Holy smokes.  This is a long story.

I’ll shorten it.

Almost a month ago, I destroyed my music room.  I took everything apart, spread the various bits of my life around my house, and rebuilt it from scratch.  New paint on the walls.  A new wooden floor.  A completely new arrangement.

Then, not content with that bit of chaos, I destroyed my computer system.  I saved all the good bits, backed everything up into crosschecked archives, and wiped both hard drives for a completely new install.

See, I had been running Debian.  It worked well for many years, but some of the new Linux features I needed for making music were . . . let’s say “difficult to figure out“, especially in the limited amount of time that I have each evening.

I went with Ubuntu.  I had heard the install process was like magic — choosing the correct drivers, detecting all the hardware, setting up the system.

It was!

Now, one of the features that made me shift was the need for realtime audio recording on the computer.  This was difficult to get perfected with my ancient Debian system.  But when I did some research, I found there was a version of Ubuntu that was perfect for audiovisual work — Ubuntu Studio.

However, about this time, I’d been working with a new music program called Rosegarden.  (MIDI and keyboard work feature a lot more prominently in my new music, for example, La vie sous la mer.)  Rosegarden introduced me to KDE.  I figured I’d give KDE a try.

And I liked it far, far better than anything I’d seen before.

Therefore, I actually installed my system as Kubuntu (KDE + Ubuntu), but with the Ubuntu Studio packages . . .

Making my system, I guess — Kubuntu Studio!

(And of course, my computer’s name is “bermuda-depths”, in case you couldn’t have guessed.)

Anyway, I’d like to welcome to my page anyone who has wandered here from my new homes at the Ubuntu or Kubuntu forums.   In case you’re new to this page, yes, I’m a musician.  When I’m not formatting hard drives and installing wood floors

The sky was full of stars, and every star was an exploding ship — one of ours.
– Jeffery Sinclair, Babylon 5, Season 1, Episode 8.

I survived my own miniature version of the Battle of the Line.

Since the first weeks of October, I’ve been sick just about every day.  I think it was more than one illness.  Problem is, I don’t know: they all overlapped.  Sore throat, headaches, ear infections, sinus problems, bronchitis . . . .

That’s what I get for being a teacher.

Today is the first day in a long time I woke up without having a sore throat or a fit of coughing.

I’ve been pretty scarce around here, and around the internet in general.  With so much of my energy spent fighting against one invading army of microbes after another, I had to focus on a few projects and do them well, as opposed to failing eloquently across the board.

And today?  Unexpectedly, the enemy surrendered.  Three months of battle, gallons of cough medicine, three trips to the doctor, two days spent lying horizontal thanks to an ear infection . . . and now, today, nothing different, no new remedy, no new medication . . . just “it’s gone.”

Well, although I stepped back from the broader world of the internet, I focused what energy I had on making music and learning new things.  Over the next few weeks I’ll try to introduce some of them.

Also, some big projects are in the works . . . not music, but home improvement, oddly.

Today I’m writing this from my living room.  All around me, the bits and pieces of my world are spread out like debris from a wrecked starship.

That is, I just finished painting my music room, and I’m about to install a new floor.  My recording area, my computer, and all my musical instruments are scattered all over the house.  It’s like the twister from Wizard of Oz ran through them.

The weird thing is, I hadn’t realized how much that particular corner of the house really represented until it was taken apart bit by bit and stored in a dozen inconvenient locations.  I’m at home, but at the same time I’m not at home: I’m camping out in my own house.

Well, that’s the holidays in a nutshell: days you aren’t at work, but aren’t really at home, either.