A frustrating few days, I've kept busy but don't feel I'm on a track, darting between too many different things.
Most of yesterday was spent on my art book. There is much to write here. I also started to think about Prometheus and how difficult or easy it might be to make it into a 64-bit application. It is rather easy, but there are a few caveats. One is that the files have pointers in the structures, eg. "long* lppointer". Of course, the data there is irrelevant, it's zero in the file, it's there only to make saving faster, but it means that the file structure itself is a different size on a 64-bit system. The solution is to have a file structure which simply uses an unsigned-long as a substitute, not a pointer, thus it can be the correct 32-bits big on a 64-bit system.
Overnight I had many fantastical dreams. I dreamed I could see the end of the world, which took place at a music event. The event was planned by Creative Crewe, and included as an organiser my old headmaster, Mr Bowers, a well-liked teacher, and the father of someone in my school class. He appeared in my Facebook feed yesterday due to the sudden death of his wife. The event included musicians, and a piano or harpsichord which could be split in two, high/low, through the keyboard and each half wheeled around. I was disappointed not to be asked to perform at the event, but held a hope in my heart that I'd be asked, I felt that they simply didn't think to ask me, quietly desperate though I was to be part of the event.
The event took place in a circus tent of some sort, and three signs, like giant keyboards hung above the ring; left, centre, right. In the cobbled courtyard outside, Deb was there with a bowl haircut, perhaps a little like Princess Diana, perhaps a little like my memory of the school friend. I became aware that she was in love with another man, an electric guitar player who was part of the show. Without much fanfare or any words, she left with him, leaving me heartbroken. The grey courtyard was high up on some rocks, and jutted out into the sea like a castle, and there was something medieval about it all. In my suicidal despair I leapt from the walls to my death in the churning sea below.
To my surprise, my descent slowed and I started to fly forwards, low over the waves, rather than hit the bottom. I began to feel happier, and glancing up at the horizon saw a fantastical city in my distance, among brightly coloured clouds, like a painting. The city appeared to be New York, or a fantasy version of it, with the Statue of Liberty appearing in the centre as I watched. I fell to the ground, which was now a beach of rippled sand and sea water. The beach was full of small gemstones, transparent cubic zirconium and very pretty. There were strange women around, like angelic beings.
Thus ended the dream.
Today I discovered, by pure chance, that I'd accidentally assigned the same ISRC code to two different recordings, one on The Dusty Mirror and one on the new Letters From A Square Spoon. This is a disaster for record keeping, these need to be unique. These codes are used in many places to identify the usage of a recording. I'm so lucky to spot this today, 4 weeks before the release of Spoon. This timing allowed me to remove the release in progress and re-submit it correctly. I was also set today to order the CD copies, which also include this code; so I managed to do this with the correct code. The codes are used in many places, but today I've managed to correct them all.
Duplications like these are rare, I've done it once before in the 15 years or so I've been creating codes; but this error was much more important than my older one, as today so much depends on accurate reporting and detection of a recording. I'm blessed to find the error today.
After that I worked on Prometheus 3.60, preparing it for 64-bit. The first step was to remove (the old and deprecated) DirectInput which I used for key-press checking. I don't really need it at all, as Windows itself has enough function for checking the keyboard, so this was done. Then I had to change strlen() to my own routine, as strlen returns a 64-bit value in Win64, and 32-bit in Win32. 32-bits is best for both for me, so I replaced it. The only other change was changing ITEMIDLIST* to PCIDLIST_ABSOLUTE when using SHBrowseForFolder().
After that, Prometheus compiled and ran in 64-bit for the first time. It didn't and can't do anything. It needs 64-bit plugins too, and needs a new file format and converter for it; but it's an amazing step to get it this far. These changes will probably bleed into the sibling programs of SFXEngine and Argus.
