I should be in Colorado now. June will be wasted waiting around, unless I do some recording or other small projects. Bingo paid for brunch at the bakery whose air conditioning is cold enough for me to bring a book along. I have plans for the largest most powerful known A/C unit to be installed in my Florida room soon. Did I describe how there is always a slight radiant heat indoors on all metal or wooden structures in this kind of climate. But it is preferable to frost half-way up the walls when I was growing up.Billy-B and I have arranged for independent rehearsal next week. Two items I detect is that the man is under some kind of time pressure and he would definitely like this band to become a full-time project. I’m okay if the money or fame are commensurate but everybody slow down and remember when I responded to the ad, there was nothing to hint this band would happen any faster than usual. That means three months to get ready and it has been three weeks.
This is the type of band that needs promo. Three videos on my camera are the sum total so far. I don’t know how to record live drums. Billy-B mentioned he’s buying a digital camcorder and didn’t he also say he knew how to mix soundtracks? This band is well-funded so we’ll accomplish more than Hippie-talk about CDs and demos. By interesting coincidence, when I told him about the nasty attitude I got at Willy’s, he reports the same thing happened to him right there three years ago.
“Was it,” I asked, “some screwy lady friend of the band?” “That’s the one,” he replied, “told me to get out.” I said, “That’s also the owner’s girlfriend, someone told me.” I think we can scratch Willy’s off our Xmas list. I then proceeded to step through all the menus on the new recorder mixer. One of the most important functions of a mixing board is the ability to overdub one section of one track, a process called punching in and punching out. That’s why I find it so strange that is the most difficult operation on Boss and Tascam recorders. I’ve spent three hours trying to erase one extra measure of drum beats accidentally recorded on track 5/6, and finally packed it in for the day at 4:30 PM. Up yours, Roland.
This is an electronic dry erase tablet sold at Brookstone. My review: too expensive, no memory card, no computer interface, and all or nothing erase. Also for sale are toy helicopters fitted with cameras you pilot with your Android. Isn’t it uncanny right after I start something new like robotics, a year later everything I planned starts appearing on the market before I get to invent it. I should ask Wallace, he’s an expert on detecting mind control.
I went to the movies. My observation that 3D movies were weak is shared by others. The expression goes, “If you can’t make it good, make it 3D.” So I chose “Battleship” and was nicely surprised. The first thing you notice is the Hasbro toy logo, the second thing is this isn’t like any other movie. That alone made it worth it. Great special effects, lots of action, easy on the romantic scenes, great navy scenes, and if you can accept radio can get to the nearest stars and back in a few hours, plausible physics.
The humanoid aliens have metal exoskeletons and their weapons, for once, are mortars and saws instead of death beams. Props include teetering radar dishes, WWII veterans, and the USS Missouri. Once again, the egghead scientist is a geek-freak type. The refreshing uniqueness of this movie has to be the influence of Hasbro, who own the game “Battleship”. Let’s hope the sequel isn’t “Play-Doh”.
ADDENDUM Here's something you never saw before. It is a LiDar photo, and this one is of a remote area in the Honduras on the Caribbean side. I was in the area and they don't call it the Mosquito Coast for nothing. Light radar is nothing magical, instead of radio waves, it uses the much shorter wavelengths of light to build a picture of whatever it is aimed at. This photo shows a stretch of jungle that may have grown over ruins of a city.
And that city would be Ciudad Blanca, or "The White City". It is the legendary birthplace of the Aztec snake god which, if history repeats itself, is chock full of gold. The photo looks like cloud shadows to the untrained eye, but it is picking up very slight differences in elevation under the tree canopy. Not to be confused with ground penetrating radar that I looked into in the early 1990s.
This picture got my attention because of the small white dot on the river just right of center. I tried to CSI it but it came out just a blur. Probably another Club Med or something.
