June Summary

Because I suck at life, I've been too busy trying to fix it to update this blog in a while, so in place of simple updates, I'll just summarize the month of June.

Earlier this month, I released Greasy Rhythms, my first album, which people passed over because I suck at marketing, too. It proved to me that people are bloody bastards and must be killed.

My stepmother is in the hospital, and as it's the 30th, it doesn't look like she's going to get better anytime this month. She was hospitalized initially for Bilateral Pneumonia, but it was later discovered that she had Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. If she doesn't die in the hospital, she will still die soon....
Father has been driven into insanity, and has been pushing me around much like a boss with control issues would whip around his slave workers. He doesn't have any idea how the business works, so we may become bankrupt soon. His self-control is slipping away like soap in the hands of a gay man in a public shower.
(Yes, that was the worst simile ever.)

Speaking of gay men, during Debbi's hospitalization, I snagged myself a new boyfriend. His name is Travis, he's 23, works in fast food, is too tall (but I'll deal with that, I swear), is a furry, plays Dungeons and Dragons (and hates the fourth edition), is a bottom, and loves being touched (yes, It's OK and actually correct to think dirty thoughts about that). I don't know if I love him yet, but I really do like him.

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to see him lately because how sick I've been. There's a chance it's a sinus infection, but I'm hoping desperately that it's just a bad cold. I've been swallowing acetaminophen like candy trying to get better, fatherman ordering me around and causing major hatred.

Finally, I uploaded a version of Solomon's Temple, of Ys and Yuzo Koshiro fame. I'm not going to release it professionally, like Koshiro's work seems to be doing, because of that nasty ending. I may clean it up to release it, but heck, I'm tired, and making music is unprofitable in my position.

Fundraising

Luckally for me, I have the ability to raise the money I need for my microcontroller. Where will I get the money? From YOU!

I've got new methods of reciving money in the past year (Mainly, PayPal), and using it, I've set up a Lulu account and become a publisher. My first Project: Greasy Rhythms. It's a ten-track CD of new game soundtrack mixes. It's a collection of the best songs I've ever mixed, most of which have never been released to the public before. The CD costs about $11, so it's not too incredibly expensive, but since Lulu does POD (Publication on Demand), Prices for making each unit is a bit higher then they could be under more traditional methods, and I only make about $5 per sale.

If you're interested, you can click here to get more details.

Progress

Today, I have officially graduated, so I should be happy. The only reason I don't feel happy is that I feel a tad sick.

But progress has been made. I wanted to underwrite the Valedictorian's speech, since he was one of my friends, but he wouldn't let me. But in some ways, I'm grateful that he didn't. His speech was unusually good. He quoted Victor Hugo, surprisingly, verbatim. With a good accent, too!

But this post isn't about graduation; it's progress on my SNES APU project. Gathering the materials has become an easier task; my grandmother gave me $20 as a graduation present, we later went to Fry's, and I bought a breadboard, a wiring kit, and two DIP40 sockets. Now I just need to place my order at Parallax, but there's one simple problem: I lack another $20 (+shipping costs). I'm going to need to get the prop clip instead of the prop plug, which sold out, but that doesn't really matter.

If you see a PayPal link sometime in the (hopefully near) future, you can donate though that. How nice!

Nice Dream

I really liked my idea. It was a serious possibility, and it was, for the most part, doable.

But then I drew up a Bill of Materials, and I discovered a serious problem: it's too damn expensive.

Nobody said that building embedded systems would be expensive. I certainly didn't think so, especially because of Parallax's low (-ish) price for their extremely high-end Propeller microcontroller. But then I reallized that my computer wouldn't have a TTL serial interface on it, so I added the USB Prop Plug to interface to the Propeller. Then, I realized that it dosn't have built-in storage, so I need to get a tiny annoying little 24LC256 EEPROM chip, which is probibly more extravagant than it needs to be (who needs I2C for 32KBs? The chip accepts TTL serial for programming, why can't it use it for EEPROM access?)

A breadboard, a wiring kit, and several miscellanious parts later (Thanks, Mouser!), I'm at $126.39, and that's just an estimate.

I think I'm gonna get Google ads now....

Get Out of my Head!

This time, I've really done it. I've got a song permenately engraved directly on my brain. I was searching around VGMusic.com and found some MIDI files from Pilotwings. I'd never played Pilotwings before, but I heard a song that I liked.

That song is Instructions/Password.

So I imported it to FL Studio and used my better soundfont softsynth. Since FL Studio loops the beginning of a pattern by default, and MIDI is imported as a single patern, I quickly discovered that the song loops infanitely. So it's been playing. Over and over and over again.

So now I pass on the value to you! Make sure you loop the file!