Well, the Grammy awards shortlist came out on Monday, and to our… oh, honestly, complete lack of surprise… we did not make the shortlist in either category in which we were nominated. (Bone Walker for folk album; “Kitsune at War” for arrangement, instrumental or a cappella.)

Ah, well, it was tremendous fun while it lasted. But stopping here doesn’t take away that we did get a nod from an Academy member, we did get referred to the jury, we did make it past the jury, and we did become a long-list Grammy nominee.

Twice.

And while the long list was the end of the road for us this year, I’m still pretty damn chuffed about making that.

So thanks to everyone who had any part of any of the process, and hey – I’m finally starting to lay down my first new tracks in a while. Let’s see what happens next year. Because y’know what? We ain’t done here.

(Is there a Grammy Losers party? There should totally be a Grammy Losers party.)

Use cyber2015 at checkout for 20% off all music, including Bone Walker, the long-list Grammy Award nominated album. If you’re with the academy, thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

Remember a while ago I talked about the “bitchin’ metal hurdy-gurdy solo” that Nicolas Boulerice did at a Le Vent du Nord show in Victoria? And I talked to him after the show and found out that he had in fact been in a metal band before going onto Quebecois trad music?

This is called “cutting out the middleman.”

(h/t George P Burdell III on Facebook)

Use cyber2015 at checkout for 20% off all music, including Bone Walker, the long-list Grammy Award nominated album. If you’re with the academy, thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

We have another High Wind Warning today, so will very likely lose power again, taking most of the site offline. It’s already atypically breezy right now – annoying, but what can you do?

Bandcamp will of course stay up, which means you can still play and/or download music, and the cyber2015 discount code will obviously still work.

On the plus side, at least, we’re making our way through the current series of Doctor Who, and at this point, I’m really glad I gave this series another chance. I’m liking the longer story format, and while the first half of this latest two-parter (The Zygon Invasion) was pretty much rubbish, the second half (The Zygon Inversion) more than made up for it – it made sitting through the terrible first hour worthwhile.

In particular, Jenna Coleman is just knocking it out of the park every episode now. Her performance in Inversion just – wow. I’m actually going to miss her, after this year.

Plus, we haven’t heard a good Doctor Rant like the one we got this episode in quite a while. Sometimes those get pretty tiresome, but this one was built right and in the right kind of context and was all character-revelation-y for a guest character without just being an exposition, and that’s how you should do these. Or, at least, it’s one of the right ways. I’ll take that with some ice cream, Doctor.

Plus I will admit hearing the Brig say “five rounds rapid” made my little fangirl heart squee a bit. XD

So, yeah. If we go out, the Bandcamp site will still be up, as will the LJ/Dreamwidth echoes and all that. And we’ll probably? be back by sometime tomorrow.

Assuming the volcano doesn’t blow. There’s kind of a thing, we kind of have to deal with it today, we kind of need power for that, we do have backup, but only so much, and and and. Such a bother.

Ah, well, best get to it. Geoengineering waits for no one.

Use cyber2015 at checkout for 20% off all music, including Bone Walker, the long-list Grammy Award nominated album. If you’re with the academy, thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

I grabbed this sign out of an office remodel a while ago – hey, Seattleites, guess where! – and added it to my studio door at the Lair last week:

I may be taking it a little too literally. These are picks after a couple of takes each of “Thirteen” today:

How many of these things am I gonna have to make to record this song?

I may have to upgrade my picks. I may need something a little more ruggedised, maybe something a bit more metal, like these:

Seriously, are those shiny or what? They’re from the GuitarPickCollection Etsy store. I’m not affiliated, the lead dev on Ardour just pointed me at them today and they are very, very pretty. He has a couple and reports they’re really smoothly polished, and are actually playable.

I think they’re kind of amazing. Not something I’d actually want to use; reviews of other metal picks say they’re great for lead work, but I need more flex than these would have. Even so, they’re amazing to look at.

Use cyber2015 at checkout for 20% off all music, including Bone Walker, the long-list Grammy Award nominated album. If you’re with the academy, thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

Cyber Monday always makes me think it’s basically HELLO CYLONS time, but hey, who am I to stand in the way of a good robot uprising? I mean, let’s face it, nothing says “discounts now!” like an old-fashioned cybernetic apocalypse.

