The Mandelbear's Musings

10:20 pm - Getting ready for Baycon

Just got back from a Tres Gique rehearsal at Joyce's. I think I may be allergic to something in that house; my throat got very dry and constricted, so we didn't get through even the songs I had on the list. There's still room for a few more, and suggestions (waves at cflute and pocketnaomi) are welcome.

Current Mood: productive

08:08 pm - Tres Gique at Baycon

Tres Gique's concert at Baycon will be Friday, May 23^rd at 10pm. We are now taking suggestions for a set list. What will you kill us if we don't perform? What will you kill us if we do perform?

("Desolation Row" is already off the list. "The River" is on. All of the songs from my concert at FKO are on except for "Bigger on the Inside".)

10:02 pm - Cited

Our Filk Hall of Fame citation is finally up on the FilKONtario website.

08:52 am - FilKONtario: Friday

(I'm afraid that this, like most of my con reports recently, is going to be pretty sketchy. It should be possible to get a better picture of the con through other peoples' entries, as seen through my fko memory keyword. It would be better if you could AND keywords to get just 2008, and sort in reverse. Stupid LJ.)

The hotel has a good breakfast buffet -- I had berries, bacon, sausage, ham, one egg Benedict, and an omelette. The sausage and Benedict weren't so good, but the blackberries and bacon more than made up for it. I like to eat a breakfast consisting mostly of protein; after that I can easily skip lunch. Got together with ohiblather long enough to arrange a practice session for early Saturday afternoon.

It should be no surprise that Friday afternoon was almost entirely spent socializing. Colleen parked herself in one of the chairs next to the conversation pit with the piano, where a succession of con-goers including deborah_c and Interfilk guest Marilyn Miller occasionally entertained. Colleen, as usual, prodded me to sing as well. I really like taking Plink to cons; the little Vagabond is perfect for lobby, hallway, and con-suite filking.

Most of my lobby and con-suite singing involved either "Ferret Went A-Courtin'" or The River.

Tom and Sue's wedding started the evening. Lovely mostly-Celtic ceremony, with music afterward, and a desert reception. The best feature for me was, of course, not having to do anything besides show up; I wore my "Father of the Bride" costume from last month: dark red shirt under a tail coat.

The wedding was followed by opening ceremonies (which I barely arrived in time for), and the Urban Tapestry and Heather Dale concerts, both of which were a preview for next year, when UT is Filk Waif (which is what they call the Toastmaster) and Heather is GoH. I'm going, if it's at all possible budget-wise.

After that, we went up to the con suite for Vixy and Tony's release party. It was packed, but we managed to buy our four copies (one for us, one for each kid, and one for a friend). It thinned out after a while; we finally got down to the open filking around 1am, and to bed around 2:30. Since we were time-shifted three hours, this was actually pretty close to our usual bedtime.

04:11 pm - Now it can be told

Tonight at FKO Colleen and Steve Savitzky (that's flower_cat and me, in case you didn't know) were inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame; the other inductees were Bob and Anne Passovoy. (I'm sure somebody will correct me on the spelling. Thanks!) links when I get to a machine that lets me do tabbed browsing (done: 04-08); the XO is great for most things, but...

Current Mood: ecstatic

11:59 pm - Bound for FKO

Well, we're packed and ready to go. I decided to take only the XO, with a minimum of data -- anything else I need I can grab from the web. Then at the last minute I decided to put a copy of my working directories onto a USB drive; it'll probably take all night at the rate it's going. Grump.

I also decided not to take CDs for sale -- I know at least two dealers are going to be there, and if they don't have enough stock, well... At some point I'll have to figure out the proper procedure for taking stuff for sale through customs, but I don't have time to research it tonight.

07:54 pm - Triple squee!

This episode of BoingBoing TV, recorded this year at Consonance, features not only a great cover shot of my CD, Coffee, Computers, and Song, but a discussion of one of the songs on it (Vampire Mega-Byte), and people singing a filk of Rocket Rider's Prayer. So I'm a very happy filker.

(Via this post by hsifyppah. Thank you!)

08:05 pm - Mostly better now

It was a good afternoon for a walk; I'm glad the flower_cat kicked my sorry butt out of the house and told me to take one. Walked for an hour by Los Gatos Creek, from where it crosses Leigh Avenue up to the little park in Campbell and back.

Started working on a song; nothing but fragments so far. I may just scribble them down and let them marinate for a while; if I go much further down that particular rabbit hole I won't get the taxes started until next week, if then.

The park was full of people; I had a nice little conversation with a girl who was sitting on a picnic table playing a guitar. Well, she looked like a girl, anyway, until her five-year-old daughter came over for a hug. They left when the little one fell down and scraped her hand. But I was able to show off a little, help her with a C chord (she's only been playing for a couple of months), and talk about music and kids for a while. Her name was Bonnie, if I remember correctly.

It's hard not to be at least a little cheerful with music and pleasant memories in my head. Even harder after tasty rabbit stew and steamed asparagus. We started the stew just before I left; I came back just in time to help finish it, and to empty the dishwasher.

Still no real handle on why that wave of depression hit me this afternoon, but it doesn't matter. Besides, I tend to write when I'm depressed. It might just have been the song trying to get out.

08:08 am - The insanity begins...

