Changing Perspective

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Jason Vincion

I’d normally be working out right now (according to my new schedule), but I called an audible and decided to blog because I’ve got some serious digging to do tomorrow and need to conserve my strength.

I’ve got two fairly large gardens to flip with a shovel early tomorrow morning and I’m actually looking forward to it. In my younger years, yard work was something I tolerated, but never really enjoyed. It’s only been over the past two years or so where just getting outside and working with the earth has become enjoyable.

I’m not sure when or why this transition happened, but I think it came when I quit thinking about yard work as a chore to take care of and started thinking of it as a project to take on. That seems to be the case whenever I’m confronted with something I don’t want to do – it starts out as a chore, which makes me hem and haw at the prospect of having to do it. Once I’m able to see the benefits of doing said task (in this case, homegrown food, free compost, and firewood for the winter), I can change my perspective on it, turn it into a project, and go after it with gusto.

I also enjoy the gas-free approach to yard work as I traded in my gas mower for a push mower a couple years ago, though my reason for doing so was mostly for the exercise. At least flipping the garden with a shovel has more of a reason behind it – the rototiller jacked up my back pretty bad last year and using a rototiller to stir up the earth tends to turn the earthworms into chunks.

I’ve known since grade school that earthworms are good for the soil, and good soil tends to breed better plants. I ran into quite a few of the critters while flipping the garden bed on the south side of the house last month, which is a promising sign. It also gets the most sun, so the plants that need it the most (tomatoes) go there.

I also need to figure out which tree branches I can take down in order to increase the amount of sun that those soon-to-be flipped gardens will receive. Right now, it’s somewhere between 5-6 hours, which is not enough for a good deal of plants to yield well. I don’t know if I’ll get to cutting any branches this weekend, but I might – depends on how worn out I am after all that shoveling.

Today’s weight: 216.0 lbs

Holding steady with the weight, which is better than gaining. I have a feeling I’ll be dropping a bit of weight once Sunday rolls around, for obvious reasons – well, obvious if you read the rest of this post, that is. :)

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Starrysea – Aqumeneon

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Jason Vincion

Hey everyone! I’ve completed another Starrysea song (entitled Aqumeneon) and it’s available for streaming and download off of the Starrysea Bandcamp page!

Of course, it would be discourteous of me not to provide a streaming widget, so here it is:


The song will also reside in the sidebar until the next Starrysea song comes along, and you can always check out the last Starrysea song (Auscuenleon) on the Starrysea page.

As for why the Starrysea song names are so peculiar, it’s the only remnant from an overly technical musical project that I created at the end of last year. I had randomized everything about the project, from the chord changes to the time signature, as well as the names.

The names came from the prefixes, midfixes, and suffixes of stars and star systems that contain extrasolar planets. I created a chart of 39 different prefixes, midfixes, and suffixes (117 parts in total) and determined which parts I would use with two 20-sided dice rolls. The names would contain one prefix, two midfixes, and one suffix with any repeated letters omitted.

And to think – the whole project was like that. I don’t know where my head was at that point, but it certainly wasn’t a good place. In any event, I hope you enjoy the song!

Yesterday’s weight: 216.6 lbs
Today’s weight: 216.0 lbs

The weight gain from dining at a restaurant was smaller than I thought it would be, and I was able to get back to where I was on Tuesday by eating better last night and finally getting back to working out yesterday morning. I even had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner!

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Returning to a Time Schedule

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Jason Vincion

I’m happy to say that I’ve finally devised a new schedule for myself in order to use my time more efficiently. Now that I have a rather long-term goal set (my 1000 Days post sums it up), I need to schedule my short-term and medium-term goals accordingly.

I’m no stranger to making a schedule in order to get things done, as I used to experiment with various ways of following a schedule in search of the best way to optimize my time. I tried time blocking (sectioning off blocks of time for certain tasks), I tried the one week on, one week off method (which would have worked better without a full-time job), I made lists of everything I wanted to do and got to them as I could, but none of these methods gave me the results I was looking for.

With the current schedule I’m working from, I divvied the weekdays up into mornings and evenings, and the weekends and holidays up into mornings, afternoons, and evenings. I put all of the necessary tasks on there first, then I gradually added all of the things that I want to complete, with a loose idea on how much time would be spent on each task.

