I am Patrick Perdue! I am bad for you!

After a two week absence, one of which was unscheduled thanks to another basement flood, we now present, for what it may or may not be worth to you, your loved ones, your cash register, and the random pair of sneakers under your bed, this week's episode of Things and Stuff. Assuming you didn't catch the live show, here are a few things you may have missed:

• ScanSoft Squishalizer Borris, a new synthesizer from Popular Demand Audio, with cooperation from ScanSoft (or not,) makes itself known to the world by hosting the show for a while.


• After a quick discussion with myself about the last couple of weeks, and the fact that I picked up an Olympus DM520 digital recorder at the ACB conference and Convention in Phoenix, I got a tech support question from Monty regarding said unit, which eventually resulted in showing just how easy it is to switch between real and fake versions of Borris.


• Jonathan calls in with the last of the weird neighbor reports. He didn't last long in that apartment building, apparently. Discussion then turns to various things, such as baby beer stories, blind tech, speech synthesis, and random crap.


• WGAJ ends another broadcast... Not broadcasting day, but broadcast. Hear the last minute of this educational station's existence as captured by Josh Owens in May of 1998.


• The Arizona Rattlers don't sponsor TBRN, but apparently my subconscious thought it should. Why? No idea, I'm afraid.


• Venison shows up to talk about broken things, break more things, and generally mess the world up for no particular reason. Global warming, sun spots, atmosphere blow-up, all kinds of fun things.


• Thanks to a submission from Randy Gilkey, we have a few demo tapes of the Ursa Major Space Station, a digital delay and reverb unit from around 1978. We do like effects around here! One of the tapes was played back on a miss-aligned deck. Oh well.


• The secret behind ScanSoft Squishalizer Borris is revealed, which eventually leads to some very odd phone calls from Venison, Jonathan, and ultra-eago, setting up future confrentations in the process.

That's this week done. Due to things happening around here, I may or may not be on fake air for the next few weeks. Everything needs to be moved out of the studio, and the carpet needs to be replaced. Not sure when that will happen, so there you have it. Enjoy, or some such.

KirBoom! Persplode! Wizz! Pop! Oh yeah, it's time for fireworks, and other bad things, such as this week's episode of Things and Stuff. Let's cut to the point: What?
This show was a particularly crazy one, which was a little slim on phone calls, due to a technical issue I only found after the show was over. Oh well. I only missed calls from Byron. No big loss, right? Oops, did I say that?
Here's a summary of the badness contained in this week's terrible 111MB waste of space:

• Derek's traditional first call turned into an interesting discussion about the fact that he deserted his listeners to go make money, unlikely iPhone applications of the future, and other things.


• Josh is now a proud father as of July first. Even so, he called to discuss radio stuff.


• Because it's the time of year for it, have "the all American patriotic sign-off" from WMNA FM, recorded in 1997. There's something you don't hear too often these days, especially on FM. This was followed by some... um... liners?


• Byron sent in two odd versions of 'I walk the line,' as one was mentioned by Josh.


• Cliche? over played? Too bad! With independence day, or as I like to call it, anti-UK day being just around the corner at the time of this show, a few tracks from Stan Freberg's 'the United States' came out of the closet for something to do.


• Open microphones outside revealed the occasional firework, and a bunch of crickets.


• I bought a cheap $2 flute in Tennessee last month, and forgot about it until it was thrown at me. It's not in concert pitch, and isn't really even in tune with itself. Does that stop me from playing with it, along with a randomly selected performance from the Motif XS? What do you think?


• Negativland: enough said. We like that around here.


• Crickets and carts through effects processors (Did I ever mention I really like my Digitech Quad IV?)


• Near the end of the show, I landed on some blues thing in f major, and got this sudden urge to sing about cigarettes. I really have no idea what came over me, and I apologize for it.

And there you have it. As I'll be in Phoenix next Saturday, there will be no Things and Stuff for the first time since December 12 of last year, not counting Radio Failure and FakeTime 20o10, at least not a live one. I'm sure Derek and I will stream at some point during the convention, so stay tuned to my twitter, Derek's twitter, or both, for late breaking news on stupid things as they happen.
Speaking of twitter, freakyfwoof has one of those now. You can now follow freakyfwoof if you use that service. Who saw that coming?

And now, for your considerable discomfort, we modestly present the last Things and Stuff for June 20o10."
Like most shows, we apologize for putting you through this. Here's why:

• Derek, the traditional first caller to the show, ended up being the host for a while, as certain annoying issues decided to make themselves known at the last minute. We also got to hear the awesome acoustics of Derek's future studio space.


• Alexander showed up, at which point we revealed that your call may be monitored or recorded by a radio shack CTR-69 cassette recorder.


• Bryan showed up, proving that he's a lot more interesting on Derek's show than mine, but that's OK.


• Derek Roberts, also known as CN (for cup man,) and a new amateur radio operator, obsesses about morse code while talking about his all-that-for-that field day experience. As a result, the no more CW song was brought to the world's attention, unfortunately for the world.


• Apparently, you are not allowed to have morbid thoughts in the 48 contiguous United States, but you can have them in Alaska, Hawaii, and Port Ricky (er, Puerto Rico.)


• How can a couple of coca cola commercials from 1967 cause issues, and generate a new idea on achieving world piece at the same time?


• Successfully dead, partially inspired by the no more CW song and written by Alexander, is introduced to the broader world of bad people.


• Jayson Smith, a first time caller, called in using Project MF and a fake bluebox.


• Jonathan from Canada has a new neighbor, who just happens to be a bad person. Of course, he told us all about it.


• Charles Hiser, another first-time caller, shows up to make life... interesting?


• Thanks to a call from Byron, we learned about Canada's high population of black people, which was prompted by Jonathan's earlier call. We also learned that Russia was apparently responsible for inventing memory loss.


• More updates from Jonathan on the weird neighbor, now worse than ever before.


• Was Hitler actually a good person? Well... no.

And that's it for June. I'll be happy when this month is over. Finances are stretched past the limit, and convention's coming up in just under two weeks. Let's see what it does, shall we?

FINALLY! This is the only word I can come up with to describe the feeling I have for the fact that the week ending June 19, 2010, is finally over. What a stupid bunch of crap!
Speaking of stupid bunches of crap, this week's Things and Stuff is now available for download.

New features in this version:

• No, this really isn't the karaoke machine show. I promise. It may, however, seem that way at first.


• After the traditional first call from Derek, in which several standard things are discussed, Josh shows up with a new phone. Does it sound better than his previous one? Well... no. Sorry, I took away the suspense. Let's talk about radio things, files that get lost, anniversaries, babies, and all sorts of good stuff. Fun with effects processors during this call, just so I would be seen as "doing something" by all zero people watching me from outside the control room.


• Apparently, blaming the weather man for your bad week will result in a severe thunderstorm warning... or will it?


• Monty calls in to report a possible distraction, talk about the up-coming convention we'll be attending in Phoenix, and other bad things. I bring up the fact that I have just installed a 32GB OCZ solid-state disk in my netbook, a "my first little SSD" if you will. More on all that in a later post.


• All sorts of bad things are happening in Venison's neighborhood, which may or may not involve people he knows personally, including old people partying like there's no tomorrow. Oh, wait...


• Jonathan calls in to talk about Kurzweil keyboards in particular, and keyboards in general.


• Thanks to Derek, we have a bit of fun with a loop that simply goes "Oh deer! I broke it again!" Effects processors never get old.


• The Mommy call sparks talk of the Harry Potter movies vs. the books.


• June 19, 2010 marked the fifth anniversary of a certain bit played on TBRN involving a drunk Swedish school teacher, which, of course, was revisited for the amusement of some.


• Buttons and knobs, again?


• A very unusually late call from Bryan, way past his bedtime.


• Conspiracies contrived by people who aren't evil; can this phenomenon actually exist?

And, folks, that's it for this week. Enjoy, or don't. It's your prerogative. We're not going to force you.

Last night, I awoke two hours before showtime with several issues. Headache, sinus problems, alergic reactions, brain-blowing sneeze pressure, and other related things. Yes, because I'm just good and reliable like that, I did a show despite all these problems. I haven't missed one yet this year, so why start now? I'm sure I'll miss at least one, as I now have a round-trip ticket to Phoenix, AZ, for the 49th annual ACB convention in July. On Saturday, July 10, 2010, at 7:00 PM MST, I'm pretty sure there will be more interesting things going on to keep my attention away from attempting to stream from a hotel room.
Anyway, enough of that. This show is now available for download.

Sorry, I can't really be bothered to write a description for this week's show, except to say that it broke quite a lot. No, this is not unusual in the context of this particular show, and is, in fact, expected by most people by now. However, it should be pointed out that there is a certain psychological phenomenon of human nature, simply referred to as schadenfreude. Those who subscribe to this phenomenon (doesn't everyone at a fundamental level?) will probably enjoy this show.

I'm out, like my 500GB Seagate hard drive, with many valuable bits of data. Yep, another dead hard drive. Forth in a month. Will it ever end?

Although it's a bit later than usual, thanks to some local issues, it's now available to download.
Here's a list of some of the wonderful things you may be glad you missed if you didn't hear this show live, and, perhaps, wish you had after hearing the archive:

• With the first two callers in a row from Derek and Josh, both of whom had quite a lot to say on various subjects, things really got started after about half an hour.


• One of the fun things done this week included myself, Derek, and Melanie in a helicopter in Tennessee. A fun clip from that was played, brought to you by a couple of small omni-directional mics in very close proximity to the vehicle.


• Monty calls in, breaks things, and talks about things that are broken.


• Jonathan from Canada calls to talk about even more broken things, dead Dell power supplies, and other random junk.


• After this week's Mommy call, we prove that summer is finally here by looking at the weather forecast for Barrow, Alaska, after which, the broadcast machine flops over on it's face and dies.


• Thanks to a contact mic I got for my birthday, the "cup mic," which is quite literally what it says it is, makes an appearance, followed by another "cup mic" which sounds about as good, but, unfortunately for the person who uses it, isn't actually a cup.


• Josh sent in a clip from the end of a broadcast on WKTE, including the very confused announcer. Isn't it great when people screw up on the radio?


• I bought another weird old microphone, this being a made in USSR Poltava ND-52 dynamic from 1974. To honor that, have an angry Russian man singing and yelling about who knows what.


• Let's invade someone's privacy, and listen to a very boring baby monitor from somewhere in the general area.


• A small clip recorded at Pigeon Forge Music Outlet is played, with Derek on a set of bongos, and myself on a mountain dulcimer, a combination of instruments you don't hear every day.

Well, that's it for now. Apologies to the impatient people who wanted the archive "NOW NOW NOW!" but things beyond my control happen sometimes.

