i’ve been a very bad blogger here. part of it was due to my primitive computer setup which didn’t make doing a lot of computing things fun or easy. i’ve got my main music making computer: an apple g4 tower with protools hardware. i see myself keeping that for a while still, but it’s not an ideal computer for daily net cruising for various reasons, one of which is that it can never go into sleep mode due to the protools cards not being energy star compliant.

so my awesome new computer also happens to be appple’s least expensive computer (sort of): the mac mini. the reason i say sort of is that i maxed it out with 2 gigs of ram. it’s replacing a slow apple ibook (circa 2001/2002) and a compaq desktop pc (circa 1999/2000). this little computer is cool. first, it’s about 1/20’th the size of the pc. and now that macs use intels, i’m able to run windows simultaneously with osx using a nifty program called parallels. so the pc is destined for the local electronics recycling center soon.

Life honestly seems to be a constant process of gathering and sorting. So much of my time is devoted to activity. Sometimes I think I should be more classically Buddhist by trying to not own things. I’m not even always aware that I’m collecting things until I notice that I need to organize them or discard them. My house is so tiny that it can’t fit many things in the first place, so just a few things can really make it seem crowded or messy. I’m at a point now where I look around and see small stacks piling up here and there which drives me crazy. I’ve been listing many CDs on lala.com just recently, but of course, more CDs come back to me… So my large stack of unwanted CDs will be replaced with a large stack of wanted ones. Which is better, I suppose. I’m stil in the process of digitizing my whole CD collection, which is pretty time consuming. I made smaller bit rate files of many songs back in the early mp3 days, so I’m trying to replace those with 320 aacs now. Plus I’m adding in the artwork, too. Gathering and sorting. Oh, and deleting.

Ryan and I went down to Ontario for the Podcast & Portable Media Expo, but ended up spending most of our time at the PodShow UnExpo2! Originally we thought we’d just go up Friday to check it out, but we decided to go back on Sunday, too, to hang out poolside with my PodShow homies and take part in the live PodShow Music Rewind recording session. You can actually check that out over at rewind.podshow.com — episode #45. Ryan and I come in next to last on the show, though you do hear me laughing or yelling in the background from time to time. Ha ha!

I also did video interviews with Cali Lewis, of GeekBriefTV, and the Rumor Girls, so when I see those go up, I’ll link to them here — probably in the news section. Posed for photos here and there, including a great one with 6 other women PodShow podcasters taken by Frank of Media Artist Secrets.

We’re nearly done with our fifth new song, called “Nocturnal Daze”. We originally came up with the idea back in November but just returned to it last week. Unlike the last song, we didn’t have really strong ideas about the arrangement before going in to record it, so we started simply with the acoustic guitar and vocals of the demo and then let the ideas flow in around it. Ryan decided to play Rhodes throughout the tune, which ended up giving it a bit of a Zero 7/Air feel. I likened the sound to “Trip Hop without the beats.” Anyway, at first Ryan was just going to play his electric guitar at the end, but I had imagined it going in and out of the whole song, so he gave it a shot last night and we both liked the results. The song fits really well with the other 4 completed tunes and once again I am struck by how nicely the album is coming together.

dear cbs,

your labor day tennis coverage was incredibly frustrating! while the #2 seed game was going on, you insisted on sticking with the tedious #14 vs #18 seed game that drug on and on uninterestingly. i suspect cbs of being nationalist, trying to force amercian tennis players on us. get a clue; americans love nadal, not ginepri!

not only that, but you kept showing tennis news while you could have been showing live games. i would have loved to see some of the safin game, but instead you wasted time repeating scores and making commentary in the studio. we can already read the scores on the bottom of the tv screen – so why not focus on the live tennis games going on? frustrating!

i am completely dissapointed in today’s coverage.

— anji

The newest episode of Chillin’ with Lovespirals lists our Top 5 Downloads, which were quite a surprise to me, I must say! I also announce our digital sales vs CD sales ratio… maybe not as much of a surpise to us, but may be to some fans. We also chat about recent band happenings and share the intro to our latest song in progress. And if you’ve already heard the podcast, yes, introoutro.com is taken!