Bits and Pieces

In the "Bits and Pieces" section for today, I will touch on a few things that are on mind. That way, I can put them all in one entry...

I've been talking with the Mac guy (Eric, who also transferred my last batch of films) about the PowerComputing Mac Clone I got from my Freecycle list. After much deliberation, I've come to the conclusion I'm not going to use the Mac in this stage of Mater Dei Television. After everything I either have to buy and/or upgrade on this thing, it'll probably serve me better as a toy-around-with computer that I can stick on my KVM, put OS 8.5 on it, and see what it can do. What I think needs to be understood is this: We have to use what we already have or can get for either free or inexpensively. I don't have the money to spend upgrading a Mac for the sake of using a Mac.

This decision comes on the heels of yet another Freecycle acquisition: A three year old eMachine with a dead motherboard. Dead eMachines, from what I was told by someone in an eMachine overclockers group, are a good place to scavenge for parts. What happened was a design flaw in the power supply caused the motherboard to burn out prematurely, but has a tendency to leave other parts intact. In fact, the 2.2GHz Celeron that is in my video editor now was pulled out of a dead eMachine. The new one is a 2.6GHz, so the upgrade will be made. I'm going to stick the power supply that I had in the P4 I was trying to build last month (that gave me all the fits that I wrote about) and a new motherboard in there, probably along with a Dazzle USB analog capture setup, so that I can output video to an analog source. It'll take longer to encode, but I don't see a better way of encoding two different types of streams using the exact same source.

In other news, I'm acing my J-100 class. Yeah, I'm back in college (which is probably why I don't update as much as I should right now). J-100 is an entry level journalism course from Indiana University that I'm taking at IUPUI. A guy named Hank Nuwer is my prof. He seems to have liked my work thus far. He said that he's interested in reading my final article for the class, which is actually going to be about the alleged, long-awaited Moto Proprio that's supposed to be issued by Pope Benedict XVI any day now. The rumors have been abounding for...how long now? It's like that part in the movie "Airplane." You know..."Now arriving at Gate 6...Gate 7...Gate 8...", except instead of different gates, it's different days. I don't criticize the Holy Father for either waiting or not issuing the Moto Proprio yet. No. I have to question the sanity of those who are starting the rumors. Yes, I want greater access to the Tridentine Mass also, but for crying out loud: Let Pope Benedict do his work! The more rumors that get started, the more ancy people get.

I was originally going to title the next item as a separate post called "Faster Than Thou, Harder Than Thou, Holier Than Thou." It's about a Traditional Catholic grindcore project out of Houston called Forty Holy Martyrs of Sebaste. By and large, "Traditional Catholic" and "grindcore" are two phrases that you generally don't hear in the same sentence, let alone together. For those of you who don't know what grindcore is, it's the heaviest, fastest, most brutal music known to mankind.

I've been listening to it for years.

The main guy in the band, who goes by St. Augustine, is actually a Catholic who attends the Anglican Use parish in Houston. The other guy, St. Nicholas, actually is too busy and had to leave the project for the time being. Nick, however, attends the Indult Mass down there. I actually had to show this to the Inquisitor Generalis from the Sacred Weblog of the Universal Inquistion, himself a fan of punk and metal (and many of the subgenres that go with them). The thing I've noticed about the younger Traditional Catholics is that it seems like the more traditional that they tend to be, the harder the music that they like. It may not necessarily be the case across the board, but it does seem to make sense. It's actually not a bad idea. For one, you won't be hearing this music during Mass anytime soon. I love Seven Sorrows also, but some of their acoustic songs could be thrown into a Lifeteen Mass somewhere and it would go undetected. If you did that with 40 Holy Martyrs, even Cardinal Mahoney would be covering his ears! And good. We really do need more non-liturgical Catholic music to be listening to outside of Mass. I'm just glad that more of it is finally beginning to cater to my heavier tastes. In addition to 40 Holy Martyrs and Seven Sorrows, you might want to give Thirst a shot, too. Granted, not all of it is heavy, but these are quite definitely the better bands.

And for those of you who still think that all rock music is the work of the Devil, please quit being so protestant. Yes, some of it is; no arguments from me whatsoever. And I avoid that stuff these days. But to call all of it evil based on the fact that it's rock music is a purityrannical viewpoint that mostly goes back to WASPs in the southern U.S. who decried rock and roll because of the fact that EARLY rock and roll was, in fact, music of African-Americans. Heresy is diabolical too, and protestantism is, in fact, a heresy. If you don't want your children listening to it, be the parent and pull the plug.

Until next time...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI