StinkFight.com

(Including “How to soundproof your home studio for under ten bucks.”)

I’m often asked how I get such a great sound on my home recordings, be they Podiobooks, podcasts, or especially music. (Listen to my great new band, Right Arm of Wyoming.) (get MP3s of these songs on Amazon)

Well, I’m gonna lay all of my secrets on ya, here and now.

There is a lot of stuff out there that they try to sell to musicians. I’ve tried a lot of it, and ended up selling most of it. Here’s what I’ve kept that has stood the test of time (thirty years of playing music and recording, and 12 years of computer recording):

First thing you need is a good microphone and a good sound booth. Both are easier than you might think.

The best mic for the money is the Rode NT1-A. Buy it for $229 here. It is a very low-noise high-quality condenser microphone. Since it’s a condenser, it will need a pre-amp, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

You’ll need a shock mount, a pop filter and a mic stand. I use these. The RODE SM1 Shock Mount for NT1 Studio Microphone, 25 bucks.

Nady MPF-6 Nady 6-Inch Clamp On Pop Filter is 17 bucks.

Mic cables, you’ll need at least three. These are cheap and good. XLR male to XLR female Microphone Cable.

Here’s a good microphone stand for 25 bucks: On Stage Spotlight Tripod Microphone Boom Stand.

SOUND BOOTH:

(How to soundproof your home studio for under ten bucks)

This is easier than you’d think, and easier than I used to think it was. At our home in California, I’d spent a lot of money and time converting a whole room to be a studio. At our new home in Wyoming, I simply stuck some rugs up in a closet. It didn’t cost any money, works great, took about ten minutes and only about ten nails. Some of the rugs and foam are just wedged in there, not even nailed up.

This is a closet in the basement. If you don’t have a closet, you could even hang up some ropes and make a little tent-type room with blankets.

SOFTWARE:

I do my drum looping and multitrack recording in Sony Acid Pro 7. It’s an incredibly versatile program.

For mastering, and MP3 creation, I use Sony Sound Forge 9.

My book $30 Music School has good basic tutorials on using Acid and SoundForge.

Mastering is probably the trickiest thing I do of all of this, and it’s a bit of an art. If you want, I will master music for 50 bucks per song. Most people charge 100 bucks per song, and totally sap the life out of the music, trying to keep up with the Loudness War. As you can tell by my samples above, I master plenty loud, without squishing the music and ruining the dynamics and tone. You’ll like the result. e-mail me if you want that done. e-mail address is

kittyfeet70

at

yahoo.com

HARDWARE:

For headphones, I use Sony Pro MDR-7506 headphones, the best phones in the world under 100 dollars.

For a microphone tube preamp and compressor, I use the SM Pro Audio TB202.

Here it is at night, working in the spooky studio darkness:

They’re 250 bucks new, I bought mine used on CraigsList for $150. It smooths out vocal dynamics and adds a “warm” sound. It also has an instrument input which makes bass guitar sound great, and it has a powered output for your condenser microphone. I plug it with XLR mic cables into my $133 Alesis MultiMix USB 8 Mixer (which also has a powered output, if you’re on a budget and need to skip the preamp). This is a great unit, and has USB output to plug into your computer.

One secret about this unit, it is great except for an engineering flaw whereby it overheats and dies. This can be fixed by putting it up on a couple of blocks of wood so you get an airflow underneath it, and turn it off when you’re not using it. I’ve had mine for three years with no problem, whereas people I know who haven’t put theirs on blocks fried it in a few months.

A power conditioner is a good idea (to plug everything into, including your computer) to protect from surges and keep noise out of your signal. I use this Furman unit.

My guitar player, the mysterious Office Huttskew (who must disguise his identity due to the the highly sensitive nature of his day job) records his Fender Stratocaster direct into the board, without an amp, using the amazing Line 6 POD 2.0 for tone.

I record the drums, bass guitar and singing, and e-mail an MP3 to Office Huttskew. He pulls it into Garage Band (comes free with Mac computers, but here’s a good book on using Garage Band), and adds guitar. He sends me the separate guitar tracks as 192k MP3 files. I drop them into Acid and mix.

