Last night, I came home to discover that I could not find my laptop. Thinking that I must have just misplaced it, I went out to get some dinner. Upon returning, it was discovered that my other laptop which was hooked up to the TV was also missing. Clearly, our house had been robbed. I also lost a backpack, my microphone, and the contents of my change jar. The biggest loss was my data. I had not backed up any of the music that I have been working on, nor did I backup any of my other projects. I guess I learned my backup lesson, and it would also appear that backing up to external disks that are in the same room with the laptop probably isn't going to do it. So the result of all this is two-fold. One; I will need to purchase a new computer, which is ok, I think I can be happy with the crackhead induced upgrade cycle. Two; I need to start backing up my data to some offsite location. I guess the loss of all the music that I have been working on is the biggest blow, but it is never a bad time to start again. As an excercise, here are some other people who had laptops stolen from them, presumably by crackheads.

Hello folks, everybody who both reads this blog and lives in pittsburgh has probably already heard this first hand, but just in case I missed anyone, I am playing a show at the Brillobox on December 5th, 2006. Here is the event info as a block of text for those that will understand it better. Planned Parenthood fundraiser Brillobox, Friendship, Pittsburgh, USA 8pm, December 5th, 2006 I am currently in the process of remixing my old songs, and making some new ones. This is my first live show in about one and a half years, so hopefully it will go alright. audio (and video) hopefully forthcoming. [edit] I just found out that the event starts at 5:30. I can't imagine that I will be playing music that early though. But I think that is how early you can start donating to planned parenthood by drinking.

Just finished a quick sketch of a track and uploaded it for you to take a listen. Actually, it took me about a week to get it done, I normally try to get things out of the way quicker than that. I am Forest, Creature. Also, recently, I have been going to a bunch of shows, specifically of musicians that not only use electronics as the center of their setup, but also provide an interesting stage show. If any of these musicians comes through your town, feel free to go see them, they are all fantastic:

1. Daedelus: wierdo electronic / sample based bedroom hip hop.
2. Dosh: Hip hop equivelent of Andrew Bird, plus very worn instruments. Down tempo warmth through looper pedals.
3. Zombi: This is the odd one out, a John Carpenter influenced prog rock horror movie extravaganza.

[edit: minor typos and grammar problems.]

I have been meaning to do a redesign of my homepage for a while now, and I just got done with it tonight. Quick!  Go take a look at it, and come right back. I have not really needed the college portfolio style site which has been living in my root directory for a while now, and I have been meaning to replace it with something that can stay more current with my life. I am sure the "all-feed" home page is not a new idea, but designing around all of those different forms of content was quite a bit of a pain. After some initial forays into trying to get a unified theme on all of them, I realized that I can just do the old "use someone elses design as a crutch" and wrap it in my own mess. So that is exactly what I did. There are still a few feeds that I would like to add there, and perhaps even build a few of my own services to help fill out my page (a self contained about box, perhaps a little shoutboard), but I am quite happy with my evenings work. Let me know what you think, glaring oversights, etc. P.S. The portfolio will be coming back, just in a more easy to maintain format, perhaps some type of wiki. But that is a project for another night.

I just got an iPod last week, an old mini that my roommate was unloading to make room for one of the new nanos. Excited to listen to something other than public radio sports coverage on my drive to work in the morning, I went out and got an iTrip - the version with the dock connector and the LCD screen. I should have read the online reviews first. This thing is seriously a piece of trash. Specs? I only get signal when the iTrip is within a foot of my car radio, and as for the radio in my kitchen, the antenna wire has to be physically wrapped around the iTrip. The FM band is pretty crowded in Pittsburgh, but I have witnessed other portable audio FM transmitters working a lot better than this. In addition to the broadcast issues, with the iPod volume maxed, I need to turn my car radio up twice as loud as my normal (loud) listening volume. Once the broadcast is at a comfortable listening volume, so is the noise floor on my not to shabby car radio. I have never once noticed it before. Ok, back to the store you go! hopefully I will get a better one on the next trip.