I’m happy with the results so far, but as I only came up with this schedule yesterday, only time will tell how well it will work. I’ll need to change the goals as certain things rise and diminish in importance, but I believe the structure will be one I can follow indefinitely and get things completed in a timely fashion.

I could elaborate on the goals I’ve set (and likely will in a future blog post), but my main hope for this approach is that it gives me more time to work on my artistic ventures.

I’ve decided to have my status updates conclude my posts from now on, so here goes!

Today’s weight: 216.0 lbs

One day of cleaning up my diet after the weekend and I’m already one pound from my first goal. I may have screwed up tonight, as I went out to dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant that’s one block from the office.

On the positive side, I had a green salad with chicken on top, but the meal had some unfamiliar spices and sauces on it (though they certainly tasted good) and it came two quarter-circles of pita bread (which I ate), so I’m not sure how that will affect tomorrow’s weigh-in.

I also had a dessert of a banana, some honey, and some almond butter when I got home, so I may have blown it today, but I’ll endeavor to eat better tomorrow.

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Exploring the Starrysea

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Jason Vincion

Yesterday’s weight: 217.4 lbs
Today’s weight: 217.2 lbs

Holding steady on the weight front over the weekend is a good sign, as I may be able to reach the 215 mark this week with a little effort and no drinking. Sounds good!

Yesterday was relatively uneventful, aside from playing some Dragon Quest IX, working on the next Starrysea song, creating the artwork for it, and taking my Mom to the Jolly Roger Taproom for Mother’s Day lunch. The venue was a mutual choice, as we like to go there for Sunday lunch on occasion and we figured (correctly) that it wouldn’t be very busy. Aside from the beer, the lunch I had was mostly paleo and we had a good time.

Speaking of Starrysea, I’ve been trying to figure out exactly which projects of mine have led to this one. When I make new musical projects, there are usually remnants of previous ones that come along with it.

Of my two non-eponymous projects from 2011, I’d certainly say both Repudiation (a funeral doom project) and Thunderspell (an atmospheric jungle project) both have had influence, as the Starrysea drum kit is the same one I put together for the Repudiation project (with less reverb added). Thunderspell was pretty heavy with synthesizer, though I think the idea of compacting a two-word title into one is probably the biggest similarity.

Some of my eponymous work from 2010 and 2011 is likely an influence as well, as “The Rise of Count Barcula” was a pretty big experiment in time stretching sound files, and using time stretching on acoustic guitar loops is what makes up the backbone of the Starrysea project.

As an aside, the song is named after my cat Barclay, who indeed has vampire fangs:

Anyway, the last two songs from the Explorations in Sound album from 2011 (available for listening/purchase in the Older Tunes tab) also have similarities – “Submersion” is based around an acoustic guitar loop with lots of keyboard and synthesizer and “In Memory of Mouse” (created on the one-year anniversary of his passing) has a really simple drumbeat with lots of dreamy synthesizer loops.

That style of extending looping song was influenced by my Philistine on the Sidewalk project from 2010, which I’m looking to remaster all of the tracks (as well as the unreleased remixes) and release on Concatenation Records once I change it over to WordPress.

That said, I think there are earlier origins – the Amaranthine Skies project from 2007-2009 was some of the most ambient material I’ve ever done, the Cyanidic Rapture project from 2008-2009 introduced the use of fractal images for artwork (though the sound is nothing alike), and the Kuribo’s Shoegaze project from 2006 also drew from my enjoyment of the shoegaze genre (mostly Slowdive at that point), but I think the earliest origin would be the Natthimmel project from 2002-2008.

Natthimmel started out as a semi-technical metal project and slowly evolved in to a more experimental rock project. I recorded a lot of video game covers at the time and a couple spring to mind as being influential – “Alfred’s Last Day” from Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (2005) and “Moonbeams and Pennywhistles” from Final Fantasy IV (2006).

“Alfred’s Last Day” had a softer sound with a basic drumbeat and multiple keyboard loops, and “Moonbeams and Pennywhistles” was also a more keyboard-oriented song that had a time-altered bass line which was pitched up an octave. Both songs can be heard here. Also, natthimmel is the Norwegian word for “night sky” and there certainly is a starry sea in the night sky!

