Optimizing/cleaning a laptop for live only

[mcbpete]

Absolutely, to be safe I've always played with a simple crossfadering device or switcher with another laptop (or just any audio device!) playing in tandem so that if things go tits up, I can at least have something playing instead of the deafening silence of a failed machine.

[Perezvon]

Also this reminds me. I watched a guy have his Windows laptop completely fail during his set just the other week. It locked completely and spat out that ":( An error has occured" fullscreen message. He sat there frustrated as FUCK while Windows was validating some shit on the filesystem for 10 minutes. Then he gave up and left.

 

Don't be that guy I guess. It was really sad to watch.

 

 

some variation of that thing ^^ horrific

Holy shit, this looks absolutely terrifying

 

The only laptop I had serious blue screens on had its components probably damaged by heat and random shocks. I'll probably get a laptop stand too.

[maitake]

That's a good idea.
Brainstorming some tips to prevent that from happening:

1) Disable as many useless services as you can in the "service manager" I think it was called (little rusty). Things like print spooling, samba, blah blah. It's a massive list of bloated shit on a default install.

 

2) Unmount any drives that aren't being used. Even a hard disk that you store random shit on and always keep mounted. If windows gets any sense of a funny business in the file system it sometimes gets wild

 

3) adding Perezvon's tip here.. LAPTOP STAND. Reduce any shock or vibration. A live show will guarantee large amplitude sound waves. Come to think of it, could this be why that guy's laptop wen't full frowny? The message was something about file corruption/file system ..

 

4) Perhaps seperate Windows installs.. Keep a totally different install with nothing but your audio environment on it to run live shows on. Keep it disconnected from all networking services and then install all your shit there. Then on the other partition with another Windows copy running, use that one to browse porn, run anti-virus, call of duty, etc.. DO NOT USE YOUR DAILY DRIVER INSTALL FOR LIVE SHOWS without a backup plan or good trust in it's current stability.

 

5)

 

6)

[Test Fforet]

 

i've been suspicious of the claims of SSD longevity as I know little usb sticks have a limited number of read + write cycles, was wondering if this carried over to SSDs too.

 

 

 

Speaking of longevity of SSD, this was indeed a problem with the first generations of SSDs, but with recent Versions (like samsung evo850 (1tb), which i use atm) you dont need to worry.

 

They are stable and simulations testify them a long live, but then again there's no real longe live proof because of the "young" history of SSD

 

 

EDIT: If you want your music to last forever, carve the midi notes of your track on stone (and of course the source code of your preferred DAW+OS so Aliens or humans in million year can rebuild OS+DAW+tracks to listen to)q

[maitake]

 

or this thing. it accepts kb size text files. midi data shouldn't be an issue.

 

 

 

Femtosecond laser writing in transparent materials has attracted considerable interest due to new science and a wide range of applications from laser surgery, 3D integrated optics and optofluidics to geometrical phase optics and ultra-stable optical data storage. A decade ago it has been discovered that under certain irradiation conditions self-organized subwavelength structures with record small features of 20 nm, could be created in the volume of silica glass. On the macroscopic scale the self-assembled nanostructure behaves as a uniaxial optical crystal with negative birefringence. The optical anisotropy, which results from the alignment of nano-platelets, referred to as form birefringence, is of the same order of magnitude as positive birefringence in crystalline quartz. The two independent parameters describing birefringence, the slow axis orientation (4th dimension) and the strength of retardance (5th dimension), are explored for the optical encoding of information in addition to three spatial coordinates. The slow axis orientation and the retardance are independently manipulated by the polarization and intensity of the femtosecond laser beam. The data optically encoded into five dimensions is successfully retrieved by quantitative birefringence measurements. The storage allows unprecedented parameters including hundreds of terabytes per disc data capacity and thermal stability up to 1000°. Even at elevated temperatures of 160oC, the extrapolated decay time of nanogratings is comparable with the age of the Universe - 13.8 billion years. The demonstrated recording of the digital documents, which will survive the human race, including the eternal copies of Kings James Bible and Magna Carta, is a vital step towards an eternal archive.