TGIF! Totally Getting It Free!

I have an awesome dilemma. It's not awesome in the sense that I enjoy it or that it will be the easiest choice, but it is the first time this decision had to be made for me. I need to choose between using an open source sound editor or using a pirated copy of one that is very not free. In leu of having a computer without Ubuntu studio and wanting to not use UbuStu again because I think there are more powerful linux distributions out there for sound editing. And so instead of picking a new distro I downloaded the next thing that I have used the most, Ableton Live!. When I bought my m-audio firewire solo to record my guitar, it came with a free demo version of Live! and I thoroughly enjoyed using it. It lets me do a lot of things, from create drum beats to adding guitar effects. The free version was limited to only a few effects running at once, which was annoying and so after I first got UbuStu I never went back. Colin and I used the open source program Ardour for the very first Hello Blacksmith recordings and it wasn't the greatest and didn't have as many features, it was open source.
Open source is something I support very strongly, it gives users the power to add the functionality that they want, ever improving the program. And as long as each version is maintained, it can result in very powerful tools, like GIMP, which has almost all the functionality as Adobe Photoshop. Granted, GIMP is a lot less user friendly and its window management still makes me almost smash things in anger, it works. Ardour has a lot of features that are great and recording and editing are very easy to do. Its main weak points are that it is all simplistic, you can do the basic editing functions, cutting, moving, layering, and looping. It doesn't have very many manipulation tools and the ones it has are weak and don't change all too much.
From that summary of each alone I don't see why I wouldn't use the more powerful Live! for producing the upcoming Hello Blacksmith EP, right? Wrong. (Doesn't that wording just make you feel bad inside? Sorry, just a common way to say something, no harm against you) The price point of Live! is $400. But Martin, you support free information and so why don't you just steal the full version and use that? Well, I do have a full copy it, and using it is quite great. But, I cannot bring myself to use stolen property to create something that I will be selling for money. It is an issue I haven't encountered until now because I never sell anything I make in copyrighted applications. Having to think about the decision, it wasn't a hard choice at all to use open source programs instead of pirated ones. I knew the answer as soon as I asked myself the question, and I guess I could have said that in the first paragraph but there should be some point to reading this far.
So, just so you know, and I don't know if HBS will advertise this on the CDs or not, but we use only open source applications in the production of our music. The sound is edited in (as of right now) Ardour and the images are modified in GIMP. I hope that eases your conscious a little bit.

Waking up at noon (or: how I look so awesome)

I woke up after my class started at 9:15, and I slept till 12:30. It was kinda sad, but I needed it or something. I've stopped staying up for completley unreasonable amounts of time at night, thanks to last week. But one thing I stopped doing was eating well, or in general. Yesterday I ate two smaller meals, and that's it. I don't know why, but I just forget to eat, and I don't think that it is related to why I feel so tired or have not the most energy. But using last week as proof, I was much happier when I ate all my meals. It was so nice.

But I have a plan, at least for today. I'm going home after this class and making a couple sandwiches for my radio show and after that I will go home and eat and clean my room.

My room is a disater, just so you know. It's not exactly gross, just cluttered. And when I say cluttered, I mean half my bed is being used as a shelf. It feels strange, but comfortable sleeping next to a guitar, if you wanted to know.

You should...

Do this.

A collection of movies that I enjoy

So I was (actually, I am in the progress of) talking with lauren and meghan and we were (are) talking about favorite movies, and I was thinking about what my top 10 list would be. It would include a lot of movies, well, ten, but it would be varied. Like, here are some off the top of my head. Boondock saints, starship troopers, rounders, primer, naked gun series, brain donors, fight club, star wars, matrix, memento, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, garden state, monty python, and many, many more.

What I need is to rate all the movies I've ever seen. Same with music. And books too. Then I could have an actual top 10 list.

The growth on meghan's finger and how it hurts

I needed a blog topic to write about, well, I didn't need one, I just wanted one. And I went through my dilemma of "I can't write about subject because someone might read it and take it personally." I don't want to write something that singles one person out, or singles a group of people out for that matter. I just want to write. And what puts a halt to my writing is knowing that if I write, it will be about something that I don't want someone to see. Whether it is me being critical of an action, or just a commentary about an issue that people care about.
But n-e-ways, meghan said that i should write a blog about this thing on her finger, so that's what this was i guess.

Sometimes I'm sad, and sometimes I'm glad for the feeling.

If we never feel overwhelmed, we never get the chance to prove ourselves.

On the drive back to morris I got very overwhelmed, I have so much to do and so little time to do it. but then I took a semi-nap and when I woke up, we were at the outskirts of Morris and Caroline Smith was playing. And i saw that it was going to be okay. I was looking at all my problems and things I have to do as a whole and it was very overwhelming, so I looked at what I have to do over time and it all spread itself out. I have a presentation tomorrow, which having met with my partner and made the slides, I feel much better about. Tuesday I have another presentation and a calc exam. The presentation should be easy peasy. The exam will require studying but I'm hoping it won't be too bad. Having been going to classes since the last exam, I feel like I've been learning to material sufficiently to get a decent grade.
And that's basically my week. I have nothing else (that I remember at this point) due until finals week. I have a group assignment with Jake that will take a grip of time, I'm sure, but I'm also really excited about it. the project were taking on is to evolve art. I'll post some of the results after, or during, we get some cool stuff. I have a take home final in bioinformatics. Another exam in calc. And I think that's it. Well, I have to preform my vocal abilities infront of the main voice teacher, hopefully I can prove I've improved. I'd definitely say I have. If not in my ability, at least in my understanding of how to sing.
There is a lot of theory in how to sing that I didn't know. I always assumed I was decent, but as I learned, it's easy to say "I'm good" to yourself and have other people think "he's bad" at the same time. I just don't care as much, but I've learned to not assume that I'm as good as I thought. And not in a "I suck" way, but in a "how could I have been that good if I've improved this much?" I have a lot of practice this week and in my future to keep my vocal abilities up. I knew practice was important, but I, for some reason, forgot that the voice is just like playing an instrument. If you don't practice, you get worse.
But I'm happy with where I am and with what the next three weeks will have in store.

Why are the british so cool?

Yesterday I went to the Noah and the Whale concert at 7th Street entry with Meghan. It was awesome. The openers were Anni Rossi and Ferraby Lionheart. Anni was this short and very shy woman who stood on a suitcase with a microphone in it, played the viloa, and sang. She played for about 20 minutes, but they were a great 20 minutes. She had a way of playing that went from strumming, plucking, tapping, and using the bow. Her voice was also very kind of sporadic and cute.
Ferraby was next and had a pretty sweet band. the drummer was quite good at playing the same beat in as many ways as possible. Ferraby himself played guitar and sang and was good. He remarked at how we were all bouncing and having fun and clapping and he is used to just depressing people.
Then Noah and the Whale came on and just were amazing. They weren't the full band on the album, so no horns or female vocals, but I think they played their songs with an amazing amount of fullness. Fink, the head of the band was pretty amazing at taking the songs from the album and adding live twists and fills to the songs to make them even better. At one point he announced that they are done with their next album and they played songs off of it and they were great. The first one started off fairly normal, although definitely more electric and punky than normal for them. But then it got crazy, with Fink on his knees playing the guitar with an eletric toothbrush to create nonsense sounds that he looped and played over. Meanwhile the drums, bass, and violin are going beserkers and creating an amazing cacophony of sound. They played another song like that later in the show. Plus the crowd was great, with 7th street being so small, everyone was so into the music it was great.
I can't wait for the next album/live show I see.