D. Lee Jackson

Words and Music

What Happened to November?

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Mushroom-CloudThere’s not much left to the month of November, and as usual, I’m glad. Despite it being the month of my birth, something always seems to come along and screw November up. I have no idea why.

For example, I had an appointment with back surgeon number three to see if there was anything he could do to fix the problems I have with my back. He confirmed that I’ve got pain (gee, thanks), but just like surgeons number one and two, he said there was no surgical solution that would help my pain.

Since that appointment (and since the end of the Nevro test), I’ve been on nothing but a strong pain medicine (name withheld at my wife’s request). It’s been difficult as hell to keep track of my doses, mainly because it turns me into a zombie if I get it wrong and it puts me to sleep sometimes if I get the dosage right. I have an appointment with my pain management doctor tomorrow to discuss everything that’s happened since the Nevro test.

While there have been bad issues, there have been a couple of good ones to counter the bad ones. My wife allowed me to make some purchases for the music computer, mainly from XLN Audio. They ran a 50% off discount on everything, including a new drum kit of stick/mallet performances and an accompanying MIDI groove pack. I also got a pleasant surprise from them: I asked them to check the status of one of my libraries which I didn’t think had been properly upgraded from Addictive Drums 1 to Addictive Drums 2. Not only did they confirm that, they found several other libraries that weren’t properly upgraded. They fixed those as well. Bonus!

Another 50% discount was for Kontakt Assistant from the people who make Translator for synth cross usage.. That one I got super cheap.

Of course, something had to come along and spoil that part of the party. I’ve been using Cakewalk, now Cakewalk SONAR Platinum, as my music composition software since at least 1994. Gibson Brands bought out the software a couple of years ago. The bad news came down on November 17th, but I didn’t get wind of it until the 25th—”Gibson Brands announced today that it is ceasing active development and production of Cakewalk branded products.” This was a gut punch of titanic proportions. No one knows what is going to happen to what I believe is the best music software out there. Not yet, at least. Until then, I’m still using SONAR, but I’m also investigating other programs. If you have any suggestions, PLEASE use the contact page or leave a comment to give me an idea for something that might be equivalent. One requirement: MIDI editing. I’m a MIDI maven to the nth degree.

One last gut punch: I had a filling fall out this morning. Dentist appointment required. Screw November, I’m through with you.

Did Firefox 45 Break The Internet?

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I find myself in a bit of a conundrum. You see, I like to save the critiques that I get of my writing on Scribophile to my hard drive as PDF files. Up until a few days ago, I had a perfectly good Firefox AddOn that allowed me to do just that (Print Pages to PDF). It would save all of the page layout, including text background colors which Scribophile displays for comments and other markups. I have over 33 megabytes of such critiques saved off to more than 100 files. Wonderful critique-saving goodness.

All of that goodness has changed with the release of Firefox 45.

The Print Pages to PDF AddOn has suddenly stopped working. In fact, it disappeared from my list of installed plugins when Firefox finished rebooting after the install. I found it, still listed in the AddOns section of Mozilla’s site, and reinstalled it. No joy. It now does nothing but sit there and stare at you when invoked.

I’ve tried most of the other alternatives available in Firefox. None of them provided the same speed and capabilities. Previously (and again today), I’ve tried programs that allow you to print any file straight to PDF. Again, I found none that does what Print Pages to PDF did.

Before you start talking about “signing” AddOns, the Print Pages to PDF AddOn is signed.

This is not the only plugin that has been affected. I had one called Scrapbook Plus. It, too, disappeared, leaving 112+ megabytes of now useless data sitting in my Google Drive. I’ve since found other various AddOns which users have reported as broken since the release of Firefox 45.

I finally broke down, dug up my old Mozilla login (and migrated to the “new” Firefox login), and found the support e-mail for the AddOn. I am sad to say that he no longer develops the AddOn—according to him, one certain individual at Mozilla had been rejecting his code commits without explanation. As a result, he gave up on development.

I have to question if this is intentional on Firefox/Mozilla’s part. Are they deliberately trying to break AddOns, with the side effect of making important parts of the Internet obsolete? What are doing? I wish I knew.

In the meantime, I’m afraid I’m going to have to bite the proverbial bullet and consider a subscription to Adobe Acrobat. There goes my budget—thank you, Firefox 45.

Questions? Comments? Please feel free to use the Contact page. Thank you for reading!