The Blog of Xangis

In addition to my last few synthesizer acquisitions I’ve picked up a Roland U-220 with two expansion cards and a Kawai K1m. I can’t take more than a few steps without tripping over a keyboard.

I’ve just broken the 100-work mark on Fictionclassics.com. The site’s been up for 67 weeks, so I’ve average 1.5 works per week.

The site doesn’t get much traffic, but it is fun to work on now and then.

I just picked up two more synths — an Ensoniq ESQ-1 and an Ensoniq SQ-2. And I’ve been drooling over the MR-76, ZR-76, TS-10, and TS-12 by Ensoniq. They made some mighty fine gear. It’s a shame they were bought by idiots (CREAF.PK) and subsequently run into the ground.

Most sci-fi shows fail to make it past the fourth season. I’m convinced it’s because there’s a limited number of plots that can be done on a spaceship, at least by below-average writers (as in, writers who aren’t good enough to write for Stargate SG-1.)

There’s a certain point, usually in the fourth season, that the female characters start showing up with a little less clothing than they did in the third season. It’s a last-ditch attempt to get ratings by showing some “titten und arsch,” but science fiction audiences usually aren’t retarded enough to fall for it (see Enterprise as a perfect example of this).

This is often preceded by the “Ill-Conceived third season romance” where the show will have two characters who don’t even belong in the same room hook up in some sort of steamy, tumultuous relationship reminiscent of one of many long-running daytime soap operas. This typically has absolutely nothing to do with the overall plot of the show and is more of a “Hollywood vomit” where the clichés of the industry prevail over the style of the genre. Third-season Battlestar Galactica is a good example.

I don’t see this as going away anytime soon. Writing to the lowest common denominator has taken over and we’re stuck with the crap the lazy, uncreative writers want to feed us. Nevermind that there’s nigh on 100 years of excellent fiction to draw from, we *LOVE* to see the same old crap regurgitated over and over.

I’ve recently acquired:

Roland D-20
Yamaha CS2x
Yamaha RX15 Drum Machine

The drum machine is pretty manky and unlikely to survive the “play around and see if I like it” period, but the D-20 and CS2x are pretty awesome.

There’s a new compilation in the works by C’Tan Worldkiller of Darksonus. You can read more here:

http://www.darksonus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1964

Something tells me the 2008 material I’m working on would fit perfectly.

Since spring’s happening and I’m once again motivated, I’ve started acquiring synthesizers again. In the past few weeks, the collection has acquired the following doohickeys:

Roland JV-880
Roland GM-70 Guitar Synthesizer
Roland MT-32
E-Mu Proteus/2
Korg DS-8
Yamaha EX7
Yamaha TX81Z
Ensoniq VFX

Part of it is that I want to make noises again. Part of it is that I want more material to post on Freewavesamples.com. Part of it is that I want to write a good synthesizer editing/patch management application for Vista. So, yeah, I’m acquiring gear. Look for a new Bloodless Mushroom CD later in 2008.

Not too long ago I put some of my older Bloodless Mushroom tunes on PodSafe. Looks like one found its way into a podcast:

http://jameserellogadgets.com/2008/03/29/geek-democracy-03282008-techcrunched/

Feels pretty neat to be making myself useful in some way.

Today I was filling out my corporate tax forms for Zeta Centauri, Inc. To my massive chagrin, printed clearly on the first page of the tax instruction booklet was:

“WITH GOD ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE”

My first reaction was, “What the _FUCK_ is going on here?” I seriously flipped out. I mean WTF!?!?!? How are imaginary friends and taxes related?

So, I did a little bit of investigating. Apparently this is something that slipped under my radar back in 2001:

http://www.claremont.org/projects/pageid.1821/default.asp

So, I had to at least write this to the Ohio Department of Taxation via their “contact us” page:

‘As a non-religious corporation, we question the validity of printing
“With god all things are possible” on the Ohio Corporation Franchise Tax
Report Instructions booklet. This would make sense on a church tax form
booklet, but it has no place on corporate tax booklets. It makes us
question whether, not having this “god”, it is actually possible to
complete form 1120.’

…

I mean, seriously, this is the damned 21st century. It’s not like electricity hasn’t been invented yet and people are still living in caves… or so I thought.

This is the sort of thing that leads people to make love to patio furniture.

I’ve started playing bass with the.untermensch.denial.

http://www.myspace.com/utrband if you’re curious what it sounds like.

It looks like it has a lot of potential. We’ll see where it goes from here.

I managed to wipe out the boot loader for Vista yesterday.

Here’s how to restore it.

1. Boot from Vista CD.
2. Enter your language info and hit next.
3. Go to the console (bottom option on the menu that comes up).
4. Go to your CD drive.  If it’s drive E, type ‘E:\’.
5. Change to the boot directory by typing ‘cd boot’.
6. Run the bootsect command.  You can type ‘bootsect /?’ to see your options, but ultimately you’ll end up typing something like ‘bootsect /nt60 C: /mbr’.
7. Life should no longer suck after you reboot.