I got up reasonably early, before 9am.

I dragged out one of the servers, plugged it all in, booted it up, I started downloading stuff I needed, so I could get X going on it.

I looked for the windows cd, couldn't find it, oh well.

I had a shower while I waited for stuff to download.

I managed to get all the stuff for X, configured it, got it running.

I downloaded a linux multitrack recording program "audacity", but it complained it couldn't access the soundcard. Not suprising, since I didn't compile the kernel driver for it.

I started looking at details of getting the sound working on that board it looks like a pain.

I started downloading the kernel source, so I could build the sound drivers.

While I waited, I went to Jaycar to get the cables.

On my way there, since I was right near my mate's place, I stopped in to look at his amp, see if it had a line out port on it, and what type of connector it had.

It was about 11am when I got there, my mate's Dad was there, he left me in, then told my mate I was there.

He came crawling out, saying I was a bit early, and I said I was just on my way to buy cables, and wanted to check his amp, and then he could back to bed.

It was just a standard 6.5mm jack on the back, not an XLR socket like I expected.

I took off, and went to Jaycar. I got a stack of cables, XLR cable, adapters, extension cables, a microphone, another guitar cable.

I also got some batteries and stuff to make up a proper serial adapter for the 95lx, instead of the bits of wire and paperclips I was using last night.

I headed back for home, stopped in at McDonalds on the way, and got a couple of cheeseburgers, I thought about staying there to eat them, but then saw there were no newspapers, and there was also some soccer club having what looked like a garage sale there.

I came home, ate the burgers, changed the batteries in the 95lx, great, it still says low battery. Must be something wrong with it.

I played the guitar for a bit, got a call fro my mate, he was on his way down, and would pick me up on the way. gees, it's nearly 1pm now.

I packed up all the cables and stuff, sat around for a bit, listened to some music, he turned up a little while later.

I loaded my amp and guitar and stuff into the car, and we went around to my mate's place.

We sat down for a bit, I didn't even bother setting my stuff up, we went out to have some lunch.

We went out to Erina, we were meeting another mate. We waited for him, and waited, and waited.

He eventually turned up, and then we went in to get some food.

I ate lunch, and then went to get a drink, I went to the juice place again, ordered a regular (small) drink this time, and again, there was more than a large drink worth, so the chick poured it, I drank some, and then she put more in, but I couldn't be bothered mucking around, she was about pour it into another cup, and I said not to worry about it.

I went back to the table I didn't get lost this time) sat back down for a while, then we went to JB Hifi.

We browsed around in there for a while, still no copies of Kill Bill volume 1, I didn't get anything, and then we came back across, went back to the car, and went back to my mate's place.

It was now about 3.30pm. We set the gear up, and started playing. We practiced Sultans of Swing for a while, and then at 4.30pm, my mate, who gave me a lift over, wanted to go home, because he was going to a party later.

My mate (who's place it was) said he'd give me a lift back later if I wanted, so I could stay there a while.

We played the guitars a bit more, and then we decided to muck around with the computer, I took 2 soundcards with me.

We dragged the pc out, and set it up in the loungeroom near all the gear. I put an extra card in it.

We booted up, started trying to find where to tell Cakewalk to use 2 cards, couldn't find it, or anything in the help.

I said we should just google. The phone line didn't reach to the computer, so we dragged it all back into his office again, and set it back up.

He'd had a power surge on the phone line a couple of days before, and it had blown his modem up, he'd bought a new one, and put it in, but it had trouble connecting.

He connected, while dialing, it was making all crackling noises. He said the phone (in the loungeroom) didn't do that.

It only connected at like 16k. We tried browsing, it was painful, but were able to find that the version of cakewalk we were trying to use doesn't support multiple soundcards.

The connection dropped out. We connected again, 12k this time. Browsed a bit more, found that the newer version (cakewalk became "sonar") does support it.

The connection dropped out again.

I told my mate to get the phone, he did, we plugged it in, instead of the modem, it was all crackly. Hmm, sounds like the line is stuffed.

I checked the extension cord he was using, inside the connector looked fine, no corrosion. perhaps it's the other end, or the socket on the wall.

He plugged the phone straight into the wall, it was fine.

I took the cover off the connector on the other end.

One wire was just barely contacting with the pin that went into the socket, and the other wire was all corroded.

I fixed both of these, put it back together, and then the phone sounded fine through it.

We connected to the internet again, this time windows reckoned we'd connected at 963k, hmm, somehow I don't think I did _that_ good of a job fixing the cable.

I suggested that he get an 802.11b/g card for his pc, since he's close to the cbd, there's probably a few open APs he could connect to, bugger this dialup.

We looked around the net a bit more, I noticed my mate's Marshall amp foot switch board (it's not really a pedal, what do you call these things?), picked it up, and started looking at it.

My mate told me that the Overdrive 2 switch is stuffed, it's stuck on. I played with it a bit, yeah, feels like the action in the switch is broken. The others go down a bit, then click, and it changes the state, this one just goes up and down, doesn't click.

He told me that it stuffed up before, and he took it back and had it fixed under warranty, but now it was out of warranty. I said it probably just needed a new switch.

