Not sure even Jimi Hendrix would have looked cool in these things. Maybe Devo could have pulled it off fashionably. (via Music Thing)

It’s allergy season so I am a stoned zombie wandering around walking into things and sleeping for twelve hours a night. I sat here staring at the computer today and I think maybe I did absolutely nothing.

Work continues on the album however. There are some great potential album covers in the forum thread with some other sweet ones on the way. I’m trying to think of a way to use the album covers I don’t pick for “the one”.

Did I mention I’m having recurring nightmares of putting the album out and then nobody buys it and then I get chased by bees? Uhh…

Thinking about selling my guitar amp and switching to running my Boss GT-6 into a keyboard amp (or two). Right now the Behringer K3000FX or the Roland KC350 are the  leading contenders. Sorta leaning towards the Roland because a) I don’t know why I’d need 300 watts of guitar and b) I know Behringer stuff will eventually turn to dust in my hands.

I went to IKEA today thinking I might pick up a few things to improve my office:

HANNES - I wanted this as a side-table/keyboard stand so I could put my 50 key MIDI keyboard on the pull-out shelf and my little Axiom 25 on the top with room for junk on the side. In person the HANNES was flimsy and ugly and too deep. I would have had to modify it a lot to work for me and the particleboard was so thin I think it’d disintegrate if I took a saw to it. Pass.

DAVE - On the website this looked like a good general use laptop/side-work table. In person it’s real wobbly so I didn’t get it. I may go back for it, I think the equivalent non-wobbly version from somewhere else would cost at least three times the price. Pass.

BRÄDA - This was pretty much exactly as advertised. Cheap little laptop lap table. Hard on top, cushiony underneath. Also I enjoy the name. Bought.

Also I forgot to look around for a FARTYG.

DIY $10 Ableton Footcontroller (no soldering required) - how to build a foot controller out of a QWERTY keyboard. Pretty simple but neat.

I’m looking to build a two (or three) shelved keyboard stand. Right now I have a keyboard on an X-stand that I often use as a table and I have a small 25 key keyboard that sits in a box because I have nowhere to put it.

Buying a dedicated keyboard stand is way more expensive than you’d think and as it’s not moving I don’t need to be lightweight and foldable. I thought the Internet would be full of DIY keyboard stands but so far I’ve only found two:

• A Keyboard Stand on the Cheap - this one’s on the right track. I may just extend this out a bit for my purposes.
• $5 Keyboard Stand - keyboard stand out of PVC pipe. I think I’d rather go wood for extra sturdiness and expandability.

Any others out there?

Miro - formerly Democracy now 1.0 and renamed. Very nice open source internet tv / video player.

Quiltsrÿche - Metal quilts. “Bangover” is my favorite.

Holy crap: musical tesla coils. This would be a sweet live show. Here’s the Super Mario Brothers theme on solid state musical tesla coils:

The theme from Weird Science:

Beetlejuice:

And here’s the introduction and explanation:

The history of Vinyl Data has some surprises. I didn’t realize there were artists encoding Sinclair ZX Spectrum programs into their records as far back as 1983 such as Pete Shelly from the Buzzcocks and the Thompson Twins. That’s awful hardcore for 20+ years ago. I would say it beats the crap out of manipulating spectrograms.

Even more awesomely The Thompson Twins included an adventure game (called The Thompson Twins Adventure) where you wander around beaches and caves for no real reason:

You can actually play it online here. OH GOD I FOUND A BOTTLE OF SPICE.

My favorite of course is Urusei Yatsura’s ‘Everybody Loves Uresei Yatsura’ album:

Examining the source for the program reveals the following comments:

“Hi Nick, is Robin there?”

“Judas Priest Satanic Message #3″

“What is sadder: a.) finding this b.) writing it”

Lick his cloven hoof.\m/ (via kotaku)

Reactee - I like the idea behind these Reactee t-shirts, though you have to really eye up the wearers’ nipples to see the SMS info.