I meant to turn off free/pay-what-you-like Bandcamp downloads last week, but I didn’t warn people. Accordingly:
Today is the last day you can pull my Bandcamp albums down for free/pay-what-you-like. So grab while the grabbing’s good; I’m putting minimums back on tomorrow.
A couple of singles – Kaiju Meat and The S-100 Bus being notable examples – will stay free/pay-what-you-like permanently, but the rest? Not so much.
I got up into the attic above my studio this weekend, because I have this leftover rock wool sound insulation, and wanted to see whether I could further dampen the occasional airplane noise that makes it through everything.
I’ve never lived in a new-construction house before. This thing was built in 1998-2000. (Why such a wide date range? Because this.) I’ve always lived in old buildings. Attics are dark spaces with 2×12 joists and random boards lying about and forgotten storage and knob and tube writing (sometimes just remnants) and hopefully bare-bulb light-fixtures and places where they took out the pull-down staircase and probably spiders and possibly livestock and almost certainly not ghosts.
This attic? Basically, this attic has no goddamn floor at all. Turns out the top floor ceiling is just wallboard held up by 2x4s, which are in turn hidden and drowning in an ocean of blow-in insulation. And while blow-in insulation is awesome – I’m all for insulation – having literally no visible places to step is not awesome. It’s like the end of the world in Skyrim. LOL NO FLOOR ANYMORE HAVE FUN WITH THE OCEAN.
I’m not walking around up there, much less putting in rock wool. And while, okay, 2x4s, they can hold up wallboard, and hopefully me at least briefly, and hopefully all that blow-in insulation but I’m not convinced, I’m mostly in the category of whose idea is this?! Can wallboard ceilings hold up rock wool? I would think so, but I don’t even know! Hell, I’m not even enamoured of it holding up that much blow-in thermal insulation because that is a lot of insulation up there.
Basically what I’m saying is that compared to what I’m used to, this attic “floor” is made up of assurances which are made up of lies. So I’m not remotely surprised I hear airplanes through it.
What do I do here? Continue to live with it? I mean, it’s only occasional, and it’s at -60db when I do hear it at my normal recording levels, so even if it happens during recording it’s not that big a deal. Do I tack up another layer of wallboard to absorb low-frequency airplane noise, maybe on floaters of some kind? Do I make rock wool pillows and hang them from the existing ceiling and try to compensate for the brightness loss by taking out other baffles? Will this all literally come tumbling down on my head if I do any of it?
I’ve no idea. And really, I suppose it’s not that important. But it tasks me. It does, it does.
Last week, I asked what you want out of 2014. You collectively responded with a lot of different and varied answers. They all seemed pretty reasonable, honestly. Health for elderly relatives. Time. A better sugar-cookie recipe. Fewer bad things going down.
I’m not so reasonable. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want for 2014, and I think a lot of it comes down to wanting to be done with all the bullshit.
That’s both nonspecific and unattainable – there is always bullshit – but I would like there to be less of it. But less intentional stupidity. Less believing in lies for the sake of tribalism. Less of politics as some sort of goddamn sportsball event. I’m sick of that.
But I don’t want to externalise all of this. I want less bullshit on a personal level – not in the sense of lying, but in the sense of moving on past things. I’ve had a rough history, in a lot of ways – Batman ain’t got nothin’ on me – and I’ve had to deal with a bunch of that over the last few years. I’m tired of it. I want less of that and less of the mental expenditures and less of the blocking that kind of thing creates.
See, kayjayuu on Livejournal? Kayjayuu asked for forward motion.
Yeah.
See, the thing about all the bullshit is that it impedes, and I’m regularly feeling stalled out and delayed and I’m tired of that. Lots of North America seems to feel that way to me, too – but I can’t be sure that’s not just my perspective, my filters, my projection.
But even if it is, it’s the view I’ve got.
Forward motion through less bullshit in 2014.
That is a goal.
