Fear of Motorcycles

I've been talking a lot about motorcycles lately.

I want to share something with you: I am frightened of riding a motorcycle.

That's not going to stop me.

The reason it's not is because I know exactly what that fear is: it's just noise from the reverberating echo chamber of my ignorance.

There was a time I was afraid to drive a manual transmission (I know it sounds ridiculous). Beat that. I used to be afraid to swim. Beat that. I used to be afraid to play for an audience. Beat that. With a HAMMER.

Chipping away at (or simply releasing) fear has been an ongoing, conscious act.

I'm going to force myself to move forward because I know that all it will take is to learn everything I can about how to ride a motorcycle without getting hurt or killed. All it takes is talking to people who know, getting some training and then practicing. Accumulating knowledge and experience. The bigger my knowledge and experience gets, the smaller my fear becomes.

If need be, the fear gets reshaped into a healthy respect for the potential hazards. That's a totally different thing than being unwilling to even try. It comes from a place of knowledge rather than ignorance. Fear is then transformed from a barrier into a tool.

Then the reward comes: I can finally be a part of something I've looked at from the outside for years. I can be that guy riding his bike along the winding Atlantic coast. I can ride with my friends and finally understand what it is they've been trying to tell me all this time but couldn't really put into words.

I have been a fearful person. Take a little insecurity and add an active imagination and you get a lot of worry and hesitation. With time I've gotten better at realizing when I'm doing this and getting it under control.

This is all part of the journey.

Mark Your Calendar

Be it known that Monday, June 25th of 2007 was a mighty, mighty day.

Shortly after the joyous resurrection of the motorcycle my good friend, fellow motorcycle enthusiast, fellow musician and producer/engineer extraordinaire Mr. Scott Cann arrived to have a look-see at my recording setup. A couple of hours of trial & error later, the DAW was working flawlessly and--best of all--with virtually ZERO LATENCY.

Well, technically it's about 1.0 - 1.5 milliseconds, but that may as well be 0.0 as far as human ears are concerned.

For anyone reading this who may be interested in the technical details of the fix, basically what it came down to was removing the computer sound card from the signal path altogether. By attempting to monitor recording/playback through the computer speakers I was inviting latency and a host of other problems into the scenario.

This is how it runs now:

M-Audio NRV10 --(via FireWire)--> Computer/Sonar 6.0 --(via FireWire)--> M-Audio NRV10--> Headphones/Monitors

In essence, I'm relying on FireWire's (and my 3G processor's) inherent speed to allow me to monitor signal coming back out from Sonar and into the mixer. No sound card to slow down the signal.

Some other changes we made included the following (all of which are found under Options --> Audio Options in Sonar):

• Playback Timing Master and Record Timing Master were set to the same channel on the NRV10, rather than the soundcard. Because it's poop.
• We turned off Read Caching and Write Caching entirely after finding that this process was introducing digital noise (intermittent ticking sounds) while recording. Again, turning this off means I'm relying on my processor and RAM to do the heavy lifting rather than using caching to lighten the load. We're not sure why it caused noise but for now the problem is solved. There's the possibility that shutting off caching might cause problems with larger, multitrack files later on but we'll worry about that when the time comes.
• Turned off the 64-bit Double Precision Engine (didn't need it anyway, as I'm not running a 64-bit version of XP). Duh.
• Changed the sample rate to 44,100 because there's really no need to go higher for what I'm doing.
• Drank some Dos Equis
• Ate blue corn chips, bean & corn salsa and habanero cheese.
• Also, not sure if this made a difference, but Scott gave my motorcycle a test drive and gave it the thumbs up. I don't know. Could be a contributing factor.

Thank you very much, Scott. You're the man.

KASTLE TESLA CRACKLES WITH POWER.

IT'S ALIVE!

The motorcycle is running!

The smile, it stretches from ear to ear.

It turns out that the battery was the problem all along. The old one just wasn't holding a charge. After getting a new one with the wrong terminals I finally got some good advice and ended up with the right battery. One of the sealed ones. It was a little tough getting it into the compartment but a little coaxing solved that. Then there was the n00b mistake of not charging the new battery before trying to start the bike (oops).

Long story short, I charged it and installed it and not 20 minutes ago the Big Single was thumping in the driveway.

(Pssst! I even put it in gear and rode it a total of 12 feet for the first time! Don't tell anyone)

I'm extremely happy right now. Plus, my friend Scott is coming over to help look into my digital recording troubles this evening. Here's hoping we can ride the wave and solve that one, too.

Woohoo!

That was close...

