Linux, musical road-dogging, and daily life by Paul W. Frields
 
Category: <span>General</span>

For the second time in a few weeks, I’ve had a really weird e-mail returned to me (it’s going to Hotmail because that’s where my jennyboyle-dot-net service forwards my mail). If there’s anyone reading this blog, who’s using AOL and might have my jennyboyle-dot-net address hanging around in their system, …

Thanks to a helpful message on a listserv where I’m a member, I got a link to The AX84 Project, which is all about homemade tube amp building. The documentation is fantastic and also a lot of knowledgeable people there tell you why turning a 50-watt amp up to deafening …

We finally put some deck furniture up, so now we are fully prepared for summer cookouts! I had a fantastic weekend just having a lot of family time (much of it spent running back and forth to Wal-Mart, but hey, wherever you can get it). The baby was in very …

Congratulations to my friends Brent and Leslie, who just had twin boys last night, Nicholas and Alexander. I haven’t seen Brent since my college years but I still hear about the big news when it hits the papers! Also, I fixed the link below to the Triumph film, which is …

A nice practice day today. I didn’t do many fundamentals, but I worked on doing some improvisation, trying to hold down a moving chord structure and keeping time with the left hand, while letting the right hand find a melody. Then I worked on trying to actually craft a melody …

I am really boggled by my new VF-1. I’m going to sit down tonight and read the instruction manual so I can figure out some programming strategies for it. I did manage to get my EQ’s set up last night to ensure that my bass and melody sides sound roughly …

Today we’re bringing the baby and going to Charlottesville to visit some friends who just moved there. It’s funny, I’ll feel like I’m skipping class if I go down without getting a lesson from Greg. ? Over the weekend we saw The Others and What Women Want. The first movie …

OK, so I discovered the POD thing is documented on page 5-4 of the manual. But it’s still pretty cool. I set up a bank of patches where I can start and overdub a loop, play over it on the same side without overdubs if I like, and then let …

From Hell was much better than I thought it would be. While not exceedingly true (except in subject matter) to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, it at least retained the same mordant tone. Johnny Depp was very good, as he usually is, and Ian Holm was …

Eleya and I joined Netflix and got our first three movies today: From Hell, The Others, and What Women Want. Can’t wait to check them out, and more importantly, see how Netflix does over the next couple of months. We can watch movies at a pretty good clip so we’ll …