Hi.
Well, we almost went away in April due to the fact I was down to no “desktop” computers…but now I’m having to part ways for an entirely different reason.
Back in May I lost my job…and sadly I’ve been unable to find a replacement source of income. Even though there’s no financial requirement to maintain this site; WordPress provides all the hosting for images and I’ve still got a HotLinkFiles account for demos, I’ve got a lot going on.
For starters, being out of a job and out of money takes a great emotional toll on someone if you haven’t ever been in that situation. You’re so used to having money to not only pay required bills but..just have some lying back with more coming in every week…then all of a sudden…there’s no more money rolling in. So you go out and try to find another job…footing it around town, driving to interview to interview, making phone calls, emails, anything to find a job. Eventually, since you’ve been doing so much running around to find a job you can’t even afford to get to work in the first place. It’s a very pathetic feeling…and when you’re like me and you’d rather do without whatever you can’t pay for (including food which is a very basic necessity of life), the depression and feeling of useless ness pile up.
I attempted to start a tape-transfer business but all I ever got were huge projects from people who themselves didn’t have any money. The last time I earned any kind of money, it was $200 for over 100 hours invested in transfering and restoring 34 tapes…..I’m sorry, but $2/hour doesn’t pay the bills.
I had to give up my main server today…along with all the other luxuries I’d been trying to hold on to to maintain not only some sense of accomplishment but also my sanity…today however, I’ve had to give up my server and cancel a few other items like the cell-phone and satellite tv…if I didn’t have neighbors kind enough to let me use their WiFi, I wouldn’t even be here.
I honestly haven’t put as much in to this site as I feel I should. The tutorials were few and far between, although the general reaction was they were well written. I personally had problems finding topics to write about…and then when I would write, it’d be 5 pages long and I’d spend more time editing it than anything, plus there was the issue of taking what I had written, which wasn’t usually in a step-by-step process and converting it to a step-by-step process wasn’t really something I enjoyed doing all too much.
I think honestly, deciding to focus on tutorials for Goldwave only and excluding all the works I had been playing around with in Adobe Audition was probably a bad idea and I would of written more tutorials…tutorials was probably a bad idea, I should of stuck with mostly writing articles aimed at people who weren’t absolute beginners.
On a personal note, I’ve had a lot of personal stress. A family member was diagnosed with throat cancer and earlier in July, after a long battle of root canals, I had to have all my top teeth extracted. I did not go with the temporary plate due to cost issues. While the ordeal of having the extractions was traumatic (much more than having wisdom teeth pulled, which is generally the only teeth people have extracted), the recovery is a huge emotional stress and is physically demanding. The food I’m able to eat pretty much only provides the nourishment I need to keep me healthy, I have suffered a lot of energy loss. Emotional stress comes from seeing people sit and enjoy the food I love; steaks, burgers…tacos. While some of them I can eat, it’s not very comfortable. I should probably also mention I’m only 26, and looking forward to having to eventually explain the fact I’ve got false teeth to a potential girlfriend isn’t all that great of a feeling. These are the kinds of things that rush through your head when you’re blindly staring at daytime television wondering if you’re ever going to find a job.
I’m not taking the site down, not by any means…and I will still be active on the Goldwave forums. I’m mostly saying don’t really hold your breath for any major updates. I might be back sometime…I might come back tomorrow and start publishing some Audition tutorials or straight articles based on my own interpertation of audio, I really don’t know where things are going to go.
I mostly don’t have any drive to do anything but sit around and play MultiTheftAuto:SA (Multiplayer “hack/addon” for Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.
If you really feel compelled to want to help get this site rolling in any way, well, the one thing you could do is send me an email (dewdude@*nospam*.gmail.com – remove the *nospam*) and give me ideas on stuff to cover….although if you’re in a position to get me a job in the audio industry, that would work too. Mind you, my tutorials are aimed at beginners and with a little over 12 years of digital audio manipulation under my belt, is no where near what my actual current skill-set is. I can provide more through demos of restoration, mastering; even multi-track production upon request.
-Jay
musichack - hacking audio...one sample at a time 