Wow!
Well, for a start, I had totally forgotten how much work, and how stressful being at uni is. I guess I just got slack in my time at Glidepath. And by that, I’m not saying I did nothing at Glidepath, I think I got used to the fact once I got home from Glidepath, I didn’t have to think about it ever. And uni is totally the opposite. I can’t help but think about how much uni work I have to do, all the time. It’s the last thing I think about before I go to bed. It’s the thing that causes me to jolt awake in the middle of the night. This year, I am the only person doing my course that I know, and sometimes, I barely know myself. I live in constant fear that there is something really important due today that I have just forgotten, or just don’t know about. I can’t keep track of what’s due on what day, or when this trip is. I need someone to organise my life for me – I need a girlfriend.
I’ve pretty much finished the mixing for the These Four Walls EP, for the second time around. I gave Gray the almost final mix yesterday, and I really hope he likes it – it is miles better than the first one, and just quietly, really under the table here, I think its quite wicked. Well, actually, I’ve listened to those same seven songs so many times I can’t even tell what sounds good any more. I’m just sitting here, with my fingers crossed, hoping that Gary doesn’t call me and tell me I have another 20 hours work to do. In a way though, I’m sad to see it go, because now I don’t have any excuses for why I’m so tired all the time, and I’m going to have to think of a new pickup line to try in vain on the ladies. I suppose I could always show them the album I mixed, if my name ends up on it.
My guitar effects loop controller is coming along nicely. Today I mounted the rest of the stuff in the case. I then put it in my rack, and pushed the buttons pretending it was finished, like a little kid, pushing the buttons of his new toy fire truck through the see through window of the box it comes in. It is so close to finished I can almost taste it. It tastes like steel. I’ve played using it a couple of times, and its worked wonders. The first time I used it, I only had it hooked up to my amp. It was using it to do the job a $5 switch would do, but man, it was so much cooler. I’ve got all of the control outputs done, and I just have to get around to hooking up the relays for the effects switching. I have all the pieces, but I just can’t get over the mental block of slamming the bits onto the circuit board and waving my soldering iron madly over it. I don’t know – it’s the most important part, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. There are some bugs in the code as well, like the saving/loading of patches doesn’t work correctly all of the time, and the menu doesn’t have the right feel. It will get there though. When I find the time.
I swear I’ve drawn a comic in my sketch book – It has been such a long time since I’ve done one. I’m getting there I promise you. There are just some other things in my life that I need to get out of the way. I’m going to go and scan it as soon as I’ve written this post, and then I’m going to do my mathematical modelling assignment. In the mean time, here is an excerpt from my thoughts.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about television. Not so much about watching it, but what is so good about it. It amazes me that there is exactly half an hour of material per episode. I think that amazes me more than the content itself. How the writers come up with exactly half an hour of drama or humour that fits into the same amount of time very week. How can they fully develop an idea, and be sure that everything will work out at the end of the episode? What happens if, for some reason, they don’t have the time in the half an hour to make sure everything works out every episode? I wish my life were more like that. Broken up into manageable chunks of drama with occasional humour that breaks the tension. And that it was clearly defined when my life was normal again at the end of the episode. And that there was the voice over at the end to tell me how everything worked out ok.