I do a bit of cutting and pasting in Acid. I’ll usually take the best four measures of my bass playing and loop it for the verse, do the same for the chorus, and the same for the middle eight. That serves two purposes: 1) it gives a more consistent and precise performance than playing all the way through the song. 2) it interfaces well with electronic drum patterns to give a more “industrial” feel, while still maintaining the “rock” sound and feel of actual playing. (Think “Nine Inch Nails.”)

I’ll often do the same thing with the singing on the choruses - I’ll sing several tracks, either doing harmonies, or on the more “punk” numbers I’ll overdub several tracks of yelling in unison (for that 80s hardcore “the whole band yelling backup in brotherly unity” feel), then mix down to a single stereo track, then cut and paste everywhere there’s a chorus in the song. I do the same trick with the more “industrial” sounding rhythm guitar parts, especially on the verses.

I’ve been recording the guitar with me playing on some of the later songs. Here’s a thread on what I use.

I think that’s about it, people. This is all you need to make kick-ass music without spending a fortune or bugging your neighbors with the noise. This is the basis for a totally functional, professional home studio, just add talent!

–Michael W. Dean

(click on photo to see it big.)

Trip total: 3219 miles, slept in six Wyoming cities, two Utah cities, in ten days. We got three tiny spider cracks in the windshield from pebbles thrown by trucks (two in Wyoming, one in Utah.) There was snow in one part of the state while we were there, tornado in another (we missed both). Even so, we loved every minute of being there, and feel like we left home when we came back to Los Angeles.)

Leaving Wyoming. Sad. But…”Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear.”

=====

We packed and pumped at the Pump & Pack in Douglas:

Open carry dinner at T-Joe’s Steak House in Cheyenne:

Entering Colorado:

Entering Utah:

Our car at this amazing stop. We were the only people there:

Rainbow in Utah:

Utah, car carry only:

California. Guns back in the cases. Meh. How come the places you need ‘em the most you can have ‘em the least?:

DJ started to cry, literally, when we hit Los Angeles. It took us 90 minutes to go the last thirty miles:

Back in the nest.

Charlie cat happy to see us:

We’re trying to move to Wyoming within a month.

Doing this back where I’m from would get you a year in prison (if you weren’t shot by the cops first):

But in Wyoming, it’s legal and nifty to protect your life. That’s part of why we’re moving here!

(Note: We’re crossing our arms in all these so you can see the guns. We didn’t cross our arms the whole trip, lol, just in the pix.)

——

DAY 2: So, we left the hotel in Provo. We were really psyched to enter Wyoming, and we were not disappointed. It’s a wonderful state, we love it, and we can’t wait to move!

Provo. Pretty town. Can’t open carry though. We did see some college students marching with M1 Garand rifles, practicing drills. You’d only see that California in a Military setting. This was at a community college. But unfortunately, we couldn’t get a picture of it.

Mister Hedgie liked Provo too:

Outside of Provo (Provo Canyon):

FINALLY! Wyoming line:

Immediately, there’s lots of fireworks places. Here’s one called Pyro City!:

We stop in Evanston to put on our guns. I look down in the parking lot. I see it. I’m outside. I’m not breaking the law. I feel like I’m walking on the moon for the first time, just like I thought I would:

Debra Jean’s happy too:

We went for breakfast at the Main Street Artisans Cafe & Gallery in Evanston. It’s a fine place with a nice, hippy-ish vibe, cool art on the walls, and Bob Dylan on the stereo. We open carried. Everyone noticed our guns, no one had a problem with them.

There’s a lot we saw in Wyoming that we didn’t get pictures of: 1 wild bison, lots and lots of antelope, and for some reason, there’s a lot of seagulls in Wyoming. I don’t get that, I’ll have to ask someone. But here’s some ground squirrels prairie dogs:

Click on this next photo and see it big, see how many ground squirrels you can see standing up behind me:

I talked to two young truckers on a long haul from Wisconsin. They asked me what kind of guns DJ and I had. Only time anyone asked about them all day. They were really polite, and curious. A retired man who grew up here talked to me about ground squirrels, and about how he shoots ‘em with his .22 to help his neighbors (cows and horses break their legs in the ground squirrel’s burrow holes).

