2004-12-29
Nikon CoolPix 990 For Sale
I'm selling my Nikon CoolPix 990. This is a 3.2 megapixel digital camera. It comes with 2 batteries, a 128MB flash card, fisheye lens, charger, AC adapter and the composite video cable (for displaying on TV). I've got it on eBay as well. I'd like $275 out of the whole deal.
2004-12-28
Fancy New Threads
So I updated justinpenney.com. I was getting bored of the black and thought I should add the webhosting page back in so I did. If you don't like it let me know. I probably won't change it but you'll at least get the warm fuzzy feeling that you tried to make a diofference on my website.
2004-12-27
Done with Christmas
Not a day too soon! I had a pretty good one this year, got to see some family, got some nice gifts, didn't get run completely ragged.
2004-12-21
Some new music
I used to have an unlimited eMusic account. When they got bought out and it wasn't as good of a deal I cancelled. Well, one of their latest marketing campaigns is to email previous subscribers and offer them a free month (which is 40 songs). After that it's $9.95/month for 40/month. There are some other packages but you can always buy "booster packs" that will get you $50 songs for $14.95. Anyway... enough of the back ground.
The first album I got was Audit in Progress by Hot Snakes. I'd heard "Hi-Lites" before after it was discussed on a message board (j.hall's forum on prosoundweb) and liked it. It's some hard hitting music. Noisy, yelling... just a blast. I'm not liking as much agressive music lately but this album is great. It's refreshing to hear simple direct lyrics belted out at top volume at you.
Antics by Interpol is good. It's not as good as Turn on the Bright Lights but it's listenable. So far not much has jumped out at me but I've heard that some of the songs take some time to grow on you. The bass parts are a standout and the bass is much more prominent on this album. I am kind of missing the over-compressed sound they had on "Bright Lights."
I finally got around to Pedro the Lion's newest, Achilles Heel. Previously Pedro the Lion hadn't really caught my ear but this album is great! Everything sounds really well thought out and well put together. There was definitely a good concept for the sound. They have recording notes on the album website that list the microphones and preamps used through the recording. For the most part it's very minimal, most of the drums are only an overhead and a kick mic, but everything sounds really full.
Finally, The New What Next from Hot Water Music. I really like Hot Water Music but haven't been impressed today... I'm going to give this one a few days before I make much of a call on it.
Today is the First Day of Winter
Today is the first day of winter and while shopping last night for something specifically wintry the store I went to was out of them. They also informed me that they would be putting out their spring merchandise after Christmas and they wouldn't be getting in any more winter stuff. Maybe I'm just that bad of a procrastinator but man... the coldest part of winter is still a month away and I'm still preparing a little.
My wife works in retail and I want to puke every August when they start putting out Christmas and Holiday merchandise.
Holiday Funk
And no, I don't mean funky like Bootsy but funky like... sucks. I just see all this money being spent and people (including me) shopping like the lemmings that we are and it makes me a little sick to my stomach. Everyone wants to go everywhere and do everything and see everyone and I just want to take a nap. I'm not usually a big sleeper but around the holidays I just want to sleep. Maybe it's the short daylight hours which on some level are affecting me, which would be odd since I usually don't feel awake until 9 o'clock at night.
I do know that it's not just me. Everyone at my office is about half asleep. The lethargy is to the point that one woman was askign everyone if they were feeling ok thinking there might be a carbon monoxide leak. We did have the tell tale smell of gas late last week but the gas company assured us that it was just because they added too much of the odorant (the thing that makes gas stink so you know when there's a leak) and that it was not being burned out by the heaters. I had been in the warehouse all day and when I walked into the front part of the office I was almost knocked over by the smell... man that's hideous. It's also nice to know that we called the gas company and they just said to sit tight and that they would be here soon.
2004-12-18
Got A DVD Burner.
Yesterday was my birthday and my wife let me buy a DVD burner today! It's really awesome... to sit here, feeding it DVDs while I back up all the projects for the last year... Yeah, good times.
It is something I really wanted and am currently getting a lot of use out of. I had a drive fail in my file server recently and I see hard drives go bad all the time at work so before I lost anything I figured it would be good to start archiving stuff.
2004-12-16
New Summing Bus
As I've started buying and ogling outboard gear I realised that my current console-less setup makes it a bit more difficult. I haev the Peavey mixer which I really do like but I've got an input board out to repair and it's got a few other mysterious issues going on so I wouldn't trust it really... Maybe I'll pick a good input board and use it jsut for the preamps. Anyway, back on topic. I didn't want to buy a mixer and start mixing completely analog, first off the wallet wouldn't like that, second off I've got all this great automation in SONAR and and boards with automation and recall are going to be a really good chunk of change.
I started looking around and saw things like the Dangerous 2-Bus which is supposed to sound awesome but at $3k... So then I saw the Folcrom summing box which is a really cool, simple idea. I started poking around and found some schematics for a passive summing bus that works on the same idea. I did a quick 8 channel one and it worked really well so I'm rebuilding it to have all 16 channels going through.
