How's that for a record amount of time of not posting anything to my weblog/journal/rantpage?

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving came and went. Christine and I went to her parents' house this year. Adam and Melissa switched their schedule so they'd be going there this year too. Seemed like almost everyone else was there this year too, so next year it will be crickets.

The Colorado tour

The week before Thanksgiving, I accompanied Sons Of Nothing on a four-date tour across the mountain region of Colorado. Stops included Steamboat Springs, Edwards, and Breckenridge.

We were excited about Edwards and Breckendridge because it was the start of the ski season. While the performances were "on," the audiences were thin -- probably due to lackluster promotion.

The two shows in Steamboat Springs were well-attended. The last show of the tour was at Mahogany Ridge in Steamboat Springs. We had never been there before, so we had no idea what to expect. It was, essentially, a bar/restaurant with a raised, carpeted platform at one end of the dining room. They had a faiirly decent sound system, but no lights. Apparently, they expected us to bring our own lights with us, which we didn't understand. Wal-Mart saved the day and we hung three clip-on lights with colored party bulbs in them -- just to get by.

This tour also marked the return of Derek "Goozbach" Carter to the roadie crew. Derek was, as always, great fun to have along and was a hard worker. When we arrived in Breckenridge, we had some extra time, so he hit the slopes to do some snowboarding. It seemed like he had a lot of fun, except for when he hit a patch of ice and caught himself with his left temple. After that, he just looked like an abused, unappreciated roadie.

During this trip, I finally got around to writing some automation for the visual aspect of the show. Up until this trip, I was typing commands into an SSH session by hand to start and stop each visual presentation on the screen(s). For example:

The most automation I'd had prior to this was creating macros for running mplayer and xine (like that vid macro shown above, which runs mplayer fullscreen).

My ultimate goal has always been a system with a database backend that stores cues for each song and a CLI frontend for triggering cues. I figured I could make it extensible enough it could be used for visuals, audio effects, and lighting (via a DMX controller). Because of this grandiose goal, I didn't really make any progress toward it.

On this trip, I got fed up with having to remember all the parameters to the screensavers I was using. So, I whipped up a couple shell and Perl scripts to macro-ize the screen savers so I could sstart them up and stop them with a single command. I also created a shell interface for the system as well. It made things so much easier. The audience at the last show at Mahogany Ridge were privy to the best visuals to ever accompany Sons Of Nothing. It helped there wasn't much light to distract them from the screen. :-)

It is somewhat ironic I also decided I'm removing myself from touring with Sons Of Nothing after this trip to Colorado. It's for a million reasons, it seems, I came to this decision. Some of it has to do with my family missing me when I'm gone. Some of it has to do with my growing tired of being around really drunk people. In the end, I've had a great time doing it and I'm ready to start up a new hobby, probably with my family, to try. Maybe paintball (/me winks at Jayce^). Maybe experimental rocketry. Maybe agility trials with our new dog.

I'm still going to be involved with the band and might still show up to do visuals and effects at a show if they need me, but I plan on concentrating on the band's website and the marketing/promotion side of things. Who knows?! I might continue to record my unique style of spoken word on future SoN recordings. :-D

"RRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrip!"

Recently, a close friend of mine wasqdivorced from his wife of ~15 years. Learning of this and helping my friend deal with the thick stew of emotional upheaval he's found himself in has been a difficult experience. Honestly, I really dislike seeing people -- especially people I care about -- go through something like this. I've been through a handful of divorces as a close bystander and I know it takes time, more than anything else, for someone to get through it and get back to being a stable, productive individual.