... in about an hour. The plan is for me to load the van, then stay here while Colleen plays truck-driver. I get to accept delivery of packages, reload the van whenever it shows up, search for the missing con suite supplies, collect the Y.D. at school, and finally end up at the hotel in time for the rehearsal dinner.

(11:00 all supplies found, including the large coffeepot, which finally turned up under the dining table behind a case of wine. I still have to hard-boil a big pile of eggs, and of course pack, but I'm not actually moving in to the hotel until tomorrow.)

The real insanity starts tomorrow.

I got a little less than I expected done yesterday at work, but only a little. The little CGI side-project got sidelined, but the main rush job (also a CGI) was brought to a workable state in time for the other group needing it. It was down to the wire: I was sending pessimistic status emails right up until 5:15, when it finally worked. All hail Perl, the Swiss army chainsaw of programming languages.

A lot of things have fallen through the cracks. I don't think any of my songs made it into the CD-ROM "songbook", for example, and no work to speak of has been done on the next album or the collaboration/subscription website that is intended to serve in lieu of pre-orders. And taxes? Hah!

This comic strip by ohiblather is, unfortunately, right on target for me.

Current Mood: indescribable

09:29 pm - Being productive

Just put up the next-to-last set of living room curtains. (The last set is the bay window; they're less critical because the window is already well-screened by the rose trellis, and because nobody is ever going to want to sleep in that section of the living room, so it doesn't have to be dark there.)

The general idea was to be able to curtain off the small section of the L-shaped living room that used to be the master bedroom, so that guests could sleep there if we had a huge crowd. As it turns out, we're unlikely to have that many people before Consonance, but we didn't know that when we planned it. It'll come in handy sometime, I've no doubt.

Going back in time again, I had a productive day at work: I was able to take a break from writing tech reports (I'm almost done) and do a little bit of actual coding on one of the two major projects I'm involved in. (They're not actually major from a programming point of view, but they'll be very high visibility in perhaps as little as a few months.)

Going still further back, I had a good practice session with Joyce last night. We worked out the chords (Rise Up Singing's chords didn't work for me) and arrangement for Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, which we'll sing at the wedding. Also sang her Ferret Went A-Courtin' and The River, which she liked.

There's still way too much to do.

06:34 am - Guess I didn't get back to sleep, did I?

Woke up about 4am. Realized by 4:30 that I wasn't going to get back to sleep any time soon, so came out to the office, read some LJ, and worked a little bit on "Ferret Went A-Courtin'".

Tried again briefly at about 5am, but succeeded only in rousing the Cat enough for her to request a shoulder rub. She went back to sleep and I didn't, so I came out and finished "Ferret". Still possibly some rough edges.

Good morning!

Current Mood: creative

07:02 am - Conflikt: Saturday

Saturday at Conflikt started with the buffet brunch. Unexciting; bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, french toast (which I passed on because of its high glycemic index), potatoes (tasty, but I only took a little), toasted baguette with some kind of warm dip, pastries (passed on), and a few other breakfasty items I can't remember now. The con had ordered what the hotel thought was enough bacon for the number of people; they ran out. Filkers don't eat like "normal" people; for anyone on a low-carb diet the bacon and eggs were about the only things they could eat.

Every table had a couple of slips of paper with instafilk topics; ours technological, (don't remember exactly) but I was feeling uninspired. The conversation was great, though.

I skipped the role-playing singalong; putting the songs up on a screen with a projector was a good idea, though. Came in afterward to set up for recording the twofers. tibicina had the first slot; I had the second. Sang "The Toolmakers" (at pocketnaomi's request) and "The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of" (with cflute on flute). Went pretty well; cflute noted that I still need to be capo 2 on "Toolmakers"; I was bottoming out. Plink, my little Vagabond travel guitar, sounds awesome amplified. I'll definitely have to find myself a small portable amp. Or hack a preamp together and use it with my battery-powered speakers.

Skipped the songbook sing-along, and came back for the Interfilk guests' "concert". Since Steven Joel isn't a performer, this consisted of a mix of live and recorded performances by other people. Good to hear some of those old tapes again.

Went with cflute, jenkitty, pocietnaomi, and tibicina to an early dinner in the hotel restaurant.

sooj and stealthcello's concert was wonderful. I had no idea anyone made carbon-fiber cellos. The room, which would have been fine for the expected 80 members, was packed; I ended up on the right-hand end of the front row with cflute and her minions.

cflute's Toastmistress concert was next; I had a couple of pieces in the last third, and took advantage of the setup interval to tune. I sang "Cicero in the 21st Century" and "World Inside the Crystal" (probably our strongest songs), and played guitar on Harold Groot's "In Our Fathers' Footsteps" and (corrected:) Callie's "Circles of Music". We skipped "Demon Lover" because Callie's voice was weakening by that point.

Added: cflute's complete set list here.

This was followed by tarkrai's GOH concert, which was his usual high-energy amazingness. He ended by leading the group in "Many Hearts, One Voice", adding Conflikt to the Worldream chorus.

I don't recall spening any time at all in the open filking; spent most of the rest of the evening talking. I seem to do that more and more at filk cons, and I'm OK with that. Ended the night in a long, deep, wide-ranging conversation with pocketnaomi.

Current Mood: calm

09:35 am - Conflilkt - day 1 (Friday)

The convoy from the Big Green Monster arrived at Conflikt around 1:30 and unloaded. Ended up swapping my suite (the only room left in the con's room block when I made the reservation) for a double/double at the convention rate (they had me at a higher rate in spite of the fact that I'd been told I'd be getting the con rate).