2004-12-07
Five Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make
Five Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make is a good read! This pretty much covers all the things I hate about band sites. At least now I know I'm not the only one.
2004-12-06
Oh The Pain...
I actually watched part of the Mtv2 - Rock Countdown. I left part way through so I'll only comment on what I saw....
What the f*ck happened to New Found Glory? I'm a proud pop-punk lover for a long time and have a few older New Found Glory CDs but what the hell are they doing. How much more whiny can his voice get? Oh yeah... Leaving the autotune on auto for the whoel song really sucks! This video had things going backwards, as in running the video backwards.
Hoobastank... I don't actually remember this one.
This whole video was backwards. What's with these "pop-punk" ballads?
I really dig the Interpol video and need to get the new album. I really liked Turn on the Bright Lights. I really dig the "Joy Division-like" bands. Maybe I just need to listen to more Joy division though. This video had stuff that had been broken play backward so that it became unbroken!
Jet is truly the most derivitive band I ahve heard! Every song they do sounds like a direct rip off of some classic band. This song, "Look What You've Done," is nearly a diorect rip off of the Beatles... actually it makes me think of Oasis which is a bad rip off of the Beatles... so this is a 3rd generation rip-off. Nice. However... there was a refreshing lack of backward video!
No matter how black you dress or how big your mohawk is or how tattooed you are if you sing like N'Sync you are just as lame. Oh and also you can't joke about getting your "cred" back if you never had any to start with. Good Charlotte could never make another sound and I would be much happier!
Secret Machines also make me think of Joy Division. I like them. There's lots of lights in the video. My wife and I were arguing about the backwardness of the video. She thinks that the lights could be backward. I don't think that would count anyway since it's not horribly obvious if they are.
The last one I saw was "Always" by Blink 182. Ok... here it is in writing... I like Blink 182. I've got most of their albums and would listen to them if the local alternative station didn't have such a tight playlist that incorporated at least 2 Blink songs per half hour. This is also a cool video. I like the concept and the production. I'm a cheeseball. Sorry.
Anyway... at this point I left to record The Last Call Girls at the Brick.
Not Satisfied With Getting Rid of Evolution
Some Kansas legislators are now wanting to push through a bill that will "limit the grounds for divorce to adultery, spousal or child abuse, abandonment for at least a year or a felony conviction."
I really want to get religion out of politics. I thought that was already pretty explicitly spelled out in the constitution but apparently, "congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" leaves a lot open for interpretation. Personally I'd like to see the legal institution of marriage be completely abandoned. It's a big bunch of poop to me, and I've been married twice! Just completely get rid of it, put in an open way for two people to put their legal trust in one another and call it a day.
This is especially frustrating as we're fighting a war against an idea that is fueled by, at least in my opinion, misguided religious fundamentalism. The whole reason the terrorists aren't able to be reasoned with is that they are all hopped up on religion! They are the righteous ones in their eyes. I think that overlooking this is the fatal flaw in the U.S. approach to the fundamental Islamist terrorists. The irony lies in the fact that we keep electing Christian fundamentalists! These are the same people as the terrorists, they just call their god a different name.
Nothing Like The Voice of a Few...
... deciding the state of many: 99.8% of FCC complaints from one group.
2004-12-05
Damn Trucks
I'm a fan of Small Cars. These are the last few cars I've owned:
- Hyundai Elantra
- Honda Prelude
- Honda Civic
- Ford Focus
Anyway... that's the boring background on what I drive. So the other night my wife and I went to Osco. She ran in while I waited in the parking lot (listening to the Dead Milkmen on my sweet tape deck in the Elantra) and this truck comes zooming up and screeches to halt in the space next to me. A couple minutes later another truck come flying up and screeches into a spot next to me. The next day I totally get cut off by some dude in a truck then five minutes later another truck runs a stop sign in front of me.
I got Ignorance is Bliss Back!
When we first started His Last Chance a big inspiration was Ignorance is Bliss by Face to Face. I lent it to Ryan as an example of the direction I had in mind. That was in 2000. I haven't seen or heard it since.
In October Ryan had a party and we were playing music in his van (the van has a GREAT sounding stereo by the way) and we listened to that and Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie. So that was another album down the drain. Both of these were sitting in his van and he always drove their Jetta when he came to practice. Well... today he finally was in the van and I wanted the Death Cab disc back so I went it to get it. When he handed it to me he told me to look to see if he left anything else in there. He did. I lifted up the CD and saw it and looked at Ryan. He let out a dissapointed "Sh*t." I exclaimed, "Yes!" and ran up the stairs and turned around and gave him the "double deuce."
I just finished listening to both of these and I'm pretty happy. Oh yeah... Chad Blinman is an awesome engineer. Even thought a lot of people don't like that Face to Face album it really resonates with me and every part of it sounds really good.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
