Hosts file for ad blocking

By admin July 28th, 2010, under Tech

This is my updated anti-advertising / anti marketing hosts file for my windows machine. You can import it into your windows machine by using HostsMan available here.

Please note that if you are using Windows 7 or Vista, it is highly recommended that you allow HostMan to disable the DNS Client (DNS Caching) service after installing this hosts file and reboot. If you do not, a hosts file as large as the one below may considerably slow down your machine.

Right Hand Click on this link and do a “Save Target As”:
HOSTS.txt

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New painting up on the gallery

By admin July 26th, 2010, under Art

Well, the latest painting is done. It’s another freehand airbrush on canvas. I rather like the way the textures and color worked out, but as it wasn’t well thought out, I’m not 100% convinced on the final outcome. Still, it’s rather interesting, and gave me a chance to try a bunch of techniques on canvas, and to refine some of my approach.

Wasteland

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Thoughts on Airbrushing on Canvas

By admin July 6th, 2010, under Art, Art Technique

I’ve recently taken to experimenting with airbrush on canvas instead of illustration card. I have to say that it’s been a real challange. I’m not fussy on the results so far, but I’m learning a hell of a lot.

I usually try to use a techique that is light on the paint, and allows me to correct, or texture with an electric eraser, knife, or similar, as well as detailing in pencil crayon or conte. However, the rough textured surface of a canvas presents unique challanges to an airbrush artist.

The rough texture of canvas requires that more paint get used for certain light effects, and makes it virtually impossible to get clean light effects, texture with a knife, or touch up with crayon, so many of my renderings feel flat and lifeless to me. I’m having to learn to layer textures very differently, and how to get the most use out of transparent extender. I’m also finding it very difficult to control the exact position of paint, and finding that colors fade very quickly in the drying process. Even with a well gesso’d canvas, the amount of pigment that seems to get soaked up is astonishing.

Still, I am finding new ways to do things, which is always a good exercise. However, after I finish the piece I’m currently working on, I may have to go back to illustration card for the next one, just to soothe my badly bruised artist ego. :)

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Monday morning dullness.

By admin July 5th, 2010, under Life

Monday morning once again. I’m looking over my task list for the week, and discovering that some of the things I needed to get done last week have sort of bled over into this one. I can’t seem to find my 06 tax returns, I’ve forgotten to mail my GST remittances, and so on.

I feel rather disorganized.

I suppose it’s not the end of the world. I’m far more organized these days than I was 6 months ago. I sorta feel like I’ve been slowly climbing out of a big giant hole.

Still, Monday mornings suck. I always end up feeling like Sysyphus looking up at that boulder, realizing that I’ve gotta start pushing it up that hill again.

I suppose that I rather like painting and working on tunes, because at the end of the day I can look back and actually see something I did. Unlike tech work, which pretty much means that I look back and see pretty much what I saw at the start of the day.

I guess I gotta find some time tonight to look for tax returns, and get some mail out the door after work. Also, now that they gym is paid off, I think I’ll get my butt out there tonight. ‘s been a while.

Oh, reminds me…. I gotta charge the iPod.

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Morning Light

By admin June 28th, 2010, under Audio, Audio Tracks

This is quite unlike anything I’ve produced before. It’s very light and airy. It’s not likely to represent the final version, but I thought I’d get this up here as a sort of milestone.

After working with Kendal on her latest work, I was taken by her use of glockenspiel with guitar. So it got me thinking about trying some more traditional sounds instead of going my usual heavy electronic route. I decided that it might be interesting to restrict myself to harp and piano, just play and see what came out. At first I wasn’t too thrilled with the sound, but as I worked more and more on the piano portion, I started to rather enjoy it.

It did start to sound awfully ‘Robert Miles’ to my ears at first, so I thought I’d go with a downtempo Chicago style electro beat and see how it offset the music. I’m rather pleased with the result, even if it is a radical departure from what I normally do. I hope you enjoy it. Comments are always welcome, even if it’s just ‘This Sucks!’ . Cheers!

