Gecko Bloggle

Hi.  Been eleven months.  Any of you still out there? I occasionally post on Twitter now, and maybe post a little more often on Facebook, but mostly I just.

I just what? I work. I cycle. I sleep. I surf. I make stupid jokes at my lovely wife, the doula/writer/teacher/mom, and watch my kids get huge.  17combined years of childhood combine in the house to create one hell of a mess sometimes.  Also, we have rats now. Rats are odd.

I occasionally drive around in

Hi.  Been eleven months. Any of you still out there? I occasionally post on Twitter now, and maybe post a little more often on Facebook, but mostly I just.

I just what? I work. I cycle. I sleep. I surf. I make stupid jokes at my lovely wife, the doula/writer/teacher/mom, and watch my kids get huge. 17combined years of childhood combine in the house to create one hell of a mess sometimes. Also, we have rats now. Rats are odd.

I occasionally drive around in other people’s cars. People keep giving me cars, or asking me to drive their car, or park it somewhere. I sound like a mule, but I’m totally not. Just near the airport, and the sort of person not likely to destroy your vehicular baby. Though there was that one time I went WAY too fast through the tunnel, but I was young and foolish, as opposed to now. I’m older.

Holy crap you guys, I’m almost 42 now. I’m not going to ask where the time went, ’cause I know where it went. Away.

There’s some sort of format radio button that’s called Aside, and I suspect if I played with it even once, I would probably want to use it all the time, and wonder why Thunderbird/Facebook/Twitter don’t also all have this wonderous feature.

So I’d better just leave it the heck alone.

Instead, I’ll play you a little of what I’ve been hearing in my head while cycling the 10k to/from work every day this Summer up until, the uh, the third day of Bike-To-Work-Week. To be fair (to me, not to you) there’s been some reasonably good excuses for driving my dad’s car to work for the last two days, but they’re more about reason (I’m getting a cold? I have to get home faster than 30+ minutes?) and less about anything approaching what I’d normally do.

Ramble bramble scramble, get on with the music. Alt-J album An Awesome Wave simply blew my mind, and continues to do so, a full two months of heavy rotation later. I’ll let it speak for itself, but I wanted to say that I’m pretty sure this the most beautiful control and playfulness I’ve ever heard in what is, at best, a very weird voice.

And I’m a big fan of weird vocalists.

Thanks for stopping in and feel free to say hi.

other people’s cars. People keep giving me cars, or asking me to drive their car, or park it somewhere. I sound like a mule, but I’m totally not. Just near the airport, and the sort of person not likely to destroy your vehicular baby. Though there was that one time I went WAY too fast through the tunnel, but I was young and foolish, as opposed to now. I’m older.

Holy crap you guys, I’m almost 42 now. I’m not going to ask where the time went, ’cause I know where it went. Away.

There’s some sort of format radio button that’s called Aside, and I suspect if I played with it even once, I would probably want to use it all the time, and wonder why Thunderbird/Facebook/Twitter don’t also all have this wonderous feature.

So I’d better just leave it the heck alone.

Instead, I’ll play you a little of what I’ve been hearing in my head while cycling the 10k to/from work every day this Summer up until, the uh, the third day of Bike-To-Work-Week.  To be fair (to me, not to you) there’s been some reasonably good excuses for driving my dad’s car to work for the last two days, but they’re more about reason (I’m getting a cold? I have to get home faster than 30+ minutes?) and less about anything approaching what I’d normally do.

Ramble bramble scramble, get on with the music.  Alt-J album An Awesome Wave simply blew my mind, and continues to do so, a full two months of heavy rotation later.  I’ll let it speak for itself, but I wanted to say that I’m pretty sure this the most beautiful control and playfulness I’ve ever heard in what is, at best, a very weird voice.

And I’m a big fan of weird vocalists.

Thanks for stopping in and feel free to say hi.

Crap.  Blew right through yesterday.  Forgot all about it until I was drop-dead exhausted.

