Welcome to my home page. Please allow me to introduce
myself. My name is Erich Kohl, and I live in the United
States. 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 an iMac 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 iMac with
a 600 MHz PowerPC
G3. 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.
I decided to venture into the art of overclocking with my desktop rig,
and everything was
fine at first -- I was always able to keep my CPU at a minimum of 3.0
GHz. However, as time went on, my system gradually became more
and more unstable. I finally gave up altogether; in fact, I'm not
even overclocking my video card anymore. My philosophy from now
on is simple: Just get a good and powerful combination of CPU and
GPU right from the very beginning, and don't bother to push it any
further. I've got a quad-core CPU and a nice GTX 280 video card,
so I should be all set for a while. Why put additional stress on
the hardware just for a couple extra frames per second while gaming?
But anyway, 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.
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.
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!
