not_hathor | Reading

That was a trip. :)

K is in school down at Ball State in Muncie and this is Parents' Weekend, so we dropped the dogs off to be boarded, drove down yesterday, checked into a motel, visited with K over dinner, went back to the motel, got some sleep, picked up K and a friend, got lunch, went back to the dorm, visited with K for a while, took her to Walmart to buy Cheerios (and other things), dropped her off at the dorm, drove home, made an unscheduled stop to buy a stuffed horse, and have just arrived home in time to fall into bed so that we can get up tomorrow and redeem the dogs.

We're tired.

But it was a good trip and it was nice to have some time to shoot the breeze with Phil Midkiff on various subjects. :)

Tomorrow, it's laundry and back into the studio to see if I can work on a few things that showed up in the truck test of the current album on the way to Ball State.

Whee!

billroper

This is going to be a complex weekend. But I will get through it.

See you on the other side!

billroper

We had a lovely visit with Amy McNally today. And if you follow Amy's Patreon, you may have seen that we have accomplished the mission of getting a cover for the "Amy & Me" album. :)

There are still things to be finished up, but I should be pushing this out to the duplicator Monday or Tuesday.

And there will be much rejoicing! :)

billroper

I wasn't able to log into the VPN at work today until early in the afternoon, which greatly limited the amount of work that I could get done before that. Nevertheless, I managed to fix one bug this morning in a Zoom meeting (because Zoom works without the VPN and I was able to see the code on someone else's machine), and email worked too, so that was all good.

In the interim, I have managed to finish all of the tweaks to the digipak artwork save for actually having a front cover. I hope to remedy that tomorrow. :)

billroper

I am blessed by having Adobe Illustrator and a fairly standard way of laying out my CDs. This one is a little different, because it's a double CD, but they're all digipaks nowadays and as long as I'm in the four-panel layout, it's really pretty easy to grab the cookie cutter and get to work.

Fonts though. Fonts are a thing. I own a great many fonts and finding the right ones for a particular cover can be a challenge. I went through several iterations before finding something that I felt happy with.

I still need a cover photo. And I still need to lay out the individual CD templates, although that is high on the "piece of cake" scale.

And of course, I still need to do the final trims on all of the songs and the assembling of the masters.

But this is looking more and more like an album every day.

And that's a good thing.

billroper

A two-CD set is more complicated than the average album to sort out. Let's see how this looks for "Amy & Me". (Subject to actually playing this through and listening to the transitions...)

CD 1: Leaning SF (58 minutes or so)

Weekend Away
Counting Up
End of the Line
Canvas
Coal
Time After Time
Postcards From the Stars
Last Ship Outbound
Going There With You
Wise Guys
Starry Weather
Running Down the Stars

CD 2: Leaning Fantasy (53 minutes or so)

Lunatic Moon
Inconstant Moon
Crystal Dance
Make a Joyful Noise
Halloween
Electric Skies
Oz
Counting to Infinity
Happily Ever After
Everything Ends
Shining

So if you're familiar with the material, what do you think?

billroper

Today's mixing session in the studio was followed by a long, long drive to get dinner and listen to the tracks, because the 23 tracks on the album add up to a total of one hour and 52 minutes before any trimming. This feels like a robust enough length and the tracks are mostly sounding good, so there's not a lot more work to do -- other than trying to figure out the track order for each CD.

*That* could take a while, so I'd better get started. :)

billroper

The Cardinals just got the second-best walk-off win of the night against a team that used to be from New York.

This is because the Orioles (who *used* to be from St. Louis) got the best walk-off win of the night against a team that used to be from New York.

The Cardinals were trailing the Giants 2-0 going to the bottom of the ninth. Their offense all night had been an exercise in futility. They proceeded to load the bases with no one out, got a single to score one run, followed by a double to plate two more, and suddenly they had won the game by a final of 3-2.

Pretty good, no?

