Mac mini memory upgrade

As you know, our platform goal in Kazakstan is to meet local traditional musicians (dombura players) and record them playing their songs.

But, how do we record them? We could use existing studios: these are actually rare, and at any rate these are the same ones which produce current commercial products which in our opinion suffer from poor quality. Plus, we intend to approach local musicians on a grass-roots level, and bringing them to a fancy studio would project a different image. Plus, we 'd have to pay the studio owners for the time, and since they'd probably supply their own engineers and mixers, we opted to not go this way. One listen to the average commercial Kazak traditional music tape here, and you'd want to re-do it too! We want good quality!

Would we develop our own studio? Some friends provided an estimate between 5,000 and 10,000 Canadian dollars to set one up (though this didn't include preparing an actual room, just the equipment needed to actually record.) Whoa. And then we'd have to get all that out here.

As some of you may also know, Shane is a big fan of Mac computers. And he loves fiddling with them. While in London, England, we dropped into a nice Apple store near Oxford Circus looking for a desktop system which would suit our purposes. True, they are usually pricier than Windoze machines, but, they are far more user-friendly (and any of you who ever heard my rant on this topic might be able to imagine my tone even now!), with tighter software integration, reliability, etc.

Well, of all things, Apple had just released a new desktop Mac, called the Mac Mini. Sounds like a silly name until you see the price ($400 US), 1.25 gHz processors, 256 ram, 40 gb hard drive, etc. It is only W 6.5 x L 6.5 x 2 inches high! There is a desktop we could bring overseas. It practically fits in a coat pocket. We didn't want to use my current laptop for it contains loads of sensitive work, and Michelle's Sony, well, it looks nice.

Thanks to God, and to all our investors, we bought one. We also picked up an extra 1GB memory chip. The only thing is we'd have to pay 200 dollars to have someone install it, or bring it all out with us and let me upgrade it. Fortunately, the amount of fiddling I have done over the years gave me some confidence that I could do this. After downloading several guides from the 'net, I felt ready. And so, as of 10 minutes ago, I successfully opened our Mac Mini and replaced the existing 256 MB chip with the 1 GB chip. To get a shop to do this would have cost another bundle.

We are closer than ever to being ready to record dombura players here in our home.All that we need now are 1) a nice monitor, and 2) a massive external firewire hard drive.

And if any of you are looking to get another computer, I recommend the Mac Mini.

Our first get together

Last Friday we hosted our first get-together at our place. Every week we meet with others to sing. So, there was lots of cleaning to do beforehand. It sure is dusty here! Really, every two days you can feel the dust that has gathered on the floor and have to get out the clothe and pail and start wiping. This also makes it hard for the computers.
So, the time was good. We live in a new building, one of many being built in the city. The main aspect which stood out for our visitors was the brightness, for many buildings from the Soviet days are dark and dreary. You can see the nice white walls at our recent photo site.
The highlight however was Michelle playing guitar for the singing time, for the first time ever! She has strummed a chord here and there over the years, but didn't feel she was making progress. Sunday night, a week ago, she was asked to be in charge of the singing, so I suggested SHE do the playing. At first she declined, but Sunday night she picked up the guitar, "just to see", and what do you know! Two hours and 4 songs later a new song leader was born!

Welcome

Hello dear friends! Glad you found this site. If you are like us, you probably surf the net somewhat. We thought this might be an interesting way to keep in touch. Throughout the day we often jot down thoughts, or think of doing so and forget, and much never makes it into the emails to you.

We shall do our best to make sure this isn't filled with common blogging posts like "just testing this to see if it works", followed by the same 2 weeks later.

The news for today is that we are looking into registering a domain name so that we can put up a proper web site for the music platform we are developing.

Even bigger news: after years of trying now and then, Michelle yesterday has begun playing guitar! Prior to this she would strum a few chords, and that's about it. All of a sudden last night at 11:30 pm she picked up the guitar and two hours later she put it down! Praise God! She was thrilled but tired. And I was thrilled too!

We look forward to hearing from you. Shane