I got the linux box talking to the phone over gprs. I had to remember enough of how these weird things called “modems” work to be able to configure it properly.
Trying to get the license plate bracket on the bike fixed before I leave Thursday. Need to track down a replacement tail light. I’ve got one on order, but it might not make it here in time. Got a replacement bracket rigged up, but would prefer a better constructed bracket.
I decided that I would make a run to Greensboro via “Greensboro Road”. A bit of a shakedown run in a way. Last time I tried this I dropped the bike. This time it wasn’t quite as exciting.
I got about 5 miles down the road and CLANK . My license plate bracket broke and my license plate fell off and into the wheel well. That would be the license plate bracket that got bent a few months ago when someone rearended me. I’ve been putting off replacing it. I guess I waited a touch too long.
Of course, it smashed the tail/brake light into little pieces again. Grumble.
Fixing it good enough to get home was interesting. I realized my rigging kit was a little on the slim side. I had only two components of the Holy Quadrilateral Of Improvised Repairs. I had a swiss army knife and vice grips, but no duct tape or cable ties.
So vice grips it is. Managed to catch some rain on the rain home just to top it off.
Now I need to somehow figure out how to get a new bracket/tail list, or rig one up. Hopefully the trip to Sturgis will go better.
I’m a dork. I now own notadumptruck.com.
Aside from touching upon a quickly fading internet meme, it also describes me well. I am not, nor have I ever been, a dump truck.
Played a house show at Badgerhaus tonight.
Show went well. Not a bad crowd for a house show. This was my first show as Automatic Caution Show and my first solo performance.
Got fairly short notice for the show, so didn’t have a huge amount of time for the show. I decided to give it a shot with an idea thats been in my head for a while. Basically, solo semi improv heavy ambient/dub/industrial kind of thing. Think Scorn or Godflesh. It ended up being a bit more improvised than I originally intended, but thats okay.
I think it went pretty well. The concept mostly worked, but I could probably use some time to work on song structure, mostly to make better use of dynamics, something that I sort of overlooked a bit tonight. I could also maybe use some work on the guitar sounds, but given the volume constraints, it didn’t seem to bad. In a louder environment, a half stack cranked to 11 would be nice ;-> Seemed to get a nice response from some of the folks there.
The Subliminator was pretty awesome. He has a very unique setup. Basically two alesis AirSynths and two AirFX for the music, plus a vocal processor and a Boomerang looper pedal. Vocals were processed, and heavily looped, building up dense vocal interswirling lines. It’s a small setup that he makes very impressive use of.
Oh, and as the last post would indicate The Subliminator tours on a customized BMW 1100GS. So after the show we spent a few hours talking about music and motorcycles.
The way to tour
Originally uploaded by alikins.
The subliminators bike
I finally decided to upgrade from my phone from a craptastic nokia to a craptacular motorrola razr.
It does have some nice improvements though. Like useable gprs and bluetooth. I got the osx box syncing to it, and able to get to the internet using it as a bluetooth modem. Took a few hours, but finally found the info I need on the cingular site. Though, the cingular docs on how to connect from osc actually have you firing up a terminal and typing in AT commands at one. Thats pretty awesome. Found a better way elsewhere.
The linux box is next. I got it talking to it via a usb bluetooth dongle, but couldn’t really test anything since I still don’t really get any GPRS connection at home.
Next up is getting the blog to accept phone posts. It seems to work for text, but something goes wonky with images. I really need to update the version of wordpress anyway, since it seems like 1.5.x is now unsupported. I’ve had to hack up the themes and whatnot to make the captcha stuff work, but hopefully thats not an issue in 2.x.
Automatic Caution Door will make it’s performance debut this friday at Badgerhaus opening up for The Subliminator.
Who is Automatic Caution Door? Well, that would be me. Doing “stuff”. I’m not entirely sure what that will be at the moment. But it’s safe to assume it will be partially, if not completely improvised.
I mean, er, come out and enjoy a carefully considered and painstakingly perfected masterpiece in it’s performance debut and retirement.
tuxmobil.org seems to be the place to go for linux/cellphone/etc issues.
I got bored and decorated one of my laptops.
Process was:
– doodle onto paper with pen
– scan paper with scanner
– clean up scan with gimp
– import scan into inkscape
– autotrace doodle into a vector image
– resize as needed
– print onto “window decal” inkjet paper
– apply
Of course, for those images, some of those steps were separated by years.
I’ve just noticed that I have failed to mentioned that I will be taking a two week vacation and riding the motorcycle to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. I’ll be riding out there with my dad and some of his friends.
Looks to be about a 4,000 mile round trip. It will take most of the middle of August. Not exactly sure what to expect, but it should be interesting at least.