International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield and Barenaked Ladies, live on CBCMUSIC three days ago. I AM NOT EVEN JOKING. Click through and hit play. Chris’s parts were actually recorded from space, tho’ time syncing would’ve been done later, of course, as is normal.

THE FUTURE!

Been busy with nwcMUSIC and soundtrack album this week, and today is all Daye Jobbe, so here, have a parrot singing dubstep:

And a genuinely fascinating hour-long German documentary – this version in English – on television under the Nazi regime. Turns out they started regular broadcasts in 1935! To almost no one, mind you, but it’s genuinely fascinating. A lot of filmed footage of television survived, turned out, and it’s just odd:

I am thinking really hard about starting a geekmusic podcast.

In fact, I’m thinking so hard about it that I want to do a pilot episode. The idea would be for it to be released in early March, before Norwescon. I could bring in a few people who are going to be at nwcMUSIC, so it’d serve a dual role – pre-event publicity and pilot episode! – while having a bunch of different people on, to keep it interesting. Then, maybe monthly.

I’ve already made a bumper.

What sorts of things would make you, personally, interested in listening to a geekmusic podcast? Yes, I’m looking for content ideas here, because I’ve never done a podcast before, and while once upon a time I was in radio, I didn’t do that kind of programming – I was a DJ at one station, in sports at another, and sports director at my college station. But no interviews.

(Yes, me being sports director is in fact hilarious. But we had the best women’s basketball coverage in the city, so take that.)

Playing some music? DIY? Interviews? About what, particularly? Other musicians not on the show? Vicious backbiting? History of geekmusic?

What would make you interested in listening?

As most of you know pretty well by now, I run a small geekmusic festival, nwcMUSIC, as part of the Norwescon Science Fiction Convention. We’re two months out now, so WELCOME TO THE GRID:

nwcMUSIC 2013

There are so many things to talk about I don’t know where to start, even. MONSTARRS OF NERDCORE is a two-hour multiband nerdcore extravaganza, featuring Death*Star and Klopfenpop, and possibly a surprise. Yes, that’s Molly Lewis, making her debut at Norwescon on Saturday night, with Vixy & Tony as her backup band. Yes, that’s Hello The Future on Friday. Yes, Alexander James Adams will be doing one of his rare shows this year at our event. Yes, that’s Guest of Honour Catherine Asaro – who is also a musician as well as a writer and a brain surgeon research scientist, doing the Buckaroo Banzai/Hong Kong Cavaliers thing on Friday afternoon; CD Woodbury will be bringing in some of his friends as backup. And yes, that’s 13 hours of workshops and panel programming during the day, all with our determinedly DIY/participatory culture emphasis in mind.

Plus other artists I am so excited about I can’t even tell you. HeyLasFas? Pony Progrock. They released a concept album about the fall of Princess Luna, called Nightfall, and seriously it is amazing…

Now. Where. Were. We?

I’m not going to cover all this in one post, so I’ll talk about more in weeks to come. We have so much going on this year we had to make a hopefully-one-time exception to one of our rules, and overlap programming. And if you know me, you know how much I try to avoid that – but there just wasn’t any other way to fit it all in. Chiptunes, filk, Jpop, nerdcore, ponyrock… did I mention Leannan Sidhe’s CD release concert? Ah well, I’ll get to it next time.

Easter weekend 2013, people. It’s gonna be epic.

I’ve been thinking for a while that Criminal Studios wasn’t quite the right name for the Lair’s recording environment, and that Supervillain Studios might be better. But while a heat ray is pretty damn neat, I haven’t been entirely convinced it’s enough to merit exactly that much better.

But now that I have the Rainmaker, and other villains showing up in the Lair? I think it’s time for an upgrade. Criminality is fine, but Supervillainy? That’s awesome.

I do worry a little bit about the whole name recognition thing (“What happened to Criminal Studios?” “I dunno. Bumped off, I guess.”). But at my scale I think it’s safe not to think too much about that.

More importantly, there’s a videogame company in California called Supervillain Studios. Do I need to care about that?

Maybe Supervillain Sound. That seems to solve it, while still being significantly sibilant. Also, touches on the Puget part of the Salish Sea.

We don’t have a logo, tho’. Should I make a logo?

Hey, back from Conflikt! They were in a new hotel this year, and the social flow of the convention really benefitted from the new room geometry. Thanks to Dave “Salad of Doom” Tinney, I gained like three pounds despite not eating out once, and it is a damned good thing he’s not cooking for me regularly, that’s all I can say.

