RAVE RAVE, TECHNO TECHNO!

You're going to see a lot of changes here in the very near future - I, along with the other 30-odd folks in the company, have lost my Linux network administrator job of six years.

Some people would call that "unemployed".  I prefer to pronounce it "professional musician". ;)

We got a severance package, and I plan to apply for EI as soon as I'm eligible.  For the next several months, I intend to spend a full-time-job's worth of time in the studio, so all the projects I've been putting off are now my main focus...

Wow, am I ever a slacker! Time flies when you're busy, I guess.

Updates since last posting: the rackmount machine is up and running and being used for shows now. I had to abandon the idea of solid-state drives for the time being, as no matter what I tried, I simply could not get the CF cards to boot. I used Linux tools to copy the partitions over block-for-block, including the boot sectors, I tried using both Grub and LILO to bootstrap... nothing. I suspect it's the card itself; the machine counts its RAM, then goes to a black screen with a flashing cursor, waiting for a bootstrap, and just never goes any further. Oh well, a space 17G hard drive fits in the case nicely - longer term I'm thinking of replacing it with a pair of SATA laptop hard drives in a RAID1.

I've played a few shows since the last posting - the most notable of which were probably the Robot Invasion Skytrain party, the Victoria 'Jungle Room' show, and the Bellingham Electronic Arts Festival... here's some details.

The Skytrain party was insane, the idea was basically that since the Skytrain doesn't have a driver, perhaps it'd be nice to throw a party and invite a bunch of robots - there's a review and some great photos here: http://www.goldengod.net/gallery/robots/

The Pickled Beats crew in Victoria invited me over to play a show in the Jungle Room, which was a lot of fun - thanks to Jamie and Lehna for the booking, Walter for the beers and hospitality, and especially thanks again to Lehna, Cim and Sarah for the wicked crepe breakfast in the killer snowstorm! Erin's pics are here:

The BEAF Boogie, thrown by Boogie Universal as a part of the Bellingham Electronic Arts Festival, was super-cool as well - I played a set of techno just before KJ Sawka got up and blew me away with his wicked live-drumming drum&bass. The show was held in a radio and electricity museum, tonnes of hands-on stuff, and the space was amazing - not to mention the wicked three screens of visuals from VJ Culture, with full Edirol sponsorship... man, what a rig that guy has! Erin's pics are here: http://www.reelgeek.com/images/photos/2006_12_02_mux_beaf/

Anyway - another big show coming up this weekend, this time in Seattle. Should be a blast, I'm headlining a classic rave for the Inertia Labs crew, who've been throwing wicked events for eight years running. I'll post a review when I'm back. :)

Argh - got some great news and some frustrating news.

On one front, the string of non-bookings is broken; I've got two upcoming shows, a week (and a continent!) apart. I've been booked for Soundproof's "Trancemission 9", for the third year in a row, which is an honour and a privilege - this is an annual free party out at Mile36 that just epitomizes the whole BC outdoor rave experience... it's the same night as the Burning Man party again this year, which means a great, diverse party crowd. I wouldn't consider missing this party.

A week after that I'm off to New Brunswick, via Nova Scotia, to visit my folks. My friend Malte in Halifax has booked me for some sort of Friday night gig, about which I know very little. My last gig in Halifax went splendidly though, so I'm really looking forward to it. It won't be much of a vacation, though, as pretty much the whole thing will be running around like mad trying to visit all the folks we need to see.

The frustrating news is that the work on the "ultimate rackmount livepa computer" project is halted while I wait for the motherboard to arrive - apparently it will come into stock on July 19th. *sigh*. The Trancemission show is on July 22nd, nowhere near enough time to assemble and test the gear.