Pest Control

I was at my friend SN's house, we were waiting to head out for some fun, while at his place I kept hearing a super high pitch static type noise. It was nearly impossible to tell what direction it was coming from but there seem to be a pattern of annoying noise 2 seconds of non-noise and noise again. I asked what it was but SN was unable to hear it and was giving me a look like I was totally whacked. As I wandered around the house determined to find the source, I located an off white box plugged into the wall outlet. The box had a blue light that blinked in perfect sync with the noise I was hearing. I asked what the device was for and he explained it was for repelling pests like Mice, ants, and spiders, and that humans should not be able to hear it. I guess this settles it.....I'm a pest

Interesting: we should all take note

http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/15/why-is-there-no-looting-in-japan/?hpt=T1

Wishlist: Roland JD-800

For a while....since 1994 I've wanted one of these....But the price kept me away, they listed for $2800 USD and I'd never seen them for under $900.....there were a few timed in early 2000 when my various contacts would alert me when a JD 800 for sale would surface. I was actually in Chicago headed to s music store only to get there to find out that prince (minus the revolution) had sent one of his peeps to buy the one I was going to look at. Both manuals are a little over an inch and a half thick, but I've never really Bern a big fan of reading manuals. Shocking I know. So when I randomly located one of these on eBay for just under 400 And jumped into the bidding which seemed slow. But as soon as I hit refresh I discovered I was outbid, so I let it go and did what anyone suffering from consumer fetishism would do. I came back 45 seconds before the expire bid time and sniped it. So one of my wish list items is now checked off. This synthesizer was worth the wait. The main selling point with the JD 800 is that you can manipulate almost any sonic parameter with sliders and knobs rather than buttons and menus which seemed in vogue at the time. This thing is sonic bliss. Expect to hear a few ridiculously over the top sick sounds emitting from the newly overhauled and reconfigured Negative Nine Studios.  

Did you know that the world is actually ending on 05/21/2011.. I didn't either... http://www.wecanknow.com/

Dream #030811

Strange shattered glass, ships sinking, old house, shots with CJ, and elusive event.

Wishlist: Quasimidi Rave-O-Lution 309

I've always wanted a Quasimidi Rave-O-Lution 309, in fact i was at guitar center in the early 90's looking to buy one for around $1000. USD and the sales person introduced ME to the Roland MC-505 which i ended up buying in place of the 309 but always intended to eventually circle back and pick one up. the MC-505 served as my foundation for years of songwriting in many different styles and looks like this.

I can see the bar from here

I was invited to join my old band mates for a round of "Dance all Night" strange how the microphone looks like a ghost or UFO, but you learn to ignore crazy distracting crap like that.... and yes as cheesy as it sounds my inner asian tourist (tho i'm only part asian) could not resist taking a picture of the crowd. it felt fantastic to sing with friends while being surrounded in sound and have a stage under me feet again. i need to do more of this.

I imagined the whole thing...

A Very Long time ago in the 80's my aunt gave me a book for Christmas or my birthday, i don't remember which, i never did finish the book, not be cause it wasn't interesting..but because i had the attention span of a fruit fly. as time went on i lost track of many things, this wonderful book being one of them. a year or two ago i went looking for the book and could not find it. being the cheap skate that i am i headed to the library and found a pretty beat up version of a reprint of the same book. Oddly enough i still couldn't find time to finish it, so searched for it on eBay, bid and won. i finally finished the book recently and quite enjoyed it, i thought it would be a fun to tell my aunt thanks after all this time, only to discover she had zero memory of the book or it;s subject matter. if you know the material, it's not the kind of thing you would casually read and forget. i remember the conversation we had before i started reading the book in the 80's and remember how cool it was that an adult would be so open to such crazy ideas, but again she had no recollection of the book or anything approaching the subject matter....very puzzling.  

Random Thought

Sometimes I look around and see reflections of my self in things. It's sometimes less enjoyable than you would think.

Dre Vs. aiso/wdm buffer size

Sometimes I really hate technology. Why would any company stop it's customers from rolling back and installing old (and more stable) versions of their operating systems ? I have discovered that my MAudio sound card does not play well with windows vista. I've tried all the fixes an work arounds, nothing works. While recording at random times intermittent distortion will insert itself into my recordings. As such I've decided to uninstall vista and install XP, only to discover that either gateway or Microsoft has found some craptackular way of stopping this. That's right, even with a totally wiped seta drive XP will not install without blue screening. Apparently there is a way to partition your hard drive so that you can install multiple Operating systems so that you can boot up and select the OS of your choice. What. The. F#}k ?!?!?, so this seems to be my only choice for now. A friend let me use his windows 7 installer for testing, because after all this there is no guarantee that my MAudio card will play nice with windows 7. This is exactly the kind of situation that caused people to go and develop Linux.

