Wednesday, March 29, 2006: Siam Protest

Right now there are thousands and thousands of people protesting the Thai Prime Minister Thaskin in the area around the Siam Center. Because of this The Siam Paragon, The Siam Center and Siam Discovery are all closed for the next three days. (Oddly MBK which is on the South West corner across from them is open) Its hard to say if this has snarled traffic any more than it is usually snarled.

In 1992 when there were similar protests the Government sent the Army in to shoot everybody so Sandy has promised her family she won't go near the protests. It is doubtful that there would be a repeat of that though as the King made in clear already he would have none of that. It was the King in 1992 that made the Army stand down and it has been implied that they've been told in advance who they take orders from.

That being said there are a lot of riot cops out. Still the whole thing is rather peaceful and far more successful than any of the "Anti-Globalization" protests they've had here during various points.

The new election is on Sunday but it is doubtful Thaskin will lose as the rural folk love him. I'm not sure if Sandy is going home to vote or not.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006: Weird Storm

We had this weird windstorm tonight. I've never seen anything like it here. It was like a summer storm in Alberta that makes you suspect either hail or a tornado is on the way. There was stuff flying around and being sucked up in to the air and Sandy and I watched some unfornutate Noodle Vender's whole improvised world come crashing down while staff and customers scrambled to hold it all together. Eventually the rain came with this weird lightening.

Tonight we watched "Elizabethtown" which wasn't bad, and after "I Heart Huckabees" seemed absolutely brilliant. I had some of the typical Hollywood strawmen to beat on but other than that I thought it was a good movie as far as romantic comedies go. The other aspect of it was Orlando Bloom with long dark hair reminded me of Justin M who I missed. Spiderman's Girlfriend, whatever her name is also reminds me of The Bean. Who I also miss.

Monday, March 27, 2006: Sandy Returns

Sandy got in last night at around 9:30 pm. She brought back some treats including the first good tasting corn on the cob I’ve had over here. This was outstanding. She also had some pastries that had pineapple filling that were amazing.

We watch the movie “I heart Huckabees” which I bought based on the cast and was soon wanting to scratch my eyes out and jab pencils into my ears. Sandy insisted on watching the whole thing especially since it was 150 Baht. Oh what a crappy and annoying movie. Why did these big actors agree to be in it? Was it a favor? Sandy suggested it was like a student movie. Which it was. It sucked.

Today it was hot hot hot.

The anti-Thaskin protests are starting to lose support from the locals because they snarl traffic and are becoming increasingly annoying and confrontational.

Sunday, March 26, 2006: In a Silent Way

I was up until 5:00 am this morning messing with Lappy. Amazingly I woke up at around 9:00 am. I spent the morning reading and listening to “In a Silent Way”. It is possibly the best CD I’ve bought in YEARS.

I went to Ole for lunch and had their outstanding Pad Thai then went back to the Redoubt and set up the Sherman Filter bank and got out the guitar. I didn’t use the GR-30 as I wanted to have the guitar in keeping with the spirit of when I originally recorded the music. I did the guitar track with the Ebo and the cheap Chinese distortion pedal through the Sherman out to my battery eating Digitech digital delay. It came off quite easily and I was done in about an hour. Afterwards I messed with running the MC-303 Groove Box through the Sherman for another track with mixed results.

I can’t seem to get the Groove Box to lock on to the MIDI SYNC from the MRS4 recorder but delving into the manual didn’t help. I think it might be an actual technical problem with the Groove Box. I hadn’t programmed it in a while and I found it sort of annoying to deal with. I don’t know how I got so capable with it back in the day. Now its just annoying. That and the lack of Doctor Memory. 90 percent of its internal memory is dedicated to crap 1996 Dance beats written by some Japanese fellow who read an article on the Rave scene. The user gets to program 30 files. I would much rather program a loop on a soft synth, render it as a Wav file then paste it in that deal with memory crashes and breaking of the president MIDI meltdowns. But that’s just me.

At around 4:00 pm I packed away all the toys and listened to “In a Silent Way” another 3 times, read and watched the sun go down. Tonight I walked over to Siam Discovery and bought a new note book to use as a journal then went to The Pizza Company for a treat. I had great difficulty convincing the waitress that I wanted Thai style Cha Yen NOT Lipton’s ice tea. Several Thai college students sitting near by were amused by my drinking two glasses of it. After dinner I took the BTS back to the Redoubt.

