radio hidebound on blogspot

Elmer's Mailing List

2008-08-20T09:44:00.001-07:00

So, um, it has been awhile since I've posted anything here, including news about the new band . . . Elmer's Big Brain Theory.

After the demise of Blue Gene Therapy, I took some time off from playing with other people. Being in a band is pretty emotional for me and I just needed time by myself. Just as I was starting to feel the itch to play with others, an old friend contacted me about electronic drumkits. Turns out my old friend, Jesus, was feeling an itch of his own to get back to playing drums. He thought BGT was still a going concern so his inquiry was more of a "does your drummer like your electronic drums?" kind of question.

Little did he know.

He came by to play my drums, and after a couple of jam sessions he brought his friend Roger along to play bass. The three of us hit it off rather well and I begged another friend of mine, Mike, who I knew plays guitar to join in.

A few weeks later someone said, "so, I guess we should have a name, right?". Now, naming a band is an intense process. Names were bandied about and nothing really stuck. One of the names mentioned at this point was "Big Brain Theory", based on an article Roger read in the New York Times.

It was a cool name, but I thought it sounded a little . . . full of ourselves. And being from DC, I feared a backlash from any Bad Brains fans. While we continued to bandy about names, Jesus got into the habit of calling the stuffed moose who sits on my drumkit (he's a pretty small moose) "Elmer" and at some point joked about calling ourselves Elmer's Big Brain Theory.

My initial reaction wasn't overly positive, but the more I thought about it I liked the "silliness" aspect including the name and figured it would separate the name enough from the Bad Brains so there might not be so much backlash (whether or not this will be the case remains to be seen). I'm not really sure how the others, including Jesus and Roger, feel about the name. It may have just been an effect of attrition. Dunno. Anyway, we have a name.

Things are progressing slowly as we all have real adult lives, but it's fun and progress is being made.

So, here's the obligatory links:

MySpace
ReverbNation

and via ReverbNation we have a mailing list collector:

radio hidebound down for a little while

2008-08-19T03:44:00.000-07:00

We lost electricity long enough this morning that the radio hidebound computer had to be restarted. Because of the "winback.exe" infection, this restart made it necessary to start a complete system recovery, i.e. resetting the computer back to the original facotry configuration.

It will be a few hours before we're back broadcasting again. Sorry.

2008-08-09T20:27:00.001-07:00

just testing since I fear I'll need to be using this space for updates on the pending problems with the computer running radio hidebound.

Sigh.

and one of my own, because I am

2007-09-10T21:46:00.001-07:00

You are 100% Scorpio

How Scorpio Are You?

Damn Straight!

I suck

2007-09-10T21:42:00.000-07:00

ganked from Rosie

Candy Cigarettes

You're a total badass, but you don't taste very good.

What Kind of Candy Are You?

Strange Daze

2007-09-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

it's my night for quizzes, ganked from Zippychik (why no one tags me surprises me not one lick)

You Are 63% Strange!

Based on your score, it seems you do have a healthy dose of strangeness. You aren't THAT far out, but you are somewhat bizarre. Congratulations on being different and having some quirks. It makes you an interesting person!

How Strange Are You?
Quizzes for MySpace

Celtic Horoscope

2007-09-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

ganked from deathlok who got tagged by Skywriter.

You Are A Chestnut Tree

You are a born diplomat with a well developed sense of justice.
And even though you're impressive and intimidating, you're also fun to be around.
You can be irritated easily, and you sometimes act superior.
Nevertheless, you are sensitive of others feelings and very loyal.
Sometimes you feel misunderstood and are fiercely close to those who know you best.

What's Your Celtic Horoscope?

that's actually frightening accurate.

Radio: Terrestrial vs. Internet

2007-08-10T17:09:00.000-07:00

radio hidebound's new friends over at TUN3R asked me to write an article for their blog about some of the differences between being a DJ on terrestrial radio as opposed to running an Internet radio station. This is what I came up with.

For me, the two are drastically different. I was "on the air" over 20 years ago playing "brand new music" and now I'm never actually "on the air" and playing, mostly, the music that was brand new over 20 years ago.

