Docbop

I worked in computer biz for over 35+ years some side trips back to music. So survived a lot of layoff and got nailed by a couple and never a good feeling getting laid off. But have to focus on future and try to stay positive, if you don't it comes thru in interviews and that's not good. Also have to be open to changing directions if necessary. One thing working in computers and surviving into my 60's when they feel people over 30 are over the hill is being flexible. Looks at your skills and think about how they would be a positive in other areas that will make for a lot more doors to knock on. Keep your head up and as the old saying goes.... Where there's a will there's a way!

Yes, I worked for a ten-eleven piece Asian dance band doing sound for awhile in L.A. after working for them I knew my way around the downtown real good. Also Asian dances at the Alpine Village which could get scary because some the Asian gangs would show up. Then discovered one my favorite last night places to eat was the Alps Coffee Shop that was Japanese owned and stayed open late on weekends. We'd go after gigs and be funny all these drunk Japanese business guys nodding off and doing a face plant into giant bowls of Donburi. We bring our own things to drink and smoke while eating and the young waitresses would come by and smell the air and just look at us and smile. We played lots of big wedding they were great because they would feed us same as the guests. There are lot of Asian gigs in L.A. especially the fraternities would have big dances. Only thing odd was getting used to how they would dance like crazy but not clap after a tune but wait until the end of the set.

I've been taking online lessons for many years first as guitarist and now as a pianist. Now I wouldn't suggest a total beginner take online, but after a couple months then online is just a good as in person in my opinion. In fact with teachers I've had I have more contact with doing online than with a one on one teacher. One on one teacher were like you have X minutes and I'll see you next week. With my online teacher not only is emailing them a question between lesson allowed it's encouraged. I really miss my online guitar lessons with the Sherpa program at Truefire (sadly Truefire is guitar and bass only) I could send as many video or emails as I want to my private instructor. I wish there was a piano version of Truefire and the different levels of teaching they offer at very reasonable prices. Back to original topic bottom line it's always about the student interest level, a bad online student is probably a bad one on one student too. If they want to learn they will ask questions and do the assignments.

Lets see, look at rack and my back starts to hurts, would need a truck instead of a car to move, whole lot of points of failure in all that gear and wiring. Look at a laptop and back is happy. all fits into my car, and only a couple potential points of failure. Laptop wins! I could even afford an old laptop as a backup instead of buy a truck to haul the rack. Maybe a rack if I'm the second keyboardist for a major act with full crew, a keyboard tech, and backup of everything to handle how ever many levels of "Murphy" that happen during a show.

Look at the bright side if venues reopen and require all audience members to maintain two meters from each other them maybe they will finally shut the #$%^ up and listen.

I see the immediate future yes solo, duo, and trio if enough space gigs will be bulk of gigs, but heading down the road medical science will get a handle on this virus like it has other in the past and people will be able to crowd around bars and stages again. The big difference with this virus is it hit so fast and spread equally as fast that it affected the whole world at once. To me the big problem is trying to rush back to how things were too fast. People aren't looking at the past pandemics and how long they lasted and even those the negative when some tried to get back to normal too fast. It's going to take a lot on the part of both people and governments to accept this is going to take awhile and makes adjustments to benefit all and get thru it and wait for science to do it's thing.

I seen pictures or at Smalls jam sessions and Nicholas playing upright bass and drums too, he does it all with an amazing feel. I remember one night at Smalls jam there must of been some trumpet show in NYC because a lot of big name and new on scene trumpet players all showed up at the Small's jam. They were all hanging about the stage taking turns and every now and then this trumpet player dress in all black would walk up and play with amazing tone, intonation, and feel then just walk away back to the bar. I didn't know who it was but when he stepped up to play he owned that stage. Later discovered that was Nicholas Payton I was already a fan but had never seen him before what a great musician.

We all should stand and give one last standing ovation and celebrate the life of Little Richard and thanks for all the music he left us with. I only got to see him once live and I think he did every song in G and the bass player played the same bass line on every tune. But it was Little Richard and a hell of a lot of energy and fun night. Thank you Richard!

Taking a phrase from another issue and changing it for current world Are you dying to work or working to die, if you work involve being around a lot of people especially any sort of retail or food service. It really is a Catch-22 going back to work to deal with personal and countries economic health or staying in place with limited work by delivery and food service industries for the health of the people. You can see this Catch-22 being address by different countries deciding on whether to help their citizens or help their economy. Some are saying this is why there is big government to step in and help the people in times of crisis and we'll worried about the the cost and getting economy back together after the crisis. Others the big government is only concerned with the economy and view citizens dying as a cost of doing business. Then some countries trying to walk a tightrope trying to do both. This pandemic is pulling the curtain back and exposing the real economic condition of countries around the globe and how different countries value their citizens. The aftermath of this crisis is going to be a very different world and who is viewed as global leaders.

>>>> I get your point about longevity -- this a concern worth considering. I've yet to regret having 8G of memory but at some point that will surely change. I'm not sure that it will be during the life of my MacBook Pro, which is 5 years old, but it could matter for the OP who's looking to buy now. <<< These day with Apple and now some others are starting to solder in memory and storage you really need to get as much as you can afford when you buy because upgrading is impossible. Used to be you could buy a lower spec' computer and over time add more RAM and bigger storage to make it last longer but with soldering in those components to create planned obsolescence . I remember reading a interview with someone at Apple and they were saying their view of the world is people should get a new phone every two years and a new computer every three years. Again get as much RAM as you can now. Storage you can go external but with laptop having less and less ports you now looking at bus contention and bottlenecks at the port if a lot is daisy chained.

