I am Patrick Perdue! I am bad for you!

Good hello, or should that be badbye?

I've finally gotten around to doing what I've been threatening to do for at least a year, and have imported everything from this blog to a shiny new self-hosted wordpress over at Borris.me. While everything has been moved in, due to the fact that I am what some would consider a wordpress n00b, everything looks all boring and default. This, I'm sure, will change, as anyone who knows anything about me will know that I don't generally like defaults for anything. I find them boring and offensive. Defaults are there to be changed, after all.

The import process didn't go quite as smoothly as I would have liked, as all comments from 2010 and up were duplicated an insane amount of times, while older comments were fine. Don't know what that was all about, but it's been taken care of now.

Anyway, I'll keep this Live Journal around, but don't expect to see any more updates here. I'll also be ridding myself of BadForYou.net, as I just can't connect with that name anymore. Anyone want it?

While I don't blog as much as I used to, due to things like my twitter and a genuine lack of anything worth talking about other than Things and Stuff archives, I plan to at least attempt to be more interesting in future.

I started this particular blog on March 22, 2005. Now, it's March 8, not quite six years later, and *insert overly dramatic, fake crying noises here, or something*

Yeah, I think that's it.

As you've probably guessed by now, I've gone and done it again. This week's Things and Stuff is now ready to be digested. Come on, little enzymes, get to work! Break it down into it's component pieces! Dissolve the flesh! Absorb those lovely ... nutrients? Oh, wait. We have none of those around here.
Here's a summary of what this show did:

• How was your week? Mine consisted of failing technology and cheap microphones.


• Immature kids with the ability to spoof caller ID are bad.


• Nick G tells us about a fun deal from ChunkHost. in which you get a free VPS with 512MB ram and a 20GB HD for an unspecified amount of time. Might get one of these myself just for testing purposes.


• Jonathan speculates on what it might have been like to own a telephone in 1906, based on a book he read, among other things.


• What do you get when you pay $3.98 for a microphone? How do two of these cheap pieces of crap work in a stereo configuration?


• Let's have some music made with duct tape, water bottles, wine glasses, and other standard items from a strange person, followed by other examples of stupid musical things by yours truly.


• Mom continues to be generally odd, somehow managing to bring together President Obama and a bunch of squeaky ducks. Yeah, she's weird, I know.


• My first boring production ever made with Garage band under Mac OSS10.6.6 is introduced, though it isn't all that interesting in and of itself.


• FX Radio has been dead since October. After waffling for a while, then playing some tracks, I randomly decided I missed it, and so pulled up several media players (at least ten of them, I think,) and faked it for a while, accidentally creating the "that is correct" remix on the fly. I really didn't mean to sound like Over the Edge or Shirley & Spinoza Radio, I promise! Well, not really hard, anyway.

So, that's that for this week. Stay tuned next week for the exciting new sound of the same show going through a Linksys E2000 router running Tomato instead of a Buffalo WHRG125 with DD-WRT. I'm sure you'll notice the difference, right?

This week's Things and Stuff is now ready for baking.
This episode features an intro change, as well as a remote co-host, dgl1984, brought to us by the latest version of Fideliphone, a rather awesome free low latency full duplex audio streaming thingy.
Think of it as kind of a mini-realtime, only not, since it was split-studio. The latency and performance of Fideliphone is such, however, that it almost seemed like a real one... sort of.

Except for a couple of stupid technical issues with the phone (I still hate softphones,) this was a rather fun show, featuring things such as the first "ask Mommy" segment, wherein listeners are invited to ask questions of my very strange mother, and a realtime demonstration of packet data streaming from a pass of the international space station. We managed to waste the rest of the time with other pointless things as well, including fun clips from a trip to West Virginia, confusing Monty, and other random stuff.

This concept of having a co-host via Fideliphone is most likely a one-off, and was totally unplanned, which worked out fine, since I had nothing planned for the show anyway. No, please don't all be shocked at once, or anything like that. Feel free to enjoy, or not, depending on how it strikes your fancy.

This week's Things and Stuff is now ready to download. It may hold the record for being the "blindest" Things and Stuff show ever, with discussions about guide dogs, talking watches, screen readers, and other fun stuff, but it's OK. It happens sometimes. Apologies, or not, depending on how you take that sort of thing.

Just a quick stupid unrelated update:
For those who aren't following me on Twitter, I had a short (twenty hour) stay in a hospital for the first time since 1989 on Monday. Lots of abdominal pain, but fortunately nothing serious. The first thing I thought was "appendix," but fortunately, this wasn't the case. I have to say though, I've never experienced pain like that in my life, and hope never to do so again.

Also, on Friday, I got a MacBook Pro 13.3 inch laptop, which I'm now attempting to figure out. Learning an entirely new computing environment is fun. Sure, it will eventually also act as a Windows host, but for now, it's fun to play with, as prior to obtaining this laptop, I hadn't actually used a Mac since OS 7.5. Only everything has changed since then. However, I'm being a bad, non-adventurous person by typing this post on the netbook. Oh well.

Interestingly enough, this is the first non-netbook portable computer I've actually purchased in five years, as I bought the HP L2005 in February 2006. The HP technically still works, but needs a new hard drive, and the left arrow key is missing. Maybe I'll fix it up and put that in service as a spare, or a Mommybook at some point.

Also, to someone's amusement, maybe only mine, the MacBook cost a little bit less than I paid for that HP five years ago. Oh, and for anyone who cares, the Mac is called Grindelwald. The HP is Marvolo. Yeah... Enough said.

It's now time to embrase the thing that is Sunday, otherwise known as bed. See you next time.

It's been a while since I've posted here. To be completely honest, just throwing links to show archives on my twitter page has been more welcoming than sitting down to write out descriptions of shows for the past few weeks. However, I know there are those who don't follow Twitter, and thus, I suppose I'm being a bad, exclusive person. Certainly not a great idea when things are on such a small scale to begin with, but it happens.
I'll fully admit that I'm lazy. However, it has also come to my attention that the podcast feed for my show has been broken for a while, so some of you may not have seen these things show up. Oh well, no matter. Here we are at the end of January, with a backlog of three archives to post about here. Isn't that a great idea? No? Oh well...
Let's do this thing in chronological order, so as to not break the series. Oh wait, this isn't a series...

Things and Stuff for January 15, 2011

Here is another great example of why one should never try doing a show several minutes after waking up from a good early evening's nap, with a large headache on top of that. Really, I don't recommend it. Don't do it.

• After a rocky start, including the keyboard nearly dying, and continuously firing the "oh no" cart lots of times, things finally get under way, with a call from that generic Google voice person from last week, who we now know as Bill. Still not interesting. Sorry.


• Derek calls in to display his displeasure at the substandard first call, brought to us by a technical difficulty preventing a more interesting one from showing up, like Derek's interesting run-in with a southern girl who was looking for a
  
  guy with a car...


• Sometimes, phones generate bad things, like people calling in from Skype, requesting things that are obviously bad. Don't worry, we have better things to use for suitable substitutions.


• Every episode of this show has a bit of geekery in it. This one is no exception. With a call from Kyle comes talk of amateur radio, various data transmission methods, and all sorts of stuff that would completely bore normal people. Good thing you're not, right?


• The weekly Mommy call is quite boring this time around, as Mom and I talk about some of the acoustic material I put up in the studio falling down due to obvious issues, Dexter still has a cute face, and... that's about it. Nothing exciting at all, really.


• More old telephone stuff shows up... like that's never happened before... This time, we have an old broadcast featuring Pat Fleet and Jane Barby, as well as someone's video from inside an old crossbar telephone exchange in the UK, and a very clean recording from a switch in the 251 area code.


• More keyboard badness, followed by me totally screwing up my routing matrix when attempting to play with my mixer's on-board effects, and ending up in the wrong section of the interface entirely. I managed to route the SP/DIF output on the console to the phone send, which really broke things. Naturally, I compensated for it... Post-production is fun! This was followed by a broken song, and more bad things with keyboards and effects processors.


