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Blog – December 2011 Posted: 2011-December-31 NP: Daimashikyou Galious NSF The end of the year is here and what do I have to show for it? Not much! Okay, maybe I do. After the two albums I did this year flopped, I started setting more plans in motion for my future. Music didn’t really get resolved until earlier this month with the Planetary Formations project (which will be split into originals and VG covers instead of co-mingling them), but I’ve been in slow burn mode with a lot of my other interests this year. Without getting into too much detail, I see 2012 as the year that I really start clearing out the excess from my life and start focusing more on the things I appreciate. 2011 was a year of setbacks, reconfigurations, and new realizations on how I want to live the rest of my life (or at least the next year). Unfortunately, 2012 will be the year that I lose my little cat Bootsie. She’s going to make it through the rest of this year, but she’s wobbling around and is basically a fur-covered skeleton. She doesn’t appear to be in pain, but I have a feeling I’ll wake up one morning and she’ll just be gone. The thyroid medicine has returned it to normal levels, but she’s been fighting a cold since about two days after she started on the medication and she just isn’t eating enough. I was fortunate enough to get some cute pictures of her earlier this evening laying in her kitty bed (which was recently acquired because she can’t get on the couch any more), and she’s had over six and a half years of life at this house that she likely wouldn’t have had otherwise (her previous owner had to move and was going to put her to sleep). I’m glad that she’s had the extra time, but it’s going to be hard to see her go. It was absolutely brutal when Mouse had to be put to sleep, but I can’t imagine her passing will be much easier to deal with. At least I’ve still got Barclay, and at only two and a half, he should be around to fill my life with joy for quite some time. In any event, I wish everyone a Happy New Year! Despite all the doomsayers, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing well beyond 2012 and there should be some interesting developments in outer space (not related to planetary alignment that won’t be happening) over the next few years. Back on Monday with a blog from the new year! Posted: 2011-December-28 NP: Jesus – Kyoufu no Bio Monster NSF If I start veering off into completely illogical ramblings, I apologize in advance. My body has had some adverse reactions to food I’ve eaten and drinks I’ve consumed over the past couple of days. Sleep was impossible to achieve Monday night and difficult last night. I should be good tonight, but I haven’t tried to go to sleep yet. When in doubt, drinking large quantities of water seems to help, but getting out of bed with my hip lighting up every time I do so is no fun. Compound all of this with the fact that my cat Bootsie is probably on her last legs and it hasn’t been the best end to a year. She contracted hyperthyroidism earlier this year and she’s been on oral medicine for it for a month, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. The little girl’s a rack of bones – when I got her in April of 2005, she was 14.5 pounds. When she was weighed at her last vet visit a couple of weeks ago, she was 4.5 pounds. After what happened with Mouse, I’m prepared for the worst, but it will still be difficult when the time comes. On a positive note, my music project seems to be taking better shape. What I figure I’ll do is that I’ll have each original song named something similar to what an non-specialized extrasolar planet would be (like HD 69830 b), and each song will be a corresponding letter – a will be the first, b will be the second, and so on. Any VG covers I do will be named like asteroid belts (Edgeworth-Kuiper belt) except the name will be the game and the corresponding track name in the game. Come the end of the year, I’ll release all of that year’s songs together in a collection on Concatenation and put up a corresponding map (with planets and belts) as an image for the collection. I’m well aware the idea is overly convoluted, but I am compelled to do it for some strange reason. I hope I stick with it for at least a year to see how it turns out. I’ve been trending towards wanting to make some seriously dense tunes, so it should turn out how I envision it will. I figure that I’ll still release the songs here on the site throughout the year as I create them, and then people can grab the whole collection at the end of the year if they are so inclined. We’ll see how things transpire. I’ll be back Saturday with the last blog of the year! Posted: 2011-December-26 NP: Space Harrier NSF So, a three-day weekend sits in my wake, and what do I have to show for it? I finally beat Mass Effect (and started a 2nd playthrough), got some good loot for Christmas, got a chance to see my extended family and catch up with them (my 2nd cousin is doing much better), went to a Christmas gaming party on Friday night and got a chance