We stopped in Rawlins, open carried, no problems. Took some photos, but they were too boring to share.

We open carried at the Burger King in Casper near the intersection of the 220 and the 87 (by Evansville). People who worked there were super polite to us. We forgot to take pix though.

Below is me leaving the Kum & Go in Buffalo. (Buffalo is a BEAUTIFUL town. We could retire there. It’s wonderful and quaint and sweet.) No problems open carrying there (or anywhere we went).

On the street in Buffalo:

We were really even more polite than we usually are, we considered ourselves emissaries for open carry, and wanted to reflect well in all that we did.

Here’s a stunning scene, with Alcova Reservoir:

All in all we had a great day, and the only time we saw an Obama bumper sticker was ON A CAR BEING TOWED BECAUSE IT HAD BROKEN DOWN.

We love Wyoming!

Tune in tomorrow for more on the Open Carry Vacation to Wyoming!

Getting ready for an open carry vacation in Wyoming:

Charlie says “This is an initiation of force!”:

Happy squit beasts in catente (Cat Détente):

Peanut: Cat without a face:

Inside of a USB drive. It went through the wash and died, so I took it apart to “see what makes it tick”:

Peanut put himself in “kitty jail”:

Debra Jean gently noshing on Fuzzy’s tail:

Fuzzy being a scardy cat:

MEW! Have a wonderful week! We sure are so far!

You don’t need to buy Adobe Acrobat Distiller to make PDFs. CutePDF is an AWESOME freeware PDF utility, with no crapware. Info and download link here. Direct small download here. Supports Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista (x32/x64).

You install it, then you can “print” a GREAT looking PDF document directly from Microsoft Word or any other program that has a “print” option. You can export Word docs, make eBooks, even make a PDF of a webpage. (Click here for the PDF I made of this page while I was in “post-writing” admin mode.)

I almost think that it looks better than PDFs made from Distiller, at least with the one-click settings in CutePDF. (Acrobat has many many deep menus for changing various things, I’ll still use that for outputting books to send to the printer. But CutePDF opens faster, renders faster, and looks better for simple things like a book proposal or a business letter.)

You click on “print” from whatever program you’re in, then you have to pick “CutePDF writer” from your drop-down list of “printers.”

OK, OK, I’d rather work than hack….

So, I pussed out and deleted Puppy Linux from the “System Tray of life.”

I had this great idea to get an old IBM ThinkPad laptop, remove the hard drives, install an internal USB drive running Puppy, and write my new book on it. Was also approved by Make Magazine to write an article on this process. Sadly, the article will not be written. Here’s why….

Here’s me inside the old ThinkPad:

ThinkPads are well made, and are easy to take apart. The manual tells you how. They’re made for scientists, not grandmas. Want proof? Here’s a 2004 NASA photo from Wikipedia of a cosmonaut with “Several ThinkPads in use aboard the International Space Station”:

The one he’s using is the exact one I bought for 200 bucks on eBay.

It was all going well until I spilled hot solder on the motherboard and ruined it. I threw the 200 laptop in the trash, and immediately drove to Circuit City and bought a brand new HP Pavilion with 4 gigs of RAM running (gasp) Windows Vista.

Vista had a LOT of problems at first rollout, but the big update pack (which is already in my version) fixed most of it, including providing drivers that weren’t there in the first rollout. That’s how Microsoft does things. They sell you a shiny new broken car, then fix it later for free (while you’re trying to drive it).