• Another annoying phone call, followed by more geekery, in which I explain a new audio processing stack for the input of my node on GlobalTuners, succeeded by a phone call from Jayson Smith, which lasted far too long for everyone's own good.

'Are we done yet?' Nope. Two more issue boxes to go through, I'm afraid.

Things and Stuff for January 22, 2011

• In place of the normal Things and Stuff everyone has come to expect, we have communist content from Cuba from a cheap Sony world band radio instead... for a while, anyway.


• Alexander, this week's non-communist first phone call, reports his non-communist activities, as well as a bunch of other stuff, including the previously introduced 20o10 award, and those bad old Radio Shack sound effects generators from the mid 90's.


• Discussion of those old Radio Shack 8-bit noise boxes prompted a call fro Jayson Smith, in which more bad things from the 80's and 90's were brought up, including the almost universally hated talking clocks that go "BONG!" Microwaves are fun for those. However, out of spite, I decided to feature clips from one in the first track of the show.


• The entire city, not province, of Edmonton, decides to call about communist things, including USSR radio jamming, and all kinds of other fun unrelated rambling things.


• Let's laugh at the jailers I live with, who now quite frequently forget to pay their cable bill, thus losing internet access. Surprisingly, or not, Monty, the bandwidth guy, has things to say about that. Mom defends herself and her actions.


• What would TBRN sound like on shortwave? This question is partially answered, but not really.


• Arfy tries to call in from Australia, but his net connection keeps breaking the call after only a few seconds. Monty calls in to laugh at Arfy's misfortune, but unfortunately can't make a good case for himself, as his own phone service is having issues at the time. Wah ha ha! I am a fan of irony!


• Let's tune around the shortwave band, play some rather odd tracks, then turn the radio back on to see what both shortwave and the FM broadcast band are up to, as well as doing bad things with interference from multiple electronic devices in and around the studio.


• Jayson Smith is looking for a recording that looped on several TV stations before their analog feeds were terminated. Couldn't find it, but other bad things happened anyway.

'Is the torture over yet?' Nope. Sorry. Just this last one, and you can go to sleep. I promise this one's more interesting.

Things and Stuff for January 29, 2011

• Starting out the show with... issues? Apparently, someone came in behind my back, and messed about with the equipment, deciding that phones and microphones were better off on single sideband, and had some fun with my network-controlled open-reel deck... Ya know, the one that plays music...


• Time to pick on Canada again. I always enjoy doing that.


• Lino, who hasn't called into the show in about two years, decided that doing so again was a good idea. Why? Don't know. I also accidentally changed oracles during that phone call.


• I hate nose stubbers. I also hate it when I forget about noses altogether. So, something must be done about this.


• Let's talk about chainsaws. I like those, too.


• Let's also talk about portable digital recorders, as someone with a crappy recorder called in for microphone recommendations for a substandard pile of crap.


• This week's Mommy call is brought to us by a local routing configuration change, making it sound better than ever, and giving us a chance to pick on Mom's southern accent even more than usual.


• Crestin, Iowa is a great place to be, especially if you're behind the times. We find out why, thanks to Beck.


• Time for even more phone recordings, followed by a call from Kyle, with fun discussions, such as how to hack your way into heaven, and more.


• I might as well incriminate myself with "the carbon microphone song," made in 2008 with a portable four-track recorder,
  and, of course, a carbon microphone.


• Someone sent us a couple of rendered tracks of game stuff, originally arranged for the Roland MT32 module, remixed and
  ported over to more modern sounding Roland stuff. Hear the difference!


• More keyboard badness, this time featuring an improv, which I simply call Corporations.

'Are we done?' Well, almost. Now, let's just throw a few links at you:
If you're interested in any of the preceding crap, feel free to download the January 15, January 22, or January 29 from their respective links. Enjoy, or not. Also, remind me not to backlog like this again.

By the way, since last I wrote here, I purchased a new domain, Borris.me. I plan on putting BadForYou.net on the auction block, and transferring the blog to wordpress. One of these days, I will actually get around to doing all that stuff. Then again, maybe not. Who knows?

The subtitle of this show: "Some people should not be allowed to play with technology." For once, I'm not talking about myself in that contact. Find out more by downloading this week's show.

• A first-time caller to the show, who, unfortunately, is cool enough to set up an Asterisk PBX with GoogleVoice support, but not be very interesting otherwise, decides to show up... again... and again... and again... and...


• Randy Gilkey, snowed in up there in West Virginia, calls with some pre-nam news about some up-coming audio gear, and we talk about keyboards, organs, and strange things for a while.


• The Mommy Call is noisy this week, featuring one of those little cheap sleep sound machine things. Mommy later shows up in the studio with lots of even noisier things. Typical...


• Somewhere near the end, things get... weird. Yes, even more so than normal.

This show was brought to you by the number 11.
Speaking of that, it's currently 16.8 degrees F outside. Oh, wait, that has nothing to do with anything. Oh well.

Since Thursday, I've been at the home/trailer of dgl1984. I did not plan on doing a show from his place, especially since we both did a show on New Year's Eve, called DeadTime 20o10 (yet to be uploaded,) and I'm not familiar with his board. Derek, unfortunately, started a campaign for me to do just that, and, apparently, lots of people wanted to see things flop over, have issues, and generally fail to not suck. So, here it is! I hope you're all happy with your decision (you know who you are, of course!)
Phone issues, send problems, broken files, barfing USB drives (literally,) guns, explosions, and a problem in a pair tree... Never again will I do a show with someone else's gear. Never!
Well, ok. It actually wasn't all that bad, given it could have been a lot worse. Enjoy the first stupid thing from 2011. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. I already had enough of that last year.

Due to Derek's encoder not having been set up to archive in wave format, and, since ogg splicing is an ugly business, this will be the first show in 5 years, 11 months and 11 days to not feature an intro. Great, since I tried, and failed, to reenact the start of the first ever Things and Stuff from January 1, 2005, which also doesn't feature an intro.

Have fun, or not, and may the new year suck much less than the last one did.

Happy boxing day to all, and have the last Things and Stuff for 20o10, specifically, December 25, 20o10. Not much to look at, but it's there anyway.

I figured, because it was Christmas night, things would be a little quiet and low key. I was correct. So, other than Bryan being the first caller to the show for the first time, and thus, making his mark in history as the last first caller to the show in a year that... well... could have been a lot better, to say the least, nothing spectacular happened, though it was fun all the same. So, take it and run. Have lots of fun.

If I don't write here before 20oLeven, have a good one of those, too.

Well, here we are again, a day later, with another Things and Stuff archive for you to download. 'Twas the show before Christmas, and some strange things happened. What? You want to know more? OK, fine!

• For about a minute, we had a guest appearance in the studio from Steve, formerly of Blart Radio.


• Derek calls to talk about the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the movie, and plays drums on a phone, as well as other stuff.


• Ever tried to clean a fan on a laptop? We feel your pain. So does some random guy on Youtube, so he made a song about it.


• A call from Jonathan results in talking about Over the Edge and other random things.


• Just how sick was I over the last couple of weeks? Well, naturally, in my state of having a horribly messed up voice, I had to record a few things, including the 32 broken Borrises.


• Alexander shows up. We talk about Over the Edge some more, and old, bad Christmas things I've done in the past. A couple of them are played.


• Getting into the Christmas spirit a bit with some seasonable music, the Mommy call turns into a live, in-studio Mommy, and a bunch of other random crap rounds out the show, including the annual appearance from Sammy the Christmas Snake.

And, as per usual, that's a done deal. Tune in next week for... huh... I've never done a show on Christmas day before. That could turn out interesting.

Hello, and welcome to a two-week late post. Man, these last couple of weeks have sucked. I spent most of them in bed with what I'm pretty sure was strep throat. I had no voice for most of the time, and it all started on Saturday, December 4. I, of course, the bad person I am, went through with the show anyway, despite a fever, headache, and a slowly but surely dying voice, and this archive is the result.
Here's what it did:

• Starting the show off with issues is a normal thing. This time, we had phone issues, which lasted through half the show, and started with the standard first caller, who tried, and failed, to make them appear more interesting than they actually were in real life, you know, as opposed to fake life.


