Welcome to my home page. Please allow me to introduce
myself. My name is Erich Kohl, and I live in the United
States in the state of Michigan. I work as an audio/visual aide
at
a local community
college (the same school where I earned my Associate's Degree in
Computer
Information Systems). I am relatively new at creating web pages,
so please
forgive me, for I am not an expert at it (yet). However, ever
since I got a Mac and discovered that it allows you to host your own
websites within OS X, I decided to give it a try.
On this page you'll find all kinds of neat things about who I am and
what I am interested in.
If you wish to send me some e-mail, my address is ekohl@sbcglobal.net. I
look forward to hearing from you!
My Family
Here are a few group photos of my family.
FAMILY PHOTO #1
FAMILY PHOTO #2
FAMILY PHOTO #3
My Animal
Friends
All of us in my family love animals. We've had our share of pets,
and we also like to feed the different kinds of critters that
visit us in our backyard.
This is ARNOLD. He used to be my
brother's pet chihuahua. Isn't he cute?
Here are some BUNNY
WABBITS that my brother and his family took care of until they were
old enough to be on their own.
Here is a picture of a SQUIRREL that
used to visit us for peanuts.
This is MOLLY.
She used to be our pet rabbit. She was very gentle and
intelligent.
Be sure to check out THE MOLLY PAGE
for more photos of Molly, including
some of Molly and Arnold (my brother's former dog) together!
My Setup
I absolutely love computers (and music). Here is a picture of MY SETUP (circa 2005).
I have several computers. My current main rig is a PC with an
Intel
Core 2 Quad processor (Yorkfield Q9300 running stock), and my
older
machine is
a PC with
a 1.0 GHz
AMD Thunderbird. My quad-core Intel machine has now been upgraded
to Windows 7, and it is connected to a
beautiful 28" Hanns.G HG281D LCD flat panel display. My older PC
uses a big old 21" ViewSonic CRT. I also have an Apple Mac Mini
running Snow Leopard; both are VERY cool (the Mini is hooked up to a
22" ViewSonic LCD). Before my Mac Mini I used an older
iMac. I am an
amateur musician, and on the right side of the picture above you will
see my keyboards, an Alesis QS7 and
a Yamaha PSR-640, which are hooked up to my computers via a MOTU
Fastlane USB MIDI adapter and to my entertainment center via a mixer
that I bought at, heh, Radio Shack.
Not pictured here is an old
laptop that I also own, a Pentium-based portable that runs -- get
this -- Windows 95! But don't worry, I'm not permanently stuck in
the past. I am now the proud owner of an HP Pavilion dv6z
notebook, and I really like it a lot. It sports a 2.2 GHz AMD
Turion processor with 4 GB of RAM, and it's currently running Vista
Home Premium 64-bit. This is my first venture into using a 64-bit
OS, and so far it's been a success. I was even able to get it to
run some fairly old games, including Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed,
which is at least a nine-year-old piece of software. Now that's
impressive -- and it's totally compatible with the built-in ATI 4530
graphics card. In addition, I now have WiFi throughout the
house. I bought a D-Link wireless 802.11n router, and so far it's
been working very well. I was surprised at how easy it was to set
it up, and I'm basically a networking n00b.
Another recent addition to my setup is my FOSTEX
MR-8 Digital Multitrack Recorder. Trust me -- this is a very,
very good digital recorder for the price. It is very easy to use,
has eight tracks and built-in effects, and stores your music on
CompactFlash memory cards. Transferring to a PC is a snap!
If you are an amateur musician, I recommend one highly if you want to
get started doing recordings!
My Fostex MR-8 is nice, but I suddenly realized that I needed more
power and flexibility -- that's why I've decided to do my audio
production on my PC from now on with an E-MU 0404
USB audio interface. This is a very nice piece of hardware,
and it's working out really well for me, especially in conjunction with
Cakewalk Music Creator, which is the software that I use to record my
music.
In addition to my recent hardware, I also have some vintage equipment
-- an Apple //e and a Macintosh Classic. Click HERE to see a
picture of my Apple //e.
Now, on to the subject of overclocking: This has been an area in which
I've been experimenting quite a bit, and things were a bit problematic
at first. I was getting frequent Blue Screens of Death, and my
system was just not stable. Upon testing my memory I discovered
that I had some bad RAM, and I think that was the culprit. Now
that I've upgraded to Windows 7 x64 and installed 4 GB of fresh RAM,
everything seems to be okay. So I now have my system running at a
speed of 3.0 GHz. I also recently upgraded to an HIS ATI Radeon
5870 graphics card, so needless to say, my system is performing very
well. I've decided, however, not to overclock my video card.
If you're new to overclocking the way I was, I recommend
this article, which helped
me a great deal: Beginner's
Guide
to
Overclocking. It describes everything in plain
English and does an excellent job of walking you through the steps.
Want to watch me play the guitar solo from U2's "Bullet the Blue Sky"
on my Yamaha PSR-640 keyboard? Here's a link to the Google video!
