I wish my story of working with a good project and at least trying to follow some basic rules of being decent to humans was better. When I started with all of this I did not have nightmares and worked real hard to keep my body healthy and my activities good and on the up and up to maintain a nice life with sound sleep and good dreams. For one thing, I never knowingly consumed mind altering substances known to produce flash backs and in fact, avoided any sort of concentrated substances as I think it is poison to your body and your body is all that you have. A few years later, I must have failed somewhere a long the way; I am having some really bad nightmares. Nightmares I am awake for and unable stop by waking up.
In the timeline of my life, I first wrote this tutorial and used tigerts beautiful Nightbird.ogg for the audio portion. Things were fine -- oh, I had a real life bad experience with an ex-boyfriend and his cat named Tigger, which is not unlike this rave -- this story is about a different time, however. After I wrote this set of tutorials and made the video files with the WAV I made from tigerts perfectly good ogg, I wrote my resume. In the early days of computers I seemed to drop out everytime DOS was my only option. I did this not for the war of good over evil or right over wrong; I did this because I am lazy and DOS was terrible. It was really and honestly the worst choice of operating systems even back then -- a terrible design for any one who actually wanted to use the computer to do something. I could see this tendency in my past when I pieced together my experience for this resume.
I gave myself a little congratulations for getting to this age and really not spending much time using anything Micro$oft; even though it was more about being lazy than doing the right thing.
Then I pulled an AVI off from my camera and started to play with it. With my camera, I make WAV's or at least I have the software installed that makes WAV files from whatever audio my camera records. After I made AVI's of the gimp-2.2 splash contest I learned from the gimpi mail list that AVI is a Microsoft originated format. It is the future now, and it is not so clear as it was way back then. WAV is the only sound format the video stuff can read and my beloved camera delivers AVI. My lazy sense for good design is failing me.
While I was working on the jellyfish movies and before my bad non-sleeping daytime nightmare, I considered using stolen/borrowed audio from the blade runner composer, perfect except for the theft part. I discarded this idea because it was the right thing to do. Then one night, I was smoking cigarettes on the porch here in California. It was raining and the rain made beautiful complicated yet delicate sounds, not unlike this composers (and others) music. I grabbed the camera and made movies with the sole reason of getting the sound file. The movies were totally dark, it was a rainy after midnight.
This was one of those nights where the rain was steady and the darkness not frightening -- you dont feel alone on these nights. Well, I didnt. I felt like I was getting somewhere with this video editing -- I was making my own sound files so I was getting somewhere. In this crazy world where people are needing to both better themselves and protect themselves -- you can make a sound file and give yourself permission to use it still.
Later when I was editing the file, pulling the audio portion out to see what I got; I became very disturbed when the number of the file that had the most promise was the same number as the extension of one of my favorite fish biologists when I worked for the fed back in the eighties. 234. The audio was not loud enough to use and really looked like a too weak heartbeat when put into the software to look at music that way. Then the memory of the son of the man at extension 234 who was killed in a hit and run car accident.
What a mess. I remembered my mom saying that she did not understand classical music right around the same time that the band Chicago lost a band member playing russian roulette. I remembered the children of he fishery biologists who died. And my friend who said she needs to go to Chicago for a little smoke. For whatever reason, I feel responsible now for all of this.
Now, my friend tells me that having these nightmares does not help any one. I am not going to edit WAV files any longer. I did not want them and tried to live in a way that my guilt would not catch up to me. Are you guilty when you dont understand what is going on? I guess so, and you even get to know that it didnt help anyone to make the whole meal just totally perfect -- to what end? I never wanted this. I did not want it for you and I did not want it for me.
My ex had a cat. I loved this cat and the cat loved me. A beautiful and picky soul, I made some changes to Tiggers lifestyle and his food and his allergies got better -- his face filled out and he started to live a better life. He did the cat equivelent back for me; he was a very very special cat; just for me it seemed.
After my ex child was old enough to be out on her own, she did just that; leaving not much at home except a relationship I had not the stuff to maintain forever.
He would rather Tigger die lonely and without me rather than let him live with me. And he kept the other cat who probably did well enough with the new family.
So, now I have awake nightmares about old friends and get to be sorry that I changed tigerts (a human I know of) ogg into a WAV and learn that no one is getting anything from all of this.
No more WAVs. Please. A warning to other do gooders like me; dont let them bet on you.