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Posting pics isn’t enough. I ran accross this little gem, Dave Smith Instrument’s Mopho and I am totally hooked. I am also salivating over a Tetr4 but it costs twice as much as the Mopho. Here’s review of the Mopho.

So what is so exciting? True analog sound in a small box without spending thousands on Moogs or similar. I am excited. My only gripe is that it is monophonic. Also in the running are the Waldorf Blofeld and Virus T1 Snow.

Oh man, they call it “gear lust”. What I really want now is a Moog Little Phatty.

Oh, this weekend I am going camping with Nate to Lake Ozette. We’re hoping to get some fishing in. I am totally stoked to get some fresh air, quiet, and camaraderie.

We have been looking at apartments, houses, and town homes pretty intensely the last few weeks. We have found some potential places to move to. One is in Fife and another in Federal Way. It has been fairly discouraging in that things are really expensive. The average price of a three bedroom apartment has ranged from around 1100 to $1600 a month. If I wanted to live in Bellevue it goes much more then that.

We’re hoping that our house sells soon so we can move. We need more space and it’d be nice to take the ferries out of the equation. Unfortunately everything affordable is still a fair drive away from work. If I drive, it will cost me a tank of gas a week but the commute will be about 30 to 40 minutes. If I ride the bus, it will be about 120 minutes but cost me the equivalent of two tanks of gas a month.

While I lament the crappy rental market, I wanted to share with you the awesomeness of perhaps my next keyboard: Yamaha Motif XS8.

While I am packing my giant laptop onto the commuter train and I’ve pretty much exhausted everything except trolling Facebook and reading some books, I really want to start making music on the commuter train. In steps the Akai LPK25:

I was making music on the ferries using the M-Audio Oxygen v2 while we were living in Bremerton and I was riding the ferry/bus to Bellevue but the tables on the ferries were considerably larger.

This is also much lighter and although the keys are considerably smaller, they still have good synth action. I’ve also been considering the even lighter Korg Nano series but I’ve read some disappointing reviews about them.

Ideally, I want to check both out and actually give them a try. It’s going to be sweet to set up and have a couple hours a day to work on my music.

I guess what got me thinking about this is that I was actually making some pretty good music on the ferry. Tracks titled Ferry Time, Wade Through Filth, Macht Arbeit, and Sunrise. Good times.

I’ve connected my MIDI controller keyboard and have been actively been working on music every night that I can. I have had a lot of fun putting some hip-hop beats and learning some cool new rhythms. I think having my keyboard out and everything easily accessible has made it more conducive to making music. Right now I have been using quite a bit of Plugsound’s libraries. Emulation has been a great way to learning new stuff for me. A favorite example is to take a loop that is something Timbaland might put together and then break it out of the construction set in one of these libraries and learn how they fit together. Talk about reprogramming a rhythmically challenged brain!

Music inspiration. Sometimes I find musical inspiration in the oddest things, like… leather pants. In all seriousness, though, is this revelation that music can be simple. To me it is strange especially since the more complex a tune seemed to be the more I was attracted to it. I hope to shed this egotistical and short sighted approach to music. An example of a simple approach would be the track “Hoffnung Am Ende Der Welt” by Stephan Zacharias for the Der Untergang soundtrack. Perhaps its simplicity is its complexity. The somber tones, the rawness of the strings, the placement coloring of the mix; evokes emotion which I enjoy.

OMG! I knew this a while ago but one of my favorite movies of all time is coming out with a sequal and I was finally able to find some screenies. So much happiness. Kate Beckinsale in a black corset and black rubber catsuit for 2 hours is going to be so much happiness for my mind and for in my pants. Linky.

Sure its a romantic comedy and a lot of people fail to grasp Coen brothers’ humor, but we watched Intolerable Cruelty a few days ago and I always laugh. Especially when there are some notable subtleties like the lawyer wearing a t-shirt with the word ‘Objection!’ written across the front. Which reminds me that we watched that Narnia flick and a couple other more recent releases which I will need to add to my review area.

We stopped by the new house yesterday. We didn’t do much but we are getting some ideas on where to put stuff. The fridge is clean and cold. Man, its been so long since we have had a normal working fridge. In the meantime, I have paid most of my tuition and I will pay the remainder on Friday on payday. I have a lot of things to take care of. I called and canceled power for the old place, get it switched to our name at the new place, cancel cable at our old place, transfer our phone service, etc.