It’s cold here in Vancouver, which is rare. We’re not used to it.  Okay, *I* am not used to it.  I’m getting over a cold-ish-eque thing I had starting Thursday afternoon.  I’m *mostly* over it, I think.  Never really turned into a cold cold, but was one of those ones that was going to drag me into the abyss for a good week or so.  Still need to be getting more sleep than I have been, but I’m working on it.  Arwen’s got something now, but we suspect it’s just migraine (“just” I said, like it was no big deal).

Some friends came over last night who’re working on having a baby.  It was easy for us, but for them?  It’s work, and money, and time, and heartbreak.  Here’s to hoping they do okay this time around.

Craig Fergusson is currently having a nicely frank (and yet utterly uncomfortable/hilarious) conversation with a Doctor.  He just yelled “You can BREAK your penis?” a few times in a row, which is funny, and I’m really glad CBS lets him push the limits of what you can/can’t say on the air.  I don’t know whether or not CBS actually cares, but I like that for all the sexy flirting and stuff Craig does on the show, he was equally fascinated and alarmed by the conversation.

Oh wow, been listening to the audio book William Gibson’s Zero History and it’s been bending my head.  He writes in a world that I’m equally afraid exists and yet hope is there ’cause it makes walking down the street so much interesting when you’re in a metropolitan space like Vancouver.

Last week, the kids and I were trying to get the PVR going (it’s a hard disc recorder with a DVD burner in it, which comes in handy when you wanna take that tape of the kids singing in the xmas concert and turn it into a DVD for others to watch, AND you wanna be able to record Glee for when your wife’s out…  That’s handy.  Also handy for those “Oh hey, this thing is on TV, and the kids would like to see it, I bet.”

That was the case with some live concert footage of Bobby McFerron from a few months ago.  I’d totally forgotten I’d recorded it, (it’d been on PBS at 1am or something) and when I hit play on it, the kids both went from giggling to literally sitting slackjawed, flabberghasted by what was happening onscreen.  Sure, if you grew up in the 80s and were pummeled by overplay of D0n’t W0rry Bee H@ppy, then hearing McFerron might cause dread.

Watching with the kids gave me new ears, and gave me some new stuff to try next time I’m waiting for the service elevator to arrive at work. Seriously.  Awesome room.  Cement walls, square, 13 foot ceilings.  I get in there and beatbox, and the reverb in the room is RIDONCULOUS.  I’ll have to get a recording of it some time. I can actually get a nice echo loop going along the lines of the Future Sound of London Deseo remixes.

The Future Sound Of London – FSOL Deseo Reconstruction #2 (Radio Edit) – The Deseo Radio Mixes

So, look forward to that.

Also, new picture of me up on the Mo’10 page tonight.  ALSO I need to upgrade some pics from the camera for NON-moustache purposes.

g’nite.  Stay warm.  Hope your lights stay on.

Oh hi.

Just got in the door from an afternoon at Arwen’s mom’s place, and we’re sitting here in utter silence.  The kids are asleep, the cat is ignoring us, and the late night planes haven’t started coming in yet (their takeoffs and landings are actually pretty spectacular in the summer, when they really get going.  This picture is day 13 of Movember (couple more pictures and a donation link are somewhere on this page under Mo’10).

Made a mistake while at Beth’s today.  Got on a scale.  Been a long time since I got on a scale.  Creeping up higher than it was last time I was on one.  Of course, I’d spent the afternoon and evening putting away a few pounds of food, I’m sure, but still.  Woof.  Gotta lay off the takeout/mall food when at work, and not just for financial reasons.  Been looking at the daily photos I’ve been taking this month to mark my moustache, and it’s been somewhat alarming to see how blotchy my skin is.  I know it’s bad lighting, with a flash, *right* before going to be, so how shiny am I think I’m supposed to look, really, but still.

Actually, most of it’s probably just the picture flip thing.  I think I’ve talked about this before, that most people don’t like photos of themselves because their face is on backwards from what they see in the mirror a few times a day.    Maybe I’ll try that again, and you tell me which looks like me to you.

Camera 1

Camera 2

wow.  I bet the formatting on that’s going to be atrocious.

