Excuse me, did I miss something, or it's been nearly a week since I posted & I can't remember too much of what happened between then & now! I know there was a little thing called Christmasa & a Staff party which was good fun, but more about them when I have time to write properly. I think the whole quake/tsunami tragedy has kept my mind off most things & it can't really be summed up into words.
Anyway, If I don't get to post again before we hit 'two double oh five, here's wishing everyone an totally bodacious New Year's!
Sometimes you just have to put into words what you're thinking & that’s exactly what I did. It was a long rambling entry that probably would have put every reader into therapy, so I deleted it! Enough said.
Last night, I scored the place to myself, so I pulled out the recording gear & laid down another song. I've recorded it before, rather crudely, but now it sounds like I've spend thousands of buckeroonies in a studio. People talk about amateur equipment, but some of the cheapest gear in the marketplace can perform an amazing job.
I still have to do some mixing & mastering before uploading, but the inevitable boring Christmas break might pave the way.
Speaking of Christmas, it's now the 22nd & I'm yet to start shopping. I do however know where all the pressies are, It's just a matter of getting to their various locations. I did have a run in yesterday with a cosmetics chick in a department store. My sister wants a specific perfume & I thought I might be able to find it closer than where I know it is currently sold. Snobby woman walks up to me as I browse their perfume cabinets & asks if she can be of assistance. I tell her the name & maker of the perfume, to which she laughs, smirks & tells me there is no such fragrance. I felt so small as she continued to look at me as though I'd just landed from Saturn. I went back to the office & looked it up on the internet & sure enough, it does exist. Geez, what a bitch!
I saw Santa driving a bus this morning on the way into work.
I suppose he is qualified for driving extra long vehicles!
I'm not quite sure how he's going to survive all day in the big red suit, those buses don't have fantastic air-conditioning. Santa might be giving out some quite noxious gifts by this afternoon!
One of Australia’s native emblems, the Koala, is having a bit of a browse around my sisters unit at the moment. She first thought it was a bloody big cat, until it climbed up onto a window ledge. It currently resides in the tree just outside her front door & is munching on a few gum leaves between naps. He doesn't look fully grown, but unlike the Koalas found in your average zoo, they’re not to be toyed with in the wild. The whole cute & cuddly impression goes out the window once you see their claws! Apparently, he’s been elsewhere in the area & doesn’t really mind a bit of human company & actually fell asleep while I was there.
He’s not the easiest to take a shot of with bright sun, wind & foliage galore. Since he’s getting a free feed, it’s likely he’ll be there tomorrow as well, so I might try again if he’s more photogenic!
Gee, it's a bit quiet in the land of blogs! Is anybody out there??
I scored Friday off & I get today as well to make up for my anticipated working through New Year. An extra long weekend has been a great break & I didn't realise just how run down I was actually getting! However, I am confusing days. Although I knew Sunday was Sunday, it just didn’t feel like one!
I spent most of Friday tangled in cables trying to put some recordings together & after some teething troubles with the new mic, everything came together exceptionally well. I thought I might have had a dud microphone or preamp, as I had all sorts of interference which made it sound like a hurricane was going through (with Adelaide's current weather, that's not out of the realm of possibility!). In the end, it just needs a heap of time for the internal valve to warm up & once there, the sound quality is beyond what I was expecting or hoping for!
Most of the recordings have come off in one take. Now, a bit of mastering is needed to blend it all together, then I can post them here! Five tracks down & a bunch more to go!
In all things music related, I don’t advocate many web sites, but a great rarities site is “Rare Records”. Their stuff is really expensive, but I’ve found a few recordings that I didn’t know existed. They have some odd pieces which would be great for collectors, as well as unusual items from other countries, where albums contain additional material. I’ve found a couple of their ‘rarities’ in my collection, which was a nice surprise. Doubt I’d be able to get the same resale values though!
Have I ever mentioned that “Something for Kate” is one of my favourite bands?! Most probably yes, but I still think they are underrated. The only reason I mention it, is I have Paul Dempsey, Stephanie Ashworth & Clint Hyndman, playing at considerable volume at this very moment & the louder it is, the better it becomes!
Oh, so close... to having end of month reporting finished. If all goes well tomorrow & all the crap is sent to Singapore, I can skip Friday & just lounge around, finally delving into the several thousand hours of time in lieu.
