Apparently auditions for an Overreacting video are happening this weekend, which is a neat and exciting thing to think about. I'm really interested to see what comes of it.

I got an email yesterday asking me if I wanted to participate in a compilation called "Il Programma Di Religione" at boyarm.com. The compilation is 265 songs about Popes that are less than or equal to (<=) 15 seconds in length. It seemed like an interesting challenge; I've never tried to write a 15 second song before. I asked if I was going to be assigned a Pope or if I choose a Pope or what the deal was with the Pope selection. I was told that I just submit some music and they name it after a Pope and that most of the songs don't have lyrics.

Because I am a total jerk to myself, I immediately decided I wanted to make something with lyrics, that would apply to almost any Pope and, as another added challenge: be kind of sad and reflective.

You can check out my 15 second Pope Song right here baby. I recommend looping it until it gets on your nerves. It goes by pretty quick.

It was really difficult trying to cram everything I wanted in to 15 seconds and I wound up chopping the original ending off and cranking the speed up by about 30bpm in the end. But oh well. I'm not sure when the compilation will come out, but dammit there'll be some Brad Sucks on it when it does.

I've finally updated the FAQ with how to get the source files for Brad Sucks songs. Basically, I'll mail you a CD with the source for the songs you want for five US dollars. That's shipping and everything.

So I think I've decided to abandon Acid and switch to Cubase SX. Acid's been kind to me, but after being frustrated with mixing the other day for the kabillionth time, I tried to mix some of my old tracks in Cubase and sweet Jesus was it ever nicer. I had gotten used to having a one second delay every time I change an EQ setting in Acid and in Cubase it's instant. INSTANT! But the interface is batty. I just have no clue what's going on. I managed to import some old audio files and horse around with them, but the idea of actually writing a track in there is a little daunting. The simplicity of Acid was mostly what I liked about it and Cubase seems like Acid's more complicated older brother that's been translated into German and back a couple of times.

I've been kind of busy, but have about four tracks I've been working on and struggling with recording. There's something about mixing electric guitars that makes me want to write techno.

Life's been a little hectic lately. Between little contract web jobs and trying to learn Flash so I could do some projects I've been thinking about for a while, I haven't had a chance to finish any of the songs I have lying around. If you don't believe me, click here for shocking, undeniable proof.

Also slowing me down are my almost exactly year-old braces, which have recently been tightened and modified so that I have elastic bands keeping me from opening my mouth more than a centimeter or so. Also they hurt. Pretty damn bad. With luck I'll be getting the braces off in six months. So here's to that and all the chewing and biting that will follow.

So I've been anticipating the release of Acid 4.0 for oh, about as long as I've been using Acid 3. And it's finally out! Hooray for everything! You should download the 27 meg demo and play with it! It promises various sexy things that I've wanted for a long, painful time such as plug-in effects automation, ASIO driver support, MIDI piano roll, and VSTi plug-in support. Not to mention there are a whole bunch of other things on the new feature list that I'm sure will impress the pants off me as well.

The main thing I worry about is stability. One of the great things about Acid is that it rarely crashes, which is fantastic because nothing makes you want to hurt adorable little animals more than losing your work. Even if it's just the last ten minutes, it's still awful. As I've learned from previous crashes throughout my computer-using career, I can do a surprising amount in ten minutes.

I'm installing it now. More as it happens.

I seem to be able to get my Darla to work for limited amounts of time before the it craps out on me. I recorded most of a song yesterday, having to occasionally re-record stuff because the left channel just didn't show up sometimes. Today I've started looking around to see how much a replacement card might set me back. So far it's looking kind of expensive and complicated. I found this sound card benchmark comparison, but a lot of the top of the line cards are a bit fancy for my needs. I don't need a ton of outputs or inputs, I just need two ins, two outs, excellent sound and hopefully really good Windows XP drivers.

The search continues...

My 56k modem (Which only ever worked at 28.8k due to my rotten phone lines) was fright Wednesday night in some sort of freak Canadian lightning storm. I was forced to go out and spend $150 on a new retardedly slow modem Thursday morning because I'm a slave to the Internet and I had given away all my backup modems to friends and family over the years. I will never be nice to anyone ever again, especially my friends and family. I also tried to install Movable Type because while I like to think of myself as a slick web programmer who doesn't need no prefab scripts, this weblog package I wrote for Brad Sucks could use an overhaul and various sexy features (such as commenting, a posting form that works, RSS feeds, and decent category archiving), but I don't have the time to spend on writing them lately. Installing cgi-bin managed to screw up just about everything that was good and pure about this server and I've given up for now because I don't have the time to waste on that either. All in all, time to waste has hit an all time low in the Bradiverse, which is unfortunate because it's one of my strongest skills.

In case you're checking this page looking for some stupid new songs, there are a few on the way. I've been busy and briefly sick with some sort of flu I had imported from Norway for me. In the meantime you should play with Viragelic and generate some random songs while looking forward to a time when tempermental (and not to mention lazy) artists are replaced by Flash applications.

After what seems like a month of dealing with awful hosting problems for both this site and my other ones, things seem to be back online. I have an injured finger and am hoping to get back on track with this whole mad crazy ill fresh Brad Sucks thang real soon.

Over the next week or two I'll be getting a nice sound-proofed studio room built, which will hopefully be a vast improvement over the current "really reflective and cramped bedroom" thing I've got going on right now. Also, I think I'm going to shell out the dough for real live monitors so I can actually attempt to learn a thing or two about mixing. But first I have to learn a thing or two about monitors.