02010-03-20

…and the djembe calls the villagers together, who march under a moonlit sky to a faraway place on the plain where they…
A) beat the crap out of an elephant poacher!
B) witness in silent amazement a firefly that flies backwards!
C) sit under a lone tree that has iPads instead of leaves!

It’s the last chorus and ending of “Backwards Firefly”, track number 7.

02010-03-21

We had more snow in the afternoon and experienced two blackouts during the snow storm. Yes, the UPS in my studio work well. Everything stayed up and running. (((what a studio needs: 1. isolation transformer – so you don’t hear when your neighbor turns on his table saw, 2. uninterruptible powers supplies – so that a blackout or brownout doesn’t take your computer down, 3. a solid sync clock – because a computer is not a solid enough timing-device! Jon uses the Big Ben and I have an Aardvark. Three of the most important basics, so often overlooked!)))

In the afternoon I worked on cover ideas and did a bunch of house-keeping – e.g. determined ISRC codes for the new songs, catalog number for the album and so on and on…

In the evening, more snow…

02010-03-22

While the rest of town didn’t get much snow I woke up to about half a foot of new snow this Morning. The first day of Spring: cold, blue skies, sparkling, dazzling snow. Ran to the studio through the snow, in Crocs, to add a couple of new parts Jon had uploaded.

Tuesday in Santa Fe

Rehearsal with Michael and Jon. So many songs! The new material was rehearsed, a tentative set list was created and tomorrow we will play the set in order.
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My orchids keep on blooming. I’m fine with that.
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Slashdot Games Story | How Nintendo’s Mario Got His Name
In 1981, tiny Nintendo of America was getting ready to release Donkey Kong. When the company’s landlord, Mario Segale, demanded back rent, Nintendo staffers named the game’s barrel-jumping protagonist after him. Almost thirty years later, neither Nintendo — which continues to crank out Mario games — nor Segale — now a wealthy, secretive Washington State real estate developer — like to talk about how one of video games’ iconic characters got his name and Italian heritage.h

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Fantastic slow-mo of the launch of Apollo 11:

(Via Daring Fireball)
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What Climate Change Means for Wine Industry | Wired Science | Wired.com
All crops need favorable climates, but few are as vulnerable to temperature and other extremes as wine grapes. “There is a 15-fold difference in the price of cabernet sauvignon grapes that are grown in Napa Valley and cabernet sauvignon grapes grown in Fresno” in California’s hot Central Valley, says Kim Cahill, a consultant to the Napa Valley Vintners’ Association. “Cab grapes grown in Napa sold [in 2006] for $4,100 a ton. In Fresno the price was $260 a ton. The difference in average temperature between Napa and Fresno was 5 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Numbers like that help explain why climate change is poised to clobber the global wine industry, a multibillion-dollar business whose decline would also damage the much larger industries of food, restaurants, and tourism.

Very interesting article about grapes. I have long felt that nothing will really be done about climate change until the big corporations start seeing losses… should the flood waters come close to Disneyland, or the wine industry in Nappa fail, well, action will be taken then.
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You want to buy a new bike. You don’t know which size frame would suit you best… there is an app for that:

SizeMyBike: iPhone bike fitting App
How to choose the right bicycle size?

02010-03-23

The second verse of the last piece on the new album. The piece is called Garden at Dusk. Added extra-reverb to the very last note of the verse… those are the little things I am working on now. Little surprises you may hear, or not even notice, but that make repeated listening more fun.