• After playing a track from a digitally encoded LP, squished a bit much by accident by my processing, I mention that this is the first show done with my new Heil Sound PR30 large diaphragm dynamic microphone, obtained just before RealTime 20o10, because, you know, everyone needs to know what mics are being used in the studio at any given time.


• The first snow of the season showed up, bringing two inches of the stuff down on us. I recorded a bit of that from the perspective of my outside streaming mics. This prompted a discussion about weathermen, and a bit regarding the weather (or lack thereof,) and the old "We have no power!" thing from 2002 is dragged up from the depths of the please die vault.


• We are the beyond radio network. Your content will be added to our own... or something. Fake borg times.


• In honor of the holiday season, we put Christmas through a trash compactor... Well, not really, but close enough.


• It's all the RIAA's fault, apparently.


• The weekly Mommy call results in a pointless discussion about calendars, and the point is moot, not mute.


• We hear from Colt Ford, an interestingly bad country/rap artist thrown in our general direction by a listener.


• It's all the RIAA's fault, part II, featuring a fake representative.


• Alexander Nelson calls, talks about weird things for a while, then goes away. No point in going further in detail about that, I suppose.


• After being party ready for a while, it's time for weird things with effects and keyboards.

And, generally speaking, that's about it, other than the other, non-mentioned stuff. I didn't do a show last week, because of the bad sick times that started during the course of this one, and only just shoved off a couple of days ago. Let's not do that again.

Stupid notes:
I uploaded this show from my iPhone 4 and it's 3g connection at an average speed of 140 KBPS, faster than my cable upstream which tops out at around 90 KBPS (768 kbps up.) This makes me angry. While I have the option of paying for more upstream, it's price gouging at it's finest around here, with 10/1 mbps at $149, and 15/2 mbps at $349 a month. Can we say outch?
I enabled iPhone tethering for one month, so a car time could happen. This broke in every conceivable way, but it did give me an opportunity to play with it, anyway. The fact that it has more upstream available than I'm currently getting from my cable service, and nearly three times that of the local top residential Time Warner Cable teer, is, quite frankly, terrible. They need to step it up around here!
Anyway, back to the story... My billing cycle resets on the 18th of the month, so I uploaded this archive just before the cut-off to burn a bit more data, since I didn't use all of it. It's now well after midnight on the 18th, and it hasn't automagically turned off my tethering. I wonder when this actually will take place. I'm tempted to just keep it connected until it doesn't work anymore, but I probably can't practically do that. Oh well.

Here we go. Let's waste... about 5 KB of my wireless data by posting this. Oh man, that's gonna hurt!

Although PDAudio Realtime 20o10 happened on Saturday, November 27, 20o10 from my place, and the archive has actually been available for a while, though not officially linked anywhere except for one Twitter post, reminding me yet again that PDAudio.net really needs a working website, I'm throwing it out here for general reference.

This was a rather strange show, in which Derek's voice was very broken as a result of issues the day before. We experimented with many odd concepts and effect combinations, came up with a few ideas, and generally wasted 4 hours, 3 minutes, and 28 seconds of time. For more info, feel free to download PDAudio RealTime 20o10. Go on, waste 218MB of disk space, you know you want to!

I really do hate to bother you, but this week's show archive is now available.
Nope, not really one of my better days, but it tried hard.
Here's some of what it has to offer:

• Starting out with clicks, issues, and a second take due to the stream client crashing multiple times (turns out this was the fault of the softphone I'm using, since the thrice-revived grandstream bt101 is having issues again,) the show doesn't get much better.


• November 19, 2005 was the fifth anniversary of a well-known show I did with Mary Ann in her Portland apartment, which involved, among other things, a drunk Mary Ann. She called in to inform the listeners that she was celebrating "not getting drunk by drinking gin." Issues happen as a result.


• Does anyone besides the show's host set alarms for weird times of the day, I.E. 8:18, 6:34, or 8:27 AM, rather than, say, 6:30 or 9:15?


• Due to some strange issues somewhere, a new accidental thing is created, known as 40 seconds with Venison. He gets 40 seconds to talk before his phone cuts him off, and eventually made my computer lock up hard, requiring a restart, though, naturally, he puts the blame on others.

Oh, other things happen as well, but the whole deal pretty well deteriorated about 27 minutes before it started. So, as always, listen at your own risk. I claim no responsibility for ... *insert the rest of everyone's standard disclaimer here, so I don't have to actually write it out.*

In other news, my Digitech quad IV effects processor is having problems turning on. Once it's on, it's good, but power cycling it sometimes results in the thing not working, until it's been left to sit around and click at you for a few minutes, as heard at the start of, and somewhere near the middle of the show. Anger management time happens now.

If things go as planned, PDAudio Realtime 20o10 (not 20o10.5, which should happen around this time of year, with myself and dgl1984, will occur on Saturday, November 27. Stay tuned for more fun issues from that front.

Here we go again. The end of another week, the end of another show, and the drudgery of having to try annotating the blasted thing. Well, ya know what? This time, like many others, I think I won't bother trying. I will say that this show was fun, my internet connection wasn't, and I like vocoders. What, not a good enough description? Well... yeah, it's not. So, to make up for it, here's the link to find out more. Have fun, and don't say I didn't warn you! Well, it would be the truth, since I didn't... So, don't tell the truth! No, stop it! Lie right now!

What we gonna do right here is go back... way back... back into time... Oh, wait, we already did that.
Welcome to eastern standard time, home of several people. For your reward, you get a shiny new Things and Stuff archive. I enjoyed it. Maybe you will as well.
Here's some of what it has to offer:

• The first traditional call from Derek introduces the iWork app, a workaround for the bug in iOS 4.1 that breaks alarms after a shift to or from daylight saving time.


• I was very successful at confusing Venison, and apparently various other people, with an announcement on Twitter just before the show. Got him all angry and stuff...


• "How was your week?" Mine was fun, spent with Melanie, doing interesting things. As a result, I have more toilets, and some sounds from a Motorola Droid.


• I loaded the "droid" sound into my keyboard, which made Byron call in to do bad things with his Droid, talk about weird apps, and other random stuff.


• Let's play a song I made with "droid," followed by another random thing simply entitled Colorado. Yeah, I was bored. What else is new?


• Propetuum Jazzile, an A Capella group, thinks singing songs about Africa and simulating storms with their hands and various objects on stage is a good idea. Sure, why not? They're good at it.


• As usual, something from Things and Stuff's past comes up, followed by a call from a long forgotten person who seems to show up once a year... sometimes.


• The rest of the show is formed by a chain of phone calls from people that do bad stuff, making me end the show about 6 minutes later than normal.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, 20o10 will have seven more Things and Stuffs in it. Hopefully, they'll all be at least as interesting to me, and hopefully you, as this one was. If not, oh well. Too bad.

I'll make this short, and possibly, but probably not, sweet.
What happens when you take two people (specifically Patrick Perdue and Melanie Kotch) who are beyond tired, stick them in a basement project studio for two hours, give them a couple of microphones, and let them go for a while? Well, the obvious answer, of course, is this week's episode of Things and Stuff. In fact, I think it requires no explanation what so ever. I truly believe that trying to explain it's content would be much worse than several terribly bad things. So, in everyone's best interest, I won't. Click and enjoy. No, that's share and enjoy, isn't it? Oh, just do something.

Time to sleep in a hotel bed.

And now, it's time for another free show! Is it worth what you pay for it?

This week's archive does some of the following, and other stuff as well:

• I have apparently graduated from having phone obsessed people calling the show to blind stoners, and the new "squeak of the week" is revealed, for what it's worth.


• LPC encoding/decoding in realtime. Yep, possible, and a bad idea.


• Should I be bothered in future, I now have a new, inefficient, but effective way to answer the question "How was your week?"


