Bibulb's Journal

bibulb @ 2009-11-04T20:17:00

2009-11-05T02:17:04Z

Huh.

The catastrophic lightkit failure at the beginning of the second set was, in fact, simply total failure of both the primary and backup battery plugs. One weak link, and both the use-model and backup coincidentally went out at the same time.

I guess I oughta get me some more of those things, or build better ones right onto the frame itself.

(And I should make my third-case backup as well - thankfully, that's easy to do, already in process and pretty much foolproof...)

bibulb @ 2009-11-01T22:04:00

2009-11-02T04:04:31Z

Wow - made it to Bagels, did a little grocery shopping, came home, and then went back to bed for a few more hours. Have now woken up to have something to eat, but I suspect that I'll be back in bed by midnight...

Return of the Night of the Living Ped - Howl-O-Ween 2009!

2009-11-01T11:29:47Z

I'm shivering right now, for a number of reasons. First off, it's just cold, and I'm sweaty to boot. (I should probably put on a jacket before I go to bed.) I'm also really tired, and coming off the adrenalin/endorphin high of intense physical exertion, so my muscles are like slackened rubber bands. But I think that a lot of it is that realization that WE'RE BACK. And more to the point, we can still do this JUST fine, thankyouverymuch.

I told this to a BUNCH of people over the course of the night (and prior), but I was worried that I just wouldn't be able to make it through an entire show. I knew that I'm out of shape, and that my stamina isn't what it used to be, but damned if I didn't make it through the thing and I'm still moving. (Granted, I'm not moving well, and I suspect that the Incan Monkey God dictating this would look at what I typed and tell me "Dude, that's just messed up - sleep it off," but I AM still moving.) I guess that I ... well, forgot what the energy that goes through me for a show is like, and how much it means to me, and how much it drives parts of me.
I went to see Herschel Berry's Natives reunion show this summer, and it was just phenomenal - I've said it before, but to some degree that sort of thing is like church services for me. (One of those charismatic services, but still.) As incredible as that was, it pales in comparison to what I was feeling tonight, and with everyone afterwards.

Also, I sweated out four pounds tonight. Kinda scary.

Oh, yeah - I should talk about the show itself, I suppose.
Tonight was the first full band show at an actual venue with the new players (bassfingers , omorka , and Cory Jackson), and to answer John Lennon, "yeah, y'all passed the audition." Cory played HARD, bassfingers has his tapping down, and omorka sounded PRETTY. Meanwhile, Jimb and Susan were as sharp as always, and Danny reminded us why he's a big mucketymuck soundman ('cause he's GOOD).
Now that the show's happened, I can spill about the set list. We had several songs that have crept back into the set from the First Saturday shows, including "Corners of the Evening" (which is just beautiful) and "Mangled Moonlight", and a few songs that hadn't really been played for several years ("Soft Thud of Men" and "Human Stew"), and one that hasn't been done for about NINETEEN years ("Sea of Pangs"). (When you're teaching everything to half the band, it's no more difficult to pull stuff out of the back catalogue than to teach them the stuff from the last show...) They also rearranged one of Zoomack's old slide guitar songs for the standard band formation, and it came together quite nicely. Also, because of the time change, we made it though the entire set list without chopping anything, and added one song for the costume contest.
(Speaking of which, I'm not gonna talk about the contest - it was kind of a shambles.)
The storyline for tonight's show was kind of a mishmash continuation of The 5ive, and the second set's story kinda just fell apart. On the other hand, Paco showed up, and had the chance to play his entire thing, so that's ALL good. (I'm biased, but "You KNOW I am a bastard - I have my own lightman!" is still pretty damn funny.)
Really, the biggest problem of the night was the beginning of the second set where my lightkit suddenly decided not to work. This resulted in my frantically trying to fix stuff, running back and forth across the dance floor with no benefit before I finally accepted Rich's offer of the old plug-in lightkit which totally saved me. (I owe him BIG TIME for that one...) I wasn't familiar with those lights, so I think that my job suffered, but that's less their problem and more mine. (If my stuff WORKED, it wouldn't have been a problem in the first place...) On the other hand, I've got a vague suspicion that the problem is somewhere in the battery clips/socket/multi-outlet splitter and not the lights or battery, so that's good...

