Dusty Chalk

Dag. Nab. It. [dusty whining]Where is US$3K when I need it?!?!?[/dusty whining] I should sell my Dynaudios, but I really don't want to.

Um...yeah, we don't really have access to your email.

I disagree -- I thought that was a fine bit of writing. He did a shitasmagorific an admirable job of capturing and conveying a mentality that I believe exists in large numbers. I think you just may have shitasmagoriphobia.

The only question is how well it models those things. I concur, a trial is in order. I'll check whether or not I win the lottery tonight. Or maybe I'll just write something myself...

Thank you, sensei.

Want -- will have to read more in-depth later, but...WANT. NAO. Maybe I'll get one of those instead of the Behringer EQ. The hard thing to model is compression and distortion -- once they start modelling well non-linearities in circuits, then I think you'll start seeing the more forward-thinking tone whores board the train (I would think Steven Wilson would be the first to experiment with this) But like you said -- purists will never be fully on board. I have digital synthesizers that think they're analog AND they stay in tune, why do I still have my ARP 2600 and Prophet 5? Because the emulations aren't perfect -- I can't get 0% PWM on my pulse wave on my Nord Modular (the closest thing to the ARP 2600), and the Prophet 5 emulation that I tried several years ago just wasn't working for me (mostly due to setup and quality of the output -- I'll have to revisit it with today's technology and spend more time setting it up right). I believe they also have one for mics, and I believe they're also available as plug-ins.

If one prefers masturbating to pretty much anything else, but would prefer to get laid than to masturbate; and... If masturbating too much leads to not getting laid; Where does one draw the line?

And WRT the technical problems, it is MHO that Steve should ditch the guitar changes, and just stick with one (-ish -- tuning notwithstanding) guitar and run it through a VG8 or equivalent. I have a musician friend who is an absolute master of that thing, and that's what he does. He can make any guitar sound like anything, including making it sound like a bass. He says the only thing that takes some getting used to is that the tactile feedback (feeling the guitar strings vibrate through the guitar and to your fingers) isn't right -- especially when you're using it to shift pitches by non-even-multiple increments (I.E. not octaves, but something bizarre, like pitch-shifting an out-of-tune guitar to a correct tuning, which it can do). His response to that is to just practice more -- if your fingers know what they are doing, then it matters less. Yes, he's that good.

Jim Henson is a god, nothing to be ashamed of.

Apparently, it is 1080p.

I completely disagree -- it's like voting, one vote may not make a difference in the overall scheme of things, but you still have to do it and make your little contribution.

Yup, they played that again, as well as pretty much everything else I would've wanted to hear. (A contemporary version of Radioactive Toy notwithstanding -- I think that's dreaming.) The Philly show actually went on sale first, so we already had those tickets when the Baltimore show went on sale. We also got gypped a few songs -- they didn't play more than the two extra songs that they did play, so I'm especially glad I went both nights. Music-choice wise, Baltimore was the better night; sound-wise, Philly was the better night; set order wise, I preferred Philly for no reason I can pinpoint, other than they played the songs I most wanted to hear earlier; performance wise, it's a toss-up, other than the first section. Oh, and Re: and, "good".

She reminds me of a girl I used to be hot for, took me three years to get over, and was the best kisser I ever met.

Dude, that's not crazy. When Tower had its last annual sale (before they announced that they were closing forever), I know a guy who spent over US$3K. Let me spell that out for you: three THOUSAND merkin dollars.

"One of the wonders of the world is going down... One of the blunders of the world is no-one cares..."

I'm a hearty believer in neutering and spaying. And he's being a real trooper about it. He hates being medicated, but I think that has more to do with the way I manhandle him to get him to open his mouth than anything else. Hope all goes well with your run today -- "Rooh! Rooh! Rooh!" (that's me cheering you on from the sidelines). Yesterday: got up relatively early for me, caffeinated, went to breakfast (Ba Le caramel lemongrass chili chicken -- yum!), drove up to Philadelphia, hung out at Eastern State Penitentiary (pics will be forthcoming) -- got some comments and one hug from a girl who loved my 3 Keyboard-Cat Moon T-shirt (I was practically a celebrity amongst the geek set, but no, did not get laid...yet) -- ate, went to Porcupine Tree/get rained on, drove home. Medicated cat twice amongst that.

I don't think he meant AA...

Yeah, we kept moving about, too, but it was so fucking crowded that there really wasn't a lot we could do. For King's X we actually stayed towards the entrance, behind and to the right (as one faces the stage) of the mixing board. For the first set, we were towards the pit, to the right, right under the overhang (the guys a couple people in front of us got hit by dropped drinks twice, so just under the ledge). The ledge was fucking up the sound for my friend (I was wearing earplugs, so was less affected), so after the first set, we moved upstairs pretty much right above where we were (we're both big fans of Gavin). If I'm ever going to be on the balcony again, I'm going to need a new pair of spectacles -- bifocals suck for looking down. And agreed on the entire concert being fucking amazing. And on the nice to meet you too. Last night we went to the philly show -- my friend had fanclub tickets, so we got let in just a little bit earlier than anyone else. They had -- by far -- the most technical issues I've ever seen. The guitar that he uses to do the solo for Time Flies (? I think) never went out, so we got gypped out of that solo; a guitar came out with the capo on the wrong fret; Colin was off by a beat during a section of Steal Your Soul; there was a funny clicky noise on another guitar. Also, he used a different delay during the instrumental break of Time Flies -- I don't know if he was experimenting, because it didn't phase him at all, but it sounded wrong to me -- it was creating a doubling effect rather than making it sound like two guitars (so it was about as long as the space between notes rather than 1/2 or 3/2 or whatever it was supposed to be set to). That said, the set was still fucking amazing. Most of the problems were in the first set ("The Incident"), so very little of that happened during the second set. He brought out the most amazing guitar -- it had an LCD screen or something behind the pickups. Looked cool as shit. I swear I heard 2500 jaws drop, simultaneously. It was also entirely different, he played Normal (!) and Russia On Ice (albeit an abbreviated version). The only thing that would have made the night more perfect is if he played Arriving Somewhere... Oh, and it fucking rained, and I happened to be standing under a leak in the roof. Felt like there was a black cloud right over my head, personally. The girl in front of me, and my friend next to me both got sick, I think. I didn't, but all three of us got soaked to the point of saturation.

Yes.

Had the cat fixed; found out he tested positive for another parasite, so cleaned his litter and vacuumed his room -- he's going to be in there for another 10-14 days. EDIT: Oh, and went to a concert.

Porcupine Tree Incident T-shirt (they sold out of X-Large while I was watching, of the Tour shirt, which is the album cover -- "Incident" is something else entirely:

Porcupine Tree, was awesome (except for the fat guy rubbing his belly against my butt like he was trying to dry-hump me -- that part sucked), sorry that I was in a weird mood Justin. I kind of hate bars...

Only one cellist, though. I mean, if you're going to go string quartet, there's the whole String Quartet Tribute to... series, including several metal bands (Tool comes to mind; I also think the Joy Division/New Order one would be enjoyed, though they're not metal, they are instrumental [all of them]). Rodrigo y Gabriela? Not cellos, but (a) rawk ( instrumentally.