The pictures have finally been printed!

Task #2 is complete! (well, kind of.) I've been sitting on printing out pictures for a few months now. Mainly the problem was picking just a handful of pictures that would look ok once printed at a size of 12x18".

So yesterday morning I sat down, narrowed down the choices, called Ryan over and we decided on 7 pictures to print. I went and had them printed - super-easy, fast, not too expensive and amazing results. One of the pictures I printed had quite a bit of noise in it but I wanted to see what it would look like printed. I was pleasantly surprised by the result. I almost opted to get them printed on nice paper but this being the first time I had anything printed in larger sizes I opted for the least expensive (or complicated) option. Next time... maybe I'll try the Baryta paper.

Anyway, the pictures look amazing. Now they need to be framed. And once that's done they'll have to somehow be placed on my wall (which wouldn't be so bad if the wall weren't made of cement.) We currently have 4 anchors on that wall. I don't think I want to use all of the anchors for pictures. I'll probably pick up two frames this week and see what I can do with them.

Other than that... the VCI-100 has burned itself into my brain. After doing some research I found out that this controller is actually pretty good. The only problem is that my soundcard wasn't made to receive a monitor signal from my computer - only from recording sources plugged into the card. This is really annoying because the VCI-100 doesn't come with a built-in soundcard. Buying another professional soundcard would be expensive. And how many pro soundcards does a girl need? I like my soundcard and up until this point haven't been limited by it. I don't particularly want to have to replace it just yet. I've looked at other controller options in the same price range (Hercules DJ Console RMX has a soundcard built in) and they just don't look as good (based on both reviews and look of the unit.) So... I don't know... maybe I'll just hold off... maybe I should just get a very basic controller... I don't particularly like any of the basic ones - they seem really limiting and are only partial solutions to the problem of having to use a mouse / keyboard while trying to mix.

Edit: yes, I admitted above that I'm essentially mixing deaf. Which is a terrible thing and which explains why it takes me forever to finish a mix. It's essentially a guessing game whenever I'm mixing. I think maybe it's time to replace this soundcard.

My research has also had me wondering what is wrong with my version of Traktor - software I use for mixing. It sounds like a lot of people are using this. Whenever I use it I have major issues - blue screens of death whenever I try to save and clipping when mixing. I really thought that maybe it was because I was trying to use it in Vista but apparently it is supposed to be compatible with Vista... So now I'm wondering what's wrong... maybe there's something wrong with my setup... more research will need to be done on this one.

Yeah, I know. This is all really quite boring. I apologize. I don't have much else here. This is what happens when I get stuck in Toronto for a week. At least I haven't started writing about my piles of laundry.