But the Orioles had them beat. They were trailing the Dodgers 3-0 going to the bottom of the ninth. Yamamoto was pitching a *no-hitter* against them. There were two outs -- one out away from the no-hitter -- when Jackson Holliday hit a solo shot to make the score 3-1 and end Yamamoto's night. The next pitcher gave up a double, a hit-by-pitch, and a walk to load the bases, followed by another walk to make the score 3-2. It was now time for yet another new pitcher who gave up a two-run single on his third pitch to the next batter. If you are counting, you realize that this makes the score 4-3 for an Orioles win.

Quick Pitch will be interesting tonight.

ETA: Apparently, the Associated Press had the story on Yamamoto's no-hitter ready to go, because here is the headline that just arrived from the Post-Dispatch:

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto throws third career no-hitter, first in MLB

Oops!

I hear that Dewey defeated Truman too.

billroper

I have now got remixes for half of the "Amy & Me" album.

I have also replaced eight of the seven vocal tracks that I intended to replace. This is because the amount of P-popping on the Chambanacon recording of "Counting Up" was about to make me insane. And since it turns out that we *also* went in direct on both guitar and fiddle for that concert, swapping out the vocal track was an option.

The Chambanacon tracks were the first ones that I mixed down when I started playing with this idea last year, so they require the most massaging to get them into the shape that the latest tracks are in. The good news is that I'm getting better at this as I go along.

And that's important, since I still have half the set to go!

Anyway, if you have picked up any of the original versions on Bandcamp, trust that the album will be different when released. :)

billroper

I have merged the "big" project that my coworker and I have been heads down on for the last several weeks into the "huge" project that we calved it off from. The code for a couple of subsystems has been substantially cleaned up and a number of new features added, as I kept proposing small bits of additional feature creep while we were in the area. These were features that our customers were asking for, so I don't feel bad about this particular creep.

The huge project is moving toward release and now our changes have joined this giant barge as we maneuver it towards the locks. This is a good feeling. :)

billroper

Calvin the Dog went to his first puppy class today with Julie acting as his primary handler. Some progress was made there and tactics provided, so that was all good.

Then we got home and Calvin promptly peed on the floor once and pooped on the floor twice.

*sigh*

Win some, lose some.

billroper

I recorded replacement vocals for two of the three tracks for "Amy & Me" tonight, leaving one to go. Yay, me!

Recording the final track won't happen tomorrow night, because the priority mission is taking Calvin the Dog to his first puppy obedience training lesson. I have my fingers crossed, recognizing that no miracle will happen in one lesson. Right now, I just need the puppy to stop terrorizing my younger child...

One of the other things I did this evening was to remove the X-Touch Extender that refused to power up at all when I was in the studio on Monday and replace it with an open-box X-Touch Extender that arrived today. Happily, it has powered up correctly and is doing the things that a working piece of gear does.

I am still not sure what part inside the older piece of gear went wonky, but it is surely not something that I have time to look into right now, because I have an album to finish. :)

billroper

And the Cubs won tonight's game over the Braves by a final of 4-3.

When I stopped to use the toilet on the way out of the park, I left my open scorecard sitting on the shelf above the trough. The fellow next to me commented that it was an ugly scorecard in the sense that the Cubs had scored four runs in one inning and done essentially no hitting during the rest of the game. I allowed as to how this was true, but a win is a win. He agreed.

billroper

The "Crosstime Bus" album is missing the boat for OVFF for a variety of excellent reasons. And, as I've said, I've been working on this album for 15 years (I think), so the fact that it's delayed doesn't mean as much as it might if it were a new, hot, and urgent project.

I did, of course, get an album out this year with my good buddy, Clif: "Liftoff to Landing". But that is the very *first* album I've ever recorded. Heck, all of the material on the "Crosstime Bus" album is 20 years old. It would be nice to do something new.

(And, yes, there is some newer material on the "Live in Germany (mostly...)" album. It doesn't *nearly* begin to exhaust what's available to record.)

I do, of course, have the "Amy & Me" digital tracks from concerts where Amy McNally was good enough to accompany me that I posted on Bandcamp. But that's 16 tracks and I suspect I can't actually squeeze that onto a 72 minute CD.