Saturday, March 25, 2006: Vocals

Today I managed to do something I haven’t been able to pull of since November 2004. That is record a vocal track. Or sever vocal tracks. I ended up pretty much finishing off a song I did this time last year and now it’s just a matter of tweaking, mousing and rendering it.

It was a beautiful day again today. Later in the day after I was done recording I went over to the Siam Center for Vietnamese food. I visited the Siam Paragon and one CD shop in particular and picked up a copy of Miles Davis’ “In a Silent Way” which I just finished reading a retrospective on in the British Electronic Music magazine “Future Music”. The retrospective talked about Miles Davis’ switch to electric instruments and the way the album was “assembled” using various cuts from one 40 minute session. The music store in the Paragon has a lot of Jazz and I picked up Jaco Pastorius’ first album there a few weeks ago so I was sure they’d have it.

After eating and getting the CD I walked back through Siam Discovery and stopped at the music store there and looked at the Zoom 8 track box to replace my Zoom 4 track. I can’t get the “Smart Card” media it takes anymore and the 128 MB card fills up too quickly. I don’t like the drum machine function on the new 8 track, as I’d rather have no drum machine and a smaller recorder but for $300 the price is truly right. The flash media it takes maxes out at 2 Gigs which would give me 800 minutes of recording.

Tonight I imported the vocal tracks to Lappy and began messing with them and mousing them. I rendered several rough mixes but was frustrated at Lappy for not being able to handle 30 + tracks and all the VST plug-ins. I need to add more RAM I think. And use less plug-ins. I did use this weird plug in that is supposed to allow you to “alter” your vocal track by adjusting things like mouth size and throat length… It really sounds more bizarre than convincing but it worked really well for the spooky echo backing vocals. Tomorrow I will add one more guitar track and then it’s a matter of rendering it.

Friday, March 24, 2006: Sandy Goes Home

Sandy went with her family up to her Parents place in the country so she was up at 6:00 am today. She was out the door to meet Pooh by 7:00 am. I hung around the Redoubt for awhile before going to Currahee.

HOT? Oh yes. The temperatures were up in the low 40s today for sure. I don’t mind that at all though. It feels like summer.

Tonight I FINALLY had a chance to sit with the GR-30 and adjust the pick up sensitivity. I am suspect that this old GK2A pick up is slightly wonky but I won’t worry about upgrading it until I am more familiar with the GR-30 box.

Like I said… Resistance is futile…

The guitar has been absorbed into the collective.

Friday, March 17, 2006: Five Killed in South

Sadly this isn't unusual anymore...

Violence hits southern Thailand

Thailand's south, where most of its minority Muslim population lives, has been hit by a two-year insurgency that has left more than 1,100 people dead.

Thursday, March 16, 2006: Osama Bin Lincoln

I have noticed a new trend amongst the trend setting world traveling Lonely Planet reading Back-Packers. It is new look for the many men of this particular segment of the reality based community. It could possibly be a spin off the Che Guevara look or even the Jesus Christ Love God look, but it is definitely THEE LOOK for ’06.

The look basically involves growing a beard at the jaw line level, never washing or combing or sorting it out in anyway but in contrast shaving the upper jaw zone and the upper lip to baby butt smoothness. The mangier the beard portion the better.

I call this look the “Osama Bin Lincoln” as it is sported by the more serious looking of the male Birkenstock wearing backpacking pajama people. The fellows who are going for a look that is a statement opposed to Jesus look which is mostly about scoring chicks.

These fellows scare me slightly as Cat Stevens has shown us it’s not a far leap from 60’s hippy radical type to going Talibannas and agreeing that Salmon Rushdie should have his head cut off.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006: Computer World

James Lileks has added a new section to the Institute of Official Cheer that is worth a peak. The best line being "Remember: your iPod has more storage capacity than everything in this room"

Monday, March 13, 2006: Super-Fantastic

Today I picked up some pills for Sandy and also bought her some food on the way back to the Redoubt. She seems better than yesterday. Hopefully she'll be rid of this soon.

There are big anti-Thaskin rallies tomorrow even though the Government has banned any large gatherings of people. Last night the Military controlled TV station broadcast "historic footage" of the King meeting with the various leaders of the 1992 uprising that resulted in bloodshed and was only stopped by the King himself ordering the Army and Police to stand down and the Goverment to step down (This is one of the reasons the Thai people LOVE their King so much; he is seen as a defender of the ordinary people). The broadcast is seen as a warning to all involved in the current crisis to keep it clean.