The very young, slightly rude salespeople at Circuit City, who were probably selling shoes last month, kept trying to upsell me, hard. They could not understand that someone would rather have a less expensive model with a nice keyboard click than a fancier model with an output for high-def TV monitor. I finally told the kid, “I’m going to buy a laptop within the next half hour. I know exactly what I’m looking for. I do not need your help, and I know far more about computers than you. I’ll come find you when I’m ready, so you can ring it up and get your commission. He said “We don’t get commission any more” and walked away. (I forgot, they fired all the knowlegable sales people nationwide to save money, and hired people off the street at minimum wage, and replaced commissions with quotas.)

I hated Vista before, and it still doesn’t run all my programs (I still have them running on my other laptop, which is running XP, and is set up to a monitor). I know I said I’d never use Vista. But if you turn off all the flashy bullshit that Vista has to try to make it look like a Mac, it runs screamingly fast. (Here’s a great tutorial on doing that.) Because the hardware needed to run Vista with all that stuff is powerful. So if you turn it all off, it’s great. I also like that Vista has true sleep mode, which is great for the way I write. I often write in bursts of 15-20 minutes, get up and do something else, then come back, write five minutes, get up, come back, write an hour, etc. Sleep mode enables me to have long battery life while doing that all over the house (or outside, when weather gets nicer.)

I also set it up to look like Win 98, which is easier, and uses less memory. (Right click on Start, go to Properties/Classic Start Menu.)

I love that everything is one click, not two, in Vista. I think they’re even imitating Linux with that, but I’ve always wondered, “Why two clicks? it’s a waste of my energy, it adds up, and it hurts my hands with my 2 million clicks a year.” (By the way, MouseCount runs well on Vista.)

Computer was only $750. Damn computers are getting better and faster and cheaper. I skipped getting the three-year extended warranty (for $350 bucks), partly because I replace my computers about every year, and partially because in this economy, Circuit City is likely to be out of business in three years.

I really do have the new laptop set up only to write my next book, which I plan being a bestseller. Did set it up for the Internet, but only to search web for research, and to FTP backups to a hidden folder on a website. Only other program I put on it is Microsoft Word 2003 (the best version of it. It reached perfection at that point, and never got better.

Also, one thing that would have made writing my book on Puppy Linux harder was the fact that the word processor, AbiWord, has a bug that makes the “find” function crash, and then you have to re-open the program. I use “find” constantly in my writing, due to the way I write. I sort of just start writing ideas, then go back and move them around and expand on them. I have to be able to find certain ideas, based on words in them, quickly in order to do that.

I did bring one thing over from Puppy Linux, and some Linux people may consider putting this on a Vista box as heresy, but I love the Puppy desktop art so much, I brought it over.

So - here’s my streamlined “write-one-best-seller-only” desktop, with only four icons:

I still think Puppy Linux is a great thing, but I need the right tools for the job.

Here’s an unrelated but nifty photo of our cats. It’s rare that Charlie (the middle one) puts up with the squittens being this close to her, so I had to document it for the ages:

Happy new year! (we slept through midnight, I’m up starting my new year now.)

I tried Puppy Linux on my laptop, it’s pretty amazing. Runs from a flash drive, can do a lot, including graphics, web, e-mail, word processing and photography.

I just bought this 200-dollar laptop on eBay. Bought it from a seller with nothing but positive feedback. It’s a Working IBM Thinkpad A31 Laptop,1.6Ghz, WiFi, 15″ LCD, CD-RW, 512MB RAM, 30GB hard drive, and a USB port.

I’m going to install Puppy and use it to write my next book. My next book is called “Practical Emotional Self-Defense”, it’s about dealing with idiots, and it’s going to make me a millionaire. Mark my words. (I don’t believe in New Years resolutions, but how’s that for a plan. And we’re four hours into the new year, and I’ve already written 3000 words of the new book.)

Puppy Linux is a mindblowingly cool operating system, and easy as pie to use. I’ve always been afraid of Linux, thinking “Windowz works well enough, why bother?” But Puppy is no bother. It works BETTER than Windowz.

Puppy is free, and it will turn a slow older Windows machine into a fast little writing tool. The whole OS, with a bunch of programs, is only 90 megs! (as opposed to the 8000 megs of Windows with no programs). You can even run it entirely loaded into memory, from a CD ROM.

