Show 'Em My Logo!

In case you didn't know, I have my own personal logo. It's on the "who?" page, it's the background on my phone, I use it on most of the forums I read, and one year, it even snuck onto my Simucon badge:



I mentioned towards the end of this post that I had plans for sprucing up my new Les Paul, and tada!



Click that pic (or here) for a close up, yo. The image was originally drawn by the lovely and talented Steph. My shirt, if you cannot read it in the closeup, says, "I'm a rocker. I rock out." A Diesel Sweeties reference and t-shirt.

V. pleased.

In other news, I've been been messing around with Sonar 5 Producer lately, trying to decide whether I've outgrown my current recording software, Acid. I've been using the various incarnations of Acid since 1998, and while it works quite well as a multitracker, it's really geared towards sample/loop-based recording. At the same time, I'm looking into changing how I record drums. When I started using Acid, I already had my Alesis SR-16, which has the capability to store and sequence entire songs' worth of drum patterns, so of course I just hit record on the computer and play on the Alesis and wandered off for a couple of minutes. Later, I started just recording the individual loops for each song, which gave me more flexibility if I needed to change the arrangements. The last couple of songs I've done, though, I've just recorded each individual drum hit as a separate sample, and painted out each hit one by one, like this:

More time-consuming at first, to be sure, but not bad once I got the hang of it, and again, much more flexible. Now, though, I'm checking out Native Instruments' Battery 2, which is basically a software sampler that specializes in drums.

Anyway, the point is that I decided to throw together a relatively easy cover as a learning experience, and chose the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer", a perennial favorite of mine. I have their version, and a few live versions from Pearl Jam, but was wanting to hear the studio version Pearl Jam did as their first Ten Club Christmas single. I probably haven't had a copy in quite some time, unless it's buried on a mix tape somewhere...the only people who I figured were really likely to have it were Jon, who you may recognize as the occasional semi-sentience of liquidfish.net, and Steph, who I haven't talked to in four or five years.

Anyway, the point is, and I mean it this time, that the day I was thinking about Steph and realizing I had no idea where she was these days, she found this site and emailed me out of the blue.

Weird. Eerie.

Currently listening to: "I Don't Care If You Know Karate", San Geronimo

Just In Case There Was Any Doubt...

Baby pandas are basically the cutest things ever.

http://www.pandafix.com/

More Cowbell

Ahh, Christmas. This year was fun. I had no idea whatsoever what I was getting...Denise faked me out a couple of times. Following a drunken conversation at Ruby Tuesday, she had me convinced I was getting driving/racing lessons, which I wasn't really into, but could totally see her getting me. If I lived somewhere that I could really open up the WRX, that'd be different, but St. Charles' finest are many and dedicated. I agonized for a few days over whether it was better to wait and see, or risk hurting her feelings by speaking up, and finally opted to speak up, whereupon she laughed at me. To think I was worried about her feelings...bitch! :D

Last night, my favorite pair of lovely and talented ladies, Sara and Melissa, hosted the traditional "orphan Christmas", a celebration comprised of Simu people who didn't flee for the holidays. The Almighty D cooked all day, ebullient in her preparation of our feast. Whenever I dared to peer into the kitchen, she was all hands and spices and stirring spoons, a virtual whirlwind of culinary efficiency. I imagine it was like watching Pilot cook. Sara's friends Jeff and Michelle made buckeyes, which I haven't had in years and were delicious. Also delicious were the nearly two bottles of wine I had, and I was pretty tipsy by the time we made it home.

Part of the premise of the party was that each person picks out one of their presents and brings it along to open there, with their significant other having no say in their choice. Denise and I kinda cheated and chose each other's present - don't tell anyone. When it came time to open the presents, she opened hers before me, and just started laughing. I had gotten her a medium black Jason Webley t-shirt, and had ordered myself one of the tan ones, XL, at the same time. Since wearing it before she opened her present would tip her off that I'd ordered from him, I just packaged mine in there with hers. So she tells me to hurry up and open mine, and damned if it's not a tan XL Jason Webley t-shirt for me, and a medium black one for her, which she had wrapped up with mine so as not to tip me off. Skeery! The presents did differ slightly: each of our orders had come with an autographed piece of art he had done, and I thought it was cool enough that I pinned it in a shadow box and included it in her gift, while she ordered the two CDs we didn't have for me. Jason Webley for the win!

Being all wined up, we went to bed pretty early (for me, anyway), and woke up this morning, all hungover and shit, but cheerfully got up to open presents. I got an Against Me! t-shirt and half a dozen incredibly soft long-sleeved shirts from Old Navy and the Gap. Say what you will about their quirky/campy/stupid TV ads; for my money, Old Navy makes the most comfortable clothes out there. I also got what looked like a large paper dice with writing on each side. Termed a "holiday decision maker", it grants the bearer - me - the choice of 10 lessons for the banjo, mandolin, violin, or piano, or a $150 music store shopping spree, or two six-week courses on audio engineering and studio recording. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with the latter, and am pretty excited about it. I understand the basics well enough to get by, but there's so much more I don't know, like buses, microphone techniques, mastering, midi sequencing, etc. I have a lot of this information available in books or via the interweb, but there's really no comparison to having someone sit down with you and explain it.

Denise was the recipient of a shiny new drum set, which I had intended to sneak down and put together last night, but my drunken tomfoolery got in the way of that, so we went down and put it together this morning. I hadn't had it together for ten minutes when I heard her down there playing "Pints of Guinness Make You Strong" on it.



You're damn right it has a cowbell.

I also have plans to build her a platform bed, but there was really no way to do that in secret in our house, and I wanted her to have input on the design, so I build a miniature one on the excellent suggestion of my mom, and wrapped that up. Her face was so cute when she opened it!



Here are a couple more pictures from different angles.

Hope you had a good one, too.

Currently listening to: "Daddy Drank Our Xmas Money", TVTV$