Is Winter finally on its way out? I sure hope so. I had an opportunity this past week to finally get to a few motorcycle "to do" projects. I was able to get my pannier hangers up in the garage. Thankfully, that was a very easy project. Just drill into the studs and done.
"Create a piece of music within 2 hours after unboxing your new Deluge from Synthstrom Audible"
If you have read the news in the motorcycling world lately you will have seen the headlines about the declining state of Harley-Davidson. Articles have been popping up everywhere for months about the company's poor financial outlook. There is a measure of angst going around as some people are using this as a measure of the health of motorcycling in the United States. It may be true that HD is the largest US seller of motorcycles, but their declining sales may not be a measure of motorcycling as it once used to me.
The HD condition, as I will call it, it largely a product of their own making. I would not call myself a fan of HD, but I am not a hater either. I can respect the sort of "mechanical" nature of their motorcycles. I personally am not a huge fan of bikes with tons of gadgets on them, electronics, and all that. With the exception of their top of the line bikes, HD has remained true to that image. However, their image overall is precisely what I think their largest problem is. They have spent decades cultivating a cultural identity and biker image. Up until recently that has largely been a boon for them, creating a "fraternity" of sorts for motorcyclists to rally behind. With that fraternity though has also been the creation of a mentality that "you're one of us or you aren't".
One of HD's (and motorcycling in the US') biggest problems is the age demographics of riders. HD riders are old, as are the riders across the country in general. Those individuals tend to be able to buy a $15000+ motorcycle, but in order for the industry to stay healthy you need to get younger riders into the market.
The new batch of millennials coming into the market don't appear to embrace the current image that HD has cultivated. Many are turning to sports bikes or adventure touring bikes. Another large sector seeing a resurgence is the café racer, "hipster", city rider. Brands like Roland Sands, Icon, and others are tapping into a new style for younger riders. Just about every manufacturer from Kawasaki, to Yamaha, are now releasing "vintage" styled bikes that appeal to a younger crowd.
Coupled with increased pressure from a "new" US brand in Indian Motorcycles, it makes you have to wonder how HD is going to respond and if HD can respond. The market now has more options and more sub-groupings of biking identity then it ever had before. No longer are biking communities split largely between sports bike riders and cruisers and with that growing division comes a smaller slice of the pie for HD.
They have spent such a long time cultivating the image that they have, I am not entirely sure they can attract a different audience with women, younger riders and a different demographic without alienating those individuals who have been with them for decades and spent tens of thousands of dollars with them. HD may finally find itself in a position where it has to cede its dominate market presence over the coming decade.
Ok, so here is things will get a little crazy. As I mentioned before Modulargrid.net has a nice portion of the website where you can build your synth. Better still, you can see what other people are building.
So here is what I have laid out so far.
Crazy right? There is almost $3,000 worth of modules laid out in that rack matching what the Mantis can hold. So what exactly do I have going on here? Let's break it down and I'll explain what I know so far about how this can work. Keep in mind that these may be acquired over months if not years.
The first two items that I really should probably get is a sequencer. One or both of them may end up changing as I continue research on sequencing techniques and what I may want to get out of a sequencer. I am currently trying to find out more information about CV/Gate sequencers, which are small little sequencers that can be manipulated with other cv/gate data.
So the first module is the Stillson Hammer Mark II. Two things are immediately attractive with this sequencer.
The second sequencer is the IIntellijel Metropolis. At first glance you might think that these things basically look the same and they are in fact very similar.
The Metropolis only has one track which it can sequence, but it utilizes a unique feature with the 8-stage switches on it. It is hard to describe and best if just shown in the video below where you can see how unique it is.
So both of those sequencers are very cool, but they are also very expensive, around $600 each. As you can see from the rack posted at the top, they also take up a ton of space. There are all sorts of cool alternatives out there. Unfortunately I am at a loss on exactly how to use them. Here is a quick list of the ones that have caught my eye so far though.
This is another super popular sequencer. It is a bit cheaper, but works on a grid matrix.
