Cerebral Flotsam And Jetsam - My Mental Maelstrom

19
Jul
2021
15:14

Tom Servo Replica

Etsy won’t allow reviews this long so I figured I’d post this here in case it helps anyone who’s thinking of getting a Tom Servo replica from MST3KBots. I don’t think I have anything to say that MANY other reviews haven’t already said, but I think it’s important to reiterate what you’re getting into here. If you just want the short summary: Amazing, near-perfect Servo replica. Really your only choice if you want one. Be patient as it will take a long time to get to you (ignore Etsy’s delivery estimate) and don’t expect responses to any messages. Now the longer version.

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14
Jul
2021
11:25

Dream Theatre 65

In last night’s dream, I was on a vacation in Russia where some dream friends and I were playing a week-long espionage-themed live role-playing game. It was our first day and we were supposed to find a woman named Flint who we would be helping. We knew she was somewhere in a 2 street area, that she was being threatened, and we had only a few minutes to intervene in the situation. If we didn’t reach her in time, we didn’t “lose” or anything, we just missed out on that first “scene” and some potential points or clues or something.

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03
Jul
2021
22:55

“She Thinks I Still Care”

I’ve never been a big country music person. I can appreciate it intellectually and musically, but it just doesn’t resonate with me and move me like a lot of other music. So I was quite surprised when I found that despite that, I was riveted by a podcast called “Cocaine and Rhinestones” about the history of modern country music. The most recent episode is about George Jones. Something about this song got inside me and made me feel the need to learn it and do a version that was my own. A version that resonated with my personal frequency. So I learned it at 2am last night and practiced it until about 4am so I could record this as soon as I got up today. Hopefully those who hold this song sacred don’t think this is some kind of abomination, but this is how that song came out when filtered through me.

Mixed and mastered audio now available on bandcamp and soon, all major streaming services.

19
May
2021
13:54

Dream Theatre 64

Last night I dreamed that a bunch of folks were at my friend, Darin Murphy’s house (a totally fictional house as I’ve never seen his actual house). I remember it being quite large and roomy, very open with high ceilings and the main living room area was huge with a pointed “A” shape ceiling. It was getting late and he said any of us could stay over if we wanted. He told me I could stay in the spare bed in his son, “Fred’s” room. Then, in “Fred’s” room a small cursed doll of a creepy girl with white skin, black eyes (the kind Quint talks about in Jaws) and stringy black hair, dressed all in black came to life with a pair of scissors (very “Trilogy of Terror” inspired). I was on one side and a few other people were on the other. Somehow I knew that she would choose a target and everyone else would be safe. She chose me. A chase and struggle ensued. At one point I got the scissors away from her. I eluded the doll and was going to get to my car. As I went through the living room, Darin and a few others were there and kind of laughed and he said something about how they had all got up early to start their cars so their cars would be safe from the doll but I hadn’t. At that point I knew that I would find my tires slashed. I cautiously backed inside the house again and saw the doll trying to sneak up on me from outside the door.

Then thankfully I woke up, shook it off and listened to some Eckhart Tolle to get back to sleep.

10
May
2021
22:08

Cover Of “Strange Deja Vu” By Dream Theater

I’m super excited and honored to have been part of this amazing international virtual collaboration with such incredible artists. When my friend, Andrés Ayala asked me to provide the vocals, I immediately said yes, jumping at the chance to once again work together. I met Andrés when we were both hired for the same band for a 6 month contract on the Carnival Liberty cruise ship, so I already knew he was a virtuoso guitar player as well as a really great person. He gathered this group together as well playing guitar and mixing the audio. I’ve never met any of these other rock stars, and yet here we are all coming together to make some great music. You have to love the power of music as well as the power of the internet and technology!

