mclii

In case you haven't noticed, this weblog hasn't been updated as of late. Please update your feeds to http://feeds.feedburner.com/markclea or go to http://markclea.blogspot.com

Or check out the latest headlines below:



I haven't wrote in a weblog for quite some time, and I'm hoping that changing to a new one may spark a bit more writing. Writing certainly is therapeutic.

Ultrasound at 7 weeks 4 days, and a cat toy convention under the stove, damming up water overflowing from the dishwasher.

On HDTV:

I know I've thought "boy, HDTV, what's the big deal?" On Monday I saw HD hockey for the first time. Now that's the big deal. If all hardware has something called a "killer app", HD hockey is the "killer app" for me and HDTV. I watched the first period of the Stanley Cup Finals on an LCD HDTV, and then watched the rest of the game on our standard definition set at home. First thing I noted was, holy crap, how much color information is thrown out on a standard definition broadcast? Standard def is so muddy and gray in comparison. Standard def also has much less detail information in it, which is obvious (720x480, or more commonly 640x480 vs 1920x1080). Then, more subtly, I noticed the audio is much different too. Both sets had only 2 speakers in them, so I was just  hearing a stereo field, but the HD audio was so much more lively, so much more atmospheric. The sound wasn't quite like "I am there at the game", but it was much better than the standard def broadcast. Here's how I've started noticing a standard definition metaphor: YouTube is to Standard definition TV as Standard definition TV is to  HDTV.

Pitcher Pages Pitcher Pages...

Just as a logging as well, Brandy saw a turkey while in our backyard this morning. Weird that it was in the city, and inside of a chain link fence. I wanted to go out and take a picture of it, but I walked around the neighborhood and couldn't find it. I never got to see it.

I just posted another new instrumental called "Experimenting with a boat in the slow current." I've been working on this the past couple of days like I've been obsessed. I put it up at the mcliimusic myspace page. This one is pretty grungy, just the way I like 'em.

This time, instead of wasting a huge amount of time drum programming like I normally do, I edited the heck out of this. It's only two minutes, and the song is super simple, but I edited it like there was no tomorrow. I really wanted to add a vocoder vocal part to it (which is where most of my editing was), but I couldn't get a satisfactory result. I'd love to get a real live vocoder though... and I'm not sure why. I'm sure the whole thing would get super silly, but who knows, maybe I'd like it, and keep it all the time. Basically, what I did, to no avail, was have computer text-to-speech amplified, and run through vocoder software. By itself it can sound kind of cool, but I just couldn't edit and mix it properly to sound musical at all. And that's the trick. If I could manipulate the program live, as the song was playing, I'm sure I would have been able to figure something musical out. But this, no this, no this wasn't the case.

I'm also working on other stuff, but none of it's recorded, or branched out into parts. Let's just say I'm digging this Epiphone Valve Junior like crazy. I used it on this song as well. Both guitar parts, and bass were recorded with it, and I couldn't be happier with getting my "mcliimusic" sound with it. I see more off the cuff, screw up laden songs in my future. Very ephemeral.

Ah February. The month of buying. Bought a new old iPod. Bought a snowblower after clearing a driveway took 2.5 hours, with another huge snowstorm looming that night. Tough. I didn't care how much it cost, I was pretty much stuck on wanting to get one.

March seems a little more interesting so far. Went down to Northwest Arkansas (and the home of Wal-Mart) for 5 days (even though we drove through a blizzard on the way down). It's amazing seeing different economies, different climates, different soil. It's all different even though we try to make it all the same.

Saw Brighten at the New Loft in Madison last Friday (first time I've been there since it relocated years ago). Brandy and I saw Brighten with Eisley and Fair out in San Francisco, and they were pretty cool. I don't normally obsess about their type of music (kind of pop-punk oriented), but their songs are pretty amazing to me, and I am obsessing about them a bit. The songs seem to kind of fit the mood that I'm in, which is kind of this melancholic positiveness. The lyrics to their song "More Vacations" are really a perfect example of melancholic positiveness. "...We're taking pictures so we don't forget names or faces and medications... Don't trust anyone anymore." Probably one of the best two minute songs I've heard. Anyway, going to the Loft was weird. Brandy and I fit right in with the parents watching their kids, hanging out towards the back, just kind of taking it all in. It seems like not so long ago that I was going there with my friends, and I was young just like they were. Amazingly, that's the most packed I've seen a club in Madison for a long time. It was great to get part of the new Brighten album too, since it doesn't seem like it's going to get released thanks to Victory Records' (blast from the past record label seems more like big business now than a record label) lawsuit to the label they were going to be on, which has since folded I believe. Brighten sounded pretty good, though the sound was a lot less great than in San Francisco. Lots of standing waves and general muck and mud.

