I don’t think I’m clear to give details but I’m going to burst so I have to do something public. Somebody I haven’t met yet will be celebrating his birth day on this date in subsequent years. He earned the right to do that just an hour or so ago.

Happy Birth Day!

Meanwhile, the four of us are watching Star Wars. The original cut, not the retarded special edition. This is the bonus disc from the most recent rerelease of the special edition.

Han will shoot first, as it should be.

We just got a phone call from former President Bill Clinton. He calls us now and then to see how we’re doing. I don’t mind, but sometimes when I’m busy I just want to tell him that I chose to vote for him twice, he has to keep calling and thanking me.

Sheesh.

He asked me to vote for Coakly in the Senate election next week. No problem Bill, anything to get you off the line so I can go back to fixing the toilet.

Prior to taking the kids to karate class today I took 200 pictures of them punching and kicking.

I love those kids for indulging my Nikon goofiness.

Thanks guys!

Here is the newly recorded theme music to Hockey Night in Canada…

By Neil Peart.

Woah!

When you finish with the Mission of Burma set from the last post (they are playing in Boston tonight and tomorrow by the way, you should go) try this one from Throwing Muses:

This is an audience recording and it can be found here: Throwing Muses Live at The Middle East on 2009-03-14 (March 14, 2009)

Achive.org has a music section. Some of the shows hosted there have embedable MP3 players. I am just testing this out…

This comes from Mission of Burma Live at MIT East Campus Courtyard on 2009-10-09 (October 9, 2009)

Just saving it for later. There are a few radio spots at the start of the playlist. Beware.

The Bruins are on the west coast this week. That means Robbie has no knowledge of what’s going on in the games until the next morning. My days of staying up all night are long gone. I was in bed, sound asleep, before the puck was dropped.

They played the Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday and lost. Not surprising. Last night they were playing the San Jose Sharks. I expected to check the score this morning and see another loss.

Shock!

They won 2-1 in a shoot out with Zdeno Chara scoring the shoot out winner! Oh what a happy morning surprise!

Of course David Krejci didn’t play. He’s out with an undisclosed injury. That means the top three centers on the Bruins roster are all out with injuries. Marc Savard is out with a knee injury. Patrice Bergeron is out with a broken thumb.

372 year old Mark Recchi was the #1 center last night. He’s actually a winger. Vladimir Sobotka, who started the year in Providence, was the number two center, followed by Steve Begin and Trent Whitfield. One does not expect to win the Stanley Cup with a line up like that.

Please come back, oh our much missed center ice men. Please come back.

But still, ‘grats for beating the Sharks. Nice going. Now stick it to the Kings on Saturday!

Quest for Iscandar 02 (1/2)

Here I am sitting on the couch in the living room with a laptop on my lap, as happens often in this high tech household me and my super software engineer wife share.

Am I using my Toshiba laptop which runs Windows 7? Nope.
Am I using my Gateway laptop which runs Linux? Nope.

I am using my beloved wife’s macbook running the latest OS X version.

I am checking out the user my bride set up for me and looking at Garageband tutorials and trying to figure out my RPM Challenge needs… again. I go through this every year.

The macbook has an audio input, which is a good thing. I just need an adapter (1/4 inch to 1/8 inch) and I can plug right in. It probably won’t sound very good, but it won’t sound any worse then the crap I recorded last year. The downside is that it only has a single audio input, which means the drum machine won’t come into Garageband in stereo.

Know what? I’m not going to worry about it. No one is going to listen to this crap-fest other than me, who cares if all of the percussion is in the center of the stereo field in the final mix. Certainly not me. I’ll spread the other instruments around for any stereo effects I might later desire.

I’ll still record anything acoustic (ie my pie hole) with the mic plugged into my mixing board and a line out into the computer. That way I don’t have to mess with the mic cable and I can eq my terrible voice at every stage along the signal path… hopefully until it no longer sounds like me.

It’s still a few weeks off, but Robbie is gearing up for RPM. Be prepared to be bored to tears with frequent updates!

And as my last band’s singer, Jeff, used to say all the time: Rock On!

Heavy Metal Baby