For the most part, my "on the air" experience was at WXYC, the college radio station in Chapel Hill, NC. I also spent a year or so at Chapel Hill's only commercial station, an AM Adult Contemporary Hits (at least that's what it was called back then) format. My commercial radio experience was pretty awful and aside from a few possibly funny anecdotes I told over the air, it's not really worth mentioning other than in no way was it fun or "art".

My college radio experience was just the opposite. I loved being on the air, even though at WXYC I hardly ever said anything other than, "that was {some song} by {some artist}, before that we heard blah blah blah and before that was blah blah blah . . . it's 24 minutes before two o'clock . . . you're listening to WXYC . . . and here is a new song from {some artist}.

In order to (eventually) write anything truly meaningful about the difference between "being on the air" on a terrestrial radio station and running an Internet radio station, I should probably write a little about WXYC itself. From the perspective of a DJ, aside from not getting paid (hmmmm . . . I'm sensing a pattern emerging), it was the closest thing to a perfect radio station that I can imagine. While we did have something resembling a format, the format was "anything good and let's focus a bit on music released in the last six months". While we focused on newly released music, a station favourite from many of the jocks was Nick Drake, so keep that in mind I guess. For most of the day's "programming" at 'XYC the only requirement was to play at least five songs every hour from our playbox. Our playbox had three parts, heavy rotation (about 25 records), medium rotation (about 25 other records) and light rotation (another 50 records or so). We were to play three heavies, one medium and one light every hour. Given a specific record in the playbox, we could play any song from that record we wanted to. Other than that, we could play whatever the hell we wanted to. Sometimes I'd play my five rotation songs and sometimes I might only play two or three of them. The new music rotation rule was really more a guideline.

When I started working (if that's the right word) at 'XYC in the fall of 1981, I was a typical 70's prog-rock junkie. I new absolutely nothing about punk, new wave, etc. etc. and, to be honest, didn't even particularly like it. I started on the path of learning about this "New Music" slowly, the station manager would keep telling me to play more new music and less Genesis et. al. and after six months or so I had changed my aural palette. Over the next four or five years, that palette grew and grew and grew. I kept playing Genesis et. al., but I played less and less as time went on and far more Teardrop Explodes and The Church and Rupert Hine - the 80's Rupert Hine, not so much the 70's Rupert Hine. And while I could have done all of this without being on the air, doing so in order to actually be on air and play songs was, I think, different than just listening to new music for myself.

Similar to many college radio stations, I had, for the most part, one two-hour shift every week. Those two hours were precious to me and I was very picky about the songs I played during those two hours. Those two hours were my way of saying, "here is the best music I think is being recorded today". Allow me to introduce you to U2, Echo & the Bunnymen, REM, Dream Syndicate, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Martha and the Muffins, Juluka, Guadalcanal Diary, Green on Red, the latest from Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel and David Bowie and Brian Eno and Bill Nelson. While I wasn't playing the Top 40 as defined by Billboard, I was playing the Top 400 as defined by the radio gnome. I would go to the station about 30 minutes before my show started and look at the list of songs played by the jock (we never really used the term "DJ", we were just "jocks") before me and the one before them to know what I couldn't play, since I didn't want to repeat anything they had played. Then I would go into the records library and pull 30-40 records for my two hours. I might not play a song from all 40 records, but I'd pull enough records so I could pick various things based on context. Then I'd take my 40 records into the control room and at the top of the hour, I was on the air.

The biggest part of actually being "on the air" was segues. When I started, I didn't know any segues, I didn't even know what a segue was. But over time I learned how to listen to both the beginning and ending of a song to get ideas about other songs to play before or after a song I was hearing for the first time. For songs in the playbox, if I "heard a great seg", which means I would hear it in my head while the playbox song was playing, I would rarely have the record the song was on in the control room. I'd make a mad dash into the library, pull the record, run back into the control room and cue up my song. Sometimes I made it back to the control in time, sometimes I didn't (oh the joys of college radio). Most of the time I made it back into the control room in time to cue the song. Which brings me to slip-cueing. Our turntables had felt covers on them so one could cue up a song, then a few seconds before the song currently playing would end one would put a thumb on the turntable for stability, put a ring finger (it had to be the ring finger, using the index finger was simply not sexy enough) on the vinyl, start the turntable while holding onto the record and then at an appropriate moment . . . let go . . . and the next song would start at a precise time. After getting reasonably sufficient at slip-cueing, I would actively search out segues with a high degree of difficulty, segues that would require me to . . . let go . . . at the exact split second or have the segue be spoiled. I could write a bit about cold fades and warm fades and false ends, but then we might be here for awhile.