There were a whole mess of people there, and bunches of them that I was SO glad to see. Seeing shefsatyr there at a Beans show just set a bunch right with the world, and seeing Larry was wonderful. Too, seeing the Sister-In-Law and her spouse was just great.
Too, there's several of you that made it that I wish I could have spent time talking with you, but I was just hopping trying to get my stuff working... (Thanks for being there, though - y'all are awesome.)

I'm gonna cut this off for now - I'm beginning to go into total shutdown mode and I should go to bed before that. More later on, if I can recollect enough to be coherent
(Also : we WILL be at Bagels, but probably a bit late.)

IT. IS. ON.

2009-11-01T00:56:01Z

bibulb @ 2009-10-31T18:30:00

2009-10-31T23:30:22Z

Lights and backpack are in the car. Getting last-minute preparations to head out to soundcheck.

This is it.

"If the chick can not crack its shell, it will be vaporized by the Aperture Science High-Energy Pellet and a negative mark will be placed on its record."

2009-10-31T18:25:19Z

By way of bOINGbOING :

Anli & Laura's Lesbian Gamer Geek Wedding
(warning : NSFDiabetics - seriously sweet)

bibulb @ 2009-10-31T00:02:00

2009-10-31T05:02:07Z

Once again, gotta mention tomorrow's show :
SEE! Beans surrounding himself with a bunch of belly dancers!
SEE! Jimb lead the new band members to triumph!
SEE! Susan try endless patches on her new-fangled keyboard!
SEE! Jen be all pretty on stage while soundin' nice!
SEE! Chuck nimbly play intricate bass lines!
SEE! Cory lay down the beat we're all gonna move to!
SEE! Me drop dead after two sets of this and my being totally out of shape!

No, seriously. I'm gonna be so ripped out on Sunday.

Come one, come all, for the return of the Bi-Peds to the stage, where we will make one glorious racket indeed! You gotta check this out.

(Really, after over two years of relative calm, even if I'm not ready, I'm SO READY for this.)
(Also, solder fumes are kinda nasty. I think I can smell colors now.)

bibulb @ 2009-10-27T00:12:00

2009-10-27T05:12:14Z

So, Mr. Ad-Hoc Maker-Dude has to blog about this one.
Like I've mentioned previously, I've been working on the lightkit in anticipation of Saturday (y'all know about the show, right?), and have been trying to rejuvenate some of the dead lights so that I have two good lights and several spares. Mostly, this is accomplished by Frankensteining multiple dead lights into one or two good-ish ones, and seeing what I can use to fix the rest with. I've found, though, that two of the parts that are going bad faster than the others are the switches and the cabling itself. I think that I might have a lead on replacing the switches, but the cabling was actually pretty vexing for me - I've been having some trouble finding two-conductor bound cabling in light enough gauges that will work for my purposes. I could just get a whole bunch of those "accessory extension cords" at AutoZone, but the pricing on those varies so much that I'd be likely to spend as much again as I spent on the lights themselves.

...Then it it hit me : speaker wire. 16 gauge speaker wire, you've got a pair of conductors bound together, about the right gauge for carrying the power, and they're even VERY clearly marked as to which conductor is positive and negative. So I bought a roll Saturday night (along with some parts for the backpack), then tonight took one light that I knew worked except for the power cable and soldered in a length of the speaker cable.
Not perfect, but really, really good. The cord doesn't have the stretch of coiled cable, obviously, but otherwise it simply works as required. (Albeit shinier than the black cables that the manufacturer originally used...)

Down the line, I'm going to try this project for coiling cables and see what I end up with for this. But for now, I have another working light, one that I didn't expect to rescue at all.

And now I think that I shall go to bed.

bibulb @ 2009-10-24T20:05:00

2009-10-25T05:52:58Z

I've got a sixteen-pound weight on my back. The new backpack will take some getting used to, I suspect. On the other hand, it's not too difficult to move in, so that's something.

I think I can work with this one.

Now I just have to get the rest of the kit and the lights in trustworthy order within the next week.

Subject: ped hedz are not ded

2009-10-25T01:05:28Z

So, I got an email from Jimb that mirrored something I was going to post tonight :

The rumor is true. The bloomers are new.

Beans Barton and the Bipeds

Hallowe'en Night

October 31st, 2009

10:00-2:00

Changing from standard time

--so 5 hours or so of merry musical mayhem

reset your timepiece and codpiece

Dan Electro's Guitar Bar and Pulchritudinous Imaginarium

TRIBAL LILIES BELLY DANCE TROUPE @ 9

BIPEDS @ 10

MASQUERADIVE EXTRAVAGANZICAL SOIREE

Performance Art for Best Costume

A first magnitude diversion

Tix on Pre-sale now thru Dan Electro's

fnord

So, yeah. If you're in town next weekend, BE THERE. Bi-Peds will stride the earth again, and the Gilluminati will reveal all.
(Although I don't think that this is going to be "Part 3 : The Gilluminati" - that's gonna come later.)

(And I'm gonna throw myself against a metaphorical brick wall over and over again for the course of the night and get REAL tired.)
(edit : no betting on when I'm going to drop.)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna head down to Home Despot and pick up some pieces to get the new backpack into starting shape.

bibulb @ 2009-10-22T20:43:00

2009-10-23T01:44:51Z

"Playing Stick is like baking while bicycling."
-Quantumduck

bibulb @ 2009-10-19T20:54:00

2009-10-20T01:54:51Z

My desktop has faceplanted the same way that it did about a month ago. This time, Time Machine seems to have worked, so we'll see how the restore goes. (Aside from slowly, that is.)
I suppose this is my cue to try and clean the camping gear out of the living room. Maybe after dinner.

In other news, I received the Blu-Ray edition of Stop Making Sense just before we left last week, and today I got around to auditioning it.

BRRRRR. Scary-good.
I went through the entirety of "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel" and "Crosseyed and Painless", and played bits and pieces of the rest of the movie. The video is good - there's still debris on the film, but it's the sharpest I've seen without running up to the screen at the River Oaks. The audio's just plain great, with bits that I'd not quite heard with that same clarity before. (Somewhat akin to listening to the DVD-A releases for Together We're Heavy and The Complex.)

(And my Warner Archives order arrived with Urgh!, so I have to check that as well...)

"Don't merge the AT fields. It would be bad."

2009-10-14T02:55:10Z

So, being the toy freak in the family (and the one who's off work tomorrow), I'm going to be hitting MattyCollector around noon tomorrow to order the two new Ghostbusters figures, both Stantzes.

Unfortunately, I referred to them both by his first name, and because of MY fandoms of choice, immediately went someplace entirely different. My eyes went saucer-wide, as I said "I have to buy as many Rays as I can and then put them in an aquarium full of Tang."

(Imagine Gendo standing there in front of the tanks, watching, just thinkin' to himself "Y'know, somethin's off here. Sad part - that's all still clones of my dead wife. Just ain't right, I'm sayin'.". )

(I'm also probably gonna order a bunch of random crap from Big Bad Toy Shop and Robot Kingdom - among other things, BBTS has the Justice League International figures CHEAP, and having a proper Blue Beetle and Booster Gold from that era would be great (and amusing).)

And this one's full of ... moral fibre.

2009-10-12T03:34:28Z

OMG URGH! A MUSIC WAR LEGIT DVD RELEASE! AHHHHHHHHHH!

(And a legit release of Penn and Teller Get Killed, for that matter. But I assumed that this would happen in some form eventually. Urgh - there was NO clue that this was coming...)

bibulb @ 2009-10-11T22:05:00

2009-10-12T03:05:14Z

It seems like it's going to be my task to post covers of "Such Great Heights", so here's another.

We are amused.

bibulb @ 2009-10-10T15:55:00

2009-10-10T20:58:20Z

I THINK I might have figured out how to refit new switches into the lights. (Working within the constraints of no-longer-manufactured gear for the casing of the lights is ... amusing, for certain values of amusing.) We'll see how this sample one works out - but for now, I'm optimistic as to what's going to come in the future...
(And of course, there's the LED upgrade as soon as I figure out what and how to put in that one...)

