You can find Leah’s new site online now. There’s nothing real flashy, just pure HTML goodness. Sign up for the e-mail list while you’re at it, whydontcha.

I am totally THRILLED and PSYCHED (yes, it’s worth shouting) that we will be sharing a stage on Saturday, Feb. 21 with Plink, a quiet-music group that features an old mate o’ mine, Brad Derrick, on (I would assume) drums and programming and such. Brad was one of the most talented drummers with whom I’ve ever been lucky enough to play. My main worry now is trying not to embarrass myself. Perhaps I should drink heavily beforehand, thus ensuring an excuse for any pesky mistakes. Unfortunately, we’re playing at a coffeehouse, which may have ramifications for my evil plan.

To all those “MS Doom” (or whatever the Windows virus o’ the week is called) sufferers out there, I feel your pain. Have you thought about using a more secure platform for your personal computing needs?

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p>All the ice and snow had at least one good side effect for me: I designed a new Web site for Leah which you can now find up and working. We are still working out some kinks and stylistic SNAFUs, but it’s pretty much as it should be. Notice the upcoming gigs for February while you’re at it!

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p>Saw a truly fantastic film a couple nights ago, Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece Ikiru. Ikiru came after Kurosawa’s huge success and acclaim for Rashomon, and before his smash hit The Seven Samurai. Ikiru is a much smaller-scale, more personal film, emotionally touching and universally appealing. It is both an examination of the preciousness of life and a lament over the state of Japanese society in the immediate post-WWII years. Most highly recommended.

The house concert last night hosted by The Deej was a truly beautiful experience. Dan and Maria were gracious hosts, and the performance space was cozy and intimate. House concerts are one of the most direct and beneficial ways to support local music, so if you haven’t attended one, you should definitely check in with The Deej to see what’s going on next. And of course, the best part is that you get to help stick it to Clear Channel.

Tonight we’re off to Borders Books in Tyson’s Corner. The show starts around 6:30pm, and is of course free. If you don’t have a copy yet, pick up the album Zero Dollars Spent while you’re there. If you do, get one for a friend!

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p>I am currently working on a Web site redesign for Leah… more news later hopefully.

Is it any surprise that Hollywood doesn’t want you to know there are two sides to every story?

Rehearsals have been underway for our house concert on the 24th. We have a “warmup” gig scheduled at Borders Books in Tyson’s Corner (VA) the evening before. We also did some demo recording of new material at Rich’s basement studio this past weekend, which went well after we straightened out some technical problems. We were trying to troubleshoot a flaky timecode sync unit that Rich uses to lock two Tascam Syncaset 238 machines. If it hadn’t been buggin’ on us, we would have had 14 tracks of warm analog tape goodness. Unfortunately, the gods of recording were frowning on us on Sunday and it was not to be.

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p>I’m going to toot my own horn uncharacteristically since Rich told me I did a good job. I repatched everything to remix the drums down to a single stereo L/R pair, adjusted all the trims and gains to grab better signal, and got us well under 8 tracks. Later we’ll try this again using my digital recording equipment, methinks. I’m like Rich in that I love the sound of analog, but unfortunately when you deal with older equipment you either have to have a techie on staff to keep it tip-top, or you succumb to the lure of digital. Using 24-bit/96kHz generally gets you pretty good results, provided your sound sources are warmed up in advance with either tube preamps or modeling gear. I am a little concerned how we’re going to get the drums into shape, but I think my preference is going to be to simply get the drums on one of the 8-track analog recorders by themselves (thus allowing some mixing flexibility), and then overdub everything else to the digital gear.

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p>Talking Rich into digital is the hardest part of this whole scenario. But that’s because he’s cool. If I were cool I’d have a room full of vintage analog recording gear — unfortunately I don’t have the ability to keep it all running properly so I go the easy route. More on this later….

I have a “updfstab Tutorial” available for use with Fedora Core. You can read the HTML version or get the XML source for use with the Fedora Documentation Project CVS tree.

Yikes, I’ve let time slip away between postings. Got some great DVD’s lately, thanks to my sister and her family’s Christmas gift: Sergio Leone’s masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West; Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs trilogy; and (on the more pedestrian side) Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

The documentaries on Once Upon a Time in the West are fantastic and feature the still striking Claudia Cardinale as well as the legendary Bertolucci, John Carpenter, and a host of other talented cinematographers, actors and writers. Well worth the time, and got it for only $15.

By comparison, T3 only cost me $13 on sale, which seems fitting since a lot of its extras on the second disc are pretty lame EPK type segments. The gag reel is really not that funny. Either it was a very serious set or some studio suit decided the outtakes are too edgy for inclusion on a mass-market DVD. I have to say I’m looking forward to snickering at the Schwarzenegger commentary though….

The extras on Trois Couleurs, though, are staggering, including a commentary on each film by film scholar Annette Insdorf; interviews and selected scene commentary by actors, editors, and producers; documentaries on Kieslowski’s career in film; and several student films he made in Poland in the mid-1960′s prior to his career as a documentarian. Staggering selection of material, and well worth the money.

These days we tend to keep a short list of “things we want on DVD,” so on any random trip to the store we can scour the aisles for sale prices. I did pretty well this weekend, so “that’s that with that,” I suppose. Hell, everything else is going to be appetizer for the extended edition DVD release of Return of the King, anyway.

I had a great time at my mom’s house this weekend helping my stepdad hook up their new home theater. We fished wire through the walls to make everything look beautiful, and it was totally kicking ass by the end of the day. I haven’t quite figured out how to get their remote control working, but I have an idea how to get their VCR to take over tuner duties so that they don’t have to fiddle with an extra TV remote. Gonna check that out later this week. My wife already thinks I’m hiding a second family over there. But it’s not true, I swear! Are you reading this, honey?

Saw a couple good films recently — Northfork by the Polish Brothers, and Heaven by Tom Tykwer, the director of Run Lola Run. Totally different pacing, and the stories have little in common, but both visually striking in their individual ways. Both recommended.

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p>And the Christmas tree is headed for its final resting place, two weeks late of course. This year we’re going to get one with lights built in, because I hate stringing the damn things. My hands always look like ground round by the time I’m done.

I’ve been working on a Stick version of Mark Knopfler’s song The Ragpicker’s Dream. Also, Eleya got me the very excellent Sticktionary by Chris Crain. It’s an excellent chordal reference for all flavors of Sticks.