Saw "Sin City" today, was very impressed. yummy even.

I only have one complaint, it was that after getting this LCD mounted in the
new Jesusonic case, and booting the thing up, the LCD requires you to hit a 
button to turn it on. Which is annoying. So I either need to figure out a way
to hack the LCD to always be on, or do something really dumb like have the
microcontroller in the box just simulate a button press after a few seconds
of being on (which could have negative consequences, so I probably won't do
that). Or I could just mount a nice little button on the box to toggle the 
screen on and off, but having to turn the screen on every time you plug the
power in is lame. real lame.

Got an expression pedal working with Jesusonic, yummy (right now it's just
connected to my microcontroller dev board). Since that works, I started 
working on a wah effect. Using a resonant bandpass, seems to be working 
but haven't gotten it to sound decent yet. Here are a couple mp3s.

The first one also has the new advanced drum sequencer I made earlier today,
it lets you specify volume, panning, and additional timing information for
each event. Yay for more flexibility, and it's backwards compatible too.

(One final post-posting note, I realized that picture is giant line6 ad. 
oh well.)

It is quickly approaching 5 in the morning, and I just got home. After seeing
a midnight showing of Napoleon Dynamite, and a spirited rehearsal turned jam,
I decided to ride my bike the mile or so home. San Francisco SoMa and Mission
is awesome at 4 in the morning on a bicycle. Nobody around, quiet, concrete 
playground. yum.

Also, I got some Etymotic 6i headphones for free (SV100 or whatnot), and while
I'm not completely sold on their everyday use for me (a bit itchy at times),
they are fuckin perfect for band practicing. They block out so much sound,
and when you mix in the monitors, feel really natural. OK they are good for
planes too..

The highlight of the jam we had is this song of epic proportion (or should that be 
plural?). Listen to the whole thing (start to finish) if you want to get it. 

Really.

I couldn't agree more with Brennan on this subject (the second paragraph).

Also, the whole April fools joke thing is funny, and was funny back when it
would be one or two or three things being thrown in there, making you wonder,
whereas the tons and tons of them that end up on sites like slashdot make it
really just annoying. seriously.

Fun fun fun. Motherboard and CF reader mounted, keyboard/trackball mounted, LCD almost mounted
(retaining mechanism needs to be finished), microcontroller firmware for knobs, footswitches,
LED display, multiple-device-on-one-serial port support, etc, done. Need to install the audio
hardware (sound board, transformers, 1/4" TRS jacks) and build UI hardware (knobs, 
microcontroller board, etc). Need to build the detachable footboard (with its footswitches 
and microcontroller and LEDs). And then the second preprototype will be done, and if I dig it
I'll have to go see how I can build ones similar to it quickly and cheaply, *sigh*.

Also, the whole secular "SKULR" doesn't really translate well. any suggestions?

As a followup to the last post, here is a picture of the new Jesusonic model in development. 
It's considerably smaller than the CrusFX 1000, and has plenty of room to shrink even more 
for the production model. This is the secular alternative to the CrusFX, and has other 
advantages. This one measures about 21" wide, 9" deep, and 3.25" high. I am pretty confident 
that will be able to be more like 8" deep and 2.5" high soon.

On a personal note, it's very satisfying going through an interative design process, learning as
I go, and realizing "hey, the next model I can make it even smaller." 

I think this model is going to get stained, as well. yum. The screen and keyboard will be recessed
into the top of it, the knobs will be along the front of the top (and they will be protected if
I get my way), the CF slot will be on the right side, all the power and audio i/o will be on 
the back, and the right side will have the footboard and expression pedal ports.

Soon I will be building the custom boards for this model. I set up a new little desk just for 
soldering and testing. fun.
 
I still need to find a nice compact backlit keyboard. help.

What's going on with Jesusonic:

  + jesusonic.com was down for a bit, but is back up now. the forums will
be back up shortly. the user submissions database was restored from an old
copy, so submissions that were from the last 2.5 weeks are not up, but they
will be back in the next few days too.

