Its a gloomy rainy day out there but its bark looks worse

then its bite. The plan later this afternoon is to head up the street to the Manning shopping centre area for brunch at Smitty's but once Anne takes a look out at that weather, will she even want to go? I don't care myself. Its only a short walk. Our options are limited today because to the lrt needs to shut the Clareview to Corona portion of the line down to accommodate a contractor doing utility work on the Valley line. Once a month doesn't go by when the ETS has to shut the half the lrt Capital line down. They have replacement buses which work well.  

I got the webcam C270 software to work with the laptop. Its for the most part pretty good. I've got to tinker with the gain/contrast a bt more. The but in all of this has to do with their "Gallery sharing" to YouTube/Twitter and Facebook. They don't work. Gallery interface doesn't recognize my YouTube account. Other posters on YouTube with the same webcam have issues with Facebook, nothing happens. The work around is the initial opportunity to have the finished video sent to their "Motion detection" folder. From there, I can drag the video out to my laptop's desktop and, then drag and drop it onto a flash drive then into my desktop already open YouTube account and publish from there. Everything else with the webcam works except their sharing aspect and apparently Logitech's tech support isn't that user friendly. Still with music, I'm considering the iELectribe for my iPod Touch. Its a cool app for about $16 bucks and I've been looking at the iKaoss pad for the iPhone. Garage band has added a Audiobus like feature to its eco system but on my single core iPod Touch processor makes the outcome in Garage band clip too much. I'm not sure if this is a product of the hardware or the software. 

At the moment I'm having my first coffee waking up. I woke out of bed at noon today. Anne wants me to wake her up at 2pm. Last night I won a free 6/49 lottery ticket by hand picking 2 numbers Friday. Plus my Calgary/BC Lions CFL game came in my favour last night. I have 3 NFL games on that ticket. Two to win and one to tie. I got the NFL picks from the Brady and Walker show Friday before I left for work. I'm curious as to see how these games will play out for $83 bucks. 

If we get out for brunch ok, if not ok as well. Tonight the Oiler's are in Chicago. On the Oiler's website the poll asks "How many games will the Oiler's win on this (CFR) road trip. Most respondents are more optimistic then I am. they say 2 games. I say 1. This road trip will be a good road trip for Eberle to get back into the swing of things. If anything its going to put the Oiler's 2nd from last place. The CFR screws the Oiler's up every season. Its hard to play 500 hockey when your on the road so much. The schedule is not very kind to the Oiler's. Never has been. Anyway, that's about all for now.

Sparky must have been

given a notice by the rm because we have yet to hear from him all night. Keep fingers crossed. Or else he's just resting up for round two coming later this morning. 

I've had 1 shift worth of work since July 15th. If I don't hear any update today, my next opportunity will be this Friday when I pick up my cheque. If I still get no update I'll be doing a soft job search. What concerns me is they are not taking deductions from my cheque as its been a month after their mandatory 3 month new hire probation policy. This tells me a couple of things. They are going to call me into the office and fire me on Friday. Or they don't have any work for the balance of the summer. "We'll call you if we have anything." And they will. Or I could be told the super will call me Saturday for something coming up next Monday. If I'm looking at the 3rd option, then fine I can live with that and ride ei out for another 2 weeks after this one. I can ride this out until about my birthday August 21st. (I'll be 63) After that I'll be in full job search mode. I don't want to give up on this job. I just need 3 days at something else and 3 days at this job until I get full pension.

If I have this week off, I'm going to book some studio time at the sound booth. I'm thinking of booking for a 2 hour morning slot. This way I can shoot the video there in a clean environment. Its a good time because I have the bus pass. Anyway, that's all for now.

It was a simple 4 hour shift

last night from 5-9. Heading into the office was ok. I found my schedule post and its (for this pay period) Yesterday (4 hours) and today 10-6pm for a full 8 hour day for just 11.5 hours. Next week I have tomorrow (Sunday) from 12-8 for a full day and Monday for 4 hours, I'm off Tuesday (I can catch the Oiler game) Wednesday I'm in for 4, Thursday same, off Friday for lodge, but in next Saturday for a full day. That's 27 hours for the 1st week in the pay period. I'm pretty sure I'm back full time after that.