All of this led to a very tactile aspect of being on the air. My fingers were almost constantly touching something while I was on the air. At times it was a bit like playing an instrument and sometimes even slightly athletic.

Fast forward 20-something years to running an Internet radio station. Because I decided to attempt being some kind of time capsule of what I did at WXYC, there is not much of a new music component to radio hidebound and definitely not one where the whole point is to find the best of everything released this week. There is also no real concept of "being on the air". I'm never really "on the air" at all. I suppose I could sit down and run the station manually for a couple of hours, but . . . why?

Instead of pulling of records from the library at WXYC, I rip CDs into mp3 files.

Instead of listening to boatloads of new music, I review the mp3 files to make sure they are technically okay and list the songs from each record I want to include in the playlist for radio hidebound.

Instead of sitting in the control room with a pile of LPs leaning against a cabinet, I load the mp3 files of songs I like into my broadcasting software's database.

Instead of opening boxes of promotional records we would receive at 'XYC, I search for CDs I want/need to buy. Yes, I have to plunk down my own money to buy CDs I want to play on the station. WXYC would get promotional copies of everything under the sun.

Instead of opening my mic to say "it's 24 minutes before 2:00", I record canned mp3 file station IDs that say things like "it's 24 minutes before 24 minutes from now . . . you're listening to radio hidebound". I have no idea what time it will be when the station ID gets played and I have no idea what time zone a listener might be in when they hear it.

Instead of taking requests to play specific songs over the phone, I answer posts in my online forum about, well, whatever a listener wants to say.

Instead of having a personal Top 400 list of songs to choose from once a week, I have a library of over 10,000 "songs that don't suck" playing in an endless loop with various controls in place so that the same song or musician doesn't get repeated too frequently.

Instead of personally selecting what song to play next, I leave that to the logic of the software I use. Having said that, I am almost constantly amazed at how good most of the segs I hear on radio hidebound are. Sometimes there are some real losers, but in general I think they are pretty good and sometimes I'll hear two songs played together which I would never have thought of playing together and be thrilled at how well they blended together.

Instead of broadcasting to a very small potential audience in Chapel Hill, NC, I am broadcasting to the largest potential audience possible, the world.

Finally . . . there is all of the technology involved in running an Internet radio station and the reality that I'm responsible for all of it working. I didn't have to worry about anything like this at WXYC. Walking into 'XYC was like flipping on a light switch, I expected everything to work and if something wasn't working, all I could do was call the station's engineer. Now I'm responsible for:

- making sure my DSL connection is working
- maintaining the various computers involved in running radio hidebound
- installing, configuring, enhancing and trouble-shooting my broadcasting software
- connecting to my broadcast host and dealing with the bills, etc.
- making sure I'm legal with all licensing issues
- ftp'ing files to a non-php HTML host server (the original "web presence" for radio hidebound)
- installing, configuring, enhancing and trouble-shooting my own portfolio of php-based software to provide for an on-line community experience for my listeners
- making whatever vain attempts at marketing I can think of

Today, I probably spend more time on the community parts of radio hidebound than I do on the station itself. Of course I keep adding songs to the playlist, but doing so takes very little time, other than spending time listening to a record I'm unfamiliar with several times before deciding which songs to add. A process which takes a little longer than one might think because I also spend a lot of time simply listening to the station itself. Listening to my station. In part to make sure it is still on the air, but mostly because I simply enjoy listening to it. If I didn't, why would I go to all of this trouble in the first place? While, of course, I want to have other people listening to the station to feel somehow important, mostly I just want to enjoy listening to it. If someone else enjoys listening, great, if not, that's okay too.

avec un fork

2007-08-07T17:40:00.000-07:00

first, go check out Deathlok's caption of the week, then come back here.

a wonderful waste of time

2007-08-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

I've wanted to get a digital tablet for ages. I got one today. Why today? I have no idea. This is going to be fun! Today was all about beginning the process of learning how to use the pen and some of the options of the software. It's crap (the result that is, the tablet is pretty cool), but it was a heck of a lot of fun.