Well, I think that solves that personal inquiry!

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ETFs, Yard Work, and Xbox 360

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Jason Vincion

Today’s weight: 217.2 lbs

There’s really not much point on commenting on a 0.2 lb fluctuation in weight, so I’ll just get on to it.

After working with my finances for a couple hours this morning, I spent a good three hours cleaning up the yard and another two hours making the Xbox 360 Achievements page on WordPress. Now, I’m topping it off with a blog post! See – workaholic.

On the financial tip, I’ve been working on my investments by focusing solely on a variety of ETFs and away from stocks. I’m doing so because I’m more interested in receiving monthly dividends opposed to quarterly ones, and a fair chunk of ETFs pay dividends monthly. Twelve smaller payments a year compound more effectively than four larger ones, and quite a few ETFs yield better than most stocks at the moment.

If you’re unfamiliar with ETFs, I recommend you head over to ETF Database and do a little research. The best way I can sum them up is that they’re mutual funds that trade on the stock market. They do have fees involved like mutual funds do, but they’re pretty reasonable (usually 0.5% or under) and painless to deal with (the fund managers take their cut from the dividends paid). There are even ETFs built out of municipal bonds that have tax-free dividends if you live in Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Washington, and Wyoming! As I live in #8 on that list, they make me smile – HYD in particular (yes, I do own some shares).

I’m also working towards making my investments more balanced and I’m trying to not have any one investment make up over 5% of my dividend income. I was less concerned about that in days past, so while most of my investments meet that criteria, I have one a slight bit above (5.2%), two between 8-9%, and one at 19.5% (yes, it’s a REIT). I’ve got a pretty healthy list of ETFs that I’m following now, so I’ll be able to bring those out-of-balance numbers down to more acceptable levels over the coming months.

On the yard work tip, I trimmed some tree branches, mowed the yard, and went to town with the weed eater. I cleared out two overgrown gardens and a couple other overgrown areas. I still need to flip those gardens with a shovel, but that can be done another day (perhaps tomorrow morning). I did notice that both of those gardens get maybe 5-6 hours of sun at most, which explains why the tomatoes planted back there last year had such a lackluster output. The ones on the south side of the house produced like gangbusters, as that part of the yard gets lots of sun and gets pretty hot.

In any event, the yard really snuck up on me over the past couple of weeks and while I enjoy working the yard quite a bit, all that work wore me out. I was hoping to work on cleaning things up inside, but all I could manage to do is work on the computer.

I was at a bit of a loss as to what to work on, as I want to convert the Concatenation Records site over to WordPress and I have two new WordPress site ideas I came up with earlier this week that I’d like to get started on sooner than later. It then occurred to me that after looking at my Google Analytics page, I should add the Xbox 360 Achievements page to this site. It’s the second most visited part of the site, and I hadn’t updated it in a month and a half. I let my buddies at The Shizz down by slacking, so I had to rectify that.

So now, here I sit at a loose end, blogging about my day. I think after I do the dinner thing, I’ll hop on the 360 and work on my achievement score. Work, work, work!

Posted in Finance, Gaming, WordPress, Yard Work | Leave a comment

1000 Days

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Jason Vincion

Today’s weight: 217.0 lbs

I shouldn’t have had those two beers or that dessert (banana w/ honey & almond butter on top) last night, but hey – live and learn. Tomorrow will be promising for weight loss, as I’ve got a hefty day of yard work ahead of me, but it could be nullified (and then some) on Sunday in going out to lunch with Mom for Mother’s Day. One step forward, one step back.

So, 1000 days. I noticed about a month ago that my government ID badge expires on February 4th, 2015 and today marks 1000 days until it expires (with 2/4/15 being the last day it’s valid). That made me wonder where I would be in 1000 days. It also led me to reflect on my last 1000 days.

1000 days ago was August 15th, 2009 – I had just released the last of the Amaranthine Skies albums, my cats Mouse and Bootsie were still alive (Mouse was six days from his 18th birthday), I was still at the old office, and I was about to go to the last of the enjoyable (for me) Penny Arcade Expos. The beginning of my big transition at that time was still a couple of months off, when I discovered Steve Pavlina’s “10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job” article, which completely altered my way of thinking. I started investing (after dragging my feet about doing so for months), I started up the old blog in December 2009, and started looking at ways to build passive income.

