Nicholas Toone

My About blurb, has some mantras listed and I’d like to talk about them.

This took a long time to write and then I waffled about even posting it.  Then I thought: fuck it.

So here we go. And my apologies, it’s long.

Continue reading “Mantras”

I have three songs in the works. All of them need lyrics and vocals. Two also need drums.

One of them turned out to be pretty terrible so I shitcanned it and now I have two songs in the works. One only has a single verse of lyrics to complete, which I’m just being completely lazy with, and the other needs a full set of lyrics and drums so near the end of July I recorded the drums.

A few days later, I realized that the drumming for the outro is little off everything else so now I have to redo all of the guitars.

“Wait,” you ask, “why re-record all the guitar parts? Why don’t you just re-record the drums?”

Well, you see, I recorded the drum parts, gave it a quick listen and was happy at the time. Then I sold my drums.

Continue reading “Downsizing”

So you’ve recorded your tracks and are ready to mix but you’re kind of bummed because everything always sounds so muddy and you know that whatever you try will not help much.

We’ve all been there. A lot. Yet there is one thing we know about but rarely seem to pay very much attention to:

The High Pass.

Continue reading “It’s Pretty Wizard: The Magic Of The High Pass”

At the end of last year I decided to post about the books I’d read in 2022. In that post I said: “… for 2023, I plan to read even more.”

Six months in and I’ve already surpassed last years count, so why not do two entries for 2023?

As a fun aside our family did the Book Advent Calendar again this year but I bag I chose, for some damn reason, was Popular Thrillers. I first book I unwrapped was The Davinci Code, which I hadn’t read as I’d been led to believe that it was shitty and not worth my time. Undaunted I decided to give it a go…

… only to find that it was shitty and not worth my time. I put it down after three chapters. It’s just so eye-rollingly bad in every way a book can be bad.

The rest of the books that came out of the Popular Thriller Advent Calendar were more of the same: Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and a couple more Pat Browns. I read only one of them and donated the rest.

Anyway, here we go…

Continue reading “2023 Books, Part 1”

Well, shit. It’s been three whole months. So much for trying to keep up on this here blog on a regular basis.

Remember this? Well, let’s see how it going.

(Note, I’m not going to comment on each specific topic in that NY post, just some of them with added colour commentary.)

Exercise

“I plan to start moving again. I’m going to get myself a bike and start using it for all the errands that I currently drive for – like going to the store that’s literally less than 5 Km away”

I bought a bike. A nice, basic fitness/city bike. While I’ve never been the worlds biggest Cannondale fan, this bike checked all the boxes for me:

• • Light
  • Rigid fork
  • Single chain ring on the front.
  • Disc brakes
  • Interior cable routing.

The test ride in the store parking lot sold me. This bike is limber and, so far, it does what I ask. I haven’t really pushed it yet due to weather and springtime chores but as we move into May, I will be going farther and farther. I haven’t realy biked anywhere in well over 5 years, so I’m going to ease back into it.

Food and Drink

Uh-huh. This is not going as well as planned. While I have shed a little weight, I’ve spent more time eating useless, carby, packaged food (and take out!) than I should be. Also, have been drinking a little more than I should be.

Music

I haven’t worked on anything since early March. Musically, the new tune I have is done but only has half its lyrics. I need to get back on this in a big way.

Writing (Non Blog)

I’ve picked back up on this. FocusWriter is my app of choice (I did try a few other, Open Source writing apps and found them overly complicated) and I set a daily goal of 500 words. I kept this up for about two weeks, then tapered off a bit. Now I try and find some time in the wee hours of the morning. Or I spend time pecking away at this rather than doomscrolling through the news.

Tech

This is an edited version of what I originally had here. I felt like i jumped the gun on a few things and was very, very reactionary about the computer bit which is stupid because it’s just computer shit. I’m trying to not be whiny about things like technology. I want to take deep breaths, look at my options and move forward. I don’t want to hit a snag and just stamp my feet and yell.

So I’ll put a little tech/computer update here and shitcan the incessant whining.

• • • For various reasons, I needed to use Windows, and right around this time Linux started acting up (after a system update).
    • I flattened the computer to Windows swearing to never touch Linux again.
    • I found that I really missed Linux so I tried Ubuntu Studio which I didn’t like.
    • I got Fedora back up and running. I’m on version 38 and things are smooth.
    • I’m still dual booting Windows for when I need it.

And that, as they say, is that.