Yay! Happy new puppy hobby for the new year!
I have a friend who’s working her way through college, she’s smart and geeky, but under employed. I suggested to her that she buy lots of older working laptops with no OS (you can find them on eBay for like 50 bucks sometimes if you buy five or ten of them), install and configure Puppy, and sell them for a small profit to help with college expenses. She might do it. And that’s permitted in the Puppy license. The Puppy Linux website even has a link for people who sell pre-configured Pup boxes, though I didn’t see any who were doing it with laptops, just desktop computers.

Best investment tip:
“Forget gold, invest in lead.”
– Michael W. Dean

Yup. Lead will do you more good when the shit hits the fan. Ammo will protect your home and feed your family. Gold will only make you a target for home invasions.

Remember, in the grand atomic time line, those with lots of gold will wish they could turn it into lead anyway.

(Photo of me that DJ took at the gun range. Something about shooting near rattlesnakes not only makes guns seem safer, but also the sign seems to sum up our current economic and political world.)

======

SO….DJ and I have labored over what to do on election day. We CANNOT vote for either guy.

——=

So here’s the puppy parade to take the bad taste out of your mouth…..some happy pictures.

Us at our new range. Me shooting metal reactive targets shaped like piggies and rams:

DJ shooting at same:

DJ recoil with brass flying:

DJ sleeping while petting Peanut in her sleep:

I talked to a good longtime friend, smallGod on the phone tonight. I talked about how I have a very powerless feeling with what’s going on with the Wall Street bailout tonight. I told him “I think this ‘immediate crisis’ with the ‘congress better authorize giving a trillion dollars to the guys who fucked it up, by Friday (tomorrow) or the sky will fall’ deadline seems made up, to serve some purpose of swaying the election, or Bush just getting a last unbelievable favor for his buddies when he’s no longer worried about getting reelected.”

My friend totally agreed. Then we got into a discussion of other rights being eroded, and he told me about NORTHCOM which is a plan to deploy US soldiers as police in the US, which is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limits such powers.

My friend sent me this NORTHCOM article, from an official Army publication:

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

I told him “Yup. You should get and read this book, The Redneck Manifesto.
http://www.stinkfight.com/2008/01/09/jim-goads-redneck-manifesto

“Goad has very interesting things to say, and says them very well. One of his chapters is about tax-protest militia groups. They’re painted by the media as “insane.” But goad asks ‘why?’

“When the gov is about to give a trillion dollars of our money to Wall Street to reward them for fucking up by being too greedy to even be good Wall Streeters, being upset about paying taxes doesn’t sound so crazy, does it?

“I believe there are tax-protest militia groups who believe that Posse Comitatus Act, means that citizens of the US don’t have to recognize any police official higher than the county sheriff (which may work well, some of them are probably related to the county sheriff. lol….) That anything higher than the county sheriff (state police, federal police, FBI, CIA, ATF, etc.) is tyranny as defined by use in the US Constitution. This is a very libertarian (with a small ‘L’) idea for sure. Not sure I buy it, but it seems kinda funky-fresh hip ‘n’ happenin’ to me sometimes.

“That thing I said to you about conspiracy stuff, about how the hidden truth is mixed in with absolute insanity, and it’s easy to get sucked into a painful wormhole, both on the Internet and in your mind and soul…..nowhere is that more true than in 2ed amendment (gun rights) writings and speech. There is some of the most right-on stuff that actually makes me feel patriotic (in the way it should be, not in the knee-jerk way it is with many Americans who believe everything they’re told), and those good parts are always one or two clicks away from the most foul, toxic, nutty, destructive, racist stuff I’ve ever read.

“I was fairly amazed that someone is as political as you doesn’t know the Amendments by name. It’s important to know what’s in the Constitution, so you know when it’s being eroded. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS> here’s an audio study aid me and the wife produced:
www.debrajeandean.com

“Anyway, me and Debra Jean are enjoying our guns. A few pix are attached. The shotgun, a Remington 870, is in the two front seats in most cop cars in California. It’s the most powerful weapon a US citizen can enjoy. It feels nice to be as well armed as the cops. And I’m as responsible as any cop, even the really responsible ones.

