Duh, yes of course, I caught y’day’s error. My only defense is that my purpose was not to directly design a sun-tracking device, but to test my ability to learn to do so. Um, try to focus on the development process. I see now that, with the proper programming, only one tube is necessary. That cuts down on my Pringles expense and calories to boot.Big Jim was in to get a laptop cleaned up. He’s got one of Arnel’s old notebooks, the Acer, which is now optimized for music. Jim is still doing Karaoke on the beach three nights a week and he just invested a small fortune in what looks to be a top quality show of his own. He’s where I was at the same age, money no object, get the best of everything. He is playing the Castle on Fridays, a place I never cared for, just not my crowd.
But the important part is the change in Jim’s, and I hear also plenty of others, destinations. They are mainly talking the talk I gave everyone here over two years ago. Live Karaoke is a hit and dominated by country music. There is reputedly a show up in West Palm where the jockey completely fakes everything, his microphone and guitar are not even plugged in, and he is making good money.
Still, I have the two year head start and nobody is going to catch up easily. Jim is again looking at a duo, but this time for the right reasons. He’s a guitar player himself and is finally fed up with trying to find another guitarist. Normally I would hesitate to form a band with two strong personalities but I’d make an exception since Jim moves in the right circles—places I, or any non-guitar act, would have trouble winning over.
This Karaoke machine he bought includes 70,000 tunes. I’m leery of that. Of the 8,000 tunes I have, only around 160 are of any real use. Most are the Chinese versions or played on the linoleum. Plus, his new machine will play only the CD+G family of formats while I have tentatively settled on MP3+G. Arnel upgrades many of his midi material by substituting higher quality instruments but this is labor-intensive. The one advantage of midi is the separately editable tracks.
What I cannot find out after hours of research is whether a midi-based drum machine is feasible. In my act, it is a requirement that the drum track stop and start on cue, adding to the impression that the show is live. I’ve got tons of experience working drum machine foot pedals, to the extent a lot of people don’t even notice I’m doing it. The trouble with midi is all the players I will begin playing again at the point where things left off. That is not good enough.
I need midi that returns to the beginning after every stop. There are several good reasons for this, which include not having to program a linear pattern and the danger of getting off beat if the stop wasn’t clean. Will it be another two years before the general music populace knows what I’m talking about today? I could not find even one source on the Internet that could answer this question.
I’ve got a review on Avatar. It’s the sci-fi version of “Dances With Wolves” with the current Indian Land Claims where tribes without any knowledge of mining have located their sacred villages right over the richest deposits. They’ve thrown in the Indian brave become-a-man rituals and right down to the Mohawk cuts. Still, the presentation and special effects alone make it a winner. The landforms are right out of Canaima Park, Venezuela, and that means awesome flying sequences.
The plot gets a zero for novelty, though the movie flows along well. A scientist is killed and his twin brother, a soldier, is substituted to run a bionic robot. He works for the evil corporation but is rescued by no less than the local chieftain’s elegantly slim, young, unmarried daughter. You have to accept, for brevity, that alien beings from a few galaxies over have the same priorities in social structure as human divorced middle-aged women. You know, constantly things on the brain like religion, marriages, mother, tribal status, and teaching men lessons.
Meaningful convo of the day:
She, “Is your cell phone charged up?”
He, “No, I paid cash”