to catch up with some old friends, and I’ve spent the majority of today making planets out of fractals for a new musical project. It’s been a good past five days and I’m hoping that this four-day week will be a mellow one, especially as we will be short-staffed. Speaking of planetary fractals, I’ve been able to make 24 today, which is above and beyond what I needed to do, as I’m setting the project up like the old Philistine on the Sidewalk project and only need one per song. Seeing as I have no songs done, I’m getting ahead of myself. One of the good things about having so many done is that I can combine them together to make even more realistic looking planets. A lot of the fractal planets are rather line-oriented, so they look a little strange by themselves. However, when they are combined together multiple times, they start to look like the extrasolar planets you see in Celestia (which is an awesome freeware program if you have any interest in the universe). As for the songs, right now I’ve got them figured as a combination between Blotted Science, Crowbar, Meshuggah, My Bloody Valentine, Philistine on the Sidewalk, Zombi, and VG tunes. Dense, atmospheric, and heavily rhythmic. Sounds good. I may go with a project name and add it to the new project I’m planning, as it will be space-themed as well. Time will tell. I don’t know – I’ve spent too much of the weekend recharging (playing Mass Effect) and my head is full of ideas and plans and I’m busy trying to decipher them all and figure out what makes sense, what’s worth continuing on with, and what’s worth dropping altogether. I need more time to figure it all out. Hopefully, I’ll be a little more centered and less all-over-the-place on Wednesday. Posted: 2011-December-21 NP: Lagrange Point NSF I suppose I don’t have to post a blog tonight because I just put a new song up, but I feel compelled to, as the last few days have been pretty wild. Monday night was definitely the wildest, as I finally got together with my friend Brando for a night of revelry at my favorite local locale – The Jolly Roger Taproom. His wife Heidi came with him and the three of us enjoyed a meal and some conversation, and they were generous enough to get me a bottle of 10 year Macallan for my birthday. The 12 year Macallan is my current favorite, so I’m sure it will be quite enjoyable once I crack it open! Unfortunately, Heidi had to leave early because of a migraine, so Brando and I stayed and continued to imbibe that delicious Jolly Roger Christmas Ale. He was attending the Pagliacci Christmas party later that night, so his friend and fellow Pagliacci employee Steve (who I first met when he came with Brando and Heidi to a Mariners game I had some free tickets for last year) showed up to give him a ride. We all hung out a little bit longer, and then I was fortunate enough to get a ride home too, so thanks again to Steve! The next morning was fun – I think my consumption of 88oz of Jolly Roger was still afflicting me when I woke up that morning in my pajamas with the light on and static on the alarm. I managed to do my morning walk, but I took a nap after I got back. Thankfully, I was able to get myself together enough to get to work, but I wasn’t fully functional until a couple hours after I was there. What a night! I was somehow functional after I got home from work Tuesday night, which allowed me to put the finishing touches on “The Farthest Reaches”. I was happy to get my monthly song done, and already plotting what my next track would be. I didn’t fully decide on that until today, but I did get some ideas for some more future tracks. Today was a little more normal, except for going out to lunch with my manager and all of my fellow contractors to Jade Garden down in Chinatown/International District and enjoying lots of dim sum... and then some. The food was great and we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit, so all in all it was a successful luncheon. I was afraid that I ate too much, but I was still able to function at work after we got back. After work, I did a bit of Christmas shopping and here I am, blogging away and uploading the new song to YouTube. I’ll be back on Saturday to report on some more shenanigans and talk about my machinations for the next song I’m going to do (a cover of “Pulp” by Godflesh). Until then! Posted: 2011-December-19 NP: Shatterhand NSF I may not have the opportunity to do this tonight, as I have indefinite plans with a friend of mine to visit the Jolly Roger Taproom and enjoy some delicious Maritime Pacific brews & food after work. So, I shall blog this morning as I have a bit of time. Not a lot has happened since the last post – I did get pretty far in working on that track from Solar Jetman yesterday, but it still needs a smidgeon of work that I can likely take care of tomorrow. It’s pretty mellow with a lot of atmospherics and a kick & sub combo that powerfully cuts through the mix. I stayed mostly true to the source material, but I tried to make the very subtle changes in the original a little more pronounced. Here’s hoping to a Wednesday