Yesterday Oilers traded LW David Perron. He scored 28 goals last year but like all the othre forwards on this team, their goal production is languishing. Perron is going to a better team and into the playoffs. Oilers get 2015 first-round draft pick and centre Rob Klinkhammer. Many Oiler fans were saying the team appeared down in last nights game in Denver due to the trade. I liked Perron. I hope he gets 30 goals this season.

I've been doing lots of research into a company called Elektron. They make synths, like their Analogue Keys (AK) etc. Speaking of, which I'd love to get ak. It comes with over 500 presets and can do some amazing things. It has a on board step sequencer. If I had about $3k I'd get that and their machine drum. Cool stuff.

Speaking of music the singer Bono from U2 might have to give up playing guitar. He's got plates in his elbow and his hand has playing hand been broken. He's not known as a guitar player anyway. I'm not a fan or anything of the group but they've kept the same lineup since they started in 1976. They have 13 studio albums and 7 #1 US hits.

The street out here last night was very icy and treacherous. Time to break open the cleats once more. It's mostly for on the way home. Anne came home with some disturbing news when she went to pay on the rent yesterday. We got a warning. Apparently the people below us were complaining that we're very loud. Anne and I have been fighting a bit and she's been raising her voice at all hours. What with me being home a lot could have edged her on as well. I have a full day today, and I'm going to get some Tim's breakfast before I start. I get my half hour break and a couple of tens in there as well today so it should go fast. I have a cold beer in the fridge for tonight. Anyway, that's all for now.

Sundays

I had a great evening last night. I managed to work on Maschine and I got it to work with my hand held mic by changing the sample rate and the Asio settings. It’s not as good as a condenser mic with a pop filter in a treated room but in changing the sample rate I got rid of a lot of static.

Yesterday here in Edmonton, local pot smokers got together for their annual smoke in or whatever it’s called. I smoked pot maybe once in my life. It never did anything for me. Still doesn’t.

Apparently the powers that be are mulling over a tax on the use of using plastic saying that merchants are losing about 10% on transactions being made every time at the point of sale someone needs to uses a credit card or a bankcard. The Bank of Canada will make the decision by the end of the week. The ramifications of this could be huge. Namely I feel it will impact the economy in an adverse way and perhaps slow it down. It also means that those Scene rewards points wont be worth much if there is a 10% surcharge on every time consumers use plastic. If that‘s to stop people from using them, banks will see their profits dwindle and that‘s another aspect to consider. It‘s not going stop the use of plastic all together if the decision to do this goes ahead. We’ll know by the end of the week what’s going to happen here. Maybe it will only apply at the till. So for example if the consumer wants to use plastic to pay for anything online, it wont affect it. I can still use my bank card online by paying for that book at Audrey’s and then going down to pick it up. That type of a thing for specific. It smacks of another tax grab. 

Speaking about music earlier in this post vinyl records were in the news again. Yesterday was international record store day. I bought many vinyl albums back in the day. The first album I ever bought I think was in 1971, when I could afford to by music but the first 45 I ever bought was The Beatles “She loves you” but remastered cds and dvds sound a lot better to my ear but you feel you actually got something for your money. Vinyl sales have gone up as well, in 2006 vinyl sales accounted for something like $36M. Today they are selling something like $171M. The last time vinyl had sales like this, Bill Clinton was President. The last vinyl album I bought was in 1988: Kansas “Power.” I remember it vividly buying it here in Edmonton Woodward’s to be exact.

Not much going on today and that’s the way I like it. I’m going to work on my music and do some Lodge memory work, have brunch watch Doctor Who and the Duck’s/Oiler’s game check my email watch the news have dinner and go to bed. I‘m working all week 9-5pm all week. The only thing pressing is to go to the library check why my un and pw are not working properly. Anyway, that‘s about all for now. 

I'm having a decent weekend

despite the snow still abundant on the ground and at this hour 3:15pm the Sun seems to want to come out. Even though it's been Spring for awhile now, it's winter conditions out there. I took this short video from inside my "office" looking out 

Usually by this time of the year, we'd have the odd patch of snow in the shadow area's but nothing like this!

Tomorrow it's Monday night Raw and the Oiler/Duck's game. Another game the Oiler's are going to drop. With about 10 games left and 3 points away from a playoff spot they better start winning some games. Tuesday after work I'm off to the Edmonton public Library to activate my library card. Wednesday and Thursday night I'm home. I'm going to see what happens Friday but I might be able to get Yamaha 5  studio monitors, the Cubase 7 update and the Akai audio interface on a plan but we'll see.

