How Does It Know?

Wordscraper* (the game the two guys from Calcutta put out once Scrabulous had to be taken down) is insane. My opponent scored the majority of those points on the word “DORKS”.

* It’s pretty much like Scrabulous (and Scrabble) except the boards are random, there are 5x word and letter spots, sometimes the letter values are randomly different and you can design your own boards. In order to get around the fact that Scrabulous was taken down, many people “design” a board that is just like a regular Scrabble board, thus playing Scrabble, Scrabulous-style, within Wordscraper.

Scrabulous on Facebook is no more

They are running out of the numeral 4 for gas station signs. They just weren’t prepared.

I found this pretty odd. The backstory for why this guy did this is also odd. Recreating the Salt March in Second Life? Sure, why not…

How to build a 17 foot tall cardboard Gandhi

(link via Ultrabrown)

Been so busy lately with work… I wish I had more time for this blog thing.

But on Wednesday night, me and Dan got together and started working together to get some drums figured out for the new EP. We also have plans to do some non-full-drum-set percussion (mainly using tambourine, snare and shakers) for a song I’ve got… Should be fun.

Had dinner at an Indian restaurant with the family for Diwali tonight. ’twas fun. I am sleepy now. I’ve gotta do some serious work for work this weekend. Not fun, but hey, keep the bosses happy, right?

So this piece of equipment I had started malfunctioning. These lights shouldn’t flash at all, they’re actually used to denote various settings. But about 20 minutes into the dbx376 warming up, these lights start flashing and it also starts making weird noises that don’t sound so good on the recordings… out of the signal chain you go… But your lights sure are pretty…

The Lager House, a bar that I’ve set foot in countless times during my 20s (either attending shows and hanging out in my early 20s, or performing with the Low Hello in the last couple years) has new owners and will be undergoing renovations, but will continue to have live music. Which is a good thing. There had been a lot of speculation about what it would become. Even though I’ve attended shows less and less as time passes, it’s a nice thought that the club will still exist and continue to have good music for years to come.

Also, I wanted to thank Rich for booking us so many times and working with us to put together good bills!

…so I haven’t really gotten around to writing anything here… but things on my mind:

1) been listening to both of Ratatat’s albums… kind of liking how even though they’re kinda both the same sort of stuff, the second one has a subtle change in that they seem to be using more organic drum sounds and more acoustic guitar. I enjoyed that.

2) been working on the vocal booth some more. Trying to get it pretty sealed up, not sure how well that’ll go. Using anything I can find, like caulk and weather stripping. Still haven’t taken any photos of it… maybe when it’s done and “pretty”. The way it works now is pretty good. Wife said it sounded really muffled when I was singing scales at full volume the other night.

3) hoping to get some time to work on some new songs. I have these new arrangement ideas for one of them that i hummed and “beat-boxed” (as well as I can) into my recorder, just gotta make them reality.

That’s about it. About to enjoy some rice. I got a rice cooker recently, and have been loving it.

Everything about this license plate is just wrong, and stupid, from the desert camouflage, to using the World Trade Center (for Oklahoma? Didn’t they have a pretty important terrorist strike of their own? Just so happened those guys were Christian and not brown, though), and the angry looking eagle, and the 9-11 banner. The thing that puts it over the top, though, is the giant “GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM” slogan at the bottom. But isn’t it called the global war on extremism now? Or maybe they’ve changed it back. I can’t keep track.
There’s also an Alabama one commemorating “Atomic Nuked Veteran“s.

(posted first at thelowhello.com)

Hi there. I wanted to make a bit of an announcement. After playing a bad (in my eyes)/ok (according to some viewers) show last night, I came to the realization (well, actually, I’d been thinking about it for a while) that I’d like to not play shows for a while. I am just a bit worn from it, and not sure if constant stage action (well, it hasn’t been constant, but more than I enjoy) is for me.

I’ve had a great time playing live shows with this band, and I’m not saying we won’t ever play live again. It’s just that I need a break from it to sort of regroup my thoughts about music, and what it is to me. I started writing songs out of a love of writing and home-recording songs, and decided to venture into forming bands and playing shows fairly “late” into my “career” (with the exception of my first and best band, the Immigrants, in high school). I’ve got a lot of stage fright, and while I’ve gotten over some of that through playing with this band, and have met some awesome people along the way, I’m not sure if the constant dread before a show is worth it to me right now.

On top of that, I would like to work on new material if we are to play anymore shows. I’m just kinda sick of my songs! Though I think YOU should still listen to them Anyway, I’ve cancelled the rest of our summer dates (sorry to any bands out there that we are letting down, particularly the Professorate, Word Play, Sister Lovers and Syscrusher; also maybe some others I’ve forgotten), and am not scheduling anything for quite a while.

Dan, Robb and Adam have become good friends to me and are guys I enjoy hanging out with and having funny conversation with a lot, so I hope that aspect of it stays alive. There’s also the possibility that we’ll come through this with some great new songs and decide to do a couple shows next spring or something. It’s all up in the air right now, and we’ll figure out what happens organically. As Robb said last night, using a new-to-me cliche, “There’s no point in pushing a rope.”

I also have a solo project I am incredibly excited to start working more on because I’m doing the demos in my basement and it brings back the great feeling of self-making music for the fun of it that I missed so much. I might be posting early finished versions of those songs over at my own site, howdoesitknow.com.

So, I’d really like to thank everyone who’s helped us book shows, let us open for them, paid us money for doing our little show, told us we did an awesome job after a show, taken (or downloaded) and enjoyed our free CD/MP3s, complimented a flyer, or otherwise promoted and enjoyed what we do/did.

Keep checking in, though, because we may be back in some form or another sooner than you think. -Sunil