• Thanks to a conversation on TeamTalk with Andre almost two weeks ago, and a delay unit from the 1980's that can truly loop infinitely with no degeneration, we have a bad loop that wasted electricity for a while... until I killed it on the air, of course.


• Let's look at two examples of mechanical music creation from the early 1900's, a good example from a properly restored Hupfeld Orchestrion Phonoliszt-Violina from 1912, playing a piano and two real violins (or something that sounds pretty real, anyway,) all from a paper roll, and a... well... not so good one from a Model 33 Heinrich Voigt (Ruth & Son) concert organ, otherwise known as "the drunk carousel."


• I found something I want for Christmas... an acoustic bass guitar, with a twist. A clip of someone demonstrating it is provided for your convenience.


• Pat Fleet BellSouth number disconnected messages do still exist around here. OH boy!


• Let's play a sequence of something I remember from high school theater, though the name escapes me, followed by some random stuff from a show rehearsal I recorded 8.5 years ago on minidisc, which contains the source of this stupid thing that would not go away, prompting me to record it very badly with a step sequencer. Buckets and tap dancing are included. How can you go wrong with that?


• The rest of the show deteriorates into one of those famous calls from Alexander (Lisa?) Nelson, talk of various sequences, and bad things from my past, yet again, like always, some more...


• Who knew Venison likes to tap dance?

That's it for this week. Check back for something hopefully interesting soon.

This week's show mainly consisted of playing with effects processors on the Yamaha Motif XS, using the iPhone as a phone patch, including it's various issues, the "oh no connection," an under-developed idea that has a lot of potential, and other strange things. Get it here and enjoy the spectacle I made of myself... again!

Are you ready? It's time for another spectacular, over-the-top piece of crap, which is now available for Download.
It includes, but is not limited to:

• some great tracks from the Dixie Dregs


• More stupidity with the Ensoniq TS-12 and it's built-in step sequencer


• Lots of calls from "Lisa Nelson"


• bad people who want to be toasters when they grow up

and much, much more. Oh, I nearly forgot to mention the Things and Stuff iPhone app, demonstrated at the start of the show.
Again, I forgot to get back to some bits. Oh well, try again later, or something.

Good hello to anyone bored enough to read this thing. Let's just say that last Saturday's show was a flop of unprecedented pproportions. If you heard it live, you may know why. To those who didn't, I envy you greatly. There will be no archive. Sorry about that. Actually, I'm not.

The last couple of days have been interesting. After Saturday's failure, I decided to turn off my primary pc (a netbook at this point,) put it under the bed, and use nothing but my iPhone until Friday. I have no immediate jobs requiring advanced functions like sound editing, and I can do all the basics using only my iPhone and a bluetooth keyboard. I've made it through almost two days of not touching a pc for anything, and, honestly, the experience has been pretty fun. I've adopted a minimalist approach to life lately, and this fits the bill rather nicely.
The LiveJournal app is useless from an accessibility standpoint, unless you just want to read entries. Posting just doesn't work, so I'm actually writing this into the notes app, and will paste it into the website. Oh well, could be worse.

Also, I've decided that my left eye really needs to stop existing. For the last week or so, it feels like something is lodged in my eye, like a piece of sand or something, but I don't think anything is. I'm starting to think I should have it looked at. Maybe it's way past time to get rid of these non-functional eyes, replacing them with useless fake ones. Then again, maybe not

One of these days, I'll have an interesting existence. Until then, I won't bother even trying to pretend. While some my argue, successfully, that there is a good reason to pretend that you are something you're not, or that the situation you'v found yourself in is, in fact, a lot worse than you make it out to be, I don't see a point in trying. I just don't have the energy to put up a front which, in the grand scheme of things, is useless anyway. Staying in bed for a month sounds like a great idea..

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

Good hello, and welcome to the last few hours of summer. In case you were wondering, I can't wait for it to die, good and proper. Unfortunately, it's doing a terrible job of that at the moment, with highs still hanging out in the 90's (Fahrenheit, of course, as temperatures in that range centigrade would be a terrible idea, for obvious reasons.) This particular summer definitely hasn't been one of my favorites. In fact, the most fun bits of the past few months happened just before summer
technically existed. Things broke during it, and now we're here. So, summer, please turn around and shove off. You are no longer welcome in these parts. Good bye!

Now, for the reason I've actually bothered to write in this thing.
I have two Things and Stuff archives for you today. One of them is over a month late, so it's new to me, as I've now forgotten what it actually did. So, let's find out together.

Things and Stuff for August 14, 2010

• The show started out with a happy hello... that is, once the thing decided to work. Phone calls for this show were provided by my Nokia E71 mobile phone patched into the board, and used as a sip client, since my normal phone patch solution took a temporary nosedive. This,
  incidentally, was the last major thing I did with that phone, as I got an iPhone 4 to replace it a few days later. Sadly, this solution sounds better than some patches I've heard on commercial stations. Oh well.


• After a standard first call from Derek, and a call from Jonathan talking about near-death experiences, MaryAnn showed up to play with her new Panasonic cordless phone, and it's associated ringtones.


• Bringing back an old bit from last year, I rediscovered some very crappy, but amusing vocal samples from the Yamaha Motif X-Panded sample bank for the Motif XS. Rug rats, anyone?


• Let's do bad things with voip equipment, effects processors, and FX Radio, for no particular reason.


• We find that the world outside my window is boring, as usual.


• The mommy call broke, but she showed up in studio during a phone call from Steve Matzura of New York City, making things interesting and odd, bringing forth conversations about baby squirrels. No, I'm not kidding!


• Monty called in from an iPhone, and talked about... wait for it... bandwidth! Shocking, isn't it?

If any of this random crap interests you, feel free to download the stupid thing!

A note: No one bothered telling me that the output on the show was incredibly low, and dynamics were all over the place. I
used a multiband compressor to squish it post-stream, which is why it sounds a little different than normal.

Things and Stuff for September 18, 2010

And now, the show for this week, a rather odd one.

• At the beginning of the show, I announced a prize for the first person to correctly guess what brand of microphone I used on this particular episode.


• The first call from Derek reminisced on past events from TBRN's nearly six year history.


• Mom showed up to talk about the flight of honor, an event held to honor World War II vets. My grandmother was a marine, and participated in this event on Saturday.


• A clue was given about the microphone name. It has an h in it.


• Because I was bored, I decided to look up the procedure on how to do step-recording on the Ensoniq TS-12, and made some rather stupid sequences as a result.


• A couple of disturbing tracks submitted by Andre, followed by the first "fast track" in over four years. Remember those?


• Thanks to a random file recorded in a car five years ago, we remember such things as the freaky fwoof alert, blart, and other things that are now dead.
  
• A bad idea called, and suggested that I do a drunk Things and Stuff. Nope, won't happen. This was followed by the first successful use of the click alarm, at least on Things and Stuff.


• I need plexiglas®!


• Jayson Smith pointed out that Thursdays are bad for you, yet again. July 4, 1776 was a Thursday... Enough said.


• Time to be boring, and play live things using my Motif XS and Ensoniq TS-12. No good reason for it, really.


• Jayson Smith called in, and among other things, promoted "super data recovery," a service for... um... getting data from broken hard drives... Yeah, sure. Appropriate music is provided.


• Another look back at Things and Stuff of the past, this time taking a look at the events of August 12, 2006.


• Venison tried to fool me, but didn't.


• The brand of microphone I used was announced at the end of the show. No one guessed, and no one won the prize, which, as it turns out, would have been said microphone.

And, just to be boring and predictable, the download link is very much over here.

Have an enjoyable double-archive time, while I hang out with another relative of Mr. McHurtford. They do keep showing up, for some reason.

Greetings from a semi-sick person. Today, we have a not so special treat for you, this being the archive for Things and Stuff, September 11, 2010.

From talk of things that just aren't made like they used to, playing with effect plugins in realtime, more odd things from Pams jingles, and a few other things in between, this archive is sure to entertain you for at least 19 seconds. If it doesn't, we can't do anything for you. Terribly sorry, and all that.