I'd just like to let you all know that I am feeling like a complete idiot at this point. The last few days with Melanie and Derek have been amazing, with the show we did live from a hotel in Mooresville being incredibly fun. However, due to a huge oversite on my part, there will be no archive of this show available publically or privately... It just doesn't exist. I even had a redundant archiving solution setup, which broke as well. Oh well. It's all a memory now, and a bummer. LIfe goes on, though.
That's it from this part of the world for now. Happy birthday to me, indeed. It was awesome until just after... Oh well.

As many know by now, I've been having all sorts of fun moving things around various hard drives, as everything keeps breaking, dying, and generally having problems existing. As a result, however, I've found many things that I either didn't know I had, or have forgotten about completely.
One such example is a text file I saved of the virtualization of a screen from my e-mail client as Jaws for Windows crashed, as it often does. The results of this are, well, to put it lightly, a lot more amusing than something like this should be.
This is apparently part of an invoice for something I bought on Ebay in 2006, with... well, I won't say anymore. ( Read this thing, and possibly enjoy. )
Yep, I'd say that's pretty broken.

I tried something new. It totally failed, so here it is.
Yes, I got bored with the Things and Stuff paradigm, thus, the introduction of Radio Failure, which will last for approximately one shows. That's right, I said one shows. Deal with it!
Here's why you shouldn't download this particular show:

• The first call between Hank and Drover from John R. Erickson's "Hank the Cowdog," followed by a listing for a violin in the Things and Stuff classifieds, despite the fact that Things and Stuff is dead, followed by a PDQ Bach piece with violin issues.


• Josh calls in, and demonstrates the fact that the toll free number, brought to us by the fine folks at Vitelity, is totally hosed, causing lots of problems, although the Vonage number seems to work fine. Old things, including Spike Jones, M&J Audio Theater's Chet Chetter's Tales from the Morgue, and other things are discussed. The fail horn is also introduced during this phone call.


• Stephen calls in to tell us about Tennessee Bill's old time radio library which will probably entertain me for hours, days and years.


• Bryan calls to inquire about the new show name, and sings a song for Melanie.


• Melanie informs us of the fact that she is incredibly happy about her song from Bryan, and wants to make it a ringtone. Derek will probably expand that idea.


• Venison and Ultra-Ego show up to make life interesting as usual, and informs us of a large economic policy fail, and how it relates to them.


• I might be moving to Montana soon... Well, maybe not, but the idea sure sounds great lately, with all the technical issues.


• MaryAnn calls in, and... Hmm, what needs to be said about that?


• Jonathan from Canada exists to give even more failures, and talk about Over the Edge.


• Byron shows up to point out some issues, make some noise, and generally cause a whole bunch of bad things to happen. After all, that's what he does.


• A call from Alexander prompts getting the broken French horn out of it's case, and doing even more terrible things than usual.


• Our friendly Linux-using cup-for-a-microphone friend Dave exists, makes a bunch of noise, and gets some morse code from a Yamaha Motif Wurlitzer patch thrown at him to decode. This is at 91 minutes and 52 seconds into the file. Can you decode it? For that matter, did I even send it properly? It's been years since I've done that sort of thing. oops, seems I left out a character... The message should still come across, though.


• Bec makes sure her SIP stuff is working properly by calling the show, and complaining about Vitelity, with good reason. Lately, it's been more like fatality.


• Near the end of the show, I find that my efforts in getting the stuff off of the 250GB Seagate hard drive, which not only accidentally had a partition deleted, but also had a broken SATA port, were wasted, and a large failure. I ended up basically bringing down the studio box in the process. Fortunately, it fixed itself just in time to go away... Well, about a minute and 56 seconds later than I was supposed to, but oh well, you'll have that.


• Within the last 30 seconds, I decided that Radio Failure was... well... a failure, and I shall resume Things and Stuff as normal from this point onward. At least I had some production elements for Radio Failure. Anyone want them?

Next week should be interesting. Melanie seems to like celebrating birthdays, and, with the release of Borris V2.6 coming up, she's coming down to North Carolina from Thursday to Wednesday. Thus, next Saturday's show, should it actually happen as expected, will be P&D Audio FakeTime 20o10, with myself, Melanie, and Derek, live from some hotel somewhere. PDAudio Realtime 20o10 should happen pretty soon as well, as it's about that time of year. Oh boy, loads of fun in the future!

Is it just me, or do these things keep getting stranger every week?
Who knows?

In any case, this week's archive is now available for download.

It started a war between the United States and Canada, had some live thunder from the outside mics, which have been hanging around for just over two months, featured a call from someone else's Mommy, and didn't bother using messengers for the entire show. Yeah, I'm tired, so that's all I'm going to say about that. Have fun! After the ultra-crappy week and a half I've had, it was certainly an enjoyable one. I currently have no laptop or netbook (netbook's drive died, laptop's motherboard shoved off,) the upstairs desktop is effectively dead out of paranoia, and the studio box and my phone are the only things that work which I can use for general purpose things. This should be changing soon, as I just bought a 640GB 2.5 inch SATA drive which will go in my Freecom Toughdrive enclosure, which currently has a 250GB Samson drive, which will go hang out in the netbook. The laptop... well... guess I'll have to save up for another one of those. Oh well.

I'm going to save myself up for a trip to bed, starting now.

This is getting ridiculous! I've written this thing up about four times now, with various issues, crashes and problems preventing me from finishing... But, ya know what? That's been how this week has worked out. Not a good one for technology, at least not for me.
Despite all that, and the fact that last week's rather interesting remote Things and Stuff has yet to be edited and uploaded, you can go download this week's episode instead. If you don't want to bother (and I honestly can't blame you if not,) here's a summary of what you're missing. Perhaps it will compel you to waste 113 MB of disk space in favor of something less useful.
Anyway, back on topic:

• After the first standard call from Derek, Monty calls in with a question, which leads to some of this week's technical issues, including dying netbooks, broken laptops, and the hopefully temporary loss of a good chunk of data, some of it being irreplaceable original stuff that isn't backed up anywhere.


• Josh shows up to relate some stories about fiddler's conventions and other things, given that Melanie and I were at Merle Fest last weekend, and it just seemed to fit at the time.


• Alexander has been trying to get me to send him a bunch of stuff I've done over the past few years. I didn't, of course, but did manage to play one of his many standard requests.


• I got a Ukulele as an early birthday present from Melanie. Naturally, odd things had to be done with this fun little instrument, including an impromptu phone jam session with Alexander and his Melodica, and some random effects from the good ol' Digitech Quad IV effects processor.


• During the Ukulele session, Monty tells of a not so bright woman who makes bomb threats on police radio frequencies, and expects them not to track her.


• Josh returns, and submits a rather unusual, unique, and incredibly amusing add presented by the general manager of WBT in Charlotte, from quite a number of times ago.


• Quite a lot of the rest of this particular show deals with telephones, prompted by a call from Jonathan from Edmonton. Not the first time this has happened, surely won't be the last.


• Geek alert near the end of the show. Not even in a good way.

And, as they say, that's all, folks! Tune in for next week's exciting episode of Things and Stuff, where you'll hear Borris say: "Oh, who cares, anyway?"

And now, it's time to dig deep into the recesses of the amazing portable inflatable Things and Stuff vault on wheels, and pull up this timeless classic... this moldy oldy... this Things and Stuff archive for April 24, 2010... uh, a few hours ago. OK, well, not so old, not so timeless, but available nevertheless.
Here are a bunch of reasons not to download it, in case you were looking for them:

• The show started out with a pair of two-way Borrises, one of them being brought to you by my new Wouxun KG-UVD1P 2m/70cm ht, the other by the old Icom IC-T2H I bought from Kelly last summer at the ACB convention. Sure, why not? Something to do, right?


• It rained during the show, which was demonstrated by the outside mics, still going after over a month. We were hoping for thunderstorms, but they never came.


• Josh's "radio report" this week consisted of a range of topics, including lightning, answering machines, radio IDs (which I've still yet to get to,) and a bunch of websites, including the Saggy Record Cabinet, Music you won't, and TinFoil.com all dealing with old records and stuff.


• I played my spoof on a recording from the Greensboro social security office again while on the phone with Josh, as some may not have heard it the first time. I think it's a little more true to form than they are, at least on the surface.


• I decided to unban Mommy, but my phone system didn't agree. She did show up eventually, however.


• The Wouxun HT was demonstrated to an extent, including some of it's talking functions, though not in great detail. It was basically used throughout the rest of the show as a receiver for a frequency from Greensboro's Parklane Hotel, which is very close by. Paper cups, shower caps, and all sorts of fun.

This show also included a bit more music than normal, which isn't at all a bad thing. Some of the stuff played was, such as an ultra-patriotic song brought to you by George W. Bush, but that's the way it goes.

Things and Stuff may or may not exist next Saturday, as lostgirl33 and myself will be attending MerleFest 2010 in Wilkesboro, NC on April 30 and May 1, and we'll be staying in a hotel in West Jefferson, which may or may not have decent internet. I'll have some gear with me, but if it breaks on Saturday, a make-up show will most likely happen, as the results of Melanie, the girl from New York in an ultra-southern environment, will most likely be priceless.

As the cycle of life would have it, it's time for the archive of 20o10's 16th episode of Things and Stuff to be presented in standard fashion, for what it's worth.
'Why bother this week?'
Well, it's not required. In fact, doing so isn't even recommended by the councel of stupid people. Remember them?
However, should you decide that listening to such a disreputable bucket of bugs is a good idea, here's some of what you can expect.

• Borris starts the show out with sampling rate issues. The SP/dif output on the Presonus Studiolive 16-4-2 is the master clock to the Delta Audiophile 24/96's input. The board was sending out 44,100hz, but the card was locked in at 48000hz. The result: fast Borris! Also... not in the archive! Ha ha ha ha ha! Well, sort of not in the archive, anyway.


• After a few preliminary phone calls, Borris plays a track with no words, other than "doo doo doo," and mentions that the song has no words. MaryAnn disagrees, and shares an amusing story about being on top of the world while on hold with Sprint customer service.


• Josh calls to inform Borris of his slightly lower than usual levels, and relays a story about an engineer who likes to run things "hot" at an FM station, and technical issues with an old EBS announcement.


• Arfy calls in to talk about... boxes and bubble rap?


• Borris makes a song using microphone/speaker feedback, a vocoder, a sequencer, two keyboards, and lots of effects. It's the feedback song, another creation from Borris Industries, Inc.


• Let's have an incredibly obvious Kraftwerk rip-off from Komputer's 1998 album, 'the World of Tomorrow.'


• A call from Bianca leads to talk of taxies, Thursdays, issues, and other things.


• First-time callers Casy and Rocky exist to "make thangs interstin' fir a while."