If you're not cheating . . .

2007-07-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

. . . then you're not trying hard enough.

Dusty Baker said this last night in the "town hall" ESPN had about Barry Bonds, the home run record and steroids.

disclaimer #1: I'm a Barry Bonds fan
disclaimer #2: I'm not at all convinced steroids are actually bad for adult males
disclaimer #3: I'm getting more and more convinced that Americans are losing all perspective (and yes, I'm being kind about this)
disclaimer #4: yeah, I know, I've already ranted about this . . . but it didn't seem to help any . . .

What Dusty Baker said was meant as a joke. It's been a joke in baseball since long before I was born. But as with most jokes, there is at least a kernel of truth in it. More than any other sport with the possible exception of NASCAR, part of the culture of baseball is figuring out new ways to cheat. I'm not saying I think using steroids is cheating, but for anyone who does, one almost must accept that part of what makes baseball baseball is cheating. Scuffing balls, corking bats, "foreign substances" of all kinds used for all kinds of purposes.

Baseball has always been a sport of cheaters, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I personally find it a little humourous that grown men go to all the trouble in the first place. But's it's always been a sport of cheaters. As far as I know, Henry Aaron was not a cheater. He's always struck me as a straight shooter. Babe Ruth? I dunno, but based on what we know of the Babe, if he had a chance to take "the clear", well . . . I'm thinking he would have been first in line. But what difference does it make whether he would have used the clear or not? None. But comparing Bonds by our standards today to Aaron or Ruth who are not playing in the standards of today strikes me as silly at best, and by today's standards I would say it strikes me as pure evil at worst.

Hypocrisy aside, I'm compelled to once again jump on my, "so what the hell is so bad about steroids in the first place?" soapbox. Okay, steroids are terrible for women of all ages. And yes, steroids are terrible for boys and young men whose bodies have not matured yet. But for adult males? There is no clinical evidence that steroids, taken in reasonable amounts, are bad for adult males. Go ahead, find some, I'd love to see an accredited study that shows reasonable use of steroids is detrimental. And while you are looking for that, look for the opposite, can you find any studies that suggest appropriate use of steroids is actually nothing but a good thing?

Physiologicaly all of the above makes perfect sense. Steroids are bad for women (since their bodies don't make steroids in the first place). Steroids are bad for physically immature boys and young men (since the male body alters how it makes steroids around the time of physical maturity). Steroids in appropriate use being good for physically mature men makes sense to me (since we're making the stuff on our own anyway).

But if the mature male body makes steroids of it's own anyway, why would anyone want to introduce more of the stuff into their system? Because a reason for men's bodies to make steroids is to help recover from physical exertion. If one's exertion is off-the-scale, it seems to make sense that getting a little extra steroids in the body would be a reasonable thing to do.

But Barry Bonds is SO BIG!!!!! you say. Newsflash: Barry Bonds is SO BIG!!!!!! because he worked his butt off to get there. Whether he used steroids or not, he still had to work his ass off. I'm sure Bonds took some protein supplements (oooh, protein supplements good, steroid supplements bad) to increase his bulk a bit, but unless he worked his butt off as well, he'd be looking more like the "before Nutrisystem" Mike Golic simply because of taking protein supplements. And while protein supplements add bulk simply by being ingested, steroids do no such thing.

Steroids simply allow the body to recover faster from physical exertion. One still has to experience physical exertion for there to be a need to recover.

We all hear that in order to succeed in sports, one has to work hard. In order to be better than somebody else, one has to work harder than that somebody else. Barry Bonds worked his ass off to get as big as he is. Maybe he had help from steroids, maybe not. But so what if he did?