So yeah, ate a bunch of food, and then we decorated these cool little sugar skull things Beth bought and filled.  Pictures will be in the post once I figure out how to get my text where I want it.  Nope, I give up.  Went to the Farmer’s Market (Farmers?) at Nat Bailey stadium today, which was at least as big at the Summer market at Mole Hill, minus all the shitty “Oh hi, yes, lovely day, blessed to be living here, yes, management and board are causing us to move out, yeah, no sure, we love it” politics we used to have to deal with while downtown.

Bought some of the black bean homous from the bean guy (yay!) and the boys got actual real honest to goodness maple syrup on snow (okay, crushed ice stuff) on a stick.  It was extremely messy by the time our two monsters go through it, but they certainly seemed to enjoy it.  That reminds me, there should be a single maple leave thingie in a bag somewhere, ’cause I bought three of those, and Arwen and I only had one each.

Later, maybe.

Yeah, so last night was an odd experience for me.  Don’t know if it was caffeine overload, caffeine withdrawal, or good old fashioned physical exhaustion, but holy WOW was I uncomfortable in my own body right before crashing out to bed.  Just everything hurt, and itched, and was generally wound up.  I slept like a log last night, crashed on the couch for another hour this morning, and fell asleep in a chair at Beth’s (woke myself up with my own snoring, and then did some dishes).  Why is it always so much easier to do dishes at someone else’s house?

Here’s some sugar skulls.

"Despite what Amanda said, the icing was quite tasty" - Ripley, 8

I’ve got one in there around the 8 O’clock area.  I’m sure CakeWrecks looks forward to me following my bliss as an icing piper.

That’s it for tonight from me, gentle readers.  On the “but am I dying?” front, my finger seems to be getting better, though it still looks scary as heck.  I think the top and bottom layers have fused together again at the nailbed, and I try to ignore that I have a slightly frost-bitten feeling at the tip of my finger.

Give it six months, and it’ll be fine, I’m sure, but I might use crazy-glue as a temporary fill in the meantime (if I could figure out some way to do it, I’d probably include a zip-tie (zap strap? what’re those things called?)

My buddy who was in Malibu until about three weeks ago might be going back again next week, at least until we figure out how best to use him.  $Foundation purchased $Company1 back in Jan/Feb, and he doesn’t see where his Art Direction and storytelling is going to come in when it comes to a 2d-to-3d film conversion company.  I know the feeling, since I’m the IT manager, and don’t know where I fit in with a 90% Mac office right now.  Not my forte, y’know? (Didn’t I say that yesterday, too?)

Nice thing about visiting with Arwen’s family is that her sister’s partner is this very low-key, grounded, softspoken person who doesn’t seem the type, but has been talking about learning to spin, and bringing up bands (artists?) like eDIT and Burial.  I would LOVE to go to a club night somewhere playing something like that.  Maybe it’s more that I wish *I* could do that, so I instead want to help anyone else who’s interested in doing it.  Maybe it’s because I think if THEY can do it, that means maybe *I* could do it too.

Alsoplusand… if you want to hear the first overseas podcast we did since Jonny Vancouver went to China (of all the unmitigated GALL), please visit http://www.geckotemple.com/podcast and enjoy my utterly blown-out microphone (tip: don’t use Skype, and then record it if you’re also participating, ’cause I think it somehow managed to record me at DOUBLE the input, or something – you’ll see what I mean the second you hit play on episode 36).

Oh, and if you’re on Twitter, come follow me in my grumblings about BCTransit, and weather, and you kids get offa my lawn. @zenrender

Nightie night, folks.

If I type sixteen more words, I’ll hit an even thousand.  Cool huh? Yep.

Not so much.

So, National Blog Posting Month wasn’t exactly a action-packed thrillride adventure, but it’s good to at least feel guilty about not writing every day, so I have some reason to take note of the world around me, and at least think “Hey, I should probably write about that tonight, so I have something for Nablopomo.”  Oh well.  I think I only missed three or four days.  Not too shabby.