In more music stuffs, I just found out that Ken Andrews is going to be playing a lot of Failure songs on his upcoming tour. He said like a 1/3 of the songs will be Failure songs, from all their records, and like a 1/3 to 1/2 will be new stuff, and the remaining being his other stuff (Year of the Rabbit, ON). This is probably the closest to a Failure reunion as it's going to get. Too bad I'm not going to be able to go to any of the shows in the area at the end of March. Just too much going on in that time frame... a lot more important things...

I just posted a new instrumental I've been working on for quite some time now to the mcliimusic myspace page. Unfortunately, the download links seem to be going wonky right now, which is really too bad. The Sea is a simple structure, yet still sounds as sweet to me when I first started playing it, so that's kind of cool.

That's right, in between trying to repair an inkjet printer from work, trying to clean up my turntable, repairing my turntable from breaking it from cleaning it, digitizing old vinyl, and organizing stuff, I had time to work on some new music and finish a song I've had laying around for a while. It was a blast laying down the bass line to this sucker (that Epiphone Valve Junior gets a great bass tone too, so that's cool). I've had the framework done for quite some time now, but I knew I needed to finish it. Instead of focusing on working on my 3/4 ditty I've had in my head for weeks now, I bounced back and forth, and eventually decided I just needed to put the finishing on The Sea. So I did.

I've decided that if I had some sort of ability to play drums, or lay drums down without programming them, it'd be much easier to create and record songs. By far, drum programming takes up the most time, and it kind of drags on too long sometimes.

I just got a Refurbed 60GB iPod Video through Apple (it was in the area on Monday, but trying to actually get the device was like a 3 day experience). I had such good luck with my wife's refurbed iPod Mini (I bought it because they no longer made the model she wanted), that I didn't even think twice about buying a refurb unit. Well, I thought about it twice because it's still quite a bit of money for one of these things, but still cheaper than a lot of things (like a furnace, or even a new iPod video 30GB).

My first thought on seeing this was whoooo boy, that thing's thick. It's about as thick as my 3rd generation iPod, and that's only 20GBs. It weighs about the same as well. I thought, for some reason, that the 60s would be just as thin as the 30s, but it seems like pretty much the same shape and size as the 20GB iPod I have (which I'm never getting rid of). Not that the size is a bad thing. I plugged it in (don't like the USB, would rather have Firewire), and instantly restored and reformatted the iPod with the latest firmware. That process took about 8 minutes. Then I loaded 27.7GBs of my music on there (which is almost every CD I own), and it took about an hour and a half. Kind of slow, but eh... what do I expect, right?

I mainly got this iPod for the size of the hard drive, the gapless playback feature, and with the notion that maybe the video stuff might come in handy in certain situations. I'm still on the fence about watching pocket sized video in your hand (it can literally be quite the pain in the neck), though I'm going to test that out a little more with some Chad Vader episodes I downloaded from Google. That guy's hilarious. Maybe hooking it up to a TV would make me understand the video portions more.

I got a case for it (which I'm returning) and a vent mount for the car. For some reason I thought getting a vent mount would make using the iPod in the car a bit safer. Hmmm, I don't see that happening. Nope, I think it's still going to be to set the iPod before you get going on the road, as the navigation on it certainly isn't very easy to do while doing something else (for instance, walking). I think a perfect solution would be a voice activated navigation system for it, though I'm sure there are so many tech hurdles to jump that it's just not feasible to do.

So far, gapless playback rocks, the QuickScroll feature is difficult to use (in that it doesn't seem to kick in very easily), and converted YouTube videos look like, well, YouTube videos. I thought squishing those videos down with a different codec would help the visuals a bit, but it still looks about the same. Usable, but still way too lossy for my taste. Just the nature of the codec they use in conjunction with Flash Video Files I guess. Too bad they don't use the H264 codec because that codec is awesome.

Ugh, January. It was kind of a crap shoot.

