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I recorded the guitar track for this over the summer.  It was the first piece I recorded in Cubase that I was really happy with, but somehow I got distracted from recording the vocal track and left it alone for a couple of days.  By the time I came back to it, my computer’s monitor had died a tragic death, just a few months shy of the warranty expiration.  Kudos to Viewsonic for promptly shipping a replacement, but it didn’t arrive until I’d left for a two-week trip to visit family in Detroit.  The day I returned to Corvallis was moving day… I spent the next month living out of a suitcase, and by the time I finally had my own place again, Twinkle was sick and I was in no mood for recording.  So this has been sitting on my hard drive for months, waiting for the inspiration to come back and finish it.

Last night I went out with Erica and her friends to catch a bluegrass show at Fireworks, and by the end of their first number I had my inspiration back.  How that woman could sing!  This evening I finally loaded up the old project and finished it off.  The original Tom Waits demo of this tune is one of my favorite songs, and I know I can’t do the original any proper justice, but I think it’s an appropriate tribute to the man whose music inspired me to really focus on song-crafting again.

Ol’ 55- MP3 download

It’s nearly 1 in the morning, and instead of prepping for tomorrow’s 9am user study, I can’t seem to pull myself away from my guitar.  This tune has been ringing in my head for a few days… I tried to record it yesterday, did about 20 takes but there didn’t seem to be any feeling behind any of them.  Today I got what I wanted almost straight-off.

So here’s my second try at recording in my new home studio.  This one is (intentionally) a lot rawer than my last attempt, just me and an acoustic guitar.  I’ve been learning how to use the EQ in Cubase, which was able to knock out the hum of my furnace in the background, plus (I think) make the piece sound a little richer.  Comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

Romeo and Juliet – MP3 download

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been experiencing horrible performance from Cubase 4.  Audio was popping and crackling like mad, and since it had been a few months since I’d recorded anything, I was going crazy trying to figure out exactly what changed on my computer that was causing the issue.  It seems pretty obvious in retrospect, but it was the on-access scanner included with Norton Antivirus.  For anyone else experiencing a similar problem, try adding your top-level Cubase project directory to the list of folders excluded from your virus scanner.  That seemed to clear everything up for me.

Sadly I’m still having trouble with the MP3 export functionality–ID3 tags aren’t included in anything that comes out of Cubase.  Searching around the Steinberg forums reveals plenty of other users with the same issue, though people with the full version seem to be able to hack around it by copying an older version of the MP3 codec from their installation disc.  As a lowly Cube Essential user, I had to buy the codec separately and the only version I have is obviously buggy.  I put in a support request a couple of days ago but still haven’t heard anything.  Pretty disappointing after spending a couple hundred dollars on their software.

For a host of reason’s I’m not about to discuss here, last Friday night was a pretty bad night.  The evening ended with me drinking alone in my apartment and watching X-Files DVDs.  Not one of my better days, but these things happen.  One of the episodes, however, was  The Post-Modern Prometheus, and even inebriated, I was keenly aware that it was the finest hour of television I’d ever before seen.  The show ends with Mulder and Scully dancing to the tune Walking in Memphis, which I suddenly found myself so in love with that I had to learn how to play it right then and there.  It was about 1 a.m. by the time I’d figured it out, so I decided against recording it that night, but I meant to come back to it.

Tonight I finally found the time to lay down the tracks and mix them into something that, at the least, I’m not entirely embarrassed by.  Feedback is completely welcome, though I should point out in advance that I’m not a good singer and am very much aware of that.  I’m still working on it.

Walking in Memphis – MP3 download

P.S. – My new neighbor totally rocks!  She knocked on my door while I was recording this and I thought it was to tell me hey, it’s late, keep it down over there, but no: she was just bringing over cupcakes!

… but it finally happened.

I’ve never in my life wanted to be in Washington D.C. so desperately.  The live footage on MSNBC and CNN is just incredible, it looks like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.  It makes me wish I still lived within driving distance.  Instead I think I’m going to head to Interzone with my notebook; some of the employees were talking this morning about how they all want to watch it there, but they’d need computers to stream the video feed.  This doesn’t feel like the sort of occasion to witness alone.

On another note… the 20th Amendment was written after the advent of radio (and, by association, real-time nationwide media coverage).  Why in the world didn’t they adjust the time of the inauguration to be more amenable to folks on the west coast?