In hindsight, most of my efforts were in vain during that 1000 day period (save for the investing, which has required lots of trial and error). The blog sputtered to a trickle after six months, mostly on the loss of my cat Mouse to tongue cancer about five months in (March 27th, 2010). I’d had him since he was 8 weeks old, so it was a big loss and totally took the wind out of my sails. My musical project at the time (Philistine on the Sidewalk) sputtered to a halt shortly thereafter, and I started doing monthly songs to keep my chops up, though none of them were all that inspired. I did two albums in 2011 under my own name that went nowhere, started up a couple more musical projects that went nowhere, and just kind of failed my way forward without stopping to reflect on what exactly I was doing.

My long-term goal of living off of passive income was still in place and I decided I could just wait it out at my job. With my rate of investment and how much I earn and save, I figured that I could retire to a simple life sometime in my 40s (I’m 32 now). I didn’t really have any big plans in place for my life and decided that I would just coast my way to the finish line. The thing is, that’s totally unlike me. Ask anyone that knows me fairly well – I’m a workaholic. I love working on projects that interest me and spend a lot of my free time doing so (when I’m not researching things online or gaming). I had essentially given up.

Thankfully, I was still reading some of my favorite blogs, and on a whim, I decided to go back through Glenn Morrissette’s To Simplify blog and read it from the beginning about a month ago. I didn’t find his blog until September 2011, but his adventure of being a mobile musician living in an RV started a little over 1000 days ago in early August 2009. Reading the entirely of his blog really lit a fire under me, and shortly thereafter, Steve Pavlina started up another series on his blog about how to earn passive income.

The timing of these two things is not lost on me and I’m going to make the best of it. I want to be able to do the same thing as Glenn and explore the beautiful scenery of our country while making music in the process. I’ve also got friends around the country that I can’t see now because I can’t take time off from my job without severely paying for it (I only have backup for one part of my job), which is frustrating to say the least. I want to see them all again and enjoy experiences with them.

Unfortunately, I can’t wrap up things in a month and a half like Glenn did, though I’m driving myself to do so within 1000 days. There are still a few large obstacles in my way (not enough money, no powerful sources of passive income, way too much stuff), but I will work my way through them, because I don’t want to be stuck where I am any more. I only had a nebulous goal to work towards before – this gives me a much more solid one. I have to do this.

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More Troubleshooting WordPress Plugins

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Jason Vincion

Today’s weight: 216.6 lbs

Joy at weight loss aside, the first thing I thought of when I woke up was the site, as all of my pages had broken before I went to bed. It had to do with uninstalling the WordPress SEO plugin, so I reinstalled it and did a tiny bit of research as to why it was doing weird things to my titles. Perhaps I should have looked at the FAQ on the wordpress.org site about the plugin, as the fix I required was the first thing listed.

In another bit of dunderheadery, I had the .htaccess file forward the Starrysea page to the starryseamusic.com address, when I should have gone to my name service provider and forwarded starryseamusic.com to jasonvincion.com/starrysea/ (which I did this morning). It’s still not working in Firefox, but it works in Chrome, IE, Opera, and Safari, so I’m guessing it’s a Firefox browser cache issue (just cleaned the most recent cache – that was indeed the issue).

I thought to myself yesterday that I’m trying to fail my way forward with my new and improved WordPress site, but then I contradicted that thought by uninstalling something to make the site better. In “running away” from the problem, it just made things worse, so I reinstalled the program, tackled it head-on, and now it works. I think there’s a life lesson in there somewhere, but I need more coffee to figure it out.

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Troubleshooting WordPress Plugins

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Jason Vincion

Today’s weight: 217.2 lbs

It’s good to be back on the downward weight trend, but after tonight’s revelry with beer & wine, that trend may be at an end. However, I didn’t eat much today and there are TMI reasons that I’ve likely dropped some weight too. We shall see in the morning!

