Hey, it’s the first Pickabar tune of 2010! I was starting to get a little nervous, because I usually have a new song in the oven every month. Four months without writing a single tune was a little bit nerve wracking. Every time I finish a song a part of me worries that it might not happen ever again. Thankfully, the voice was proven wrong, at least for one more tune.…
»Everyone is biased, but it can be very hard to acknowledge those biases. That’s why it’s an incredible advantage in life if you can look past the vanity filters and special effects that your superego places in front of our mind’s eye and really see the truth about yourself. When it comes to computer problems, I am biased towards suspecting software over hardware. It’s not hard to understand why. I am a programmer.…
»One of the things I miss most about my grandmother Nancy is the little talks we used to have. Sometimes, after a long day working two jobs, she would come home and sit down as if she was letting the air out of herself. As a young boy, I was full of energy and I couldn’t understand exactly how she felt. I understand more and more every day. Sometimes, after a bit, we would talk.…
»64 days ago I fell down a flight of stairs and I argued with myself as I fell through the air I landed on my face and stood up without any pain but I cried inside myself because I hoped that I’d be slain this world is full of tiny hurts they build up just like snow balls and I prayed that all that suffering would stop once and for all…
»We had a fun day sledding in Fort Greene Park yesterday. One of the highlights was seeing the menagerie of snowmen that were being built. As an admitted Star Wars fanatic, this was definitely my favorite: I asked him to build an AT-AT walker, but I didn’t come back to check on it.…
»My friend Jarl wrote and recorded a song for a Swedish punk rock contest. He sent me an email seeing if I would like to write some lyrics and record some vocals for the song. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to work on the song until last Sunday morning…the date when the songs were due! I wrote and recorded this in about an hour and a half. It’s not the cleverest lyric, the most sublime verse, the solo isn’t great and it’s not even very tuneful, but I’m happy with it for 90 minutes of work.…
»Microsoft has struggled playing catch-up to Google when it comes to search, but I actually preferred their map service. The killer feature for me, as a runner, was the ability to easily draw routes on a map and calculate the exact distance. This let me easily plan new runs from any computer without a lot of hassle. I’ve never found a way to do the equivalent on any other service.…
»…but there are a few Gerrard Avenues about. No, “Gerard Street” doesn’t count. Would anyone be kind enough to take a photo of one of those places and send me a copy? I would appreciate it. If you don’t live near any of them, but you have a friend who does, can you email them a link to this page? Heck, email them if they even live in the right state and maybe they’ll know someone.…
»I do my “serious” recording using Cakewalk Sonar, but I write most of my songs in Ableton Live. I find it really easy to work out parts and figure out arrangements in Live, even if it’s a tool more associated with loop based dance music and DJing than songwriting. Live includes a nice set of rhythm instruments, but I tend to use Toontrack EZDrummer for my actual drums sounds. The two work well together, except for the fact that there’s no automatic way AFAICT to have the Live piano roll show names like “Kick” or “Snare Left” instead of “C1” and “A0”.…
»Sarah’s Dad is a renaissance man. He read my little winter poem and responded in the comments: The Snow Is AlsoThe snow is also blanket to the seed, out of sight but waiting to be born. As is the name upon a stone, no longer close but never far, beneath the snow, in each of us. I took the liberty of titling it. Goals shortly.I could go on, but I won’t because I’m a little jealous.…
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