D. Lee Jackson

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Parts Bought, Commissions Still Open

Posted on 2021-12-06 Written by D. Lee Jackson Leave a Comment

TechnologyReaction to my announcement of limited commissions being open has been astounding. PCGamer first picked up the announcement, then USA Today published an article about it! As a result, I got quite a few e-mails about commissions, and have since signed agreements to do several of those. In fact, I’ve already finished my first commission, and I’d like to thank the commissioner, Fernando Calvo Schiappacasse, for trusting me to get the job done!

If you will remember, I was opening commissions primarily so I could finish buying parts for a computer build.  Well, thanks to what I’ve done so far, along with an eBay sale of some excess laptop RAM, I’ve been able to buy the remainder of those parts! The last part, the motherboard, was purchased over the weekend and is en route. I’m extremely grateful to finally be able to do this.

Does this mean that I’m going to close commissions, now that I’ve bought my parts? Not by a long shot. There are end-of-year bills to pay, and I need to boost the household income. There are also other items I’d like to buy for the finished new Music Computer, like a breath controller for composing more lifelike brass and woodwind parts with Cakewalk for Bandlab. So, for the foreseeable future, I will be keeping commissions open.

Once again, if you are interested in a commission, please drop by my Commissions page. I look forward to hearing from you!

Filed Under: composing, computer, eBay, music Tagged With: commissions, composing, computer, eBay, music, personal

Major Announcement – Commissions Open

Posted on 2021-11-20 Written by D. Lee Jackson Leave a Comment

Clock CrushWell, the computer build was coming along nicely until household finances reared their ugly head. I am now $529 away from completing the build, and that’s where I will stay until at least after the first of the new year. I’ve made great progress in getting things together using just my own money and have dipped into the household budget just once on a pre-Black Friday item that was about to run out of inventory.

So, I am officially on hiatus now. No more purchases from the household account. The only allowed purchases until January 2022 will be ones that will be made with funds I have in my own personal bank account. Therefore, as of this moment, I am open for limited commissions. See my Commissions page for details. Do you know anyone who needs a few minutes worth of music written for them? Have them contact me from the Contact Page and we’ll set things up.

Since I’m on Social Security Disability retirement, there is a limit to how much I can earn in any given month, We can discuss that when you contact me, since it will affect how much music I can write in a given month. I do guarantee, however, that I will be offering high quality product for the price we negotiate, whatever the limitation may be. 

Back to the computer parts list: at first, everything I make will be reinvested into the computer until I can bring the new build online. That’s the main reason for me opening up commissions at this time.

Now, allow me to post what I’ve got and what I’m missing so far:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type Item Price
CPU Intel Core i7-12700KF 3.6 GHz 12-Core Processor Purchased For $465.46
CPU Cooler Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler $119.02 @ Amazon
Thermal Compound ARCTIC MX-5 Incl. Spatula 4 g Thermal Paste Purchased For $7.58
Motherboard MSI MPG Z690 EDGE WIFI DDR4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard $346.39 (not bought yet)
Memory G.Skill Flare X 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL14 Memory Purchased For $411.34
Video Card EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB SC ULTRA GAMING Video Card Purchased For $585.63
Case Fractal Design Define R5 ATX Mid Tower Case Purchased For $135.30
Power Supply SeaSonic FOCUS 750 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply Purchased For $113.65
Case Fan #1 Noctua A14 PWM chromax.black.swap 82.52 CFM 140 mm Fan $26.95 @ Amazon
Case Fan #2 Noctua A14 PWM chromax.black.swap 82.52 CFM 140 mm Fan $26.95 @ Amazon
Keyboard Microsoft LXM-00001 Wired Ergonomic Keyboard Purchased For $49.62
Custom Noctua NM-i17xx-MP83 chromax.Black, Mounting Kit CPU Coolers on Intel’s LGA1700 Platform (Black) $9.63 @ Amazon
Custom (SSD) Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD – High-performance storage for desktop and laptop PCs -SKC3000S/2048G Purchased For $426.57
  Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts  
  Total $2724.09
  Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-11-20 04:50 EST-0500  

The total of unpurchased parts comes in at just under $529, as mentioned earlier. The biggest issue is the motherboard. All the rest is CPU Cooling and case cooling. Once that’s taken care of, the system can start to go together. BTW, that total of $2724.09 includes the unpurchased $529 worth of hardware. Just so we’re clear on the matter.

Anyway, you see how close I am, which is why I’m so eager to do a few commissions. Please allow some time for me to go through any that I might get, if I get any. Thank you for reading!

Filed Under: composing, computer, music, personal Tagged With: composing, computer, music, personal

New Computer Build Imminent

Posted on 2021-11-02 Written by D. Lee Jackson Leave a Comment

Snail on Keyboard It’s getting to be that time once again. Software technology has caught up to the hardware technology available at my hands, making my Music Computer interminably slow. Allow me to detail the situation.

My Music Computer is a 5th-Generation Intel i7-5930K with 32GB RAM. Its C: drive, where most of its VSTs are stored, is an SSD drive. I have precious few VSTs stored on a PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive. At one point in its history, it was a very fast system. However, with the buildup of VST Instruments, KONTAKT Instruments, general processing plugins, and so on, my system is no longer so fast. I’m starting to get crackling audio, sound subsystem dropouts, high latency issues, and other symptoms of an aging machine. I’ve upgraded it as far as is practical, with no further path left to upgrade for me. I must build a new computer.