What kind of convention is it? It’s the kind of convention where I end up doing excerpts from musical theatre at 1am Monday morning, that’s what kind. (I still have glitter stands in my hair, but that’s okay.)

Not that late yet, but pretty damn late
photo jen_kalea

Also the kind where I got to catch up with a bunch of people I don’t see very often, like Allegra and John and Heather and Ben and Shaddyr and all these people I’ve now met a few times at events and really like! but whose names are right now just gone, like Guitar Player With Memory Issues Like Mine, and Not Sue But Reminds Me Of Her from Georgia, and like the solo I was going to play on stage on Sunday morning.

…which was actually kind of funny; I joined an instaband to play a Blind Lemming Chiffon comedy song about Thing from The Addams Family, and his unhappiness about his career. They wanted a zouk solo, which I never do because I’m normally playing out alone, so I stole one of Tom Schultz’s guitar solos from “Peace of Mind,” which is a song about careerism, and the kind of joke only people at conventions like this would get.

Anyway, I’m up there, and the bridge comes around, and I hit the first note…

…and it is gone. The whole solo is out of my brain. BYE! So I go, “uh” and just start improvising in key, in the right rhythm. “Is this it? Nope. Is this it? Nope. Is it comin’ back? … … … Nope! Have I played enough notes yet? … Yes! Outro!” And we’re into verse three.

So that was kind of hilarious, but to the wrong people, namely, us. The audience didn’t know anything was wrong, they even thought it was kinda cool.

But hey, I survived my first on-stage zouk solo. Everybody wins! XD

Anyway, that was fun. And both exhausting and energising, so I’m wiped out, but in that good kind of way. But now, back to work!

Hey kids, I was up until 3am last night working on the Faerie Blood/Bone Walker soundtrack, and this drum track sounds pretty damn cool, but Iiiiiiii’m pretty sleepy. The plan was to sleep in today and then head down to Conflikt, but you know how once in a while you just get one of those

PANG! AWAKE!

mornings? And you’re still tired, but sleep has taken a holiday? Yeah.

Pretty much me

So, enjoy this article about deleting skyscrapers from the top down, and yes, there is video, and yes, it’s kind of freaky but awesome. And here’s an article talking how the ground actually moves during an earthquake. There’s an animation and it’s SCIENCE! Not bullshit.

Anybody gonna be at Conflikt? Any of you there already?

I wanted to have a second on-air sign for inside the studio, so I could see whether the signs were on or off an keep track more easily. The second was a duplication of the first, the one that I posted about already.

But I’ve had problems with minions (particularly Minion Paul) coming to the door and being afraid to enter or knock because there’s no sign out there. With a second controller already being in place, it’s really quite simple to make a third, hanging off the same controller, so I did. But being out of LEDs, I made a different kind this time.

Bento compartment box plus…

hee hee hee hee hee

I love my light-dotted I. It’s silly, but I love it so. 😀

Do you think there’re enough hipsters on Etsy to buy the ones I make out of cassette cases? The bento box ones probably aren’t retro enough, but the cassette case ones, maybe. What do you think?

[poll id=”25″]

You have failed me for the last time, Admiral Shack

Thanks to weird network events today, today’s post is potpourri. We’re going to have to schedule some server downtime at The Murkworks soon; I’m just hoping we can limp through January and do it in February, due to reasons. There’ll hopefully be an announcement before the downtime, and not after.

First, as some of you know, my partner Anna has medical news again. So to break out of that resulting mood, she’s put Faerie Blood on sale, both print and epub editions. And in better news, Carina Press has released the cover for her next book, Valor of the Healer. Check those out.

Most commentary and discussion that happens on this blog is over on the Livejournal and/or Dreamwidth echos, of all places. A little on tumblr. But I get comments here, too, so I check the spam folder for false positives. That’s where I found this:

Is there an echo in here?

…which is the first time I can recall seeing my own blog mined for response fodder for my own blog.

The spambots seem to be devolving. Goddammit, we were so close!

Also, some of you need this very badly. You’ll know who you are:

And this Earth Science Picture of the Day is lovely. I wish I’d taken it:

click to embiggen

That’s all for now. As I hope you can appreciate, I’m a little distracted. This is round five, if you count the two years of thyroid surgery, and between those two years and the newer issues – that’s the year I got hit by the car while out biking, and spent nine days unconscious in the ICU.

So things have been a bit… disturbed… for a while now. Hopefully Monday – the next appointment – will go well and all will be okay after all. That would be refreshing.