Nicholas Toone

  • 2023 Books, Part 1

    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…

    Surrender – Bono (4/10)
    I like U2 and I like Rock autobiographies so I was excited to read this. I don’t know what kind of paper and cardboard was used but this book literally weighs a metric tonne. Maybe it’s symbolic considering I’m sure the weight of Bono’s ego can be measured in metric tonnes. He is the king of the humble brag and always has been. He kind of just babbles on about… whatever he’s done that impresses himself, which is pretty much everything. He’s like a more famous Bob Geldof; he has done good things, but has sainted himself and really thinks we all see him like he sees himself. I gave this a 4 because there are some good bits about the other band members and the music in general sprinkled in here and there. All in all it’s overly religious (yet he never discusses his own infidelities), about 100 pages too long, and the last 50 pages seemed to drag on forever.

    Forever And A Day – Anthony Horowitz (7/10)
    The only Advent Calendar book from my bag that I read. It’s a Bond “prequel” and while I tend to not enjoy books written by others after an authors death, I have a soft spot for Bond (even though I’m super tired of the movie franchise). I was also in the mood for something light; I needed some mental Listerine after reading Bono’s book.  In the end it was pretty decent and it made me realize that I hadn’t read the original Flemming Bond books at all. My mother had them and I remember her telling me years ago that the movies were not even close to the books… (yeah, you know where this is eventually heading).

    Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn (7/10)
    The people who love this book, LOVE this book. The people who hate this book, HATE this book. Me? I thought it was quite good. The writing was good, the twist(s) were decent, and the ending was not what I was expecting. Could have done without the lawyer, and some of it was eye rolling but a quick, not terrible read. At some point I’ll check out the movie.

    Casino Royale – Ian Fleming (8/10)
    After Forever And A Day I decided to give the Flemming Bond books a go. This was a great start. Quick, to the point, no fancy gadgets, Bond isn’t super human and gets beat up pretty good. I did need to remember these take place in the 50s where “men were men” and all that.

    The Painted Bird – Jerzy Kosiński (DNF)
    I couldn’t finish it. It’s not the darkness or the theme, it wasn’t even the brutality. It was the repetitiveness that did me in. It stared out rather engaging but then from one chapter to the next it became just more of the same, more of the same, more of the same. I wasn’t even numbed. I was bored. Maybe that was the point? I’ve head it said that this book was supposed to show the horror of war but maybe it was supposed to show how we can become desensitized to it? I don’t think that’s it either. American Psycho is one of my favorite books and every time I read it, it works me over and stays with me. But The Painted Bird? Maybe I’m missing something but, meh.

    Live And Let Die – Ian Fleming (7/10)
    Decent, but somewhat awkward read in that 50’s casual racist way; docked a few points for that even though I understand that was the way of thinking back then. I can say that I’m enjoying the books as Bond is not the super duper spy he’s made out to be in the movies.

    Moonraker – Ian Fleming  (7/10)
    My god was I was worried about reading this one considering the movie is so fucking ridiculous. Thankfully there was no stupid space shit. It was a good, tight story about a missile and a Nazi agent.

    Diamonds are Forever – Ian Fleming (7/10)
    Quite liked this one. Good plot, quick read. Again, the book Bond is not a super hero with fancy gadgets saving the day. He takes beatings, is tortured, and relies on friends to save his ass. My hope was that this doesn’t change in the later books.

    From Russia, With Love – Ian Fleming (9/10)
    Fan-fucking-tastic. The first part of this book is some of the best shit I’ve ever read. The rest is mildly preposterous but you end up buying it. And the end is *chef’s kiss*. Fleming could have called it quits with this one and it would have been perfect.

    Dr. No – Ian Flemming (5/10)
    This one was somewhat shitty. Started out good but managed to turn lame as it went on. Considering that this was also the first Bond book to become a film, I can see how the movies turned out like they did. This was the first time, to me anyway that the villain was a complete cartoon character, complete with monologues, who had a super duper, ultra fancy Private Island Lair®™ where he puts Bond in a death trap/obstacle course rather than just kill him and wow, the giant squid is completely absurd. Weh weh.