It started out with good intentions, kind of getting out of the exhausting and sometimes anxiety filled holidays, and holiday parties. It took a while to get, but I did get that Epiphone Valve Junior head that I had been looking at. I even built a speaker cabinet for it. I then was able to sell my Marshall JCM800 to someone who will really use the amp the way it's supposed to be used. I also sold my PSP. Both on Craigslist. Pretty easy, free, and not really too much of a hassle. I even got a new computer at work, which is one of the new Mac Pro's with the two Dual Core processors in it (Quad Core). I got a new LCD screen there too, which is really nice. Widescreen is great for the crazy illustrations I need to do, or the video editing I need to do in Final Cut Pro. So is the mighty mouse for scrolling around the infinite abyss of exploded drawings. I learned how to change the battery in the Beetle after it died a couple of Monday's ago. It was probably not a great time to be messing with that stuff, considering what sort of mind frame I was in, but I was able to change the battery, and drive around with a duct taped steering pump reservoir for almost a week. This past week, I even ordered a refurbished iPod video 60GB.

But something disastrous happened in January, something I can't even really describe, and really haven't been able to figure out how I want to write about it, or if I should even write about it. I was debating, honestly, to even continue writing here, and just start my own WordPress server, just for keeping my own internal weblog; my own diary, which no one would read but myself. An easy way to keep up with myself, since I'm not sure many people read this stuff anyway. I suppose something even easier would be to just set up a bogus email address, and email my diary to myself for logging. Easy enough, maybe I'll do that anyway. But... maybe this is just another corner I need to get around in order to get back to some sort of normalcy (though that'll never happen), or to be able to work through it further.

While my Grandparents were down in Texas for the winter, which they've been doing for quite some time now (at least 10 years), my Grandma passed away--on January 18th. Two weeks ago. I've been trying to deal with it ever since. Sometimes it's tough, sometimes I don't understand, sometimes I get really confused, and sometimes I can't deal. I found out at work, while I was working on something pretty in-depth, and it was so bizarre, like I was living in a totally different world. My response to it was really canned, almost scripted, though really I was in an immense amount of shock. It took about an hour for it all to sink in. Luckily, I wasn't at work anymore. That night was even more difficult. Then from that point, it's been sinking in ever since.

They say there are many different stages of grief and loss. I probably experienced all of them, and then some. And they were certainly not in order. Right now, I have no idea what stage I'm in. I don't really care. I'm just trying to go with the flow on these things, and try to do what I can. There was a weird stage for almost a week that I've never experienced before. I couldn't listen to any of my music. Nothing seemed to soothe my ears. I'd listen to a few measures of anything, and it just wouldn't work. I'd shut it off. I think my thoughts were just too loud for music to do anything. I listened to a lot of talk radio in the car--public radio mainly. I tried listening to Eisley, Chavez, Failure, anything, to no avail. This past weekend, I picked up Imogen Heap's record, "Speak For Yourself" and I started listening to it on Monday. So far, it's the only thing that I've been able to listen to with any sort of listening cued in. Other stuff will hopefully come with time... I can only assume that it will. Yesterday I listened to a little bit of Eisley, but quickly switched back to Imogen Heap. It's all about turning corners I guess.

Well, I suppose I've done enough turning for right now, and my own dealing. It's time to go back to my mindless task of adding album art to most, if not all, of the tracks in my iTunes library for the iPod video when it comes. My prediction with the next iPod that comes out, is that cover flow will be built-in, like the iPhone has. When that day comes, I can only assume that I'll find some way to fork over more hard earned cash for something like that... but, it's all just "stuff".

I sold the Marshall JCM800 today. It's kind of tough to see it go. I'm taking consolation in the fact that it's probably going to be used a whole heck of a lot more than I used it in the past couple of years. And, it's probably going to finally be re-tolexed like it should have been a couple of years ago. Also, it's going to a quality player that's on a totally different level than what I consider myself on. He's going to use the amp like it should be used; with the guitar just plugged straight into the amp, and cranked. I don't know the guy, but in the hour I heard him play, he really had an intimate relationship with his guitars, which is really rare these days. I know I don't have that sort of relationship with my guitars. Let's put it this way, when he picks up one of his guitars, he probably sees a whole lot more than a piece of wood and some strings. He probably sees it as years and years of experience with this one piece of hardware, that's not really like hardware to him anymore, if it ever was.

I used craigslist to sell it, which I've never used before this. It seems like a pretty good setup. No listing fees, and only dealing locally. I listed my JCM800 and my PSP, and got emails within hours about them. Kind of like an instant garage sale. I'm selling both of them because I don't really use them, and know that others would probably get a lot more use out of them than I would. The PSP is sweet, but I think I'm forming the opinion that I don't like portable gaming. It hurts my neck. No, I prefer my gaming to be tethered to a TV somehow. I used the PSP more as a web browser than anything else. It was pretty clunky, seeing as how it has no keyboard. If there was a PSP keyboard even on the horizon, I might consider holding onto it, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.