Today, during my ride to work, I was listening to something from an EP by Burial, and at the 3min mark of the first of two 9min tracks, I closed my eyes for a moment (I’d been reading Twitter feeds, and for some reason, sitting sideways on the bus was making me a little queasy), and was suddenly and completely taken away, lost in the track.  That hasn’t happened in a long time for me.  Music is something that keeps me motivated when I’m cycling, keeps me sane when I’m overloaded by the maddening crowds, and keeps me focused when I’m at work and there’s too many things going on that threaten to knock me off the task at hand.

But it’s been a while since music just pulled me completely out of what’s going on.  Not even an escape from, but instead an ejection of the moment at hand.  Just gone.  Used to happen when I was making music.  I’d just put together a bunch of noises, and bleeps and bloops and drums and samples and whatever the hell else I happened to have handy and then hit play and started slapping loops together.  I refuse to challenge myself to make another album, not just because I feel let down when I don’t do it, but because it reminds me of why I quit.  Not because we had a new baby in the house.  Not because I started a new job, but because at some point after my second album I actually started to get noticed, and it freaked me out.

Not because of the attention to the music, but because I didn’t know what I was doing, so I felt like such a sham.  I had the NinjaTune label ask if I could spin my own stuff, and I couldn’t so that was out for opening for someone (and I think I would probably just pass out cold if I had to stand up in front of a crowd and play something *I* made, even if most of what I made is just arrangements of sound, and not what I consider composition).  A few months later, I was asked if I could open for a fairly well-known electronic artist in Vancouver, and again said no because I didn’t know how to “play” my stuff live.  That spooked me away from live shows, and then on top of THAT, CBC2’s New Music Canada  (that’s the online component of the stereo wing of Canada’s Broadcasting Corporation) played my least-favourite song from my first album TWICE in as many weeks.

That was all becoming more and more intense, and while it was exciting, it was also scaring the shit out of me, ’cause I kept wondering when the unmarked helicopters of audio engineering were going to show up and take away my mouse so I couldn’t do it any more because I wasn’t a “real” musician.

And then I joined the one-day music group, Immersion Composition Society (Neptune Lodge).  If you can call participating once “joining.”  I mean, I met Tricky once, even shook his hand, does that mean I’m in his band?

The point is to make a brand new piece of audio in a single day, and play it for a group of other folks that evening.  You could do anything you wanted to, using whatever method you wanted, but you had to go from nothing to something in that one day.  It was terrifying, and exhilarating, and inspiring to hear the sorts of amazing weirdness that geniuses like Dave Cheong can come up with in a day.  But mostly, I felt like I failed.  Felt like what they were doing was awesome, and what I was doing was crap.  That everyone had something to say about the other pieces (myself included) and there was discussion and dialogue, and then when it came to what little bits of audio lint I’d scraped together, the collective response was “Huh.  Well.  Next?”

It hurt.  What made it worse was that it’s not like anyone was being a dick or anything, they were just responding with whatever they’d felt, which was, it seems, not much.

Haven’t done a full single track since, and that was almost eight years ago.  Woof.

Back to where I started. Buhbye biker dude.

In other news I shaved off my Movember moustache.  Planned ahead enough to get one last photo before I went two miles up and nuked the place (it’s the only way to be sure), didn’t actually look at whether or not the “before” picture was wildly out of focus before I grabbed the shaver and went crazy on the ‘stache.

Whoops.

Oh well, thanks for reading, and if you’re not someone who’s commented before, drop a line and I’ll add you to my RSS feeds.

Most people can make their eyes pop out, but can you make your GLASSES do it?

HelLO, and welcome to another episode of “I’ve Reflanged the Barkolounger” with your host, Rupture Q. Throngboggle PhD, PTSD, NPC.

Tonight to change thing up not at all, I’m going to tell you about some surfing I did.  One of those things I do all the time is try to figure out how to get things to connect to stuff they’re not already connected to, and this often leads me to wondering how I get popular communications device A into protractive retrogrunion B.

