Well, my first mix is officially up on digeum.org. This is a project launched by Apollo and myself. The original intent was to host a podcast, but now we’re using our dj consoles and create some music mixes.

This first mix is about an hour of House.

Here are a couple of tracks that I have written over the last week. Both are kinda tech house (though some may argue that they’re trance of some sort. But I’m calling them house, dammit!)

Rhythm Flight

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Singularity Nexus

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On Thursday, I bought a Hercules RMX DJ Console from Guitar Center. It connects to my computer through USB and allows me to mix songs from my MP3 collection. I’ve been practicing with it all this weekend. I recorded my first mix, (twice, so far). I’ve found some problems with it, so I may try it again.

Once I do, I’ll post it.

So, for lunch today, I was going to go to Subway. I took my coworker Cory along with me. He wasn’t really planning on getting anything, he was just coming along to get out of the building. When we got there he said “Well, while you’re going to Subway, I’ll run into Taco Del Mar and get a burrito.” So I decided it would be a good time to give the burrito a try once again. I was a little nervous, but I got in there and had them build me a small burrito. We went back to the office to eat and I’m happy to say that everything turned out great. The burrito was quite tasty. I think I no longer have a burrito problem.

Yay, burrito!

I woke up really early this morning, and can’t seem to go back to sleep. Work is going to suck.

Anyway, I’ve been surfing around GT! and the one of the conversations reminded me of my problem with burritos. Here is the story: (I’m guessing on the timeframe here.)

Apollo came to see his family here in Idaho in December of 2006. It turned out that his flight got cancelled because San Jose airport closed down. So the airline put him up in a hotel room near the airport for the night. So, I went over and got him and we went to get some dinner. We found a little taquerita in BODO (Boise Downtown, they’re trying to be cool). We each had a burrito and then we got some coffee from Moxie Java and went back to his room and watched a movie. I left around 9 because I had to work the next day. So, that night I had a really awful stomach flu and that burrito didn’t stay down.

Ever since then I’ve had a problem with the idea of eating a burrito like that. It’s really weird, because nasty ol’ Taco Bell burritos don’t bother me, but real ones cause my stomach to kinda flip even after more than a year.

So, I’m thinking about going to a taquerita for lunch one of these days soon and seeing if I can convince myself to buy and consume one and get over this. If it doesn’t work, there’s always the Subway next door.

I did get through Green Grass and High Tide (barely), and am doing pretty well with the drumming. Though, I’m still on medium. I haven’t gotten much further in the game as I’ve spent most of my time lately in practice mode.

I also got through medium on the guitar. I’ve done some singing but I’m still feeling a little awkward about spending time in my bedroom singing.

The portable air conditioner in my bedroom has decided to go tits up on me. Well, not totally, but it doesn’t spew out cold air any longer. Of course, it has started getting hotter just as this happens. The air conditioner actually belongs to my roommates. I’m considering taking out a small personal loan and buying my own. The nice thing about the one I’m looking at is it mists out the extra water so you don’t have to constantly empty it. I hope I can get this done soon.

I am currently listening to a little stub (as Apollo would call it) of a cheesy Psytrance song that I started this evening. It’s pretty silly stuff, but I kinda like that kind of things sometimes. And the basslines are nice and bubbly, the way good Psy should be.

This may become the ConsuMuse Vol. 2 track for beckteria. It is yet to be named.

Well, I finally went out and bought Rock Band. It’s fun. I’m mostly playing around with the Drums right now. However, I have done a bit of the karaoke part of it as well. I haven’t played with the guitar yet, because it’s a little too much like Guitar Hero, and I’ve already played the shit out of that.

I’ve gotten to medium level on the drums, and tonight I got to Green Grass and High Tide by the Outlaws. I’m pretty much stuck due to the final solo section where I don’t seem to have enough rhythm to keep up with it that fast for that long. I end up getting booed off stage and I want to throw my sticks. I’m not sure if I’m going too fast or too slow, but I just can’t stay on rhythm.

Oh well, I just need more practice.

One thing that I don’t like is in practice mode, I can’t work on individual sections at full speed and that kinda bugs me. I wish I could just play part of it at full speed to get better at it.

Other than that, this has been a fun game. I’m going to see how my brother does with it, since he’s a drummer.

2 days ago, April 25, was my birthday.  I forgot to blog that until now.

I didn’t really do anything exciting.  I just stayed home.  I will be going to dinner with my parents and my brother this evening to celebrate.

C|NET has officially closed the doors on Consumating. In doing so, they made the mistake of redirecting the URL to another of their sites, help.com.

This was a huge mistake on their part. Many consumators went there and expressed their feelings in the way that they’re used to doing so on our mostly-unmoderated site. Since help.com is more heavily moderated, many of these comments resulted in banning. This just served to fan the flames which brought more consumators to help.com and a clash between consumating users and help.com users.

Consumating creator and former owner, Ben Brown posted on his new site Go, Team Internet a plea to simply ignore help.com. C|NET handled this poorly. Ben suggested that they simply should have created a 404 page with a picture of Consumating’s Feedback Zombie mascot and left it at that. That would have been an elegant and respectful solution. Instead they attempted to redirect us hoping to ramp their userbase there.

In related news (I always wanted to say that) a group of Bay Area consumators held a candlelight vigil for the death of Consumating at C|NET which included a bagpipe group playing Amazing Grace. It was a fitting sendoff for the website that we loved so much.