Walking in the City

Ambient Lighting

New NanoLeaf lights on the wall in the bedroom. Cool.

Not Tonight

The sun is about to set and folks are turning on the lights outside of their businesses. I, however, am not going to be joining them. No evening drive into the city for me. I feel a ton better than I did this morning, but I’m a little on the gun shy side as far as health is concerned so I am passing on the opportunity.

Also, Boston is about to get bitch slapped by some thunderstorms and I don’t want to deal with that. So I am staying home. I have decided that in the spirit of the new Amazon Prime series The Rings of Power, I would finally get around to watching The Hobbit, even though we all know it’s gonna kinda suck. We watched the first half of the first movie once, ages ago. Tonight I started over from the beginning. Let’s see how bad it can get.

We have a piece of furniture being delivered tomorrow afternoon. I have the living room ready for them. Everything is out of the way. For now though, we’ll just spend a little time in Middle Earth with the guy from the English version of The Office.

Hue

Jen has a plan to fix the lights in the dining room. It’ll be nice to turn them on and off by yelling at Siri.

Light Dawns on Musical Head

Holy crap, did I just figure something out?

When I record guitars in my bedroom there is a ton of extraneous ground hum coming through my amps. I always put it down to using too many pedals and too many cables and all that, but back in March I recorded using just one amp and no pedals and still had a lot of noise. I didn’t think it was my amp, I just thought there was something else going on.

It literally just dawned on me what it is! It’s the overhead lights in the room!

When I record in my little guitar nook I have the laptop running on battery. I’m one plug short of being able to cover everything I need, so battery it is. I was just thinking to myself that maybe it’s time to get an adapter with two plugs so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. The plug closest to where I sit now has my USB audio interface in one socket and a lamp in the other. I thought, I could just unplug the lamp while I record and plug it back in when I’m done because I usually turn on the super bright overhead lights and that’s when it hit me.

The overhead lights are on a dimmer switch. Hot Damn, why didn’t I think of that? Dimmer switches are the noisiest bastards in the electrical world (I don’t know if that’s true or not, but lets just go with it) and they are the bane of many a professional recording studio’s existence! Also, there are three lamps in the room that all have smart bulbs. I bet those kids are noisy as hell too! I bet if I turn off all the lights I won’t have as much 60 cycle hum coming through my amplifiers! I bet!

I mean, I’m probably wrong, but who cares! I feel smart right now, just let me enjoy it for a while.

Lights

The living room has been decorated up the ying yang for Christmas, and after about an hour or so worth of work by me and my step daughter, we now have Christmas lights outside too.

Tis the season!

Of course I am still severely lacking in holiday spirit.

Lights

Clockwork Angels the Light Show

Rush has seriously outdone themselves with the lights on this tour. The standout for me is the title song from the new album, Clockwork Angels. The lights act out the lyrics.

“The people raise their hands as if to fly.”