For blocking light out of your window, consider tacking and/or taping up a layer or two of darkly colored bedsheets. I've got two over mine, and it's effectively black in my room at all hours, with just a small, small amount of reddish light making it through. Sans that, a layer of tin-foil will do the trick, but might crinkle about with temperature changes. Option three is black construction paper. Never tried that one, but I can't imagine why two or three layers wouldn't keep the sun out.

The added benefit of the sun not waking you up in the morning makes it totally worth it, whatever you wind up doing.

You're the hero cats need and the one they deserve, Sands.

My cats just got extra pets on Christmas because there were more people. If they were inside catterinos I'm sure they would have knocked some things over and attacked some feet, though. At least the young one would have.

Tink, the aging white one, though? No. His time is past. A long time ago he was all like hey new cat for now you are raised inside until the hunger for the wild lands takes you. Stare into my eyes through this glass door, and learn my ways. And then he did and learned exactly how to be the most needy cat ever and for one Christmas, I believe, was an inside cat and he scratched things and rolled on things and probably smelled like cinnamon. My guess, anyway, not sure if he was already outside last year.

The young one is getting his first winter coat, though. His tail is so fluffy and he's becoming fat, it's absolutely wonderful. The old cat just.. Put his winter coat on a couple years ago and never took it off.

I rate your cat at an 8/10 Sands, sounds cute

I was petting my cats today and then brought them food and they ate that but instead of wanting to be pet more they just ran off, I don't think they really love me.

How do I make cats love me?

That's gay but I'll try anything once

Space is great, RAM will manage, probably. I think when I started out I was using some rinky 1.2ghz. Laptop with 2gb RAM. Your processor might be alright, but I'm no expert on older hardware.

Aha, I had to talk a friend through production a while back, as he was interested, only to learn he was using an ancient laptop with 1gb RAM, and like, a processor running at less than 1ghz.

Might not be pretty, but yeah, I think you'll be able to manage, at least long enough to learn the basics, and decide whether or not you'd like to pick it up as a full-time hobby or whatever.

Happy producing/composing, and remember that YouTube is your friend.

I'm pretty sure Reaper is plenty capable, it might just be lacking some plugins and sounds out of the box, so ideal to find your own I guess. I don't know though, never used it, just know it's considered a major DAW.

I don't even meet those requirements, am I fucked?

Maybe. Post your specs. If they're in the ballpark, you can manage as long as you take it slow and don't get too ambitious. There are some computers I know of that are under 500 that are capable of running this kinda software fine, even if not able to do other things like gaming, so if you're ever looking to upgrade for this purpose, it shouldn't be be toooo expensive.

Since you know so much about this shit where's your music?

Haha, there isn't any. I've spent the last couple years casually learning about production because it's fun. On various computers, either really shitty laptops, the family computer, or my brother's beast rig. I'll make something someday, when I feel I'm ready, I guess. Til then, there's still so much I haven't learned how to do, or need to memorize.

Well. I've thrown stuff together in private, but haven't bothered to post it. There are already thousands of mediocre musicians on the internet putting stuff out before they know what the hell they're doing because they wanna be famous, whether I'm good or not, I don't wanna get buried by them.

In the event I can get my own computer though, and learn some of the things I've been wanting, as well as legally purchase software, I'll consider it.

I believe he's had his general vaccinations, but who the hell knows. He doesn't seem fucked up aside from the frequent throwing up, but even so, I agree that he needs to be checked out, and set up with a proper plan. Also with the skin thing. I don't know if you get cones for cats, but he's an idiot and keeps biting the hell out of himself, so yeah.

Ugh. Poor cat. I've been trying to hound the parents as much as I can about taking him to fucking anyone who knows anything about cats, but we'll see how that goes. My other cat is still perfect and shit, doesn't throw up where we can see more than once every couple months, no skin shit. Sigh

Idunno, just venting, I'm still pissed about it. Sigh.

With Orchestral, something that'll help you is having a decent amount of RAM on a 64bit OS. A lot of those really big orchestral sample libraries will be apt to kick the shit out of your rig, otherwise. I'd say eight gigs, if you can, but if not, I suppose you can always freeze and flatten until then.. 2gbRAM base, 2.0ghz or so multicore processer are also recommended as a minimum with most stuff, so if you're at least over that, I think you'll manage either way.

I don't know much about reaper, other than that it's considered cheap compared to other DAWs. Should be fine if you're liking it, though. Ableton's suite version does come with like, 4gigs of strings, brass, mallets, and woodwinds each, which are alright enough if you're just getting into it, kinda shit by professional standards, but seeing as you're wanting to go free stuff, and the suite is like, eight-hundred dollars, stay awaaayyy.

Don't know of anything else, personally, especially not free stuff. Libraries like LA Scoring Strings, and Cinebrass are what you're eventually aiming for, but can be pricy. If you're feeling adventurous and piratey though, they plug into Kontakt, so grab that first.