Epiphone Valve Junior... Finally.

Picked it up yesterday after Brandy and I walked around the UW campus, walked up Bascom Hill, and went up to the 18th floor of the foreign language building (I can never remember the name of that), to see the view. It looked like a little toy city, with cranes moving buildings around.

I thought, for sure, I'd just use the 1x12 speaker cab that I had, and call it a day. Unfortunately, it sounded pretty foggy, but it was still usable. I hooked up the 10" speaker that was in my Behringer combo amp, and it was pretty bright sounding. I thought it'd be great if the sound was somewhere in between the two. I decided that it'd be best to combine the two, so I spent all day today making a speaker cabinet out of MDF, and some plywood. Now I'm super fatigued and exhausted.

I just used the speakers that were in those two cabinets, and hooked both speakers up in parallel. So, no more 1x12 cab, and no more Behringer combo amp.

The cabinet an "open" back cabinet at 4 ohms. It's a great mixture of low fog, and brightness. And guess what? It's dang loud. The amp is only 5 watts, and I basically put it at about the 1/2 setting. Not 1/2 way up (12 o'clock). 1/2 of where "1" would be, if there were numbers on the volume dial. It sounds great.

Know anyone looking for a 50 watt 800 series Marshall head? I know someone who has one for sale.

I know it's not the end of the year yet, but I probably won't log before the end of the year, so here it is from post number 400:

Went to Badger Hockey Showdown featuring Wayne State vs Western Michigan, and Northern Michigan vs Wisconsin. Claimed to want to start a college hockey podcast (obviously never materialized). Watched Buffalo '66. Put some old Failure live shows on DVD.

House of Freaks tragedy, and the history of weird music becoming normal (the story of the first CD).

Kept a log of mileage on "the land yacht". Broke the 20MPG barrier with Tank #6.

Found a way to slow down audio on a computer, without affecting the pitch, using applescript. Then realized it's easier to just open a file in Quicktime and use the A/V Controls window to alter the speed. This is good for figuring out how to play songs.

Max got his ears cleaned. Max gets stuck in a basket, Kasha waits to be served at the dinner table.

Got an Elliptical Trainer which was, like, 5,000 lbs. De-wired, and re-wired coaxial cable in the house.

Bronze Corydora #1 dies. Debated on what the most human way to euthanize a fish was.

Paid the least amount of money ever for a car when buying a used Turbo New Beetle. Tried to start a travelogue with it but failed. Tried out an iTrip with it, and was disappointed. Worked on fixing the cassette deck in it, until it worked acceptably.

Went to my first waterpark. Couldn't decide if I was wearing the wrong type of swim trunks, or if I was too heavy to slide down the water slides without a tube (kept getting stuck). Finally heard some of Jeff Halland's project, Hal Scanlon. Found out about Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys, and never really followed up with it.

Tried to make a vote for a 5 hour work day (no one listened!).

Updated the mcliiportal to include rotating header images, Focus. information, and some mcliimusic stuff.

Found a Picture Formosa "record review".

Met our friend's boyfriend (now husband) who's from Scotland. Played one round of "cereal box". Debated capitalism vs socialism.

Wondered about dreams, and goals.

Pulled my back shoveling snow. Watched the olympics (long live curling on TV), and the Frozen Tundra college hockey game (the one at Lambeau Field) on TV. Really started digging into some funny Stephen Colbert stuff.

Drove through a ton of snow in the New Beetle.

Our trees got a trim from the city. Pulled my back again, shoveling snow.

Went to a wedding. Did some videographing.

Saw Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Thought about making a podcast of music I'd digitize from tapes or vinyl. Got stuck on some songs, debated on how I can "present" other songs done in the future. Wondered why nobody just "hangs out" anymore.

Saw Walk the Line. Debated about country music, and why I disliked it, but now like it (depending on the artist).

Got a PSP. Tried to lock the cats out of the upstairs of our house with gates.

Watched The Squid and the Whale.

Thought about building a MythTV setup. Built a MythTV setup. Recorded some shows. Trashed MythTV setup. Brandy got Tivo for her birthday.

Went to MadisonFest, and saw a bunch of bands and people I haven't seen in a bunch of years.

Listed my JCM800 amp for sale. Didn't sell it (but sold the speaker cabinet).

Met with an old friend from my Osseo childhood, and went to a game demo of a game he created called Cineplexity, during the Wisconsin Film Festival.

Pulled my "superfan" status of college hockey. Wisconsin won Hockey National Championship.

Wanted to retire.

Picked up Eisley CD, Marvelous Things.