Sorry about that little interruption, there. I kinda spaced out and forgot to pay my bill. The website renewal, I mean.

Yeah, I actually have to spend a little money to do this. Isn't that amusing?

How about some updates?

Kastle Tesla
Having no end of difficulties getting the studio running smoothly. A well-hidden and tenacious gremlin who goes by the name "Latency" has hidden itself somewhere along the signal path. I'm normally pretty tolerant of strays and squatters, but he (or she) has got him(or her)self wedged somewhere that makes bass notes happen an audible number of milliseconds after I play them. That's not good.

Anyone reading this who has any expertise in these matters please contact me. I've done a bunch of research and everything short of actually contacting technical support for any of the devices/applications involved to no avail. I just don't want to make that torturous call, so I'm panhandling instead. Spare some knowledge, buddy?

Life in General
I bought a bike battery. It had the wrong kind of terminals. I brought it back. That sucked. I tried to charge my old battery. It dripped fluid (presumably acid) from the little vent thing. Kinda cool, kinda not. Still haven't tried putting it back in the bike. Not so sure that's a good idea. Definitely don't want to blow anything up.

Anyone who knows anything about not exploding bike batteries, please contact me. Acid burns make for cool supervillains, to be sure, but I'm just not sure my overall attractiveness level can withstand a hit like that.

I'm just not having a very good run at making things work these days.

Oh, well. At least the website is operational again.

Cargo Shorts, Rock Shirts, Irish Tans & Your Ugly Inner Child

Where the Hell I Have Been?
There are three good reasons why you haven't heard much from me in the past month or so. The season of faux camouflage cargo shorts, rock shirts and shockingly pale skin is upon us. I've been spending a good deal more time outdoors, tending to the yard or otherwise recreating in various outdoorsy ways.

The outside world is open for business again. Hence, rather than blogging, I am out in the world doing things about which one might write, were one so inclined. It just so happens that I am not. Blogging just hasn't been high on the list of things that need doing. It's all about the doing that needs doing.

Which is not to say I haven't been writing at all: just not publicly. This past weekend, as a matter of fact, was an alarmingly productive weekend in terms of fiction writing. Unprecedented by my standards, anyway. I'm not at liberty to discuss the results of this whirlwind of inspiration so I appeal to your patience to allow me some time.

Then there's the ongoing battle of wits and wills between myself and the newly-unveiled project studio. This is a real test, folks. Not only does my prior experience on this side of the music recording/engineering process equal a big, fat NONE but I am also not exactly the world's foremost authority on the sublime art of personal computing. The good news is that I bought me a book and I'm learnin' up a storm!

Pretty soon there might actually be some music to share with you. There's certainly no shortage of ideas. Who knew, for example, that there was so much creative raw material hidden in obscure Jack Palance quotes about mankind's search for truth and self? Well, now I do, for one.

Checking Your Mirrors
All in all the theme for 2007 is transformation and transition.

That sentence just drips with New Age flavor, doesn't it? Ugh. Alright, how about this: "A lot of fucking shit has changed this year, huh?"

Yeah, dude.

A Special Message from Yoda
Finally, I will share with you something which I learned by eating 36 fortune cookies, tearing up the fortunes, putting them into a hat, drawing them at random and then creating sentences with the scraps. You can learn it that way or by living your own life or, as a more convenient option, by going to some bookstore and buying something from the self-improvement section that seems to describe your specific type of self-loathing.

Anyway, here it is:

Liberation is not always something you are granted. It can (and should--and MUST!) be something which you give to yourself.

DELICIOUS, BOLD NEW AGE TASTE!!!

Seriously, though, that's 100% authentic wisdom, right there. Absorb it. Rub it into your skin. Feel it working.

I should write a book. I'd make millions. Fuck, that little gem alone is better than the entire self-improvement section of any bookstore on the planet. Actually, if I ever did write a self-help book it would be the shortest one ever written--possibly it would be the shortest book ever written. Here's what it would say:

"The Two Habits of Highly Effective Self-Help Authors
by Jon Glassett

Chapter One: The Secret

Step One: Write down everything you wish you'd known before you went out and fucked up your life so badly, but do it in a way that makes it sound like you aren't a loser yourself.

Step Two: Collect royalties."

There's actually another Step that I may include in the second edition. That will read:

"Step Three: As part of your publishing deal, arrange for an expanded second edition."

The follow-up book will be titled Make Friends with Oprah or Die Alone with a forward guest-written by Dr. Phil.

You know what? Screw self-improvement books! Just keep stopping by here. I've got you covered.

Who wants some chamomile tea?