I have one more concert that I haven't mixed down yet, which is the Capricon 2020 concert that I did with Amy, just before the pandemic. But I had had an unrelated cold shortly before the convention and my voice was not in the best of shape for the concert. I went back to listen to it anyway.

And then I realized that both my guitar and Amy's fiddle had been recorded direct to digital, not through a microphone. This meant that there is no vocal bleed on those tracks. And *that* means that I can replace the vocals.

There were eight tracks in that concert. Eliminating "Running Down the Stars", since I already have a cut of it, that's another seven tracks which, together with the 16 tracks that I already have, makes enough material to press this as a 2-CD double album.

I've now replaced the vocals on four of the seven tracks. I have three tracks to go, followed by remixes on the entire assembly.

I can do this.

I think. :)

So here's the proposed track list (in no particular order), three of which are duplicated on "Live in Germany", one on the yet unreleased "Crosstime Bus":

Make a Joyful Noise, Canvas, Coal, End of the Line, Inconstant Moon, Counting to Infinity, Weekend Away, Crystal Dance, Electric Skies, Going There With You, Halloween, Happily Ever After, Last Ship Outbound,
Lunatic Moon, Starry Weather, Time After Time, Counting Up, Everything Ends, Oz, Postcards From the Stars, Running Down the Stars, Shining, Wise Guys

Let's see if this is something that anyone wants to listen to...

billroper

Guitar Acquisition Syndrome is a terrible thing. And -- contrary to popular belief -- there *is* such a thing as "too many guitars".

Last weekend, I went down to Tobias Music for their Taylor Custom Event, where they showed off a lot of custom Taylor variants. This was on Sunday, because the Fretboard Summit was in Chicago on Saturday, so the store was closed for the show and many people were in town. A bunch of the Taylor guitars that had been there came out to Tobias for the Sunday event.

I had gotten there early, because I wanted to take a look at the 517 and 717 Gold Label guitars that released recently. They are very nice guitars. Of course, I already own a 717e Builders Edition that I bought back in 2019. And while I was looking at those, the Taylor sales rep pulled a guitar out for me to look at. It was *also* a very nice guitar.

After the show was over, I went into the Taylor room to check on a model that was hanging on the wall there and confirmed that it sounded like I expected it to. And then I asked the owner, Paul, if I could take another look at the guitar that the Taylor sales rep had pulled out for me to look at earlier.

A few minutes later, I was sitting in a chair with that guitar, a 517 Gold Label, and a 717 Gold Label, playing them against each other to see what everything sounded like. And I liked the guitar that the sales rep had pulled out better.

It happens that the last person to play that guitar had been Andy Powers, the Master Guitar Designer for Taylor. I was the next person. And the guitar went home with me.

I cannot tell you what that guitar is right now. I'll get around to it.

In the meantime, adding that guitar to the collection caused me to exceed the maximum reasonable (or perhaps unreasonable) number of guitars that I owned, so one of them would have to leave. It is my second-oldest Taylor, the 710ce-l9 short-scale limited edition with an Englemann spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides. It is a lovely guitar, but I have not played it very much at all since I got the 717 (also spruce and rosewood), so it has gone down to Tobias Music on consignment and should eventually make its way onto their website.

And the new guitar is sitting in my office now, along with my 326ce and my 326 Baritone-8.

I have a lot of guitars.

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise posting in

dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Profile

not_hathor

March 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Sep. 14th, 2025 02:22 pm

My 'Peeps'

a.k.a Some of the Folks who Still Talk to Me

Reading

And We're Back!

Everything All At Once

Visiting With Amy

Work Interruptus

Layout Night

Running Down the Order

Mix Me a Strong One

Baseball Is a Funny Game

Progress Report

Merge It

First Class

Two Down, One to Go

Cubs Win!

Amy & Me

GAS and Consequences

Code deploy happening shortly

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

Profile

March 2025

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags