Stickmaker: I’m a little worried. There’s a patch of ice at the far end of my front walk which I can’t scrape off and which isn’t melting. (In fact, as the temps drop it’s growing.) I piled snow at the end of the walk and then went though the yard to where the walk is safe. Hope that’s warning enough.
Anna: Dump some kitty litter out there if you have to.
Anna: Do you not have any rock salt?
Stickmaker: Kitty litter is all in use by the kitties. No rock salt.
Anna: Well I got nothin’, then.
Solarbird: you have gasoline, you have matches, i don’t see the problem here
Anna: I might suggest that when you go out again, get some rock salt. 😉
Anna: Or something otherwise appropriate for dealing with ice on your walk
Solarbird: like gasoline
Solarbird . o O ( foomp )
Solarbird: ok maybe charcoal?
Stickmaker: …That’s what I’m afraid of. 🙂
Solarbird: you’re afraid of charcoal?
Solarbird: that’s just weird.
Solarbird: what did charcoal do to you?
Solarbird: or do you fear its revenge?
Solarbird: for all the things you’ve done to it?
Solarbird . o O ( so much burning )
Stickmaker: No, the ‘Fwoomph!’
Solarbird: wait so no you fear sound effects.
Solarbird: FOOMOHPH
Solarbird: scary!

Back from hospital, visiting Feetsylvania again (positioned facing down) and sipping hot tea through a straw. Unsure of advisability of this. Advise at your leasure.

Should get to spend the rest of positioning on side. Will be better then.

I’d just drilled some probably-entirely-unnecessary vent holes in the two tighter-sealing mic cases, and finally got around to packing up the spare ribbon material for the ribbon microphone I’d built after the second eye surgery, and as I was walking upstairs to do some more comping…

…something darted down the centre of my vision.

But only in one eye. And it was repeatable.

Kill. Everything.

So I poked at it a bit, and yep, I have newly asymmetrical peripheral vision. I schedule an emergency doctor’s appointment, who confirms what I already know, and I’m scheduled for emergency surgery on Saturday morning, kill everything.

Anyway. I don’t know how much you’ll see me for the next few days. I’ll be “positioned” for another week, then limited in motion again after that. I won’t be at Conflikt, the songwriting workshop is cancelled, I’ve delayed a bunch of recording sessions indefinitely until we can reschedule, everything’s delayed another two weeks, fuck everything.

See, when this first happened, last October, there were three areas: one where the retina had torn, and two others which showed extremely old physical trauma damage. Dr. Saperstein fixed the tear in surgery, and tried to do some pre-emptive work on the other two areas, as they would fail sooner or later.

This completely failed. A few weeks later, I was back in for round two. I thought I was safe at this point from a round three, and that the pre-emptive work had done some good on the third area, but FUCK ME NO, it tore today, so I’m back in again.

So that’s what happened, and that’s where I am, and where I’m not. I’ll try to set something up so I can blog some and chat while I’m recovering – again – from this. But it resets the clock on vision recovery, I won’t be able to drive for two months – my vision had just got back to 20/20 with correction in the pinhole test, and 20/30 in open field – and… yeah.

I am so pissed off about all this, I don’t even have words. We’ll be shooting through our out-of-pocket for insurance again. What a way to start a year.

I won’t even be able to make a cake for Anna’s birthday on the 23rd. At least there will be presents.

Anna and I went to the Night Vale live theatre show last night at the Neptune, in my old hood, the U. District. I hadn’t been to the Neptune since they turned it back into a stage theatre, and I’m glad to say it works really well.

I’m not going to review it, per se; I’ll just say it was a lot of fun, with a lot of William Castle-esque elements – particularly – in one section that I really enjoyed.

My camera did a terrible job with the spotlighting, but have some cosplay pictures from the queue, a couple of the least bad stage shots, and a panorama I call Appropriate Theatre is Appropriate.

The Glow Cloud, Nr. 1
(A second glow cloud, in video form)

Eternal Scouts

Appropriate Theatre is Appropriate
1280-pixel-wide version here

Jason Webley, The Faceless Old Accordion Player Who Secretly Plays in Your Theatre

The Best Photo I Got of Cecil

We queued up 45 minutes ahead of doors (in a bad spot, in the wind), and got good seats; totally worth it, even if I had to run over to the bookstore and grab a clearance XXL fleece sweatshirt that I’ll be wearing a lot because damn this thing is comfortable.

Anyway, if you get a chance, and you like Welcome to Night Vale, the stage show is a nice night out. Go, and enjoy.

Anybody here livestreamed an Ubuntu Gnome desktop? I found this howto for justin.tv, but while I appear to have it running (albeit with a strange error that’s probably critically important) it doesn’t seem to work. I also found this tool (which was formerly on Sourceforge, which still has an older version) but haven’t tried yet.

Anybody have a preferred solution?

The World’s Largest Bluetooth Speaker is a Dalek.

I thought this was going to be kind of weak and lame, but to my shock, it’s actually pretty well thought out, and kind of cool.

Many of these deserve their entire own long rants. I don’t have time, as much as I want to. So I’m posting them in a list, and letting you pick. A few are just funny, for leavening, because that’s important too.