Last night while Sandy was alseep and after I'd downloaded all my "holiday snaps" I sent these two lovely pictures to Manolo the ShoeBlogger...

Here is his reply...

Hello to the LDT!

P.S. you are indeed super fantastic!

Sunday, March 12, 2006: Leaving Rayong

I got up at around 8:30 am. Sandy was already up but complaining she didn’t feel well again. I went back down to the Pol Restaurant with Mikey for breakfast. They had some brilliant typos on their menu including “screamble egg”. I had a cheese omelet instead. Mikey and I sat down there for over an hour then headed back up. Sandy was up again having slept after I left and wanted to eat something so I went with her back down to the beach. She ordered some food and I went for a swim while she picked at it. The water was nice. I wish we had been able to stay longer.

After I swam I walked with Sandy back up to the bungalow and we brought back the others a few containers of food. Sandy lay down again and I napped as well. I got up at noon and packed up my stuff which took about ten minutes. I let Sandy sleep and walked down and sat in the shade by the water. Sandy came down and collected me at around 1:00 pm when the driver showed up.

We headed out but stopped at this place near to resort to eat as apparently the food we had brought back hadn’t been enough. The driver said the food at this place was great and he was right. We had another big meal and I had the best Pad Thai I have ever had ever in my life. Once we’d eaten we headed out again and on through the town or village of Rayong proper. There was a brief stop at a market were the sisters disembarked for some sea side shopping then it was on to the Motorway and back towards Bangkok.

We made one stop at a Jiffy petrol station and everyone made a mass dash for the toilets and then the convenience store. I had a cha yen from this “coffee hut” which is literally a hut shaped thing that made me feel claustrophobic. Once back on the road we had the long drive back to Mikey and Lut’s. That took forever and reminded me of those horrible return trips from Poipet back in the 2001 days. The traffic was brutal and we didn’t get to the suburbs until around 5:00 pm. Everyone wanted to go to eat at MK but Sandy was too ill and Pooh wasn’t in the mood. We unloaded the gang then the driver took us back to the Redoubt zone. Pooh took a cab from there to hers and Sandy and I went back to the Redoubt. The fish were happy to see us. Sandy was happy to lie down.

Saturday, March 11, 2006: To Rayong

I set my alarm for 5:00 am today. Sandy is feeling better but it took several tries to get her out of bed. She’d packed her stuff last night so I threw what I needed in my bag and we went out to meet her Sister Pooh and our driver at 5:45 am. The driver was already there so we hopped in and headed towards the Airport area where her older Sister Lut lives with Mikey and Min.

It took about an hour to get to their house near the Airport (which soon won’t be the Airport anymore) and the sun was just up as we arrived. Pet, Pluk and their Mom Dang were already there as was their little cousin Prim, and Sandy’s other Sister Ree. We loaded up the Van and everyone squeezed in and off we went. We made a stop before we got on the Motorway and everyone scrambled out and got food. Sandy and I stayed with Mikey who had coffee and toast. I had Cha Yen (ice tea – but Thai style tea with condensed milk). Once we were on the road again I promptly fell asleep listening to music on my iPod.

I woke up just as we got to Rayong. We had rented a bungalow in a resort along the beach. I had heard bad things about the beach but it was fine. It was certainly no match for Samui or Boracay but where is? The area was relatively Farang free and the resort itself seemed to more for Thais. We had to wait about half an hour for our bungalow to be ready so I sat with Mikey while he messed around with his new phone/palm computer thingy. It is very cool but I think we’re about five years away from my actually wanting one.

After we moved in Sandy and I went for a walk on the beach. We headed east down the beach towards the Novotel and passed various other resorts and beach front restaurants. We took some photos including some rather sad footwear which no doubt had been tossed in shame into the sea to become home for barnacles. We were hungry, but indecisive about where to eat so we went back to our resort and ate there. That was a bad idea. The foot was truly diabolical. I had battered prawns that were heavy on the batter and light on the prawn, and some rice that was cold and possibly from yesterday. Sandy had a mixed plate and said that since being hungry makes food taste better that it must have been pretty bad. After our brutal meal we went back to the bungalow and I slept for a few hours while she hung out with her family.

I woke up in time for the sun set which is an important thing at the beach. Sandy and I walked down to the beach which had a lot more people than in the afternoon and walked west a little bit and found a good spot to sit. We took lots of photos and once it had set we went back to the Bungalow. Sandy and Pooh wanted to watch the last episode of the Korean soap opera that has swept the country so they stayed at the bungalow while I went down to the Pol Restaurant on the beach with Mikey and everyone else for the barbeque.

