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I beat myself up for the mistakes I make, but I’m young, only 23. I should be aware that I’m going to make mistakes. Some are going to be more costly than others, and some are going to hurt a lot more than others. It would be wise of me to learn from these mistakes, write down what precipitated the mistake, how I made it, and how to avoid making such mistakes in the future. I’m young, I have lots of mistakes yet to make. I would do well to be aware of this, so I can see them coming before I make them.

I’ve recently gotten into True Blood. At first I was like, ‘oh this is okay, this is something to watch’, then I started to watch episodes back to back, and now I…I really like it. If you had told me ‘Well, there’s this show, it’s kinda like a dramedy soap opera with vampires, and lots of sex, you might dig it’, I would give you a look that said ‘…you…I mean I thought you knew me, but clearly you don’t’. Enough people around me liked it that I decided to give it a watch. It’s such a chick show, but I’m still all over it.

I also read Open, Andre Agassi’s autobiography a couple months ago. I have a very small interest in tennis, I don’t get it, but I appreciate it. I’m aware that it’s an intense sport, the athletes put a lot into their game and their bodies, and I understand the draw, but I don’t get it. I like Virtua Tennis, but it’s not something I’d watch. Play, maybe, but watch, no thanks. I became aware of his autobiography when I was directed to an article about it. The first line mentioned that Andre Agassi hated tennis. Upon reading that, I thought ‘Shit, this guy has a story to tell’, so I gave it a read. Prior to that, if you had handed me this book and told me to read it, I probably would have handed it right back. I read it in three sittings, which is saying something, because school keeps me really frakking busy. It turned out the guy did indeed have a story to tell.

So if you want something to watch, check out True Blood. If you want something to read, check out Open, by Andre Agassi. If you want something to listen to, well, Sahara Hotnights is pretty awesome?

To celebrate enjoy this song by this band I’ve been listening to a lot lately;

Us sound designer folks do some strange things. We put ‘dead cats’ on poles then stick them an inch above a stream. We will drive far out of our way to stick a dead cat on a pole, just so we can hold it under a bridge, to see what the water flowing under it sounds like. We’ll put a .7 second sound on loop, listen to it intently about 100 times, before deciding ‘Hm, nope. I don’t like it’, whereupon some of us will bust out the scrubber, and play it back reallllllllllllllllllllllllllll slow like to find what we don’t like about it. We pretty much look like crazy folk. One thing that I didn’t think made us look insane, but apparently does, is pre and post-slating. Pre-slating is when you speak into the microphone, and say ‘Uhhh, I’m at the uhh, the school, that I walk by every day. It’s uhhhh, on that road, and this is the really noisy heating unit that uhh, is like, next to it’. They all sound like that. At least, all of mine do. Post-slating is the same thing, only instead of saying ‘This is uhhhh’, you go ‘that was uhhhhh’. I did this one day, and someone pointed out to me ‘What? You just told the microphone what you recorded, why?’, my reaction was ‘Well, puh! So I don’t forget!’, they countered with ‘But you just recorded it! How will you forget!’. It makes sense to me, but apparently telling a microphone what it just heard is weird.

Anyway! Mr. Zachary Quarles, recently made a tweet about how silly his pre-slates sound. Which inspired me to make a blag!

So, since I gave you a run down on what a pre and post-slate is, I present you with what is EASILY, the best pre-slate I’ve ever recorded, have a listen!

So, I recently moved from America, to Canada, and holy balls, the women up here look fantastimazing. My list of five most attractive women ever has been dominated by Canadians. Two of my friends who happen to be Canadian are probably the two most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, this lady who goes to my school is so frakking beautiful, as well as that lady at the bank, she is gorgeous. And I’ve been wondering, why are Canadian women so god damned pretty? And I think I’ve figured it out.

Corn.

Or, a lack thereof. You see, about forty years ago, America decided food needed to be cheaper, and more plentiful, so what they did was industrialize and subsidize corn. Why? Because you can put corn in anything, and they put it in everything. Americans are made of corn, because corn is in everything. Everything contains corn. Beef, poultry and pork contain corn, because those animals were raised on corn. Every soft drink is loaded with high fructose corn syrup, things are fried in oil that contains corn. It’s everywhere, and there’s lot of it to go around, so there’s lots of food to go around, and people are consuming all of it.

So, I think a less homogenized diet is why Canadian women are so beautiful. They get what they need in their diet, I’m sure America’s corn lust has trickled up into Canada, but there’s no way it’s as bad as it is in America. And there’s really nothing Americans can do about it. Wages suck in America, and if you want to eat, you have to buy what’s cheap, and if you’re buying what’s cheap, you’re going to be eating a lot of corn products and byproducts, and you’re not going to be getting all the proteins you need, you’re not going to be getting the vitamin A, or the iron you need. It sucks, America frakked up big time when they decided to industrialize and subsidize corn. I don’t think they understood what was happening when they did, and I think it’s too late to undo it. The only thing that can change this is the people. The people of America need to say ‘Fuck you and your shitty foods, I’m going to stop buying this processed shit, and start eating things that haven’t been processed to hell and back’, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. A lot of people need to eat, and they can only afford to eat what, well, what they can afford, and a lot of what a lot of people can afford is shit that’s been processed to hell and back, so it’s reciprocal, and I don’t think there’s any chance for change in sight, and the other people aren’t informed, and no one’s going to inform the. The government is going to tell them they’re eating poorly, they’re the ones who industrialized corn, they don’t want people to stop eating it. Their friends aren’t going to tell them, either, because no one’s telling them. It’s a reciprocal problem that not enough people are trying to fix.