The rest of the afternoon was spent recording some songs for the brunch CD ("Jabberwocky" and "Stuff that Dreams are Made Of", and getting a haircut from (Interfilk guest) France Andrews. She's a professional hairdresser and has been doing haircuts at cons in exchange for an Interfilk contribution for years. She trimmed a couple of inches off the ponytail, and trimmed my beard rather aggressively with an eye toward having it grown out to the proper length in time for the wedding at Consonance.

By the time I noticed what time it was, it was after 6pm, so I had a soup-and-appetizer dinner in the hotel restaurant. I haven't been eating much this trip, and I'm not complaining. Perhaps the low-sugar diet is starting to work.

Concerts were predictably spectacular -- cadhla's started out with technical difficulties and included what she called a cursed song, but her usual amazing stage presence allowed her to make the mayhem feel like part of the set. Wow. jhitchen's set combined music and stand-up comedy, and katyhh's was simply beautiful.

I never made it back to the open filking, but there was some lots of good song-swapping in the con suite. Fun!

The only major hitch was losing track of the piece of paper where I'd written _amethyst_fire_'s parents' phone number, which I'd found earlier in the week and then both neglected to type in, and misplaced. Finally found it this morning, but haven't gotten a callback yet. Combination of phone phobia and procrastination strikes again. Dumb bear.

Current Mood: awake

08:26 am - Scrobbled!

Thanks to a post by singingpatient, I now know that I have a page on last.fm. Who knew? It has 30-second clips, so I'm guessing it came from iTunes or something else that CD-Baby put into digital distribution. Anyone out there using last.fm? Tips? Advice?

Any suggestions about Facebook or Myspace? (The subject of social websites has come up at work, too. More about that later, perhaps.)

11:49 pm - Saturday wrap-up

This morning after my walk I went to Fry's and found that the drives they have on sale were Seagate rather than the Maxtors they had piled up yesterday. Those were still $160, and had a 3-year warranty instead of Seagate's 5-year. Then I made the interesting discovery that the Maxtor's and some of the Seagates were made in Thailand, while the otherwise-identical Seagates in the big piles were made in China.

Hmm.

A quick trip home confirmed that the flaky Seagate drive I removed a couple of months ago was Chinese, and I seemed to recall that the failing one is, too. The Maxtor I've been using as the mirror drive is Thai. Drove back to Fry's and bought a Thai Seagate.

After that, we went to Dave and Joyce's to bring them lunch: barbecued chicken, cole slaw, and baked beans from Emil Villa's. Much appreciated; Joyce isn't especially mobile due to health problems (which, however, should be fixed fairly soon). From there we went to Kathy Mar's bash. Good stone soup.

I did a little singing at Kathy's: "Ship of Stone", "Cicero in the 21st Century", "Desolation -- Oh, No!", and "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts". I'm impressed with how much nose-watering has helped my voice: singing is less painful and doesn't dry me out nearly as quickly as it used to.

11:16 pm - ... and sometimes you get it right

After a somewhat frustrating evening of Windows malware, misconfigured servers and misbehaving hard drives, it's kind of nice to sit down with a guitar and nail five songs in a row from memory. ("The Owl and the Pussycat", "The World Inside the Crystal", "Cicero in the 21st Century", "Ship of Stone", and "The Mary Ellen Carter", if you want to know.)

Have to get back in practice between now and Conflikt...

11:15 pm - Headed for Conflikt: Trip-planning post

Current plan is to fly to SeaTac for Conflikt on Thursday January 24th; I'll probably get in late afternoon. I'll look around for a rental car on Monday so I'll be relatively mobile. Probably head home on Wednesday the 30th unless somebody gives me a good reason to stay through Thursday. I'll be making my plane reservation sometime this week.

Besides the departure date, about the only other things that need deciding are what gear to take. First category is instruments: I need to decide whether to take Plink, my travel guitar, or Ruby, my usually gig guitar. I'm leaning toward Plink, since I'm flying, and she sounds really good plugged in through a direct box.

The other question is computer hardware. I'm leaning toward taking the Macbook Pro and (assuming it arrives when it's supposed to) the OLPC. I don't think I'm quite crazy enough to attempt the trip with nothing but the OLPC or even the OLPC, an external keyboard, and a massive USB hard drive. I might, however, take the OLPC instead of my songbook.

Added: Comments on this post would be a convenient place to discuss trip logistics.

08:58 am - I'm toast!

It's on the ConChord website, so it must be true: I'm going to be Toastmaster at The Southern California Filk Convention, September 12-14, 2008. And if that's not enough to get you to go (and it probably isn't), the GOH is Alexander James Adams.

07:13 pm - Niftyness at filk.com

Thanks to this post by the clever and resourceful cadhla we now know that she, I, and billroper have featured products at filk.com. And by the way, I've heard those other albums, and you should too. Go and buy!

08:33 am - Dumb bear

In general I've had a very good time here at Loscon. My mood was dragged down a bit when I made the mistake of singing "For Amy" in the circle last night -- with the chaoswolf sitting next to me. I hadn't realized she hadn't heard it, and it hit her pretty hard. No, that's an understatement. I already knew not to sing it when the flower_cat is around. I get the feeling that the next album is going to be one that some people are going to buy, listen to once, and put away because it's too painful. I have a couple of those myself.

