Almost done with the restoration work, and then a trainwreck happened. I put details over on my LJ, since I don’t really think vintage kitchen restoration is really band material. Anyway, there’s a lot of money, some more work, and I cut my left hand in a pretty ouchy way, but I’ll be okay.

But goddamn I’m angry about some of that.

This week tho’ – it’s mostly more money on other stuff than more work, so in a day or two I should be playing again and I can get those Lukey zouk re-records done. Anna is deep into the Rebels of Adalonia third book right now, so can’t do readings this week after all.

Things just take. so. many. little. times. away. from. each. other. Crazymaking.

Oh, we also just gained a bonus track. It’s actually already ready, as are many things. We’re 95% done – that just leaves the last 95% to go…

Swamped with day job work; I mentioned some of that here. But I did find time to go see and write up an analysis of Maleficent, and lament how it should’ve been great, but wasn’t, quite. Near-misses are so painful sometimes, and this is one of those times. I lament the film it should’ve been.

I can’t be done with this kitchen restoration soon enough, I gotta tell you. I’ll be at it all day again today, then tomorrow hopefully recording some vocals with Leannan Sidhe. Until then, have some flowers.

Can’t Bee Done With … ar ar ar ar ar

Blue and White and Edges So Sharp

eta: I put some kitchen pictures in comments.

This is not domestic bliss, this is kitchen restoration:

This is what I’m doing when not rehearsing for shows

I posted some details over on my old LJ blog, which I still maintain for stuff I don’t think people here will generally care about. But it’s been eating my life the last … five weeks and counting, so here you go.

I crossposted to Tumblr, too, but the LJ post has a followup pic in comments and bigger pictures.

Packing up to head east to the Dry Side! See you in Richland, excuse me, Greenwood, maybe?

I know I haven’t been posting much, it’s because of all the rental cleanup/repair/restoration insanity I’ve been dealing with over the last week and a half. It’s not done, either; as soon as I get back, it’ll be time to sand cabinets. Yay.

This floor, we were going to have abated but we’re going to cover it with a new subfloor instead. It’s lower than the other floors in the apartment anyway. Why? Who even knows.

When we put down the new subfloor I’m going to leave a note saying DO NOT PULL THIS UP WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO IT IS NOT WORTH IT and then underneath the subfloor I will leave a note saying YOU PULLED IT UP! YOU PULLED IT UP, YOU GOD DAMNED MANIACS, YOU PULLED IT UP! possibly with an asbestos warning and possibly just with a photo of Charlton Heston.

Next week I can get back to the album. Sometime. I’m not exactly sure when. But next week. We may have slipped to end of July, but goddammit, this thing is coming out this summer!

eta: I did the thing.

It sounds crazy to think that only now have I pulled the last orange sheet out of The Big Book, but I have. It’s for John Barbour. Two instruments, plus voices. It’s the joker in the album – spare, sparse, slow.

Not words you typically expect out of me, but that’s what it wants. I suppose “sparse” is by my standards, but still. Untimed / free tempo, but again, slow – it’s about six minutes long. And I want it to sound as unprocessed as possible – tho’ of course I’ll use all sorts of plug-ins and massaging to make that happen, like one always does. XD

I didn’t have time to post anything yesterday, so here, have the flower I would’ve posted had I made time. These lillies are right by our front stairs, tho’ originally they were from a neighbour house being torn down, and I saved them. They bloomed late this year, but almost overnight went from nothing to some of the largest and prettiest they’ve ever been. Enjoy.

Lillies

We’re in the comment period for the new FCC regulations which destroy Internet network neutrality. This may seem like an esoteric issue to you, but it’s not. It’s a core infrastructure question: whether you have to pay more to actually get your network traffic delivered. If you’re completely unfamiliar, here’s John Oliver talking about it in a funny but accurate way.

Gizmodo has step-by-step instructions on how to use the FCC’s comment form. I’ve filed my comment/complate; go file yours, even if it’s really short. There’s enough money on both sides of this that we have that little window of opportunity where public commentary can just maybe matter.

Is that cynical? No, it’s realistic. Take advantage of these opportunities when they appear. And go file that comment.

Many Small Flowers

I keep thinking – no, being sure – I have things to say about the latest misogynist murder spree, but I don’t, quite, yet. I’m still thinking I will. Sure, I could rant, but everybody’s doing that – so what’s the point? I think I will have one. But not yet.

Until then, you can have some pretty flowers, listen to the latest workprint from Bone Walker, and I can get ready for rehearsal.

Today’s flower picture is a semi-wild bit of shrubbery that’s on a property line between a house and a commercial property. No idea what it is, but it’s pretty now that it’s flowering. I’m kind of pleased with myself for getting a picture, given my terror of the bees which were all over the flowers.

Bunches and Bunches

Worked out a second, higher bassline for “Song for a Free Court/Anarchy Now” last night. Didn’t record it, tho’ – I’ll need another day or two of practicing it. It’s entirely up the neck, which isn’t something I’ve done a lot of on bass. DOUBLE BASSLINES: absolutely critical to commercial success! Or, more likely, something completely unlike that.

Is my art degree showing? I bet my art degree is showing.

I have triumphed over the Open Sources and have made the nvidia GT520 driver work. I am now running a new kernel along the way, but hey. I also discovered bugs in Xorg -configure, as well as the nvidia configuration tool, and it only took 11 hours.

I can also now build the latest 3.2 Linux core, but that’s just kind of a side effect.

And this is for the official nvidia driver. Don’t believe me? Here are the instructions on how to install it, from nvidia themselves.

Madness

They do tell you that you have to have a full development environment and sources and headers for your kernel. They don’t tell you their driver doesn’t work with the realtime kernel and will fail without error. (Or panic your machine – one of those, depending.)

So will the open-source drivers, by the way. That’s fun.

Honestly, figuring that “this will always fail silently forever except when crashing your machine despite what the build instructions say” part out was the biggest hurdle. There’s a patch you can apply for the 3.4 downstream realtime kernel, but that’s even more out of phase with the rest of Ubuntu 12.04LTS than my previous custom realtime kernel was, so, yeah, no.

RANDR still fails so the GUI for monitor preferences still crashes if you try to run it, but I don’t use that anyway and I think that’s because I’m running Xinema mode – it was true for my previous card setup to. Both monitors started individually run RANDR and the GUI just fine.

“Ready for the desktop” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA sobs

(The Windows install was more a matter of “here’s the driver” “yup that’s a driver” and “no I want this monitor on the right” “okay” and done. DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT TAKES TO GET ME TO SING THE PRAISES OF WINDOWS?! I mean goddamn.)

But it’s all working. Anyone playing Elder Scrolls online?