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Unexpected Downtime

By admin June 28th, 2010, under Life, Tech

Well, it seems that the upgrade of Apache on my box did not go as planned. Pretty much everything, and all dependencies had to be rebuilt from scratch. So, it was a bit of a process.

Well… We’re back up and running now, so what’s been up….

Work was insane for the last couple of months, but it’s quieted down in recent weeks. I’m actually getting a bit of time to work on personal stuff, and catch up on paperwork and the ole tax thing, which is a bit of a mess frankly. The simple truth is that I’m behind in filing because quite frankly, I can’t afford to pay them what they want and still keep a roof over my head. The business has been brutal over the last couple of years. Expected payments weren’t there, we had to lay off staff, and every damn extra penny got grabbed by one damn emergency or another. So it’s been trying. Now, that I’m not hemmoraging cash so quickly, mostly cause I’m completely out of it (lol) I thought I’d get caught up on the paperwork and see how bad it’s gonna be.

Well, the accountant is bad enough. Its $2400 bucks for them to file everything, which pretty much means that I’m absolutely penniless for the next month, and that’s BEFORE I deal with Rev Can. This so serious sucks. 10 years in the IT business and all I have to show for it is an increasing debt load to the government. *sigh* Well, I’m gonna try to keep some humor about it. At least I have a roof over my head, most of the gear I need to get things done, and I’m starting to get some time to do creative projects, like more painting and some audio work. I’m just hoping that I can get them to make a bit of money over the next while, cause I’m gonna need it!

I’ll be posting the latest projects in the next day or so.

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not much going on.

By admin April 28th, 2010, under Life

It’s been increasingly hard to find time to do creative work over the last couple of weeks. The day job is keeping me insanely busy, and by the time I’m done for the day, there isn’t anything left. I’m burnt out. So it’s been hard to keep up with posting, because frankly there’s been nothing to post about, other than ‘work sucks’ which frankly everybody already knows, and nobody wants to hear about.

I did finally about 3 am last night get struck with an idea for a painting. Not sure I can pull it off, but it’s something to try. Gonna start sketching it out tonight after the gym I think.

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New Track Added To Audio Gallery

By admin April 21st, 2010, under Audio, Audio Tracks

Added ‘Stardust’ – my latest work in progress – to the audio gallery. Pretty happy with it for the first take without editing or mastering. It defintely needs some work, and to be fleshed out, but I think its a pretty decent start.

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Akai MPD24 vs M-Audio Trigger Finger

By admin April 20th, 2010, under Audio, Gear Porn, Reviews

AKAI MPD24 Recently I picked up a new Akai MPD24 replace a dying M-Audio Trigger Finger. I’ve used the trigger finger for years, but sadly the pads on the right side of the unit stopped responding a couple of weeks ago, and it started to send some wierd junk MIDI data to ableton. A replacement as it turns out was problematic. The product has been discontinued, and the few places still ‘selling’ them online always seem to be out of stock. M-Audio will still service them (cheers to M-Audio / Avid), but the RMA process takes some time, and I needed something in the meantime.

Well, the MPD24 is Akai’s answer to the Trigger Finger, and I’d read a lot of positive reviews, so I thought I’d check it out. I compared it to the Pad Kontrol, and a few others out there, but after playing with them at my local dealer, I liked the feel of the MPD24 a lot more. Frankly the Korg Pad Kontrol has a lot of nice features, but it feels like a toy made out of cheap plastic, and the pads just did not have the right feel or size for me. So I went with the Akai.

MPD 24Well, my first impressions are pretty good. It’s reponsive, easily programmable and adjus

hard to do. Yes, they might be in different octaves, but in that case you use a bloody number like the trigger finger did. C0 for middle C, C3 for C 3 octaves up, and so on. Why they went with numbers… well, it just strikes me as somewhat lazy, and it does make it somewhat irritating to program as an instrument.

