Xtension Chords on BOCA 2007!

The list of songs on the upcoming 2007 BOCA (Best of College Acappella) compilation album has just been announced, and track #2 is going to be The U. of Illinois Xtension Chords - "Just The Girl".

!!!!

I have to admit, it makes me feel pretty darn good that my first effort at recording/producing an Xchords track was chosen for BOCA. And track 2 is a good place to be -- A LOT of people are going to hear us. We all deserve credit for this puppy though -- Brian Thoman threw down a killer solo, and all the parts from Ryan's powerful, precise bass singing to Ed's balls out high A's made this track work. And Bill Hare is really good at mixing. Sorry, that was my moment of gloating... now back to work on the rest of the album :)

Annoyed at I-Tunes

Is anyone else slightly pissed at Apple for releasing a buggy-ass version of I-Tunes? I'm getting wierd artificacts and skips even when simply viewing a webpage in firefox with a few other apps running. After all this talk about how "Apple products never crash"...

- I'm giving DMB's "Crash" album a good hard listen. I used to love this band, and all three of their great albums -- Under the table, crash, and before these crowded streets. Then they just sucked for a while, and I forgot about them. I've brought out those old albums again in the past few years, and am giving them a fresh listen. The reason I love listening to this "vintage" dave now is that there is so much subtlety and complexity to the musicianship and production those albums. The grooves are constantly fresh, and constantly tight. So tonight, it's "Crash" -- .. the album which I've most neglected thus far.

- Finished mixing on the first track from the next Xtension Chords CD. It sounds real nice. I'm having various thoughts about whether or not I could do this for a living (music production, recording). And I always come away with the thought that, yes, maybe i could, but I gotta get out of a cappella. I gotta get into stuff like Steve Lillywhite did on those DMB albums. The a cappella CD project is cool, just trying not to burn out on it.

Putting things in perspective

I found the work of Julian Beever when I received a chain email with a few of his images. I immediately looked him up to learn more. The bottle in the photo above was drawn with chalk on a two-dimensional surface (the sidewalk). INSANE. I wonder what he does before starting to draw -- does he really have such an uncanny mastery of perspective, that he can achieve such a convincing 3-D effect without prior sketches and computer-aided stretching?

Check out more of his stuff here.

Chapter 1: Ma' House

It's been about a month now that I've been all moved out of my '05-'06 apartment and all moved into my palazzo.


Perhaps palazzo isn't the right word... maybe chateau?

I was lucky enough to know the previous tenants, so they let me move in early, before the end of their lease. Good guys. The place has been treating me well.


The persian rug is courtesy of my parents. It's a pretty ratty rug as persian rugs go (we've used it in our family living room for a LONG time), but it's still WAY better than what I deserve to have in my college room right now. Thanks Ma, thanks Pa.

Twin monitors on the desk are barely visible -- one of them glows rapture-white in this shitty cellphone shot, the other one is caught between the twin rapture points of the window and the first monitor. Each monitor is connected to its own PC (you'll read all about that in Chapter 3: "Xtension Chords in collaboration with st00ts st00dios, Inc"). The keyboard is new and awesome, but maybe i'll talk more about that when I actually have something created to show you.

The plywood in the bottom left corner is another hint of what's to come in Ch. 3....

The bed is old, mattresses hopelessly worn in, headboard ugly, and the whole rig is somehow incredibly comfortable.

Yes, that is indeed an accordion next to the bed.

Let's head downstairs!

The Living Room -- As of yet un-decked-out.


The D-room -- Care to dine with me? Join me in the D-room! Pour yourself a drink!

The K-hole: Care to make me dinner so we can dine? Please, step into the the K-hole! Make sure you wash the dishes -- no dishwasher here.

The future good times headquarters of Chambana.

(Stalker Challenge! Can YOU figure out where I live from the pictures presented here? Winner gets a copy of my fall semester class schedule!)

Perhaps you meant...

Those chapter entries will soon come, I promise!! But here's a distraction in the meantime. I was looking at various dictionary sites for the word "escalate".. ever since I told Jamie that she was using the wrong word to describe "the escalating (growing) rip in her skirt". I was trying to find an authoritative source that would prove to her that it's not standard usage to use "escalate" when describing a physical increase in an object... Why should I even care? Good question.. I just felt like disagreeing with her on this point :)

Anyway, here's what I found at dictionary.net....


"
No entries found for "escalate"

We have not found any entries on our dictionary databases for the word you entered. Perhaps you are looking for one of the following instead?

escalade

"



PS. Anybody know of a dictionarywiki?

Table of Contents

Welcome to the

"Table of Contents"

!

Keep reading, and you'll soon find a list of all the things i want to share with you about myself!!! Yup, this is the Table of Contents for blog entries to come. Except you can't just flip the page to Chapter 1 whenever you want. I have to write something. Yeah, that's right. I decide when you flip the page in this publication. bitch.

Ch. 1. Ma' house!
Ch. 2. My pimp-mobil-a-car
Ch. 3: Xtension Chords in collaboration with st00ts st00dios, Inc.
Ch.4: Wildcardwildcardwhat'sitgonnabewhat'sitgonnabe






That's all for today folks, stay tuned for frequent chapter updates! :)

How could we have been so nerdy?

I just came back from wiki-surfing! This is what I saw:

Damn, they don't make magazine background gradients like they USED to!

I was meandering through some biographies of the world's wealthiest people and came across good ol' Bill Billy Gates here. The fact that Bill Gates was once this nerdy is no great surprise, but Time Magazine... how could Time Magazine have been this nerdy?

Jesus, it was only 20 years ago, but that magazine cover looks like an anthropological artifact.

I found these Wikis of extremely wealthy people interesting, both for the astounding facts they contained and for the amusing personalities of the writers of the articles. Warren Buffet is portrayed to be so classically American -- he filed his first income tax return at 13 - deducted his bike as a work expense. Bill Gates, on the other hand, seems a bit sickly -- like he took advantage of a fledgling, confused industry (computing) and weaseled around into just the right places to succeed. Mmm, slantastic.

Nonetheless, they are interesting accounts to read, to think about, to talk about. Warren Buffet seems like he could be the protagonist in an Ayn Rand novel. Though Ayn Rand probably wouldn't approve of the 39 billion Buffet just recently announced he would donate to charity, with most of that going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Wikipedia has been expanding in all directions so damn fast that now it's kind of an awkward teenager. It is one hell of a creature though.

:)

(more on various personal developments soon!)