A side-note:
I have several things from Josh Owens that I've been meaning to get to for the last couple of weeks, but it keeps breaking. So, I'll do my best to get that stuff on this up-coming Saturday.
I will also post the August 14 archive tomorrow, so it will be exactly a month late.

Now, back to feeling miserable and generally crappy.

Welcome to September. Summer is finally thinking about shoving off, and good things will soon happen... for somebody... I guess.
in an unrelated note, Click here to have issues!

On Friday, I bought an old Digitech RDS 900 digital delay unit from music-go-round for $49. It was just sitting there, looking so old, I just had to see what it did. This thing dates back to around 1984, and it's rather interesting to play with. I, naturally, did that, and explained a bit about how it works, and demonstrated how to get a stereo chorus effect from it, eeven though it's a mono effects processor.
September 4 was the 16th birthday of my Ensoniq TS-12 keyboard. This was celebrated with another dumb birthday song written using it's sequencer, just like last year, as well as a bunch of unrelated, highly incriminating clips from the past of yours truly, triggering a rather amusing memory of something that happened to an x-TBRN presenter in 2007.
Except for the third part of the Pams series, that's about it for this week.

I don't know if I'll be showing next week, since the studio might have it's guts ripped out next Saturday to change the carpet. That should have happened this week, but measurements were never taken, and I've bought some bass traps to install in the room, as I've decided to slowly put together an acoustic treatment solution to get rid of some of those annoying standing waves, and have some defusing going on. Too much to do all at once, found some good deals on bass traps, so decided to start out with that.

According to the TAS calendar, another month is over. According to the Gregorian calendar, there are still a couple of days left. Oh, how I'd like the TAS one to be correct. Alas, this is not to be. Probably not a bad thing, since, according to the TAS calendar, each month only has either four or five days in it. Then again, that in itself wouldn't be so bad sometimes.
In either case, the final episode for August 2010 is now available to play with.
This one had some particularly amusing bits in it, summarized here for your inconvenience.

• The show started out, standard enough, with a call from Derek, including suggestions as to the best possible sports to play while in a linen closet, among other non-standard items.


• After the first track, Mommy shows up with a problem. Drums do not bring root beer. Mom wants a piece of furniture in my studio very badly, and makes lots of noise about it, including the first ever story time with Mommy, and an excuse to bring up "one small twist" again.


• We say "hello" to Josh for 15 minutes (only an 8th of the show this time, not a quarter as Derek speculated it would be. HA!)


• A call from Mom, and a broken attempt to check voicemail leads to something that could very well break my reputation forever. Venison, naturally, picks up on this.


• Just as a kind of fake Sunday Night Serenade promotional type deal, we hear a clip from a streamed Boatmen band rehersal, featuring Randy Gilkey and friends, with a couple of issues.


• Let's revisit my opinion on Allison Smith because it was brought up by a new listener.


• It's time for the Notting Hill Carnival again, which Onj streams every year. I tried, and failed, to get hit in the head with metal objects while set up happened like I did in 2008, but I wasn't quite on late enough. That sort of stuff is going on as I write, currently at 8:00 AM BST, for the information.


• And now, part II of the Pams Jingles feature.


• Voicemail retreavle was finally successful. Even more noise about this certain piece of furniture was revealed as a result.


• Time to play the keyboard some more... Well, for a couple of minutes, anyway.


• Let's insert a shameless plug for FX Radio for some new people who may not have known about it.


• Let's find out how a particular small southern station pays the bills by looking at how it handles Sunday morning.

And that's that for another month. Let's see what September does... Oh, and still no upload for the show from two weeks ago. Sorry, I guess. Enjoy this one, anyway.

A few complaints:
I ran things a little hot, didn't quite have the mic processing the way I usually do, and I accidentally encoded this week's archive at a lower bitrate. Oh well, more of my money is being saved.

P.S. This entire entry was written in the bathroom. Yes, you needed to know.

Good salutation, and welcome to yet another period of time wasted on frivolous pursuits of an audiological nature, otherwise known as this week's episode of Things and Stuff.

Sorry, tired again, so no real description. It had lots of fun things in it, though, including the first of a 15-week series of presentations from a Pams Jingles sample package, a song from Andre using the La D Da app for iPhone, unnecessary sensorship, fun with outside microphones, and other random, strange and generally odd things.
Oh, and I am now an iPhone user... There, I said it.

Maybe I'll get around to uploading last week's show sometime this week. Oops. Enjoy this one for now.

It's that time again. That's right, time for another space-wasting archive. I guess it's better than nothing.
Here's what you'll get yourself into if you click the above link (my condolences to you in advance for that, by the way.)

• The show started out at the wrong sampling rate. Gotta love those digital mixers and external clock sources. Not the first time that's happened, probably won't be the last.


• Derek muses about issues with open reel tape decks, ideas for a possible broadcastathon, family reunions, Byron's flat tire shop, carbon mics, broken condensers, and other things.


• On Thursday, a very nice thunderstorm showed up, including a very out-of-place ice cream truck playing Christmas music. This, of course, was recorded for all the world to laugh about.


• Jonathan from Canada has joined the ranks of the elite, the unemployed... BLIND PEOPLE!!! This is discussed, including issues with the former employer. His last day of work was Thursday, which brings forth the predictable discussion about Thursday being bad for you, the happiest countries in the world, and other random things.


• As an experiment, I made some convolution impulses from the effects unit of my Ensoniq TS-12. Since I like the reverb, but the ts-12 has no live inputs, I wanted to see how close to reality it would come. It needs work, but it's a start.


• I like songs with things that should have been taken out, but weren't. Such an example, from the Mamas and the Papas, is brought to the world's attention.


• A call from Josh, with the usual radio report, questions about southern grammar, and the coldest weather forecast he has on tape, just in time for the dog days of summer, of course.


• Putting things out of phase, playing multiple songs at once, generally being a bad person... All things you should expect by now, of course.


• Here's another unfinished idea, brought to you by the Motif XS pattern sequencer.

Aside from the trivial details, like the actual content of the show, that's about it. Have fun with it.

Good day, readers. Today, I have a rather odd bit of audio for you, recorded at my home last night at around 6:00 PM.

As is often the case here in the good ol' southeast United States, a particularly nice thunderstorm came through the area.
During the convention I attended in Phoenix last month, I picked up an Olympus DM520 digital recorder, which I quite like.
For about the last 9 years or so, recording tests for new portable recording equipment have included toilets and thunderstorms. Yes, I know I'm a bit mad, but you'll get used to it.
Anyway, a suitable test storm came through on July 28, but it was pretty standard, so I won't bother bringing that up, other than to say it brought even more water into the basement. Oh, yes, I may not have mentioned that, when I came home from Phoenix, it was to a good deal of water on the studio floor, and the rest of the basement, for that matter. Having this happening over and over again, when I have no control of certain aspects of life here, is really getting quite old. Therefore, I'm investigating other living arrangements... but we're getting off topic yet again. You should be used to this by now.

OK, back to storms. Yes, that's what we were talking about, right? Yeah, that was it.

Yesterday, a rather large portion of North Carolina was hit by a multi-cell storm system, which was absolutely fantastic in terms of sound and lightning. Fortunately, it didn't invade the basement, which I rather appreciate, given events of recent weeks. I decided, in typical stupid fashion, to stick a single-point stereo microphone out the window, connect it to the DM520, press record, and see how things turned out. What I didn't expect, however, was hearing an ice cream truck going down the road playing Christmas music during this very obvious non-wintry weather. Silent night indeed! I don't think so!
Yep, a clash of epic proportions. Maybe that works in Australia, but not on this side of the world. Sorry, try again.