I may have to sell custom burns so people can buy a copy without the songs they can't handle. Or something.

I'm sorry, Wolfie.

07:58 pm - Travels with Ruby: Loscon so far

It occurs to me that my last Loscon post was Thursday, so I have a bit of catching up to do. Fortunately it's been mostly concerts and conversations so far, so there isn't as much to report as might be.

AJA and Dr. Jim Robinson both gave concerts yesterday -- that was good. Dinner with selenesue in the "good restaurant". Some open filking that started breaking up around midnight; I went up to the parties and finally got in about 1:30. Slept well.

Side note on the facehugger -- I seem to be getting used to it. I'm still having some trouble getting the mask tight enough so that it doesn't leak, and a little trouble getting to sleep. But by the time morning comes around I sometimes have to check to see whether I'm still wearing it, the way I do with my glasses sometimes. I can live with this. Ordered a CPAP pillow, which is back-ordered and should be back in stock later next week.

My concert (with the chaoswolf on drum and backup vocals) was today at 2:00, and seemed to go very well indeed. Smallish audience, but I think my performance was better than usual. Three weeks of practicing every couple of days with the Wolfling seemed to help. Got a decent recording with the H2. I think the drum came out too loud; we'll probably have to skip it when it's just two of us, and drop down to something quieter like shaker.

I'll post the set list later; for now, I'll just note the shortnames: cicero bugs rosie tool rrprayer barratry stuff bigger. Obviously I need a script that conses up an Emacs abbrev file, or something.

I'm no good at reporting conversations. I'll just note a good talk around dinner with mysticfig, mostly about CD production, and a couple of nice chats during soundchecks with Moira Stern.

Right now I'm avoiding the "Banned from Argo" sing; I'll probably go down in half an hour or so. The flower_cat is napping; she -- and a lot of other people -- seem to be suffering from an excess of air conditioning. Doesn't seem cold to me, but...

Current Mood: happy

11:15 pm - Odds, ends, and griffins

Finally figured out where my other Griffin iMic (USB audio interface) had to be: sure enough, it was in a box. I'd put it there during the massive cleaning frenzy last fall when we had our plumbing redone.

It'll be useful, perhaps, now that I've sent the other one off with the Griffin stereo mic that I'm no longer using, to somebody who shouldn't be reduced to voice-posting from her cell phone when she wants to get a song on the web. Shipped off the cute little Behringer interface with an orphan mic and preamp to somebody else in a similar position. It's good to get rid of clutter, but even better if you can find a good home for it in the process. It's called turning it into somebody else's clutter paying it forward.

Spent the last hour or so practicing with the chaoswolf. Good thing. I tend to get distracted; the more I practice the less likely that I'll screw up on stage at Loscon. The Wolfie still needs some work on timing, but she's close enough for filk.

I should go crash now. But I won't.

Current Mood: productive

10:21 pm - Maybe I should go to bed now...

Had a flu shot at work this afternoon; I think it just hit about an hour ago. My arm hurts near the injection site, and I'm sleepy and achy.

Got in some practicing in preparation for my concert set at Loscon, with the chaoswolf doing djembe and chorus vocals. She's getting better; next time I'll haul out the little H2 recorder.

... um, bed definitely looks like a good idea.

09:21 pm - A fine day out

Woke the family around 9am (after I'd already had spicy tofu for breakfast, unloaded the dishwasher, put some pots to soak, and read Stretching and my morning web pages), made sure everyone had a bit of breakfast, and headed up to the San Francisco Zoo. We got there about 11:30 and split up, agreeing to meet at 12:30 for lunch at the Leaping Lemur Cafe. It was a good day for it -- warm but not hot.

The flower_cat and I headed off to the African Trail and the gorilla exhibit, with the Y.D. in tow. She left us at the Primate Center while the Cat parked herself at the cafe for a while and I wandered through the lemur area and the upper level of the primate center (which I hadn't realized were connected) at more like my typical pace. I like walking with my Cat, but she's arthritic and can't walk fast enough for me to get any exercise.

After lunch we split up again; the Cat and I toddled off to see the penguins, the otters the hippo (in temporary quarters near what used to be the elephant house, but is now occupied by a rhino), the big cats, the black rhinos, and the bears. The zoo is in the middle of a decade or so of major reconstruction; the grizzlies have been moved to a great new "Grizzly Gulch" next to the black rhinos, and the entire back area that used to hold the African elephant, giraffes, and hippos, and others is fenced off and under construction. The giraffes have already been moved to the new African Trail area, and the few remaining elephants have all been moved to a "retirement home" somewhere else. We don't really have enough room in San Francisco to take proper care of elephants.

We'd aggreed to meet back at the Leaping Lemur at 3:00, but converged about half an hour early and headed for the exit. I drove home fighting sleep; the Cat and I collapsed in a heap on the bed and napped for an hour. Leftovers for dinner; we all agreed that an expedition to the local Mongolian Barbecue was best left for tomorrow.

I've spent the last few hours working on the grand directory tree reorganization, re-organizing (but not yet editing) the OVFF recordings, and trying to pull together a setlist for Loscon. So I'm actually making some progress.

06:52 pm - Live from the OVFF Dead Dog.