• PDQ Bach's "foghorn, bell, gargle and Kazoo." Fun times.


• Let's spy on Tommy with a mic on the other side of the basement, and drum loudly for a while. Lots of "pumping" with the compressor. Oh well.


• Do you like blocking Skype numbers? Borris does, even when it isn't necessary!


• Kyle calls in from a friend's band's gig, between sets, proving how bad sell phones can sound. Sure, we end up talking about radios and stuff, but you expect that by now.


• Let's hear what could possibly be Barry Manilow's best public performance: playing a kazoo backed by a 40-piece orchestra.


• My Apple bluetooth keyboard broke on Friday. As a result, I'm using a louder than normal Rocketfish bluetooth keyboard. I became annoyed with that by the end of the show, and pressed some buttons on the board. As a result, the last few minutes of my show feature a bit of speech from my screenreader. Oopsy!

There you are, this week's archive with quite a number of edits, due to a wider dynamic range than usual. Sorry 'bout that.

I'd also like to say a big thank you to my Audio Technica ATHm40 headphones for continuing to be quite leaky... Or maybe I'm just going even more deaf, and cranking them up higher as a result. In either case, we're sorry for the random headphone leaks into the microphone throughout the past... um, I dunno, 200 shows or so? Time for a new pair of cans, I think.

Ladies and robots, socks and bathrooms... It's time for this week's Things and Stuff archive!
This one has a geek warning attached. If you remove this label, you will be tried in a court of law, most likely for being stupid. Just keep that in mind before you download. If you're one of those people who takes tags off of mattresses, this show is not for you.

This thing did the following stuff:

• Due to some unfortunate circumstances, Things and Stuff was TBRN's lone representative for Saturday, April 10, 2010. As such, a song is dedicated to me in reference to Saturday.


• Derek calls in to discuss, among other things, his impressions of Apple's newest fad, the iPad and some of it's more useful? applications.


• Bianca is not getting Derek an iPad for his birthday. She is, however, developing an ever so slight southern accent.


• THE RETURN OF VENISON'S PHONE!!! That's right, after ages, minutes, and many other measurements of time, Venison's trusty carbon phone functions again, and makes it's debut appearance on TBRN for 2010! YEAH!!! See? I knew this would be a good year!


• I've been recording some of the Ensoniq TS-10/ts-12 demos from the original factory floppy disks. Let's hear my favorite one so far, followed by something a lot more boring.


• A first-time caller from California shows up, at which point, we learn that being trapped in the subway during an earthquake would be a really bad idea, and that someone has some really... powerful... weed...


• Steve calls in to talk about some keyboard demos, Ubuntu Linux, and several other things.


• Did you know that your mobile phone could possibly have an effects processor in it? If you have a Nokia phone running Symbian s60 third or fifth edition, it's possible. Of course, this is demonstrated, along with how to use it's output in a practical way... or, perhaps not.


• A Kyle call exists. Things discussed include, but are not limited to keyboard demos, yard sales, trailers, broken netbook monitors, bad shippers, mislabeled ram chips, Thursdays, and radios.


• Speaking of radios, Monty calls in to demonstrate a cheap Chinese VHF/UHF dual band amateur radio with some talking menu functions. Borris kind of wants one of these as a result.


• Let's play with the Nokia reverb some more, including triangle waves and dry voiceovers.

Yep, even more geeky than usual, if that's possible. Apologies to the mostly normal people out there, but it does happen sometimes.

Hello. I would like you to buy my mother of pearl butterfly earrings.
Failing that, you could, alternatively, download this week's Things and Stuff instead. Which would you rather?
Here is a little more information on this week's show to help your selection process. Don't worry, you don't have to decide right away. The earrings aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

• Excessive hellos, the standard first call, and a slightly extended one from Josh. The show must go on.


• Let's talk about the week, which included an almost tornado, getting rid of all the fan noise in the studio by moving the outside/Icom PCR-100 streaming box to the other side of the wall, and having a direct connection to the outside microphones on the studio board, for what that's worth. Not much, in this case.


• Proving once again how professional we are, we invent the new, revolutionary device called the nostraphone, belch our way through a series of minutes, then proceed to play with noise makers and vocoders, as if that makes up for it.


• We thought we got rid of all those hellos, but Venison brings them back.


• The Mommy call fails in the most spectacular way possible when, due to a configuration issue, instead of Mommy, I called Melanie instead. This call ended up going nowhere, and the other Mommy extension wasn't registered on the system for some reason.


• Simon, masquerading as "the Jerk Society privacy manager" from You Lose, New York shows up and breaks things for a while, with the phrase of the day being "go away!"


• Let's prove how not isolated the "outside microphones" really are from the studio by turning on the air conditioner, and banging on the drums for a minute.


• Reverse telemarketers who want to buy stupid things are worse than the standard ones who want to sell you stupid things... Well, in this case they are, anyway.


• Let's pause for station identification... Oh, actually, let's just pause. Who needs an ID, anyway?


• You could always announce games for the Carolina Tar Heels and break things if you don't like the other option.


• None of those options work for you? Fine! Get your future off the ground in the airforce, then!


• Thanks to a storm from seven years ago, we have decided to become a weather announcer for Kicks 106 in Bermingham, Alabama. Yes, we have decided to become one announcer. Isn't this grammar stuff fun?


• Proving that we are Alabama's "Bermingham stupid station," something is played that would most likely never be heard in Bermingham.


• What would you do with a one-bar loop if you had one?


• How about a drunk Mommy who comes into the studio and breaks things, reminding the host to lock the doors next time?

As a result of Mommy's bad behavior during the show, and something that happened before she ended up in the studio, she is banned from Things and Stuff until further notice. That's right. I'm locking the three doors between the studio and the rest of the house while live from now on, and there will be no Mommy call until further notice. Sorry, but that's the way it goes. Thanks, Mom, for giving me even more reason to leave, not that I don't have enough of them already.

So, have you decided yet? Do you want the butterfly earrings, or the show archive? Well, which will it be, then? Don't just stand there, make a decision! The world depends on it, you know!

Bad bye, and good hello. It's time for yet another show! Do you want it? Yes? No? Are you unsure? Maybe so! In either case, it's here to stay. Grab your very own copy today! If you don't, well that's too bad. You won't hear Borris on a Cad... M179 multi-pattern condenser microphone.
OK, that's broken. Let's get on with this, then.

This week's show offers the following useless stuff for your consideration:

• After many weeks, a non-broken traditional first phone call from Derek exists, in which he mentions going to California for a while, where he can listen to Negativland's Over the Edge locally on FM, via KPFA. Lucky!


• I managed to only play one track throughout the entire show, in this case Herbie Hancock's Spiral Prism from Mr. Hands.


• Time for another Radio Report with Josh Owens... Well, sort of.


• Here's a boring caller, with even less than I have to say on most Saturday nights.


• derek suggests that two semi-frequent callers that don't do or say much of interest should get together and do a show somewhere. We'll call it TBRN's sub-carrier.


• After another call from Josh, we finally get to see what the cheerleaders are all about, thanks to a recording from WNOX in 2004, after a week of anticipation. Naturally, "DIE TEAM DIE!" had to be brought out again for the occasion.


• tag fm? Don't know what it is, but it's amusing. It even includes several analog punch-ins free of charge.


• Apparently, I was a bad person, and made a comment that might cause me to get fired, assuming the broadcaster's association cared about the likes of TBRN. Venison calls in to explain, among other things.


• Mommy still goes to the mall with her best friend like it's the 1970's. Ain't that cute?


• And now, just for fun, we have stories about scary black people who even the local rednecks are afraid of, brought to you by Kyle. This segment also shows why softphones are bad for you!


• Monty the confusable geek... Enough said.


• Venison calls in to comment on the scary black people referenced by Kyle. Somehow, chainsaws and flamethrowers come up in the conversation, and things get weird. How about a little nitroglycerin? It does a body good, or something.


• The last bit of the show broke fantastically, as I was attempting to demonstrate a rather interesting thing that you'll have to wait until next week to learn more about, due to a couple of broken cables. Whoops!

And that does it for this week. Check back next week for... well, you know by now. Right?

Five years ago today, I started writing in this plastic box they call a blog. Today, I looked back on those early entries, and simply stared at myself with shock and amazement that I, a person with a modicum of self-respect, small that it may be, actually allowed such crap to be published to the universe at large. Why, exactly, did I do that again?

I've changed a lot in five years since I started this thing, and I'm pretty sure those changes are reflected here, at least to a point. I'm still not where I want to be in life. In fact, I still don't really know what I want from life. I just know it isn't this situation. Yep, still trapped in my own existence. That part definitely hasn't changed, unfortunately.
I am, of course, partially to blame for my own situation, and I realize that. Other outside influences don't help, either. No need to bore you with details on such crap, so, like a good, or at least slightly standard person, I won't bother doing so, if, for no other reason, to spare you from having to read such crap.
I would apologize in advance otherwise, but, at this time, there is no point in doing so. That's already happened enough for various reasons over the course of my life. I continuously feel as if I should apologize for existing, but, again, that is a pointless exercise. While I generally enjoy pointless exercises, this one isn't one I want to bother dealing with.

On a completely unrelated tangent, it looks as if my Phonic Helix FW24 mk II, the bane of my existence for the last 3.5 months, is finally going away. It was returned to me on Friday in properly working condition, and I've already tentatively sold it to a guy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We'll see how that goes in a few hours, most likely. I am officially a digital console using person, something that the five years earlier version of myself would have balked at. Just so you all know, I still, even with all the flexibility, prefer a completely analog interface, but I can't deny the high convenience factor of digital, except for when things break, at which point, I can blame the digital board for all my issues, even when it is my fault, and has nothing at all to do with the technology. It's there, so use it, right?

