The first thing I worked on wasn't so bad. I have a really short voice recording to do for a little project someone else is doing that I didn't finish. I wasn't too pleased with my voice but I'll get over it. I was surprised at not being able to get through what I was trying to say when the microphone was on. I don't have any trouble talking in front of groups but I'm not standing up too against my critical listening. I'm going to give it another go tomorrow and not listen to it anymore. Maybe I'll link it when it comes out..
The second disappointing project of the day was recording some guitar. I learned that the only thing more critical of a guitar player than a Youtube commenter is the guitar player himself as he's recording something that might end up on Youtube....
I was starting simple with a direct-in recording of how one of my guitars sounds without an amp. Next step would have been a walkthrough of my amp settings, and then later a walkthrough of my distortion pedal.
This stuff was going to be a soft intro to me putting out a practice diary online to hold myself to the fire on practicing by opening it up to the net. Problem is that after giving it a hard listen, and I just can't put it out there.
Tomorrow I'll try it again through the amp. Maybe it'll sound better. Maybe I'll be less embarrassed. I'll get something out eventually....it just might take longer than I had planned.
]]>Then I discovered Twitter a couple months ago and pretty much ground the blog to a halt. I tend to think of a blog post as a longer-form article kind of thing. Twitter's 140 character limit makes for a much lower psychological threshold to fire something out there. Also, feedback is easier and faster on twitter than a blog.
Originally this site was all about Margo and I and our wedding. When I came out as a blogger in late 2005, I wanted to turn it into more technical blog. It became a little bit of a problem for me to post useful tech info for things I do at work without talking too much about where I work and who I work for.
While the blog's still at its core about what ever I want to write about, it's been trending towards music a lot lately. I've been thinking a lot about music and independent artists lately and I want to explore that more on the blog.
Since I have a decent recording rig, one of the things I'm working on is a regular series of posts on my learning to play guitar. I'm also working on some audio walkthroughs of the gear that I have too.
I'm going to do more music related posts...some regular some not so regular... and see where it goes. I will still post on technology because it's still all about what I want to write about but I'm going to see where the music stuff take me for a while.
]]>So Apple has finally released the inexpensive iPhone. Entry level is $200 which is more in line with a normal modern phone than the original iPhone was. With 3G to boot. Slick. Will be interesting to see how hard it is to get one. My phone's 3 years old and I've been month-to-month with T-Mobile for years so I'm probably going to get one once the rush is over.
So, what remains to be seen between now and July is what will T-Mobile to do try to keep me as a customer? Is my $45/month bill worth it to them to do something interesting? Will see...
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I got around to fixing that a couple weeks ago by hitting the tip jar on his Music page. When you hit the tip jar, Brad sends a button. The button I got was of the cover of the album. Sweet.
Last month, Ghosts I-IV was released online with no warning. My copy of the CD version arrived last week.
Then the other day, the main NIN site updated again with another "2 weeks" post...like the one that went up two weeks before Ghosts dropped.
Yesterday, the single "Discipline" drops in all its disco industrial pop yumminess with a free download. The Comments field in the MP3 says, "Go to www.nin.com May 5." A new album or EP maybe? Rock! I like the new clean, sober and beefy Trent.
The multi-track remixable download is out for download too.
Would it be snarky for me to post a remix that just clips the vocal false start at the beginning of the song?
I have a thing for signed stuff, not so much as a collector, but more for the experience of connection and closeness to the artists whose music I love. So of course I had to jump on this. I agonized about the playlist and title for a long time but got there eventually, and here's the result:
I'm really jazzed. It's a one of a kind piece of artwork to go with a custom mix and a cool way to connect with an artist. I love it and I'm glad I did it. Jen posted a video on Youtube called "Each one is Unique." You can see mine here and there in the video, especially around 00:32.On March 13th, Margo and I went to see Toby Mac and Jeremy Camp with some friends at the Patriot Center. I never saw or heard their music before, so I was going in having no idea what to expect. Also since I was there with friends that knew their music, I felt like I was being watched. Kind of like when you're at an ethnic restaurant and they give you something to try...and they watch you eating it to see if you like it.
For some reason, I was paying attention to my body language more than normal. I was stiff, a little closed off and looked like I wasn't into it. Actually, Margo asked me if I hated the show.
I did really enjoy the concert though. Jeremy Camp and his band were fantastic. I wasn't as much into Toby Mac's music but he and his band put on a really entertaining show.
I thought about it and I think I know why now. When I'm watching someone perform, I'm paying real close attention to what they're doing. How they vocalize, how they hold and play their instruments, when the guitar players change effects, everything. I think it's the frustrated musician in me. This concentration tends to keep me from more outward appreciation of what's going on.
