How I Completely Broke Reaper

Sometimes… most of the time… you don’t get everything right the first time.

Until Wednesday I had been taking signups for the beta PT Actions Kit release (you can still sign up for release info, but I’ve since taken down the script downloads). The feedback I’ve gotten on it has varied wildly from the simple “this is awesome!” to serious bugs.

The most serious of these bugs currently affects Mac OSX users. Without getting too technical, due to the way window handling works in OSX – my current workflow completely shits the bed for Mac users. That really sucks and is a huge kick in the nuts considering the initial development started thanks to a guy who works on a Mac.

But I’m routinely one to make (as I quoted to my wife the other week) “fucking epic lemonade out of a pile of lemons” – so I wanted to turn this into something hopeful/inspiring to you.

If you look at the featured photo above you’ll see what I was working on yesterday – learning to build a new UI within Reaper itself to handle my problems. I turned this into a background process infinite loop that royally destroyed Reaper and crashed it over and over again (if you don’t know what an infinite loop is – imagine audio feedback that just never stopped feeding back AND murdered everyone before the speakers blew).

What should you take from this?

Everyone struggles and fails. The only difference between those who succeed and those who don’t is only who gets back up and tries again.

I drove my wife to work this morning and brainstormed a completely different way to make the script run that won’t bork the OSX users. That reminded me that there’s always a path to travel. There are infinite ways, paths, and possibilities when you’re creating. That means that when you fail, you’re only a few steps away from success. So don’t stop working at it.

Due to this bug, I’m going to be releasing the PT Actions Kit later than I expected. It’s a bit sad, and I’m eager to jump into other projects, but there’s not really a question of whether or not this will come out and help people. It will, and the only thing that would stop it is simply me deciding not to try anymore.

If you’re interested in hearing more and getting informed when it’s released – use the signup form on the right side of the page to add yourself to my email list.

Hope this gives you a little pat on the back and encourages you to keep working hard!