Guess what was wrong with the phonic? Ladies and gentlemen, the board was in the shop for almost four months because of... a broken wire! Yes, that's right, one broken wire on the power supply, and it probably took the guy five minutes to fix it. As a result of all that, a bunch of paperwork, some general stupidity, and a few other things, I had to wait for nearly four months for such service. I thought the idea of sending it to a local place was, ya know, to perhaps get fast service. Not so much, I guess. TriTec Electronics of Greensboro, you suck! Had I known all that, I'd have saved a whole bunch of money and not bothered with a digital board, as I liked the sound I was getting from the old setup, minus the Behringer Squishalizer, perhaps. That and the TC Helicon VoicePrism are the next things to get rid of. I've been meaning to take all that stuff down to the local music-go-round, but haven't done so yet. They have a Lexicon MPX-100 over there, which was my first studio effects processor. I might see if they will take the Behringer Ultramizer as a straight up trade for that unit, although the last thing I need is another processor. It sure does have some nice reverb, though, better than the internal reverb on the PreSonus, I think. It has effects, but they're far from exciting, just two independent processors with reverbs and delays. The delays are standard, the reverbs are moderately not too bad. The Phonic actually has more effects, but none of them are particularly good, either.
The PreSonus effects are definitely not a Lexicon, or an Ensoniq DP-4, which, by the way, has one of the warmest sounding reverbs I've heard from something digital. It's also a signature sound, and, while some may hate it, I think it's absolutely lovely. One of these days, I'll spend some of my not so hard-earned cash on a dp-4, just so I can have some more effects I don't need, and that warm old reverb. I wish my Ensoniq TS-12 had inputs, as it has that reverb on it, thanks to a scaled-down DP-4 engine. I've often wondered if it has the Ensoniq vocoder, even though you wouldn't be able to use it. I'll bet the chip can do it, but they left it out of the keyboard's firmware for obvious reasons. Having no inputs leads to a very uninteresting time, as far as that goes.

Oh, yeah, but I shouldn't think about wanting to buy old/new gear now. Thanks to my PreSonus purchase, I won't be buying much for a while. I'm going to be a good boy, and save up for the trip to Phoenix this summer. Yeah, that's what I'll do... until I see something too tempting not to waste my savings on. That's right, I'm a responsible adult, and don't you forget it!

Now that I have fulfilled my obligatory fifth anniversary duties, I am free to do whatever I like. In this case, that doesn't mean much. Enjoy your life.

It's the last day of winter... It's Dynamic Range Day... It's... just another Saturday night in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA. Result: yet another timeless classic? is now available for download.

Here's what we've got going on this week:

• after the traditional first call breaks quite badly in a number of fun and interesting ways, the Radio Report with Josh brings forth interesting discussion about several things, including some possible future clips from the wonderful land of radio, this station in Alabama that still uses carts in this modern age, and something about cheerleaders. Can't wait to see what that's about, myself.


• Let's talk about radio some more with Monty. Who saw that coming? Anyone?


• After an appropriately broken clip from a newscast in 1997, a great lesson on mic technique (or not,)and Several things breaking, I was prompted, internally of course, to pull out the vocoder, a couple of keyboards, and did some terrible things as a result.


• Derek finally gets to talk for more than twelve seconds, at which point we discuss why he only had his board back from the shop for ten minutes, and talk about how cheap some radio stations are, after a question from Monty about radio stations using internet connections for syndicated content.


• In honor of Dynamic Range Day, Derek remixed Marvin Gay's "Real Thing" using modern mixing techniques in Reaper, and, in anticipation for next week's cheerleader thing, "Die Team Die!"


• How about some more vocoder badness? Sure, we can do that!


• A call from MaryAnn, in which she announces the return of her show... or maybe something else. MaryAnn's Landing?


• Mom shows up with drumsticks and weird noisy toys during MaryAnn's phone call, and does scary things as per usual.


• Venison calls in with some slight complaints, and is then distracted by an auto fire near his house. Oo, shiny burning metal thing!


• Monty's car is not on fire, apparently, so we talk about broadband instead. Another "who saw that one coming?" moment


• More keyboard/vocoder fun, this time with the "bye bye" song.

And there you have it, another week has shoved off. There's two hours of your life you'll never get back. Don't feel bad, I won't either.

The other day, I had a most enlightening conversation with someone on MSN Messenger. I don't know what the point was, where it came from, how it found me, or, in general, why.
I will, however, post the transcript for your enjoyment. Though it's rather short, it's still none the less interesting... or something.

Weird Person
;) hi
Me
herro.
Weird Person
how are you?
Me
I am standard. And yourself?
Weird Person
:) are you still in CHINA?
Me
Yeah, just having a good ol' time at Tienanmen Square since 1990 or so. Um... No.
Weird Person
oh.
we have new products of speaker
Me
That's rather convenient. I have old speakers from 1974, and like them a lot.
Weird Person
1974?
Me
Indeed. They are JBL 4311 studio reference monitors. All original components.
Weird Person
yeah
If you have time you can come here to have look thoes new modle 9F/932 NEW ASIA
Me
Well, that's great, but then I'd have to go to Asia to do that. And there, the conversation ended. Thanks for that, just when it started to get interesting, too. Shame that relationship couldn't have lasted longer.

I'm also amused that I wrote "herro" at this person, not knowing it would then ask about China. Maybe it thought I was there based on that response? I don't know. In any case, I do know that, as the world awakens, this Borris sleeps.

Oh, man. Do I really have to sit down and write another one of these things out? Well, the answer, actually, is no, but I'm going to do it anyway. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. OK, we're ready for action now.

This week's episode of Things and stuff, having occurred just before the jump to EDT (A.K.A. extra dumb time) in most of North America, is now available for download.

Because you now have a link to download it, you really don't need to read further for a description, since you can make one for yourself. Ah, yeah, ya know what? I think this time around, I'll just throw the link out there and run away. Have a good listen, if you're so inclined.
I'll just say that it has several interesting things, including rain, a new product for getting rid of ants, issues, problems, and content. OK. That's it for tonight. I can't stay awake any longer.

Hey, look! It's a blog entry that has nothing at all to do with Things and Stuff, and on a Saturday, too! I bet you didn't expect that, did you?
Oh, no, of course not! Why would I go and do something like that?

I'm here today because I became very bored, and decided to try a little experiment.

Many times at random points over the last few years, I've hung a set of microphones outside a window, turned on a streaming client, and let it go. Whatever happened outside could be brought directly to your face free of charge. Nice and cold in your home? Want to pretend you're somewhere else? Well, you could... at least as long as the mics were outside, and the stream was going.

I've always wanted to simply leave a pair of mics outside all the time, and leave it streaming, as well as having a way to listen locally without using the net.
So, I've setup a very cheap, but decent pair of Behringer dynamic microphones, in this case a set of XM8500's in an ORTF configuration. Though I'd rather use condensers for detail, these require no power, and would complain less about being drenched. Plus, the stereo spread isn't bad, although it's not omni-directional.
These mics are cheap, so if something kills them, I'm not too worried about it. If lightning strikes, I guess I'm screwed, but we'll see what that does when it happens... well, hopefully not.

This is running into a set of preamps on my Alesis Multimix8, which doesn't have much to do anymore, and, for now, is being brought to the digital world with a crappy Soundblaster USB mp3+, which is a little noisier than I'd like. The Alesis has a built-in USB chip, which is cleaner than the mp3+, but something happened to it, and the input is about 20db quieter than it should be.
The board and machine it's running on (an old HP E-Vectra 933mhz p3) are hanging out in the studio closet, making a lot more fan noise than usual with the higher CPU load. It used to only run the streams and controller for my Icom PCR-100 receiver. That software is cool, and doesn't bother running an encoder process if no one is listening, so the fan doesn't make a lot of noise. Unfortunately, it's noisier now, so I'll most likely kill this machine when I need to do something critical, since this is the only thing in the room that makes noise regularly (the studio box is on the other side of the wall from the microphones.)I'll probably insert some hardware compression, or at least a limiter, and a better sound interface at some point, but for now, I just wanted to see if this would work.
I don't even know how long I'll keep this on, or whether the people I live with will demand that I take the mics out of the back yard, and get them dead gum cables out of their way. I'd like to keep it up semi-permanently, as I think the idea of having streaming open mics outside somewhere is cool, and more people should do it.
The real test, of course, will happen when lots of rain comes through the area, which will probably happen on and off for a while. I can't wait to see how these little $20 mics handle that.
Yeah, I should have probably put these things in an enclosed area or something, but that's boring.

Next steps: upgrade to a better sound interface, insert compression (just a little,) run some cable to the studio board so I can bring it up down there, and a bunch of cable from downstairs to upstairs, so I can run it into the bedroom board as well. Will that actually happen? Who knows?

If you want to see what's going on outside the studio window, you can open the following link in your ogg capable media player of choice:
http://pdaudio.net:8888/outside.ogg.
If the link doesn't work (there's a chance it will only do so half the time,) copy and paste the address into your media player manually.

As I type this, the rain is starting to pick up. Here we go, or something! Let's see what it does! Hmm, that didn't sound good...

Two years to the day after the incredibly odd, strange, and definitely different stream from Nashville, including myself, Derek, Farhan, Kelly, Tremaine, Jose, Laurie, Clarence, eventually Kevin Reeves, and some other people I've probably forgotten by now, TBRN modestly presents the archive for March 6, 2010.
'OK, so why should I bother downloading this 112mb pile of crap then?'
Well, here's what happened during this particular show. Whether or not you download it is, of course, up to you, but it's available in either case.

• No one has respect for the portable Borris, and it gets thrown in the corner. Poor plastic person!


• Starting things out a little slowly, and without the traditional first call from Derek, which, honestly, I'm relying on a little too heavily for my own good, we get a shorter than usual first call from Josh instead.


• After discussing the weather, Allison Smith, and my board with a few callers, we hear from Old Man Weather, which then leads to the Kelly Michaels weather report from the Nashville stream two years ago. Shouldn't all weather reports be this fun?


• After the Mommy Call, "This is why I'm Blind," another highlight from this epic stream is thrown to the forefront.


• TBRN isn't the only thing around that's unprofessional and proud of it, as demonstrated by a very interesting and amusing clip from WQZZ, Utah, Alabama.


• Derek finally shows up, talks about the movie "Click," toilets, Kelly's brief return to Morganton on March 9 and the reasoning behind it, Nashville, the Kelly Michaels weather reports (which don't happen much anymore, since he's not around,) and some possibly fun ideas for the next TBRN broadcastathon.


• Victor Tsaran has a 7-string baratone guitar. I like it.


• Michael Kollwitz has a Chapman stick. I like it, too.


• Huskies, beatles, sheep, and boards round it out for this week.

There you have it. Another pointless thing out of the way. More pointlessness in weeks to come.

Hello everyone:

I'd like to apologize for my lengthy absence from writing here, even if it is only to post links to shows and their accompanying shownotes. I obviously haven't gotten around to moving this blog away from livejournal out of pure lazyness, which is, of course, the reason PDAudio.net has been dead for the past year or so as well. I really should do something about both of these things, although stuff is looking up in other areas. I may or may not have the nearly complete freedom I so enjoy soon enough, which is perfectly fine by me, given the potential for better things to come as a result.

In the meantime, I'll throw an entire month's worth of Things and Stuff archives at you, all at once. What, is an average workday of saturation too much for you? Oh well, that's too bad! Have it anyway! Oh, and for the curious, if you were to play every episode of Things and Stuff from 2005 to now back-to-back, the playlist would run for about 15 days. Isn't that special?

