Miscellaneous

Return to Paragon City

Eleven years ago NCSoft notoriously shut down City of Heroes, the first superhero MMORPG. I recently discovered that it has been revived, albeit unofficially. Someone obtained the code several years ago and ran it on a clandestine server. Word eventually got out, the code was shared, and there are now several Cities available online. I’ve been playing a little on “Homecoming.” Avatars I’ve designed so far include “Alpha Ralpha” and “MacCruiskeen,” with probably “Willy McGilly” and “Jirel de Joiry” to follow.¹

This might be of interest to John C. Wright, if he doesn’t already know.

No more spinning beachballs

I’ve had my new laptop for two weeks now. Articles on switching from Apple to Windows recommend that you quit using your old Mac cold turkey, and that has been easy. Windows 11 feels very Mac-like, and I’ve had little trouble finding my way around. The new computer is also much, much faster than the aging iMac, thanks to solid-state drives. I can check my mail thirty seconds after turning the laptop on; with the old Mac, I had time to shave and fix breakfast before I could delete the morning spam. Whenever I do use the old Mac, everything happens in slow motion. (I expect that the current generation of Apple computers with SSD drives are as fast as my new Windows machine, but the prices range from Too High to Absolutely Ridiculous, and they generally aren’t upgradable.)

With one major exception, most of the software I used on the Mac has Windows versions which I could — usually — install on the new computer without buying again. (The exception is Logic, the digital audio workstation that I’ve been using for over twenty years. It is Apple-only, and it is the only remaining good reason for using a Mac.) Sometimes the installations went smoothly. Applied Acoustics Systems conveniently assembled all the instruments I’ve bought over the years into a single file to download, which installed everything in the right places and authorized them, all at once. They get an A+. Native Instruments’ installer also got it right the first time, which is important when the total download is nearly 600 gigabytes and needs to be split across two drives (the applications on the main drive, the samples and soundware, which constitute the bulk of the downloads, on the capacious external drive). NI also gets an A.

IK Multimedia, however, gets a D. The installer for their “product manager” would not launch the first few times I tried. Re-downloading it didn’t make any difference. Just before I sent IK an angry note, I tried once more, and this time it worked and installed the installer. The total IK download was about 450 gigabytes, and as with NI, it was also to be spread across two drives. However, the product manager screwed things up. Although I told it that the sounds were to go on the external drive, it ignored me and put most of them on the main drive. Fortunately, it was easy, albeit tedious, to fix: copy all the misplaced files to the correct folders, launch each application one by one and tell it where to find the sounds, and delete the superfluous files.

Embertone gets a C-. Here again you need to download an installer. Unfortunately, the link to that installer goes to “This site can’t be reached.” I finally heard back from the company yesterday and all is now well, but they need to update their website.

Graphics software was more of a problem. If I am going to continue to use Photoshop Elements, I will have to purchase it again (like hell I’m going to “subscribe” to anything Adobe). I think I’ll see if Affinity Photo (cheap) or GIMP (free) will do what I need. Topaz Labs does make their “legacy” filters available for download on their site, but the installers put them in random places. You have to track them down and manually move them to the right plugins folder for Photoshop to find them. I may be looking for alternatives for Topaz. Filter Forge doesn’t offer legacy downloads, and you need to purchase the most recent version to install it on a new computer. Adobe, Topaz and FF all get C’s or worse. Other specialized software vendors are more responsible, fortunately; Helicon Focus, PanoramaStudio and Photomatix were all easily installed and get A’s.

Not everything about Windows is delightful. The task bar is stuck at the bottom of the screen where it constantly gets in my way, and, as far as I can tell, it is not possible to move it to the side in Windows 11, as I could the dock on my Mac. Special symbols like a degree sign or an em-dash are simple three-key combinations on a Mac keyboard, but require either an easily-forgotten alt-plus-(number pad) digits sequence or scrolling down a menu to insert. I use a lot of dashes when I write, and this is a damned nuisance.

Cheap stuff, free stuff, silly stuff

Adobe has transitioned from innovation to rent-seeking. Fortunately, there are practical alternatives to Photoshop and InDesign: Affinity’s Photo and Publisher. You can buy them, and actually own them, and for excellent prices, too. Currently they are $25 each. There’s also Affinity Designer, a counterpart to Illustrator, for the same price. I haven’t had time to give them thorough workouts, but I have verified that most of the Topaz plugins I use work in Affinity Photo. The Affinity site is here.

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Cherry Audio has made their Voltage Modular Nucleus free for the downloading for a while. I already have VCV Rack and Reaktor Blocks, so I’ll probably give it a pass, but if you have a yen to experiment with modular sound synthesis, it might be worth checking out.

If you have a digital audio workstation such as Logic or Cubase, here are some freebies you might find useful.

• Native Instruments’ Analog Dreams is an “instrument” emulating old-fashioned subtractive synthesizers. It’s in my armory, and it sounds convincing. I haven’t used it much, but that’s because I have more virtual noisemakers than I will ever use.

• Standard Guitar is an extended-range electric guitar that works well with pedal and amp emulations. (The site is in Japanese, but it’s not hard to figure out where to click.)

• Shiny Guitar is an arch-top guitar, suitable for jazz, of course, and quite a bit else.

Both the above guitars run in Plogue’s sampler Sforzando, which is also free.

If you have NI’s Kontakt, there are several other free guitars to consider here.

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I wonder sometimes just how authoritative AllMusic is. The above is from the entry on Canned Heat’s second album. Strange — I don’t recall hearing the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus on “Amphetamine Annie.”

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I recently received the above invitation. Um, yeah. Right. Just wondering: how many of these “women of excellence” need to shave?

Continue reading “Cheap stuff, free stuff, silly stuff”

California, December 2018

I made a trip out to California the week before Christmas, where I spent a couple of days in Disneyland. It was difficult to get good pictures of the attractions — 10,000 oblivious people staring at their cellphones got in the way — but I was more interested in the plants there, anyway. Many that … Continue reading “California, December 2018”