Anyway, I recorded this storm, which, by the way, has some pretty amazing bangs in it, only to discover that my mic placement left something to be desired, and the stereo image almost didn't exist. Fortunately, thanks to Sound Forge and it's ms matrix decoder, flipping one channel out of phase, and lining up the amplitude of both channels, I managed to get a good image from it, despite the issues.
It was also pretty windy outside, and I couldn't find a windscreen, so I used a pair of rolled up socks. Worked just as well, as it turned out, but if anyone happened to be looking in the general direction of the upstairs bathroom window, seeing a pair of socks hanging off a metal rod in the window had to look a little weird. I sure hope I didn't break my pristine reputation. Oh, wait... never mind.
For those who may be interested in this sort of thing, 35 minutes of this storm can now be downloaded free of charge. As well as reprocessing the stereo image, a bit of dynamic compression was used. Therefore, it's really not quite an accurate representation of the DM520 by itself, but it will give you a pretty good idea of what it can do if it wants to.

Don't forget, you can always click here for a live stream of the environment just outside my studio window, if you're bored with your own. For a while, you'll make friends with Mr. next door neighbor's air conditioning unit, as well as the occasional evening party with the local Mexican population, but that's OK. It could always be worse.

July is over. August, generally the most depressing month of the year for no particular reason, which occurs six months after February, the most pointless month of the year, is here to take it's place. As a result, this highly bad episode of Things and Stuff is now available. Remind me to stop doing these blasted things 20 minutes after waking up. It's not a good idea. Here it is anyway. enjoy.

After a two week absence, one of which was unscheduled thanks to another basement flood, we now present, for what it may or may not be worth to you, your loved ones, your cash register, and the random pair of sneakers under your bed, this week's episode of Things and Stuff. Assuming you didn't catch the live show, here are a few things you may have missed:

• ScanSoft Squishalizer Borris, a new synthesizer from Popular Demand Audio, with cooperation from ScanSoft (or not,) makes itself known to the world by hosting the show for a while.


• After a quick discussion with myself about the last couple of weeks, and the fact that I picked up an Olympus DM520 digital recorder at the ACB conference and Convention in Phoenix, I got a tech support question from Monty regarding said unit, which eventually resulted in showing just how easy it is to switch between real and fake versions of Borris.


• Jonathan calls in with the last of the weird neighbor reports. He didn't last long in that apartment building, apparently. Discussion then turns to various things, such as baby beer stories, blind tech, speech synthesis, and random crap.


• WGAJ ends another broadcast... Not broadcasting day, but broadcast. Hear the last minute of this educational station's existence as captured by Josh Owens in May of 1998.


• The Arizona Rattlers don't sponsor TBRN, but apparently my subconscious thought it should. Why? No idea, I'm afraid.


• Venison shows up to talk about broken things, break more things, and generally mess the world up for no particular reason. Global warming, sun spots, atmosphere blow-up, all kinds of fun things.


• Thanks to a submission from Randy Gilkey, we have a few demo tapes of the Ursa Major Space Station, a digital delay and reverb unit from around 1978. We do like effects around here! One of the tapes was played back on a miss-aligned deck. Oh well.


• The secret behind ScanSoft Squishalizer Borris is revealed, which eventually leads to some very odd phone calls from Venison, Jonathan, and ultra-eago, setting up future confrentations in the process.

That's this week done. Due to things happening around here, I may or may not be on fake air for the next few weeks. Everything needs to be moved out of the studio, and the carpet needs to be replaced. Not sure when that will happen, so there you have it. Enjoy, or some such.

KirBoom! Persplode! Wizz! Pop! Oh yeah, it's time for fireworks, and other bad things, such as this week's episode of Things and Stuff. Let's cut to the point: What?
This show was a particularly crazy one, which was a little slim on phone calls, due to a technical issue I only found after the show was over. Oh well. I only missed calls from Byron. No big loss, right? Oops, did I say that?
Here's a summary of the badness contained in this week's terrible 111MB waste of space:

• Derek's traditional first call turned into an interesting discussion about the fact that he deserted his listeners to go make money, unlikely iPhone applications of the future, and other things.


• Josh is now a proud father as of July first. Even so, he called to discuss radio stuff.


• Because it's the time of year for it, have "the all American patriotic sign-off" from WMNA FM, recorded in 1997. There's something you don't hear too often these days, especially on FM. This was followed by some... um... liners?


• Byron sent in two odd versions of 'I walk the line,' as one was mentioned by Josh.


• Cliche? over played? Too bad! With independence day, or as I like to call it, anti-UK day being just around the corner at the time of this show, a few tracks from Stan Freberg's 'the United States' came out of the closet for something to do.


• Open microphones outside revealed the occasional firework, and a bunch of crickets.


• I bought a cheap $2 flute in Tennessee last month, and forgot about it until it was thrown at me. It's not in concert pitch, and isn't really even in tune with itself. Does that stop me from playing with it, along with a randomly selected performance from the Motif XS? What do you think?


• Negativland: enough said. We like that around here.


• Crickets and carts through effects processors (Did I ever mention I really like my Digitech Quad IV?)


• Near the end of the show, I landed on some blues thing in f major, and got this sudden urge to sing about cigarettes. I really have no idea what came over me, and I apologize for it.

And there you have it. As I'll be in Phoenix next Saturday, there will be no Things and Stuff for the first time since December 12 of last year, not counting Radio Failure and FakeTime 20o10, at least not a live one. I'm sure Derek and I will stream at some point during the convention, so stay tuned to my twitter, Derek's twitter, or both, for late breaking news on stupid things as they happen.
Speaking of twitter, freakyfwoof has one of those now. You can now follow freakyfwoof if you use that service. Who saw that coming?

And now, for your considerable discomfort, we modestly present the last Things and Stuff for June 20o10."
Like most shows, we apologize for putting you through this. Here's why:

• Derek, the traditional first caller to the show, ended up being the host for a while, as certain annoying issues decided to make themselves known at the last minute. We also got to hear the awesome acoustics of Derek's future studio space.


• Alexander showed up, at which point we revealed that your call may be monitored or recorded by a radio shack CTR-69 cassette recorder.


• Bryan showed up, proving that he's a lot more interesting on Derek's show than mine, but that's OK.


• Derek Roberts, also known as CN (for cup man,) and a new amateur radio operator, obsesses about morse code while talking about his all-that-for-that field day experience. As a result, the no more CW song was brought to the world's attention, unfortunately for the world.


• Apparently, you are not allowed to have morbid thoughts in the 48 contiguous United States, but you can have them in Alaska, Hawaii, and Port Ricky (er, Puerto Rico.)


• How can a couple of coca cola commercials from 1967 cause issues, and generate a new idea on achieving world piece at the same time?


• Successfully dead, partially inspired by the no more CW song and written by Alexander, is introduced to the broader world of bad people.


• Jayson Smith, a first time caller, called in using Project MF and a fake bluebox.


• Jonathan from Canada has a new neighbor, who just happens to be a bad person. Of course, he told us all about it.


• Charles Hiser, another first-time caller, shows up to make life... interesting?


• Thanks to a call from Byron, we learned about Canada's high population of black people, which was prompted by Jonathan's earlier call. We also learned that Russia was apparently responsible for inventing memory loss.


• More updates from Jonathan on the weird neighbor, now worse than ever before.


• Was Hitler actually a good person? Well... no.

And that's it for June. I'll be happy when this month is over. Finances are stretched past the limit, and convention's coming up in just under two weeks. Let's see what it does, shall we?

FINALLY! This is the only word I can come up with to describe the feeling I have for the fact that the week ending June 19, 2010, is finally over. What a stupid bunch of crap!
Speaking of stupid bunches of crap, this week's Things and Stuff is now available for download.

New features in this version:

• No, this really isn't the karaoke machine show. I promise. It may, however, seem that way at first.


• After the traditional first call from Derek, in which several standard things are discussed, Josh shows up with a new phone. Does it sound better than his previous one? Well... no. Sorry, I took away the suspense. Let's talk about radio things, files that get lost, anniversaries, babies, and all sorts of good stuff. Fun with effects processors during this call, just so I would be seen as "doing something" by all zero people watching me from outside the control room.


• Apparently, blaming the weather man for your bad week will result in a severe thunderstorm warning... or will it?