This is likely to be a little disconnected; I'm sitting in the Dead Dog filk at OVFF, but pretty far back against the wall. There's power and a strong WiFi signal here. Almost like being there.

(Pause while I set up the H2. Should have done it sooner. I'll get to that later.)

I've been getting to bed much too late, and getting up much too late, to have done any real-time blogging. This will have to do. Let's see.

I managed to capture most of the Pegasus nominee concert; missed the "Songs of home" section because I stupidly forgot that the H2 has a standby mode. Got most of the concerts yesterday; nothing today until now.

Had a two-fer slot yesterday. I originally planned to do "Stuff that Dreams are Made Of" and "Rambling Silver Rose", but discovered that I'd pulled "Stuff..." sometime in the past and hadn't replaced it. Substituted "Cicero", which was a better choice anyway because it gave me a good excuse to mention the album. The guitar work in the last verse was a train wreck, and I had a couple of serious vocal flubs as well. Got much more relaxed for "Rose" and I think turned in a decent performance.

Apart from Thursday night and the two-fer I did next to no singing, except for a couple of hours in the hall last night swapping songs with pocketnaomi. Mostly I sat around in the consuite or hallways and talked. I realized several years ago that that's what I really go to cons for. Might have been different if any of the usual Tres Gique suspects had been around, but they weren't. Even so, there a lot of people here who I wanted to spend more time with.

09:03 am - Soon a huge volcanic crater...

... will be all that's left of SCO.
-- (from "High Barratry", on Coffee, Computers, & Song)

The first stage in the formation of a caldera is a gigantic volcanic eruption that empties the magma chamber, which subsequently collapses. Now that SCO has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, we're starting to see the eruption tapering off.

This filing stays all pending legal action against SCO, including the trial in SCO vs. Novell that was scheduled to start on Monday. But Pam Jones of Groklaw points out in the cited post, and in an earlier comment, that SCO isn't exactly off the hook here. First of all, Novell already has a summary judgement that SCO is liable for conversion (the civil equivalent of theft) of the royalties it was owed. So SCO is, in effect, in posession of stolen property, and that's not affected by the bankruptcy. The only thing left to determine is how much. Tuesday's hearing in Delaware should be interesting.

There's also the interesting fact that, up until yesterday, they were telling the court and the SEC that they were still solvent. Is it remotely possible that they were, um, shading the truth a little? There's also a fascinating paragraph in the bankruptcy filing where they continue to claim that they own Unix. In spite of Judge Kimball's recent ruling that they don't.

The soprano is warming up.

11:55 pm - Home again, home again...

Picked up the chaoswolf at the airport yesterday evening, home from six weeks with her fiancé (selkit) and ready for home cooking. (She made dinner tonight -- a salad, and porkchops with a barbecue sauce based largely on honey, lemon juice, and espresso. Yum!)

Spent most of the evening preparing packing material for tomorrow's preorder mailings, reading LJ, and listening to Nancy Freeman (nimuejohn)'s Stardust County. Wow! Probably a good thing I didn't listen to it while I was working on CC&S, or I would have been too intimidated to finish. It's gorgeous. Go buy a copy.

Somehow the house seems more complete with both kids here, even when they're both upstairs asleep.

02:35 pm - Sound check?

It crossed my mind at the last Très Gique gig at Westercon that my usual sound check song, "Jabberwocky" as a talking blues, is totally lame. A proper sound check song should be a throwaway, sure, but it also has to be something that everybody in the group can sing on, with verses we can trade off singing, geeky, totally silly, and loud.

"Old Time Computing" came to mind. Then I came up with:

When your drummer plays a doumbek
You had better run a sound check
Or you'll end up sounding like heck
And your audience will flee...

... Possibly with a chorus about a real-time musician, after which things could easily degenerate into verses about emacs/vi, unix/vms, and other software religion. But I'm not going to go there right now.

12:13 pm - Westercon 2007 concert set list

Here's the setlist for last night's Tres Gique concert:

1. The World Inside the Crystal
2. Bugs
3. Daddy's World
4. Keep the Dream Alive
5. The Mushroom Song
6. I Wanna Be a Webmaster
7. Guilty Pleasures
8. The Rambling Silver Rose
9. The Owl and the Pussycat
10. Ship of Stone

It was after AJA's concert, which ran late: I don't think we started until 11:15 or so. Bailed on "TEOTW" and "Stuff that Dreams are Made Of" when it started getting late, and wrapped up a few minutes before midnight. Sold two album preorders after the concert, which was good.

For this concert Tres Gique consisted of me, Joyce, Jordan, and chaoswolf, so I picked songs that Kat knew the choruses for, and that didn't require cflute's voice. Kathy Mar told me later that Kat has the makings of a great singing voice: good breathing and volume, and plenty of enthusiasm. All she needs is little ear training to help her sing exactly what she's hearing. She's about where I was at that age, in other words. I still can't carry a tune in a paper bag without an instrument to back it up.

05:19 pm - So here I am at Westercon

...waiting for my next panel to start. It's on blogging, so I figured this way I'd be the first panel member to blog about it. The fact that it's during what I would normally consider to be dinner time is particularly annoying, especially when concerts start at 7:00.

With luck I'll have time for a bowl of chili and a quick rehearsal. I have only about half an hour's worth of Tres Gique pieces lined up; if I can run for an hour i'm prepared to wing it...