I think I need a grand theft auto break....To be continued......

...but if I don't sin then Jesus will have died in vein !!

Farewell to Andropolis.....

My main "DAW" that's digital audio workstation as the world now likes to call them, crashed & burned for the last time Friday night. I was nestled in for a night of throw-down mad beats but it was not to be. I've had the computer since the mid 90's (yeah 90's) and did my best to keep it updated and OFFLINE but is now an un bootable paper weight. I know it's crazy talk but believe me... if you want to catch a work eating, show stopping virus just hop online. The good news is a few years back i expanded and moved all project data to a separate hard drive. The expansion drive is an EIDE and holds 150GB but thats about 90% full and named "darkplace"..... Anyway until 2000-ish I was still running windows 98 and only upgraded to XP as a fix to a virus issue, so I completely missed windows NT, windows 2000 and that horrible vista thing (SP2 was added a few years ago) The bottom line is that... the only thing that computer was allowed to do was MAKE MUSIC. That's it. No games, no surfing, no downloading, just music. I named the computer "Andropolis" which if you know me, will need no explanation, because it's my own little world. I've often joked that of all the things to save in a disaster it would be that hard drive as it represents so much of my musical work. Andropolis had a whopping 30GB hard drive and was custom built just for electronic music. Andropolis and I have been through a lot together, we've written about five albums, countless remixes, and created contributions for other artists albums, and there's about 6 albums worth of songs waiting to be released. I actually feel like I'm saying good bye to a friend or loved one. One of the hardest parts about loosing something you have created is rebuilding it, normally I'm more positive when it comes to looking and accessing situations like this but imagine building a house, now think about what you fill it with, tables, chairs, TV, bed...the list goes on. This is what rebuilding has been similar to because not only did I have my main recording/editing program but I also had hundreds (not kidding) ...hundreds of plugins. Plugins allow you to do very specific tasks.  Take distortion for example, there are tons of different plugins that handle just distortion, I'll leave out the part where you can make your own custom settings because that could be a posting all it's own. At about midnight I finished rebuilding the new computer, installing software, installing the sound card, and yes reinstalling what plugins I've been able to find. The good news is Prymal studios was about to throw out a computer but donated it to me a few months back. I think its only 3 years old but it didn't fit their needs. They know I am a novice Computer tinkerer enthusiast & grade A maguyver-er. Even though I have a relatively newer, better, faster and more updated computer I still miss Andropolis.

Not sure if you noticed but in the picture above "darkplace" is already installed...over on the right ?

:-)

Return

So i clicked my heels together and returned back to the land of wind, ice, and post apocalyptic zombie dreams. oh well....at least the sky is clear and there is no smell of pesky Cuban cigar in the air

And another....these were actually taken about 15 minutes apart, sometimes sunlight can be a cool thing huh ?

My last meal in the warmth

Was at a lovely place called....well i don't remember, I'm sure the sun and brightness has done something terrible to my brain, or maybe its the lack of ability to get more than 4 hours of continuous sleep....but i know it had the name of the place had news in it. "Veggie omelet" in case you were wondering.

You know yer old when....

...a fully functioning iron gets you excited, or maybe its just the view ourside my window, or all the brightness, and un-midwest weather.

Resurrection of Dredillah with Kaoss

I've been toying with the idea of my drum & bass side project a lot. mostly i build the songs in my head, i can envision the over all theme of the music. Dredillah will be high energy for sure with minimal guitars. Drum machines, synthesizers and samples mostly. It seems strange talking (writing) about this in the 3rd person. It also feels like a part of me that was never explored to it's fullest extent. I think I'll avoid actual song structure and follow more of a build up, break, mellow out, build up, go nuts sort of formula if there is such a thing. i have a slight habit of starting things and then not finishing them but i can feel that this will be different. There have been three un-released albums (roughly 6 songs each) worth of Dredillah material in the past, but i think this was because i didn't really have a fully thought out vision in terms of direction.  

Slayer Goes To Church

I know this isnt new but it makes me smile everytime i see it....

Just finished mixing new Dredillah tracks

Dream # 122710

Crazy dream with magic, spells, nudity and cooking fish. Been craving fish sticks in the worst possible way lately.  I think eating after 10PM may need to stop. what is it with nudity and dreams ? As usual it felt like days, even months had gone by, i must have a a very fully stocked dream life. I think i was in Texas, or some other southern state. i was in an apartment and it was early morning. The sun had not come up yet. we were talking like we were reviewing some sort of plan. There was an overtone of sadness the whole time, like something wasn't quite right about the way things were transpiring.

There is something calming about the wee hours of the morning