As for the title, I found that the WordPress SEO plugin I was using caused some weird disruptions with the titles of my pages, so I decided to disable it to keep things simple.  I guess simplicity might be out the window now that I have 10+ plugins installed on the site, but none of the ones that are installed now have caused any issues with the page.  There are some more that I’m looking to install to further optimize the page, so hopefully they don’t cause any conflicts.

In other news, I’ve tracked out the drums and started working with Reason synth patches for the next Starrysea song, so I’m hoping I can make some more progress on it in the near future.  I likely won’t be able to get back to it until Sunday afternoon because of something I plan to blog about tomorrow night.  The goal is to get the two Starrysea songs done by the end of the quarter (June 30th), so I still have a fair chunk of time to get things done.

I’m gonna fiddle around with plugins for a bit longer, then I’m-a pass out.  Good night!

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Busy Morning, Sleepy Day, Busy Night

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Jason Vincion

Today’s weight: 217.8 lbs

The weight’s back on the downtrend, but now that I’ve discovered the joy of wine, I have a feeling I may end up curbing my progress in the short-term. Ah well, you only live once!

Speaking of which, I’ve been on a tear while at home today. I launched a new song for the Shizz to the Future project, bid on a couple of eBay auctions (both of which I won), tracked out the drums for one of the Starrysea songs I spoke of last time, unsubscribed from a couple of e-mail newsletters I never read, added some more widgets to this page, and am hoping to get an Older Tunes page going before I crash out tonight.

While on fire at home, work was slower than a snail in molasses and it led me to wonder if my time wouldn’t be better suited elsewhere.  I’m starting my seventh year at the job and I can’t remember a time when it was slower.  It’s funny, because when I started there, I had to hit the ground running and was constantly bombarded with work.  Ah well, the natural progression of a government compensation program, I suppose.

Still, it makes me want to redouble my efforts to create passive income streams, so I’m not so reliant on my job for income.  I have a reasonable one started through dividend income, but it’s not nearly enough to sustain myself and it will take me years to get where I want to go if I stay on my current path.

I guess what has lit a fire under me is that Steve Pavlina has started another series of articles that really resonate with me on building passive income. It was his articles that got me interested in blogging two and a half years ago, and he’s been a stellar source of information and inspiration over that time.

Instead of just heeding his advice and letting things sputter out, I’m following his suggestions to the letter. While this will likely result in better results, I actually have a rather large goal in mind once I’m able to meet my passive income goals. I’ll let that plan slip in due time, but the point is that when I tried this before, I had no real endgame in mind, outside of not doing the 9-5 thing in an office. There wasn’t a negative result to not putting forth extra effort.

Now, I have an endgame in mind and the longer I take to set up passive income streams, the longer it takes me to get where I really want to go. I have plans on how I can make this happen, so it’s time to get to work. I’ve been pretty hard-nosed about sticking to schedules and getting things done in my younger years, but now I know to work smarter and can get more done in a shorter amount of time.

Speaking of which, I better get back to it!

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Of eBay and Starrysea

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Jason Vincion

Yesterday’s weight: 219.8 lbs
Today’s weight: 218.0 lbs

Saturday’s day of revelry was very enjoyable, but I definitely ate too much and drank too much beer. Thankfully, I curbed my intake yesterday and got some good box moving going on. I didn’t do any yard work, but I plan to attack the yard in a blitzkrieg on Saturday, as there are supposed to be a few days of clear weather leading up to the weekend.

Yesterday also marked the beginning of my new eBay adventures, as I picked up a Nintendo DS game for about half of its going price (complete in box).  I want to start selling some of my stuff on eBay, but I’ve read it’s good to build up at least 10 positive responses before doing so.  As I paid for the auctioned item about five minutes after I won it, that should start my ascent towards my not-so-lofty goal.

While yesterday’s cleaning didn’t lead to getting my recording setup back online, I did find a couple of recorded (and stretched) acoustic guitar pieces that I’ll be able to turn into Starrysea songs without too much difficulty.  After I get these two songs written and recorded, I think I’ll try my hand at a four-song EP and see how that goes.  If it goes well, I may even start the first Starrysea LP (my 11th album overall).  Here’s to the future!

Posted in eBay, Starrysea, Status Update | 2 Comments