Now that being said, I really appreciated the fact that out of the box it worked brilliantly as a drum controller for Abelton, which is why I bought it. Also the bundled programming sofware was very straightforward and much easier to use than that piece of crap Enigma software that M-Audio provides, which frankly doesn’t bloody well work on Vista or Win7, and doesn’t much care for Wine either. The pads have a great feel and repsonse, and trigger cleanly where ever you strike them, unlike the trigger finger which can be picky if you hit the pads on a corner. I did however miss being able to roll on the pads to get good aftertouch, and the analog style slider for pad sensitivity is something I loved about the trigger finger. The one touch sensitivity operation on the akai is neat, but not particularily useful for live situations.

The construction of it is far better than the trigger finger, but it looses a lot of points for missing features that I’d come to rely on. Still, at the price point that I paid, and the ease of use with my software of choice, I’m pretty happy overall. I’m getting the TF repaired for sure, but this is a great tool to have in the toolbox.

I hope that M-Audio ressurects the Trigger Finger. It was such a great product, and there are tons of people out there that love it still. The MPD24 is a great alternative, but won’t quite replace it for me.

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I love my APC-40

By admin April 14th, 2010, under Audio, Gear Porn, Reviews

I got to say that I love the Akai APC-40 Ableton controller. I’ve used Ableton Live since it first came out in 2001. I got a free copy with some audio hardware I was buying for a DJ gig at the time. I’d recently started making the transition from CDs and traditional vinyl to digital (Final Scratch), and needed an external sound card for the ole laptop. I spent a small fortune on what turned out to be a lemon of an audio interface. However, the promotional package I bought came with a stack of bundled software, containing a bright green disk in a white envelope with this authorization code for something thing called ableton live, and a stack of pro-sessions sound libraries. There was no manual, no explanation, no indication of what it was, and to be frank, bundled software usually sucks monkey balls, so I put it aside, and it sat there for weeks.

Well, a Saturday afternoon a few weeks later, I was kicking my heels looking for something to do. So, I decided to check out this bundle of software to see if there was anything even remotely usable. I set up and installed this ableton thing, and fired it up. My first impression was that though the interface was a little unusual, this piece of software looked like little more than an updated version of the old Amiga Tracker Software. Having been a fan of a number of ProTracker 2 for Amiga I decided to play around with it. 10 minutes later I was in love. This was shockingly good software written with composition and live performance in mind, and not just another DAW or software synth. It had everything I had ever wanted in a audio application. It was mind blowing.

AKAI APC-40

AKAI APC-40


Over the last nine years, the product has just gotten better and better. I will admit that some of the features are making it a little bloated these days, and it is starting to get to the point like some of it’s predecessors (like Cakewalk, Cubase, or Reason) where there are so many options and capabilities that option paralysis is a becoming a common problem for new users. That being said, if you do know what you are doing, and what you want, there are few tools out there that even come close. The only criticism that I had was that despite being written for live performance, the fact is that trying to click on clips, loops and controls on a computer screen is just not feasible in a live situation. Yes, the software supported midi learn, but this meant painstakingly setting up midi devices and having to map them to the on screen controls every time you changed anything. Such a pain! Mostly, you just ended up mapping drum pads as triggers and using bank switching to access additional controls, or having to carry all kinds of otherwise useless equipment just for the control knobs.

A few controllers have come out over the years, but nothing great. The novation is a great launchpad, but what about effect controls, what about my cross fader (I am primarily a DJ), what about… well you get the picture.

However that’s all changed. Recently I saw the Akai apc in DJ mag. I was intrigued. So I started looking around and pricing them out. I got a chance to attend a local demo, and knew that I had to have one.

So I scraped together the cash, decided to risk it, even though it meant eatting pot noodle soup for a month, and went out and got one.

The APC-40 has transformed my interaction with audio. I love this thing. I have been more productive and inspired in one month as a result of playing with this thing, than I have in the last 5 years. I’ve been recording, remixing and writing new material more than ever before!

Now that I’ve got this blog up and running, I’ll be posting my latest work soon.

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