Cory Doctorow reviewed a book recently that I am really interested in – Mind Over Ship. My favorite quote – “…it trembles on the verge of breakdown, acrobatically walking on a tightrope over the pit of too-weird.” I haven’t read anything really weird in a while. I wonder if Cory would consider books like Story of the Eye or My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist as falling into the pit of too-weird or not.

On another note, Laura and I recently (6/15) celebrated our 10 year “dating anniversary”. By celebrate, I mean I changed my Facebook status. Our seventh wedding anniversary is coming up next week, and we will quietly celebrate that by opening the first bottle of wine that I made last month.

Speaking of making beer and wine, I have two beers in the hopper right now – a summer “ginger” ale and Abbey Experiment #2 – a lighter Trappist that I hope will be close to a Trippel.

Yesterday was unbelievably cold, foggy, and dreary for June in New Jersey. After work I took Dylan to soccer practice – it seemed like he was playing on the Scottish moors or something. Miserable.

Jason mentions he is interested in getting back into field recording. We have been discussing equipment – there are a lot of interesting new option this year for recording equipment. We’ve come a long way from the mini disc days of the late 90s.

This makes me think of my own musical endeavors. I am trying to get some momentum back after a few years of musical hiatus. I need to push through the untitled piano pieces, and eventually clean them up for performance. I recently started playing parts of them on guitar – I would like to write a guitar arrangement for them as well at some point. Then there are all the sound files I have, and the cleanup work on all my previous works I’d like to do. Plus learn Pro Tools.

Speaking of Pro Tools, although I love the program and the hardware, I have started to become a little uneasy with it the more I get interested in open source software. I have recently been reading a little bit of Eric S. Raymond, and getting involved in the open source Lilypond project (just by subscribing to the mailing list, but it’s a start. I am tossing around some ideas on how to incorporate the open source ideas into my music. I am still on the fence as to whether I will release my music on a creative commons license, but “releasing” music is something I still have to put a lot of thought into.