8/26/08

Ok, looks like I haven't been here in a while. *blows dust off of homepage*. Three months is a pretty long time, if your a gnat, but us humans can take it all in stride (look like I haven't lost my sarcastic edge :-), but I digress.

Geez where to start hmmmm...Hey how about those Olympics? Michael Phelps on the box of frosted flakes and everybody's bitching because he should have been on a more healthier type cereal like shredded wheat. Ever have shredded wheat? Don't 'cause it tastes like shredded cardboard. Anyway big congrats to him, 8 gold medals, good for him and I don't give a shit if he's on the cover of Count Chocula the dude kicked major ass. Nice kid too. No ego, no attitude. He's all about the sport, competition and fun of swimming. And to think that French dude was talking trash to him before the race..."how you doin?!"

Interesting correlation I picked up on as far as track and field. The farther the distance the runner has to run the more humility he has. Think on it. Mr Bolt while giving a spine tingling performance in the 100, man he just pulled away and even broke form at the end. While he was quite short on the time was quite long on the narcissism. Kinda disappointing. While the Gold Medal Kenyan marathoner was so humble and seemed very proud and appreciative. It seems the more you suffer the more modest you become. Also the US Gold Medal winner in the Decathalon seems like such a nice guy, Brian Clay I believe his name was. Again a 2 day grueling event and he totally kicked ass. Good for him.

The gymastics was indeed also fun to watch. I tell you the most intense thing was watching the men's rings competition. How in the hell do they make themselves stay in those seemingly impossible positions. Talk about strength. The girls to were cool to watch as well (easy there keep your mind out of the gutter). And I gotta tell you those Chinese girls were way below 16, no doubt about it. They were like 12 a the most. I thought Nastia Lukien (sp?) was spectacular. To be honest I think she got ripped off on the beam competition. She shoulda got gold.

Also the women's beach volleyball (again...how you doin?). They're in their 20's-30's so gawking can be done with no guilt or creepiness. The gold medal match against China was amazing.

This was the first time in a long time that I actually made it a point to try to tune in to the games and it was well worth it.

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The Holdsworth show that took place in May was as usual awesome. The lineup was Allan, Chad Wackerman and Ernest Tibbs. Great bunch of guys playing other worldly music.

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The Jeff Beck tribute is going to be available on 10/10/08. I heard a bunch of tracks off of it and it sounds great. Oh and Sony picked it up so availablility should be even better! We just finished our track on the Jimi Hendrix Tribute that should be dropping this year. We did "Fire" and it turned out very nice...very heavy :-). I used a talk box on it a la Peter Frampton. I had never used one before and it was a major pain in the ass. The premise is cool though. Basically you plug your guitar into the "box" and then you take the plastic tube (1/2" in diameter) and stick it in yer yapper. Then basically your mouth becomes the amplifier so you're obviously miked. So you then play the guitar while mouthing the words you want to say. Really strange, and takes a lot of practice, at least for me. Our next adventure is the Eric Clapton Tribute. We picked our tune and we're working on the arrangement now. Sounds pretty cool so far. Oh and we're going to be on TV come September, local cable show. If there are any details I'll follow up.

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The studio is pretty much completed. Yay! What an absolute shit ton of work, but worth it...I hope. So where I left off was that I put up the new wall and put up some 1x6 knotty pine on two of the walls. Well since then I managed to put down a new floor (engineered laminate), I made 14 2'x4' broadband acoustic panels which are hung in the two back corners and liberally on the walls. Painted the ceiling and the other two walls. Made and installed the hatch door to the room under the stairs (which is where all my guitars are now. Put in a new 3' entry door, and trimmed all the windows and doors.  Put together the new audio desk (Omnirax Force 12) and popped in some rack gear (still need to do a bit more wiring though). Everything is pretty much up and running and I'm actually tracking now. I'm running Samplitude and BFD2 for now. I'm hoping to get a couple of soft synths and a new controller in the near future.

That's all I got.