    Exit Stage Left: The Curious Afterlife of Pop Stars – Nick Duerden (8/10)
    Excellent read overall even if it started to lag a little near the end. It is interesting to read about those who touched fame and then were cast aside for whatever the reason. I can say that this book made me a little glad I never “made it” in music or art.

    Goldfinger – Ian Fleming (4/10)
    Ehhhhh. Didn’t think too much about this one. Like Dr. No, this is the movie Bond. The villain was meh. The big crime was eye rolling. And wow, is the racism ever ramped up. Oh, and the homophobia. I know it was the 50s but, GODDAMN.

    Thunderball – Ian Fleming (6/10)
    Felt like this one was getting back to the earlier Bond. All in all pretty ok. Not much to say past that.

    The Spy Who Loved Me – Ian Flemming (10/10)
    Fucking LOVED this one. It was apparently not well received when it came out because it was such a drastic change from the previous books but that’s exactly what I liked about it.

    Requiem For A Dream – Hubert Selby Jr (10/10)
    Whew. Holy hell this one beat me up. I actually tried starting with Selby via Last Exit To Brooklyn, but I couldn’t penetrate his prose and put it down after 10 pages. Decided to try this and it was simply excellent. Dark, hopeless, uncomfortable, and really hitting the mark when it comes to dreaming about the perfect life America advertises while it simultaneously suffocates you to death. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read and I will most likely never read it again. (Will probably watch the movie though.)

    Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis (9/10)
    As mentioned in my rant about The Painted Bird, American Psycho is one of my favorite books. Strangely haven’t read Ellis’ other works. I decided to start at the beginning. It was a little slow moving at first, but the chapters are short and by the end I was hooked; simultaneously intrigued and uncomfortably horrified. Needed to take a couple of days to digest what I’d just read.

     

  • Perfection Is The Enemy Of The Good

    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.

  • Another Step Away

    Since 2015 or so, I’d been trying to get synths working, mostly for live performances, and found myself frustrated with Kontakt, Ableton, and the like. I’m not knocking either of these programs. I know they’re tried, tested, and true. I know a ton of pros live and breath by them. For me, I just couldn’t get them to click. I found the learning curve steep and the cost high. I never made it past the trial stage.

    I turned to Apple’s MainStage which made everything easy. Thanks to this app and my trusty 12-Step, I was able to not only record synth parts for Opium Winter, but also play them live.

    An Opium Winter set loaded up in MainStage.

    However, as anyone who happens to read this blog knows, my MacBook Air is on its last legs and I’ve mostly moved away from Apple. I had to start looking at alternatives.

    (more…)

  • Gods, Prophets, or Slaves

    Dropping another new track: “Gods, Prophets, or Slaves”.

    Click here for lyrics.

    N. Toone - Gods, Prophets, or Slaves
    ©2024 Nicholas Toone

    Song Notes

    The bones of this song have been around for at least five years; I’ve been messing around with the main bass groove 1 since early 2017. It’s been through a few variations over the years and last fall I decided that this was the first one I was going to record entirely in Linux.

    I scrapped the original takes I’d done in Windows and re-recorded everything in Fedora on Reaper and Mixbus 32c using native plugins. 2

    As of the beginning of December last year, all it needed were lyrics and vocal tracks, which were all completed in the past few weeks.

    Main plugins used:

    • ToneLib GFX. My god I love this plugin. “Gods, Prophets, or Slaves” was the final test; once I had the guitar tracks laid down, I bought GFX without a second thought.
    • Flying Delay by SuperflyDSP. While it sometimes forgets its settings after you close out a project, this is a great delay, especially for vocal effects.
    • EQ10Q LV2 Plugins. I use the EQ10QM Equalizer on most channels as a compliment to the Mixbus channel strips. I also use it, along with the CS10Q Compressor on my “NYC Compression” bus.

    All in all, Linux is pretty solid for recording something from start to finish. While there is not as many options for native plugins as there is for Windows or Mac, it’s a reminder that it’s always better to use what you have rather than spending your time looking for “the perfect plugins”. Remember: it’s not the plugins alone that make the song, or the sound.

    So here it is in all its nerdy glory: “Gods, Prophets, or Slaves”.

    1: Fun note: The working title of this song was “Spy Hunter” because my main bass groove reminded me of the 8 bit music version of the Peter Gunn Theme from the 1983 arcade game.

