Friday, January 23, 2004

Incommunicado

Been out sick for a couple of weeks - bad ear kicked off vertigo, spent Sunday night in the emergency room. Off to the ENT guy today, hope he's got the magic cure!!!

Saturday, January 10, 2004

Yeeha!

Finally got my own domain: www.graytail.com. Nothin there yet, but watch out!!!

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

Putting the Gray in Graytail

So, a couple of weeks ago, I started a goatee - it really started itself, but I stopped fighting with it. Looks pretty cool, but WAY more gray/white in it than on my head.

Then, I went to my annual eye exam - and all of a sudden I need $%^&^^& bifocals. Grr.

Then I saw my doctor, and he prescribed a sleep study. So I went last night...

...and I have severe sleep apnea. The dangerous kind - oxygen levels getting scary low. So now, I get to spend the rest of my $%^&^^& life tied to a $%^& CPAP machine every night:




There's an off chance that if I lose enough weight (Atkins is going pretty well), the problem will go away - but that's rare.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna see if Kim wants to play "Darth Vader Meets the Space Wench..."

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

ATF Head Recruited by RIAA

by Kent Van Cleave

First we need to terrorize the file-sharing industry into submission, eliminating criminal opportunities. Then we need to terrorize those still tempted to copy music illegally by showing that we can nail them on mere suspicion. By applying the ATF model to our efforts at RIAA, we'll have both prongs covered.

Note - this is humor. Pointed humor, but humor nonetheless...

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

eBay item 2448756945

eBay item 2448756945 (Ends Dec-21-03 10:21:29 PST) - Honda CB500T rolling chassis - horrible

You GOTTA read these comments. Read the whole page - skip nothing. It's a valid auction, but the seller's commentary is a hoot!

Auction ends 12-21.

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Harmony CentralĂ‚®: Notre Dame de Budapest Pipe Organ Captured for GigaStudio

Notre Dame de Budapest pipes for GigaStudio

Sounds yummy. $450 Euro. Wonder if my old GigaSampler LE will handle it...

Friday, November 21, 2003

The Egg, Myself, and I

Humpty-Dumpty Effect: Acoustically, people resemble large eggs: Science News Online, Nov. 15, 2003

Until now, no one had measured the absolute acoustic profile of the human body—that is, how the body scatters sound waves independently of where it happens to be.

Thursday, November 20, 2003

Wired News: Record Label Sings New Tune

Wired News: Record Label Sings New Tune

Interesting idea - maybe more suited to remix-oriented genres, but it's good to see some creative thought about copyrights out there.

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

New template

The old one crashed and burned, couldn't find it in the new template collection (tiny list - wonder why???).

So links, sidebar pics, etc. are gone for now. I'll resurrect them as soon as I can...

Friday, November 14, 2003

Huh - something broke at blogger? This site went dead after my last post. Grrr...

Larry Norman benefit 11/15 in Cincinnati

Come see us!!!



Sittin in with my pals the Motor City Saints this weekend, while they look for a permanent 4th member. Long drive, but a worthy cause!

Monday, November 10, 2003

The Recording Project

It's the sleek new offshoot of HomeRecording Dot Com. All the cool stuff HR has, plus:

post mp3s directly to a thread
special collab threads allow you to post wavs
two hangouts - one PG-rated, one R-rated --- helps solve the 13-year-olds-in-the-cave issues
non-absentee owners and moderators WHO ACTUALLY IMPLEMENT USER SUGGESTIONS (what a concept!) - they promise they'll keep the trolls in line, too!
No performance issues / too-much-traffic lockouts




See ya there!

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Shakey's Spooky pics


Da Blog


Helen gives us a first-hand view of the San Diego county fires. Spooky.

Monday, October 20, 2003

Premier Amplifiers

Premier Amplifiers


Went to a party / jam session with the Alligators a few weeks back. I had met a few of the guys at another jam, but it was my HR pal Dougie who finagled me the invite.

Great food and beer, and a real nice buch of people. Jamming was lots of fun, shared keyboard duties with another HR buddy, Sean.

The harp player is way into vintage gear - we've discussed it before - and I noticed he had a Premier amp he played slide guitar through - sounded like a harp amp, there was so much distortion. Very cool. So I went on a search today, THIS:

is what I found. Premier was a cheap Fender knockoff from the 60's, lower power and way more tube distortion. But that's its beauty. There's a big section of the linked site devoted to Premier. Best thing is, these things are cheap! Just gotta find a good one...

Friday, October 10, 2003

TbT audio

Wow!!!

Lotsa VST goodies here:
TbT audio software projects Home

Tube Limiter especially sounds pretty cool. And all of it's freeware!!!