release! I don’t know what else is going on. Christmas is on Sunday, which is always an enjoyable opportunity to get blotto on pre-spiked eggnog, but it’s also a three-day weekend, which will afford me the opportunity to have more time to make progress on one of my many projects. I just have to figure out which one. It’s also the first of three three-day weekends over the next month, which is a nice break to have. I’ve all but given up on taking any extra time off, because the workload is heavy and the only backup I do have available (my manager) is swamped with lots of other stuff concerning the other three offices he helps to manage. At least all of the hours I will accrue in my vacation reserves (over 80) will be cashed out in the first paycheck of December next year. I only had a few over 80 this year, but I should have a lot over 80 next year and that’ll be a nice bonus to toss into my investments. Anyway, I should get this posted before I have to get to the office, so I’m out for now and will be back Wednesday – hopefully with a new song too. Posted: 2011-December-17 NP: AbadoX NSF I’m gonna keep it short because I want to hop on the 360 and get my game on. There will be no new music project like I spoke of last time, but I will incorporate those ideas into my current work under my own name. I remembered that when I do projects, I tend to refine my sound too much and I want to have the freedom to do whatever style I choose whenever I choose to do so. So, that third project I mentioned last time will not involve my musical works, but I still plan on doing it in a smaller capacity. If it takes off, then I’ll think about expanding it. The one project of those three I talked about last time that’s really going to see some work put into it next year is Concatenation Records. In addition to the new project, I have a lot of old material just floating in the ether from 2007 (the last of the VRC releases) until now, and it needs a proper home. I can think of three releases off the top of my head: all of the Philistine on the Sidewalk material (including the three remixes which never saw the light of day), the monthly songs on this site from June 2010 to March 2011, and a collection of the VG remixes I’ve done under various projects from 2007 until now (and there are more than a few). I’ll likely remaster all the songs to the current way I master tunes and then release the projects for free with people having the options of donating to yours truly. Speaking of money, I think I’m going to toss a few ads up on this site in various places to see if I can’t gather a little bit of extra coinage. The pages getting the most traffic appear to be this blog and the Xbox 360 Achievements page. I’m thinking one unobtrusive banner ad at the header and one at the footer – visible, but not obnoxious. I’m not doing it tonight, because I want to play some games. As for that Solar Jetman cover I talked about last Saturday, it is in progress. I didn’t have time to finish it up last weekend, so I’m hoping to get it knocked out tomorrow as I have the whole day at my disposal. What I have so far sounds pretty nice, so I just need to add some extra texture to make it more dynamic. I’ll be back Monday with a new blog, some ads, and hopefully a new song! Posted: 2011-December-14 NP: Crisis Force NSF In my free time over the last couple of days, I’ve been scouring Wikipedia for information on astrophysics, cosmology, and the potential fates of the universe. It’s been extremely fascinating reading, and it’s also given me ideas for a very specific musical project that I’ve been attempting to plot out for the past month or so. I’d divulge some details about it, but I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag before doing anything for it. Suffice it to say, I will be embarking on a new project in the near future, and it will be one of three that I plan to partake in throughout 2012. One is the downsizing of my possessions, one is a collaborative effort with my fellow Shizzies to grow the MAGFund and make Concatenation Records more relevant than it has been in 2011, and the third is the project I just mentioned, which will also include my musical efforts (as will the Concatenation project). I don’t have all the details fleshed out yet, but I’ll get them figured out as the days pass. I guess I need something new and big to work on, as all of the facets of my financial goals have been figured out. I’ve already plotted my plan to retire a little earlier than the average bear and all it requires from my end is about an hour a week to track things (and keep saving and investing, of course). However, that goal is still quite a ways off and something that keeps going through my head is a line from the Smashing Pumpkins song “Siva”: “tell me, tell me what you’re after – I just want to get there faster.” Until next time. Posted: 2011-December-12 NP: Xexyz NSF Well, somehow I managed to survive the debauchery of my 32nd birthday, though I did require a bit of napping on Sunday. Drinking the equivalent of a half case of fairly potent microbrew in a