I’m going to round up the indie maker recommendations from the Recommendations Post, in a minute. But before that…

…I have another question! It doesn’t work as a poll, so let’s just go for answers-in-comments again. Specifically:

Who inspires you?

Artistically, musically, engineeringly, whatever. Shit is all fucked up and bullshit, as the sign said, but people keep going anyway. Some of that’s determined ignorance, but not all of it. So: who inspires you? Not what: who.

Leave comments. Others might take notes.

And as promised, indie recommendations-from-fans time! These are all from comments:

• From Christi, we have Qrafted by Queannah (http://www.etsy.com/people/QraftedByQueannah) – fun, whimsical stuff with Legos. She also has textile crafts and beadwork.
• From GlennS, we have two recommendations: Talis Kimberley (http://www.talis.net), green filky folk with a British accent and Morse code, and Jen VanBlargan’s Love Medusa Crafts (http://www.etsy.com/shop/lovemedusa?ref=si_shop), necklaces and bracelets with no clasp.
• From Shasta Willson, we have Jack Lewis’s small-press book, Nothing in Reserve (http://www.jaxworx.com/nothing-in-reserve/)
• From Angela Korra’ti, we have Repeating History, a mashup of time travel romance and Western! (http://mmjustus.com/fictionRepeatingHistory.html)
• From Dmitri, we have Tormented Artifacts (http://www.tormentedartifacts.com) – a wide mix of stuff from handmade leather pieces to props to found-art pieces, prints, digital artwork, and other items.
• From Eirewolf, we have their original leather masks and fantasy sculptures at http://eirewolf.artfire.com
• From Annie Henry, we have her Indiegogo project to fund her first album! It’s like Kickstarter, but a different website: http://www.indiegogo.com/traditions
• From Roger, we have handmade steampunk leather and accessories (http://www.steampunkedout.com)
• And finally, from Gear, who I’m pretty sure is Gifted, we have Beth Kinderman’s “pretty awesome prog-rock folk music” – http://bethkinderman.bandcamp.com/ and http://www.bethkinderman.com/buy.htm

And, of course, I recommend my own studio album, Dick Tracy Must Die, which is about as handmade as CDs and digital recordings can be. Buy the studio album for someone, or just for yourself! Short on cash, as so many people are right now? Download Cracksman Betty and/or Espionage: Live from Mars for anything you can afford, including free, and give as stocking stuffers.

G’wan, take a look. ^_^

Finally, I have SOLVED THE LINUX PROBLEM! o/ For details, see comments in the original post. Thanks go out to several people, but particularly to criacow on Twitter who pointed me at a sane explanation for how to swap out kernel images cleanly. I’m now running Linux kernel 3.1.5 underneath Ubuntu 10.4, which is vaguely hilarious, but which fixes the crash bug and gave me room enough to get the hardware running. Yay! My tiny studio is now somewhat less tiny! SIX CHANNEL RECORDING WOOOOOOOOOOOO! 😀