  + I've decided to use the Jesusonic prototype #1 (pictured on the web
site and whatnot) for our band's second show, which should happen in May 
here in SF. This will be the Jesusonic's stage debut! I'll post details of the
show once the scheduling is finalized.

  + I've begun construction of a secular Jesusonic prototype, which will be
slightly larger than the Pod XT Live, and will feature a detachable footboard,
8 assignable knobs (4 rotary encoders and 4 pots), balanced outputs, two inputs
(both hi-z and lo-z) and other refinements. For this prototype I'm moving 
from Basswood to 1/4" cabinet grade plywood, but I'm thinking I'll get 
some ABS cut from TAP plastics if this design works well. In the mean 
time, I've been reading up on my scrollsaw technique, so hopefully
I can go make some nice clean straight cuts. Pictures will follow shortly.

So Brennan Christophe and I decided that we're going to play a show in May,
so we've started practicing, and here are the relevant cuts from the practices
of our songs, in case anybody wants to hear:
  + from today (m3u playlist)
  + from 3 days ago (m3u playlist)
We have a long way to go, but I totally dig these so far. I'm not sure I know of
any other bands who make everything they ever do available for people to stream
as it is produced.. kinda fun, not sure what it really means though..

Congrats Tom, too, if you ever read this (doubtful).

Got a $329 Dell 420SC server (paid the extra $99 for the P4 instead of a 
Celeron), getting a bunch of RAM for it, so it'll be like $500 for a 
P4 2.8 ghz server, 160gb SATA disk, 2GB RAM, and GigE. Not bad. Oh what
will I do with all of the power?? I'm so used to this P3-500 with 512mb...
(this is for a name/mail/web server, in case you're wondering)

Made a new version of PathSync, which does a lot of what I want it to (though
there's still much to do, this ain't bad for a 2 hour update). 

I was reading this article and one quote really stuck out for me:

  In its court filings, Apple argued that neither the free speech protections of 
  the United States Constitution nor the California Shield Law, which protects 
  journalists from revealing their sources, applies to the Web sites. The 
  company said such protections apply only to "legitimate members of the press."

So what they're saying here, is that APPLE, the company that so many people loove
to love so much, doesn't think web-only news sites are legitimate journalism. 
Way to embrace the internet, Apple. I can understand that you're miffed that
some of your employees leaked info, but don't go trying to set some terrible
precedent just because of that.

You know, having been using this multiple monitor setup (2 dell 2001FPs, which 
are 20" LCDs) for about the last 10 months, I've realized that while it is 
occasionally useful, overall it leaves me feeling scattered. Too many places to
look for things, and whatnot. The usefulness is just rare, for me, and usually
involves watching a movie while working. The other times, when I want to find a
window, it kinda gives me a headache. Anybody have any suggestions or thoughts?

ok so I'm lazy and didn't tune anything. I like the first 10 seconds and 
last 20 seconds, so maybe I should shorten it to 30 seconds. the stuff in 
between is ultimately just killing time, so I should, but as I said I'm lazy
so I won't. Instead I shall go to bed (where my poor fever-wielding girlfriend
has hopefully already sweat herself to sleep).

OK so last week I updated Jesusonic to 0.99, it's up and has a few nice little
improvements and a bugfix or two.

The other thing I want to note that I wasn't going to type out on my phone last
night is that I was lucky enough to receive additional screening flying back 
from Vegas, and they had some new thing I hadn't seen before, where I walk into
this little chamber, and maybe 30 air jets blow air on me, and I gather it 
sniffs the particles that came off me and decide whether or not I should be
trusted. Anyway, strange thing, in my exhausted state it was a little scary.
Well, not so much scary, just a little abrupt, that's all.

more vegas airport light pictures. tired and sick, but home and warm bed await me.

Made this ditty last night. I really dig it, though the lead guitar is 
pretty much in need of being replaced. Anyway. Thunderstorms here, yay. 
I miss thunderstorms from Arizona...