Matthew Supert

Well I got the H4 relay installed this morning. Took a lot longer than it should. The basic thing that I needed to do was just remove the gas tank, then run the new line from the battery to the headlight assembly. Of course something unrelated to the relay install threw me off. After disconnecting the gas tank I had a slow but persistent drip coming from the primer nozzle on the fuel tank. I don't know why this thing was leaking as I just rebuilt the damn petcock in October. Well that led to me having to drain the tank so I didn't get gas all over the garage. That was the longest part of this whole process.

Once I got the H4 relay installed it was just a matter of moving in reverse. The relay kit has the relays set inside the headlamp housing so I think later this summer i will replace the standard three pin connector with posilock connectors to get some more free space in there. 

My troubles didn't even there of course. After getting the bike fully assembled again it wouldn't start. It would turn, just not over so I knew I didn't jack up the battery connection. My guess is the engine was flooded or something or perhaps empty from sitting for the past couple of months. After about thirty minutes of messing with everything I finally got it to turn over and run. I let it run for quite a while just to flush itself out. Turned it off and it started back up again with no problems. Overall a decently smooth project.

It is nearly the end of February and that means that it is time to get back on the motorcycle. Pretty excited about this and i am actually hoping to do quick a bit of upgrades to my bike this year. For those that do no know I own a 2000 Kawasaki ZR-7. Picked it up last year for $2,000. It isn't the biggest or the fastest bike out there, but it is a very good all arounder. Now that I have had a few miles on it I have decided that I am actually going to keep it (and probably get a second new bike in the future) and use it as my project bike. Now I know absolustley nothing about motorcycles so I figured thise could be a good one to get my hands dirty on with some upgrades and such. 

One of the first things I am planning to do is install an H4 relay kit on it tomorrow. This relay kit allows the headlamb to be wired directly to the battery to give off more light. Should be an easy upgrade that I can do myself. I also have a new pair of Metzeler Roadtec Z6 tires on order. I unforuntely do not have the tools to swap these out, but my local mechanic said he can change of the tires and dispose of the old ones for about $100. 

Other upgrades that I hope to do this year is a full swap of the turn signals and brake lights to LED's. I am having a bit of a problem finding three wire turn signals though. I also need to get a new seat and if time and funds allow I think the bike needs a new paint job. There are a few deep scratches on it and I would like to get something a little better looking than the electric blue I currently have. Not sure if I will do it myself or not, but for the costs it seems like it might be more worthwhile to have a professional do it, just so a proper paint job can go on to protect the gas tank. 

It has been a while since I have posted one of these reading lists and I thought it is time to post an update as to what I have been reading. The biggest book on the docket for the past several months has been Three Kingdoms Romance (or Romance of the Three Kingdoms). This is an ancient chinese folklore tale that covers the time period during the fall of the Han dynasty and is considered to be one of the four great chinese classics. I have been laboring on its four volumes since September of 2011. Thank the heavens for the Kindle version as it made it much easier to read.  It broadly lays out the conflicts of this time period and intersperses it with a bit of magic and demons for good measure. Overall it was a pretty good book for being over eight hundred yeas old. If you think Game of Thrones has a lot of characters, this thing had literally hundreds. 

Since that book took up so much of my time I have actually not read a ton of other books. I listened to the audiobooks of both Heat Wave and Mockingjay. Heat Wave was simply not a very good book and Mockingjay was a fitting end to the Hunger Games Trilogy. It is a pity that I just cannot stand the main character in those books. 

I also got a start on the Books of Skyrim (Download Link). This is a collection of all of the books found in the Skyrim video game. Someone on the internet kindly put them all into an ePub file. I have to say that they are pretty good actually and hey, they are free. 

For the months ahead I have several real paper books to get through. I just started Born to Run this past week and I also have sitting on my shelf Manovationals, Arabian Nights, and the Complete Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (plus a dozen more books sitting on my Kindle). 

As I mentioned in my 2012 Goals post, one of my objectives this year is to donate at least $100 a month to a charity or cause that I find compelling. I decided to begin doing a monthly post on these donations to cast some light and awareness on them. If anyone else out there would like to donate to them as well I will provide links to their sites in my posts along with information about the cause. 

For my first donation of the year I chose to go with a seemingly unknown animal sanctuary call Batworld. As you might expect from the name they are an animal sanctuary for bats that for some reason cannot make it back to the wild. To be honest I cannot remember how I first came across this organization, but after reading up on them it seems that they have recently come upon some hard times due to some legal or defamation issues. They just felt like the right place for me so I made a donation. 

There are several ways you can donate, but perhaps the easiest and most heartwarming is their "adopt a bat" program". For $40 ($30 for a class I think) you can adopt a bat for one year to help pay for food and medical supplies for the sanctuary. I chose to go with Beene'. As a result they sent me a nice little informational packet in the mail and a wonderful picture of the bat that I plan to frame.

After I made my donation I had a pleasant email from the foundation as well that just sort of made me feel good. 

Dear Matthew,

It looks like you may have accidentally sponsored Beene' three times. Let me know if you meant to only sponsor her once and I'll refund the extra donation you were charged.

