21st Century Schizoid Man

My Apple PowerBook running OS X v10.4.9, with a Commodore 64 (playing "Leather Goddesses of Phobos"), FreeBSD 6.2, Windows 2000 Professional, and BeOS R5.0.3 all running simultaneously under emulations

I've been referring to myself as the Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man (after the King Crimson song) since early 1999; finally, the first half is as accurate as the second. I've been a technophile much longer than that, though. I got my first computer, a Timex Sinclair 1000, sometime around 1982. No hard drive, no sound, no color... It was soon upgraded to a Commodore VIC-20, and a few years after that, I got a Commodore 128. These machines were a lot of fun and fascinating to work with, but I didn't settle for just buying and playing games on them. I learned BASIC and the concepts behind programming, then set out writing my own simple games, date calculators, plotting and graphing programs... the first worthwhile word processor I ever used on the VIC-20 was one I wrote myself, from scratch, that handled page numbers, subscripts, superscripts, and footnotes with ease. At the time, I couldn't find one on the market to do all that, so I just made one. When I took a computer class in my junior year in high school (just looking for more math credits), I became an unofficial teacher's assistant, helping out with students less computer-literate. As we were working with Commodore PETs, I was already familiar with the hardware and the version of BASIC.

In late 1993, I began thinking about getting a 'serious' computer. I'd done a lot with the 128, and had even put its simple (but impressive for its time) synthesizer to use by manually 'sequencing' the rhythm section from "Rainbow Connection" painstakingly, one note at a time, and accompanying the resulting music on guitar. One of the last, best software packages I got for the Commodore was GEOS, a graphical user interface, but I didn't play with it enough and never quite realized its potential. I did realize, however, that the computer was an antiquated relic now for most modern uses, and there was so much more I could do with a new, more powerful computer. I toyed with the idea of getting an Amiga, since I already liked Commodore and had heard great things about those computers, but this was around the time that the company started having financial difficulties. Eventually I decided on a Macintosh instead.

I had of course heard good things about Apple as well. The Mac's dominance in audio applications probably played a role in my decision, though I didn't really utilize its capabilities in that area for two years or so. Having worked on a Windows (3.11) box for a few months at my place of employment by then, I could see that Mac was where it was at (and that Microsoft had seen that, too, in its plundering of the GUI), so in January of 1994, I purchased a Macintosh Performa 550, which was promptly dubbed VAL 9000 (in honor of HAL 9000 and his 'sister' SAL 9000, from Arthur C. Clarke's books).

In retrospect, with a little more research, I could have picked a better Apple. The PowerPC-based Power Macintoshes were just being introduced, and while many of the Performas were being touted as PowerPC-upgradeable, Apple soon pulled the plug on that program for several models, including the 550. After about three years, the 160 MB hard drive also started feeling claustrophobic. (Funny, now that I've got USB flash drives with one hundred times that capacity...) With some additional RAM and storage, and a lot of time and patience, I accomplished much with VAL.

In the fall of 1998, I bought one of several used no-name PCs my employer was selling cheap. Yoko's 100 MHz Pentium processor, while lethargic by then-current standards, ran circles around VAL's 33 MHz 68LC30, even if it was running a Microsoft operating system. Each computer had its own Zip drive, though like so many others, I eventually had to deal with the click of death. Less than a year later, in August of 1999, I purchased a used Power Macintosh 6100/60 through Yahoo!'s auction system. It had a respectable 60 MHz first-generation PowerPC chip inside. Paulene was named for an old X song; yes, my computers are all female, aren't yours?  ;)  I bought a CD-R drive for the PC, which was a definite plus. Finally, I could store data on CDs when the five hard drives I now owned started getting full.

I looked the impending twenty-first century firmly in the eye when Dana, my Graphite iBook SE, arrived via Airborne Express on October 10, 2000. Her 466 MHz G3 processor blew away the three older computers' brains put together. With 320 MB of RAM, an internal CD-ROM/DVD-ROM player, an external FireWire CD-R/W drive, a FireWire scanner, an iMic audio interface for recording, an Airport (Wi-Fi) card, and several operating systems from which to choose, this was one lean, mean, computin' machine. The iBook was my main computer almost from the day I received it until I replaced it with a PowerBook in 2005, and I don't know how I survived without a laptop; I've worked on my Web site, my writing, my music, and documents for my job on the bus and train to and from work. I had to replace the iBook's battery twice, but otherwise I had no serious issues with Dana, or her successor, Trinity. The 12" PowerBook G4 is still a very usable computer, loaded with commercial and open source software and 1.5 GB of RAM.