Very cool because this one can be easily "stacked" with the Varigate 8+.
The list goes on with problematic sequencers, euclidean sequencers and cartesian sequencers. I'm sure there are even more.
Megan and I had a conversation the other day about our top summer songs. These are all songs that I have some sort of particular memory or connection to summer. Perhaps it was a cool summer night, hanging around a campfire, going to a rave in a warehouse or something else.
So in no particular order, here are mine. Let me see your favorite songs in the comments below.
This first one hopefully no one will know except my high school friends. This was a local high school band and they put out a fun album. Several good songs on there, but this one is a personal favorite that I am uploading directly to my blog here.
I'm gonna throw a bonus song in here, in particular this scene and track from the movie Groove. This whole vibe is very emblematic of some of the warehouse and Goa Trance parties Megan and i used to go to. This movie in particular just puts a huge smile on my face so go give it a rental.
I was browsing around my blog today and noticed down at the bottom of the page that I had 45 pages of archives. I decided to click on the last link to see what my very first blog post was. My very first blog post was on October 9th, 2004. You can see it below.
Now, I obviously wasn't using Posthaven back then and it appears that I had setup a custom html website with an RSS feed at the time. To be honest, I don't remember exactly what that was. Clearly though through the beauty of RSS I have been able to export and carry my past blog posts to the various platforms that I have used over the years. I have at one point or another used nearly every blog platform out there. For years Blogspot.com was my go to choice for blogging in the mid-2000's. The interface was clean and with the ownership of Google you got good search results. That annoying blogspot bar got to me over time and I then migrated to other platforms. At some point I was using Wordpress and while I liked the platform, it did eventually change from a blogging tool into a full on CMS, which became a bit overkill for my needs. Tumblr and Posterous were also great sites that I experimented with and there were probably more.
In the end I have found myself now residing on Posthaven.com, which is a decent place to blog. It is a bare bones blogging system with a minimalist interface, but that is largely what I am looking for from my blogging system. I have always preferred to go with a paid hosting site if I can so I don't have to deal with ads and can have my own URL. Posthaven has grown a bit stagnant over the past few years though so there may come a time if I find the need to move onto another service to try.
In the meantime though I thought it would be interesting to post a couple of my favorite old blog posts. Going through these brings back some interesting memories, and while the migrations from service to service to service hasn't preserved every post, many of them are at least still readable.
Meg and I went to C2E2, Chicago's comic-con on Saturday and we had an absolutely blast. I have wanted to goto this show for a few years now, but I always miss the date and find out about it after the fact. It just so happened that this year, Megan's art teacher's conference abutted up to comic-con so we were able to attend.
The show is a blast and if you are into comic books or TV shows then this is a good event to goto. There is a huge floor full of all sorts of vendors and media ranging from books, to comics to toys. And then there is the cosplay. As with any con, the cosplay is almost the draw in and of itself and the cosplay did not disappoint. There were some absolutely amazing costumes out there like the Black Mage from Final Fantasy I got a photo of.
Megan got in on the cosplay this year and went at Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service. It was a simply costume, but I was surprised at how many people wanted to get a photo of here. She probably had 30+ photos taken and she was a hit. I think she wants to go full in on the cosplay creation now.
A couple of weeks ago Megan and I won a goodie basket from the chocolate fair at the Morton Arboretum. In the basket was (obviously chocolate) some olive oil and some dark chocolate balsamic vinegar from the "Olive Tap". We decided to adapt the olive oil ice cream recipe from Jenu's ice cream book, leaving out the nuts in the recipe to instead make just a pure olive oil ice cream.
First off, if you are into making your own ice cream. Get this book. The recipes here are not only fantastic, but they are super easy to make since they do not require you to make a custard with eggs. Instead Jeni uses cream cheese as a base.
This ice cream came out incredibly smooth and in fact did taste like custard when we were mixing it. It probably helped that the olive oil was as high quality as it was. This was a super easy recipe that nailed it out of the park.