At the moment Anne is doing some shopping and then we're going to have some late brunch and watch Doctor Who. 

Anne's been wanting me to call our local Apple store to see if she can recover her purchased music lost on her iTouch she lost about a month ago and put it on my iPad and into my iTunes account. So I'm going to do this while she's out. Anyway, that's about all for now. 

A little business to take care of first....

if this offends some people, so be it. I'm not here to make friends. Let me break it down for you in plain English guys: I believe in God and that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. I don't wear my religious beliefs on my sleeve or anything and neither do you have to either if you like. It's for the above I give pause today because on this day Good Friday. Jesus died for us. I'm not a Church goer or read the bible everyday but just to let my readers know that if you don't have God in your life, your nothing. Everything I am or lack there of comes from one source, that's God.

Yesterday morning I had circulation trouble in my legs due to problems with diabetes, Anne suggested I have an extra long weekend so I called into the office regretting my situation. At least I called in sick.

This is really not new News. Google announced that it is shutting down Reader. I like Reader but there are alternatives. One site I'm liking is TheOldReader thanks to i09 for posting this.

At the moment I'm trying to sync 1107 songs from my iTunes library to clear off all the music from my iPod Touch. I hope I'm doing this right. 

Ok, I'm switching back to Firefox. It's so easy to download photos Chrome always seems to have my photos turned sideways after I download as I'm about 40% synced. This could take all night. Finally, I've got this done. I cleared about 3.5 Gb space for the iTouch.
  
The Columbus/Oiler game at the Rex last night was a quite the game. It was a nice thing for the Oiler's to do win on the eve of a long weekend. They get 2 points and are just 3 points away from a playoff spot. With 17 games left anything can happen. It was a fun game to watch. 

Not only was yesterday notable in above but also I got my income tax return,which means I'm going to pay off Maschine,which is about 60% of my return but the rest is going to be saved for a rainy day. I'm hoping in a way though that I get "laid off"briefly and go on EI with a medical. I've done it that way last time 15 yers ago. The rational behind this is that while it may take 8 weeks to get my first check if it's approved. Next week sometime,I'll make my availability
less half a shift so I can apply for my CPP. This takes 4 months to activate, which means my first CPP check wont come in until about the time my first EI check comes in. If I can get social assistance for those 2 months, the Province will pay for my dental work,such as dentures etc. With the amount of hours I have, I might be able to have about 38 weeks off or just about 6.5 months off. That will take me to 61. Then by that time, I'll have other places set up. I'm trying to time it so that I have work during those 3 years 61-64 will be a tough 3.5 years but from I hope to be on EI for maybe half of that year I'll retire with full CPP and OAS and work where I am for 3 days/week. But that's the long term game plan. Anyway, that's all for now.  
 

Its going to be another hot one in E town today as we're in the middle of heat wave with no end in sight

This morning I headed into work at my usual time and enjoying a nice breeze waiting in the shade for my bus. I forgot my shades though. I never made it to the bank appointment. I was dreading work inside the office all day but when I got inside it wasn’t bad. I didn’t do that badly as I ended up with $225 for the first half and 1 card sale in the 2nd half but nothing after 7pm. I posted a couple of Tweets and was counting down last hour. I was glad to rid the day but it wasn’t bad. I was happy to get out of the officered though I had a 10 minute wait. My train was loaded with it being late and full of summer festival goers. Usually there would be maybe 4 passengers on the 9:10pm train and I could make the 9:30pm bus at Clareview. Not anymore. It’s going to be this way until September.

Coast has another decent show on this evening on Tesla and energy and tomorrow Urantia Revelations. A good couple of shows.

I was talking with Tim about the Fender Squier Bullet guitars. I want to get the one with the double Humbucker pickup and the 2 single coil’s. All I need is a guitar>amp quarter jack cable Tim says I should ask for one as they’re about $5 each. Like my mic into my audio interface I can plug the guitar into it and Audacity etc and I’m ready to rock. I should ask for a couple of picks and a strap as well.  The bullet strat is a good first learning guitar from what I’ve been reading.

We’ve got another day of +30 today or near abouts. I don’t mind the hot weather really. It’s all good but I’m ready for bed, that’s about all for now.

I'm having

fun with my FL Studio X Signature bundle. Looptalk responses were saying that all Signature bundle means is you get a few more plugins but basically FL Studio 10 “Producer” is the “highest” you can go with FL Studio. My product contains only a few plugins but I could have gone with just “Producer” and I could have saved over a $100 bucks just getting “Producer.” L&M also has Loop for $99. It doesn’t give much of an explanation.