Brandy and I went out to San Francisco. I'm still not a good flyer, but SF is definitely a cool city. Saw Eisley, Simon Dawes, Fair, and Brighten.

Got new cell phones for free (Motorola RAZRs). Didn't like the fact that the OS on the phone is crippled and is very difficult to get photos off of.

Read A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906" by Simon Winchester. Drooled over Dipinto Galaxy 4 guitars.

Had squirrels in our attic. Beetle turned 111,111.

Got an Alesis Multimix8 mixer for my computer, and some guitar hangers for the wall.

Thought about the sounds of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system.

Painted our dining room.

Attempted to make a word "Guitapolidextertech". Didn't work out too well.

Picked up the Gathering's record called "Home". Listened to it on repeat for a good long while. Picked up Fair's "Best Worst Case Scenario". Talked about the lack of CDs I buy now.

Got a kayak. Wondered about poison ivy.

Found out we'd need 5.6 planets if everyone lived like me.

Fixed our sump pump.

Grew a goatee.

Played through a Fender Blues Deluxe amp. Started playing with a new tuning on one of my guitars. The "real" drop-d tuning.

Tried to paddle upstream on the Wisconsin River.

Scanned an old Picture Formosa picture.

Saw Clerks II. Went into a fog for nearly three months. Turns out I have migraines, but I'm not going to take any medicine for them. Last Bronze Corydora died in the fish tank.

Debated the "validity" of my college degree as the program folded.

Laptop hinge broke, and is now duct taped open.

Rolled my own Mii, and wanted a Wii.

There it is, the year that was logged. Too bad a bunch of stuff didn't get logged. It's just too hard to keep up I guess. Maybe I'll try harder. Maybe I won't. I wish I could condense my thoughts better, and it wouldn't take so long to log.

Is this Mii, or Mii? I can't really tell, and I don't know if I'm even close. No, I don't have a Nintendo Wii, but anyone who wants to spend a couple of hours on making a Mii (like I did), can follow this link to joystiq and roll your own Mii. Just click on the Play -- Mii maker link on the page for a full screen version (Flash SWF files morph to the size of your browser window).

The hinge busted on the TiBook laptop yesterday. Duct tape secures it pretty well, at least while it's open. There are little wires in the hinge that connect the LCD panel to the logic board, so I'm very aware that if the panel slips just right, it could sever the wires and make the screen useless. The computer has ceased to be a laptop from here on out, and will be used as is, on a desktop. It's been a good run in laptop mode, but I'm definitely not going to be shelling out $350 to get the hinge replaced. It's just not worth it in my eyes. In the picture, I'm currently surfing Eisley's Tales of Trolleywood journal; they've just finished recording their second record with Richard Gibbs of Oingo Boingo fame.

--

As a note, I hope to set aside a bit of time every week to post a picture, recapping something, anything. This'll do just fine as a number one. Hopefully this'll work out ok, as this weblog has kind of turned kind of dormant.

It's official. My college degree means absolutely nothing. Not that it meant that much to begin with.

"Due to financial and personnel considerations, the Dance Program's Interarts and Technology option was terminated at the end of the 2005-06 academic year. Future resources will be redirected to expand and strengthen the dance major program."

While I was in school my classmates and professors debated, theorized, and debated, (and postulated), what our major meant in the first place. I'll go for the literal definition of "between the arts and technology". What it truly meant, was not much. The major was very marginalized in the grand scheme of things, and now isn't even a blip. It was kind of removed three or four times, from a top level major. We had to fight and sign petitions to even get a certificate that said "Interarts and Technology" on it at graduation. Most IATECH majors have dance degrees, and hey for some, it works. For me, I just get odd looks when I say that's my major. "You dance?" And I wonder why I question everything I do with my professional life-- if it isn't blatantly obvious.

I took an interest in it, since it was the only major at the UW with creative audio and recording as part of the major. There were only two classes associated with this, and I learned a lot, but it was mainly in regards to older technology recordings, and odd synth and MIDI diagrams. The other parts of the major were a bizarre mixture of dance, performance art, theatre, computer art (imagine what you think of when you think of really bad 3D computer art), video art, and seminars. Lots of theory and art theory. Honestly, none of it was very up to date.

This is all kind of a perfect metaphor for the way I've been feeling for the past month. Marginalized, undefined, melancholy, and pretty damn confused. Now the question is, did I go through that major just to work a desk job for the remainder of my professional life? I'm certainly not having much fun with it these days-- how to change, how to change? How to network, when the network never existed in the first place? The magic 8-ball says, "Outlook not so clear".