So keep in mind I don't know what I'm doing here...

Recording is frustrating; Audacity, doubly so. See the bottom section if you care for the particulars; the picosummary is that Audacity's equalisation model drives me batshit and turns 30-second tasks into hour-long frustration and failures. Fun! It also throws out data a lot and a bunch of things don't work right on OSX. But I can work around these problems.

What I haven't been able to work around is the highly-compressed (wooshy-noise compressed) AM-radio equalisation it wants to give everything I record. Obviously this is not good. I don't know why it's doing it. I know the microphone doesn't do that; I've tried it with both my external soundcard toy and the onboard soundcard, and that does matter, because the onboard is better at that, but even worse with equalisation.

So, I'm willing to turn our Windows file server into a dualboot Winserver/Linux audio workstation so I can run some of this stuff on its primary target OS. Right now my plan is to install the Ubuntu Studio OS variant, since it includes Ardour out of the gate anyway. But I don't know whether it supports, say, this input device, or another similar input device of similar or lower cost but of reasonable fidelity.

I that people on my friendslist have done this sort of thing, and I'm hoping one or more of you can tell me what you did, because this is driving me spare. I don't have a particular interest in setting up a recording studio, I'm just trying to get something to the point where I can record things with reasonable fidelity, and not like ass. (Multitrack recording would be nice, eventually, but I can deal fine with one track at a time. There's just the one of me, after all.)

So, um... help for the clueless? What hardware and software are you using?

Audacity WTFery below if anyone cares

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Audacity for OSX has a sincere and vibrant love of track deletion. For example, why does hitting the DELETE key on a selected range delete everything in all tracks? For whom is that function useful? Why does Audacity sometimes decide to start autodeleting the contents of every new track I make? ARE YOU TRYING TO SEND ME A MESSAGE, AUDACITY? Why does it take two quit-and-restarts to make it stop doing this? (Seriously, this makes me miss reel-to-reel decks and razor blades, it really does.)

Why does hitting record start a new track instead of using the blank track with the characteristics you want that you just made? Why is the new track sometimes stereo and sometimes mono?

Why is equalisation a post-recording non-live non-realtime filter? Why does it only give three seconds of preview no matter what you tell Preferences about desired preview length? Why doesn't preview actually preview what's shown but instead what was last saved, dumped out of memory, and reloaded? (Seriously, that's the only thing that makes it work.) Why is the least bad version of the eq interface the one where you're editing a B-spline? Why is editing the B-spline so silly and involving of so many point edits? Why does the B-spline generator ignore some of your spline anchors sometimes? Why does cancel sometimes sekritly mean OK? (Fortunately, undo does mean undo, even to Audacity. It has that much right.)

I know people use this software, tho' I don't know how many if any of them use it on OSX. Idly - how?

So that's, what, $3T in new debt?

Good morning.

So. We've got about US$1T in the stimulus package, we've got another US$1T or so in TARP II (that's today's newly-announced banking system bailout), we've got a couple of hundred billion from TARP I charged against this new year (which is part of the $500B in "private" equity that's part of TARP II, meaning "not so much with the private equity"), $800B in other-operations deficit (counting the wars, which haven't been being counted) - that's US$3 TRILLION in new treasuries to auction. Or just to print.

The 10-year Treasury poked over 3% yesterday, by the way. The yield is down sharply today as the market slumps substantially this morning - Y HLO THER 7-HNDLE DOWZ - but the trend has been up.

Treasury Secretary Geithner thinks there's scads of money sitting on the sidelines "that wants to come in." I'm not convinced of that at all. There's some, no doubt, but it only wants to come in if it can find a safer place to hide than T-bills and cash - which is what he's trying to set up with TARP II, of course, at your and my expense. Martin Wolf at the Financial Times thinks we're really in trouble because there's still no political willingness to admit that these banks are insolvent, and that the underlying assets are worthless. Brad Setzer at the Council on Foreign Relations, who tends to be more sympathetic than do I, thinks that the government's goals of accountability and refusal to nationalise failed banks is in hopeless opposition, and wishes they'd just nationalise, as does Dr. Roubini at RGE Monitor, who further notes that the Anglo-Saxon regulation model has failed. Mish just calls the whole thing insane, noting indirectly - as does Global Guerrillas in more explicit terms - that we are in a state of regulatory capture, where those supposedly being regulated are in charge of the regulation. This has not changed with the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, Karl thinks Mr. Geithner should resign over the market manipulation that forced the Bear Stearns merger. Yes, he was directly involved.

Mish talks about deflationary pressures on salaries, here, and analyses the stimulus package's spending-over-time here.

Japanese newspapers are reporting that Russia may be about to default on sovereign debt again. That'd be about a US$400B hit. Russia is denying the Nikkei report, however. India saw looting at 600 stores last weekend as Subhiksha Trading Services failed to pay bills to its security services. Former Financial Times and now Minister Ed Balls (there's a name to regret, ne?) reportedly says it's going to be worse than the Depression when he thinks people aren't going to talk to the press. Brad talks about protectionism, and whether talking about protectionism of others is in fact protectionism itself. You may laugh, but of such things, trade wars are made. CATO says "let's not do that, it'd be bad, hmmkay?"

GM's cutting another 10,000 jobs. Wholesaler inventories (as opposed to factory and retail) fell dramatically in December.

Cramer of Mad Money - who is so completely wrong so regularly that he's become a running joke, and yet, still has a show - freaks out about Meredith Whitney and her accurate descriptions of reality, nicknaming her "Jason" and saying she's going to take out all but about two banks with her commentary. Lulz.

BTW, I don't know how reliable this source is, but Stimulus Watch is trying to track funding requests for the stimulus by states, counties, and cities. These are "shovel-ready" requests from governments, not actual fundings.

That's it for now. Good luck, and I hope you had a good weekend and enjoy a good week.