The other thing I did this morning was to configure Movie Maker 7. I put together a instrumental song in FL studio export it to the desktop and opened mm7. I put a photo of Sporty and Silky and a title and added the music and everything synced perfectly. I need something like what Windows media player has or even Real player that has multi color animation patterns that pulse to themusic. Anyway I put together a little 9 second video. It’s not much just some noise. But at least It works.

Next weekend is the labour day weekend and I’m taking Sunday and Monday off. I was told that as long as one works either the Saturday or the Sunday, I’d get paid on the Friday night. I need to confirm that with the boss though. Because it’s a Lodge night, I’m going to only get 34 hours instead of my usual 36. 38 now that they have the extra extended shift. This week I’ll have 34 hours. I should have worked yesterday because of me missing Thursday but I wouldn’t have much of a weekend. So for the next 2 weeks I’m only going to have 34 hour checks.

I kind of did a stupid thing Saturday. I brought my insulin with me after I came back from buying my FL Studio. I bought my breakfast at Tim’s about 11am and went to use the pay phone at Corona station. I called the office and asked Dan if he and the Doctor wanted anything. I got them an order and carried to the office. in the office I realized, “don’t forget about V and the novelin pen. When he saw me taking insulin he asked about it because his father in India is diabetic as well. So, I said I knew I had a spare one at home, he could have the one I was currently using. Fast forward Saturday night, I checked on the pen ready to take a shot and somebody (when I had the pen in the business room fridge) had broken the plunger part of the pen rendering it useless. Uh-oh. Now I had to make up a story to Anne what had happened to the pen. She forewarned me that we night have to get a prescription, which meant waiting in medi clinic for several hours. I called Walmart pharmacy Sunday afternoon when they opened at 1pm and they said no prescription necessary. I asked if I could get two pens. No problem. Anne had to go to Walmart anyway and she picked them up for me. My camera batteries are being charged up today so I can’t make any more movies for awhile.

That movie maker 7 is a really slick piece of software. I‘ve had it before but it didn’t work very well for me. I like how once the user has a finished it’s a one step process to upload directly to ones YouTube channel.

In a way I‘m kind of disappointed with FL Studio Signature Bundle. I didn’t know that all the features I wanted from it were demos. The unregistered version of FL Studio 9 I had earlier was a lot better as the software I had like Gross Beat and Toxic were full versions and not demos. My version has Sytrus which is a full version, which itself has almost 500 presets in its own. Plus there‘s a lot of other tools and stuff I can use. My project today is to get my midi controller up and running. So that‘s about all today.

I'm a day late for this but better late then

never.

It was yesterday to the day 23 years ago the hockey world learned of the Big Trade: Wayne Gretzky to LA Kings. That was when hockey went from being a game to a business. I was 35 years old and I had just come in from my 3pm coffee break working with the Army & Navy department store warehouse. I think I had ordered some lunch at Joe's, a cafeteria in the basement of The Boardwalk market. When I heard the news coming through the back sliding doors at Cobogo I was devastated. It was Bob Kennedy that told me as I was walking through on that hot August summer day. I cried that day. The Oilers have won the Stanley Cup only once after that in 1990. A very sad day for Oiler fans and the end of an era. How odd everything seemed to end at once within a few short years of that incident. The year after, I lost my job at the warehouse. Even music for me changed what with the emergence of Rap in 1990, which disenfranchised me. My world changed forever August 9th 1988.

Fast forward to the present: I got to my bank at noon yesterday and made the deposit and then right after that went to the pharmacy to collect my Pro-line winnings. No snags. I called Anne at 4:30pm said she could have $25. I had my lunch: Rice and a teriyaki processed BBQ riblet type thing. It was good. I even had a great day sales wise as well.

Coast's topics tonight are about why the US is in Afghanistan and about a defence attorney defending John Gacy. Yawn.