08:55 am - Back at the Winchester Mystery Hotel

Well, the Bear is moderately caffeinated and at least nominally awake. I have four panels on my schedule for this afternoon, and a concert tonight. The Gods alone know when -- or if -- I'll have time for practice. Or dinner. Then there's the fact that I'm not sure whether I'll have amplification for the concert, or when it starts, or whether Joyce will be up to singing. She's been sick, so we never did get a chance to practice much, but at least it hasn't been all that long since Baycon.

Well, it'll be interesting. I'll start off with a couple of Tres Gique pieces that can work with just me and drums, and wing it from there. I've lined up some stuff that I haven't done lately because it either flat doesn't work in a group, or we haven't worked up arrangements.

10:04 pm - Tracks

After yet another test drive, decided that the shaker part needed to be drastically reduced on "I Wanna Be a Webmaster" and "TEOTW". Also adjusted levels on "Programmer's Alphabet", "Stuck Here" and "Demon Lover". Still pending: minor pitch and sync problems in "Little Computing Machine", E's part in "Daddy's World", drum parts for "Guilty Pleasures" and maybe "TEOTW", and the trainwreck that is "Someplace in the Net".

Side note: I need to practice every night between now and Westercon (our concert is Saturday 10pm), and train chaoswolf on the recording rig. It's simple enough; mostly just a matter of knowing what needs tweaking and what to leave the heck alone. And come up with the rest of the set list by Wednesday night.

Current Mood: sleepy

10:13 pm - Father's Day afternoon

In the afternoon the family (minus the Younger Daughter, who decided to stay home rather than be bored by grown-up conversation) went over to the Ugglas' for barbeque, conversation, and music. Got in a little bit of rehearsal with Joyce and Jordan for the Tres Gique concert at Westercon. Decided regretfully that The Merry Man and his Maid won't be ready in time; I think the next con we'll both be at is probably Consonance. Might do it as a one-shot.

The chaoswolf joined us on "High Barratry", "Stuff that Dreams are Made Of", and "Rambling Silver Rose" (if I remember correctly). Definitely has promise.

09:12 am - The Heir to the Heatherlands

Took the household out to Alexander James's concert in Palo Alto last night. Wow!

He has a few of Heather's mannerisms, like the lopsided grin, and uses a couple of the same guitar and fiddle riffs, but he's definitely his own person. More mellow, quieter, and seemingly a lot more comfortable in his skin than Heather was in hers.

And his version of "Creature of the Wood" is just plain awesome.

06:23 pm - Baycon 2007 Tres Gique Concert

Here's the final setlist for the Baycon 2007 Tres Gique concert:

1. The World Inside the Crystal
2. Cicero in the Twenty First Century
3. The Owl and the Pussycat
4. Guilty Pleasures
5. The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of
6. High Barratry
7. The Rambling Silver Rose
8. House Carpenter
9. Demon Lover
10. Bound For Hackers' Heaven
11. Silk and Steel
12. I Wanna Be a Webmaster
13. Ship of Stone
14. Keep the Dream Alive

On the whole it went pretty well. A couple of egregious flubs on my part -- I kept getting distracted -- and cflute reported that the monitors weren't audible and she was just cueing off me. Recording didn't go as well -- I had the mics too close, and as a result probably got more of me than the audience did. This is not necessarily a good thing.

Came out with one minute to spare -- yay for timing during the final rehearsal. Should maybe have had a show-stopper for an encore, but I don't think fast enough on my feet.

Also, I stupidly left the interface box on the floor rather than putting it in the rolly as I had the night before, and turned the levels down too low. The levels were only a minor problem, since I only lost a few bits off the top (I hope!), but there were a sizeable number of noise spikes. More during the Tres Gique concert, when the chaoswolf was baby-sitting the box, than during the ones I did myself, but a few with those as well. Not a good idea. The rig really needs its own rolly-crate or possibly a rolling rack. 4-U rack on a with its own handle/mic stand? Hmm. We could do that.

And either further back in the audience, or three mics up front.

06:45 pm - Seen at Baycon

A laser-printed sign captioned "Hotel Guide" above a copy of Escher's "Relativity", with a "you are here" arrow pointed at the person in the center.

It turns out that the fastest route from our end of the third floor to the function space on the second floor (astute readers will remember that these floors are connected by a one-foot-high ramp) is to take one set of elevators down to the ground floor, walk fifty feet to another set of elevators in the lobby, and go up. (edit actually, that's the shortest route. But when you add in the waiting time for two elevators, it's actually close to a wash time-wise, and it's all the walking I'm likely to get this weekend.)

Concert in 1:15. Setup in 0:45. Be there or be square, or at least vaguely oblong.

10:05 am - Here I am at Baycon...

I suspect my Baycon reporting will be a little sketchy this year; I've been a busy bear. Good rehearsal session Friday night, after a long day that included two different hotel-room screwups affecting cflute and the Ugglas; fortunately all resolved.

The hotel is a maze in about 2.5 dimensions -- each floor is a branching tree structure with a fractal dimension of 1.5 or so. The function space is mostly on the second floor, and our room is on the third floor (the party floor, but we're off in a cul-de-sac). You can get from our room to the function space by walking about 1/4 mile and going down a short ramp. Except that some of the function space is on the other second floor, which can only be reached by elevator from the third floor. Right. I got well and truly lost several times on Friday; either the corridors move around, Hogwarts style, when you're not looking, or the hotel knocks you out and moves you around while you're unconscious. Haven't figured out which.