So in that spirit, here, have a discount code for anything – including physical goods – on the Bandcamp site. Bandcamp is the best because they let you download lossless files, and also because you can actually get physical media if you want, and get them signed and such. (Just be sure to tell me you want that!)

Enter this code at checkout:

cyber2015

…and it’s 20% off everything.

Now if you’ll excuse me, having played Christmas Capitalist, I must now go conduct some experiments on brains. Possibly my own, possibly using bleach. You know – the usual Monday.

Looking for the Grammy Awards Long List nominee post? Thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

Hey, remember I extended the raffle deadline – any Bandcamp download for free – to Wednesday, right? Then I didn’t post the winner because Second Thanksgiving and a Lair full of visitors and all that. Well, I did in fact roll the dice to determine a winner, and that winner is Kimberly Turriff on Facebook! Kimberly, I’ll tag you on the Facebook link of this post, please contact me and tell me what you’d like!

Also, thanks to everyone for entering! If you didn’t win, well, this being Cyber Monday, well, I think you can make a guess about the post I’m about to make right after this one. But that’s for the next post. 😀

Meanwhile, this weekend a few of us got out there and shot some material for Mary Crowell‘s upcoming new video. Tune in for EXCITING RAKING ACTION:

Actual raking not included

After all, that’s why I have Minion Rachel and Minion Ian. Note the stylish Minion sashes.

It’s all for Mary’s cover of “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked.” The video is due out later in December. I’ll link when it comes out.

And how was your Second Thanksgiving?

Looking for the Grammy Awards Long List nominee post? Thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

Hello, Atlantic Canada and American East Coasters! There is in fact a Cyber Monday post coming. Yes, I’m doing it too, I’m calling it Cylon Monday. It’s queued for 9am Cascadian/Pacific time, so if you’re looking for such things, come back then.

Looking for the Grammy Awards Long List nominee post? Thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

Fred showed up for Second Thanksgiving from Oregon with a MOUNTAIN DULCIMER BASS. I did not even know this was a thing. I sat around playing metal basslines on it. I want to hook it up to like three overdrive pedals and rawk out.

I posted proof of concept video on Tumblr, go check this thing out, it is hilarious and awesome. 😀

Looking for the Grammy Awards Long List nominee post? Thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

For years, I’ve been making apple pie with Second Thanksgiving. I make it the day before, it’s an easy recipe, it’s good. Very straightforward.

But I’m always left with apple peels, because I peel the apples. And I like apple peel, but not that much of it, so I’ve experimented a bunch of times with the leftover peels, trying to see what I could make. And it’s never been worth mentioning. I’ve tried toasting them, I’ve tried sautéing them in brown sugar, I’ve tried a lot of stuff.

This year I finally pulled it off.

Peelings Managed

Apple-peel tarts. One eaten; other four in the fridge for the morning. Surprisingly tart with softened peels. Recipe:

• Flatten leftover crust dough on parchment paper, very thin. Cut into strips and lay a couple into each tart cup.
• Get a long spiral of apple peel, and lay across bottom of cup. Add a few leftover apple pieces from the pie filling, and wind in the rest of the spiral.
• Add pieces of leftover apple, again from the pie filling. It’s important that the apple and peel mingle, I think.
• Put in oven with pie, after the initial higher-temperature 10 minutes are over. For me, this means as reducing the oven from 450F to 350F.
• After 10 minutes, move to a second oven (or toaster oven) at 300F.
• After 20 more minutes, add about 2 tablespoons apple cider. (New and critical!)
• Allow to bake for 10-15 more minutes; judge it by eye, you want the cider to boil down a bit in the oven.

The peel came out soft and tart and delicious. The apple chunks (about half of it) retained their shape and were sweet and yummy. The crust strips add a third texture and also absorb candied cider flavour.

I’m really hoping it holds up in the morning. Fingers crossed.

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Check it out – it’s a sample-based synth, right? But it lets you snip and select subsets of the waveform live, as you’re playing. Sure, there’s nothing here that you can’t do now with a DAW and mics and such, but as an interface? This is really, really slick.

It’s a prototype only at the moment, which is too bad. Love to play with this.

(h/t spazzkat and gizmodo)

Looking for the Grammy Awards Long List nominee post? Thank you for listening, and for your consideration.