The Dreaded Lurgy & Draft #2 finally started

 Or is it lurgi? Anway, Pat brought it back from Crufts and I eventually succumbed. Fortunately I was spared the shit and vomit but did spend all Wednesday night fighting the vomit and the following day in bed weak as a kitten. Are kittens actually all that weak compared to, say, baby dormice? Anyway. it's Friday and I was feeling OK until I ate some chocolate, now I'm nauseous again. 

Wednesday was walk day this week - and we had snow. I was already starting to feel weedy though but struggled through. Got some more old pix from Dave Holme, which I didn't even know existed. Anyway, taking it easy today but hope to get into studio. Jack Mcc has done me a CDR of The Amazing Adventures of Ludwig Eartrumpet, so I think I'll get a cover done and put it on bandcamp. My original cover was a bit shit - a photo taken by Chummy in Paris of a naked lady statue groping my balls. I'm not sure if was funny even then. 

Bought a Terry Riley CD while stoned - it's nothing like the fab stuff of his on Youtube so more fool me, the guy has range. I thought it was all sweet, repetitive, simple stuff but this is faffy classical nonsense. Hopefully I'll appreciate it better when I feel more up to it. Also bought this African thing which is modular synths and rhythm, which is fantastic .Afrorack it says. Like as if some cool drummer played along with Conrad Schnitzler. 

Well, on Saturday I did a (sober) track of Osmose overdubs into the BB and it came out pretty well. No point linking to the soundcloud version as I'll probably snot it soon, especially as I need to do a less rushed final mix. 

Oh and I've started draft #2 of the novel finally, deciding that keep pratting with the ending wasn't helping me - I can work with what there is and get down to making the whole thing better, whatever that means. It means the book exists, no matter how flaky and wonky and holey, so that's something. 

On Sunday I didn't do a lot, visited mum, yet another conversation about her will that felt a bit like a negotiation, very peculiar and unsettling. We're back on Netflix again but probably not for long as it's gone up to an eye-watering £10.99 a month. Oh, and the fucking car tyre went down again. 

Did I mention I put out another old casssette on bandcamp? Not a personal favourite or one people ask about but what the fuck. 

Turns out the tyres going down a bit is normal, gonna buy my own pump to keep in car. Still working at the Terry Riley but really want to get some of that lovely stuff I heard, if I could just tie up to a release. More people have bought 'Ludwig' than I expected, give it's free. 

I've often thought that, if my legs were slightly longer, I'd be taller. I wonder if there's a surgeon in Turkey who can do that for me? All the answers are out there, apparently. Mind you my pants wouldn't fit and I have several pairs I've worn in already.
Hey ho. Rainy week, it looks like. Decided (again) against going north with Tony. 

Wednesday after a few busy days running to Blackburn hospital with mum, hoping she's home today. Will need Pat to come and bring car while I wheel her down to front as it's a very large hospital. Tony A also taken in ambulance, he reports on FB, so all go.

Naturally it's now that I'm in full on novel mode, going through the chapters and smoothing, rationalising, adding context and location, generally making the order better. By the end it will be a readable thing for others and, of course, I'm feeling hopeful it'll be great.

I bought a new Eurorack module!

 I know, wild eh?
Joranalogue Receive 2 - Line Input Module (in case you were wondering).

I decided I needed a better way to get the MS20 and Synthi (and Lyra) into the world of Eurorack. Even if they're going right through or through some Eurorack processing, they can go into the Erica mixer, which would mean I no longer need the Behringer RX-1602 in the signal chain. Sweet. 

On Friday we had snow and v3 of the sp-404-ii dropped. I got stoned and did this

Had curry now stoned again and watching Terry Riley on Youtube. Pat went south for Crufts this afternoon, which surprised me as I thought she was going tomorrow. Could be a stoney niht. All good. Was too, watched Godzilla vs Kong and it was just peachy. I'd guessed they'd get together to sort out Mechagodzilla and so they did.   

Excellent sesh with Tim on Saturday, my Zoom card filled during my recording. Sunday was a chance to try the new module - working well, triggered the usual move-around but this time dropping modules I'm not immediately using and leaving a few gaps (noticed case 2 quite warm inside so some venitilation needed). Paul D brought Marbles back so I slotted it in along with Angle Grinder, dropping the Tonestar and a few others I'm not using right now. He left me some beer and some artwork, which was ace - hopefully we'll get together for a jam at some point. 

Setup 2 looking and feeling real nice.

I remembered how sweet the Lyra sounded through the Wasp filter - I'm also giving it the NightSky treatment at the moment, tuning the synth and reverb together offering lots to explore. Synthi doing some amazing booming after just a few pin swaps. Will play some more tomorrow. Ordered two new SD cards as noticed my Zoom H4n also nearly full. I think I also need a 'performance' MicroSD with all my best stuff since the start on for easy recall. Course the early ones won't have the tempo in the name so it'd be a PITA, OK I'm already talking myself out of the idea. It ain't like I have any performances lined up. Oh yes, continue work on video camera, try going live on Twitch TV and see how that handles...

New video camera/webcam and a walk

 Yeah it's Friday and I had mixed success with new Zoom 8Qn. Hopefully tomorrow will bring new leads and I'll stop using the headphone output for recording. Got OBS and Twitch TV working after a fashion but laptop gets very sluggish. Tomorrow will try just recording a film and seeing the quality. Youtube sound was pretty flaky though so also need to try wired network thing.

Saturday evening and it's been a good one. Tim and I worked on stuff that went with some of his MPC patterns - Cessange was the thing and it had some weird, disparate elements that we threw together cheerily. Now Pat's gone to bed with a possibly nasty cold and I'm watching a 1950s apocalypse movie while working on my novel. As you do. Tomorrow I get my footscan. 

Footscan says I don't have a neuroma so back to square one with the old sore feet lark, not happy.

Monday I tried the wired network connection but sound still not good - I think I need to sort that before doing anything else, so tomorrow I'll try to use the camera as a regular video camera and see where the cleanest sound comes from. Must admit I'm already a bit weary with the faffing around but other people cope so why not me? It always takes away time and energy from making music.

This cropped up on Facebook, made me smile.

Oh and I got every classical music question on University Challenge except the Gounod, showing a composer I know almost nothing about. Those Schubert string quartets finally pay off. And finally we got frogspawn yesterday, not a lot but some at last. Will need to really clean that pond this year. 

Tuesday, tried a regular video and both picture and sound were good - the MOV was a nice clean acceptable thing, so a small victory at last. Webcam needs sussing but at least I know everything is going into the camera OK. Walking tomorrow as weather meant to get snowy on Thursday. Just watching a very silly film (Fiend Without A Face) which has these stop-motion brains scurrying about, Some good quotes though but sadly I missed most of them so may need to record it at some point in the future. ;)

Pat expressed concern that doing Youtube videos was a security risk. Guess she's right but then so is almost any online presence, studio photos etc. etc. Got me worrying though. 

OK we walked on Wednesday. Thursday I did a short video to try a narrower field of view, tomorrow I shall have a full-on Friday experience!

The predicted megasnow not causing much grief yet.