Guitar and audio mixing: Andrés Ayala
Bass: Josué Hermart
Drums: Carlos Rojas
Keys: Vincenzo Lizzi
Video Editing: Lucia Mendez

25
Apr
2021
23:39

Post For One

You’ll never see this so I don’t know why I’m posting it other than it feels good to get it out of my head and into the universe and my page feels like a safe sanctuary where I can do what I want, while also knowing that likely no one will see it. Also if by chance you do ever see this, I know it’s by your own choice and not because I somehow forced these words upon you. I don’t know why you suddenly decided to block me after all this time, but I can only assume it was because of a post that had nothing to do with you and only to with my own brain being an asshole to me. Just in case that was it, I edited the post for clarification. Regardless, I’m sorry for whatever the reason was that made you feel it necessary to get me even further out of your life (which I didn’t even think was possible). I understand, I’m sorry, and I hope all is as well and happy as it seems. Welcome back to Austin. Goodbye. I love you and wish you a truly great life, even if I can’t be a part of it. You deserve all the love and happiness it has to offer. #SayWhatYouNeedToSay #PostForOne #ThatOneBeingMeItTurnsOut

24
Apr
2021
14:57

Setting Up My Behringer Xtouch With Reaper

EDIT 1/19/2023: I just had to re-set up CSI and the newest version at this time is 2.0 and seems very different, so many of my original instructions aren’t relevant any more, I think. I’m still poking around and setting up the new version with custom layout. The instructions on his Wiki are great and this new version incorporated a lot of the things I had previously customized. I really only messed with the “buttons.zon” file and copied over a lot of the customizations I had made for my personal workflow as I don’t use a lot of the more advanced functions like VCA, or mapping FX parameters or anything like that. I did notice the X-touch had a firmware update I hadn’t installed (1.22) and still I could not get either of my AMD Ryzen machines to recognize the X-touch in update mode. Luckily I had an old Intel laptop around still that recognized it while in update mode and I updated the firmware. Overall CSI 2.0 seems way better right out of the box and eliminated the need for some of the tweaks I had previously made.

ORIGINAL POST:
I have used Reaper as my Digital Audio Workstation software for about 15 years now and absolutely love it. Recently I decided it might be nice to get a physical control surface to use with it. I initially got a Korg nanoKONTROL to dip my toes in the water. It’s a decent little surface, but I very quickly realized that if I was going to go this route I wanted to go all the way and actually have motorized faders and all the bells and whistles, so at the suggestion of many other users I got a Behringer Xtouch. The Korg unit had taken a lot of setup and tweaking to get it working with Reaper. The Xtouch works right out of the box though with only basic functionality mostly. I thought I’d document my journey for posterity in case I ever need to remember what all I did or in case it can help anyone else.

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09
Apr
2021
1:55

Reverse Engineering A VLC Media Player Skin

Summary of this post: inane geeky technobabble about reverse engineering a “skin” for VLC media player. Ye have been warned.

I use VLC as my media player. Like most folks, I wanted a dark skin for it (which they have supposedly been working on a default one for years now). There are lots of user created skins you can use. I have a very specific taste in what I want. Dark, minimalist, compact, I want to see the actual volume percentage, and I want the progress bar to display current time/time remaining. Most of the skins, I couldn’t stand. I found one that almost met all my needs though. Darklounge. The only thing was it had a progress bar that displayed current time/total duration.

I looked into how to edit skins. There is an official skin editor that is ancient (as are most skins). I figured changing that one thing should be pretty simple. I downloaded the editor. Oh, it needs Java Runtime Environment. Ew. This is too much trouble for my tiny change. I find lots of other skins to try. Jump through hoops to download them. None fit the bill. I decide to bite the bullet and try and install JRE just to do this and then I’ll uninstall everything. The skin editor still thinks I don’t have JRE. I read somewhere about setting a JAVA_HOME environment variable in Windows settings. I do that. Hey the editor starts now but I can’t for the life of me get it to even open the skin I want to edit. Again I abandon this project and try every possible other skin to see if any are good enough. Nope.

More research. I discover that the skin files (.vlt files) are actually just .zip archives. I change the extension. Windows can normally open those by default, but not this one for some reason. So I fire up 7zip which CAN read the archive. It’s just a bunch of .png files and one .xml file. So what I need HAS to be in the .xml somewhere. I look up the variable that skins use. I find the “$D” variable for “Duration” and change it to “$L” which is the variable for “Time Remaining.” Save the archive, and BAM! Perfect! I finally have my dark, minimal, compact VLC skin with volume percentage and that displays current time/time remaining. I do a highly satisfied victory butt dance in my chair. I’m practically Neo in The Matrix*

*That is sarcasm as, while this wasn’t necessarily “simple,” it’s fairly elementary amateur tech stuff.

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