Maybe time to bring back TV shows like "In Concert" only do them as On Demand and maybe a new concept in virtual clubs that livestream music for a monthly fee. People have big screen TV and high end sound put it to good use for music. Have listening parties with friends and best part not a bunch of asshats holding up smartphones trying to record everything.

She's back with another YT about the viral video going around. I like the first 14 minute just on fact checking common sense. After the 14 minute point she talks about the video. [video:youtube]

First you get SAG Sell All Gear then you see the money and GAS returns.

If you get a used Mac be sure to get one before the T2 chip.

I been wanting a workstation Montage, Fantom, Kronos. What keep my GAS under control is first my apartment is so full of crap until I do a major clearing out of stuff there is no room for another big keyboard. Two I'm still a beginner when it comes to keyboard so all that great workstation abilities would just be a distraction at this point. But at night I keep telling myself, but-but, but I could sequence backing tracks to practice with, I could......

For stuff like that long passwords or situations where if I make a typo which I do a lot it hard or impossible to go back and correct what I will do is open a text editor and type it in there then cut and paste the long password or text in. Then just exit the text editor without saving. To it's worth the security or avoiding typos in chats and etc.

I'm really digging all the stuff Open Studio is doing. Last night they did a livestream Listening Session on YouTube and FB and played the John Coltrane album Crescent and had open chat between each tune on the album. Been check out their classes too really hip place.

I was out get my walk in and ran in to my old high school buddy so we walked together for a bit. He never totally stopped teaching guitar lessons and today was smiles because some of his students that stopped because of the virus are starting back up. Like me he's in that older group that need to be careful and he's taking students and he doesn't need the money. He gets haircut by some woman who is going to peoples houses because the salon is closed, go to the store every couple days to have an excuse to be out and about. It's like he and others are going thru withdrawal and jonesing for a social fix. They're give a new meaning to STDs instead of Sexually Transmitted Disease it Socially Transmitted Disease. I'm glad I've been a loner most my life and staying home and playing, listening to music works for me. In fact with the stay at home going on there is a wealth of great music, interviews, at home concerts, and musician hangs I'll miss when the virus is finally under control. Stay home and stay safe all.

That mixer doesn't have an audio interface so whatever mixer output (mono, stereo out) you send to the audio interface is all the Mac/Garageband is going to get it's not going to be separate tracks. If you wanted separate tracks you should of either bought a mixer that has an built-in audio interface, or a audio interface with more inputs.

You're assuming that they're coming in through the front door. if they gain access to the underlying password file, they can brute force crack as fast as their computing hardware will run. Bottom line if someone can physically get to your computer you're screwed period.

Pro's don't brute force they crack passwords in bulk with small supercomputers with multiple password crackers running multiple cack dictionaries. Feed in thousands of accounts and encrypted passwords then use the accounts they cracked. My last job before retiring was for a company who's name made many hacker think was a financial institution. Every morning I'd start my day was a big cup of coffee and then read though the security logs on my servers. The logs were filled with various levels of people trying to break in. If I saw a lot of IP's from a range I check to see who owned them and see what country, sometimes a region. Other times it would look like some kid in another country trying to learn to hack by all the attempts from on IP. Being in other countries not much you could do because none actually got in they just tried. I'd see some IP's from the US but less often because in US even just pinging a server the law could come down on you it they wanted to. A lot of the attempt came in spurts from a particular country and we were like okay hacking 101 class is in session again we'll get a lot of log entires from them for the next month. Bottom line is anything can be broken into IF they want something bad enough and willing to spend the time it take. For the average person they are just going for the low hanging fruit so use good passwords to keep from being that low hanging fruit.

I don't trust password managers, how well do you know them, how safe their own site? The first thing I do is create passwords that I can make simple acronyms to help me remember them or I can write down and means nothing. I was programmer for one of the big universities and just to do my daily work needed to use five passwords that had to be changed monthly and no password could be reused for six months. So came up with use acronyms that I could write down and no one was the wiser. Since being involved with computer security and this woman I knew who was the chief security nerd for one of the credit reporting agency's internal security. She put together a six node supercomputer she would test how quickly she could crack employee passwords with. It was fast and computer speeds are so much faster today. So then I realized LONG passwords are the key to being safe and they don't even have to be that crazy the length is the key. People who crack passwords in general go for bulk cracking so passwords that take too much time tend to get ignored, unless you are their specific target. So a long password might take an extra second to type but the return in security is worth it.

Just read an article that the On-Demand of the new Trolls movie has already made more money than original did in it's entire five month run. So other studios are looking to at maybe new world for movies is online. So seems concerts could go the same way why the expense of touring, dealing with weather, sold out in one city empty seats in others. Move to internet and get a global audience for the original show(s) and tickets for being in the audience for the live capture would be $$$ status symbol. Then more money for the On-Demand replays. Large venues would now have the built in lighting video streaming capabilities as part of venues package. Seems like a business model that would work. Live music would continue in bars and similar small places and YouTube streaming will be the world of up and coming artists building a name for themselves.

Chick tours with his different bands yearly. Here's what 2020 looked like before the virus. Chick Corea schedule 2020

I saw that a week or so ago on YT and couldn't stop laughing. I sent it to the owner of the local music store, he was not amused. LOL