If it is true that taking steroids is "risky", I could understand Big Brother saying that for the good of everyone, we're not going to let anyone take them. But this doesn't seem to be the case. Of course, if someone overdoses on steroids, there will be problems. Just as there will be from overdosing on anything. But that's a different issue now, isn't it? Legislating stupidity never works. Stupid people are stupid people. If they aren't stupid with steroids, they'll be stupid with something else.

And while this issue is "only" about a game, the witch hunt doesn't have anything to do with sports. It has to do with how cruel and vindictive we have become. I don't like it, I don't like it at all.

I hate all of you.

greetings from Syracuse

2007-07-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

this is why I suck as a blogger, I sit down to write, have all these cool thoughts and then . . . . . . . . . . nothing.

Hmmmmmm. Got into Syracuse a little late yesterday as my flight was delayed in DC due to a thunderstorm that lasted about 3 seconds. See a little bit of lightning, sit on your butt for a couple of hours. Harumph.

Then went to a Syracuse watering hole with Zippychik, and had a lovely little chat. Mr. Zippychik was a party pooper and stayed at home, but the rumour is that he will join us on the trip to Cortland this evening for Blotto, the Flashcubes and some other band.

Should be fun. Hope it doesn't rain too much, and hope the rain here can somehow find it's way to dry, dry DC.

Internet radio is SAVED!!! (for now)

2007-07-13T20:01:00.000-07:00

once upon a time . . .

no . . . that's a stupid way to start.

So, a few months ago, the lovely Recording Industry Association of America (the RIAA, or, the mouths for Sony BMG, Universal, EMI and Warner) bedded the apparently useless Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) of the Library of Congress to set a new set of royalty payments Internet radio broadcasters have to pay.

Google: RIAA, CRB, SoundExchange, DiMA, IREA (Internet Radio Equality Act), RAIN

now that you know the backstory, let's just say that Congress intervened on behalf of the hundreds/thousands/millions of citizens who called them to protest and removed the RIAA and the CRB from the process and got the apparently reasonable SoundExchange and DiMA to actually talk and start a process that will be fair to both musicians and webcasters and even the records labels.

So radio hidebound and thousands of other little Internet radio stations get to continue doing whatever it is they do for whatever reasons they do it for the couple of hundred of dollars a month they've been paying for the last few years instead of four or five thousand dollars a month.

So that's pretty cool.

Week #2 of iTunes traffic

2007-06-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

boy did it pick up!! There's something humorous about getting picked up on iTunes the week before the "Day Of Silence" and a couple of weeks before we might have to close up shop if the RIAA gets their way.

We've never had a lot of listeners (which I don't take personally, I realize radio hidebound fills a singularly peculiar niche), so I've never plunked out the dough for very many listener slots (the number of people who can listen at one time). Back in the days of Live365 I had the minimum package which for live broadcasters was 50 slots I think. When I left Live365 (still very glad I did that, btw) I signed up for 25 slots at 64kbps. A few months ago I increased the bandwidth to 128kbps but kept the slots at 25.

Last week fellow broadcaster lumper5 let me know of a streaming host that had a 100-slot @ 128kbps for $40 (which is what I pay for the 25 slots I had at the time). Switching sounds like a no-brainer right? Well, the new place doesn't have support for folks behind a rigid firewall which requires the broadcast stream to come in on port 80. So I've kept the old streaming host in addition to adding 100 slots with the new host.

On Thursday and Friday of this week, the traffic from iTunes (which is still pointing to the 25-slot host) capped out a couple of times. Capping out means that the number of listeners equals the number of slots and no new listeners can tune in. iTunes frowns on this and de-lists stations that cap-out too much. I'm hoping that the 30 minutes or so that we've been capped along with sending them a request to change the iTunes directory link to the new 100-slot host will keep us listed.

I haven't taken a real close look at our new TLH (total listening hours) stats yet, but a quick glance looks like they've shot up from around 100 TLH a day to around 300 a day. So that's pretty cool. I guess.

no radio hidebound today

2007-06-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

We've decided to join in on the "day of silence" as Internet radio casters protest the proposed rate hike in royalties. While I could piss and moan about this, I think I'll just let a couple of our listeners do it.

