{"id":5209,"date":"2013-12-31T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2013-12-31T20:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=5209"},"modified":"2013-12-31T12:00:54","modified_gmt":"2013-12-31T20:00:54","slug":"showing-2014-the-body-of-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/31\/showing-2014-the-body-of-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"showing 2014 the body of 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

That’s right: it’s time for the year-in-review post!<\/p>\n


New stage costume in progress, for GeekGirlCon<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n

My 2013 was pretty good, most of the year. Actually, until October, it was really<\/em> 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!<\/p>\n

I did my first zouk solo on stage<\/a> (and came away with a funny story), appeared on someone else’s album for the first time<\/a> (as well as recording more than half of it), put out several episodes of a Geekmusic Podcast<\/a>, appeared on The Cosmic Ray Show<\/a>, played in Victoria<\/a>, rebuilt this website<\/a>, and toured briefly – eight shows – with Leannan Sidhe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I fell really hard<\/em> for Pacific Rim<\/a>, and wrote a song about it for Jaegercon<\/a>, recorded with help from fans tereshkova2001 and Kathryn Tewson<\/a>, had fun at Clallam Bay Comicon<\/a> and Virtual ComiCon<\/a> and VCON<\/a> and Harrison Hot Springs<\/a>, got involved with fannish and gamer misogyny<\/a>, including a fight with Penny Arcade’s Ben Kuchera on Twitter<\/a> about something other than PAX<\/a>, and performed a supervillain elfmetal operetta with Hello, the Future!<\/a> and tereshkova2001<\/a> and Angela Highland<\/a> and Amber Clark at GeekGirlCon, complete with a new stage costume<\/a> (thanks to Leannan Sidhe for her help)…<\/p>\n

…which is when things got annoying. Emergency eye surgery, rounds one<\/a> and two<\/a>. And Anna had to have major medical adventures of her own<\/a>, which kept us both – aheh – homestuck<\/em> for a couple of months.<\/p>\n


Pan-Pacific Defence Corps<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n

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<\/em> for you.<\/p>\n

None of that stopped me from doing my first voice acting during recovery<\/a>, but damn, that was nasty. We had to miss Orycon<\/a> and everything.<\/p>\n

But then, at the end of the year? I got invited into the Mega-Music Download<\/a>, 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 \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n


Better than Me<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As usual, there were a bunch of DIY highlights. I built a remote-control for Ardour<\/a>, a remote-control ON AIR sign<\/a>, made some retr0brite and de-yellowed some equipment<\/a>; I identified the Lord Ruler of All Hard Drives<\/a> 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<\/a>, made my DAW into a standing workstation<\/a>, did some graphic design to make a nice, legal-size comp sheet to help in studio work<\/a> (downloadable!), and found super-cheap but very effective ways to do speaker isolation<\/a> and microphone<\/a> cases<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oh, plus, put together a buildout post for the Austin Microphones ribbon mic kit<\/a>, and an even better buildout post for the pre-amp kit<\/a>. I’ll be using this on that album.<\/p>\n


Blinkinlights blinking!<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n

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<\/em>. (Downloads still pay-what-you-like<\/a>, but not for much longer!)<\/p>\n

But for all the everything<\/em>, I don’t…<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

My tools are in pretty good shape, now – let’s get back to using them<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

eta<\/b>: Anna has posted an even longer, more detailed year-in-recap post<\/a> of her own!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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! New stage costume in progress, for GeekGirlCon My 2013 was pretty good, most of the year. Actually, until October, [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}