Happy birthday to me! To DAW or not to DAW?

 The nurse doing my blood test said it this morning and I realised that tomorrow is indeed my birthday. Golly. Sixty One years old and still alive. OK, I'm writing this on Tuesday so counting chickens I suppose.

After the drama of the wedding, have a few days before Synthfest. Sadly Eddie not able to make it as he's looking after his parents but I'm sure there will be lots of other cool people to hang with. Kim wants to pay me for the work on the Roland book so I may get him to chip in towards a Bliss Habit pedal. 

Have spent a few days assessing Digitakt and its new song mode as well as MPC and its probabilities. It struck me that the Digitakt doesn't really do anything that Octatrack doesn't - indeed considerably less and with a poxy 1Gb of storage to play with compared to the limitless CF card capacity of the OT. It's fun but really just another distraction. Working with the MPC again this morning, I find it pretty good in some respects, hate the touch screen and some of the laborious operations. It seems that I either go back to using a DAW for the structured stuff and keep my pattern-based gear for jamming and fun or I keep trying to make these things do the tricks that Logic does effortlessly. It's all a matter of how much pain I want to give myself. Makes me think about the simplicity of structure in Berlin school and old-style step sequencers and just playing and how much more enjoyable it is not to keep battling machines. If only Colin would work on Cirklon and make it the machine it was always meant to be.

You know, all those people working with Ableton Live and a cool controller, they're the wise ones. Stubborn, pointless old men deliberately making their lives hard, they're just nutters. That's my thought for the day. Think I'll drink beer and make drones and loops and poops.

I'm supposed to speak at the council planning meeting on Thursday evening so will have to work out a script - not much of one though as I get 4 minutes! And the housing company gets the last word. Rearrange these words to make a sentence: stitch what up a. 

Think we may not be walking this week - weather forecast is grim. Hope not too bad for my drive over to Sheffield. I vented my spleen a bit on the Udo beta testing forum about the various annoyances that just keep on being there, probably shouldn't but I suppose this council thing is affecting my mood.

Hmm, they want another blood test in 2 weeks...

Spent Thursday going through my points to get over. The more I do it the better it sounds. 

Well now, a very good experience at the council meeting - council members standing up for us, including the leader who spoke very well. My spot overran slightly but I got all the points over I wanted - and it seemed to make a difference. Disappointed no neighbours but Alec turned up but I guess that's people. We won a deferral, which is actually better than throwing it out due to the vagaries of the appeal process and what happens when the client wins an appeal. Came out quite emotional for all the support and thanked a lot of them personally. Meanwhile Pat was outside getting grief from someone on the other side, he swore at her. Did their case no good and council dudes will insist he doesn't come back. 

Feel pretty good.