Well the flash mobs in London England have been at it again. I don't understand why the Government doesn't just shut the Internet down? Seems simple on the surface, just pull the plug. So what's the root of the problem? Personally I think its boredom. Kids are bored. Their music isn't exiting not like the punk movement back in the mid 1970's, so kids can't rally behind something like the music. Punk rock wasn't about social anarchy, back then Punk was about rebelling against the state of the music industry of the time. Back then fashion was the banner of the punk rock movement, the music drove it to make a point. Sometimes unconsciously (The Ramones) .Sometimes consciously (The Clash/SexPistols)  Today the kids are using social media. They say their unemployed they got no direction. I believe it brings us back to the music. It's that simple. Since Rap and Hip-hop surfaced some 25 years ago, that's all the kids have had as an outlet to release its angst. Even punk rock died in 1982 when the winds of music changed direction. The perpetrators of rap/hip-hop, kept their sound alive longer then they should have and as a result kids today are paying the price for their transgressions. The youth culture has always been centered around the music of the times. contemporary music reflects attitudes of the street, always has. Even music of the Elvis era lasted roughly 10 years before it gave its last gasp and made way for the music of the 60's and the British invasion, which lasted about 8 years. When the Beatles split in 1970 music of the youth changed again. Disco, barely lasted 5 years on the musical radar map until Punk/New Wave surfaced. The music of the 80's had its own sound but after the 1980's everything was Rap/hip-hop. And that's been around now for 25 years. Now the kids are paying the price.

I've got Magix's tech support number and they seem to be out of the US (Nevada) which means no currency exchange (I think, which is good news.) I've got the number just in case and they even have a tech support line to help me with the install. Cool and I'll be going to get the credit card next Monday and place the order. In the meantime, I'll use the demo of Melodyne editor. Any way's that's all for now.

My next L&M purchase is a music notaion

program called Sibelius 6 First. It’s the lighter stripped down version of its the heftier big brother Sibelius 6. The difference is in price at $140 as opposed to over $600. The cool thing about Sibelius 6 first is that it uses “ReWire”, which is a protocol that lets VST and other software “talk with each other.” This means I can compose in Sib 6 and then sync the composition into my Host/Daw like FL Studio and it will playback and record right from Sib 6. I save it “As” and it’s captured. This is way cool and I’m going to pick this up next weeken (the 23rd) This is going to be cool and when I get FL Studio 10, and battery 3, possibly Sugar Bytes guitarist. SB is a cool program and I also want to get that doublerX program as well. So, Fl Studio 10, Battery 3, Doubler X and that’s all I need. I’m going to have my own music up on the net cutting my first track this fall, if all goes well.

Anyway, Anne and I headed out of here about 3:30pm yesterday as our destination was to Royal Pizza on the South Side. Not having anything to eat and all I wasn’t in the best of moods. I picked up though on our way on the train. I was anticipating a long ride. I don’t know what time we got to the University but at least it wasn’t raining. A brief wait and we were at Chapters because the rest of a street festival of some kind. It wasn’t raining as we got to Royal Pizza I’d say within 40 minutes of leaving the house. Anne spilled some pop in our booth all over herself and it was mostly my fault. I felt bad but it was minor and my mood picked up. The bill for pop and the pizza was $31. No big deal. Anne wanted to go get some ice cream at a place nearby she likes. I went over to Chapters because I thought they might have closed by 6pm as it was just after 5pm.
Inside Chapters I looked around for book 2 of the Star Wars “Fate of the Jedi series.” They had book 3 Allies. I picked that one up and Anne comes up the stairs with a cone of ice cream. I was going to pickup book 4 of Georg RR Martin’s Song of fire and ice but I couldn’t remember if I had already had it yet. Book 2 of the Star Wars book was still in hardcover. I’m going to get Sib 6 first before I get the book. There David Weber’s Safe hold series book 4 “A mighty fortress.” I‘m interested in this series. Anyway, time for bed. .
Not that I needed the pill or anything to help me sleep overnight but it didn’t hurt.

Earlier this afternoon I did a inventory of my SFF novles and I have 271 books so far in my "new library," as opposed to the others I had abandoned in the late 1970's. I hope to break the 300 mark by the end of the year. When I reach 1,000 books I'm going to get all my new books on a ebook reader.
.
This morning I was able to get some more info on Rewire. The thing with sample tank is, it works fine in stand alone mode. FL Studio 9 launches it in a “wrapper” which makes it hard to set up midi. Sample tank is a program or a plug-in not a VST instrument. But it supports Rewire and if my un registered copy of Cubase can talk to Sampletank via Rewire it might help me figure out why I’m getting static with my sounds in Sampletank. FL Studio lets me only have one channel at a time. I’m still “evaluating” FL Studio and Cubase, Anyway that's about all for now.