• Monty calls in to report a possible distraction, talk about the up-coming convention we'll be attending in Phoenix, and other bad things. I bring up the fact that I have just installed a 32GB OCZ solid-state disk in my netbook, a "my first little SSD" if you will. More on all that in a later post.


• All sorts of bad things are happening in Venison's neighborhood, which may or may not involve people he knows personally, including old people partying like there's no tomorrow. Oh, wait...


• Jonathan calls in to talk about Kurzweil keyboards in particular, and keyboards in general.


• Thanks to Derek, we have a bit of fun with a loop that simply goes "Oh deer! I broke it again!" Effects processors never get old.


• The Mommy call sparks talk of the Harry Potter movies vs. the books.


• June 19, 2010 marked the fifth anniversary of a certain bit played on TBRN involving a drunk Swedish school teacher, which, of course, was revisited for the amusement of some.


• Buttons and knobs, again?


• A very unusually late call from Bryan, way past his bedtime.


• Conspiracies contrived by people who aren't evil; can this phenomenon actually exist?

And, folks, that's it for this week. Enjoy, or don't. It's your prerogative. We're not going to force you.

Last night, I awoke two hours before showtime with several issues. Headache, sinus problems, alergic reactions, brain-blowing sneeze pressure, and other related things. Yes, because I'm just good and reliable like that, I did a show despite all these problems. I haven't missed one yet this year, so why start now? I'm sure I'll miss at least one, as I now have a round-trip ticket to Phoenix, AZ, for the 49th annual ACB convention in July. On Saturday, July 10, 2010, at 7:00 PM MST, I'm pretty sure there will be more interesting things going on to keep my attention away from attempting to stream from a hotel room.
Anyway, enough of that. This show is now available for download.

Sorry, I can't really be bothered to write a description for this week's show, except to say that it broke quite a lot. No, this is not unusual in the context of this particular show, and is, in fact, expected by most people by now. However, it should be pointed out that there is a certain psychological phenomenon of human nature, simply referred to as schadenfreude. Those who subscribe to this phenomenon (doesn't everyone at a fundamental level?) will probably enjoy this show.

I'm out, like my 500GB Seagate hard drive, with many valuable bits of data. Yep, another dead hard drive. Forth in a month. Will it ever end?

Although it's a bit later than usual, thanks to some local issues, it's now available to download.
Here's a list of some of the wonderful things you may be glad you missed if you didn't hear this show live, and, perhaps, wish you had after hearing the archive:

• With the first two callers in a row from Derek and Josh, both of whom had quite a lot to say on various subjects, things really got started after about half an hour.


• One of the fun things done this week included myself, Derek, and Melanie in a helicopter in Tennessee. A fun clip from that was played, brought to you by a couple of small omni-directional mics in very close proximity to the vehicle.


• Monty calls in, breaks things, and talks about things that are broken.


• Jonathan from Canada calls to talk about even more broken things, dead Dell power supplies, and other random junk.


• After this week's Mommy call, we prove that summer is finally here by looking at the weather forecast for Barrow, Alaska, after which, the broadcast machine flops over on it's face and dies.


• Thanks to a contact mic I got for my birthday, the "cup mic," which is quite literally what it says it is, makes an appearance, followed by another "cup mic" which sounds about as good, but, unfortunately for the person who uses it, isn't actually a cup.


• Josh sent in a clip from the end of a broadcast on WKTE, including the very confused announcer. Isn't it great when people screw up on the radio?


• I bought another weird old microphone, this being a made in USSR Poltava ND-52 dynamic from 1974. To honor that, have an angry Russian man singing and yelling about who knows what.


• Let's invade someone's privacy, and listen to a very boring baby monitor from somewhere in the general area.


• A small clip recorded at Pigeon Forge Music Outlet is played, with Derek on a set of bongos, and myself on a mountain dulcimer, a combination of instruments you don't hear every day.

Well, that's it for now. Apologies to the impatient people who wanted the archive "NOW NOW NOW!" but things beyond my control happen sometimes.

I'd just like to let you all know that I am feeling like a complete idiot at this point. The last few days with Melanie and Derek have been amazing, with the show we did live from a hotel in Mooresville being incredibly fun. However, due to a huge oversite on my part, there will be no archive of this show available publically or privately... It just doesn't exist. I even had a redundant archiving solution setup, which broke as well. Oh well. It's all a memory now, and a bummer. LIfe goes on, though.
That's it from this part of the world for now. Happy birthday to me, indeed. It was awesome until just after... Oh well.

As many know by now, I've been having all sorts of fun moving things around various hard drives, as everything keeps breaking, dying, and generally having problems existing. As a result, however, I've found many things that I either didn't know I had, or have forgotten about completely.
One such example is a text file I saved of the virtualization of a screen from my e-mail client as Jaws for Windows crashed, as it often does. The results of this are, well, to put it lightly, a lot more amusing than something like this should be.
This is apparently part of an invoice for something I bought on Ebay in 2006, with... well, I won't say anymore. ( Read this thing, and possibly enjoy. )
Yep, I'd say that's pretty broken.

I tried something new. It totally failed, so here it is.
Yes, I got bored with the Things and Stuff paradigm, thus, the introduction of Radio Failure, which will last for approximately one shows. That's right, I said one shows. Deal with it!
Here's why you shouldn't download this particular show:

• The first call between Hank and Drover from John R. Erickson's "Hank the Cowdog," followed by a listing for a violin in the Things and Stuff classifieds, despite the fact that Things and Stuff is dead, followed by a PDQ Bach piece with violin issues.


• Josh calls in, and demonstrates the fact that the toll free number, brought to us by the fine folks at Vitelity, is totally hosed, causing lots of problems, although the Vonage number seems to work fine. Old things, including Spike Jones, M&J Audio Theater's Chet Chetter's Tales from the Morgue, and other things are discussed. The fail horn is also introduced during this phone call.


• Stephen calls in to tell us about Tennessee Bill's old time radio library which will probably entertain me for hours, days and years.


• Bryan calls to inquire about the new show name, and sings a song for Melanie.


• Melanie informs us of the fact that she is incredibly happy about her song from Bryan, and wants to make it a ringtone. Derek will probably expand that idea.


• Venison and Ultra-Ego show up to make life interesting as usual, and informs us of a large economic policy fail, and how it relates to them.


• I might be moving to Montana soon... Well, maybe not, but the idea sure sounds great lately, with all the technical issues.


• MaryAnn calls in, and... Hmm, what needs to be said about that?


• Jonathan from Canada exists to give even more failures, and talk about Over the Edge.


• Byron shows up to point out some issues, make some noise, and generally cause a whole bunch of bad things to happen. After all, that's what he does.


• A call from Alexander prompts getting the broken French horn out of it's case, and doing even more terrible things than usual.


• Our friendly Linux-using cup-for-a-microphone friend Dave exists, makes a bunch of noise, and gets some morse code from a Yamaha Motif Wurlitzer patch thrown at him to decode. This is at 91 minutes and 52 seconds into the file. Can you decode it? For that matter, did I even send it properly? It's been years since I've done that sort of thing. oops, seems I left out a character... The message should still come across, though.


• Bec makes sure her SIP stuff is working properly by calling the show, and complaining about Vitelity, with good reason. Lately, it's been more like fatality.


• Near the end of the show, I find that my efforts in getting the stuff off of the 250GB Seagate hard drive, which not only accidentally had a partition deleted, but also had a broken SATA port, were wasted, and a large failure. I ended up basically bringing down the studio box in the process. Fortunately, it fixed itself just in time to go away... Well, about a minute and 56 seconds later than I was supposed to, but oh well, you'll have that.


• Within the last 30 seconds, I decided that Radio Failure was... well... a failure, and I shall resume Things and Stuff as normal from this point onward. At least I had some production elements for Radio Failure. Anyone want them?