It makes me wonder for smaller venues if anyone on stage looked out, saw me and thought "he thinks we suck". I hope not.
I can't do anything about the past but moving forward, I'm going to be more aware of my body language out there. I hope that maybe if there's other people out there like me that they'll pay more attention too.
]]>In 1998, I started with a biotech services company in a mid-level systems administration role. Up to that point, my experience was mostly in call-center and desktop support with some server administration too. When I started with this new job, I was doing desktop support but also spent part of my time doing administration. The way our department handled coverage was that everyone had a primary and secondary area of responsibility and we all overlapped. I was strong in Netware and Exchange, so I was primary for those systems. They needed someone to back up the primary Notes administrator so they told me I was going to do Notes. We had 6 or so servers with a bunch of Notes client-based applications that supported a lot of the work that our company did.
The more I worked with Domino the more I was impressed with how the server platform seemed to be able to do whatever odd thing we wanted to do with it. I'll never forget one thing we did there. Since it's a biotech company, we dealt with a lot of sensitive medical and customer business information. We wanted to replicate selected information back to our customers but didn't want to do it over the internet for security concerns. We set up a dedicated Domino server for replicating to specific customers. We had selection formulas set up so that the replication server had the required information. Then we set up a Dial-up connection to the customer's server and made our replication server replicate through that. So the server would dial out direct and push the data to the customer.
When it was time for me to leave the biotech company in 2000, I decided I wanted to make a career out of working with Domino.
My next job was at a dot-com called Eyecast. Their business model was to digitally capture closed-circuit camera feeds, transmit them back to the servers in our data center for archival, and allow for real-time viewing and control of cameras over the web from a browser. Most of the work was being done by Domino servers on an s/390 mainframe. What we were doing there was so far out, I really started to love the Domino platform. It seemed like you could do almost anything...except make money appear out of thin air. Eyecast dissolved in 2001.
Without turning this post into a long-form resume, my next job was my last job as a Domino administrator. It would probably better fit into the post about how I'm not working with Lotus software anymore.
]]>It looks like they have released a live album as a free download from their website. Aside from being some really good music, it's a good way to get an idea what their live shows are like too for anyone that prefers to know what to expect before going to a show.
One of these days I'm going to brave our hellish DC-area traffic and get out on a weeknight to one of their shows...it takes a good hour plus to get from Centreville to Arlington or Old Town. sigh.
Anyway, you can get the MP3's for "Live at Jim's" here:
http://www.michaeljantz.com/hearsomesongs.html
Their show schedule's posted on the site as well if you find yourself in the US mid-atlantic area.
]]>I watched the first episode so far. The featured artists are Jonathan Coulton (I can't get that Portal song out of my head...huge success!) and Jesse Malin who were both previously featured on the SMtv audio podcast.
I was surprised by the format. Samantha has been talking about a video version of SMtv for quite a while now and I was expecting just a video feed of the podcast recordings. Parts of the show include video from previous podcasts, there's a lot more to it. There's an interview with Terry McBride, part of Jesse Malin's performance at IOTA, and Mike Schmid fawning over Johnathan Coulton (I would too, probably so it's OK) and a couple other surprises.
It's definitely worth a look. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's not in the podcast feed yet so you'll have to go direct from the website for now. I'm going to try to get through episode 2 before I head out to work.
Link: The Samantha Murphy Show
]]>I discovered the Argentina-based band Cirse when Gabriel Leopardi, their guitar player, and Luciana, their singer, became instructors on the site. The band put out a CD called "bi-polar" this past December. Gabriel has a couple of lessons on GMC lately that show how to play some of their songs which is really cool, I think.
Of course, I had to have a copy of the CD and Gabriel and Luciana were kind enough to sign it for me:
I noticed this year that there's a torrent out there with 700+ songs it from bands that are going to be playing SXSW this year. I snagged it over the weekend and started listening to it on the way to work yesterday.
It'll take me a long time to get through all the music in there but what I've heard so far is really good stuff. There's a lot of different styles represented. If you're looking for new music this torrent is a quick way to sample a bunch of quality artists all in one place.
Link: SXSW Showcase Torrents
]]>I do tend to get some odd results on these things though. This is no exception.
Image by jan2eke.I'm learning to play guitar these days. I'll have to remember this if I ever have an album to do.
The game goes like this:
Band name from Wikipedia random page, the album title is the last four words from the final quote on the random quotes page and the art should be the third image from the Flickr Interestingness / Last 7 days page.
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