Man, I love playing the piano. I realized this this weekend and it really hit. Making music, connecting to my soul and expressing myself. If there is one thing that identifies the health of a human being it is music. I make no guarantees of that statement but it certainly rings for me. I received a call from my piano instructor, Dr. Welle, and I now have 2 half hour sessions a week. Apparently my address and phone number are out of date at the college and he was unable to contact me earlier to schedule me. When I old him that 10 years ago I played Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat Major, Lizst’s Ab Irato, Schubert’s Impromptu in E-flat Major and a couple others he exclaimed “Damn it, I wish I had gotten a hold of you earlier!” But, I explained that I am out of practice. It sounds like a potentially meaningful teacher-student relationship unlike the one I had with Dr. Farner at PLU all those years ago. You see, I have always kept the piano in the back of my mind as something I want to pursue. Unfortunately, I wish to avoid the seemingly common result of a performance major: teaching. I think programming or engineering are a great way to make piano a serious hobby.

I had to put some color on the blog. *cough* I know, I know. The magazine is Issue 54 of SkinTwo and on the cover is Elva from Sweden. B) Emmmmm, color.

UPDATE: My first piano lesson went well. It was a quick 30 minutes but I think he’s a good guy. My assignment is to practice the Rachmaninoff Prelude in G Minor (I know its a Prelude but I am unsure of the Opus number). Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu in C-Sharp Minor, and the Schubert Impromptu I mentioned earlier. Its a good mix. The Rachmaninoff will be a review and the other two, well, I have never learned all the way through so I guess they will be new pieces? He asked about my goals, my past experiences, and so on. Younger than my previous professor but that’s okay.

I was going to right about the shocking loss for civil libertarians yesterday in the Supreme Courts landmark ruling (sorry, its CNN) that the government can seize your private land for private or public use. You see, some home owners back East didn’t want their homes to be taken (with compensation, but that’s all subjective) so that the local city can authorize the tax generating strip mall. So the land was taken for private use but because it impacts the public, the judges voted to enforce eminent domain.

I am seriously getting sick thinking about this. The implications are far reaching. We are taxed to our ears. Property taxes, excise taxes, sales tax, income tax, going on and on. Its something that our country inherited from the English. And now they completely disregard our personal property. Anyway, I am too upset to write about it. Read the article. You decide.

Anyway, I have been doing some shopping online and have been visiting all my favorite “sexual gratification augmentation” retailers. I mention a few of them on my links page but one that stands out in my mind is Marquis out of Germany. Lots of kink, less vanilla. Haha. Its funny to hear myself say that. Its really “augmented” my wife’s and my relationship. Although some of the stuff from this couple can be more revealing than I would share, the owners of A Thing For Rubber 3.0 offer a good look at what I am talking about. Latex clothing is amazing but leather like stuff from Stormy is just as fascinating. Ah, happy thoughts. We’re married and we’re having fun! eBay has had some good retailers out there lately. I was pleased to find a variety of things. I am weary of the quality sometimes, and no amount of security features convince me that shill bidding doesn’t still happen. Oh and note to self and all others: always check the cost of shipping and handling before bidding. Above is the cover of the current issue of SkinTwo magazine, probably my favorite. The cover is incredible. and the card below is a sample of some of the events we’d like to go to although this one is from a NYC club.

We’re going to go see our insurance agent today. Hopefully we will be able to go and get our camera replaced. I am anxious to get out of here. I am not feeling very well. I have decided to stop drinking pop (again, *sigh*) so we’ll see how it goes. I am very irritable. I noticed that I have gained some more weight. I need to not give up this time. I have too many things I would like to do, kids to raise, wife to love that would be cut short if I continue down my current path. At least the sun has finally emerged.

Oh and remember: Kinky couples are people too!

Well our insurance company, State Farm, came through. It was remarkably quick and painless. Even with the deductible, we were able to afford a new digital camera. Circuit City was out of the 4600 so we got the Nikon 5600 5.0 Megpixel, a case, a GB memory stick, and some batteries. I am amazed that the renters insurance covered us. I really wish we’d get our pictures back, but its time to move on. We may get a DVD camcorder again but that will hopefully be later definitely before we have kids.