Last week Eric posted about memorization, and our culture’s general lack of it.  He was specifically referring to storytelling and poetry.  I only had to memorize a couple of [very short] poems in high school, but I recall even that was nearly beyond me, I had a terrible time of it.  I do really well with plot lines; the general series of events in a film or novel or history book  stick with me for ages, but the specifics never do.  Unlike some people, I have no idea when the Treaty of Ghent was signed.  I’ve often wished for a mind able to trap these details and hold onto them until they become useful, but I’m afraid that’s not my lot.

Music, however, is a different story.  It seems to be the combination of words and melody that does it for me… I’m no good at recalling either until I’ve memorized both, but that usually only takes listening to a tune a couple of times.  Seeing lyrics written by themselves doesn’t help me at all, they slide right through my mind.  Melodies, by themselves, are the same way.  When I was playing classical guitar, I had lots of trouble memorizing pieces for performances.  Once I even got halfway through performing a piece before realizing I had no idea what came next, and just stopped (this actually happened twice: the same song, at the same spot, at the same competition.  Tres embarrassing.).  Once you combine the music and lyrics, however, I’m fine.  I’ve recently been playing a lot of tunes that I learned 5 or 10 years ago and haven’t even thought of in years… remarkably, they’re all still up there.

I’m not sure why I have an easy time memorizing these two concurrent vectors when simply one vector alone is very difficult, though I suspect it has something to do with the music reminding of associated lyrics, and vice-versa.  No complaints, though.  It’s allowed me to build a formidable repertoire of cover tunes which, some day, will be as useful (to me) as knowing the signing date for the Treaty of Ghent.

[Just to be clear, that last bit isn't sarcastic.  Chris got a great laugh out of an audience by mentioning that little tidbit, which I'd say is pretty awesome.]

• Finish the design of our next experiment involving debugging machine-learned programs.  This is actually coming along pretty well, and with a little luck I’ll be running sandbox pilots next week.  Assuming we get IRB approval, we should then be able to get real participants in for the last two weeks of the month.
• Prepare a presentation of our last research paper for IUI’09.  Still haven’t even started this.
• Figure out what my CS 519 term project will be.  Hopefully I can tie it in with my research and turn it into another paper.
• Talk to my adviser about internship possibilities for this summer.  Teaching was a lot of fun last year, but I’m ready for something new.
• Get a couple of cavities filled.  I may not have a paralyzing fear of dentists, but no one looks forward to fillings.
• Make it to the rec center at least 3 times a week.  I’m actually totally on track for this!
• Cook at least one new dish each week.  Again, I’ve been doing really well at this–I’ve actually been looking forward to leftovers!
• Record something, even if just a cover tune.  Phil loaned me some excellent books on digital audio and audio engineering, but I still haven’t found the time (see above) to put any of it to practice.

As discussed elsewhere, today Congress officially tallied the electoral votes from the 2008 presidential election and declared Barack Obama the victor with 365 out of 538.  It may just be a formality at this point, but still: as of today, Obama is officially the next President of the United States.  After the trio of presidential heartbreaks (Gore in 2000, Dean in the 2004 primaries, and Kerry is the 2004 general), I’m still having a little trouble believing this actually happened.

Barack Obama outside American Dream Pizza, in Corvallis, Oregon.

Related, it’s also awesome to see that Howard Dean is finally getting credit for designing and implementing his successful 50-state campaign strategy.  While mocked by traditional politicos, it resulted in Democrats realistically competing in races all across the country, rather than being confined to blue states and urban centers.  Not a bad way to vindicate yourself after what turned into a disastrous 2004 primary campaign.

For the past year I’ve been trying to manage my finances with iBank.  After hearing nightmares about Quicken for the Mac, it seemed like the only other option.  While the software itself is stable and, in true Mac fashion, full of lovely eye-candy, it completely lacks support for online banking via both my credit union and primary credit card.  Judging from their user forums, this problem is pretty widespread–it seems their database of supported online banking sites is tragically tiny.  Importing data manually got old quickly, so I find myself only using iBank once every few months or so, importing everything at once and looking at the generated graphs to get a general sense of my spending.  I’d prefer to be able to do this much more frequently.

Today Intuit sent me an email notifying me of the beta release of Quicken Financial Life for Mac.  It’s supposedly a complete rewrite of Quicken based on Mac OS X 10.5, and thus may solve the problems of the previous version, which I guess were from porting the software from OS 9 to OS X.  I’m downloading as I type–hopefully it will be functional, stable, and support the banks I actually use.

Update: Nevermind, the Quicken beta can’t use direct connect to interface with any of banks.  Le sigh.