It will give me time to play around with my brand new microphone. A shiny Studio Projects B1 which is plugged into a Behringer Ultragain MC100 preamp & connected to my Boss BR864 digital recorder (I'm subconsciously setting up an entire studio here!). The sensitivity of the mic is incredible, picking up the clock ticking in the next room! Now I'll be able to record some decent vocals to add to some tracks I already have on disk, instead of using the internal mic on the recorder. My main problem is finding a time when no-one is around & all noise is eliminated, which isn't very easy, but that's the challenge of it all.
Whether anyone cares or not, I might even take some happy snaps of my new microphone & post them here. Then everyone can indulge in it's coolness factor!
In what might just be some of the crappiest camera phone images ever posted on the Internet, I give you my week that was!
Last week, work-wise sucked, so I’m not even going to go there!
Outside of dungeon hours, I hit the town rather hard. Last Friday, I trundled down to Light Square to be a part of Open House #7, a bit of an arts festival presented, ironically, by Arts SA. We sat on the lawn listening to “a mix of Funk, Latin, Soul, Reggae & Jazz” (per the brochure) under a stunning full moon. Apparently, there have been six other Open House events, but I hadn’t heard of any before! A whole heap of Hindley Street traders had bands, DJs & food discounts for the crowd. I’m cheap, it was free, no complaints!
Look closely & you can make out the stage!!
Last night, I caught Brooke Fraser play at Jive & damn is she talented! Brooke played support for John Mayer in April & gained a few new fans in the process. She’s only 20 & has had her album “What To Do With Daylight” sitting in the top ten in New Zealand for over six months!
We expected a solo acoustic show but the whole band turned up in full flight. It’s one of those shows could break her in Australia. After all, Mayer played his first show to about 50 people at the Gov & a bit over a year later, to 4000+ across the road at the Entertainment Centre. Next time Brooke turns up to Adelaide, I think we’ll be paying more than $17 to get in.
The 100 or so which caught the show last night were blown away by her performance & Brooke (in grey socks with heals), enjoyed playing it as well, which made it even more special.
Technology hates me! But that's okay, I'll get over it.
I wrote my biggest blog in ages the other night with pictures, links, the works, only to click the "post" button in Blogger & get the "page not found" screen. Of course, there was that empty, sinking feeling in the stomach, followed by anger, then self-disgust for not copying it al into Word before publishing!
Will I retype it? Hmmm, if I have some time to kill over the weekend, maybe!
My Palm is the next casualty, refusing to turn off after a soft reset, but to get out of the soft reset, I need to perform a soft reset, which results in a bit of a circular issue as you can see. The only way out is a hard reset, during which, I wondered just how many days (weeks!), had gone by since I last performed a hotsync. Thankfully, that brought the Palm back to life, but when I try to restore from a backup card, I head back to square one. Urghhh!
IT issues always seem to be a problem at work. Most of it seems to be old equipment & software trying to get along with new stuff as we slowly upgrade everything. Windows 95, 98, XP, NT & 2000 are all on computers with a Novell server & Linux for email. I think it goes without saying, this can't be a happy combination.
I'm not quite sure why, but the Finance department historically deals with all things IT. I bumble my way through some things, applying a bit of logic, checking cables & copying settings to solve issues. It's cheaper for me do rectify some things instead of calling out some expensive technician because someone yanked a cord with their big feet.
However, now anything which goes wrong is expected to be fixed by Finance. When actual hardware fries though, it's out of my league, but people still walk in wondering why I don't jump to my feet, cape flowing from my back, a touch of spandex & a screwdriver pointed to the sky, ready to save the computing world.
When a network port in the restaurant died, I had calls from five staff asking me to fix it. I gave them a number to call to get someone in, but that was too hard, saying they didn't have time! And they wasted how long walking all the way to my office to tell me???
Eventually, I made the arrangements, had someone replace a cable & had everything working before trade the following day. The head chef gave me a call, since he'd been informed of what was going on. I explained everything only to be faced with a long pause, then the reply of "What I really want to know is why the Head Chef has to call the Accountant to solve a IT problem for which we have an Engineering department?!?" Exactly! At least someone understands!