I grabbed a screwdriver, and opened it up, oh wow, I think I'll need an oscilloscope to work this circuit out.. there was almost nothing in there. The only components were 4 LEDS to show the state of the 4 switches, and a bunch of wires. There was no PCB, nothing, just wires and LEDs soldered to the switches.

I figured I could just get a heavy duty switch of some description, that would have the same barrel size, and replace it. Probably wouldn't look terrific, having and odd switch, but it would work.

I put back together, and then my mobile rang, it was my mate from Wyong. He was at a guy's place in Sydney, the guy with the Craptus cable modem that stopped working, and the tech stuffed up his network config when he replaced it.

This time he was having connectivity issues. I tried to work out what the problem was, it was a very strange one, the client pcs could get ips (dhcp) from the one running ICS, but they couldn't ping it, or get any traffic through.

I stayed on the phone, suggesting things he try, removing/reinstalling the lan card in the ICS machine etc, but nothing would fix it, it ended up the same, could get DHCP off it, but couldn't ping it or NAT through it.

I suspected a firewall on the ICS machine, that's bollocksed things up, but he said nothing had been installed on there.

I got off the phone, afetr 25 minutes.

I spoke to my mate a bit more, he'd worked out that sonar 4 would probably do it, so I suggested getting eMule, and looking for an "evaluation" version. (I'm not going to spend $1000 on a program, only to find it doesn't do what I need).

He started downloading it, I said I'd get though, at that point he gave me a lift home. I took my guitar, ro practice, and a few cables, and the microphone, left my amp and a bunch of stuff there, since I'm coming back tomorrow.

I got home, my mate said he let me know if there was anything happening (going out to a club or whatever). I couldn't be bothered to go out to get any dinner, so I just had a couple of cans of Bundy and coke that were left in the fridge from Wednesday night, after the hail.

About 9.30pm, I was feeling a bit hungry, realised there was a packet of rice crackers on the counter I'd bought days ago, and ate them.

I was mucking around on the server, I kicked off downloading the kernel sources, so I could compile the driver for the sound card. The current kernel version I was using isn't latest anymore, so I was worried I'd have to muck around to get the RAID driver etc all working again.

It took ages to download 30M.

When it finished, I couldn't find where the sources were.. found them, in with the sources to the current kernel I was running. D'oh, waited a couple of hours for nothing.

I went into the current kernel source, compiled the sound driver, and the driver for the cards I've bought. I didn't worry about the driver for the onboard sound, since while doing some reading on the internet about sound recording, I found details of sound sync getting out, because the crystals on different cards aren't all the same.

I figure that by using similar cards, it should minimise that.

The drivers compiled, I loaded them, got an error, but that was becuase the card wasn't in the machine yet.

I rebooted, to make sure it would come up properly, yep, fine. Shutdown, put a card in, booted.

Strange, didn't see the card listed as PnP device in the POST screen. Tried loading the kernel driver, failed, no card.

Shutdown the machine, took the card out again, put one of the other cards in, booted up, it showed up, loaded the driver, card came up. I shutdown, put the original card in as well, in a different slot, then 2 cards showed up, and the kernel driver found both.

I started trying to work out how to use both cards, with audicity. Hmm, doesn't look promising.

I mucked around a bit, couldn't find how to use multiple cards, read a stack of stuff on the internet. Found out about some windows program that'll do it, "n-track", started downloading that.

I was IMing the guy that looks after the oztivo images at the moment, he suggested that I use ALSA instead of OSS, since it's more flexible. He asked what card it was, and then gave me a link straight to a page telling me how to install the driver for that card.

I went about going through that, but I couldn't find the kernel driver modules. Eventually found I had to download "alsa-source", instead of "alsa-modules" (which it is now apparently), once I had that, I compiled the driver for the card, tried loading it. Failed.

I'd done a make install, but it was referencing /lib/modules/2.4.25/kernel/sound, instead of /lib/modules/2.4.25/kernel/drivers/sound.

I copied all the compiled drivers in manually.

When I tried to load it/them, I kept getting errors about "can't find cmipci.o", I then found I had to run "update-modules", and then it could find it.

I tried loading again, still failing.

D'oh, I still have the OSS driver loaded, dopey. rmmoded that, insmoded the new one, some error about a post install script failing. Poked around a bit, loaded the other modules, then came back and tried loading the driver again, same error.

Did it again, this time it worked. Hmm. I ran alsaconf again (which I'd done a few times, only to have it tell me that it couldn't find any cards). This time it found both cards, so I configured them.

I went back to mucking around with audacity, still didn't have any extra options. Less in fact, now there's only /dev/dsp, no /dev/dsp1 for the other card.

I ran "snddevices" at some point, it mucked around in /dev, and I think that might have put dsp1 back again.

I started reading about making a virtual device using the alsa configuration files, apparently it has a "multi" mode, where you can use multiple sound cards to make a single, multichannel device, though it says "this won't allow you to use several cheapy sound cards to make a multichannel input device".

D'oh, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. I'll try and do it anyway. I think it's because of the sync issues, (which it did mention) but as I said, since I'm using the same cards, that should be minimised.

I wrote a config file, tried to run audacity against it, but then found you can't specify the device to use, and it doesn't support ALSA mode natively.

I changed the default device to be the multichannel virtual card, but then audacity just complained it couldn't open the sound system.

I gave up, and went to bed. It was about 2.30am I think.