Basically, America’s screwed. The nations health is a problem, and people either can’t do, or aren’t doing anything about it.

I have no idea where this tangent came from, and I don’t know where the hyperbole starts or ends, but there it is.

I’m attending Metalworks Recording Institute up here in THIS IS CANADA, and in one of our classes we were tasked with making a musical instrument, one of my buddies, Aaron, made a cello/violin ordeal out of a make up box, he calls it THE TRILLO, and it sounds fantastic. I got this recording of it when I swung by his place, check it out;

My first thought when I heard it was ‘Holy shit, I need to record this at the highest sample rate possible, then slow it down for use in sound design’. The audio in the video was recorded with a Zoom H2 that was placed inside the instrument itself. After I got the video of him playing, I got some recordings of him just playing each string unfretted, I haven’t played with those yet, but they sound so awesome, I’m sure I’ll find some use for them.

I’ve been looking for a ‘dirty propeller’ sound for a personal project I’m working on. There’s a really nasty looking, mean looking, dilapidated, propeller driven aircraft carrier in this project. It’s really cool, and the more I think about it, the more the design makes sense. It’s the bad guys vessel, it’s so run down it looks it can fall out of the sky at any second, and I think that says ‘Look at us, we have so many more people than you that we can afford to lose a whole vessel and it’s crew, and we’ll still come after you!’, it’s a cool, subtle message to send.

Anyway, on my way to school, I walk past this factory that has a ventilation fan that sounds particularly mean, and dirty. I got a recording of it, and I’m totally going to process it to use as my mean sounding prop, here’s the recording;

I know there’s some squeaking and hammering in the background, but I think that works in its favour. The squeaking makes it sound like something is about to break, and hammering makes it sound like something has already broken, they’re trying to fix it mid-flight, and they’re doing a half assed job of it by using a hammer.

I turn completely retarded;

The point of all this was to get some recordings so I could make some sounds for Zinger!, the wonderfully whimsical putt-putt game I’m working on with Brandon, Chad, and a few other people. The finished product came out something like this.

So, one night, whilst drinking on Skype, I had the one, the inimatable, Ryan “The Baxe Murderer” Murtha on the other end of the line (his weapon of choice is a baseball bat with an ax at the end, hence “The Baxe Murderer”). When we started talking, I did a mic check, and for some reason, I recorded this mic check. Being drunk, I thought ‘holy SHIT, that was a funny mic check! I must remix it into a techno song!”, so I did, and this is what happened;

I’m usually really excited about the Olympics. In 2006, I got to watch Darius Kasparaitis in the Olympics, and his goal was to make the team in 2010. Age (like, in years, not like the lovely proprietor of pink-spider.net) has finally caught up to Kaspar, and he’s not the player he used to be. He’s still a darned good defenseman, he’d be an asset to Team Russia, and I don’t think anyone would argue with that (Sans Philly fans, who’ve had to deal with him when he was the Islanders, Penguins, and Rangers), but he didn’t make the cut.

As I’m sure most people are aware; Jussi Jokinen is my favourite player still playing in the NHL. I’ve even drawn pictures of him, see?!

I was really excited about seeing him play for Team Finland in 2010. He’s easily one of the ten best Finnish players in the NHL, and probably one of the 15 best Finnish players currently playing. Surely he’s a shoo-in. I was so excited about it! I had set aside a couple hundred bucks to buy a team Finland jersey with his name on it. It’d be so great to watch him get a medal. Silver, bronze. Gold, maybe? I’d just be happy to see him play, of course I’d be happier to see him get a medal, but to see him play on the biggest hockey stage in the world, that’d be great, one of the highlights of my year.

Alas, roster announcements come, and Jussi Jokinen name isn’t mentioned. I think ‘Ha! This must be some bad translations, right? There’s no way Jussi Jokinen got the snub. I’ll check it out tomorrow’. I check it again, he’s not on the roster. I check it later, thinking maybe it was a preliminary roster? But he’s not on it, not even as a reserve. I was pretty upset. Now, on February 13th, with the Olympics about to start, it’s horribly clear that Mr. Jussi Jokinen is not going to be playing in Vancouver this February.

As such, I have no interest in the Olympics. No offense to team Canada, or team USA, the teams which I suppose I should back, but I’m a fan of players first, not teams or nationalities. With Jussi out of the picture, there’s not a lot for me to be interested in. And with the rink surface being only 85′ wide, the medal games are going to end up being a mismatched NHL All-Star game.

Sigh. Jokinen’s a young guy, surely he’ll make the team in 2014, right?