Things and Stuff for February 6, 2010

Nearly a month late, this show is now available for download.
In this episode:

• Derek calls into the show using the sip client on his newly acquired Nokia E63, drastically improving the sound of "the standard first call," while Borris drools over a Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 digital mixer, something he never thought he would do. At this point, the Phonic is stil in the shop, and the purchase of a new, non-phonic board is looking very appealing.


• Borris talks a little about the time spent with Melanie, Derek, Bianca and others the week before, and goes into detail of the fake productive week.


• To start a string of repeat callers, a bad person from Florida/Arazona/somewhere in the pacific ocean shows up, and makes things... interesting?


• Mom shows up, and things break more than they ever have. Stilted conversation, awkward silence, etc. Just one of those moments where things just don't work.


• After playing a track from Pink Floid's Dark Side of the Moon, we hear a bit from the band itself on the creation of one of the album's more memorable tracks.


• In place of the standard mommy call, with the use of an old Sony Vaio Pentium III laptop, Fideliphone, a speaker, and a microphone, bad things happen in the living room. Let's shove random noises around, and see what happens. Probably the most amusing bit of the entire show.


• Another one of those famous Borris hits: "She Turned It Awwf!"


• Of Venison, Texas Instruments TI99A computers, artificial intelligence, and other scary things...


• Because it's near the end of the show, and Borris is tired, let's default to playing a bunch of random clips, which spawns another couple of repeat callers... again...


• The show ends, Borris is relieved,goes to bed, and stops writing in the third person.

If you couldn't tell, not one of my favorites, but oh well. Sorry for the random pops and clicks, but the standard archiving solution broke again, and we had to rely on Edcast, which we always hate doing, as it's archiving capability is rather anemic, and breaks easily.
OK, he didn't stop writing in the first person. He lied, but will do so now.

Things and Stuff for February 13, 2010

And now, it's time for another archive!
On this one:

• The standard phone call, as well as all subsequent ones, are a bit noisier than usual (fixed to a point in the archive after the stream) due to an error on my part, and a change of hardware. Kids, remember: when there is any bit of noise on the phone's high end, don't run a harmonic exciter on that channel strip, and have the high end enhancement cranked up to max, ok?


• The phone system has been upgraded to include g.722 support on most phones in the house, yielding high quality internal calls. This is demonstrated as a fake wireless microphone using a Siemens A580 IP dect cordless phone.


• Let's have a tribute to the most pointless day of the year, which falls on the day after this particular show is presented, while at the same time, proving that sensorship for the sake of it is more fun than it should be.


• ON February 13, 1970, Black Sabbath came into existence. Forty years later, a rather strange tribute to the band is presented on a little known internet radio station called TBRN, featuring the Cardigans, the Bad Plus, and Wesley Willis.


• ACcording to Venison, autotune is "the new reverb." We also discover that crying babies through autotune are fun.


• The first "high quality Mommy call" occurs. Looky, she has some highs now! We discuss the olympics, the horrible new We Are the World 2010, and other things.


• Let's have an ambient track created using an old analog Arp 2500 modular synthesizer and a step sequencer, because I like things like that, followed by a very nicely restored Bill Evans track from vinyl. I like those, too.


• A demonstration of Radio Time, one of my more pointless inventions, which doesn't work at the time of this writing... Oops?


• To the tune of a loop provided by my Korg Kaossilater and FX Radio, let's call a bunch of random toll free numbers, and get absolutely nowhere.


• And now, a couple of random tracks that came with my Sandisk Sansa Fuze mp3 player, providing a bunch of songs from people no one has ever heard of as a prise for buying that particular product.


• Now, out of pure unadultorated boredom that so typifies the last few minutes of one of these things, let's play a keyboard to a loop of ticky tocky clocky things.


• To round out the show, we talk about old portable mp3 players, old versions of windows, and moo.

Things and Stuff for February 20, 2010

This show is now available for your face, and had plenty of issues.
For some reason, I had reverb on the microphone through the entire show. I only realized this afterward, and really have no idea why I did that. I'd also like to apologize for the slight dynamic fluctuations on this archive. Oh well, just adds to the flavor, I guess
Anyway, here's what it did:

• Well, I've gone and done it now... Remember the PreSonus board I was drooling over a couple of weeks ago? I bought one two days before this show aired live, and thus, this is the last regular show using the Yamaha MG124C that was temporarily replacing the Phonic in the studio. The Phonic is still in the shop, although it's supposedly fixed now, three months to the day after I sent it in. So much for fast local service, I guess.


• To make up for all those long, annoying songs that show up and get stuck in your head, have a whole bunch of short ones.


• Proving that Grandstream IP phones have issues with call waiting dropping audio on one side, a bunch of people call in and break things pretty successfully. Note: this function is fixed with a firmware update that I can't seem to download no matter what I do, so no call waiting for a while. I could be sorry, but I don't think I'll do that.


• With a call from Josh comes some good news, some standard news, and a bunch of questions about SoundForge.


• During the standard Mommy Call, the Icecast server completely flops over and dies. Derek calls in and alerts us to this fact, and we successfully revive it on air... or, at least, on archive, since there was no air at the time, fake or otherwise.


• As a result of all that, let's have the segmentation fault blues, some bluegrass, some jazz, and the end of a much shorter than usual show.

Thank goodness that's over!

Things and Stuff for February 27, 2010

Well, here we go, ladies and gentlemen... My first show with a digital board. Never thought I'd do it, but here it is.

• You can laugh along with me in your book. You'll know it's time to laugh when you hear something break... Derek did, anyway, and so did Bianca. Two first calls in one. Oh boy!


• How about some more issues with call waiting, since I obviously forgot to turn that off last week.


• Is it Utah, Alabama, or neither? Josh Owens has more information, discussion of city states, country cities, Quiet American, and old radio things. Seems to be a trend when he calls in for some reason... No, really?


• In celebration of the new board existing in the studio, I dropped the first board used on the show, an old Behringer MX2642A 16-channel, 4-bus, now broken board down the basement stairs, and, of course, recorded it. Not as fun as it sounds, but you'll have that.


• After a call from Dan, where the new board is discussed at length, we have a sample of a not quite finished drum sound, brought to you by the processing of the board. It still needs work, but it's something to have.


• Uncle Meet, the Mommy Call, playing around with the PreSonus mixer's onboard effects processor for a short time, and playing some keys with a bed in the background (ya know, to keep people from ripping things out...)


• More beautifully restored Jazz from Count Bassy, followed by a vocoder, a phone call from Bryan (who is now a self-proclaimed jerk,) and an incredibly expensive way to sensor yourself on the air.


• How about some Chinese Cajan Jambalaya? um... OK then! Thanks, Josh.


• Some British guy recreated the Bladerunner theme using a Virus Access T virtual analog synthesizer, and we decided that was fun.


• Canned music, FX Radio, filters, vocoders and issues round up this show, to the relief of most listeners, I'm sure.

All right, I've successfully paid my debt to society, or at least this tiny circle of it. I may post a review of this new board from the perspective of a blind wannabe sound tech at some point... or maybe not. For the most part, it's easy to run with no vision, has very few menus, and the ones that do exist don't wrap.
For now, I'll end this thing, because it's gotten to the point where typing for extended periods of time is becoming more and more painful. As I don't particularly enjoy that feeling, I'll run away, and attempt to be slightly productive. I have a few pending things to do, believe it or not, so I'd better do them. Enjoy all these shows, and I promise I won't let them stockpile for a month anymore, if not for your sake, then at least mine, so I don't have to type all this stuff up at once again.

Good hello, Live Journal:

It seems you now do bad things, like throwing trogens at unsuspecting users of your services. As I don't support such actions, I've decided, after storing this blog here for five years (which, lately, has become little more than a repository for Things and Stuff shownotes,) will no longer exist as it does.
As soon as some things are in place, I'll be exporting this blog to Wordpress, which will be available at www.BadForYou.net, just as this blog is now.
Perhaps I'll keep this lj around for the express purpose of importing current posts to the new blog, so users of this site can still view my uninteresting posts. Maybe not. Oh well. It was fun, in either case.
In the meantime, I'll go back to being sick, and reading hp fanfics, because it passes the time.

I would say all the normal things about this show, but I can't. Why? Because, even for something completely non-standard, this thing is... well... completely non-standard. It's the not normal of the non-normal. It's broken personified, to the maximum power of things that are broken. On top of that, it's even more broken than that... OK, so basically, I will shut up about what it is, and give you this link for the show, featuring myself and Melanie Kotch.
'Well, what's so great about it, then?'

I'll just go ahead and tell you that the description for this week's show will suck a lot more than the show itself did, including bad grammar, but here goes anyway.

• The theme for this show, more than ever, is "I broke it!"


• North Carolina got a whole bunch of snow. After the first traditional call from Derek, a song was played to properly commemorate the occasion... which promptly broke.


• One of a couple of calls from "the duck," breaking even more things.


• Venison calls in to tell us about an experiment involving alcohol and eggs, which broke?


• On the same note, a gassy fire... Sure, why not?


• Josh calls in, Mommy shows up, and things get really, really confusing... that is to say, broken. Baby pictures included, free of charge.


• Melanie and I went to a Carolina Hurricanes game on Thursday, wherein the New York Islanders forgot to show up, and lost 4 to 1. A few highlights, including drunk people chanting slower and slower as the game progressed.


• I said something that caused lots of laughs. I won't say what it was, because it was just... bad.


• Annoying people, broken "oh no" loops, and drum kits, oh my!


• Venison's Alter ego finally figures out that Melanie is "the girl who likes hummers.," and breaks more things as a result.


• Let's try, and fail, to put annoying people in boxes. Didn't work so well... Let's make them fall down the stairs instead.


• Mary Ann calls in, and proves that presents are meant to be broken.


• Venison's Alter-ego shows up again to tell us about some amazing products on sale now.


• Fire drills, hacking phone systems, and many more broken things from a call from Chris West round up this week's squash box.


• As per usual, quite a bunch of other things happened. Find out for yourself what those were.

There you have it, the most enjoyable show of 2010 thus far. Have fun, kids!

Oh, crap! Looks like it's time for another one of these things.

On this weeks' particularly strange show:

• Although I should have stopped long ago, I'm still amused by one particular effect preset I created on the Quad IV processor last year, and used it on a few phone calls, including the traditional first call from Derek.


• The now nearly traditional second caller, Josh Owens, shows up to talk about radio stuff (as per usual,) bad weather, washing cd's in the laundry, the fact that North Carolina's record low temperature was recorded on January 23, 1985 (-34º F,) and other stuff.


• A phone call from Mary Ann leads to discussion of the world-famous "bad for you" effect, brought to you by a Dell Dimention 8200 in 2005, accidental mid-western accents, and a demonstration of the random cart categories for interjecting noises and comments into the show.