The food was amazing. I had steamed white snapper in so called lemon sauce that is heavy on those little nasty peppers. It was an outstanding meal. One of those Thai torture meals that is so spicy you don’t want to eat any more but so good you can’t help yourself. After each bit where the spice kicks in you swear that’s the last bite, only to be followed by another bite. Sandy and Pooh eventually joined us and Sandy finished off the White Snapper that I missed. Mikey was all excited because they served him English style “chips” opposed to those little skinny French fries. The whole meal that fed seven adults and three kids cost 1900 baht.

We headed back up to the Bungalow and everyone went to bed. Sandy and I had a tea with Mikey then called it a day.

Friday, March 10, 2006: The Screws

Try finding screws in the hardware department of Central Chitlom. Try explaining the concept of screws to the uninterested staff. All the things to hang, all the things to mount, all the things that need screws and all the screw drivers, but where are the screws? Ah. here they are right in a place no one would see. Just over behind the plumbing stuff near the car parts. It all makes sense now.

I wasn't sure which type of screw would work best for mounting the GK2A on The Traveler. So I bought 3 different packages figuring that one of them would do it okay. I mounted the HEX pickup first and then positioned the plug/control/input/output/Borg attachment part next and mounted that. Behold. My guitar has been Borgified.

The next task is to adjust the GR-30's sensitivity. That looks like one of those tedious Apollo 13 "housekeeping" tasks. Each string is individually read and so on and so forth. This sort of thing is what I liked about the GR-300. You plugged it in and brraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa away you went. Well, perhaps after tuning the oscillators for half an hour. The bright side is that once I've set up the string tracking I won't have to repeat the process every time I fire the thing up.

Sandy is better. I can tell because she's climbing on me.

Thursday, March 9, 2006: Bomb

Sandy still had a fever when I got up this morning, although when I got home tonight she was cooler and said she felt much better. She's more low energy than usual though.

The big news today was the bomb. Not that bombs are uncommon in this part of the world.

Bomb explodes outside house of Thai king's adviser

They said the bomb, hidden under a stone bench near an unoccupied security booth in front of the residence of former Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda, sent glass flying and damaged three cars parked in front of the house

It's important to understand that former Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda came out against Thaskin recently so the feeling is that this has something to do with that. Thankfully it isn't the usual JI suspects as when they blow something up it tends to be more effective.

Wednesday, March 8, 2006: The Great Raid

Sandy has the flu. She was fever-girl all of today and barely left the bed. Tonight she felt a little better and we watched "The Great Raid" on DVD. For some reason the movie here is titled "121: The Great Raid". I'm not sure why though or what the 121 represents. The date of the raid? The number of men in the Rangers unit? Beats me.

It was a pretty good movie based on the book "Ghost Soldiers". I think they added a romance and gave the one main death a heroic cause rather than the usual random ricochet type injury. Over all though it wasn't bad. I'm sure it was a big hit in the Philippines. Everyone seems to have forgot, if they ever cared, that 1 Million Philippinos died under the Japanese. This movie paints the brutality of the Imperial Japanese Army in the same dark light usually reserved for the SS. It's hard to put together the annual August Nathan Phillips Square hair pulling over the "crime" of dropping A-Bombs on the Japanese when you look at the history of that period.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006: Resistance Is Futile

Today I decided to go over to the music shop and buy the GR-30. It took a while to convey to the staff that, no I didn’t want to try it out again, I wanted to purchase it. I must remember to get Sandy to teach me how to say “buy”. I know how to say “don’t need” since that comes in use more often. The owner came out and helped remove the GK2 pickup from the demo guitar and the staff helpfully packed it all in a box for me. It came with a manual however it will be of little use as I don’t read Japanese. Thankfully through the power of the internet I can probably download a manual in PDF format with out any trouble.

Tonight I spent a while mounting the GK2 pickup on my travel guitar in the most temporary way. The double sided sticky tape is too thick and the result is that the HEX pickup is far to close to the strings. So I fear I will have to use the screw option. I sort of got it attached and fired it up just to see what would happen. It’s very bizarre looking I have to say. The travel guitar is odd enough in appearance but with the GK2 pickup and its one red LED glowing my guitar looks like it’s been absorbed by the BORG collective. This makes the Godin guitar seem even more appealing.