    Side note: An early version of this tune can be heard in one of the LBL YouTube videos (starting at around 03:35).

    2: Tracks were recorded into Reaper, stems exported to Mixbus 32c for the final mix. I record in Reaper as it’s lightweight and easy with the latency. Linux in Reaper is not overly great for mixing simply because  it just does not like LV2 plugins or having ToneLib on more than one track.

    For mixing, you just can’t beat Mixbus 32c. Not only is the inline EQ and compression on each channel strip so damn good you could get away with not using plugins, Mixbus just sounds better. While I don’t have “golden ears”, I do hear a pretty big difference between the output of Reaper and Mixbus.

  • Music, Labels, The Internet, And Streaming Services

    The other day I shared Benn Jordan’s latest video regarding Spotify and mentioned that I’d post some thoughts. When I started to write this, I went back and re-read two pieces that I keep on hand:

    Both of those articles opened a can of worms, especially when you think of them as older companion pieces to the video.

    While a lot of people thought (and still think) the music industry was/is evil, no one was really prepared for Big Tech.

    (more…)

  • Spotify …

    I’ll add some thoughts in the coming days. For now, this is an important watch/listen.

  • Linux Almost Six Months In

    Almost half a year into the Great Linux Experiment and I’m still here.

    HP Linux Whoo!!

    The last time I tired running Linux as a desktop OS was back around 2001. It went so horribly sideways that I lasted maybe two days. Then again this was 2001 and while I could get Linux (Mandrake) installed, couldn’t get the damned thing online. So it was essentially a weekend of yelling and screaming to myself because I had no Internet to yell and scream into.

    Now I can scream all I want, anytime I want. Here are a few things I’ve discovered:

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  • 2023 – Here We Go

    To start 2023, I decided to move everything back to where it began. I registered nicholastoone.com well over a decade ago, so that’s where everything is going to be. The Low Budget Lifer domain will not be renewed and will fall by they wayside sometime in late April. No more clever URL’s. No more content creating on whatever the big platform of the day is. No more playing with SEO or whatnot. Just me in my little corner of the Internet.

    I was going to post a big, blathering piece about 2022 but I couldn’t find the right tone. Everything I wrote sounded overly bitchy, or overly elitist, or overly preachy. In the end, I’ve settled on a short list of what could be called resolutions.

    (more…)

  • 2022: Books

    I read more in 2022 than I have in recent years. I was a voracious reader in my teens and early twenties but tech got its hooks into me over the years and reading books just fell by the wayside. I’ve been working on changing this and for 2023, I plan to read even more.

    I’m not what you’d call a fast reader. My rate is a little more than a book a month; a “book” being +/- 400 pages. I have a habit where I will re-read sentences or paragraphs that I find particularly excellent. I also spent too much time on my damn phone and not enough time with my nose buried in books.

    So without further ado..

    The Storyteller – Dave Grohl (7/10)
    Decent read even though I (and everyone else) knew most of the stories in advance.

    Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett (5/10)
    This has been sitting in one of our bookshelves since I can remember. I decided to give it a read and… Eh, it was ok. A pretty good snapshot of a period in time however, it meandered and didn’t really go anywhere by the end.

    Girl on The Train – Paula Hawkins (7/10) *
    Well written. Twist was good and not overly obvious.

    The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt  (10/10) *
    This was surprisingly excellent. I’m not big on westerns (ask me what I think of Lonesome Dove sometime), but this book stands out as one of the best I read this year (or ever, really). Highly Recommended.

    Greenwood – Michael Christie (10/10) *
    Excellent. I had low expectations as the description made it out to be hippy dippy, which it absolutely was but not in the way you’d think. Highly Recommended.

    Room – Emma Donoghue (6/10) *
    I was really, really into this book … until the escape. I mean, I wanted them to escape but considering all the work the captor did to control her and ensure that she and the boy would never escape, I was honestly surprised he fell for it. It was very paper thin. This took me right out of the whole story making the rest of the book not hit as hard as it could have.

    Can I Say – Travis Barker (5/10)
    I don’t like Blink-182, but Barkers drumming made that band what it is. He plays drums lots. Likes Cadillac lots. Drug abuse. Survived a horrific crash. Run of the mill rock bio.