Amanda

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No I did actually want to sponsor that amount.  You can use the money towards other bats or whatever, but the $1XX is all yours.

Matt Supert.

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Dear Matthew, Thank you so much!!! This is so very generous of you. Our organization faces a continual uphill battle in securing the financial resources it takes to rescue these misunderstood animals. Your contribution will make a difference in the number of lives we will be able to save in the coming months. 
 
Again, thank you, on behalf of all the injured, orphaned and abused bats who will be helped due to your compassionate support.

Amanda

So I hope people find this organization interesting and if you are looking to adopt a bat with your kids, learn a little bit more about bats or perhaps do something for one of your classes definitely check out Batworld.org to learn more. 

Winter NAMM has been done for a couple of weeks now and everyone has sort of settled on their discussions at what impressed them at the show. Hardware seems to have made a nice appearance again, especially in the analog form. While discussing our highlights and disappointments at the show over at Serious-sounds.net an interesting question came up to me asking about my gear setup. Now for those not in the know I use grooveboxes for my entire setup. That setup with the built in sequencers has always just sort of clicked with me. Problem is no one is really making these magical little boxes anymore. 

My current setup consists of a Korg EA-1, Korg EMX-1, a Yamaha AN200 and the mother of all grooveboxes the EMU XL-7 Command Station. The history of grooveboxes is a short, but rather remarkable one. Perhaps starting originally in the Akai MPC 60 there are some notable boxes that appeared during most of the 1990s. The Roland MC series with the MC-303 and MC-505 were groundbreaking for their time. Then the Korg Electribes came along that brought a new affordable and groundbreaking accessibility to music production. Yamaha had a brief attempt at it themselves with the Loopfactory boxes, but really the EMU Command Stations (which were sort of a failure) ultimately were the best of the series. Unfortunately not a lot has come out since that time except for some pricy gear from Elektron, Radikal Technologies, Acidlab and perhaps Jomox. If you look at any of these companies they are all based in Europe.

If my current stuff ends up dying I suppose it leaves me relegated mostly to investing in some of this pricy gear. That certainly would not be a bad thing since these are wonderful pieces of kit with a great build quality. It does mean though that I have basically relegated myself to a largely boutique level of the production world. What setup to I actually end up getting though? 

The Elektron equipment I think is by far the  nicest and most mature. I have never really heard of issues with their software or gear. The Radikal Technologies Spectralis would probably also end up on that list of gear, but I have heard there were some OS issues in past versions. Only problem with all of this though is it would all have a price tag of about $7,000. 

So I traded in my skis this morning for a snowboard. I have never been snowboarding before. Wow, is it a different experience. On skis you are moving forward and leaning side to side. On a snowboard you are moving sideways an leaning front to back.

The first couple of hours we're pretty rough, but I eventually got it. Man did I fall hard though, and a lot. My rump and shoulder took the brunt of it and I have a splitting headache. Can't say yet whether I enjoy snowboarding yet since it is tough to compare four hours to my 10+ years of skiing. There seems to be a smaller margin of error though.

Went skiing in Galena this weekend. Had a blast. It was Megan's first attempt at skiing. She did a good job in the morning, but had a crabby time this afternoon. She had to tell at me not to look at her while we skied. Ultimately my brother and I just went off our own direction and met everyone else later in the day.

I rented skis for this trip, but I definitely have a desire to try snowboarding in the future. May even just buy one in the future.

Well Winter NAMM 2012 kicked off this past week and my initial thoughts at the beginning of the week were that it was going to be a bust. If trends mean anything (and apparently they do not) I was under the impression that NAMM was going to be stuck in the perpetual cycle of iterative software announcements. To my pleasant surprise however, we got to see a whole bunch of interesting hardware announcements. 

Waldorf Pulse 2

This is one of three serious analog synths announced at this year's NAMM. Analog seems to be back and in a big way. The Waldorf Pulse was the one that excited me the most, mostly because of its form factor. I can see this little guy sitting very nicely next to a Blofield and a DS Evolver. 

Arturia

Perhaps garnering the most attention at the show was the Arturia Minibrute. This was a surprise for everyone since Arturia has never produced a hardware synth, let alone an analog. I have seen many a talk over at LivePA.org with excitement about the fact that there is a control for every parameter here. The steiner-parker (no idea what this means) filer also is garnering a lot of talk.

Moog Minitaur

Personally I am not excited about this one, but it has the Moog name on it and is MSRP'd at ~$650. I suppose that is enough for a Moog. 

Akai

Akai also seems to have come on very strong this year with a bunch of MPC stuff. The MPC Renaissance is a full on controller for the PC. The MPC Fly looks like a very interesting hardware interface bringing MPC pads to the iPad in a clamshell type case. They also have a nice grouping of Midi controllers that seem to be stepping up the level a notch.

Nektar Panorama Controller for Reason

The final piece of gear that surprised me was the Nektar hardware controller for Reason. We have seen over the past couple of years a lot of dedicated controllers for Ableton Live. It makes sense that Reason would eventually get one too since it has such a constant interface. I am personally not a Reason user, but this controller has a really solid look to it.