Spiderboy Sings

Alright, Let's Shoot This F****r!

Nothing much of substance, but it's been a while and I've got some pictures to share, so I'll try to be more regular.

A month or so ago we took the kids to The Wild Center's free day (because it's totally NOT worth the admission price otherwise).

I know this picture isn't the clearest, but, evidently we picked the day of spring when all turtles become amorous, because any enclosure with more than two of the little creatures in it had loads of turtle sex happening.

Notice the two heads - Connor noticed this first "Dad look, that turtle's walking on the bottom underwater." Me: "That's, ah, two turtles and they're not just walking."

Around the corner there was a smaller enclosure that let me witness things up close:

There were more, but how much turtle-porn does one person really need?

There was also some fishing in the pond:


And Des scaled a rock wall by stepping on an old man's head:


Fin.

Every Once In A While, Something Can Happen At Work That Makes You Happy...

In January, we got a duplicate of an instrument we already had (A BD FACSCanto II, if anyone cares...), and to distinguish between the two we had a naming contest. The winners, by a long shot, were "R2-D2" and "C-3PO" - I like to think that my culture of Star Wars love had something to do with this, even though I didn't suggest it (all of the warning posters I've created feature either Darth Vader or Storm Troopers, although we have one made by someone else that has Chuck 'effing Norris on it). Anyhow, today while preoccupied with something else, I notice something out of the corner of my eye. Someone had christened "C-3PO" with her own mast head:


Majestic, ain't he...

More surprises followed...









If you crack this puppy open, what do you get?













A recreation, in miniature, of the Mos Eisley Cantina scene!


Ladies and Gentleman, the Modal Nodes...Jeez I'm a nerd for knowing the band's name!

Greedo even get's blasted out of his seat if you push down on the table!

Han shoots first, bitches. Now and forever!
Also, notice the storm trooper door-bursting action!


She can make the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs.





Oh, and it snowed this week. A lot, but it's mostly gone now. I did think that the snow made an interesting juxtaposition with the new growth happening on our trees, so I took some pictures.

I think I may need to clean my camera lens or somethin.' Sometimes my pictures have unexplained smudges - or maybe it's my eyes.

On Your Own Terms

It warms my cockles to see that people like this can still be found in the world - even thought this particular instance is of someone who's left the earth. Godspeed, Dugout Dick.

Endless Repeat

If you haven't seen this take the time (there's about a dozen f-bombs, so turn the speakers down if you're at work). Parts of it have been playing through my head all day "F***in' magnets, how do they work?"


Just trust me - I wouldn't expose anyone to ICP if it wasn't worth the payoff.

Also, this.

Do You Know What Your Problem Is?

You don't eat your feedback.

So I had my first annual physical today after several years, and now that I'm in my 30's I figured I'd be getting a free finger in my anus, so of course when the nurse took my BP it was a bit high (not out of limits, but getting up there). And then I didn't even get the 'ol UFIA, so there was no reason for me to be so worked up. Guess I should stop at Rite Aid later just to be sure my BP's where it should be. Although, who knows, they may put fingers in butts there, too.

Here's some pictures that I've been promising for a while.



Des eats cookie dough, Connor's just...What is Connor doing?



Cooper says hello.



One time in the '80's, Ethan killed a guy.



Desmond does not approve.



Cindy talked me into growing my hair out, so I have to keep it out of my eyes when I exercise.



Hence the ridiculous sweatbands.



Desmond makes them look much cooler than I do.



I think this one's my favorite, but unless you see the "Karate" and Kung Fu" headbands first, it doesn't necessarily make sense. Yes I do have Adult Braces™.



Oh shit it's a snow dinosaur!

As always, clicking on the pictures goes to my Flickr page where there's more to be seen.

Hooray For Hair Metal

Remember "Round and Round?" Ratt still makes music that sounds exactly like that, and it gives me hope for the world.



Okay, so the first 30 seconds feature a lot of old men making out with young groupies, and Steven Pearcy looks like the Crypt Keeper - only with more hair. How ridiculously awesome is it, though, that at least one band from that era isn't afraid to sound exactly the same way they did back then?

Mysteries

I read a big long thing the other day about some unsolved mysteries the other day - watching cells fall into tubes™ can get kind of dull. I thought I'd share, for anyone else who's bored at work. This one kind of freaked me out a bit.

And this is worth a watch.


Anybody remember the ghost car from The Simpsons?

And. I might actually Flickr this afternoon and be back with something more personal later - aside from a rant about Bull$#!% camping websites.

FUCKRESERVEAMERICA

Sorry for the French language.

FUCK RESERVE AMERICA.

Here's their website: FUCK YOU

Now don't get me wrong. I can respect that many or most of our national parks are in high demand for camping spots/places to stay. But. This bullshit website has no consistent way to plan a trip - I'd like to plan a canoe trip through the Saranac Lakes - due to their bullshit layout and choice to use MS Silverlight software. Who the f&^% uses Silverlight? Have you ever heard of Silverlight before? I hadn't. Everyone uses Google maps, right?

If the idea is that I should just call a travel agent, cool. Can we be up front about it, though?