• This week's Mommy call reveals that I missed some fun things on Friday night involving lots of cop cars, which is, naturally, rather unfortunate.


• Thanks to a couple of strange Australians, we hear the amazing sound of four berocca multi-vitamin tablets being dissolved in two glasses of water, in stereo, of course.


• Did you know that Ronnie Milsap promoted the use of Windows 3.1? Well, maybe not.


• Things expire over time, but does time itself actually expire and time out?


• Patrick Kelly shows up after not existing for a while. Many things are discussed, including fun experiments with dry ice.


• The sound track for nothing at all?


• I finally have news about the Phonic board. TriTech has *finally* been approved by American Music and Sound to fix it under the warranty. Maybe I'll get it back before next year now instead of 2021, as was originally suggested by the length of time it takes people to actually do things around here.


• Would anyone like a Seth Thomas pocket watch?


• Mary Ann finally got called out for something she did 15 or 20 years ago regarding a grandfather clock, thanks to a conversation at dinner. Cute how these things turn out, isn't it?


• Let's have Christmas on an acid trip, brought to you by what had better be a mislabeled cd. If it isn't, someone has issues.


• Time to play the keyboard some more.

And, as they say, that's that.

Melanie is coming down for a week on Wednesday, meaning Borris goes to another hockey game on Thursday, and, depending on what's going on, there may or may not be a show on Saturday, January 30. If there is, it should be an interesting one. Stay tuned, as per usual.

Hello, and welcome to another week... except not, because it's over. As a result, a new episode of Things and Stuff is now available for you to play with.

On this messed up edition:

• After the first standard call from Derek, relaying some amusing things as usual, Josh calls in and discusses more old radio stuff, broken English, and Redneck Tech, among other subjects.


• A new possible segment of the show, things you know but might not understand, starting with Sting and the Police... in Japanese?


• A call from MaryAnn, including a demonstration of the Moshi talking clock, and why it's a bad idea to use as an alarm, discussion of the Korg KO1 I bought last week, expensive remotes with touchscreens, and the Logitech Squeezebox.


• After a few false starts, playing with the talkbox a bit much, and a call from Alexander, we get a groove going on the Korg KO1 that I call the extended dial tone remix. It will be obvious why, I think.

Congratulations, there's this week's show in the recycle bin. More of the same wonderful crap next week.

Here we are again: the end of another week, most of which I spent in bed, feeling like crap. Way to start out 20o10, huh?

As the standard cycle of things go, another Things and Stuff archive is now available.
Here are just a few of the noteworthy things from this week's show:

• Instead of the hacked, duct taped system of using the Alesis Multimix8 through the Yamaha Motif as a master compressor, this week's show was brought to you by my Yamaha MG124C console, XLR out to the analog inputs on the Delta Audiophile 24/96, using the DBX compressor on mic, a two-stage hybrid compression system+side chain on the phone, and Sony WaveHammer and Smooth/Enhanse plugins on the stream for mastering, otherwise known as all that for that. This board doesn't have master inserts, and I did try putting a hardware compression solution directly in place between the board and the sound card, with some pretty nasty results. I think this sounds better than that would have.


• After the standard first phone call from Derek, we heard from Josh Owens again, with another unusually long phone call, reminiscing about the good old days (well, for us, anyway) of ham radio, old local phone systems, and too many random things to mention here, including more unexpected news relating to said person.


• Last week, I bought a Sansa Sandisk 2gb mp3 player for $20, which runs Rockbox, and can be expanded to 16gb with a MicroSD card. We learn why using it's built-in recorder as a drum miking solution is a bad idea, unless you like that "low-fi" effect, or something.


• We finally have solid proof from Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve that the year should be pronounced 20o10.


• This week's Mommy Call breaks in an interesting way when Dad decides to pick up another phone. Zoom ATAs don't like it when multiple phones are off the hook, resulting in me being looped back into myself and trying to compensate for it. Oh, yeah, and my father is weird.


• How's the Randolph County Sheriff communications frequency doing? Find out speratically throughout the rest of the show.


• A call from a Canadian listener prompts discussion of many things.


• Carbon mics and ping pong effects -- a great way to waste your Saturday night.


• I can't find what I'm looking for, but I do have a talkbox, and a lot of time on my hands, apparently.


• Let's have some out-of-tune side-band from a Canadian HF receiver.


• Kelly the Eyes makes an appearance from Phoenix, acting as the last call, and provider of typical bad humor.

As per usual, other things happened that aren't logged here, but where would all the fun go if things were properly detailed? My response to that: Let's not!

Next week may possibly feature random things from the Korg KO1 Kaossilator I ordered yesterday, but don't have yet. This is a portable, battery-powered phrase synthesizer which does several strange things. Not what most would consider a serious instrument, but it looked fun, so why not? Oh, yeah, and it was cheap, so there's another reason... or something like that.

This fun show, being the first from 20o10, deserves a proper description. Really it does! Thing is, I don't feel like writing one. It was fun, and included, among other things, me making an absolute fool out of myself with a talkbox, a short song about 20o10, Rusty in Orchestraville, which was recorded in the late 1940's and features lots of sonovox, and other fun things.
I rather enjoyed doing this one, but I don't enjoy staying awake anymore. I have been told, internally, to shut right on down. And really, who am I to argue with myself? Oh, yeah, me!

By the way, for anyone curious, I WANT MY BOARD BACK! OK, I'll shut up about that for now, but damn!

'Oh no! Is it time for one of those boring, yearly reflective things again?'

Yep, sorry, 'fraid so.

'Aww, man! I hate those!'

Well, you know how to stop reading, then, don't you?

'True, you have a point.'

OK, now that we've gotten rid of him, here we go with the general bad things that are the typical ramblings from this particular person, prompted by the end of time... or, at least, the end of this period of time which calls itself MMIX, or 2009, otherwise known as -3 B.A. (three years before Armageddon, since we already know the world is going to simply shove off and stop existing as we know it in 2012, right?)

According to history, 2009, overall, wasn't such a great year, even to the very last minute. I'll leave it to others far more qualified than myself to express all that stuff, perhaps reverendbigdawg since he is the history major around here, and, to be frank, I'm lazy, and don't feel like conducting proper research, and referencing specific events to back up the case that 2009 was a sucky year in general for quite a large number of individuals, groups, and fashions. It feels too much like going back to school for a few minutes, which I currently have no desire to do. This could change, however, born out of just the right combination of restlessness and boredom, but for now, let's not.

2009 was a good year to die, apparently, with an unusually high number of celebrity casualties. Incidentally, I've always loved the use of that word, casualty, in that context. To me, it always implied that the end of a human life was casual, and didn't matter too much if it happened or not... Anyway, Some of the more visible/noteworthy deaths included the likes of Paul Harvey, Les Paul, Billy Mays, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, David Carradine, Brittany Murphy, Patrick Swayze, Wayne Allwine (the third official voice of Mickey Mouse,) Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul and Mary,) Henry Gibson (the voice of Wilbur in the 1973 version of Charlotte's Web,) James Sullivan (drummer for Avenged Sevenfold,) Dewey Martin (drummer for Buffalo Springfield,) Billy Powell (from Lynyrd Skynyrd,) Blair Lent (the guy who wrote Tikki Tikki Tembo,) Kelly Groucutt (bass player for Electric Light Orchestra,) Eric Woolfson (keyboardist and singer for the Alan Parsons Project,) and many, many more. For a much more complete list of this year's noteworthy and not so noteworthy dead people, you can run over here. If you died this year, and you don't find your name on the list, feel free to add yourself, then tell us about it later.

For me, 2009 wasn't so bad, despite what happened in the rest of the world. I can think of quite a large number of people who would disagree, and with good reason, but honestly, this has been one of my better years in recent history.
Of course, the big highlights included going to London for Andre and Kirsten's wedding in April with Brandon, Realtime 2009 and 2009.5, hanging out in Florida for almost a week in July for the ACB's annual national convention with Derek, Kelly, Stephen, Nick, Monty, some Justins, Brandon, and others, spending time with Melanie in mid November, and crashing Randy Gilkey's place in West Virginia just this month, with Derek and... Brandon? Wow, he just keeps popping up, doesn't he? Considering he's probably a good 2500 miles or more away from me, I've sure seen a lot of him this year. Talk about impulse!
Of course, Christmas with the family was fun and interesting as always, nicely rounding things out, even if Tommy kept losing his duck. If you know Tommy, you might know why this was such a big deal, and caused some issues throughout Christmas day, but that's neither here nor there.

Also, this year marks the fifth anniversary of the Beyond Radio Network's existence. We've been through some great times, and some rough times, and we're still alive to talk about it, something which I honestly didn't think would happen, even a year after it started.
TBRN has brought a lot of people together in ways that wouldn't have happened otherwise, introduced a bunch of interesting technical innovations in all the wrong places, and caused several cats to have problems over the past five years. I would say 'here's to another five', but let's be realistic, and not have any expectations for the future, shall we? After all, that's the proper pessimistic thing to do.
Many people have come and gone over the years, but the bulk of the core that started this project is still around, with some recent additions, which are always welcome. Yep, we're still passively looking for those.

Incidentally, if you want to hang out and text chat with several TBRN people, as well as other random folks who thought it was a good idea at the time, we have an IRC server at irc.tbrn.net:6667. Join #TheLobby, and fun things will happen to you... assuming people are awake, though it's pretty active for a small group of people.
Alternatively, a TeamTalk v4.0 server is available at onj1.andrelouis.com:10333/10333. You can get TeamTalk from Bearware.DK. For blind people, install the classic client for improved accessibility, and some missing features... erps!

Back to 2009:
Unfortunately, a new annual tradition seems to be showing up lately, that being the death of my mixing console at least once a year. Last year, I was without my Phonic board for roughly two months, followed by a nice little flood in the basement soon after getting it back, which set things back another couple of weeks. Now, the board is dead again, has been since November, and I have no idea when I'll get it back, thanks to a subcontractor in flux, lots of paperwork, and other bad things. It turns out that nick6489, who has the same board I have, also now has the same problem with his board! Isn't that cute? I got a Yamaha MG124C for Christmas from Melanie and Derek, which is the new, very cool upstairs board. I could take it downstairs and use it in the studio for a while, but it doesn't fit on a rack, and I don't have a lot of table space. So, for now, I'm using the little Alesis Multimix8 USB rigged through the inputs of the Yamaha Motif XS, coming out of that through SP/Dif to my Delta, and generally making a mess of things. It's a stupid setup, but it works for basic broadcasting needs, including non-software compression, or, at least compression not rendered by a PC, until I can get the Phonic back. As for real production: not quite, although I did manage to record the carbon song, a tribute to carbon phones to the tune of jingle bells, without the use of a board at all, only using the sp/dif output from my TC Helicon Voice Prism and the Yamaha Motif XS for sequencing, so I guess I can do stuff in a pinch. It's just a lot less convenient to do so at the moment.
Speaking of Phonic, I'm really rather tired of dealing with their crap, nice though it sounds when it all works, but I can't find anything analog with all the same flexibility and nice audio for under roughly 2 grand, not counting discounts from fun places like Full Compass, and I *refuse* to buy anything from Behringer again (at least the big stuff that matters,) or a digital board, even if I did have the money for it. Sorry, won't do it! Digital's great, but I want to know where everything is just by looking, not going into menus to do even the most basic of mixing tasks, like panning channels around, etc. Derek's board has made me want one even less than I already didn't, despite the conveniences, like flying automated faders, decent internal dynamics processing on each channel, the ability to copy parameters between channels, buses and sends, as well as other related things... Oh, hang on, that was an unrelated tangent, wasn't it? We're supposed to be talking about this year, aren't we? Well, let's get back to that, then.

