brykmantra.com

I’m so thrilled to be able to blog again that I’m at it again after just five hours.

First of all I’d like to thank my friends Kim and Pam for already noticing I’m back without me even telling them, and to Renny, who didn’t know I was having problems, but who kept checking back anyway, and left two comments during the month while I couldn’t post anything.

And also a big thanks to Joni of WordPress forums for helping me troubleshoot and get back online.

I had more to post, but I have to go get ready for a job interview tomorrow (did I mention that?), so here’s what I don’t have time to talk about tonight: My adventures in Second Life, my music getting circulated around (I have my own ringtones! Woo-hoo!), developments in various shows, and my job interview tomorrow.

Bet you can’t wait.

(Click the picture to view the large size for full effect.)

Well, I finally did it: I finally broke down and checked into Second Life. I heard about it a couple of years ago, but never really got motivated to check it out, and lately I’ve been hearing that it’s over the hump, and was never really all it was cracked up to be.

Besides, I’ve done the Everquest thing, so I know how involving those virtual worlds can be, and I needed to put my time into other projects..

And I’ve done the There.com thing, so I also know how UN-involving virtual worlds can be. So I blew it off.

But now, Second Life happens to be intersecting with one of my other projects — and it’s free, and I’m unemployed, and on Friday it was an alternative to driving an 80 mile round trip — so I finally took the plunge.

As it turns out, it was a great time, both Friday night and all day Saturday, with several RPMers and even a few civilians gathering their avatars in a virtual nightclub and having those avatars boogie down, as shown in the above picture, to music that WE wrote and recorded.

A great feeling it is, to see people (virtual in this case) dancing to your music.

The dancer in this case is not one of the fellow musicians, but rather a lady named Mazzie from Australia. (I’m posting this particular picture because she didn’t believe that her normally silver outfit was giving off a distinctly green hue for an hour or so.)

I also promised several people a shout-out, including Mazzie, Gwenette Writer (another non-RPMer, but something of a mover-and-shaker within Second Life), Fence Flatley (our DJ for the evening and an RPM musician in Omaha, whose artist name is One Inch From Midget), Ruby’s Cannon (who wrote me a very complimentary email about my music), Jigjaw from London, England, Sister Savage from Bristol, England (I told her, “We have a dog named Bristol!”)
and … well, I can’t remember the others right now, but there were lots of us, and lots of strangers getting exposed to our music.

Oh, and Domestic Science wasn’t there at the party, but she also gave me a nice compliment about my music in an email, so I’m giving her a mention and a link as well …

Go to the RPM Jukebox, click Library, and check out these artists and others. You’ll be glad you did.

(Note to old college buddy Terry: Find Ruby’s Cannon in the Jukebox and listen to their stuff, especially 442, and see if it reminds you to Pat Travers.)

I still don’t feel like posting anything today — I’ve had the out-of-work blahs this week — and I’m not posting a direct link yet to my own RPM Challenge album, so here’s a link to the new >2008 Challenge Jukebox.

But if you really want to hear my songs, you can look in the jukebox for a song called “Ferriswheel”; that and the other songs on that album are mine.

But you’ll have to earn it.

While you’re at it, search for Dogs Are Weird, by Emergency Pizza Party. It’s a funny little nerdcore group rap (and no, it’s not about dogs at all, it’s about food; long story).

And just generally browse the jukebox and listen around. The amount of creativity and great material that came out of this one month is staggering.

The worldwide listening parties were today, but the one for the DFW area wasn’t centrally located (i.e., an 80-mile round trip for me), so I blew it off and watched the live webcast from New Hampshire. It was fun chatting with other RPMer’s in the chat room (a lot of whom I knew from the message boards) and watching as the guys in NH moved the camera over the table with all of our CDs.

The NH guys asked us to tell them where we were, and they were amazed at the varied locations: Texas (3 of us in the chat room), Pennsylvania, and several from Ireland and England.

There’s another live listening party later tonight in Second Life, so I finally bit the bullet and signed up for that after all these years of resisting.

Anyway, check out the songs; I’m going to get back to it now …

Hmm … looks like I posted something after all … oh well …

Now for some traditional Irish and Celtic music, in video form:

Keep coming back, there’s more!

Next up: The classic Irish “Danny Boy”, as sung by two of my three favorite Muppet characters:

(In case you’re wondering, The Count is the third.)

Stay tuned, there’s more to come!

I’m going to try something this week. It’s hard to explain, but it’s about how there can be lots of material on one tiny little pinpoint subject.

This week: Videos of people playing the Ventures’ 60s surf hit, “Walk Don’t Run”.

The power of Web 2.0: Anyone can have a global audience!

It’s great to see that the young folks are helping to preserve the classics:

Jazzy!

An eight-year-old Japanese girl!

Acoustic trio!

From 80s German TV!

The way it was meant to be played: In a leisure suit at a wedding party!

Another youngster showing appreciation for the classics:

And finally, the real thing: The Ventures!