I have had a strange thing happen on my computer. Every time I played certain games like Battlefield 2 or use the visualizations in Winamp, the screen would display anomalies. It would shift and be off center. I would work around this by changing my resolutions until one of them worked. Or sometimes the display would bulge at higher resolutions. I recently came across a Microsoft(MS) support page that helps with this issue and although it discusses MS games in particular, I figured I would give it a try. Well anyway, the option to override the DirectX settings regarding the refresh rate have solved my problems. Now all the games I play (so far that I have noticed) display correctly. It was a strange problem and an even stranger fix.

I really need to build a new machine. I may have griped about this before. I have to play all the new first person shooters on the lowest settings and even then the load times are insane. Yes, the old Intel/AMD debate has started again. I am even trying to decide between ATI and nVidia. Here is a preliminary setup I am trying to decide on.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ CPU	$585
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX Video Card	$184
Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1Gb) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Memory	$344
Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA II Hard Drive	$140
BFG Tech BFGR78256GTXOC Geforce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card	$619
LITE-ON Black IDE CD/DVD RW Burner Model SOHW-1693S Optical Drive	$49
VANTEC VAN-520A ATX 520W Power Supply	$95
Lian Li PC-V2100B Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case	$290

Total: $2,306

Prices are taken from Newegg but even with Internet prices and no sales tax its way more than I have now. I compromised on the CPU. The 4600+ was $300 more and I think that is too much of a price gap and too small of a performance gap. I actually am debating a RAID drive setup but for now a single 250GB SATAII drive should be fine. I really am bummed that Seagate doesn’t have any SATAII models. Priced about the same, I chose nVidia because its simply the newest technology. The case maybe a slight over kill. I could use a less expensive model. I didn’t get a monitor because I think I will continue using the one I have.

For my birthday, my wife got me a theatrical poster for the movie “The Downfall” which is quite possibly one of the best World War II movies ever made.

The picture doesn’t give it justice because its not the standard movie poster like shown. Its 30 inches tall and 40 inches wide. Its stunning. We had it framed and now it is displayed in our home. I am glad my wife appreciates the movies I like. The frame is a charcoal grey, matte in texture and metal in material. Its amazing. The poster, which was in a UK light box, cost us about $80 with shipping and the frame cost about $224 including a 20% discount because we know the lady that owns the store.

It may have been a tad more expensive than the average poster from a poster emporium online but this version is unique. And the frame job is awesome.

We are the only ones who know what is good for the country, and we are the only ones who can do anything about it.
— Joseph G. Deegan FBI Special Agent, 1977

And there you have it! The sheep are too stupid to shepherd themselves. This was said in 1977. More on Waco and Ruby Ridge here. Yes those ignorant and sleepy people. Obsessed with their giant SUVs, babbling about this or that and the next big thing. As long as they are screwing someone, doing whatever to keep themselves happy, keep that wool drawn over their eyes. I am simply asking that people be aware of government activites and gross neglagence. We shouldn’t let our servants rule us.

In a recent article, an anti-gun campaign official made an interesting comment:

They?re (the FBI) violating the existing law, and I?m sure glad they?re doing so.
— Peter Hamm Brady Campaign

So wait, the government is excused from obeying laws but the sheep are not? Whoa, wait a second. Sir, do you realize how dangerous such an attitude is? You are only safe because you encourage their agenda. Its never a argument of who keeps the government in check. Its always some emotionalism that is completely irrational. Yes, 5 people died because some whack-o decides to kill everyone he sees. The question is “Why did he do this? What has changed in our society to encourage such events?” and should never, ever be “What laws should we pass to make us look good?” or “See, the government will arrive after everyone is dead! They are here to protect the dead! Give up your guns! Make your place of employment and schools free kill zones!” I hope you got that sarcasm. People are willing to sacrifice a lot for everyone else to accomplish little for themselves.

I guess I am just ranting. I pose these questions rhetorically. Check out EFF about to read more about government freedom reducing legislation. Also check out some commentary about the Patriot Act and how you will qualify as a deportable “terrorist”. Also, check out info about Executive Orders which have at times resembled mandates from a dictator.

I suppose there is plenty of information regarding all these issues on the Internet. Its just a matter of filtering and deciding what is true and what may be false. Perversions to the Constitution are happening. We need to defend it.