One of the most pointless arguments in the world, in my opinion, comes up around this time every ten years. Does the end of 2009 really signify the end of a decade? For that matter, did 2000 officially start off the 21st century and the new millennium, or did that happen in 2001?
As far as most of society is concerned, base-ten, from zero to nine, a ten year period, is just as good a place to start and end a decade as any. Technically, as there is no representation for zero in the roman numeral system, and thus, no year zero between 1 B.C and 1 A.D, the arguement can very easily be stated, with backup, that things should go from one to ten, meaning that the 21st century, the current decade, and the new millennium did, in fact, not start until 2001. My Sharp EL-640 talking clock/calculator/calendar would agree with this philosophy, since it goes no further back than 1901. One observation would have the new decade starting on March 3, 2014. Yet another one has it starting sometime in September, 2017, I think. Ask an Ethiopian for more details on that one.
Of course, the media says that 2009 ends the decade, 2010 starts the next one, and everyone else needs to go home and try again. This seems to infuriate a small group of technically and politically correct minded people, which amuses me to no end. Folks, it's the end of a ten year period. A new decade ends every year from ten years ago. Does it *really* matter so much? I mean, really? 2010/2011, Nothing is going to be any different either way, you know! SHUT UP! I honestly don't care, as if I haven't made that clear at this point.

On an unrelated note, 2010, represented in roman numerals, is mmx. Does that mean 2010 is the year of the old Intel instruction set? MMX was introduced to Intel's Pentium processor in 1996, and now, 14 years later, we will have a year long celebration of the wonderful things you could do with all that added functionality and larger cache. So, we thank you, Vinod Dhan, John H. Crawford, and many others, for developing the original Intel Pentium, which would eventually have that celebrated MMX technology, which we can now dedicate an entire year to worshiping... or something, if you're into that kind of thing. even if you're not, it's still fun to say that 2010 is the year of the old Intel instruction set. If nothing else, it will get funny looks thrown in your general direction, and may even get you ostracized from certain social gatherings, just for good measure.

I've also heard 2009 having been referred to as "the year of much fail." Speaking of failure, here's a list of the fifty worst gadgets of the decade. There are some really fun ones here, definitely worth a read.

As I write this, it's 8:25 PM on December 31, 2009, although this entry won't be posted until after the start of the next one, due to this very boring, pointless, and generally dumb tradition I've had for the past three years of standing outside at the end of the driveway with a recorder and some microphones, archiving the result of New Year's celebrations in 'da hood'. If you're really bored while virtually waiting for this year's deal to be recorded and uploaded, which, of course, you won't be, since this entry won't actually be posted to the interwebs until after that occurs, you can download the following three files:

• 2007 featuring some rain, and the no longer updating Bec, recorded with an Edirol R1 and the Wizzzoe mics


• 2008 recorded with the Zoom H4 and Cad M179's on a Jecklin disk


• 2009 recorded with the same setup as 2008, featuring the usual fireworks, some guns, and a Kwanzaa celebration at the church across the street.

It's always fun to see what stupid things people will do around here. Will this one be any fun? Who knows... As they say, stay tuned and find out.

I've been writing 2010 all this time, but it's my personal belief that 2010 sounds wrong, and leaves you looking for more that just isn't there. Even two thousand and ten sounds better, because that 'and' hangs around to bridge the gap. 20 and 10 wouldn't work too well either. Not enough stress on the 'and', in my opinion.
Thus, dgl1984 and I came up with 20o10 quite a number of years ago to fill the void, just like we now refer to the year 2000 as 20o0, because it's more interesting that way. Interestingly enough, we both did this not having met each other yet, which I personally find rather amusing. Thus, from this point on, especially in speech, I will refer to the year 2010 as 20o10, and there's really not much you can do about it. Sure, it's technically incorrect, and my mother doesn't agree with it, but I don't really care very much. So there!

It's now 10:23 PM EST, and I should probably be a little paranoid, and make sure my h4's batteries are charged.
Oh, good. They are. We're setup to record at 24/96 with lots of headroom.

10:40 PM EST: Time to synchronize the trusty reliable Sharp Talking Time I.
Right, now that's done...

11:30 PM EST: It's raining. I get to stand in the rain, which is fine, since I wanted to do that anyway.
12:34 AM
Well, that was pretty boring, but now, I can throw the intro to 20o10, complete with an interrupting phone call, me being bored and tooting horns at people, and not much else. I think I used a little too much dynamic compression. Yeah, not as fun as some previous years, but, after all, you'll have that. It's all part of the experience.

Enjoy your new year, new decade, whatever you do. We'll do this again, or something like it, in 2011. By the way, 20O11 doesn't work. Thank you.

Well, what do you know? We've almost *finally* made it to the end of 2009, which, for me, didn't suck as badly as it did for other people, and for history in general... but more about that at a later time. For now, I modestly present the last Things and Stuff archive for 2009.
Here are some of the highlights:

• After the standard first call from dgl1984, we have a rare appearance from freakyfwoof, who, as it turns out, also did something rare for him these days... a show!


• Among other fun things, I received a Rocktron Banshee talkbox for Christmas. I explain what that is, how it works, and naturally, do many bad things with it throughout the course of the show.


• I was apparently bored enough to make a Christmas tribute to carbon phones, including lots of obvious autotune... then share it with the world.


• The Phonic mixing console still isn't back in the studio. Find out why... Oo, isn't this exciting?


• Ode to... stupid?


• A tribute to my Yamaha PSS-560 keyboard, or at least it's drums, which turned 23 years old on Christmas Eve.


• Due to a relatively low listener count, especially at the end, lots more tracks were played than usual. Oh well, I should do that more often anyway.


• Sure, let's talk about TBRN's early days, as we tend to do around this time every year...


• There is always hope, but supplies are limited.


• The radio is broken.


• Hello.


• As always, other things.

As a random note, I did this entire show with no effects processing, other than compression and the talkbox, which isn't really an effects processor since it's actually a physical/mechanical thingy. Also, no one told me the show was so quiet as I was streaming. I had to squish it a lot later to get it to a decent level. Thanks, guys... or something?

In other not quite news, I will hopefully write in these virtual pages more often with something other than links to shows, although that requires an upgrade to life first, as I haven't had much to say lately. For those who really want to keep up with the insubstancial details of my life, you can either friend me on Facebook or follow @BorrisInABox on Twitter. Twitter is updated more than Facebook, but I try to cross-post the really interesting stuff.

Well, here we are, the last Saturday, and thus, the last actual Things and Stuff before Christmas 2009, although I will probably do something dumb on Christmas eve.
'What did it do?

• The phonic board is still being fixed (maybe). The show starts out with a very bad side-effect of using a keyboard as a master processor, but it was left in for the amusement factor.


• It snowed in North Carolina yesterday, which naturally made the state fold up and shut down, however, it was worse in West Virginia. This among other things was discussed with the first three callers to the show, Derek Lane, Josh Owens, and Randy Gilkey.


• Randy Gilkey... good ol' boy from West Virginia... does the Electric Slide? That's right! Here what Randy doesn't want you to know about him... that he actually enjoys it.


• We find out what Christmas Clunkies are, what they have to do with my mother, and why they are a bad idea in general.


• William the printed circuitboard made himself known today, existing in my Zoom h4 recorder, which broke, and was later fixed.


• Toys that play/sing Christmas songs in Arabic: do they exist?


• Cad fart?


• Let's revisit creating songs using only a calculator, Sound Forge's tone generator, and manually quantizing everything, and demo a partially finished project using this method of fake music creation.


• The mix bus, a new show on tbrn... or not?


• Of course, Other things.

Congratulations, you've almost reached the end of the year. Just one of these boring things left, and 20o10 will exist to do possible fun things to you! Note that 20o10 is not a typo. As I have told my friends and family, I will be calling the next year 20o10, not 2010, because it just sounds more interesting that way. I don't particularly care about correctness, so too bad! Enjoy!

My Phonic board is broken. Did that stop me from doing what I do best, I.E. wasting time, energy, and resources for not very much other than my own enjoyment, and hopefully that of at least two other people? Of course not! As a result, this week's show is now downloadable. In this show:

• We learn the day's true date, November 35, 1990-19.


• The current issues with Phonic, TriTech Electronics (who are, according to Phonic, supposedly authorized to fix my board under the manufacturer's warranty, although they claim otherwise), is discussed, as well as a description of this show's very convoluted broadcasting setup. Just for the info, this is probably the weirdest one I've used to date, and includes a keyboard being used as a master compressor.


• Wo, where'd that come from? A totally unexpected phone call from a long-time family friend, Josh Owens, which lead to an interesting discussion about radio, greyhound buses, West Virginia, Christmas, and many other things. This is a longer phone call than usual, as it was so unexpected, given that Josh had no regular computer access the last time we spoke, and, in fact, didn't really know how to use one that well.


• A standard fallback, going through production libraries at random, leads to a few interesting things, including showcasing some very nasty scratchy pots on the current broadcast board.


• Let's have a Sennheiser MKE2002+dummy head demo from 1973.


• Why wasn't the popular Beatles song 'Let It Be' called 'Let It Generally Exist' instead?


• What Things and Stuff episode would be complete without playing with an effects processor or two, even on a scaled-down streaming setup?


• If you don't have a phone booth, you can put a phone call in a box... Well, I can, so I did.

And there you have it, another show thingy has passed us by. As a reminder, Things and Stuff won't be on next week, since I'll be at Randy's place, for which I am leaving in about 10 hours. Maybe I should start packing? Yeah... Maybe. If possible, I will try to stream at least one of Randy's live gigs, but there isn't a lot of 3g coverage in West Virginia, unless you're in Charleston, Huntington, Parkersburg, or Wheeling. Maybe we'll get lucky, and have some available wifi somewhere. Who knows? Stay tuned and find out, because, after all, it's something to do.