We’ve been a very musical family lately, my wife having been reviving her interest in singing in the last couple of years, and with me having the RPM Challenge last month, her own work has increased in pace as well.

So now comes MySong, a program from Microsoft Research that supposedly puts instrumental music to your singing — seriously, you sing, and the program sings along.

That sounds nice, in theory, for those who can actually sing. For the rest of us, I don’t know, I haven’t watched the video yet.

This video:

(The actual demos start at about 2:45, so skip forward if that’s all you’re interested in.)

Read the article here.

(Via Geekologie (which in turn was via Attack of the Show)

Let’s see if we can make this quick:

It’s snowing! And it’s the first and probably the last time this winter, but it snowed quite a bit, already 3 inches accumulation on our cars at 9:00. This is on top of the fact that it was 80F here on Saturday, and pretty warm yesterday too.

And yes, I probably should have posted this a couple of days ago … but I did actually finish the RPM Challenge! And since I actually finished, on time, and my finished album isn’t a total humiliation, I’ll gladly give credit (as opposed to blame) to Yay Kim, who told me about the challenge and encouraged me to enter.

Of course, I also need to thank my wife, who told me I really needed to do the challenge, and was patient through all the time I spent doing music. She understands creative urges like that.

Anyway, I’ll give you a link soon to listen to my stuff, but until then, listen to somebody else’s stuff, namely that of Another Cultural Landslide (ACL), one of my favorite artists from the challenge, in an instrumental track cryptically entitled Fred and Ethel Go Bowling.

So why hadn’t I posted until now? Because I was at the Irish Festival yesterday, duh, and that brings me to a shout-out that I promised Emily from Luton, England. Emily works in one of the clothing shops during the festival. I bought a shirt from her last year, and we talked about the TV show that she & my wife like (“Keeping Up Appearances”), so this year I decided to snap a picture and make her a part of my festival commemorations.

You can see more of my festival pictures (just the first 100 that I’ve uploaded so far) by clicking here. (That picture yesterday was one of them, the most amazingly healthy bit of festival food I’ve ever heard of, a fruit salad served in a hollowed-out half-pineapple! And it was great!)

More pictures forthcoming.

And speaking of this month’s Irish celebrations, our Flickr friend Miss Sarie rode in the Saint Patrick’s Parade and fun dog show in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia (they have it early to beat the rush, apparently). The first year she went, she won the coveted “Best Irish Costume”, and this year she got her picture in the paper. Click on the picture to see more!

And now for something completely different: One of the commercials in the Snickers “Feast” series.

I didn’t really care for them at first, since the whole concept seemed kind of pointless, but for some odd reason I get a kick out of this one that they’re showing these days:

You can just never tell what’s going to make me laugh …

Some quick things before I have to get back to the music (just 1 more day to go!):

I’m using the clover bullet point in anticipation of the Irish Festival this weekend!

I promised a shout to the fine folks at Hurricane Glass and Mirror, with whom I had an interview today. It probably won’t amount to anything, since I’m vastly overqualified for this particular job (I’m hearing that a lot), but on the other hand, they’ll be expanding their operations soon, and my skills can come in handy.

Anyway, it was a good interview, and the main reason I tried out is because the office is 2.5 miles from my house.

After almost 13 years of driving 27 miles to toil on the corporate minefield, it would feel like a paid vacation to work in a small office right here in my own town, even if I would be vastly underemployed.

In other news, I’ve been meaning to mention that William F. Buckley Jr. died this week.

Buckley was what you call a classic intellectual consevative — as opposed to what we have now.

RPM Challenge (my music project) progress report: With just one day left, desperate times call for wacky measures, thus the book you see at right.

Seriously, though, I saw this at the library and couldn’t resist; I posted a picture on the RPM message boards and got a laugh from some of my similarly desperate fellow challengees.

Hey Spook, tell your mom Happy Birthday for me tomorrow!

And Now For Something Completely Different: Tron footage remixed with the sounds of nerdcore master YTCracker.

Here’s how caught up I’ve been in the RPM Challenge: It’s only 3 days until the North Texas Irish Festival, and this is the first time I’ve mentioned it!

I had started to not go to it this year, since I’m still out of a job, but my wife insisted that I go, because it’s the only thing I look forward to all year, and I had to miss it year before last because I was freshly missing half a lung.

Isn’t she wonderful? (As if we needed further proof …)

I’ll probably go on Sunday this year, since I still haven’t finished my 10 songs (and since I’m not smart like Yay Kim, pacing herself last November when she did a similar musical project). I have to get my album postmarked by noon on Saturday, so Friday could be a late night for me if I don’t progress remarkably in the next couple of days.

Plus, there’s alot of peer pressure on the RPM message boards to do cover art for our albums.

Yes, I know I should resist, but it’s going to be bad enough that playing instruments and writing lyrics and singing on their albums (and some have even recorded in professional studios!), and now many of them have professionally designed album covers.

I had no idea the standards would be so high.

Anyway, I’m going to go back to working on the music thing now and try to leave some time for my usual psyching-up for the festival …