I MIGHT also have the new strobe working by the show. If not, then it'll be the classic one for now.

bibulb @ 2009-10-07T23:06:00

2009-10-08T04:10:34Z

I'm trying something interesting for Movie Night tomorrow - specifically, I'm renting the movie through iTunes. (The studio's only releasing it for rental for right now, even in physical media formats. I am perplexonified.) So we'll see how that turns out.

John Calvin, he's long dead, and we gotta get that in our head.

2009-10-07T14:15:53Z

Quick word of note before I go to work, but hully GEEZE is this big freakout news to get shouted from the tops of the watertowers in town:

MOJO NIXON at Amazon MP3 - FREE, DRUNK AND HORNY. ESPECIALLY FREE.

Yep, all the Mojo albums appear to be free for the moment, and a bunch of singles as well. The only things I'm seeing missing are ¡Sock Ray Blue! The Real Texas Prison Field Recordings Vol. 3 and Horny Holidays!, which, while being a damn shame, is not the end of the world. (Although missing "The Ballad of Country Dick" is a DAMN SHAME. Gorgeous song.) I don't know how long this is going to last, but I'd take advantage of this beautimous offer fast-like while you can.

Festival seating only - please, no rushing the stage.

2009-10-03T18:16:17Z

Word of note : Dan Electro's has online tickets available for the Howl-O-Ween Beans show.

Awesome, no? While I'm not expecting pre-sell to sell out, at the same time they might be running short of the good tables by the time of show night...

Remember - y'all wanna check this out...

"Hi, there - I'm Eris Benevolence, your waitress. Three guesses what you'll be having today?"

2009-10-01T04:30:31Z

Cabel Sasser's story of the the Ogori cafe really restores some of my faith in the beauty of Discordia, in the random acts of kindness, and kind acts of benevolent randomness.

(And geeze, that faith sure isn't fulfilled by his reports from the I.F.O.C.E. professional-level Rib Eating Competition. If that doesn't terrify you, I don't know what would.)

Also note : Movie Night *is* on for tomorrow, but we're gonna have to kick people out pretty darn early, just so you know.

bibulb @ 2009-09-29T23:37:00

2009-09-30T04:37:07Z

I've been out of it these past couple of days, so let me catch up with two birthday yippees :

rorawillow and kaze_no_tessa, both of y'all - Happy Birthday! Yay y'all!

Also, although we're going to be out of town this weekend, I want to wish a Happy Birthday to northwall ahead of time - we'll hand you your present next weekend. In the meantime, have a celebratory time!

(Also, I need to modify my standard mood - I had not remembered that "blarg" had a specific meaning as per the Jargon File, and it was conveying something other than what I meant. (Although, I will note that it is a different spelling, and that as such they are two distinct entities. At which point, someone will cudgel me with the varying spellings for "kluge", and I kind of have to give up THAT little argument.) As such, I will be using another onomatopoeia indicating my peculiar blearyness from now on, as seen below. (I figure I'll probably try several before settling on the one that feels right.))

bibulb @ 2009-09-27T15:23:00

2009-09-27T20:24:03Z

Like Susan just said, that sounds like the Bi-Peds.

Oh, Ma, we're ALL devo!

2009-09-24T02:56:36Z

In the vein of my recent post mentioning "Devo Was Right About Everything", there's an awesome performance of "Beautiful World" with a SUPREMELY devolved coda rant by Jihad Jerry (a Casale by any other name would smell as sweet) backed by a primo Devo cover band, shot by the right Rev. Ivan Stang himself.

On the cute end of the spectrum, Google Japan explains how Google Street View works - in the international language of adorableness.

bibulb @ 2009-09-21T23:26:00

2009-09-22T04:36:53Z

I feel tired, but accomplished - I managed to get two more lights working tonight after slaving over them with a hot soldering iron, and I can probably get one or two more going over the next week. Now all I have to do is find some replacement switches for a few of the dead lights, and (hopefully by the end of the year) start working on replacement guts for the lights themselves. (And build the LED strobe kit I got -- preferably by Howl-O-Ween, but probably not.)

bibulb @ 2009-09-19T01:28:00

2009-09-19T06:30:16Z

In a related note to "Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede" from the last post, evidently there's an ongoing curious temporal anomaly - Oliver Vale is tweeting from 1988.