This evening, when I was in transit home, it occurred to me that my Blackberry has Bluetooth, and my Netbook has Bluetooth, and I’ve heard about people using their Blackberry to connect to the Internet when they’re in the middle of a field or something, so I thought to myself “Are we home yet?  Did I miss my stop?  Have my ears popped from coming out of the underground tube of Canada Line yet?  Florence and the Machine is better than you think it’s going to be in the first four bars of any song.  I wonder if I can get my Blackberry to use my Netbook’s wireless connection to get onto the ‘Net instead of the other way ’round?”

“Wait.  Dude.  What?”

“Yeah, no, really.  Remember the Nokia N-Gage, with the totally ludicrous phone functionality?  It had software that gave it a Bluetooth Internet Gateway thing, so it stands to reason that TCP/IP over the Bluetooth stack should be possible.  For free.  Also, I want pizza pops.  Red Eyed Treefrogs are the perfect fridge magnet shape when they’re all tucked in.”

“You’re right, I should try that when I get home tonight.  Or maybe Briggs would know.”

“Shh. Can’t talk.  Pizza pops.”

About 45 minutes of Googling, installing, reconfiguring, de-un-re-anti-con-platifguring, and just plain looking it up in field repair guides and stuff came up snake eyes.  Not even snake eyes.  No dice, no table, no casino, you’re voted off the island, and Pluto sends its regards.

Probably because any of the Blackberry devices that are worth having have built-in wifi, so trying to bridge via Bluetooth across another device would be extra steps, and would mean the BB would be dependent on another device in the immediate vicinity.  Goes against the grain.  Causes seizures in succulents.  May lead to thoughts of super-suede.

So, what else?

Stumbled across Percussion Lab tonight while looking for some information about JDilla and the mind-blowing Wonk Funk mix by KPER.  They have it, but they also have not only a whole schwack of other stuff that I’ve never heard of, but lots of other world-class DJs and set that might have been around for the last ten years, but I wouldn’t know it.

Sad that radio in Vancouver just doesn’t play anything like this.  Of course, if my ability to make anything I like at Body Shop be instantly removed from the shelves (they had a liquid soap that smelled EXACTLY like fresh-cut grass, and after I bought my second bottle, it was gone) applies to music, it’s probably good that I don’t hear much that I can stomach on radio.

I think this is the first shot I've had that actually show's the 'stache.

So yeah, ignore the double chin (I come by it honestly, I assure you) but take note of the little Lemmy going on down there.  That’s not a goatee, that’s my mo.  It’s getting hi-…

What the hell’s going on with my hair?  I know I’m shooting through my wide-angle lens at a 90°, so that’ll make weird “tall angle” shots, but still.  Th’hell?

When I had long hair, it was always kinda sticky-outy on the sides, and that’d make me insane, but this little “wisp of hair at the tip of my egg-shaped noggin” is a bit much.

Everybody but me got the H1N1 shot today.  Tate was asking where the “bugs” were in his arm.  I’m not sure whether or not he was asking where the shot was administered, or where the pre-defeated virus was in his body now.

Low-key day. Made breakfast for the kids, which included a smoothie. We opened up the fridge, crammed banana, blueberries, an orange, some baby carrots, two icecubes, and some milk* into the cup thing for our brand new immersion blender we picked up at the Supastow yesternight.  Time to fire that baby up, and see what it can do, yeah?

Oh great and powerful OZ was it loud at 8am. Milk with bits of blueberry was flying everywhere, it was making a huge mess, Tate started yelling “WoooOOOOOOooooOoOoOo” in tune with the blender (are kids trying to do some sorta noise canceling when they yell in harmony like that?)

So yeah, after I cleaned up the cutting block thing, and poured it into cups for the kids, Ripley scarfed his down, but Tate (who’d wanted the smoothies in the first place) wasn’t convinced after maaaaybe one sip.

*Didja spot the mistake I made there?

Watched TV with the kids and alternated between telling them they couldn’t have candy at 9:30 NOR could they play with the computer.  I’m the meanest dad in the whole wild world.  Ignored my Saturday Blackberry calendar item that’s been there for about a year and a half that says simply “GO DO SOMETHING” at 10.  Was probably a bad idea.  Rubber boots and big puddles would probably have been a good idea for the kids.