Zippychik and Mike In Arlington

thanks guys!

okay, really in love this time

2007-06-18T19:37:00.000-07:00

Halfway through Clerks 2 and I remembered . . .

it's an encore performance.

i think i'm in love

2007-06-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

her name

is Sophia

radio hidebound schwag

2007-06-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

Our darling Zippychik has provided us with new artwork based on the logo she created for us recently. Using this new artwork we've created some schwag, merchandise that is, over at Cafe Press. We've got t-shirts, coffee mugs and bumper stickers available.

The really good news is that we get a little smidge of the proceeds for any schwag purchased, so if you'd like to help out a little Internet radio station, order your radio hidebound schwag today.

radio hidebound listed on iTunes

2007-06-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

or . . . keeping up with the Westons

a few weeks ago my fellow Internet broadcaster and college radio buddy who runs Deeper Into Music sent an email out letting folks know his station had been listed in the iTunes directory of radio stations. That was pretty cool I thought, so I rather sheepishly sent an email to iTunes asking to add my station. I never really thought anything would come of it, but lo and behold, as of today my little station is listed on iTunes in the "70s/80s Pop" category:

So that's pretty cool.

some old television I love

2007-05-29T14:55:00.000-07:00

no, not the band (but I do love ALL old Television of THAT kind). Well, maybe a little of the moosical Television at that, it would be a huge surprise, but maybe . . .

I was a bad boy today, I walked into a Border's to kill some time during lunch and walked away with a couple hundred bucks worth of DVDs. The bad part is that between this splurge, the refrigerator splurge, and the general splurginess of my recent trip to Chapel Hill, an almost splurge for radio hidebound from www.cdconnection.com had to be postponed for a couple of weeks.

Not all of today's DVDs is old television stuff, but most of it is. In reverse anticipation order:

The Big Lebowski - I remember not thinking much of this when I first saw it, but it is a Coen brothers film and I think might become a fave upon multiple watchings.

Dune - Probably my favourite book during high school. I didn't know anything about David Lynch when I watched his celluloid version, and while I can appreciate why so many people didn't think much of it, I love how the thing looks and can't wait to see it again. Well, I can wait a little while for it, because . . .

The television stuff. I don't know if it came from my early days of reading comic books, my inherited fascination with soap operas (daytime dramas for you kids out there) from my Mom, or something that is just hardwired into me, but I love the serial nature of television. I love how a story unfolds over a year, and sometimes multiple years. Not all television does this of course, and even when it does sometimes it's really bad, but sometimes it is quite magical.

Twin Peaks, Season Two - I've had the first season and the movie "Fire Walk With Me" for awhile. Maybe not the best television ever done (close if not the best), but given the context of the time it aired and comparing it to the other stuff that was on at the time, it was truly magnificent. Easily the best thing ever on television compared to what else was on at the time.

Live from New York, and you're not - I was a smidge too young to have watched the first season of Saturday Night Live when it aired. Of course I've seen bits and pieces of it over the years, but I'm looking forward to watching it show by show.

A few years ago I mentioned to a friend that someone should put together a DVD compilation of the best music segments from David Letterman. Something like that probably exists but until I get my greedy little hands on it, SNL: 25 Years of Music will have to suffice. Will there be any Television???? Doubtful, but how cool would it be to get this surprise (don't anybody comment one way or the other about whether TV is included or not, part of the fun is the anticipation)

And finally (or firstly depending on the POV)

Season One of . . . . Beauty and the Beast. I cannot express how much I loved the first season of this show. Seasons 2 and 3 not so much, but season 1 was one magical hour after another every Friday night - I think it was on Friday nights. Father, Catherine and, of course, my favourite television character of all time, Vincent.

I think I'll pop the first episode in right now.

new fridge

2007-05-22T17:32:00.001-07:00

what, you gotta problem with a fridge having mostly ale in it or something? It's been two weeks, all of the old food spoiled and about the only thing I had left to put in this were some of my Anderson Valleys.

Wow, two consecutive days of posting! Things must be pretty busy in the mythical land of radio hidebound.

So my old refrigerator died a couple of weeks ago. I probably could have had someone come in and fix it, but it was kinda old and kinda broken in places on the inside, and kinda boring. I decided to get a new fridge. Friends Mark and Jen (Jen and Mark) helped me narrow down some options and I ended up getting the beauty on the left, even though I initially said I wasn't going to splurge for French Doors. Or Stainless Steel.