All together now: WOW!!!

Monday, October 06, 2003

How I Spent My Weekend, and a tribute to Warren Z

The First Annual HomeRec Canadian Mini Jam Fest, aka Voxfest 2003, is now history. Much jamming, drinking, eating, and carrying on with brothers and sisters from Hamilton, London, Detroit, and Utah (!!!). A jam purist would denounce some of the jamming as something other than true jams - multiple takes til we got it right, and not much extended group creativity, though there WERE moments that were more like a traditional jam. Some last minute cancellations from New York, Detroit, and Connecticut made for a smaller turnout than anticipated, but plenty of talent at every position.

It differed from the much larger Connecticut jamfest, not only in approach and size, but also content - very few 12-bar blues, or 60s/70s warhorses got pulled out here - much more GreenDay / 3EB / 90s rock content. A couple of key players, Simon and Myke, were my son's age. Creative guys with a great future, I think.

Musical highlights:
Home For A Rest, aka the Newfie jam, a hard-rocking Celtic flavored Canadian Classic - new to most of us there. We just followed Myke;
Stooges' I Wanna Be Your Dog, featuring my brother Rats on vocs and keys, and my recording debut on the guitar and airsynth;
Billy J's Still Rock & Roll, starring Myke, but I get a piano solo - big fun, much cooler than the fake sax thing I used to do in it;
Britney Spears' (!!!???) Hit Me Baby, completely reworked as a grungy punky moshpit jam - big fun!!!;
our Warren Zevon tribute (RIP, man...), Werewolves, with me singing and butchering the first line (bad notes, wrong words), but it got better as we went along;
a Sex Pistols cover, featuring rats again (title escapes me); and
rats' We Are All Clones, recorded by ratso, Voxxy, and me after everyone else had left - a great "end of the fest" tune.

Major props to the other jammers: Simon, Myke, PartyPants, Voxxy, Chris, ratso, and Voxxy's bass man (name has now escaped my so-called mind). What an absolute blast. We also had DJ Li'l A (Alyssa, 2) sit in on the DJBox, and minivox (Johnny, 3) was bangin' the drums. Voxxy actually played mini-v's tiny set on Clones!!! Great trashcan sound.

Other firsts:
poutine,
absinthe,
a brown beer whose name I've forgotten, but there's a 6-pack waiting at home to remind me, and
an unfortunate visual of a very drunk, very naked Voxxy, stumbling around his house after skinny dipping and drinking WAY too much - not necessarily in that order. Big thanks to my wife, who insisted we stay at a hotel!!! I need that sixpack of temporarily unnamed beer, just to help me forget the horrors my eyes have seen...

Heh heh.

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

DJ Li'l A in da HOUSE!!



Know what I'm SAYIN?

Monday, September 29, 2003

Child Pimp Suits

I suppose I should be horrified

But THIS is pretty funny. Apparently trick-or-treating has changed a lot since I was a kid...

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Sing Ho!

Wrote this today - tried to get my songwriting buddies to chime in. Didn't happen. You can sing it to the tune of Sweet Molly Malone, but I'll try to come up with something different. And I had to change the names slightly to protect the guilty...

Oh yeah - big parental advisory on this one...

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks and her money and pimp will be gone.



Sweet Mandy had hair of a fine flaxen hue,
And she'd laugh as I kissed her pink orbs in a kneel,
But then one day she spurned me, "I couldn't love you,
For I must find a man whose tall lance makes me squeal!"

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks and her money and pimp will be gone.



Crazy-eyed Nanette, more stalker than belle,
She learned at my knee of the world, of the flesh,
Years later, I met her, amidst a dry spell,
She teased, then she cackled — a bitter, sour wench!

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks and her money and pimp will be gone.



Me and Fannie was drunk, sure and I was still green,
We rolled on the grass, she was done, I withdrew,
Then in daylight I saw her, a sobering scene,
Mourned my stained knees, lost innocence, broken fly too!

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks (??) and her money and pimp will be gone.



Lucienza was hungry, a fiery Italian,
In my wagon we trysted, her panties enpursed,
Next day, told her girlfriends that I was no stallion
more schnauzer than steed, and more gherkin than wurst!

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks and her money and pimp will be gone.



Round Sharon was randy, an eager dark lass,
with an eye for rough pleasure, and forbidden whim,
She, the night that we parted, pledged love to the last,
But next evening was making the beast, astride Tim.

Sing ho!, for the hoor and take comfort, poor john,
Soon her looks and her money and pimp will be gone.


Maybe more verses coming, but I'm about out of exes.