Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

May/June Music

Music was made this morning. I started a song idea (#2 for June) on my iPad late last night and put guitars on it this morning. That’s probably going to be the plan going forward. I did not use my Deluxe Reverb as my amplifier, even though it’s in the pictures, I used my Vox MV50’s direct output and speaker simulation into my USB interface. No speakers involved at all. That makes me sad, but it also let Jen sleep so that’s a huge win in my book. I suspect the only chances I am going to have to put a dent in music projects this month, or even this summer, will be to do it before work and that means we’re going direct.

Now I just need to write 10 songs within the month of June, and finish all 10 that I started in May. Yeah. Right.

DSC_1383
279/365
DSC_1385

Fear the Walking Loose Ends

As usual, spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead (Season eight, episode four specifically but also a couple of episodes of the original show, The Walking Dead, including the pilot).

I started jogging (pronounced “yogging”) this morning while watching season five of Star Wars The Clone Wars. Season four was weaker than I expected. Much of season five was weak too, but I’m down to the last five episodes and a big story line is just ramping up so it’s better.

As I was trot trot trotting to Boston, trot trot trotting to Lynn (get it?) a notification popped up on my screen. The Talking Dead podcast released its recap of Sunday night’s Fear the Walking Dead. I was doing a good job pretending the episode didn’t exist but seeing that notification just made me have to watch it. Shit.

There was potential for this episode to be something really special. I still have 15 minutes to go but it’s turned into its usual dumb failure. Congratulations, Fear. You suck again.

The premise is that Morgan went back to the setting of the original show’s pilot to tie up a loose end that has been hanging since that very first episode of The Walking Dead. Well… technically it’s been hanging since season three when Rick and Carl and Michonne went back to Rick’s home town looking for guns and found Morgan out of his brain insane, but it still sort of ties back to the pilot so we’re going with that.

The current show takes place in Louisiana, I think. It might be Mississippi. Someplace in the South, East of Texas, that’s all we know for sure. The genius writing staff hasn’t seen fit to tell us specifically, but we know that much. In this episode, Morgan goes on a secret mission back to Georgia. He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going. He doesn’t tell anyone that he actually is going, he just goes. Magically, five of the season eight regulars and two expendable baddies find him. I say magically, because the reason they find him is the walkie talkies. Oh, and at one point the expendable baddies use the walkie talkie to call from Georgia to wherever the bad guy headquarters are in Louisiana or Mississippi or wherever. I’m guessing that particular piece of utter stupidity is the real reason the writers haven’t told us exactly where the baddies live.

This show blows. What a waste.

Vision Pro

When the iPhone was announced I thought it was meh.

Then the iPad, same thing.

Then the Apple Watch, again the same thing. Meh.

Then within minutes of trying all three they became indispensable. Literally can’t deal with not having them.

Now we have Vision Pro…

I suddenly NEED me some AR.

I NEED IT!

Introducing Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s first spatial computer.

ADDENDUM: And then Robert saw the $3,499 price tag and suddenly he wasn’t as into it as he was before.

Genesis on The Midnight Special

I read a story about this earlier this morning. The old 70’s TV show The Midnight Special has a YouTube channel and they released a video of Genesis playing The Musical Box in 1973. The article mentioned that the show originally included them playing Watcher of the Skies as well but that hadn’t been released on the YouTubes. I went looking for The Musical Box at lunch today and Watcher of the Skies actually came out this morning as well.

Enjoy watching Peter Gabriel play dress up!

Figures that the camera panned up off of Steve Hackett’s hands just before he played one of Earth’s first examples of two hand tapping. Oh well.

Smoke

We made blackened fish in a cast iron skillet last night. It was excellent.

Cleaning the skillet requires rubbing it down with vegetable oil and then burning it off. That didn’t go quite as excellent. Especially when I had all of the windows open at 10:30pm when it was 48 degrees out, and that was before the smoke alarms went off.

Insult to injury, 15 minutes after the smoke cleared and the alarms were silent, one of the smoke alarms started giving that dying battery chirp. Perfect timing, ass munch.

278/365
278/365

At least the skillet is clean and ready for the next meal.