Tonight I had dinner with my mom, my brother and my niece. We went to Golden Corral, which has a pretty good steak for a buffet place.

When we were done there, we went to Best Buy. My mom is looking into getting an HDTV, and she wanted to see what they had. While there, she talked to an emo kid who worked there. He was very knowledgeable about the difference between Plasma and LCD.

I started practicing the bass again today. I had to hook my PC back up to do this. I have a breakout box created by Line 6 called Guitar Port. It is a USB interface to connect a guitar to.

I use that with a pair of headphones so I don’t bug my roommates while I practice.

There were a couple of songs I was practicing today. I learned Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry a while back, so I played around with that. Another song I learned a while back is Save A Prayer by Duran Duran. I started playing around with Fly Away by Lenny Kravitz.

Tonight, I found that I have Stray Cat Strut by the Stray Cats on iTunes, so I started playing around with that. It’s fun and challenging, so I’m excited to get better at that one.

The only problem with that, really, is that it should be played on an Accoustic Double Bass, but all I have is an electric. I’m sure it’ll work, though.

When I was in 7th grade, my brother and sister were both in the Payette high school band. That year, the band took a trip to Los Angeles to play at Disneyland. My mom went along as a bus chaperone. Along the way, we stopped at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas because the jazz band was going to play there for some show or something. We really only stayed for a short time, and it really wasn’t exciting because this was when the Mob still ran the show, so there really wasn’t anything exciting for a 11 year old kid like me.

Part of the above paragraph is untrue. I was talking about this with my mom a few weeks ago. She pointed out to me that this was at the MGM Grand in Reno, not in Vegas. For years, I had said that I’ve been to Vegas, but only when I was too young. All that time, I was incorrect.

So, I’ve never been to Vegas. I want to go.

See more progress on: Las Vegas

This weekend, Apollo came to Idaho to celebrate his grandma’s birthday. We were planning on hanging out, so I told him I’d drive over to his grandma’s house in Payette and give him a ride to the airport so he could fly back home.

When I talked to him on Friday, he told me that he had a gift for me to make me say “Damn!” When I got there today, he gave me a bag from Rasputin Records. In it was the DVD of Krush Groove. When I pulled the DVD out of the bag, I did, indeed, say “Damn!”
If you’ve never seen this movie, here is a quick summary. Krush Groove stars Run DMC, the Fat Boys, Kurtis Blow and Sheila E. It also has New Edition, L.L. Cool J and is the first film performance by Blair Underwood. (He’d been on an episode of Knight Rider and the Cosby Show previous to this movie. Thanks IMDB.)

The story revolves around a small independant record company that has a few up and coming stars. Greed and personality clashes in the group threaten to ruin the whole thing. This is a fun movie from the 80’s when rap was fun and sometimes silly.

One of the greatest parts of this movie is when Krush Groove records is holding auditions. In comes LL Cool J, then a fairly unknown artist. The Krush Groove crew say “Sorry…auditions are over. Come back next week!” LL shouts “Box!” and his homeboy starts the giant boombox he’s carrying. Then LL proceeds to kick the first verse of I Can’t Live Without My Radio. That short scene pretty much stole the show.

This is a fun movie and it is such a nostalgia thing for me. Good lookin’ out, Apollo. Now they just need to get Tougher than Leather on DVD.

In 17 days, 17 hours (as of this post), those crazy Swede’s at Propellerheads Software will be releasing version 4.0 of their software synth on steroids, Reason. And it comes with new toys!

Here is the list of new stuff to play with:

1. Thor - This is a big ol’ modular synth. It has lots of options for oscillators, filters and other stuff. It looks complicated but fun to play with.
2. RPG8 Arpeggiator - They have finally included a really feature-rich arpeggiator for lazy bastards like me.
3. ReGroove Mixer - This seems to be a way to take programmed drums and mix them so they sound more natural. I’m not 100% sure how this works, but I’m intrigued.
4. Sequencer - Reason’s sequencer has always been somewhat sparse. It looks like they are fattening up the sequencer to make it easier to make edits. Hell. yeah.
5. Plus lots of updates to what is already out there.

Reason 4 releases Sept. 26 and will cost $499 for new users and $129 for the upgrade.

Here is a video example of Thor from the NAMM show:

While I’m at work, I like to listen to/watch podcasts. The majority of the ones I watch are tech news podcasts, such as T.W.I.T. and GeekBrief.TV. I enjoy getting the different perspectives on what’s going on in technology.

The latest one I’ve found is TeXtra, hosted by Natali Del Conte. Like GeekBrief.TV, TeXtra is on the PodShow Network. TeXtra is a technology news podcast with some culture and humor thrown into the mix. It is recorded on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

The show mixes a professional look and feel of a quality television program with the accessability of a podcast. Natali, being an established tech journalist, does a great job in presenting tech news. She is knowledgable, funny and cute. She sometimes seems a little nervous on camera still, however. I’m sure that will improve as she does more shows.

I would recommend this podcast to anyone interested in finding out what’s going on in the world of technology. I enjoy it and will continue watching.