I hope that I'm not jumping the gun by posting this, but I think that things have pretty much fallen into place now. The studio is working, my system is stable, my backups are manageable and even my ciradian rhythm is close to what is considered normal.

Music production can begin again!
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The next thing to sort out is communication with collaborators/projects. I'm sure I've missed a lot of development over these months and I'll be trying to get back up to speed if you are still interested.

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Also, as a tribute to this occasion I've uploaded an old track of mine from 2009, which I've been saving like wine. It might not have the latest sounds nor professional mastering, but it has character!

Still importing backups. The installation process of most virtual instruments gives very limited control over where the data will be stored. Meaning that I have to manually clean up the file system after running each installer. Sometimes it takes hours from running the installer to actually reaching the state where the instrument works and the file system is properly organized.

So, while I keep working on getting everything in order, I'll also take the time here and now to propagate the use of disk imaging. If you doubt you could recover easy from a severe system malfunction, or if you know you have to format your system disk now and then, then just save its image on a separade harddrive! It might save you the trouble of having to reinstall everying from scratch, even in cases of viruses and the like.

Sounds overly complicated, not sure if it would really be helpful? Well, let me tell you this: with computers you have to do everything to save yourself from having to do everything from scratch. You want as many options available to you as possible when disaster strikes.

If you are interested in information security and don't know where to start, pm me.

Computer is working fine again, I'm now working on importing my backups.

Dear newgrounder or project leader/representative,
I apologize for my unavailability this month and that I have to keep this message so short. This year I've been plagued with technical problems but I always managed to work around them, I always had a way to compose music and participate in projects. I never thought the situation would escalate to the point when I cannot use my computer anymore. Needless to say, I should have considered that.

This month I have had to devote most of my time to maintenance of my computers and network, studying computer security and backing up terabytes of data has taken up most of the time so far. I expect everything to be done within a week, but I've never done this kind of security revamp before, so consider it a rough estimate.

I want you to know that I have not forgotten about your project, I will be back to finish it. And if all goes as planned, I will never have this kind of downtime again.

Thank you for your patience!

The Creative X-fi series of sound cards is probably known for being in collusion with the devil. They are great cards, when they work. But I should have looked up the facts before I bought an extreme gamer card many years ago.

I used to love it for everything from its gold-plated connectors to its driver software, with so many settings to tweak that I never bothered to learn what they are, but most importantly I liked the clarity of the sound. Although it's usually the headphones that are the culprit in bad audio quality, this sound card did improve the aural experience a lot from the ancient piece of onboard hardware I had before. And when I got into music production, it was adequate.

The more time that passed, the higher became my demands on polyphony, signal delay and distorsion, etc. And I think that the load on the card increased as I started to push it harder, but it used to live up to expectations in most situations that didn't require timing-critical recording. Which in my case is 99% of the time. But all good things must come to an end.

Today, some moments ago, I eagerly opened up FL Studio for a short composing session and then the card went all insurgent on me. Instead of the typical anaphone sound FL Studio should play when it opens, I got the sonic version of assasination. It was something like a sudden explosion of static so extremely loud that I had to throw my headphones off of me. It was very unexpected and highly unpleasant. I think I may be suffering a little temporary hearing loss now.

Hearing loss or no hearing loss, Beethoven went deaf and it didn't bother him, but if I cannot trust my own hardware then what can I trust? The relationship between the X-fi and me will never be the same again knowing that until I find out what caused that malfunction I risk getting physically hurt by my machine.
Up until this year I thought that the most dangerous thing about computers were the bad habits and sitting in an unnatural position for 10h+ a day, but that is nothing compared to hazards like this and the PSU explosion I experienced a month ago. What will the next malfunction be?

Why have I always been using EQUO for everything? No wonder I used to hate mixing.
From now on I'll use parametric eq.

Have a good day!

Bought a new PSU and my machine is back online. Resuming normal composing operation.
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Yay! =)

BloodyN00b here, reporting from my laptop.
While working on my latest masterpiece I was pushing my soundwave manipulation station (desktop PC) over its limits. It allowed to me upload the song, but it could not recover from the stress I had put it through. The next day, it perished. I don't know what is worse, the loss of data or the smell of burning components, but probably the smell. I'm quite used to losing data by now.

This laptop doesn't have any music production software installed and I have no access to any backups of anything. I think I'll be writing music with paper and pen for a while, maybe I'll be able to upload it to the art portal =D

Every day in January I was thinking about what I would write for the NAC, but no inspiration came. The deadline came and went, and voila. Here I am with my most well-recieved orchestral piece to date, and the contest is over =(

This month's contest is about 80's videogames, I wonder if I'll find a way to approach it with an orchestra =P

"Let the past be the past" are words I've heard somewhere. I have no clue who said it, but I've invoked it often to forget about my loose ends. Today though, I wanted to at least fulfill the promise I made to write a proper comment on Bunker Infiltration. To my surprise, a pop-up message told me that it's no longer editable due to its popularity.
So much for that promise =P

So, now I'm stuck with another unfulfillabe promise (if promises were edible, I could feed Africa with all of mine), but I sincerely want to say a late thank you to johnathan-wrathborne for featuring the song in his flash Tankmen:Dual part 1.
Because ultimately, artists like him are the main reason I make music. And the flash is good.

Lesson learned today: think before you write your Newgrounds song comments. =P