DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

After a meeting in St. Helena, I had a purely Napa experience: I bought $16 worth of chocolate that I could nearly close my hand around, and three doors down, a small bottle of balsamic vinegar that at $160/gallon costs 66 times more than gasoline, even in St. Helena.

In other words, the Napa experience is: upscale food items, great presentation, and, natch, exclusive prices. Or excessive. Maybe both of those.

Foodie photos from St. Helena

I guess I don’t have a lot of reason to wear oxblood tassel loafers any more.

Heh, I’m pretty happy about that.

My long-delayed mixdown is complete. Tune in for the next three Thursdays to hear the results. (Is that a cheap ploy to build interest and traffic? Why, yes it is.)

Long-distance mixing takes a lot of time. The engineer, Evan, has a pretty amazing ear, so the basic tracks came together immediately. The fine tuning is what takes the time: he sends MP3s, I take two weeks to listen to them (through two pairs of headphones, two pairs of speakers, on a portable stereo, in the car, at high volume, at low volume, from the next room, etc.), then he takes another week to adjust the mix, and then we do it again. We’ve been working on this since Thanksgiving — I downloaded the first round of mixes in Hawaii, over dialup, before I realized I could sponge off the neighbor’s wifi if I sat by the kitchen window.

Had I been present for mixdown, the turnaround time on the various EQ and level changes we made would have been measured in seconds instead of weeks. Next time, I’ll probably just fly to LA for this.

The four songs I sent Evan covered the spectrum of genres from acoustic ballad to heavy rock. One was recorded about 12 years ago with an early incarnation of the band that would become JAR — an abandoned track rescued from some dusty ADATs in the garage. I didn’t write it, and had no designs for it (other than posting it here). If JAR had become famous this song would have showed up on the box set after I’d gotten old and fat and bought a castle next to Elton John. Alas, now I’m old and fat, and the closest I’ve been to Elton John was the time I sat on a People magazine at the dentist’s office. Anyway, Evan nailed this mix on his first attempt. It blew me away. It’s a better song now than the day we recorded it.

The other three tracks were recorded here (and chronicled here). One was an old JAR song, Bleed. Another was an acoustic tune by JAR’s guitarist. The last was my own song Ode to Soup, which was a bitch to mix for a lot of reasons: there were two lead instrumental voices, the recording engineer was an amateur (this means me), the drum and guitar tracks were assembled digitally from multiple takes, and I was sweating every detail.

I’m happy we’re done, and I’m happy with the results. I am in the midst of writing new songs, in hopes of finishing up my first CD within 12-18 months. (It’s a long time… lots of concurrent plans for the next year.)

MP3s coming your way:

• 2006-02-02: No Regret
• 2006-02-09: Bleed
• 2006-02-16: Ode to Soup

Y’all come back now, y’hear?

We traded out all the incandescent bulbs in our house the weekend we moved in. Except for two: a recalcitrant half-globe fixture above the stairs that, despite four increasingly violent attempts, I can’t open, and a 4-way fixture in the foyer that uses torpedo bulbs with the candelabra screw base — smaller than the standard 1-1/16'' base you’re used to.

There’s not a big market for Compact Fluorescent bulbs with candelabra bases, so they’re expensive — something like $20 apiece when I called around, a couple years ago. Despite the tree-hugging appeal of having no incandescent bulbs in the house (except for that bastard above the stairs that I’m pretending doesn’t exist), I couldn’t justify the cost. We use the light in the foyer about three minutes every month, as dinner guests are putting their shoes back on on their way out the door. In a typical year, the electricity consumed by this fixture costs us … well, 160 watts (4 bulbs x 40 watts) times 36 minutes = 0.096 kWh; at 8.7¢/kWh (averaging the summer and winter off-peak, schedule E-7 TOU rates) … about 83/100 of a cent.

The break-even point for $80 worth of CF bulbs, at ~80% of .83¢/year, is 120 years. Compact Fluorescent bulbs may last a long time, but probably not that long.

On the other hand, my great-great-great-great-grandkids might be really impressed by my forward thinking. So I picked up a 4-pack of candelabla-base CFs at Ikea last month. CF prices have fallen, and Ikea has mastered the art of selling for cheap, e.g. by manufacturing furniture out of cardboard. The four bulbs cost about $18 total if I remember correctly, so it’s at least somewhat likely I’ll live to see breakeven, 21.6 years from now.

The only problem is, these bulbs suck. They’re so dim, it takes 10 seconds to know whether they’re working. When they’re fully warmed up, they do a real nice job of illuminating the inside of the frosted glass fixture.

But hey! I’m saving well over a half-cent a year! Rawk!