Silly Songs with Dave

This is the part of the programme where Dave comes out and sings a silly song.

Since I recently bought a new computer, I no longer have a MIDI interface (that's Musical Instrument Digital Interface). This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I could do sheet music with MIDI but really had no good way to record audio (the built-in audio in my old machine was, shall we say, not up to the task).

I'm still going to add a MIDI port, but while looking for one I got a nifty new LightSnake from SoundTech. It hooks up a microphone and my keyboard. So now there's audio. Though it comes with a DVD, every software title on it is a demo. So I hit the Web and Audacity and Lame. Audacity is a free audio recorder/mixer. Lame encodes files as MP3. I didn't need the entire Lame distribution, just this DLL.

With Audacity, I can record, edit, export to MP3 and burn CDs. There are 92 plug-ins freely available that let you manipulate the audio files, adding echo, chorus, or any number of customizable effects. My needs aren't that hard to meet, though... I just wanted to record a song and encode it as MP3.

The first effort sounds really scratchy to me, like an old phonograph. Part of that is the fact that the keyboard I've had for 22 years(!!) is finally beginning to wear out. I can only play at full volume because one of the keys has lost its touch sensitivity. This means that I can't play anything with finesse on this thing. Part of it is that my microphone is just about the same age. So.... it looks like I'm going to have to sock away some money for some new equipment. I tested a Casio CDP-100 and it's EXACTLY right, but I can wait for my birthday, I think.

In the meantime I'll practice with some noise reduction software and see how well that works before I record anything serious.

Anyway, here are the stupid songs (and I mean that!)
http://cratchit.org/music/ImGonnaBeSad.mp3 ~2.1MB
http://cratchit.org/music/DownHomeInUnion.mp3 ~1.6MB

About the songs:
I'm Gonna Be Sad is a stupid little song I use when my kids are pouting and feeling like martyrs. There is a "sad dance" that goes with it, during the instrumental bits. At that point I usually shout "Dance sadly, now! Heads down! Be morose! And by all means, keep time!"

Down Home in Union was written for Boogaloo Folklife Productions production, Comin' Up a Cloud. It was written in response to a song called Killin' Time in our first production, Turn the Washpot Down. The songs in Washpot were written by a professional songwriter, as we had hired a production team to get us going. But it was pretty clear they didn't have any idea what life in the rural South was like. So their idea of teenagers killing time was sitting on fenceposts and communing with animals or some such (the communing with animals part does happen, I suppose, but even here you tend to get arrested for that). So they wrote a really boring song to reflect that boring scenario. In reality, there's a lot of sitting around at Heart's Drive-In, or in the Wal-mart parking lot, and just talking. Then there's driving to another parking lot and more talking. Sounds exciting, doesn't it! My perverse and ironic sense of humor leads me to take this mundane situation and set it to some bouncy music. The more boring the lyric, the more exciting the music. This version is a little too fast, but slowed down a bit it's great music to clog to. Clogging is popular here.

BTW, I'm not a performer, I'm a songwriter. So the purpose of my recording any songs along isn't to show off prodigious talents which I don't possess, but rather to get the idea of the songs across. Fill in the rest with your imagination, or ask me for permission to record them yourself.



This music free to share under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License.

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night... I'm Green Lantern!

Marc Orchant just posted a link to an interesting survey. It's a little personality quiz to determine which superhero you're most like (Marc is Batman, btw).

I'm pleased to discover that I'm Green Lantern. I'm even more pleased that it's Hal Jordan, and not Kyle Raynor that they used in the graphic. And... no cape!

Fearless, highly inventive, with an indomitable will... yeah, baby, that's me. So who are you?

---

You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 70% Spider-Man 65% Iron Man 60% Superman 55% Hulk 45% Robin 42% Catwoman 40% Batman 35% Wonder Woman 30% Supergirl 25% The Flash 20%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

It's National Games Week!

It's National Games Week, a time to promote non-computer board and card games.

So, perhaps it's appropriate that my game, Jedi Chess, was published on Chessvariants.org yesterday. I invite you to play it with your kids and have fun!

