Adam Schabtach's Blog
The temperature broke 70F today, which, frankly, is a bit warm for March. However, in a happy event that may or may not be related, Tracie spotted a butterfly circling in our front yard. I managed to get a fairly good photo of it, despite not being able to get closer than about 10 feet to it. (The digital zoom on the Canon SD700 IS works remarkably well.)
Tracie and I are going to Japan for a vacation at the end of this month. We (mostly she, honestly) have been planning this trip for about two years; suddely it’s about to happen. We depart on March 29. Here is our itinerary, with links to infomation about each place:
• Mar 30- Apr 04:
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2164.html
While in
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2166.html
Take bullet train to:
My mom gave us a rain chain for Christmas. I hung it from one of the downspouts on the house recently. A few days later the temperature dropped again, and over the next few days it becamse quite thick with ice. There are photos of it in the photo gallery here.
Here’s a rather poorly shot video of Robert Henke playing his Monodeck II:
It’s too bad that the camera operator doesn’t figure out until the last minute that all he really needs to do is point the camera straight down at the thing, but still, it’s an exciting look at one of the most impressive DIY music electronics projects that I know of. Robert mentions on his site that there’s more video forthcoming.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Robert Henke is one of the founding, and now sole, members of the minimal-techno electronic music act Monolake. The other member was Gerhard Behles; Gerhard left Monolake to write Live, which has become an extremely successful digital-audio workstation application. Live is also my favorite host application for developing and testing Audio Damage plug-ins, and I listen to a fair amount of Monolake while doing so. The Monodeck II is a one-of-a-kind hardware control surface designed and built by Robert and some of his friends for doing live performances with Live.
How this came about is sort of a long story, but the short version is that I built a teeny greenhouse for a basil plant out of K’nex and plastic wrap. As you can see in the following photo, it has made this basil plant quite happy. The structure is about 30 inches tall at its peak, and Tracie has harvested leaves from the plant three times. Much of its remarkable growth took place during the rather cold weather we’ve had recently, and the thermostat in the house is set at 62, so apparently the structure is doing a pretty good job of trapping heat around the plant.
I’m doing some maintenance on this site. If things suddenly go awry, try back later.
Chris has been muttering about Last.fm and today I finally paid attention to him and checked it out. It’s a neat thing, I’ve decided. The idea is that it watches what music you play on your MP3 player (software player, that is) and keeps a little database of your listening habits. Then it looks at the databases of other people who listen to the same stuff that you listen to, and suggests other things you might want to listen to. The very first track I played under its observation (“Escent” by Maitreya) produced suggestions for five other artists, four of whom I’ve never heard of.
UPS delivered two packages today containing award trophies for Audio Damage products. One is for “Best Software Value” for the 914 Filter Bank, awarded by Remix Magazine; the other is for “Download of the Year” for an unspecified selection of our plug-ins, awarded by Electronic Musician Magazine. Chris was going to pick these up in person at the awards dinner at NAMM but couldn’t get out of Oregon because of the bad weather, so he had the magazines ship them here to the Audio Damage R&D Division, Rocky Mountain Facility.
I’m selling off some old gear that I haven’t used in awhile. Here’s the list:
Chris kindly posted the list on his blog which gets far more traffic than mine. Click here to go there for more information, prices, etc.
Click here. Just do it.