day left me a little bit off on Sunday morning, but after catching a 90 minute nap, I was right as rain and ready for some more brews that night. So, here I sit at 32, trying to find some inspiration to dive into something headfirst. I do keep coming up with methods to push my music forward in a more progressive way, but I’m finding it difficult to actually sit down and get anything done. It could be that I don’t have a lot of time in the evenings to get things done, or it could be that I’m kinda burnt and am cool with just blogging every few nights, playing some games, and keeping the Xbox 360 Achievements list updated. I’m still getting ideas for original songs and video game covers, but the disconnect is coming in the actual execution of said ideas. I’m half-tempted to jettison a good majority of my schedule, do my downsizing on the weekdays and focus on music on the weekends, but I’m not quite sure where I’d fit in the gaming. I suppose on weekend nights when I’ve put in a good amount of work on my music, but I don’t know. It’s as if I need a new project that is wholly unrelated to anything I’ve delved into before. The thing is, I need to find something new to get interested in, as I’ve gone pretty far with all of my current interests and now it’s down to further honing and specializing them. Something new to get enthused about would be great to find, but it may be rather difficult as well. I have had a renewed interest in extrasolar planets since the discovery of Kepler-22b (a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet) last Monday, but my knowledge of astronomy is limited to a community college course I took over 10 years ago and whatever Wikipedia and other space-related sites serve up. However, that probably makes me more than qualified to write science fiction. As I sit here listening to music from a futuristic space-related game, have my space-related DVDs right next to me, am currently in the middle of a campaign of Mass Effect, and just picked up a space shooter game for the SNES (Axelay), I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me sooner. I’m not getting an epiphany from this revelation, but it does seem to make sense. Guess I’ve got some plotting and planning to do. Until next time! Posted: 2011-December-10 NP: Axelay SPCs It occurs that I’m going to have to write this blog this morning, because I’m going to be engaged in activities for the rest of the day. I’ve already engaged in some activities, as I tried to go out and see the lunar eclipse this morning, but the cloud cover was just too thick. I was disappointed, but at least I got my morning walk out of it and was able to check the eclipse out on a stream from an observatory in Tokyo. Gotta love technology sometimes. So! Today, I am two to the fifth power in age, or more commonly referred to as 32 years old. I’m pretty ambivalent about the situation, as I read through the blog I did after I turned 31 and am still laughing at how hard I failed in all of my creative ambitions at that age. Both of my albums flopped, my old blog dwindled to nothing, Concatenation sales dropped to a trickle, and my creative output dropped off dramatically. Good times. I’ve already decided that 32 will be a lackluster year, though I do still have some ambitions. I’m going to go back to my one song a month plan, but each song will go up at some point in the month rather than strictly on the first day of the month. I also want to get back into writing music more now that I’ve discovered The Circle of 12 Tones and plan to dedicate a majority of my Sundays (pending no other plans) to writing and recording music. In a related subject, I may get back to my noisemaking roots and try to put together some percussion instruments with all the miscellaneous noisemakers I have stored away. There’s been an underlying urge to start building things, so why not start with noisemakers? I’m always looking for new tones to add to my sound and it’d be a learning experience that could lead to building something a little more conventional in the future. I’m also going to catch up on my gaming, because I have a huge backlog of games that I haven’t even touched and I would like to rectify that quite a bit by the time I hit 33. I’ve already been catching up on my reading on the bus since my laptop crapped out on me a month and a half ago, and I need to continue cleaning up my backlog of books. I’ve read three so far, but I’ve got 30+ to go and there are a couple others that I want to pick up, which will only add to the list. Another goal is to work on downsizing the amount of things I have. Some will be sold, some will be donated, some will be recycled, maybe some will be freecycled – I’m just going to do my best not to throw too much stuff away. Most of the accumulation ended a couple years back, so it’s time to dig through the fallout and give myself a little more square footage to enjoy. Finally, I’m going to focus more on permaculture. I was pretty happy with how the garden turned out last year, but I want to kick things into a higher gear this year. I’m going to do my