Next week should be interesting. Melanie seems to like celebrating birthdays, and, with the release of Borris V2.6 coming up, she's coming down to North Carolina from Thursday to Wednesday. Thus, next Saturday's show, should it actually happen as expected, will be P&D Audio FakeTime 20o10, with myself, Melanie, and Derek, live from some hotel somewhere. PDAudio Realtime 20o10 should happen pretty soon as well, as it's about that time of year. Oh boy, loads of fun in the future!

Is it just me, or do these things keep getting stranger every week?
Who knows?

In any case, this week's archive is now available for download.

It started a war between the United States and Canada, had some live thunder from the outside mics, which have been hanging around for just over two months, featured a call from someone else's Mommy, and didn't bother using messengers for the entire show. Yeah, I'm tired, so that's all I'm going to say about that. Have fun! After the ultra-crappy week and a half I've had, it was certainly an enjoyable one. I currently have no laptop or netbook (netbook's drive died, laptop's motherboard shoved off,) the upstairs desktop is effectively dead out of paranoia, and the studio box and my phone are the only things that work which I can use for general purpose things. This should be changing soon, as I just bought a 640GB 2.5 inch SATA drive which will go in my Freecom Toughdrive enclosure, which currently has a 250GB Samson drive, which will go hang out in the netbook. The laptop... well... guess I'll have to save up for another one of those. Oh well.

I'm going to save myself up for a trip to bed, starting now.

This is getting ridiculous! I've written this thing up about four times now, with various issues, crashes and problems preventing me from finishing... But, ya know what? That's been how this week has worked out. Not a good one for technology, at least not for me.
Despite all that, and the fact that last week's rather interesting remote Things and Stuff has yet to be edited and uploaded, you can go download this week's episode instead. If you don't want to bother (and I honestly can't blame you if not,) here's a summary of what you're missing. Perhaps it will compel you to waste 113 MB of disk space in favor of something less useful.
Anyway, back on topic:

• After the first standard call from Derek, Monty calls in with a question, which leads to some of this week's technical issues, including dying netbooks, broken laptops, and the hopefully temporary loss of a good chunk of data, some of it being irreplaceable original stuff that isn't backed up anywhere.


• Josh shows up to relate some stories about fiddler's conventions and other things, given that Melanie and I were at Merle Fest last weekend, and it just seemed to fit at the time.


• Alexander has been trying to get me to send him a bunch of stuff I've done over the past few years. I didn't, of course, but did manage to play one of his many standard requests.


• I got a Ukulele as an early birthday present from Melanie. Naturally, odd things had to be done with this fun little instrument, including an impromptu phone jam session with Alexander and his Melodica, and some random effects from the good ol' Digitech Quad IV effects processor.


• During the Ukulele session, Monty tells of a not so bright woman who makes bomb threats on police radio frequencies, and expects them not to track her.


• Josh returns, and submits a rather unusual, unique, and incredibly amusing add presented by the general manager of WBT in Charlotte, from quite a number of times ago.


• Quite a lot of the rest of this particular show deals with telephones, prompted by a call from Jonathan from Edmonton. Not the first time this has happened, surely won't be the last.


• Geek alert near the end of the show. Not even in a good way.

And, as they say, that's all, folks! Tune in for next week's exciting episode of Things and Stuff, where you'll hear Borris say: "Oh, who cares, anyway?"

And now, it's time to dig deep into the recesses of the amazing portable inflatable Things and Stuff vault on wheels, and pull up this timeless classic... this moldy oldy... this Things and Stuff archive for April 24, 2010... uh, a few hours ago. OK, well, not so old, not so timeless, but available nevertheless.
Here are a bunch of reasons not to download it, in case you were looking for them:

• The show started out with a pair of two-way Borrises, one of them being brought to you by my new Wouxun KG-UVD1P 2m/70cm ht, the other by the old Icom IC-T2H I bought from Kelly last summer at the ACB convention. Sure, why not? Something to do, right?


• It rained during the show, which was demonstrated by the outside mics, still going after over a month. We were hoping for thunderstorms, but they never came.


• Josh's "radio report" this week consisted of a range of topics, including lightning, answering machines, radio IDs (which I've still yet to get to,) and a bunch of websites, including the Saggy Record Cabinet, Music you won't, and TinFoil.com all dealing with old records and stuff.


• I played my spoof on a recording from the Greensboro social security office again while on the phone with Josh, as some may not have heard it the first time. I think it's a little more true to form than they are, at least on the surface.


• I decided to unban Mommy, but my phone system didn't agree. She did show up eventually, however.


• The Wouxun HT was demonstrated to an extent, including some of it's talking functions, though not in great detail. It was basically used throughout the rest of the show as a receiver for a frequency from Greensboro's Parklane Hotel, which is very close by. Paper cups, shower caps, and all sorts of fun.

This show also included a bit more music than normal, which isn't at all a bad thing. Some of the stuff played was, such as an ultra-patriotic song brought to you by George W. Bush, but that's the way it goes.

Things and Stuff may or may not exist next Saturday, as lostgirl33 and myself will be attending MerleFest 2010 in Wilkesboro, NC on April 30 and May 1, and we'll be staying in a hotel in West Jefferson, which may or may not have decent internet. I'll have some gear with me, but if it breaks on Saturday, a make-up show will most likely happen, as the results of Melanie, the girl from New York in an ultra-southern environment, will most likely be priceless.

As the cycle of life would have it, it's time for the archive of 20o10's 16th episode of Things and Stuff to be presented in standard fashion, for what it's worth.
'Why bother this week?'
Well, it's not required. In fact, doing so isn't even recommended by the councel of stupid people. Remember them?
However, should you decide that listening to such a disreputable bucket of bugs is a good idea, here's some of what you can expect.

• Borris starts the show out with sampling rate issues. The SP/dif output on the Presonus Studiolive 16-4-2 is the master clock to the Delta Audiophile 24/96's input. The board was sending out 44,100hz, but the card was locked in at 48000hz. The result: fast Borris! Also... not in the archive! Ha ha ha ha ha! Well, sort of not in the archive, anyway.


• After a few preliminary phone calls, Borris plays a track with no words, other than "doo doo doo," and mentions that the song has no words. MaryAnn disagrees, and shares an amusing story about being on top of the world while on hold with Sprint customer service.


• Josh calls to inform Borris of his slightly lower than usual levels, and relays a story about an engineer who likes to run things "hot" at an FM station, and technical issues with an old EBS announcement.


• Arfy calls in to talk about... boxes and bubble rap?


• Borris makes a song using microphone/speaker feedback, a vocoder, a sequencer, two keyboards, and lots of effects. It's the feedback song, another creation from Borris Industries, Inc.


• Let's have an incredibly obvious Kraftwerk rip-off from Komputer's 1998 album, 'the World of Tomorrow.'


• A call from Bianca leads to talk of taxies, Thursdays, issues, and other things.


• First-time callers Casy and Rocky exist to "make thangs interstin' fir a while."


• PDQ Bach's "foghorn, bell, gargle and Kazoo." Fun times.


• Let's spy on Tommy with a mic on the other side of the basement, and drum loudly for a while. Lots of "pumping" with the compressor. Oh well.


• Do you like blocking Skype numbers? Borris does, even when it isn't necessary!


• Kyle calls in from a friend's band's gig, between sets, proving how bad sell phones can sound. Sure, we end up talking about radios and stuff, but you expect that by now.


• Let's hear what could possibly be Barry Manilow's best public performance: playing a kazoo backed by a 40-piece orchestra.


• My Apple bluetooth keyboard broke on Friday. As a result, I'm using a louder than normal Rocketfish bluetooth keyboard. I became annoyed with that by the end of the show, and pressed some buttons on the board. As a result, the last few minutes of my show feature a bit of speech from my screenreader. Oopsy!

There you are, this week's archive with quite a number of edits, due to a wider dynamic range than usual. Sorry 'bout that.

I'd also like to say a big thank you to my Audio Technica ATHm40 headphones for continuing to be quite leaky... Or maybe I'm just going even more deaf, and cranking them up higher as a result. In either case, we're sorry for the random headphone leaks into the microphone throughout the past... um, I dunno, 200 shows or so? Time for a new pair of cans, I think.