Again. Sorry about the langauage. Not sorry about the slander - it's not slander if it's true, right?

More slander to come...

Everybody Turn Green, It's St. Paddy's Day

Jeez, Shane McGowan is one ugly f%$#!

Miller Lyte? Really?

Rooster McConaughey? Guys name is "Rooster?" Named his kids Miller Lyte and Margarita Olympia? Makes naked bongo-playing look sane in comparison.

This Guy

He's as cool in real life as he is on TV. Apparently.

Question For The Ages

All of the Chinese food joints around here have "Dragon and Phoenix" on the menu - meaning chicken and shrimp. Which is the dragon and which is the phoenix?

Aw, Shucks

Over the last year and a half or so, in the course of my never ending quest to advance as a musician, I taught myself how to read music. So now I spend my lunch breaks playing scales and doing classical exercises and occasionally learning a rock n' roll song (or more often, just the solo) in the hopes that I'll develop decent chops at some point. Then I stay up too late and see something like this, and I think "f&@% it, I should just be bashing out power chords and having fun." I'm way to cerebral to try and put together songs or arrangements like this myself, but balls out, straight a head rock frickin' kills.



That's an Elvis Costello song (I really wanted to post the cover of Bowie's "Queen Bitch" that they did on Fallon's show, but YouTube's pulled it down). These two guys are from Supergrass - another band that I like very much - in their cover's based side project, The Hot Rats. Check 'em out.

Follow This

For the most part I detest Twitter, but I'm going to try my hardest to follow this...

Awesome. And Kind Of Sweet.

This is about the raddest thing I've seen on the internets, ever. A 29 year old artist draws comics that his five year old brother writes. Check it out.

Jeez I should be collaborating artistically with my guys more. I think the results are almost always going to be adorable when you throw the mentality of a little kid into the mix.

Something About This Just Plain Rubs Me The Wrong Way

I can't put my finger on it, but whenever I see the previews for this movie, I wince. Maybe it's the reference to a "Royale wit' Cheese", but I think it probably goes deeper than that.

This movie has to suck.

I'm With Coco

I gotta admit, I stopped watching Conan when he took over "The Tonight Show." It just kind of seemed like he was comedically neutered by the move. But since he's been given his walking papers, his old style of comedy has reared it's hilarious head. I'm happy he's back to form, but where will he land that we'll get to enjoy it?

Example:


where's the Canadian masturbating bear been during all of this?

Axiom 25 - Using The Keys And Pads At The Same Time On An M-Audio Axiom 25

My apologies to the friends and family that normally read my blog. But. I just got an Axiom 25 (for putting drums and keys and things into stuff like the song in my last post) and I've found just getting started with the thing frustrating as all hell, mostly due to the lack of quality tech support from the manufacturer. I'm making this post in the hope that some other poor sap like me that's just trying to figure out how to get started using MIDI stuff might find it in a google search and avoid some frustration.

If you look at the M-Audio forums, several people have asked how to have the keys and drum pads on the unit at the same time, and the @$$hole tech support people never give any answers other than something like "you should be able to do this in the Enigma software" without ever bothering to explain how you do it. Frustrating. After several hours of being really pissed off and annoyed, I finally figured out how to do this and thought I'd share it with the world.

This is in Ableton Live Lite, because it comes with the Axiom unit (I know, I know, I'm a "noob," but I ain't plunking down a bunch of money for DAW software without being 100% sure I know what I'm getting is what I need, first!). Anyhow. Connect your Axiom to the computer and turn it on (Duh). Set the Axiom to program 18 (supposedly you can use programs 17-20, but 18 worked for me, so stick with that for now - and if you don't know how to recall a program they *Do* actually cover this in the shitty manual, and on the M-Audio forums - I don't have my Axiom in front of me right now, so I'd probably give the wrong directions if I attempted to explain this). Open up Ableton. Open up the preferences/options menu (maybe I have that backward, it could be options/preferences) and set it up to recognize your device (you'll have two axiom slot, arm all these, and then click the "on" buttons for "track" and "remote." Close this window. Make two MIDI tracks and arm both of them (you have to right click on the red "Arm" button to be able to arm two track simultaneously). Open up the midi instruments folder and set one of these to something you would control with the keyboard - keys, organ, strings, whatever. Set the other midi track with whatever you would want the pads to control - probably drums or techno-y stuff. Now, click the button in the upper right hand corner that changes the view of the tracks from horizontal to vertical. You can now see a little thing that says something like "Midi all channels" or somesuch nonsense. You want to change this to "1" for your keyboard controlled part, and "10" for the drum controlled part. Now you *should* be able to have them trigger independently. The other thing to do now is set the drum pads to play the notes/drums you want them to play, which is explained pretty well somewhere in here (look at response #13 - that's how I did it).

If that helps one person, I'll feel like I've done my good deed for the day. This whole thing seemed like an awful big debacle just to be able to program some drums and keys into some roots-rocky type stuff that I cook up in my living room, but hopefully I'll be glad I bought a (slightly) more professional piece of equipment in the long run, even if the learning curve is steep!