I’m leading with the most important, and finishing with the most important, even though they’re different – they’re both really important. First, something I don’t understand why doesn’t get more net traction:

Why Marketers Fear the Female Geek.

It’s because marketing to increase sexism is strategy, not accident. Basically, in a nutshell, it’s this: marketing strategy isn’t to market broadly, it’s to market to market segments, or subsets. Your first round of ads hits with a segment; if that segment is large enough to meet your sales goals, you then market to that segment that the ‘others’ not in that segment are lesser, because that increases buy-in within the targeted segment.

Tell Seahawks fans that 49er fans are weak, and more Seahawks fans buy your merch than if you don’t.

And in way too many geek subjects, that “other” means women.

Weak. Lesser. Not Really Gamers. Not Really People.

It’s intentional, and the targeted segment eats it up every time.

There’s more at the link, go chase it. Not all marketers use this strategy, but it’s common. The more people are aware that they’re being manipulated, they more they’ll resist it, because they resent it.

Surviving the post-employment economy. Wonder why there’s this sudden growing urge for a guaranteed basic minimum income? This is why.

Bad British NFL Commentary, by which one means comedic, but I’m not sure the one who posted this gets that. Their “bad baseball commentary” example (“No! Caught by the chap in the pajamas with the glove that makes everything easier. And they all scuttle off for a nap.”) is perfect baseball commentary.

It Is Easier Now That I Look Like a Guy – same person, femme to butch casually passing with male; suddenly their career is better and they get dramatically more respect from everyone. Go fig.

Federal Court Strikes Down Net Neutrality. This is very bad for the internet, and particularly bad for independent artists, because it means you want your traffic moved? Pay us, too. This has to be overturned, somehow. Common Carrier status is the most obvious way to get there; will it happen? Depends upon who throws the most money at whom, of course. But if it’s close – and there’s money on both sides of this – you might be able to shove it a bit one way or the other.

Forbes Magazine has noticed the return of the analogue synthesiser. I’ve seen a lot of people buying old and rebuilding; I wasn’t aware how many of the classics were back in or about to return to production.

Korg MS-20 (courtesy Wikipedia)

There seems to be some idea floating out there – and certainly in that Forbes article – that it’s a matter of rejecting digital, with it’s an implication that it’s some sort of Overdue Retreat From False Progress, and similar foolishness.

That’s not just wrong, it’s stupid. It’s the kind of derpitude written for people who don’t understand a subject and are wearing their late-middle-age everything-was-better-in-my-day nostalgia crap goggles.

Never wear those.

But something real is happening: a recognition that these were interesting and unique instruments in their own rights, and that new “versions” of the instrumental idea are not the instrumental idea. Just as the successors of the lute were not lute version 2.0, the successors of these synths are are not these instruments, version 2.0. They’re new instruments, with their own merits and flaws.

The technology model of continuous improvement doesn’t apply to everything, no matter how hard you try.

Similarly, just as MIDI violin doesn’t preempt real violin, emulations of the actual instrument – while useful, I’m a huge fan of the Animoog implementation on my iPad – do not always replace the actual instrument.

Particularly not with players. Not with the musicians. All of these things have their own physicalities, and for a lot of players – like me – that’s important. There are tens of thousands of bass guitars out there; there are a few I love. There are far fewer Irish Bouzoukis out there; and there are two, so far, I love. Part of that’s the sound; part of that is the physicality. It all matters.

I’m glad that’s finally being recognised for these classic analogue subtractive synths. The recognition that they are unique instruments, of a kind and a type, and of value not as a step to something else, but to themselves, and their unique sounds – it’s long overdue. Returning them to production is no more some kind of reactionary step backwards than is continuing to produce fiddles.

And I’m all for it. Welcome back to the fold, subtractive synths. We missed you.

First! That pro-bono recording-restoration project I mentioned a week or so ago? The one with the interview with Buck O’Neil, of the Kansas City Monarchs of the old Negro American League?

I heard back from James today:

For the record, Bob Kendrick with the NLBM [Negro League Baseball Museum] said the audio is outstanding.

Awesome. This makes me happy. I’m really pleased they found it potentially usable. It’s the first time I’ve done this sort of work, and I’m really glad they liked the result. I hope they find a use for it.

Second: the allergy testing went fine; I’m much less allergic to grass than I used to be. Thank you, allergy shots.

And finally, the latest follow-up appointment to have my eyes checked again as I continue to recover from two rounds of emergency eye surgery a couple of months ago also went well; they told me get out and don’t come back for eight weeks, and that my vision is up to 20/25 with lenses on.

I have to tell you, I’d’ve thought 20/25 would be a lot better than this. But apparently, it’s not. Wow.

I’d also talk about the meetings earlier this week, but I can’t. Yet. I can say that something very cool and exciting came out of them, I just can’t say what. Hopefully I’ll be able to say more in a couple of months.

But it’s cool, and exciting. Hee hee hee. 😀

I’ll be at the Welcome to Night Vale show at the Neptune tonight. Say hi, if you see me. Say hi, if you don’t see me. Say hi, to the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home. You won’t know for sure that she heard you. But she did. She did.

…eyes all dilated:

Solarbird sings: I can’t focus, I can’t focus, I can’t focus…
Minion Paul sings: It’s time to throw the knives!