Things not to do:

1. Let your laptop bag break a strap while walking down stairs, sending
your laptop tumbling down half a flight of stairs.

Thanksgiving at the parents. I’m bored. So I’m
randomly configuring crap on the laptop.

a screenshot

Think I got the desktop setup in a workable fashion. Lots ot
quicksilver abuse.

Firefox fiddling, etc.

If you were going to write a non-fiction book, what would it be about?

Ignore lack of time, or money, or the size of the market, etc. Just
what non-fiction subject do you think you could write a useful
book about, or, what subject would you like to write about even if
you are not currently knowledgeable in that area?

Played at Bickett Gallery last night with Phasmatodea.

We were supposed to be the opener for two solo acts,
but they had to cancel.

We were not able to find any one else to play on
such short notice so it was just us. We started around
9:45 or so, and played for just over an hour. By
far our longest set so far (I generally like to
keep it to about 25 minutes, since the kind of
stuff we do can get a bit grating if it goes on
too long…)

Thanks to base10, jay, and
others for coming out. Much appreciated.

I didn’t get a recording of the show, since Cubase
(the hd recording app I have…) crashed as soon
as the laptop came out of suspend and gave me the
spinning beachball of death cursor. So far, thats
one failure out of 3 live usages. I could of probably
killed it and restarted it in a 2 or 3 minutes, but
I always hate having to watch people muck with a computer
on stage (sounds an awful lot like what I do for a living…)

I suspect badger can provide more detail as
to what we played, since he’s much better at that than I :->

I forgot my guitar synth cable, so I was just using processed
stick/guitar, so the size of my sonic palette was reduced
a bit, but seemed to be okay.

Jumped in pretty noisy. I had not plugged the cable into the
Stick so had to grab it and because of the long chain of effects
I had on, it started making interesting noises. Started
abusing the cable to get weird noises before finally plugging
in. Eventually let that fade and did some more “normal”
playing.

Second piece I played guitar, a first for Phasmatodea
shows. Started out using the korg analog mono guitar
synth (as opposed to roland digital polyphonic one…),
but was having trouble with the signal level. I think the
preamp in the guitar might have a dying battery. So I switched
to a bright clean sound with some delay and played some
simple chimey bits.

I do not remember what the third piece was. I believe it
was badger making low ominous swells with the
Etherwave, and me joining in doing the same with the analog
synth and the low pass filter. Eventually a bit of call
and response.

Next thing started off with clean stick, and short,
shattered fragments of riffs being looped asymmetrically.
Then at some point I used lots of distortion.

Last piece started off kind of meandering a bit (well,
for me any way, I was being indecisive). Badger was playing
the theremin by attacking it with swinging cables. At least,
thats what I recall, the pieces tend to blur together in my
mind. Eventually the last thing [d]evolved into me doing lots
of layered blippy bloopy noises.

Seemed to go okay over all. Hopefully it didn’t bore anyone
(It was a _long_ set for us…).

I felt my playing was not really up to par. I generally like to
keep a balance between being “normal” and abstract, and
felt the stuff last night was perhaps too abstract. The main
reason being the way the pieces changed last night tended
to be sudden and swift (mostly my doing…).
My personal preference is to slowly but
continuously morph from one idea to another. Last night
I tended to be more instantaneous and abrupt in the
changes. But then, maybe thats good. Got to keep folks on
there toes ;->

LOAD “PHASMA”, 8, 1
loading…

You are at the bottom of a long winding staircase.
To your east is a small narrow passageway. To your
north is a rocky trail leading down.

It is very dark.

From the distance, you hear strange noises. You
find them odd and confusing, but somehow enjoyable.
The sounds swirl around you, but it sounds like they
must be coming from the north trail.

> GO NORTH
You decide to venture north in the direction of the
sound of the noises.

You find a small dark L shaped room, with mysterious
artifacts hanging on the wall. You inspect them closely
before resting your weary feet on the nearest chair.

>From the back of the room, two odd looking men with
ornamented weapons enter. They begin manipulating
a series of lighted objects on the floor.

> TAKE DUMP
I do not know the word “DUMP”

> LISTEN
The men begin tapping the weapons while staring
at the array of dizzying lighted devices. Soon
wondrous and otherworldly sounds pour forth from
all corners of the room. You are entranced.

> DRINK WINE
The caretaker of the establishment fetches you
a fine beverage and thanks you for your patronage.

Your mind slowly begins to grasp the structure of
what you are hearing, and it compels you to stay.
You listen for approximately 25 minutes.

> TAKE TACO FROM MONKEY
There is no monkey here. It does not have a taco.

> CLAP HANDS
You have been eaten by a grue. The end.

Phasmatodea is playing this Thursday at
919noise night at Bickett Gallery in Raleigh.
The show starts at 9:30 and we should be playing
first and starting on time. We will be playing
with Feral Cat Scan and Khate.

We will also be playing Dec 4 at the Nightlight
in Chapel Hill. We would appreciate it if you
came out.

the random shuffle on the mp3 player seems to be particularly fond of
Godflesh, Laurie Anderson, Buckethead and Nanci Griffith today. I wonder
if it is trying to tell me something.

geek…

Note: mmap()’ing a 1.2 terabyte sparse file is a bad idea.

Developers use creative license in naming subdivisions – March 29, 2004

decided to update an old, small, but useful utility…
Made a first attempt at updating color_cvs
to support Subversion as well. Pretty simple change.

Though, I really just need to rewrite it python and
get rid of the external module requirements, but I’m
very lazy…

Now if I could only remember by password to that account
to update the webpage…