Monthly Archives: May 2020

Lana’s Parrots

cartooning, drawing

This was ultimately a fun one for me. My art friend from college, Lana, who now lives in Northern Ireland, asked me to draw a comic of her parrot. She sent me a photo months ago and I worked on it but wasn’t very pleased with how it turned out. So it sat around on the back burner for a long time. Finally, earlier this month, I spent some time and made some more drawings for her and put them in the mail. I even did a cartoon envelope for her like my Navy pal Eric Thibodeau used to do.

Cutting Down a Big Tree

philosophy, storytelling, teaching

I am in the process of cutting down a large but dying ash tree in my backyard. I was advised that it needs to come down for safety’s sake. So what did I do? I decided to cut it down by myself. With hand tools.

You might ask questions like:

Why do such a foolish thing? Why not hire professionals?

Well, I like to feel useful. I like to feel needed. I like to feel like I have a purpose for being. An important reason is that I like to save a buck when I can. I like to teach my kids some life lessons now and then. The lesson I am going for is that you can do a large, seemingly insurmountable job if you break it down into small, doable parts. Hopefully, I don’t teach them a lesson in Darwin’s survival of the fittest, but I suppose I could. I am going very slowly. I am taking it down branch by branch. I’m using tie-down straps to secure my ladder and myself. It may be a stupid project but I have been enjoying it and so far it has been going well.

Here is the latest edition from the ongoing saga of Bill’s ash tree removal.

Adobe Audition Audio Clip Stretching

Uncategorized

I am working on a virtual choir project and one of the singers has some different timing. I was looking for a way to stretch and manipulate the speed of certain sounds in Adobe Audition. It turns out, it is a simple thing to do. This tutorial taught me how, including special configurations.

https://helpx.adobe.com/audition/using/multitrack-clip-stretching.html

But the gist of this operation is to grab the white arrows in the upper corners and adjust the clip as needed.

Vinylcasting Elvis on DS106Radio & TV

Uncategorized

This morning I listened to Jim Groom playing a record album Galaxie 500: On Fire on DS106 TV and DS106 Radio.

When he finished his vinylcast, I jumped on and played another album, it was one of my mom’s – 1977 Elvis in Concert, which was published shortly after his passing. I also worked on my drawing while listening.

Something is wrong with my Ladiocast setup, so Jim Groom hooked me up with a DS106 Radio cross broadcast.