KVRwiki - the great KVRAudio site has launched a wiki for audio info.
After extensive help from RedChina and MarkJaquith on the #wordpress channel, I think my Wordpress 2.0 install is now fully functional. I have to say upgrading was not very pleasant. There's some some serious weirdness involving url rewriting. I don't even want to think about it anymore. The only real side effect should be that the full text RSS feed URL has changed. You can now get that here. There's a redirect in place so hopefully it won't be a big deal to folks who are already subscribed.
We're well into the new year now but I'm still technically on vacation. I'm trying to get caught up on email and a lot of things I've been putting off forever. Also my Wordpress 2.0 upgrade is still breaking in places (such as the full text RSS feed). 2005 was a pretty big one for me, a lot more action-packed than usual. A lot of life developments as well as a remix album as well as starting to play live (which has gone nicely so far thanks to the help of Bruce, Richard and Rob.)
I'm not generally into New Years resolutions, but I have a few music-related goals this year:
1. Finish my next album. I've been a bit paralyzed by even the minor expectations that it not completely blow. When I started doing music I was totally alone and there was little to no risk. Now there's a bit more and I guess I'm a huge baby who can't handle anything. Anyhow, this year I'll try to plow ahead regardless. And when people tell me my old stuff was better I'll become a Scientologist.
2. Blog better. I was blogging a lot about the music industry (particularly the online aspect) but in the past year I've become completely exhausted by it. I find most anti-RIAA and anti-DRM rants depressing these days and any time I go to blog one I eventually wind up quitting half way through. I'll try to find something else to fill the void but it may all be about Katamari Damacy.
3. Try to make some actual money. Through being a scaredy-cat and doing everything on my own and maybe some decent planning along the way, I'm not in the hole like a lot of my musician friends, but trying to justify spending the amount of time I do on this is getting more and more hilarious. In 2006 I would like Brad Sucks to be bought by Google or Yahoo! or even Ask Jeeves as the first ever Search Engine House Band. Which would be the true start of Music Industry 2.0.
Anyway, hope you all have a great 2006.
I checked out the Christopher Pratt exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada yesterday and it was excellent. I wasn't allowed to take pictures and the examples on the web don't do his work any sort of justice so you'll just have to trust me that it was great. His work is all of fairly ordinary things; buildings, streets, rooms, ships. But he uses color in such a way that elements of the paintings take on a 3D quality and seem to jump right out at you. Very cool and worth checking out if you get the chance.
I was reading through some Improv Everywhere missions (this Suicide Jumper one has some great photos). The Mp3 Experiment 2.0 is a lot of fun to read about though isn't so much a prank but a little bit of tech performance art.
I've been getting a lot of email about some remixes done by an Israeli group called Psycraft on their album 
Here's a shot of us at Tech Rocks 2005.
How to Rock out - "Do you Rock? Are you now or have you ever Rocked? If called upon to Rock, would you be able? Physically? Mentally? Emotionally? If you are planning to rock for the first time or simply have not rocked lately and feel the need to rock again, please take a moment to review these simple steps."
I'm having a few issues upgrading to Wordpress 2.0 due to all the crazy hacks I put in, so things may be a little freaky around here until I get that stuff resolved.
Shock & Awe (Banned Cover Art) - a fat ton of controversial album cover art. I particularly like the Born in the U.S.A. interpretation, I had never thought of that.
Well, our first full set went pretty all right I think. Stumbly here and there, but no major disasters. We opened for The Eric Eggleston band and they were really cool to us and great musicians -- thanks to them for allowing the use of their PA and very hot lights. Now I will hopefully spend the rest of the holidays drunk. Merry Christmas everyone!
Justin Frankel (Winamp & Ninjam creator, fellow Aqua Teen Hunger Force fan) has a new multitrack recording software coming out tomorrow: REAPER. I played around with an early beta and it was looking pretty good. His focus is on keeping lightweight and easy to use, which sounds great to me.
I had a chance to play with Wordpress 2.0 RC3 today. It's not tremendously different from 1.5.2 but the improvements are fantastic. The main thing I love is the new posting page, which adds WYSIWYG support, easy image uploading and the quick addition of new categories. Rumor is 2.0 final will be out on the 26th. Here's a list of the new features. Looking forward to it.
How to Apply Corpsepaint - "Remember, you want to look like a corpse, not a clown!" Handy.
Sean from the Gaim team dropped a line to let me know that Gaim 2.0.0b1 has been released. This is the first release to include the sounds I contributed for it. In case you don't know, Gaim is an open source instant messenger that can communicate with all the major instant messengers (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc). It's a cool project and you should check it out.
Brad Sucks is opening for the Eric Eggleston Band this Thursday (the 22nd) at the Greenfields Xmas Bash. Tickets are $8 advance and $10 at the door. Doors open at 9pm and apparently there are also prizes. This is our first full set (40 minutes or so), so if you wouldn't mind getting really drunk so you can't remember anything the next day, I'd appreciate it.
Google Music Search - it's all right I guess. It has my album in there. But it's not knocking my socks off or anything.
LucasArts Soundtracks - the introduction to The Secret of Monkey Island is one of my all-time favorite songs.
I'm behind on blogging. There's an article on me in the new issue of Kill Your FM. They also did up a big graphic layout of my gear setup, which is pretty nifty.
A winner has been chosen for the Brad Sucks Online Collaboration contest, you can check out all the entries here. It doesn't say on the page right now, but the Morphine Mix won. I like the Crystal Beat Mix.