My brother Frank's funeral was today. To say that it was beautiful is sort of an understatement. I'm going to start a new blog for Frank, for the family to share pictures and stories, and for friends to be able to do the same. I'll post about it on Facebook.

Also, I intend on posting here with a little more regularity. Very soon.

First, in the realm of musical experiments, very interesting goings on over at the Photosounder blog. Apparently someone has figured out how to manipulate sounds as images and viceversa. Very cool.

Also, oubliettezombie has some very good sound design tutorials for Ableton. In a similar vein, Tom Cosm has posted a very cool insight into how he works on tracks in Ableton. Very very cool.

In other news, BBC radio had a very interesting interview with Delia Derbyshire (who, despite the fact that she has passed on, and that I am a very married man, I am basically in love with) back in 1997. You can listen to part 1 and part 2 on the youtubes. She was far ahead of her day.

My friend Clint posted something funny on youtube, since this is such a youtuberific post, which you should watch. It's pretty funny.

The Tueday lunch Indian Buffet at Ellas up on Campus pretty much rocks. Very very good, I am happy to report.

Reading Conn Iggulden's Genghis Khan novels (well, the first one, so far). It's magnificent.

My latest music technology find is sfxr. It's brilliant. In a nutshell, it's designed to make those 8bitish old old video game sounds. It's specifically designed for video game designers to get quick sound effects. However, I've found that with a little processing and coaxing, the blips, bleeps and crunchy blurps sound really nice in a psytrance setting. It's too bad it's a standalone program and not a vst instrument.

Currently reading Pirate Sun (#3 in the Virga Series) by Karl Schroeder. His website is over here, and you can read a free ebook version (with a creative commons license) over here. His books are riproaring romps, very imaginative worldcreation (which we all know I love) combined with a great story. Must reads, indeed, if you like fun in your science fiction, or vice versa.

Also, over on youtube there's a guy who has a tutorial on how to use Ableton live to turn found sounds into a drum kit. Very interesting, if you're into that sort of thing.

Lord it's been a long time since I've posted.

I must say, I just really didn't feel like writing in the waning months of the Bush Regime. Hopefully things will be better now.

Over here you can read a really interesting interview with R. Scott Bakker, the author of the Prince of Nothing series. In this interview not only does he talk about his new trilogy set in the same world, there is a very interesting critique of post-modern 'literary' fiction, essentially calling it out for being the wankery that it so often is. I found this particularly delightful.

Still working on some psytrance. Had hoped to have my latest track done and posted by now, but the ice storm that hit us has had me derailed a little. Hopefully by this weekend. Still need to rework some of the percussion/drum bits.

Sail on, Oh Mighty Ship of State. Democracy is coming.

Ok. Arkansas. I'm going to lay out an argument here (and I may be absolutely wrong, but I don't think I am) for why I believe that there's a really good chance that Arkansas will actually end up going for Obama, probably even to the surprise of Obama. At any rate, even if that doesn't happen, I still think it will end up being much closer than most people think.

First, you need to look at the total numbers of votes during the Primaries. Let's assume that those who cared enough to vote in the Primaries are 'likely voters' as it were, since they already have proved that they come out to vote. When you take the total of the votes for the top 3 Democratic candidates you get 303,932. When you take the total of the votes for the top 3 Republican candidates you get 203,991. You can see that Democratic voters outvoted Republicans by roughly 100,000 votes.

Next, take into account that roughly 88,000 new voters have been registered in Arkansas this year. I highly doubt that it's even, but assume that it is.

Assume that everyone who was partisan enough to vote for a Democratic candidate will vote Democrat. Assume the same for Republicans. If Sarah Palin were not the VP candidate for the Repubs I might entertain the notion that some Hillary Dems would go GOP, but that is looking very unlikely right now. Assume, for the sake of argument, that those who voted GOP will stay that way. Assume that 50% of the new voters go Dem, 50% GOP. That gives us a total of 247,991 Republican votes, and 347,932 Democrat votes. I think it's much more likely though that a large majority of those new voters will go for Obama, since Democrats have posted record numbers of registrations in Arkansas, and the number of registered Republicans is actually shrinking.

Of course, the real question is how many of the 1.57 million registered voters in Arkansas, most of whom are unaffiliated, will go. Well, the polls tell one story (the last one seems to have been in September, with McCain showing a 9 point lead over Obama), but the voting record for 2006 tells another story. The Governor is a Democrat. Most state office holders are Democrats. In short, Arkansas is turning Blue.

At any rate, we'll see how it goes soon. And I'm sure it will be interesting to watch.