In the late '90s, I began acquiring some older computer hardware, including a Commodore Amiga 3000, Amiable, which could use some upgrades but is in fact functioning well. For nostalgia's sake, I picked up a used Commodore 128 (dubbed Lisa, to the probable chagrin of Steve Jobs) and a 1571 floppy drive, too; now I can play Hitchhiker's Guide and Leather Goddesses of Phobos on the original hardware (though I've got emulations of those games and more available on the Mac and on my iPhone). There's a Sun SPARCstation, a Silicon Graphics Indy, two more Power Macs, an ancient Quadra, and more. All the boxes and OSes (except the 128) are connected to the 'Net thanks to my Airport Extreme Base Station and its built-in network address translation (NAT). So, yes, I now have fourteen functioning computers (sixteen if you count the Treo 600 and the iPhone!), covering a wide range of platforms and OSes. Why? Because I can, and because I happen to like computers and operating systems and learning how they work. Even the ones with command-line prompts.

My computers... all twelve of them (at the time)

My Yamaha PSR-48 keyboard, which I've had since about 1989, is a MIDI instrument, and while I understood the implications, I'd never really looked into the possibility of using the MIDI functionality until I bought the PC. As it already had a sound card with a MIDI port, I decided to purchase the requisite cables, and voilá! Suddenly, my computer could control my keyboard, and vice versa. When I first thought about covering NIN's "Terrible Lie" late in 1999, I looked into sequencing parts of it through MIDI, but found this to be too painstaking. When I finally did record this cover, it didn't utilize MIDI after all, and I no longer have Yoko the PC, but with GarageBand and the M-Audio Ozonic MIDI keyboard controller and my Mac laptop (first the PowerBook, then the MacBook Pro), I do use MIDI in my recordings these days. The Yamaha's still around, too, though I haven't touched it since I got the Ozonic.

As for the rest of my power-draining equipment... I have a 25-watt Ibanez guitar amplifier and a cheap bass amp, a Roland Micro Cube amp, several guitar effects pedals (including my current fave, a Korg ToneWorks AX1G multi-effects processor, a DOD Punkifier, and a Dunlop Crybaby wah), an EBow Plus, an Alesis drum machine, a graphic equalizer, and my Technics tuner, 5-CD changer, and turntable (that's right, I said turntable). All of this makes up my 'studio,' and while I was responsible for a few tripped circuit breakers in my first apartment in Garfield, NJ, I am proud to say that there have been no burnt fuses, tripped breakers, or electrical fires due to my equipment since 1996.

I've been a 'Netizen, first through America Online and then through Netcom, BowieNet, and now Comcast, since 1994. I've had a Web site of some ilk or other since around '97, and I registered my own domain, andersensilva.com, in 2001. Early 2005 saw the launch of JoyInTheNew.com for my debut CD, too. I've had a pager, on and off, but in January of 1999 I switched to an Ericsson mobile phone (my original carrier, Omnipoint, was later acquired by Voicestream, which was later acquired by T-Mobile). In March 2003, I replaced the phone with a Handspring Treo 180, which covered my phone and PDA needs with the Palm OS; early 2004 saw me upgrade that device to a palmOne Treo 600. My father gave me a mini digital recorder for Christmas 1999, which traveled to London and Brazil (and other places) with me. Christmas 2002 snagged me a Nomad IIc MP3 player, a Fuji digital camera, and a TiVo digital video recorder. A year later, I got a 30GB 'video' iPod, and on June 29, 2007, after standing in line for a few hours (unnecessarily, as it turned out), I became one of the first few thousand owners of an Apple iPhone, and the Treo 600 and my longstanding relationship with T-Mobile quickly went by the wayside. In 2007, a flat-screen TV, a Sony PlayStation 3, and an Apple TV were added to my entertainment center, and almost a year later, iGot another iPod, this time a shuffle. The iPhone was in turn replaced with an iPhone 3G S (for speed!) in June 2009, and that was joined by Athena, a blazing-fast MacBook Pro, a few months later in September. In short, I am the Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man. Could I live without electric guitars, computers, and the Internet? Sure. But I have an eerie feeling that I'd be much less interesting, and interested...

See Andy at work in Babsyland Studios!

See the old Nutley Nuthouse studio!

The Artist Meets the 21st Century Schizoid Man