Well - its the first of April. I need to get back into the habit of these updates so here goes. (cue 2 week wait ;-)). I'm gradually trying to claw my way back to being on top of things. I want to apologise to all my mates for not having been in touch - i'll try and do it in person soon. This week its been work rather than Milo - I finally start getting on top of my sleep and work has been full on so I'm still knackered. Still it all makes for an interesting life. Actually work has been quite interesting of late - I've been working on a couple of projects we are doing with partners and so have been looking at a few different bits and pieces.
Music wise I have a stack of ideas - these are either in my head, fragments and ideas either in my hd recorder or on my laptop or bits of PD programs and pulsar patches. Hopefully these will all be assembled into a proper release soon. Its crazy the busier I am the more ideas I have - when I am unemployed or in quiet periods it all seems to dry up and I end up doing bugger all. I've also been writing a bit - I've got a sketchbook of writings and pictures on the go for this next release. I have been toying with the idea of having words in the music (not singing since I can't) so you never know.
Reading is slow at the moment and has primarly been SciFi (nice and easy to get your head round when you are too tired to read much). Adam Roberts is interesting - I've just read "On" - very well written and some interesting ideas but the overall story left me a little unsatisifed. I'm reading Ken Macleod at the moment who intriguingly lives round here somewhere. Listening wise I'm having a Coil phase - Coil are one of those curious groups I keep comming back to.
I'm moving again this week so its another big unheaval and yet another studio to build. The space its going in is great and I've learnt my lessons about what works for me and what doesn't so I am basically sticking with this setup buy hopefully will have a couple more of my synths on hand. It will be great to move out of this tiny house into a space where we can all move around.
Oh and the update message was an aprils fool - ha ha! Not very funny really but I felt I had to make a vague effort...
These postings are becoming intermitent again. I am sure you can imagine why.
The weekend was spent on a tiring but very pleasent visit to my parents. It was quite odd being in the house that I grew up in with my son. Milo is doing great though and seems to be eager to grow up and get on with things.
Work matters have been the other main focus. I managed to release a VST plugin for PD and I have started work on my next music release - mostly at the programming and sampling stage although I have several sections of source audio recorded as well. The McDonna project to which I contributed a track now has a web release as well - this is another microsound project and is as usual well worth a listen.
Ignorance and stupidity is alive and well - in the form of creationism being taught in one of our schools. This is a very serious issue - Science has absolute evidence that creationism is absolute nonsense - even if you don't accept evolution (for which there is an overwhelming body of evidence) the simple fact is that our knowledge of geology and astronomy give us excellent timescales for the earth and the universe both considerably greater than those advocated by creationism. Creationism is typically supported by pseudo science of the most reprehensible kind as well - were the people seeking to promote it try in a very cack handed way to co-opt the language (but not the techniques) of science to "Prove" that their belief is "true". Therefore by teaching it as being a possibility we are teaching our children that science is a "point of view" rather than a truth. Now we can get all metaphysical here about truth and whether we actually exist or not but the bottom line is that science explains very well a large amount of the world around us - it also allows us to build things from houses and bridges to satellites. Scientific thought also teaches us to be critical of the things we think - it has built in mechanisms to test hypotheses and to consider the consequences of the things we think.
This of course would be all very well if religious thought was harmless or helpful. But as we have seen underlined very strongly of late - from September the 11th to the appalling activities in Israel/Palastine - religious thinking often leads to oppression and violence. Religion is the very antithesis of critical thought - religions by their very nature discourage questions and promote blind following of doctrine.