Today, we have several stream archives available for you, the strange, bored person who likes that sort of thing.

PDAudio Realtime 2009.5

On Friday, November 27, 2009, P&D Audio Productions Realtime 2009.5 took place in the beautiful bedroom studio of one Derek Lane. Quite a number of bad, abnormal, and generally dumb things happened during the course of the stream, which, of course, is only to be expected at this point.
Here are just a few such examples:

• Autotune the blues, a prime example of why Derek and myself should never be given access to studio equipment


• slide whistles through autotune are fun.


• So are 1-a-cans with guitar slides.


• TBRN.AM, a good idea or not?


• Uncle Hanson's redneck poetry... enough said?


• Swedish disney songs... Sure, why not?


• How about a wire tape machine playing back a recording of an atomic bomb test?

All this and more can be found in this clickable link. I Think this may have been the shortest realtime stream to date, although this made it no less enjoyable for me.

PDAudio Cartime 2009.5

Adding to the shortest ever series, we bring you CarTime 2009.5, which only lasted 26 minutes due to being late, thanks to a few technical issues.
For those who don't know, CarTime is so named because the streams are done live from the car on the way back from Derek's place. Every one we've tried to do while taking Derek back from mine has completely and totally failed, and this one came close to not existing at all. Fortunately, it did manage to work, and was apparently more stable than any other stream we've done from the car, although it started later than we would have liked. Unfortunately, we couldn't take phone calls (again), but the messengers worked. Although the original stream was done at 24 kbps mono to improve the bandwidth to sound ratio, the archive is in stereo. So, even if you heard it live, you may have missed something interesting. Congratulations to you! Now you can hear just what you missed, and then say "Wow, was that really worth it?"

Things and Stuff for November 28, 2009?

Well... um... I haven't sent my board off to be fixed yet, though I plan on doing so this week. It's gotten even worse than the last time you all heard it in action. TO prove it, instead of a real show, have this fake one as I demonstrate why I didn't actually do a show this week. I think you'll understand, and I hope you'll forgive me. Hey, you can't say I didn't actually do a show, now can you?

What now?

Derek and myself are going to visit Randy Gilkey up there in West Virginia where it's all relative, so our respective shows won't be on for a couple of weeks. Naturally, we'll make up for it by doing strange, possibly random things while there. Of course, I encourage you to stay tuned to the website and TBRN's Twitter for all the latest news, and stuff. No, before you ask, I will not start a news show, and call it News and Stuff, amusing though the concept is to me, for a few seconds, anyway.

Proving that I'm still dedicated to the fine art of completely wasting time, this week's show is now consumable. It's probably not very tasty, but feel free to ingest it at your leisure... or something.

On this weeks highly enjoyable show:

• Although it's not terribly obvious unless pointed out specifically, my Phonic Helix Board fw24 MKII, the console I use to produce Things and Stuff, and many other fine? things, is having some power supply problems, and will most likely be shipped off to Florida for repair in a few days. Not happy about this, you know. It's the kind of problem I only know will get worse, so I'd better do something about it now.


• A fake section called "why I shouldn't own a studio" was introduced, including bad drumming, and a cover of a Beatles track I did while under the influence of a headache on Friday. Sorry about the nasty sound from the floor tom.


• We hear from the 1956 RCA MK II synthesizer, and explain very briefly how it worked, on the fundamental level.


• Mommy reports nothing at all, which is becoming more and more standard in these parts, now that all the loud fighting neighbors have moved away.


• We briefly discuss and demonstrate the G722 codec on a Snom 320 IP phone, and wish all phones could sound like that.


• Let's have fun with recordings made from my Icom tuner over the week, as well as an incredibly inefficient but amusing way to communicate with the show.


• Thanks to Kyle, a discussion of the Large Hadron Collider occured, including several possible theories as to why it didn't work originally, which leads to the world having never been destroyed, of course.


• Bored enough to count from 11:48 PM to 11:49 PM? I was, apparently.


• Random crap was added to the end of the archive to make it exactly two hours long.


• As per usual, other stuff happened that never quite made it to these pages when it actually came to writing these fake show notes.

And there you have it, people. Another week over, another show gone. Next week should, theoretically, play host to PDAudio Realtime 2009.5 from Derek's place on Friday, assuming it all works out. What it will do, I've no idea, but then again, things work best that way.

Have fun, and don't die.

And now, on the forth anniversary of a very memorable show from Portland with myself and maryannn, one of the more unusual shows in a long while comes to you a lot later than normal, and is available for download.

This show is a great example of how to recover from technical issues that make things impractical to deal with, and end up doing something interesting anyway. In this case, Melanie and myself streaming from the netbook on the hotel's internet connection wasn't working out so well due to saturated bandwidth, most likely caused by someone running torrents on the network. After nearly an hour of broadcasting this way, being highly fragmented and only just existing, I decided to try streaming via my phone on AT&T's 3g internet, which worked surprisingly well given that we were streaming in ogg quality 3 and taking phone calls through a sip softphone at the same time. Latency on phone calls was a bit long in some cases, and, over all, the sound isn't as polished as I've like, but given the circumstances, things could have been a lot worse.

This was a rather crazy show, which I would be hard pressed to describe and get right, so I don't think I'll say much, leaving you all to figure it out for yourselves. I will, however, mention that drunk people in a hotel on a Saturday night are fun, hockey in the south is apparently wrong, and... oh, look at the time!

Hello people, both good and bad.

This entry comes to you today from my new Samsung N130 netbook, which I received on Wednesday. I'm writing from a desk in a room on the first floor of the Hyatt hotel, which is only about a five minute car trip from my house. 'Why are you there?' Well, I'm here because lostgirl33 is staying in Greensboro for a few days, and it's the thing to do. On top of that, thanks to all the water from Hurricane Ida, my basement has once again flooded, including part of the studio. It's not quite as bad as the swimming in the studio clip from August 2008, but it isn't so good, either.
Therefore, I'm not sure if there will be a show tomorrow. The part of the studio that really matters is dry, but with a quarter of it covered in about a half inch of water, it may not be such a good idea to try doing anything useful. The grounding down there already sucks, and standing water sure doesn't help that sort of thing. I may go home on Saturday afternoon, grab some mics and one of my small boards, and attempt a show from the hotel, although the internet here is reasonably fast, yet not very reliable, with sucky AT&T routes. We'll see how things go, I guess.

In the meantime, because it's the thing I usually do, have this placeholder, otherwise known as a Hyatt Hotel toilet. It's nothing special, but it's something I have to do, as you probably know by now.

The next few days should be interesting. Later today, we're doing somethingI never honestly thought I would do... going to a hockey game between the New York Islanders and the Carolina Hurricanes at the RBC Center in Raleigh, otherwise known as watching the Hurricanes properly representing the state by losing, most likely. After all, this is North Carolina, and losing is what we do best. Well, hey, we have to do something, right?
We're also planning a trip to Derek's place on Sunday.
As for all the time in between, who knows?

I'll leave you with this for now, with possibly more in the future. Oh, and I apologize for not having anything more interesting to show for myself other than a very standard American toilet (which I think is actually an American Standard), but as we all know, no two flushes are ever the same. So, have another one of your very own, or something.

I know you're tired of hearing this phrase, but I seem to be saying it a lot lately. I apologize for this show in advance, and promise to nevewr not do something like this again.

This week's show can be downloaded here, and offers the following:

• Co-host Chris is introduced, and what is left of a heavily medicated dgl1984 explains the state he's found himself in.


• The technical problems begin with failing messengers, and a dying APC UPS that really wants my attention.


• A Canadian listener calls in, at which point several things, including broken Messengers, an appropriate sound scheme for Windows Vista, and old, bad Things and Stuff references from 2007 are discussed.


• Chris plays with my effects processor for what is arguably a bit too long for anyone's own good.


• Haven't you always wanted to play with a model airplane? Well, now you can, on model airplanes and stuff!


• More unfinished ideas, brought to you by the Yamaha Motif XS and it's pattern sequencer.


• No Mommy Call this week, truly breaking that after almost a year of doing it.


• Thanks to a Canadian node on GlobalTuners, we have a comparison of the United States NOAA weather radio, and Weather Radio Canada. Both are bad, but which is worse?


• Have you ever wondered how WWV sounds on narrow band FM, instead of it's proper AM?


• Shins for Windows takes the streaming client and a couple of other things down after a nice, hard crash, prompting a remote session from another computer to kill it, resulting in issues with the stream for several moments. Gotta love those external archiving solutions... I suppose I could have edited this more, but if Don Joyce can spend half an hour trying to fix a buzz on real FM radio, then I don't feel so bad.


• A ringing endorsement of Time Warner Cable business class? Well, maybe it doesn't actually ring...


• TBRN's live stream is dead... or is it?


• A call from a slightly intoxicated Kyle and Jody at a camp fire ends this poor excuse for a show.

Well, there you have it. Enjoy it more than I did, for what it's worth. Next week's show should be interesting, since Melanie, A.K.A. lostgirl33 will be spending a few days here, starting on Thursday... the twelth... OH NO!

Another month gone, another show in the can.
This show features a failed not quite demonstration of my Icom PCR-100 on Global Tuners, talk about radio for nearly an hour, the introduction of Berny the Fuse (yet to be developed into anything useful), proof that the Greensboro social security office is bad for you, cheap toys from Mommy (again), banging on drums for about 20 seconds, a tribute to 100.3, the not buzzard anymore, and a grand total of five incoming phone calls (all from kd6cae. Enjoy.

Yes, that's right, folks. It's October 25, and, instead of posting yesterday's archive, which is 12 minutes long, by the way, since it broke in all kinds of fun and interesting ways, I'm giving you a show archive that was previously not uploaded, because I didn't like it at the time. Have I changed my mind? Well, not really, but it's something to have.

According to the notes I wrote for this show in June:
At the time of the show, I was being plagued by a migraine from hell. I did manage to do a few fun things, such as putting a well-known and quite horrible song through a midi controlled Granulab, which was rather amusing (at least to me), showed the last couple of minutes of WCWG's analog TV feed as it went off the air forever, and complained about various things.
For some inexplicable reason, I extended the show for almost an entire hour just to talk to Alexander Nelson about keyboards and pointless things, and to play around a bit with the Ensoniq TS-12.
I think I left out a few things, such as Venison's problems with big words, I.E. anything longer than two syllables.

As there was no archive for this week's show, though I still may do another one soon to make up for over-sleeping, then breaking things yesterday, have this thing from last summer instead. I'm not really sure that this is any better. You can judge that for yourself if you like.