Plaidophile

It's about freaking time.

Of course, after I spent the $19 for Discmakers to generate a UPC, I found out that TuneCore provides them for free. Meh. I also found out that TuneCore does manufacturing now and they're about the same price as Discmakers, so I could have saved a lot of trouble in dealing with Discmakers' crappy interface. Meh. Oh well.

No idea when it'll be available on iTunes/Amazon/etc. (Tunecore said "within 4-6 weeks") but I should be getting the first 100 CDs sometime next week. I guess I'll send like 20 of them to CDBaby and see how that goes, and one to Pandora, and so on. (And for the next 100 I'll try Tunecore's manufacturing instead.)

Dear iTunes,

My MacBook Pro is connected directly via Gigabit Ethernet to my G5. YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER HAVE TO "REBUFFER" YOUR STREAM. And even if you were connected by the slowest of my wireless networks (which is still a lot more than 320kbps, the maximum possible bandwidth taken by an mp3), these "rebuffering" periods shouldn't take THREE MINUTES.

Hating the shit out of you,
fluffy

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So, as soon as I released my first album I immediately started working on my second album, "foodsexsleep." It has gone through many complete revisions and restarts, and the one I started last year has so far proffered 10 songs with a total of 27.9 minutes. They are a very solid 30 minutes. But I feel like something's missing, and I also feel like albums should be a bit longer than that. 45 minutes seems to be the gold standard, but even shorter albums seem to be around 36 minutes or so.

I think if I can finish two more songs for it that fit into the little acoustic arc I have going, it will be perfect. I definitely need something between "Baby, Be Quiet" and "Night Terrors," and similarly it seems like there should be something after "House In My Head."

Last night I went to Cinematic Titanic Live with some friends. The "original" MST3k crew^* certainly has their act together.

^* Frank wasn't actually on the original crew — he came along when J. Elvis left the show at the end of the first season, which was the same time Bill Corbett came on board to voice Servo. Bill Corbett has just as much a claim to the "original crew" designation, but he's in the RiffTrax camp. And, strictly-speaking, Mary Jo Pehl, who came on board even later, joined the crew after Mike Nelson, although before Mike became the host.

Unsurprisingly, they their biggest laughs and cheers when they made direct MST3k references.

I did miss a chance to chat with Trace Beaulieu in the lobby while I was trying to get to the bathroom (I actually didn't recognize him, what with him not wearing a chartreuse lab coat and having a full beard). One of my friends talked to Joel a bit though.

So, because of my new monitor, I now have a spare monitor which is in my bedroom, ready to be used as a "bedtime media viewing device" when hooked up to my Mac mini. As always, the addition of a new system makes for some compelling questions which may or may not be easy to answer.

Last night I decided to finally get around to replacing the (long-dead) hard drive in my old Mac mini (since I have an actual use for that computer again). I don't have a putty knife, but I remembered that method being very difficult anyway. So I decided to try out my bench scraper, which worked wonderfully.

The other trick is to rest the computer on its face (i.e. on the optical drive) rather than on its top, which made it much easier to separate the lid from the base.

After that it was really damn simple. So now I have a working Mini again, with a 120GB drive, running nice and quiet and ready for the bedroom. (I am still putting my old monitor to use. It's odd that buying something new actually makes my old, obsolete stuff more useful.)

Since I have my sister's car for the next couple months, I realized that I could order large packages and have them delivered to work and could just drive to work on the days that the package would be delivered. So, a few days ago I finally ordered a new monitor, which was set to arrive today.

The not-particularly-amazing thing is that my commute by car actually took the same amount of time as my bicycle commute, and it was a lot more stressful. There was a lot more stuff to look out for (especially on the way home), and all the other traffic and the idiots double-parking had an even more profound impact on me in a car than on a bike.

If I weren't under contract with them for the damn iPhone (and the iPhone is the only reason I switched to them from T-mobile — and the fact I'm under contract is also ridiculous considering I bought the iPhone separately and unsubsidized!) I'd be seriously considering canceling my service and switching back to T-Mobile.

So, tonight I'm watching a very new episode of Good Eats, and all I could pay attention to towards the beginning is that when describing the varieties of supermarket oranges, they were using the soundtrack from a rather old episode. Normally that wouldn't matter, except that the particular soundtrack in question was designed to integrate with the timing of the subject matter, with little chords and notes to represent the "symphony of flavors" or whatever. But the timing was all off when talking about oranges and it was just jarring.

It's not that I spend a lot of time memorizing cooking show soundtracks or whatever (although I usually get the auditory puns that tend to come up in them, like Barbecue University using an adaptation of "Ring Of Fire"), I just happen to notice things.

So, from following the Musician's Friend Stupid Deal of the Day, I've noticed an interesting pattern: electric guitar collectible packs always come with a beer pint glass, while classical guitar collectible packs always come with a coffee cup.

This makes me wonder, will drum-related collectible packs come with a syringe and a tourniquet? Would a bass collector's pack come with a roach clip?