Tag Archives: Posted

The chopsticks wrapper has nothing on this

Headset packageFor years, native English speakers have gotten a good chuckle out of the (increasingly rare) old chopsticks wrapper with poorly translated instructions. I, of course, am one of them.

But nothing about the chopsticks wrapper prepared me for the shockingly incomprehensible copy on this XBOX 360 headset package.

Credit where it’s due: I don’t own an XBOX 360, and I didn’t find this headset. It was posted on one of my favorite websites for hotheaded computer geeks such as myself, The Daily WTF. (I was glad to see that someone had also posted the Dell plastic bag safety warning hieroglyphics. I brought home one of these bags from work and have been meaning to scan it and make t-shirts. I suppose those images are copyrighted, but I wouldn’t want to own up to having created them!)

A new song (and a new title)

I’ve just posted an early, as-yet-incomplete version of my latest track, “Every Stroke of the Oar Seemed to Enrage the Missouri.” The title is a line from an old educational film from the ’50s that surfaced as part of a video project at my job.

Highway 34 RevisitedI’ve also given the album its proper title now. Hors d’Oeuvreture is out, Highway 34 Revisited is in (with all due respect to Bob Dylan). The cover is not finalized, but as with the music, I have posted an in-progress version of it.

To read more and listen to full-length MP3s of the tracks, visit the album’s page.

How about a fresh Hors d’Oeuvreture?

I’ve continued to tweak the two tracks I’ve been working on for the new album. I just posted a major update to “Heavy Water,” which you can listen to here or on the “official” page for the album.

I also posted minor updates to both tracks yesterday, in place of the earlier versions that were there. I didn’t bother to draw attention to them though, as they were basically just tweaks to the masters.

In addition to the current projects, I have a 16:18 ambient track I recorded last year, called “1.618” (because it’s based on the golden ratio… the length of the track is a deliberate play on that number), that I’m planning to add as the final track on the CD. It needs some clean up back over in Pro Tools (because I discovered GarageBand buckles under the stress of loading a pair of 16-minute waveform tracks) and a new master. I got a new computer since I worked on it, and all I seem to have backed up are the Pro Tools project and an MP3, but no CD-quality mixdown. More on that later.

Note: To conserve server space, I’m clearing out older versions of the Hors d’Oeuvreture songs. Visit the album page to hear the latest available version of each track!