Panels and concerts yesterday; got a good recording of cflute's set. I'll be recording Tres Gique (me, Callie, and Joyce, plus her son Jordan on drum). There's no stage, but plenty of room for me to set up the mics, and the end of the front row is close enough to the nearest wall plug to power the laptop. I just have to remember to make sure it's in "don't go to sleep, darnit" mode. Setting the levels will be a little tricky, but hopefully what I used last night will work.

Stayed in the open filking until 1:30 or 2:00 -- not too many people, and good singing.

Album pre-orders have been, not exactly brisk, but OK; I've also been handing out bonus disks to the folks who have already ordered. I stole an idea from quadrivium and stuffed the preorder bonus disks into correspondingly-numbered jiffy packs -- all I have to do is get the customer to put their address on the pack and swap the disk for a twenty. Easy. There are plenty still available, by the way -- I brought 75 to the con.

09:37 am - Filk on TV

For those on my friends list who want to know what I do on the weekends, and for the filkers on the list who just want to see a well-done segment on mainstream media, this article and video clip from Atlanta's public television station is worth a look. OK, maybe public television isn't exactly mainstream, but it's close. It was filmed at GAFilk this January; some people might recognize the old coot with a funny-looking guitar singing about robots.

(Seen on filk, quadrivium, and ladyat; Linux users may have to install some non-free codecs, but it does work.)

04:00 pm - Musicians and the Web

Techdirt: Musicians Realizing That Access Is A Key Selling Point

While I've been writing this series of posts about the economic models involving non-scarce things like content and ideas, a key element of understanding the business models that come out of this is recognizing that a key, scarce component is access to the musician. Clive Thompson has written up a great article for the NY Times Magazines about how new musicians are discovering the two sides of this coin. Basically, they've learned that the internet and the ability to communicate with fans is a key element in allowing them to be successful in the first place. That is, it's that ability to go straight to the fans that allows them to have a music career at all. I particularly like the one musician who strategically tours by using his online presence to figure out if over 100 fans will show up at any particular venue -- and then will make plans to perform there. Nearly all of the musicians being profiled probably wouldn't be nearly as successful without their online presence, without promoting their music for free, without asking others to help them promote their music for them -- and without being around and being accessible to fans.

10:36 am - The future isn't like it used to be

Salon.com Books | Back to the future

Staring out of my window in Manhattan's East Village the other day, it struck me suddenly that the street scene below did not differ in any significant way from how it would have looked in 1967. Maybe even 1947. Oh, the design of automobiles has changed a bit, but combustion-engine-propelled ground-level vehicles are still how we get around, as opposed to flying cars or teleportation. Pedestrians trudge along sidewalks rather than swooshing along high-speed moving travelators. And even in hipster-friendly New York, most people's clothes and hair don't look especially outlandish. From the trusty traffic meters and sturdy blue mailboxes to the iconic yellow taxis and occasional cop on horseback, 21st century New York looks distressingly nonfuturistic. For a former science science fiction fanatic like me, this is brutally disappointing.

folkmew

09:22 am - Did I mention

Did I mention the rehearsal with Joyce Monday night? I thought not. Got through much of the tentative setlist and a lot of my songbook -- I'd printed her a copy Saturday morning to give her at her husband's 60th birthday party on Sunday. Guess I didn't mention that, either. Got in some singing there, too, both my stuff and good old hymnal singing out of Rise Up Singing. Joyce is part of a group that's been holding monthly "songfests" for years; I occasionally tag along.

09:06 am - Baycon concert notes

Since The Owl and the Pussycat is in the tentative set list, I figured it would be a good idea to finally get around to putting chords and performance notes into it. Hit the pdf file for the chords. I've never been entirely happy with the results of putting chords into the HTML files -- it's impossible to control the typesetting well enough to get them onto one page.

09:17 pm - Rehearsals and mixes and tracks, oh my!

Made a dump CD for the car today and only noticed minor problems (all relative levels) on 4 songs. "Daddy's World" is already fixed; I'll probably get to the others tonight. There are still four others that need a little more work. Tomorrow and Saturday. But it's definitely converging.

Joyce came over yesterday to practice for our Baycon concert, which is now almost exactly a month away. The set list is still pretty fluid, so now's the time to make suggestions. (Waves at cflute.) We had a couple of requests from the household -- it was Wednesday, after all. "Cap and Bells" is looking like a good candidate for inclusion.

11:20 am - I don't need another blasted project...

... but it looks as though I'll be starting one anyway. this post by catsittingstill got me thinking about tweaking my CD and website build tools (edit to fix broken URL -- how did it end up being "starpnetort.com"?) to make them more generally useful. Right now they're specific to me, my website layout, and the idiosyncratic file format I use for lyrics. But it wouldn't be hard to generalize them, and I think a lot of people, especially in the filk community, would have a use for what amounts to a singer-songwriter's web toolkit.

I'm not going to do more than think about it between now and whenever my CD is finished -- hopefully Baycon.

Current Mood: geeky

08:26 pm - Friday the Thirteenth, part 2

Went to work around 11:15, which meant that I got there in time to have yummy shrimp won-ton soup at our little deli. I try not to eat there more than once or twice a week.

