Looking down the empty street from my patio. This is extremely rare, no traffic or parked cars but my own. This once bustling community is kaput. Again, the size of the trees tells you this place has been here practically forever. Which is more than can be said for the condo market. There are 40,000 unsold units, or a seven year inventory, on the market just in this area. This has an extremely beneficial effect (unless you were a speculator, in which case up yours) of depressing house prices. I noted there is yet another 4/2 for sale in Hollywood for under $100,000. This amounts to panic dumping.
My dermatologist is so economical, while I was in for my follow up today, I asked him to remove several blemishes that have irked me for years. Including a big brown mole above my right knee you could see from a block away. This was the only thing I had to do all day long and now I am bored for the first time in a year or two. Ha, that is also a dig at people who reach the same plateau but can’t do anything—you know who you are.[Photo delayed] So I didn’t go to the bookstore, I didn’t practice, I didn’t read at home, I didn’t go shopping. I didn’t make chicken stew, I didn’t go watch Karaoke, I didn’t go for a bike ride and I didn’t go chase women downtown. I did nothing. I came home and raked the cat. What? Let me explain.
The cat does not have fleas so stay with me here. She does love the flea comb. This is like a science experiment. What part of the cat can I rake the most fur out of? I mean, aren’t cats supposed to be self-cleaning? Instead, I can grab a handful of nearly felt-like fur off the rake and ask Pudding-Tat if she has any idea what this would do to someone with allergies. But like she cares? I mean, they can always move out.
It is just me and the cat in an empty trailer park. The security camera shows one or two pedestrians a day. This would make a great documentary, the death of a trailer court. By that I mean the lost sense of permanence when the time finally comes. There are actually four people left here, but Adam and Jose are gone. It is dreadfully quiet, something you don’t experience enough of in the city. It is also dreadfully hot during the days again. By May 21, it will also be hot at night.
For a while I was in the shop. That is also quiet. No customers. I went on YouTube and watched dozens of video clips on any subject that interested me. YouTube is no better than any other computer search mechanism. Everything leads to you kindergarten level writing on every subject. The lame leading the lame. I would love to take one corner of the Internet and devise a system that searches for compound words and phrases in the correct context. But it is like some kind of damn secret to find out how the system works.
Don’t misunderstand, it is only right that Google and other searches protect their algorithms. What I want is a descript of the Internet, not how those outfits do their searching. My favorite example of where they screw up is the phrase “dog food”. Today I got 247,000,000 hits. After scrolling through the first two pages (most people don’t even bother past page one), not a single hit was on the correct topic. Yet I estimate 15% of English nouns are compound terms. Post office, rental car, rock band, take-home pay. Google and Yahoo! searches on these words flood you with pure nonsense.
Oh, and the new Google advanced search? What a joke. There is something really wonky over at Google HQ to allow that crap. The Boolean OR does not act in conjunction with the phrase text box. Consequently, most searches fall for that old programming error whose name I forget. It is the error where you trap yourself with two OR statements that give you either all results or no results instead of a single result. Any way, it is pitiful that the most advanced computer searches can’t handle a simple phrase like “dog food” and come back with the right results. Predictable results.
I’m back after a six hour break. Okay, not really a break. However, if you don’t like technical discussion, be warned that is what I’m about to do. I am proud that my musical show is evolving (unlike some) and those changes are not always in line with my plans or predictions. The best sub-examples are obvious, like how I once thought I required a guitarist, or that I would never sing. Well, I don’t really sing during my act because my background music is totally pre-recorded and the most I do is sing along. Now the technical part.
Some months ago I looked into removing vocals from the music. All I could find out is that the software was so expensive they would not tell you the price without getting your life history as a down payment. I’ve decided to try to do it myself. My MP3s are created with a freeware program called Audacity and you can be assured I have not been using it for nearly a year without learning a thing or two. After a little research, which I’ll cover hear because it can be hard to find on your own, I’m going to try a poor man’s vocal removal.
It works like this. MP3s are stereo recordings. My PA system is mono. By splitting the recording and inverting one of the tracks, then playing them back together in mono, the vocals are said to disappear or nearly disappear. I will get back to you with the results. Either way, we’ve come a long way from barely understanding how to burn the CDs to now modifying them in ways and for reasons not imagined barely a year ago.
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