What can I say, I'm a splurger.

I've never had a fridge with the freezer on the bottom. That'll take some getting used to, this paradigm shift (joke for Mark). Someday I'll get the rest of house ready for a party to show off all of my new toys (most of which are guitars ).

The new fridge is so nice I had to shop at Whole Foods to get the quality of food such a beauty deserves!

I can't wait to make a real dinner for the first time in too long (blackened pork chops with sauteed asparagus and mushrooms in a savory garlic butter sauce . . . yum, yum, yum)

a 20 year reunion, of sorts

2007-05-21T07:17:00.001-07:00

Saturday I drove to my old college town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina for an informal gathering of folks who once worked (played) at WXYC, the student run college radio station at UNC.

Lots of people I remembered, at least the faces. The names sometimes not-so-much.

Most of the people there were from about the same time period, late 70's to late 80's/early 90's so it had a certain class reunion feel to it.

I took a few instruments with me and a few of us had a nice little 20 minute jam session.

One of my old friends describing me to her spouse, "In a world of truly bizarre people, this one stood out as just a little bit more bizarre than the rest."

I can live with dat.

Spring League Starts

2007-03-27T22:31:00.000-07:00

and we're already in a 1-2 hole. Not too surprising given at least three of us (including me) had never played with each other before and it was a new gym for me. A little smaller than the last place and I'm more of an outdoor player to begin with. Ceilings and walls kinda freak me out. The first two games were something like 25 -15, but we rebounded in the third game, each of us kinda figuring the others out, and we won 26-24.

I played so-so. As I've mentioned, I'm not much of a hitter and the other team was really good at digging my little dinks. During the second game I figured this out and started hitting for all I was worth - and every hit (um, okay, both of them) were out by six inches or so. My friend Mark was really cool, figured out what I was doing and said, "just keep hitting". He's such a good friend. The next "hit" was one I misjudged, got the double block to commit too soon and hit this little wimpy thing just over their block. Woo-hoo! I did play a pretty good defensive game in the third game and had a few really nice bumps on some rockets. My blocking has regressed a bit though since I've been in the net lately.

Tomorrow night I'm subbing for an all men's team. I'm supposed to be setting. That should be interesting. Since I'm such a lousy hitter, my setting is a little better, but I'm still far more comfortable playing defense in the back.

Still, it's loads of fun and with every game I feel I'm getting back into the swing of things.

So to speak.

Well . . . that was disappointing

2007-03-13T15:44:00.000-07:00

We lost all three of our volleyball games last night. Bummer. No playoffs for Vote For Pedro.

We didn't really play badly; the other team was really quite good at bumping and finding the deadspots in our defense. I thought I was solid if not spectacular last night. Only one solid block, but I was too far off the net and the ball dropped on our side of the court. I was too far off the net because I had been called in the net a couple of times prior. Okay, technically three times, but I had a little bit of help from a teammate on one of them.

I had one very nice cut-shot, which is a spike hit at a severe angle and fairly short. What made it nice was that, for once, my cut-shot was on purpose to avoid a double-block and while I was in the air I located where I wanted the ball to go and actually got it exactly where I wanted it. I know, I know, one good hit all night long. Whoopdeedoo. Unfortunately, for me that's actually pretty good. I did start to get my hitter's legs back last night, but I'm still so out of shape that my blocking late in the match suffered for it.

Since we were having such an awful night I came "this close" to trying a jump serve late in the 3rd game, but I was just too bushed to do it, and my buddy Mike wasn't there to give me any shit about it.

"Jump serve, jump serve, jump serve!!!!!"

Which he did my first night back a few weeks ago when there was NO WAY I was going to try one.

Oh yeah, my jump serves are typically these pathetic floater things whose bark is much, much worse than they're bite.

Still, it's fun to be back on the court. Hopefully the Spring league will go a little bit better.

We'll be the Kings of Suede.

Don't ask.

the vollyball standings

2007-03-10T13:25:00.000-08:00

Wouldn't you know it? Just as I get back into volleyball I get a little flu bug. Should be okay though, we don't play until Monday night and I'm already feeling much better than I did this morning.