Thinking towards the future – I don’t make resolutions, but I’m trying to figure out what I want out of 2014. In my 2013 summary post, I talked about thinking my tools are in pretty good shape; let’s work less on tools and more on using them. And that’s fair. But I don’t think that’s complete, and it’s still bouncing around in my head.
What do you you want out of 2014? I’m seeing a lot of people on different blogs being very, very tired of the status quo. If that’s you – what’re you wanting out of the new year?
While you’re thinking on it, please enjoy these two new 2014 Shatterdome drinks I experimented up, working off of tereshkova2001‘s basic research:
Siberian Honey:
2x vodka, 2x barenjager, 1x grapefruit juice (dirty). cold, shaken. pour strained; very sweet. Too sweet for me but the favourite of the shatterdome floor crew.Kuril Islands Chrysanthemum:
Prepare tippy assam (black) tea, allow to cool, do not adulterate. Then:
2x vodka, 1x barenjager, 2x fresh-squeed grapefruit juice (dirty), shake hard, pour unstrained, add 1x tea, stir in. Unexpectedly delicate; flowery without excess sweetness; tastes of chrysanthemum, hence, the name. I really liked this tonight; hopefully it’ll hold up once repeated.
Enjoy!
All of my Top 10 posts but one in 2013 are political – or, at least what I would call political. John Scalzi has seven of his top ten posts on similar topics, but doesn’t think of any of them as political. I find that kind of surprising and a little confusing.
See, in my head, I’m not sure how these various issues aren’t political. They aren’t necessarily partisan, true – it’s not to do with politics in the electoral sense – but all of it is still the politics of society.
What do you think? Are these “political” to you, or something else, and if so – what would you call them?
Moving further down the list, I find I’m still getting a bunch of hits from last year’s posts. And not just the triple-rainbow picture; mostly studio buildout series, as it turns out.
So, mostly what I think of as politics, and DIY. But like I said – I’d call these political, but other people clearly do not. What would you call them?
Seen on Twitter: if 2013 was a battle for you, then take heart: it’s dead, and you’re still alive. Show 2014 the corpse of 2013, as a warning.
That’s right: it’s time for the year-in-review post!
My 2013 was pretty good, most of the year. Actually, until October, it was really good. Honestly, it didn’t feel like I did all that much, but I’m looking at it, and thinking I must’ve been busier than I remember!
I did my first zouk solo on stage (and came away with a funny story), appeared on someone else’s album for the first time (as well as recording more than half of it), put out several episodes of a Geekmusic Podcast, appeared on The Cosmic Ray Show, played in Victoria, rebuilt this website, and toured briefly – eight shows – with Leannan Sidhe.
I fell really hard for Pacific Rim, and wrote a song about it for Jaegercon, recorded with help from fans tereshkova2001 and Kathryn Tewson, had fun at Clallam Bay Comicon and Virtual ComiCon and VCON and Harrison Hot Springs, got involved with fannish and gamer misogyny, including a fight with Penny Arcade’s Ben Kuchera on Twitter about something other than PAX, and performed a supervillain elfmetal operetta with Hello, the Future! and tereshkova2001 and Angela Highland and Amber Clark at GeekGirlCon, complete with a new stage costume (thanks to Leannan Sidhe for her help)…
…which is when things got annoying. Emergency eye surgery, rounds one and two. And Anna had to have major medical adventures of her own, which kept us both – aheh – homestuck for a couple of months.
Also, we had Cat Pee Festival 2013, about which the less said, the better, but if you think that wasn’t a distraction, I have a bundle of WRONG for you.
None of that stopped me from doing my first voice acting during recovery, but damn, that was nasty. We had to miss Orycon and everything.
But then, at the end of the year? I got invited into the Mega-Music Download, which just made me go EEEEEEEEEEEEE because here I am surrounded by all these people who are better at this than me. so exciting I can’t believe I got included eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 😀
And that doesn’t even talk about nwcMUSIC and the like, so… yeah. I’m not lying when I say I feel like I didn’t get much done this year. But then you stack it up in a list like that and I feel better about it.
