Cory

My friends and I are going to a cabin in a couple months and would love to play some Minecraft down there. Only problem is that there is no internet at the cabin. Is it possible for one of us to start a LAN server that others can join? I've done this at home while connected to the internet, but never when there was no connection.

If this is possible, how would we connect to one another? Can we network our laptops wirelessly without internet? Do we need some sort of LAN hub to plug into? Can we set up a router, despite the absence of internet, just so we can network with that?

I have an HP desktop, model HPE-500f. It has a built-in wireless adapter, which is good because the room where my roommate has the router installed is too far away to have a wired ethernet connection. The wireless adapter has worked fine for several months, but now it's hardly picking up a signal. This started happening with my previous HP desktop after about a year or so.

My laptop in the same room as the desktop can pick up the same signal flawlessly, and the adapter in the desktop used to work just as well. Now it takes 3-4 minutes just to load up the Google homepage. Sometimes it can't even connect to the router.

I'm not very handy with the inner workings of computer hardware. Is there any sort of replacement adapter that I can purchase so that I can still use the internet? What would be the cheapest alternative so I can still get a good connection?

I usually play my electric guitar through an amp simulator on my PC. It's helpful for recording as well as keeping the noise down in my apartment. I recently moved to a different apartment and am now having problems with humming/feedback.

My guitar is connected to the desktop PC via a Line 6 Toneport USB interface. The buzzing occurs as soon as I connect the guitar to the interface with an instrument cable. Sometimes if I tilt the guitar around, I can eventually stop the buzzing by holding it in that specific position.

I have another guitar and a bass, and both do the same thing as the first guitar. I've tried plugging the desktop PC into several different electrical outlets in the room, as well as different power strips. Nothing seems to alleviate the buzzing. I have a laptop, and I've found that if I connect one of the guitars to that, everything works just fine, no buzzing. I've recorded guitar for a couple years on my desktop at my old apartment with no problems. But now that I've moved here, I can't stop this annoying buzzing.

Any thoughts? Just out of curiosity, I went back to my roommates' apartment and tried plugging my desktop back in. No buzzing.

On Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells II, released 1992, there is a song named "The Bell". In this song, he starts with a simple background riff and builds onto it with a variety of instruments including a bass guitar, glockenspiel, synthesizer and eventually bells. Each instrument is introduced by name by Alan Rickman (on the album version).

One thing that has always confused me up to this day, is when Mike Oldfield brings some guitars into the song at around 2:50. Alan Rickman introduces them as "two slightly sampled electric guitars". My understanding of the term "sampled" used in a musical context has always been a sound that has been recorded and played back, often times using a keyboard. So what then would "slightly sampled" mean? I have searched for a long while now, but have never been able to find a definition for what that would refer to.

In a few months, my band and I are going to be doing a small concert at a convention. We really don't have much live experience, just kind of playing in garages for friends and family. We have two guitarists (including me) and bass player, and we'll be running a drum track from an mp3 player plugged into its own speaker. We'll be playing in a relatively large room that seats maybe 200-300 people.

The other guitarist and I live in an apartment, so we've really only need low-wattage practice amps. We have a 5" Roland Micro Cube and an 8" 15w Peavey Rage 158. The convention staff has told us that they do have a PA system we can plug into.

I don't know much about the specifics of the PA, but would it be reasonable to assume that it would be enough to make up for the lack of power in our amps? Should we invest in bigger amps? Because of limited funds and space at home, I don't think we'd want to get anything larger than a couple 12"s. Also, we use a lot of multi-fx pedals for distortion and effects, so we run our stuff through the clean channels of the amps. If we upgraded to something larger, it would be important to get something that has a clean channel that won't break up at high volumes. Any recommendations in case our practice amps and the PA won't cut it?

I have a Nook Tablet that can read MP4 and M4V files. However, it cannot sync with programs like iTunes, so there's no way to transfer any movies purchased from there without the use of a convertor program since most places use some sort of DRM. Are there any websites that offer a good selection of movies that would be playable on the Nook without having to convert anything?