Lunch was grilled cheese sandwiches with ham in ’em, but the little tiny sandwich griller iron thing must’ve not been entirely cleaned from the last time I’d made french toast, ’cause lunch had a distinctly cinnamon-y vibe.  Just… odd.

Also.  When was the last time I made french toast?  Couldn’t have been too TOO long ago, ’cause I think I’ve only used it about six times, ever.  Still, ew.

After lunch, Arwen took the kids out to Richmond mall, and I slept.  Well, I washed a load of laundry, and put it in the dryer first, but once THAT was done, I lay on the couch “watching” Aliens.  Seems that I’ve programmed my brain to knock me out cold if anything directed by Ridley Scott is on, ’cause I made it to the landing where the eggs were before I was out, and woke up for a bit just in time to catch the chest buster scene (kept hearing “Hello My Baby, Hello My Darlin” in my head) and then crashed out again until the very VERY end of the movie.

Kids home, I made spaghetti with tofu chunks (Tate’s fave) and Arwen headed out into the night to go visit with the ladies, and do ladies things.  Good for her.  Glad she’s out for an evening to have some fun.

9 is a very cool movie.  Looking forward to whatever Tim Burton’s doing next.  There wasn’t a huge amount of emotional impact for me, but I was so busy being sucked into the world they’d created, I didn’t have time to feel much of anything in the post-apocalyptic world populated by Matrix-esque badguy machines, and Little Big Planet-like main characters.  So pretty, but so sad an environment.  It was like HDR film meets videogame action, with a nicely “but what does that mean?” story.  Didn’t suck.  Style for the win.

Alien Resurrection is on.  Arwen and I saw this as a date in 1997 when it came out, and I remember the gootastic ending, and both Arwen and I walking outta there feeling like we needed a shower.  Geiger was missing from this one, let me tell ya.

Oh, and Shaw Cable Systems?  Quit putting editorial content in the first ten words of your synopsis for the Guide for movies and TV shows.  I’m tired of almost always having to push the Info button to get more plot than “Sigourney Weaver returns as tormented…” or seeing Daily described as “Irreverent skewering of…” while leaving out who the guests are.

With some of the movies, they also will say things like “This deeply terrible film…” or “Unintentionally funny cheese…” and similar things.  Look, if my job was to write that stuff up, I’d probably start putting in my own editorial comments too, but I’d put them at the end.  Maybe even a spoiler or a warning “Don’t bother…” “People over 14 will hate this…” but I’d put it at the END of the descriptions.

While I’m providing an irreverent skewering of Shaw, why is the volume on their OWN AD for their own 30 year anniversary set at slightly below 10% of everything else?  It’s like one of those screamer things on YouTube you see once in while, when then try to get you to turn up your speakers really loud, and then suddenly have  really loud scream, and put a monster picture on the screen.

So yeah, whoever’s in charge of the volume, way to go there, cowboy.  Doing a heck of a job.

Oh wait, gotta go.  Dave Matthews is on SNL tonight.  It’s like Tom Hanks lost his mind and stole Sting’s voice after swallowing Kermit the frog.

While angry.

I got nothing for ya today folks, so I’ll just say a couple really quick things:

• My half brother in law is back in hospital – think happy thoughts.
• My dad’s in Mexico so I ended up doing a long distance support call
  • Last month, I did the same thing (remote connect) for my mom, in Juba
  • So then I had to try to troubleshoot the video camera of my half-sister in-law, too.
    • While THAT was happening, the emergency number called me, Vancouver studio was “off the map”
• Had to zip into the office tonight to apply the technician proximity effect
  • Worked like a charm.  Everything was running again by the time I sat down at my desk.  Disaster averted.  Fire fought.  Action taken?  None.
• Looks like my buddy Nilo might be heading home to LA in the near future.
  • I’m going to miss him a lot, he’s been a good friend, and I don’t have many.
  • Not sure if that’s because I lose them, or just don’t make them very quickly.
• Ghost Whisperer is officially my guilty pleasure.  Stupid show, but entertaining, and Jay Mohr cracks me up.
• Jonny Vancouver called tonight with a “humline” request, and I had no idea, Arwen was pretty sure she recognized it.  Told Jon to phone Delilah, ’cause she’d know something like that.  She heard the Chocolate Song by Buddy Whatshisname and the Other Fellers (true band name) ONCE, and a year later sang it verbatim, complete with odd key changes in the third verse.
  • For Real.
    • I don’t have many friends, but stuff like that is why I love the few I have.
    • PS: Duncan got the song title together before anyone else.