Even if that damned soundtrack album got stalled out for a while. More recording is scheduled, at last, in January. There will be an album, goddammit. There will be.
As usual, there were a bunch of DIY highlights. I built a remote-control for Ardour, a remote-control ON AIR sign, made some retr0brite and de-yellowed some equipment; I identified the Lord Ruler of All Hard Drives while rebuilding and upgrading my digital audio workstation, modded the hell out of an old input switch to make a speaker-selector and warning device, made my DAW into a standing workstation, did some graphic design to make a nice, legal-size comp sheet to help in studio work (downloadable!), and found super-cheap but very effective ways to do speaker isolation and microphone cases.
Oh, plus, put together a buildout post for the Austin Microphones ribbon mic kit, and an even better buildout post for the pre-amp kit. I’ll be using this on that album.
So, yeah. It’s been a year. By most reasonable standards, it’s been a pretty big year. From a purely commercial standpoint, my two biggest download months are both this year, the second-largest being right now. (Downloads still pay-what-you-like, but not for much longer!)
But for all the everything, I don’t…
I don’t feel like I’ve been playing much, and not writing much, either. I did write some songs – not just Kaiju Meat – and even performed them out. But… yeah. Not so many.
I think that’s what’s missing; it’s been a year as much about engineering and talking than creating and playing. I think 2014 needs to be a kind of followup.
My tools are in pretty good shape, now – let’s get back to using them.
eta: Anna has posted an even longer, more detailed year-in-recap post of her own!
My Second Doctor Sonic Screwdriver arrived!
Or at least the base for it. Trying to figure out how to have it make the noise… that’ll be another matter entirely. There’s no extra room as currently configured, but that’s not actually a big deal – smaller batteries and a couple of changes in switch operation will solve that.
Oh, and the light needs to be blue. Jamie said so, and he’d know.
Please enjoy the only time the sonic screwdriver is seen driving a screw on-screen.
Happy almost-new-years everybody! Time for either the big new year’s clean and hatsumode, or lots of vodka science and quality assurance testing, or hey, why not have both? I’m for it. We could call it Vodka Science Day, throw it in with the rest. Only downside is I’m not sure anyone would notice. I’ve, er, “got friends” who just call that Thursday.
If your music collection needs refreshing, the big Mega-Music New Year’s Download that I talked about before is still going, so go grab that while you can. And all my Bandcamp downloads are still set pay-what-you-like, too.
If you had – or still have – trouble with their official download link, here is a backup that I put up myself, so use that instead.
Whup, gotta gear up, kaiju’s about ready to hatch, and you know what a mess that is! Have fun out there, and try not to die.
That’s supervillain for, “Hey – I like you.”
Okay, so I mentioned the big project? Well, a bunch of bands, including us, SJ Tucker, Heather Dale, and lots more, got together for a truly massive free mega-music download package. Seriously, there are like 39 artists in this thing:
If the download link there doesn’t work for you for some reason – it’s been a bit swamped! – here’s a direct link to the .zip file with all songs:
In addition to the previous, there’s Betsy Tinney, Talis Kimberly, Pandora Celtica, Julia Ecklar, Ginger Doss, Whisky Bards, Tom Smith, us – so many different bands.
GO GET IT. And if you like what you hear, a lot of us are doing specials right now on our own download pages, like us, where everything of ours on Bandcamp is currently pay-what-you-like. That won’t last forever, so GO. NOW.
And a happy new year to everyone!
eta: Okay, maybe having everybody involved tell all their people at the same time wasn’t the best idea. XD If you’re seeing an XML error, it’s a result of server overload; try again in 15 minutes to an hour. But my Bandcamp downloads are working fine – Bandcamp is more robust. 😀
Through the holidays, all my Bandcamp downloads are free/pay-what-you-like. That’s not a permanent condition, so grab while the grabbing is good! And if you feel like hitting the tip jar on the way out: awesome, but optional.
CDs are also still discounted, for any last-second physical gift-giving, but you can buy for other people through Bandcamp, too.
THE NEW SINGLE
 |