    Sing Backwards and Weep – Mark Lanegan (4/10)
    While the book contains some good insights into what it’s like being in a 90’s Seattle band that didn’t get really big, I found it a slog because Mark Lanegan is an insufferable, egotistical piece of shit. I really don’t understand why everyone holds him up as a genius. His music and lyrics aren’t all that great and he’s a complete asshole.

    The Only Girl: My Life and Times on the Masthead of Rolling Stone – Robin Green (6/10)
    I thought there would be way more about her time at Rolling Stone but it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good read, it just didn’t cover a lot of her career at RS considering it’s literally the title of the book.

    Infinite Detail – Tim Maughan (4/10)
    Great idea. Ho-hum story. I don’t know what else to say about this one.

    The Institute – Stephen King  (7/10)
    Typical King; good story, fun easy read. I like Stephen King as I know I any book of his is usually a good read and this is one of the better of his more recent ones.

    The Way Home – Mark Boyle  (10/10)
    Well written, fantastic read about someone who has gone pretty much completely off grid. If you haven’t head of Mark Boyle, look him up. He’s an interesting person with an interesting outlook on life and how he fits into it. Highly Recommended.

    Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records – Jim Ruland (5/10)
    Some ok, yet rehashed history of SST Records can be found here if you could be bothered to wade through unnecessary, super fanboyish reviews of records that no one cares about from bands that no one remembers which all read like Patrick Bateman talking about Huey Lewis and the News. This would have been a better book if the author had just stuck to the story of SST and cut out the incessant navel-gazing.

    Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell (10/10)
    My favorite movie of all time. Decided to give the book a go and it did not disappoint. Highly Recommended.

    Bringing Out The Dead – Joe Connelly (4/10)
    Another title that’s been hanging around in our bookshelf for a long time. I know Scorsese made a movie based in it so why not? It has some good bits and it’s well written, but… while I like dark stories without happy endings, this one didn’t really have anything to say and started to meander about two thirds of the way through to the point of eye rolling. Don’t think I’ll be watching the movie any time soon.

    Find Her – Lisa Gardner (5/10)
    Back and forth between a really well done psychological trauma backstory and a somewhat lame, paint by numbers detective/revenge plot. The payoff is just dropped on your lap, however it’s written like you’re not supposed to notice until the BIG REVEAL a few chapters later.

    * A local, second hand book store does a yearly “Book Advent Calendar” where they have tables and tables of bags marked like “Popular Thriller” or “Science Fiction” etc and each  contains 24 pre-wrapped books. Our family has been doing it for a couple of years now; it’s a good way to reuse/recycle and much more fun than the standard off the shelf garbage Advent Calendars you get at box stores.

  • They Knew You Before You Were Famous – The Just Stop Messing With It Mix

    Here is a song I titled: “They Knew You Before You Were Famous”

    Click here for Lyrics (Yes! Lyrics!)

    They Knew You Before They Were Famous
    They Knew You Before You Were Famous ©2022 Nicholas Toone

    Song Notes

    I’ve been working on this track for far, far too long. My problem is that I just can’t settle. I tweak and tweak and re-do and tweak some more. “If I just add this one more little bit…”

    I need to learn to stop fucking with things and just get the songs done. Less is more, as they say.

    So here it is. I finally just stopped where I was and decided to put it out there. Maybe there will be another mix at some point but, for now, it’s done.

    This one was started on Windows and finished on Linux. I really tried to get the song going in Mixbus, but ended up making a righteous mess of it all. No matter, Reaper was  here to save the day. The final mix was done using Reaper Plugins (mostly ReaComp and ReaEq) and Room Reverb from ElephantDSP.com.

    The big thing about this tune is that it has vocals. This is the first time I’ve written lyrics and actually sang anything (other than backing vocals) since early 2013. It took a while for the words to come, but once an idea formed, I put pen to paper and it all came together.

    Now that this one is done, I’ll work to complete the next tune, which is only lacking finished lyrics and recorded vocals. I’ve promised myself that I’m not going to keep tweaking and just get it done. Hopefully I’m not lying to myself; especially since there are another thee songs in half finished states that need my attention.

    For now, enjoy “They Knew You Before You Were Famous”