This evening I was bombing around Hintertubes looking for clues about a new album by Burial, and was reminded of how I found this weird little bubble of sound in the first place.  Rather, I was reminded how I did NOT find this artist.  I didn’t find them on the radio, or a magazine, or even through a friend, it was something I faceplanted into during a dig in the databases of a record label I knew nothing about.

I think it took me about ten minutes to figure out whether Burial was the name of the song or the name of the band, ’cause there was so little information about this song (it was Archangel, from the album Untrue).  What was really fun was that the person who is Burial doesn’t do interviews, and doesn’t really talk about the process, and probably doesn’t perform live very often (and if he did, I dunno if it would work).

I tend to become loyal to labels, which is odd for me, considering how I’m not really crazy about large corporations when it comes to their treatment of their lesser-known musicians.  Maybe it’s the whole sellout effect.  As soon as they become big, I’m like “ew, too commercial” or something, maybe.

Or maybe I just happen to like this one artist, and don’t know what I’m talking about.

I’m wandering around trying to find a way to get me from A to B, and instead of having some slick way to get me to what I really wanna talk about, I came off slightly snobby and pulled some data (or lack thereof) outta my butt.

Sorry about that.

Ignore the stuff about Burial, I have no idea what I’m talking about.  Burial’s good though, and there *IS* a new album coming, so I’ll be checking that out when it drops.

Here’s what I wanted to say.

About a year ago, Duncan tipped me off to an hour-long mixed set called GlitchBitch, and I was floored.  I’d never heard music like this.  It was different, it was broken, it was funky, and it often had strings in it.  All good things to cram into one set.  After a little digging, I found a playlist, and found out that about half of this amazing set was by edIT.  More digging turned up the album Certified Air Raid Material, which is a stellar piece of audio.  Not quite “all killer, no filler,” but about 75% of the tracks blew the top of my head clean off.

Turned out it was something being called Glitch-Hop, and that edIT was a member of the GlitchMob in California.  Crazy.  That album set up camp on both my iPod and my Blackberry so I was never without those tracks.  Around the same time I started trying to find more of this stuff, and found the wonderfully bent mix “Wonk Funk” by Kper, which had some edIT on it, but also had some interview talky stuff, mentioning J-Dilla, who I’d never heard of.

It’s been about four months of listening to Wonk Funk while cycling and commuting, and I’m still not sick of it, but I can feel it *finally* starting to become a little too comfortable, so it’s time to start digging into this mix, and see what bubbles to the surface.

It’s like finding the food of a new country, which at first is shocking, but once you get used to the flavours, you find that there’s one spice that you don’t recognize, so you figure out what that was, or at least what it might be, and then you try to figure out whether or not you enjoy a lot of it, or just a little.  Then one day, you meet a person who knows all about that sorta food, and they whip up a whole meal of stuff you’ve never heard of, and it’s delicious.

But after a while, you start wondering what else that spice might be in, where else in the world that spice might be used, and that leads to the next step.

I think I stumbled across what’s moving me on to the next step tonight.

I’m pretty sure I’m moving backwards in the timeline on this musician, but I enjoy doing that.  Figuring out how they fit into the audio cosmos is part of what’s so enjoyable for me, ’cause it means I get to find out what “country” that spice is used in, and that’ll take me to wherever’s next.

Next stop: Flying Lotus.  Maybe not new to you, but certainly new to me.  There’s a few albums out, but what caught my ear first was the EP “Reset.”

I’m getting on that bus.  Whee!