Went out for a 2-mile walk, feeling at a rather low energy level. I'm wondering: I had a Flexeril last night -- it's a muscle relaxant, and my back's been hurting for the last couple of days. But it's also a CNS depressant, and I have a history of reacting, um, inconsistently to depressants. Could that have had something to do with my depression this morning?

Work on my car was done around 3:30, so about 4:30 I headed out to pick it up. Ended up costing over a grand -- about twice what I had been expecting -- even with help from the extended warranty. Good thing I got paid today.

Picked up gin at BevMo, and rat-sized glue traps at Home Depot. The gin is now in the fridge, and the traps upstairs in the garage attic.

Got home and found catsittingstill's homebrew CD, I Promised Eli, waiting for me. Combined with quadrivium's CD, Courting My Muse, which arrived Wednesday, there's been a certain amount of fanboy squeeing in the house. (Cat's CD is being published by samizdat, by the way -- I got my copy on the condition that I'd burn more copies as needed. The track list, btw., is here. If you're not local to me, Cat can probably point you at somebody closer.)

Now I'm going to try to ignore the siren song of my new DSL line and its makeshift gateway, and try to get some editing done.

07:18 pm - Hacks, tracks, tools, and cool

I'm not normally home at 4:30 in the afternoon, and I don't normally expect calls, either. But there I was, setting up to do some recording (more on that later), when I got a call from one Buck P. Creacy, a storyteller and retired toolmaker in Kentucky, who promptly put me on a speakerphone to listen to his performance of my song "The Toolmakers", in front of a live audience. Is that cool, or what?

Buck performs "The Toolmakers" as a dramatic recitation, since he first encountered it years ago without the music. As I've said many times, I love hearing what other people do with my songs, and this kind of thing is one of the reasons why.

I stayed home today mainly to do some recording -- I'm hoping to finish the recording on my CD this weekend, and the mixing hopefully in the next week. I also got in a four-mile walk, picked up some random bits of hardware at Guitar Showcase, and moved my recording box back to the back bedroom studio. The random bits of hardware are intended to make it unnecessary to move it back to the office -- instead, I'm going to try running the audio out from the Delta 66 soundcard to the monitor speakers in the office, using an unused run of Cat5. Unshielded twisted pair isn't the best thing for audio, but when it's low impedance at fairly high levels it should be OK.

Recorded vocal retakes for "Little Computing Machine" and "Mushrooms". That leaves two vocal parts to redo ("Someplace in the Net" and "Guilty Pleasures"), three guitar parts ("TEOTWAWKI", and "Guilty Pleasures", and "Silk and Steel", and two songs that ought to be re-recorded because the recording was sub-standard ("Uncle Ernie's" and "Stuck Here"). Those last two were among my earliest attempts at recording -- I've learned a few things since then, especially about mic placement.

That makes some seven tracks to do, in an evening plus two days. Even a notorious procrastinator like myself ought to be able to do that. (The editing and mixing are another matter, but...)

And did I mention that I need to get moving on my taxes? I kept thinking, "plenty of time after I finish the album sometime in March..." Yeah, right.

01:16 am - Good party at the Starport

Good party at Grand Central Starport today. Most of the food (including a large corned beef) got eaten, which is always a good thing. johno and chriso honored me with a simplified kanreki ceremony, complete with red vest and hat (appropriately enough, a RedHat tradeshow baseball cap). I guess that makes me a recycled geek now.

There was some good singing early on; I spent much of the day in the office where I have a comfortable chair, and it's quiet enough to hold a good conversation or show off tracks from the Consonance concert.

09:57 am - Quote of the day

KR: (remarking on my 60^th birthday) So are you starting a senior citizens' group?
me: Heck no, I'm starting a band!

I'm pretty sure now that I want to put our live performance of "High Barratry" (available here) on the CD. There's some good audience reaction, and the CD needs a little more variety.

10:33 pm - The day so far

Finished my tech-report writing today. Yay! About the only thing left is copying some flowcharts into one report from where they've been languishing in a different directory. That may involve convincing dia to export them as eps.

Lunch at Buck's with the flower_cat, telynor, and her stepdaughter mokatiki. Good food, good conversation. Brought up the subject of my next album long enough to make it qualify as a business lunch. "The Stolen Child", the way I arranged it, is just crying out for wire-strung harp. Only problem is that I sing it capoed up to Cm, which is not a good key for harp. Have to see whether I can move it down to Am and not sound like a bullfrog with laryngitis.

Alternatively, and maybe better, the chorus is mostly in C. Just the first three lines of the chorus? Come to think of it, taken as a whole the thing's probably impossible to play on a diatonic instrument. It should be possible to cheat, however.

06:53 am - Consonance 2007: Set list

This was the first time Joyce, Callie and I got to perform together, under the nom-de-filk Très Gique. It was a blast.

1. The World Inside the Crystal
2. Keep the Dream Alive
3. Cicero in the Twenty First Century
4. Demon Lover
5. Silk and Steel
6. High Barratry
7. The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of
8. Ship of Stone

The setlist wasn't really settled until minutes before, and even then there was a minor trainwreck at the end about how much time we had left and whether to do "Ship of Stone" or "Rambling Silver Rose", which should have been a no-brainer. And some of the arrangements were a bit rough, but most were dead on. And we sounded great, at least in the monito