My build job is complicated by the fact that Intel is about to release their 12th-Generation Alder Lake series of processors, complete with new Z690-based motherboards with PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 RAM slots. Very few PCIe 5.0 peripherals have been announced, and DDR5 RAM is thin on the ground so close to the announced November 4th, 2021 release date.

Of course, the upshot of all this is that predicted prices of the new stuff will be somewhat ridiculous for the time being, probably stretching into 2022. That makes pricing out a new system a difficult task at best. However, thanks to my son, I’ve been introduced to an online tool which makes this job a little easier. That tool calls itself the PCPartPicker.

PCPartPicker lists thousands of computer parts from across the spectrum and lets you select the ones you want. If you go a step further, it then presents you with a list of vendors it has found who carry the product, along with the price for the product for each vendor (shipping and tax included, if you’ve signed in and configured your state and local tax rate) and a “buy” link. You can buy your entire PC from one vendor, or you can spread it out among the cheapest vendors, or you can choose whatever combination you prefer. It makes pricing out a system much easier – no more messing around with spreadsheets and searching around with Google. The only drawbacks to PCPartPicker I’ve found are a) it does not yet include the Intel 12th-Generation Alder Lake and related products, so it is impossible to price out products that are listed as “coming soon” on vendor websites, and b) it does not include vendors like Provantage and CDW, who sometimes have lower prices (especially Provantage).

But I digress.

I have already purchased one component of my new build – a Fractal Design Define R5 mid-tower computer case – but, because of the uncertainties surrounding Alder Lake, I have no idea what I’m going to stick in it. I’m not even sure if I’m going to stay with an Intel CPU, especially if the prices balloon out of control. None of the Alder Lake CPUs get released officially until November 4th, but I’ve already seen online price gouging going as high as $1,800.00 for a top-of-the-line i9-12900KF, up from the announced MSRP of $629.99.

Overall, my son thinks the best time to buy is going to be between January 2022 and March 2022, but as I said earlier, my aging Music Computer is having so many problems that it may not hold on until then. I’m thinking that I may have to start the purchase sometime between Black Friday and the end of 2021. I don’t know how it’s going to fit into the house budget, but I’m going to have to squeeze it in there somehow (if I can convince my wife to go in on the purchase with me).

I’ll keep you updated on the build as new info becomes available.

Filed Under: computer, music Tagged With: computer, music

My Beta Is Over. What Comes Next?

Posted on 2019-06-01 Written by D. Lee Jackson Leave a Comment

Magnifying glassMy two weeks of having my novel read in a Beta (or rather, a Demi-beta) format have come to a close. It’s now time for me to move on to reading someone else’s book and doing critiques for their work. It’s only fair – they did my book. That’s what Beta is all about.

The Beta period on Tapper was quite interesting. I learned several new things and had several old things reinforced (damn, I thought I’d fixed them). There will be a day when I go through the critiques with a magnifying glass in hand and try to make sense of them, but not now. I have too much of my own Beta reading to do (I’m trying to average at least six chapters a day).

That average took a beating on Wednesday and Thursday, unfortunately, thanks again to another medical problem. I had a simple eye dilation exam, for diabetic retinopathy (everything turned out fine, with the exception of some very mild early-stage cataracts, which run in my family). My eyes were pretty well shot for the rest of the day, which is unusual – I’m normally back on the computer after several hours, but I was very light sensitive, I had a bad headache, and my eyes hurt, especially when I looked at black text on a white computer screen background. I only managed to do one chapter on Wednesday.

Thursday, my headaches and eye pain continued. Thankfully, Scribophile has a “night mode” where the screen turns grey and the text turns white. I managed to slowly crank out my quota on Thursday. Again, thankfully, the pain was gone today, so I was able to turn off “night mode” and do regular critiques on Friday (5/31). Other medical issues tried to conspire against me, but I managed to fend them off long enough to get all six chapters done.

I did manage to get in one Tapper revision today, having to do with the first two chapters. Beta feedback showed me that what I thought was a clever opening could also be interpreted a different non-clever way. I fixed that, along with a couple of bits of Travis’s inner thoughts in chapter two. That’s as far as I dared go without a more in-depth study of the Beta feedback.

But, not to worry. I’ll have my time to take care of Beta details. Probably in a few weeks.

Filed Under: computer, health, novel, personal, words Tagged With: computer, health, novel, personal, Scribophile, Ubergroup, writing

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Hello, and welcome! My name is Lee Jackson, and I'm the composer of "Grabbag," the theme to the video game Duke Nukem 3D, plus music for Rise of the Triad and Shadow Warrior (the original). I've got four albums out, with tracks on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud! Read More…

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  • Lady Tygress' Suite and Other Commissions

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Recent Posts

  • New Music Collaboration In The Works 2023-03-23
  • An Audio Silver Lining 2023-03-07
  • New – “Song of the Weekend” Archive Online 2023-02-10
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  • “Lady Tygress’ Suite and Other Commissions” Album Released! 2022-11-04

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