As part of this ongoing series showing some of the cool stuff in Digital Performer 9, today I will discuss: Offline branching undo, Dynamic Equalizer, Spatial Maximizer and Track Grouping.

Be sure to check out the other DP Features posts!

• Cool Features in Digital Performer... Part 1
• Cool Features in Digital Performer... Part 3
• Cool Features in Digital Performer... Part 4
• Cool Features in Digital Performer... Part 5
• Things I hate about Digital Performer...
• Things I don't hate about Digital Performer: 10 edition

As I’ve been a Digital Performer user for a couple years, I thought I’d do a bit of a pseudo-review on DP. I’m going to cover some of the cool (and often unique) features in DP9, and I will also cover some of the downsides of using DP.

Be sure to check out the other DP Features posts!

• Cool Features in Digital Performer... Part 2
• Cool Features in Digital Performer... Part 3
• Cool Features in Digital Performer... Part 4
• Cool Features in Digital Performer... Part 5
• Things I hate about Digital Performer...
• Things I don't hate about Digital Performer: 10 edition

Click through for some neat features!

Today I’ve decided to begin trying spacemacs. For years I used emacs for things like orgmode, Common Lisp and Clojure. I also used emacs as somewhat of a C IDE with some ungodly CDET configuration. Yet, I still almost always editted text in vim.

So you may know that earlier this year I attempted to remove emacs from my life. I was partially successful as I have managed to slim down to only use emacs for Lispy-code and Babel.

Recently though, someone suggested that I try spacemacs to get the best of both worlds that I’m used to. So that’s what I’m doing right now. Writing this post in spacemacs. First though I have a question about something really simple…

So I went to find out the IRC. Oh, it’s on some weird ‘gitter’ thing. Alright, no problem.

Wait. You have to attach your github or twitter account to talk? What? Huh?

Alright. I’m done with spacemacs. Back to vim.

Nah, this isn’t about 55 gallon drums as my wife nearly thought it was. It’s about drums used in modern metal music.

Recently I wrote a post on gearslutz replying to someone that really likes room mics, but is also editing some metal drums. Since I do this quite a lot, I wrote a bit of a post explaining some tips. I’ve copied the post here as well. Click through for the whole post.

I have a concept that constantly swims through my head that I term: Efficiency.

The dictionary defines effici… screw that. The concept I have constantly going through my head is the idea that there is a shortest path between the current state and a desired state. There’s no regards for difficulty, time, feasibility or any other concern. Simply the least distance. This means basically the least amount of physical movement. Mind you, not the least amount of effort, but the least amount of movement in acting upon the final object or project.

I generally strive for things to be efficient in these terms and it’s often disastrous. I will spend hours, days, months, years or more trying to figure out the most “efficient” way of doing something.

Often this means that to achieve even simple things, I come up with difficult or complex ways of doing it. When coding for instance, I will optimize code down to the absolute fewest characters possible with no concern for readability or maintainability. When designing furniture I’ll spend an inordinate amount of time working out how to do the joinery rather that decide on which joinery is appropriate.

Another aspect to this is that often I will get stuck with very simple tasks due to an uncontrollable gap in time that I can not eliminate. Take a simple task like waiting for an LCD screen to arrive. I managed to write a bunch of totally worthless code, prepare various circuits to test, create some useless tests and then when it arrived I was so mentally exhausted that I did nothing with it for 2 months. In the end, I had everything working in about 45 minutes from scratch from bare board to displaying the necessary image.

Another example is my obsession with typing. I use a modified colemak layout and I spend a ridiculous amount of time learning emacs and vim tricks. It’s not unusual for me to pause while writing to think of the most “efficient” way to make an edit. Rather than just doing it with an extra 3-4 keystrokes, I’ve found myself spending 10 minutes thinking out how to do it in the fewest possible… and subsequently losing my train of thought. I’ve done this a few times while writing this post, and lost my train of thought twice.

Some people I know latch on to my calling a solution ‘elegant’ and subsequently making fun of me for it. I know of 3 people that do, so it must be enough of an indicator of poor behaviour that I need to pay attention to it. Perhaps the idea of ‘elegance’ is an even better description. I tend to strive to make things exceptional in their demonstration, not in their completion or ease of creation.

I really don’t have a solution other than trying to become more goal oriented, and less process oriented. I’m simply writing this as more of a realization of the problem. It’s not efficiency, it’s overthinking. I need to focus more on getting things done, not on the getting done of things.

Got a magnet? Got a toothbrush? Great… you have an easy brush for your bandsaw tires!

I just used a magnet from a hard-drive, cut a toothbrush, bolted it to the magnet and then put it in place. You can easily glue a toothbrush to a magnet too.

If you know what’s happening in this picture then I’ll buy you a cookie. For real, I will. First come, first served.

An explanation post has been in my ‘writing ideas’ OmniFocus category for a while. We’ll see if I get to it.

I have an Evans Torque Key that I’ve been testing for a couple months for attempting to quickly maintain drum tuning. While the actual product itself is great, the concept that it is based on is fundamentally flawed.

I’m going to cover both the product and the issues that underlie its failure as a product.

I’ve long been on a quest for the perfect thumb pick. I switch frequently between tapping and strumming when I play, and I basically can not play comfortably without a thumbpick. I’ve tried basically everything out there. Everything is either too stiff, too long, too small, too oddly shaped or too… something.

Recently I found the Fred Kelly BUMBLEBEE Teardrop thumb pick. It’s damn near perfect, almost. The problem is that even the largest size is half a size too small for me. I set out to fix that so I could maybe finally have a pick that’s perfect for me.

So here’s the best method that I’ve figured out.

Crusty dried paint or finish on the edge of cans is just a horrible waste of money. It causes air gaps to form around the rim when trying to close the can and accelerate the life of the product. It causes pointless drips and mess. It’s also just not fun.

It’s also really easy to avoid… Just follow the pictures.

Rip off the tape when you’re done. No mess. Accurate pouring. Easy life.