So, we're in a nine team league of which two teams make the playoffs. There's another nine team league from which two teams make the playoffs for the total of four teams in the playoffs. With two weeks left, we're tied for second with two other teams with another two teams one win behind (we've won 11 out of a possible 18 games so far).

Since I came into the season late, it's a little difficult to figure out who the main competition is. One of the teams with 10 wins has a bye this week which means they can't win any games this week so they are probably out of the running. Our team plays the league bottom feeders, who have yet to win a game, the last week so that's a little encouraging.

This coming Monday we play one of the teams we're tied with. The other 11-win team plays the 10-win team which doesn't have a bye this week. Should be a rocking Monday . . . sure hope I get my legs back by then

Win two out of three on Monday and things should work out just fine.

back on the volleyball court

2007-03-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

I'll explain what the "MOG ticker" is tomorrow (or someday soon).

Today it's volleyball. It's been about six years since I've played volleyball. I used to play weekly in the summer with a bunch of people I used to work with and played with them in a league from time to time in the non-summer months.

A lot of things changed in a pretty short period of time several years ago (relationships, children, jobs) and I think I kind of got lost in the shuffle. A few weeks ago the guys I played with in league play got so desperate for a sub, one of them gave me a call (and was a little surprised I said "yeah, I'd love to play").

I guess things went okay since they asked me to finish out the league season (due to a couple of season ending injuries) and even asked me to play with them in the next season (due to a couple of "and next season too" ending injuries).

I think I've played pretty well considering the multi-year layoff. My spiking really sucks, but at my best I was little more than a decent spiker. My serving started shaky, particulary given we're playing indoors and I keep hitting the ceiling with my serves, but I got them to come down and got more in than out and a couple of aces. And my passing was a little shaky, but it's starting to shape up a little bit.

Speaking of "shape", the worst part of my comeback is my defensive net play, which is, or at least was, one of my two strengths (the other being I've got pretty good reflexes and can control balls when "weird" things happen). I could only manage decent net play for about half of the first game my first match back. The second match last Monday I was a bit better and even got one nice stuff block, albeit in the first game.

But it's great to be playing again and I hope it keeps up. Tomorrow (or, you know, someday soon), the skinny on our chances to make the playoffs.

2006-12-28T10:17:00.000-08:00

radio hidebound listener and blogosphere compatriot deathlok tagged me, and some others, a few days ago with a Six Weird Things About Me meme. It's here in Transistor Blast

XTC and the Argonauts

2006-09-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

Friend Deathlok asked a question about embedding a YouTube thingie into his blog. So here's the steps.

1. Copy the box of text on YouTube labled embbed.

2. Create a new blog post, and paste the text copied from YouTube. Don't create a link or anything, just paste in the text.

like Wyatt says, Voila!

There are actually got a few XTC clips on YouTube. I picked this one since I love "Jason and the Argonauts" and Dave Gregory is playing his 1976 Rickenbacker 12-string (I have the same guitar and trust me, she's a beast to play)

Deathlok's TV meme

2006-06-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

go here

radio hidebound moves to a new streaming host

2005-09-08T06:05:00.000-07:00

for immediate release - here is the new page of "listen links" for radio hidebound, featuring links to all the major mp3 players, plus a special link for those of you trapped behind a corporate firewall!

radio hidebound gets a Live365 Best of nomination

2005-03-24T18:37:00.000-08:00

Hey Kids, lookie here - radio hidebound just got nominated as a Best of 2005 station in the 80's/Alternative genre. If you happen to be a registered Live365 member, why not vote for radio hidebound?

And if you're not a Live365 listener, why not? Join today.

hmmm . . . not another blog

2005-03-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

Well now, I'm only setting this blog up so I can comment on someone else's blog, who had put in a link to one of my pages on hidebound.com. Somewhere William Gibson is saying, "See, I told y'all this would happen."

The real hidebound blog can be found here (not that I ever write anything).

update: the real hidebound blog can now be found here

More importantly, visit the home of radio hidebound, my streaming Internet radio station (via Live365)