There are a lot of new visitors here over the last week, and almost all of you are here for the Hugo Awards gaming/Sad Puppies articles. And that’s great – welcome!

But I am a musician, after all, so how about a welcome present. First: all pay things on Bandcamp are 25% off with this checkout code:

     happybird2015

That includes all music, and both Free Court of Seattle novels in paperback, which I can stock and sell via arrangement with the author.

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I posted a zillion more photos from Emerald City Comicon over here, on my Flickr account. I’m going to put a preview of a pose with the only Asami who made it to the Avatar/Korra Meetup on Saturday (nice costume I have to say); the complete set is like half Korra and half other-costumes, so it’s not all my particular fandom. ^_^

Earth Kingdom Korra (from the “Korra, Alone” arc), with Asami

I had a really good time at the one day I got to go to Emerald City Comicon this year, for a lot of reasons, but in no small part because I was going as Earth Kingdom Korra, which is a fourth-year two-episode costume associated with the “Korra Alone” mini-arc where she’s going around in Earth Kingdom clothing, which meant I got to be involved in this awesomesauce moment at the Korra/Avatar Fandom Meetup:

Poor, Poor Mako
(Photo by vandroid-helsing on Tumblr)

I’ve missed public cosplay. I really have. XD

And! Next weekend is nwcMUSIC 2015 at Norwescon 38, and we will have livestreaming of the nwcMUSIC concerts again! That URL is:

http://FanSupported.tv

So be ready for that if you can’t come to the show in person.

AND! I’ll be playing! nwcMUSIC! again! for the first time since the first one, with Leannan Sidhe, on Friday night at 8pm. Show up in person or! watch at home. That’s an exclusive-or, please. Don’t show up and watch the livestream, at least not at the same time. Not even on headphones. I mean, honestly, there’s introversion, and then there’s just weird.

Anyway, more pictures maybe later today, or certainly by tomorrow. Depends upon how late rehearsal goes.

I just repaired a 20-year-old landline phone with 40-year-old components. Why? Because I can, and because my late parrot Zoe (YES SHE IS AN EX-PARROT YOU CAN STOP NOW) is still on the outgoing message recording.

I regret nothing.

George normally ignores my music – he’s not fond of drums and will leave if I start to play those, but everything else just kind of washes off.

Or that’s been the case until now. I started fiddling with the animoog using voices I’d chosen for the Leannan Sidhe show, and he hopped right up and came over to do this:

George Loves Moog

I’m wondering what it sounds like to him. Birds? Some other small animal? Whatever it is, he knows it’s in there and wants it.

Anna had this video by Vi Hart dropped in as a comment on one of her Facebook posts, and it’s really cool. It’s called What is up with Noises? (The Science and Mathematics of Sound, Frequency, and Pitch) and she’s talking about brains and harmonics and how sound is processed.

When she gets to the harmonics part and brain fill-ins, she’s talking about things which I figured out only last year, and started using with the bass parts on Bone Walker, so that you could hear them on things like laptop speakers.

Or, more accurately, think you’re hearing them.

(Things like this are why I need to remix Dick Tracy Must Die.)

Hey, know how Anna and I are on the Seattle Geekly podcast this week? Well, here’s a followup; Dark Side of the Glass went live with their interview with me today. Actually they did it yesterday, but close enough. It’s a media explosion! Or possibly only a media perturbation, but category spicy.

Dark Side of the Glass are the same people running that Faerie Blood and Bone Walker giveaway. This coming week is the end of the entry period, so go get your entry in now – the odds of winning are pretty good at the moment, so it’s worth your while.

Do the thing!

Dark Side of the Glass’s Faerie Blood and Bone Walker giveaway is continuing, with entries still open until the 8th of March. All you have to do is post in comments why you want copies and you’ve got a shot at it, so go do the thing!

They’ve actually added a second-place prize, too – ePub versions of the books. Right now if you enter you’d have a really high shot of winning, so, yeah, go do that!

Hey look, Dark Side of the Glass is giving away copies of Anna’s books and Bone Walker the album, and entering is really trivial! They’ve checked with me and Anna and we’ve given them the go-ahead and it’s on the up and up, so go for it.

Also share the link around even if you don’t want to enter, because hey, book and CD giveaway, eh?

Also, check out this Waterphone demo. They’re all hand-made and so awfully expensive, but very, very cool:

Teenage Engineering have produced a lot of really clever and nicely engineered synth devices over the last few years, so check out this pocket-sized sequencer they’re just releasing. (Klopfenpop found it, so h/t to him.) There are actually three models – a drum sequencer, a bass synth sequencer, and a melody unit, and they’re seriously like $60 each.

sixty dollars

Plus they look kind of awesome and adorable. They have passthrough so you can sync them so they’re actually useful together. I’m not convinced of the apparently-limited tempo settings so that’s a minus, but watch the video, this guy is making pretty awesome sounds just by button mashing.

button mashing makes legitimacy now

The only thing that would be better is if they came in kit form. These are begging for kit form. I would be even more all over that if they did.