There are plenty of sounds. Holy smokes. The flute ones are rather Mellotronish as are some of the string pads. There is a nice Sitar which sounded great mixed with the sound of the guitar itself. There were some rather useless echo/arpeggio U2 Edge type sounds that made me afraid Bono and his magic sunglasses where going to come in to the room and demand I pay more mind to poverty and stop buying electronic instruments. The drum patches may only be of use in the “annoy Sandy” department. Then again even the most useless or annoying sound can always be run through the Sherman Filter Bank and turned into sonic shortbread cookies.

Over all the tracking was a bit wonky but I this is largely if not entirely due to the way I’d stuck the pickup on and the fact that I haven’t “set up” the sensitivity of the GR-30 in relation to the pickup. This seems to be a rather important exercise in itself but I will wait until I get some proper screws to mount the HEX pickup with. I sort of wish Chris was here to fool around with this thing as well. We had plenty of laughs hooking up my Ibanez 2010 MIDI controller to a sound module. Especially when Chris began playing a dissonant version of the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood theme with the grand piano patch.

Sunday, March 5, 2006: DVD Burner

Sandy and I were up at the unheard of Sunday hour of 9:00 am. We went to MK for lunch and afterwards Sandy and I went to Siam Center where she bought a new purse and a top at Jaspal. There was a big sale on so the place was packed. Afterwards she went to meet Pooh and Dexa who were going to Sandy’s other Sister’s watch shop.

I walked back over to Pantip as I had forgotten to look at outboard USB DVD burners when I was there yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised to find one for 3,000 baht. I was expecting something in the 9,000 Baht range. (More savings for the GR choice)

I have no further excuses for not burning DVDs now except the time involved in rendering the projects themselves. I'll see how this works out though.

Saturday, March 4, 2006: Tire Kicking

Sandy and I went for Vietnamese for lunch today. Afterwards we went to visit a relative who was in the Hospital. That was thankfully a short visit as I am not a fan of hanging around Hospitals. Afterwards Sandy met up with Dexa and her Farang boyfriend Mike who I hadn’t met before. They were off to the Weekend Market but I declined the opportunity to wander aimlessly amongst the crowds in the scorching afternoon heat. It may be cheap there but I’d rather pay the extra and shop in some air conditioned Mall.

I went over to the Roland store and looked some more at the GR gear. The GR-20 apparently CAN drive external synths via MIDI. But the internal sounds can’t be layered, which is a feature the discontinued GR-33 could do. The Godin guitar still calls to me but I am still not sure. They must think I am the ultimate tire kicker at that store since I tend to take more time making a gear choice than the Canadian Navy does buying new used Submarines.

I headed over to Pantip afterwards and bought a new Laptop bag. My last one has worn out in the strap zone either from over-packing it or over use or both. I also picked up some DVDs of the “Monk” series. I got the first, third and fourth seasons since Sandy and I had already watched the second season.

Friday, March 3, 2006: Just A Thought

I continue to listen to Kate Bush's last double CD and it confirms my belief that Madonna should have been shot in to orbit at the end of the 1980s. Putting George Michaels and Prince in the capsual would have been a good idea too.

Thursday, March 2, 2006: Guitar Synth Addiction

One small music store near the Redoubt has a used Roland GR-30 guitar synth with the GK2 pickup for a mere 15,000 Baht. I am unsure about it though.

Problem “A” is the mounting of the GK2 pickup on my tiny travel guitar. Although I think the hex pickup itself would fit, the control input output Borg attachment appears like it might not.

Problem “B” is that the GK2 pick up is the older GK style pickup and doesn’t seem to track as well as the GK3 pickup does and certainly doesn’t track the note as well as the old school GR 300’s hex pickup. I am not 100 percent sure if the GR-30 box would work with a GK3 pick up.

Problem “C” is that the GR-30 box is an old box using PCM sounds with limited tweakablity. I favor a more analogue sound and I think that although some of the sounds are nice they would need to be Shermanized and so forth to sound truly good.

However that being considered Roland has stopped making the GR-33 and now only produces the GR-20 which doesn’t allow the user to control an external synth box via MIDI. The VR-88 box can only use MIDI to dump patches as well. I don’t understand what Roland is thinking in this regard. As far as I know the GR-30 does allow MIDI control, although I am not certain if the tracking would be even worse for an external box.

I had been looking at a Godin guitar that has built in GK guts but that alone is 30,000 baht. If I bought that then I would still be stuck buying the GR-20 which doesn’t do anything I would want it to do, or the VR-88 which does some things but fails in the MIDI control department.

So the debate continues. Fortunately I wouldn’t need to buy any cameras or such like this year.