How to Vote

OK, it's election season, and past time to weigh in. Each year at this time we're treated to "get out the vote" messages ad infinitum, (as if simply getting large numbers to the polls is a good thing, which it's not). The problem is, most voters go to the polls not knowing a thing about the issues they're deciding. They're either voting blindly or they're casting a vote decided by somebody else who told them how to vote. (This is called cheating, and it's the reason children aren't allowed to vote.) Other people decide to lodge "protest" votes. Rather than voting on the candidate that best matches their interests, they vote for somebody -- anybody -- else to "send a message".

If you're in either of those categories, stay home. Democracy doesn't need you. The country doesn't need you. You shouldn't vote, because you don't know how. Fortunately, your lack of knowledge is exceedingly easy to fix.

So here's how to vote.

First, people often vote with a particular party without knowing what it even stands for, because their parents voted that way, or their friends, or their union says to. Before you say "I'm a Republican" or Democrat, or Libertarian, find out what that means. You may find yourself switching affiliations. If you're like most people you won't agree with everything any party says. Not even the candidates do. But you'll be close enough.

If you're a protest voter, do your protesting in the primaries. The general election is no time to shoot yourself in the foot. So if you feel like throwing the bum out, replace him with a member of your party... if you agree with your party's positions. When the primaries are over, put aside your "message" and vote in your best interests. Now -- days from the general election -- is not the time for your petty protests. If you voted in the primary, your message was received; if you didn't, then sending it now sends the wrong message to the wrong people at the wrong time. Above all, do not vote emotionally, ever.

If you don't know what the candidates stand for, or what the issues mean, or if you honestly do not care, then DON'T VOTE. I mean it. The world doesn't need you screwing up things blindly when the issues could be better decided by people who are informed, involved, and who care. There is no law that says you have to vote on every position on the ballot. Just vote for what you care about and leave the rest alone. You have strong feelings about your Congressman, but you don't know anything about the candidates for county Sheriff? Then vote for your Congressman and don't choose anyone in the Sheriff's race.

If you want to vote, then get informed. Go read your local newspaper, listen to talk radio, and go to http://www.dontvote.com. Read each campaign's literature. But don't use just one source of information. If you do that, then you're just voting for somebody else. Get the balanced info so you can make a real decision, because that's what voting is.

Five days from now, when it's time to hit the polls, if you're apathetic, uninformed, confused, or plain lazy, then do the right thing. Please stay home. Don't vote.

The Open Prosthetics Project

Once in a while you find something really worthwhile you just have to share. The Open Prosthetics Project takes the idea of Open Source beyond software. As stated on the website

The Open Prosthetics Project is producing useful innovations in the field of prosthetics and giving the designs away for free. By substituting public good for profits we believe that we can generate far more societal benefit than if we commercialized and sold our ideas. This project is an open source collaboration between users, designers and funders with the goal of making our creations freely available for anyone to use and build upon.

Now that says it all. To make the project as accessible as possible they've chosen Alibre Design Xpress as their 3D parametric CAD software.

Smell the Irony

In West Bank attacks on churches, Palestinians used guns, firebombs and lighter fluid, leaving church doors charred and walls scorched by flames and pocked with bullet holes. Nobody was reported injured. Two Catholic churches, an Anglican one and a Greek Orthodox one were hit. A Greek Orthodox church was also attacked in Gaza City.

ABC News: Pope Stops Short of Apology to Muslims

This was in response to the Pope having quoted a 15th-century Byzantine emperor who decried the violence of Muslims. The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said the pontiff sought in his university speech to condemn all religious motivation for violence, "from whatever side it may come."

The attacks were perpetrated by a group calling itself "Lions of Monotheism". Way to prove the Pope's point, morons.

Never Forget.

Five years ago, on September 11^th, 2001, the World Trade Center towers collapsed after being impacted by two hijacked airliners. On this same date, the Pentagon building was impacted by a third airliner, and similar damage to a target in our Capitol (likely, the White House) was averted by the heroic passengers of Flight 93.

This was not the result of some US government conspiracy, as is suggested by some, including the conspiracy lunatics who supplied this photo. Should you click through to read their retarded fantasies (which I invite you to do, since this sort of idiocy needs to be exposed), kindly click through to the devastating debunking available at skeptic.com

This damage was done by radical Islamic fundamentalists. They are terrorists and cowards who preferred to attack unwitting civilians to choosing legitimate military targets. They hide in mosques and schools and hospitals, and cry about human rights violations if they're discovered there. They demand rights and considerations that they would never in their most compassionate lapses grant to others. They have earned their deaths. It is our duty to deliver them.