I’m tired today, even though I slept through most of Spy Kids 2 this afternoon.

Spent two hours doing groceries, watched a movie, and then we went to Ikea for wandering (whoops, $100) and dinner before coming back, putting the kids to bed, and hanging with the beautiful and talented MoxieSnacks.

Today blew by.  Pweroom.  Zorp.  Flurm.  Ka-done.

Wide angle lenses do weird things to my eyes (and/or glasses)

Oh, and I’m starting to get the moustache that I’m going to be coping with for the next three and a bit weeks.  (See photo, attached).

(Right now, Arwen and Moxie are talking about holding their breath while underwater, and so they’re closing the backs of their throats and talking, leaving them sounding like Edith Anne from Saturday Night Live, or perhaps the Professor from the Simpsons, who’s actually Jerry Lewis.  So, to recap: the two women in my living room right now are doing Jerry Lewis impressions.)

Oh holy shit.  My blog.  The main page blog (I should probably pull that, since I’m not looking for work from the outside world), and the Podcast site were all GONE for the last 15 minutes.  The blogs were still there, but they were all asking me to enter the name of the blog, and my email address.  Total amnesia.  The good folks at Fused Network are freakishly awesome and fixed it up and I’m back.  I’m sure I’ll get a thing about my ticket in a bit, if I don’t close it first.

But first, I’m going to go back up the databases on all six of the blogs on this domain…  Just. In. Case.  *cough*

In music news, I’m nervously excited that Massive Attack has a new album coming out soon, and last night, without really trying, I managed to lock down some pretty tight beats using Torq and it was embarrassingly easy.  Maybe I’ll have to get one of them thar Torq Xponent things next time I have… oh… hmm… $750… whoops.  Maybe if/when I see one on Craigslist some time.  One day.

But yeah, “Housecleaning Mix” should be something doable in the next few weeks, for sure.

So, we moved.

We told you that, right?  We didn’t?  Well, we moved.  4 bedrooms instead of two (one for each kid).  Front and back yards.  Washer & dryer (drier?).  Dishwasher (which isn’t hooked up – don’t ask).  Something called “Laths and Plaster” or something like it, which means that hammering is a very dangerous thing.  Drilling, doubly-so.  For less than the increases the folks at Mole Hill were calling “fair.”  I won’t go into it, ‘cause Arwen did it better than I did.  Still on the board though, which should be interesting after the upcoming AGM.

It also is about, oh, let’s call it… 80 blocks away from our old place.  Which was, I think I’ve mentioned, about six blocks from work for me.  This means my morning commute is no longer downhill at idiotic speeds for four minutes, it’s now about 20 minutes of uphill followed by 15 minutes of downhill, with flat bits at the middle and end.  The flat bits and NON-nonstop uphill are all thanks to the utterly faboo cycling maps provided by the good folks at UBC’s Cycling Metro Vancouver site.  I highly suggest using the Restricted Maximum Slope feature, which’ll use the topographical information to suggest a route that’ll stop you from having to pull over and yarf into someone’s flowerbed.

Right, yeah, so I’ve been using a new cycling computer I bought at Mountain Equipment CoOp, and tracking my time, average speed, and distances since I started doing this crazy ride.  Well, since August 5th, at least.

Here’s how I’m doing so far (not bad for an old guy like me, who hasn’t done any REAL riding in about 20 years).  I just looked up my commute from 12th and Commercial to my first ever real techie job, out near where Coquitlam’s Ikea is, and realized it was 19.5km and took about 1hr15min based on 15km/h.  And I’m winded by my new 11.5km?

Anyhoo, looking at my latest data (yes, I’m using a spreadsheet, nerdz), here my stats:

14 Trips (Been only going to or from work in a given day, no round trips, YET)
17.3km/h Average Speed
10.9km Average Distance (mostly due to some idiotic navigation moments)
0:38:02 Average Time

Not too shabby, for an old fart like m’self.

Oh, and IF your particular reader can cope, here’s a little playlist of the sorta thing I tend to wake up to when cycling. That first track? I swear my muscles don’t have a *chance* to whine when I hear that.