best to employ ways to optimize the harvest, as well as build structures that will help facilitate a better harvest. It may cost a little bit up front to get the materials, but it could save a lot of money in the long run. Speaking of money, that’s one area that I didn’t fail miserably in my 31st year – I saved what I could, I tightened up my belt, and optimized my portfolio akin to Harry Browne’s Permanent Portfolio. So far, so good! I still refuse to go with a fund for the Stocks portion of the portfolio, as the dividend is too poor to take seriously. I’m sure things will get modified as I go along this year, but I’m confident my positive results so far will continue. Alright, enough jibber jabber. Time to party! Posted: 2011-December-07 NP: Solar Jetman NSF I wasn’t able to update the site on Monday for two reasons: I was putting the finishing touches on the Nevar Say Die 5 release (even though I forgot one of the songs) and I visited my 2nd cousin in the hospital. While the compilation is all said and done (save for posting song lyrics), my 2nd cousin’s plight is still weighing on me. He was attacked outside of a nightclub and took a headshot to the pavement. He was also kicked in the head after he was on the ground. He has skull fractures in two places and had some slight bleeding on the brain. He was rushed to our best hospital in the area and is expected to recover fully, though the process will be long before he is able to do so. He recognizes his family and knows what day of the week it is, but he’s having a bit of trouble communicating and may require some speech therapy before he’s completely out of the woods. It’s tough for me because he’s only 20 years old and I’ve spent time with him at family functions since he was a baby. To see someone in my family in such a way due to a senseless act of violence (his assailants were drunk and belligerent) is tremendously disheartening. I’m thankful he wasn’t hurt worse or killed, because his assailants were reported to be carrying firearms. I’ve still got so many thoughts and questions about this whole situation that it’s going to take me a while to sort everything out. I think it might help me to process through things if I try to knock out a song this weekend, so I’m going to cover track 28 from the NSF I’m currently listening to. It’s a song I’ve been wanting to do for a few months and there’s no time like the present. After all the chaos that has been going on in my life over the last month with the office, NSD5, and my 2nd cousin, it’ll be nice to just sit down and create (well, cover) something peaceful with no obligations attached to it. I’ve got more to say, but I’m tired and it can be talked about at a later date. So here I am, signing off as a 31-year old, and I’ll be signing back on as a 32-year old on my birthday (which is Saturday). All said, 31 was a weird year with some positives and negatives that I will also touch on at a later date. Good night! Posted: 2011-December-03 NP: Dark Lord NSF Woo, busy day! I spent a lot longer than I had planned to cleaning things up in my living space, but the end result has things looking nicer, so no worries. I got some more leaves raked for compost, got my finances squared away, and mastered what was left of the NSD5 tracks. I have a working tracklist that I need to listen to a couple more times to be sure of it, but I can knock that out in the morning before I head to the Jolly Roger Taproom to claim a free beer that was offered at the end of last weekend’s visit. Huzzah! So, here I am with a big fuzzy kitty passed out next to me, ready to close out my Saturday with a blog and site update. Thankfully, the server for the Xbox 360 Achievement Cards is functioning, so I got that updated without any problem. There was only one person that moved, which made it an easy enough update. I’ll keep adding to The Populous Project, but I seem to have become thoroughly stuck on World 73. I’m close to coming up with a winning strategy, but I need to really put some effort into it to come through victorious. It’s nice that I can finally get my mind back on the work I want to do instead of the work I’m paid to do, as Thursday and Friday were relatively pedestrian days. Monday brings a day of training on new software, which should trigger my non-diagnosed narcolepsy on more than a few occasions. Speaking of work, I made some time on Friday during my lunch break to work on a 12 tone circle for a funeral doom song. It’s got lots of sixths, minor seconds, and minor thirds. It should be sufficiently doomy and dissonant. Well, I’m gonna get The Populous Project updated and call it a night. One of the pitfalls of getting up at 5:30 AM on a weekend is desiring to go to bed before 10:00 PM, and I’ll need to because I’m gonna get up early tomorrow too. I got off my routine of waking up early on the weekends and I was getting less done. I was a lot more productive today than I planned to be, so maybe it’s not a personality shift at all – just a matter of what time I get up. Until Monday! |
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