“We have a lot of fun with all three guns at the range, and keep them handy for home defense. (Against the possibility of murderous home invasions, which are becoming more common in Southern California, especially as the economy gets worse and the media screams “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!” about everything….it has a ripple effect on everyone.)

“I haven’t given much thought to opposing tyranny with my guns (the original intent of the 2ed amendment), and if I did, I doubt I’d type it in an e-mail. lol……)

“Was nice chattin’ with ya tonight.”

MWD

—=

My friend also sent me this video of a guy ranting about the government:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d060fWLuVio&eurl=http://wearechange.org/

I replied:
“It’s pretty much mostly true, but I sure hate being yelled at. He’s yelling. (and that creepy mask doesn’t help.)

“Not that he’s a socialist, but one of the problems I have with most socialists and radical leftists (and radical feminists, and most “-ISTs” in general) I’ve met is that many of them have shrill voices, and I can’t stand shrill voices.

“Sarah Palin also has a shrill voice. And I think she would lead that way too. (She sounds like my third-grade teacher talking down to me like I’ve done something wrong. It’s very icky to me.)

“What was the ’surprise at the end of the video’ he promised? The way he was ranting and pissed off, I thought he was gonna blow his brains out (which I would have no desire to see.) I didn’t see any surprise at all. He just kinda stopped. (Maybe to take a throat lozenge?)”

===

By the way, our founding fathers weren’t too hot on ideas like the Federal Reserve:

Thomas Jefferson said, “If the America people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

The Federal Reserve, contrary to popular beliefe, is not part of the US Government. It is a private institution that prints money and then rents it to the US, with interest. The Federal Reserve was hastily created under politicians threat of an imaginary deadline to deal with the Panic of 1907. This deadline was pushed by government for their friends J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. the “Wall Street” honchos of their day. (Think “Mr. Burns” from the Simpsons. He’s a cross between Rockefeller and a praying mantis.

Sweet dreams, kitties. Hope tomorrow brings good news, not that any of us have any say in it…..

(This is slightly old news, but I forgot to blog about it, and I’m still irked that it happened. I think they should find the fucking people who did it and charge them with treason.)

Olympic champion Kim Rhode’s shotgun is stolen

Authorities say the gun, which Rhode used in four Olympics, was stolen from her pickup truck in Lake Elsinore while she was shopping for her upcoming wedding….Full story here.

I’m sick of making video. I’m only interested in making written word and spoken audio these days. Both are much easier to edit, file size wise, and much more expressive. And audio is quick. I can type up a few notes, yack into my Zoom H2, do a little editing, fluffing and folding on the laptop, upload it and have it heard by thousands within a day. I make a great sounding podcast in a couple hours. It takes a year to make a film of the same length, and the podcast can be just as enjoyable.

And I really feel audio on a Pod is where I want my audience. I like art you can consume while working in a factory or a cubicle. More subversive.

The stuff NRA is against didn’t make sense to me at first, but more and more it totally makes sense. Assault weapon bans? ALL guns are assault weapons. Many guns defined as assault weapons are same power as hunting rifles, but just LOOK scarier. “Assault weapon” is a term made up by politicians to make people who don’t know the difference think that semi-automatic guns are machine guns (fully automatic). They’re not. And machine guns have been illegal in the US for non-military since the 1930s.

Gun registration? Will make it easier to round up guns from honest citizens if the gov decides to do so. And almost all gun crimes are committed with UN-registered guns anyway.

Waiting periods? Women have died waiting for their gun when the restraining order doesn’t keep their stalker from trying to kill them.

“Gun-free zones”? Mass murders love ‘em. That’s why they shoot at schools and malls, because there’s no chance someone who is legally packing will fight back and end it quick. “Gun-free zones” don’t work on criminals any more than “drug-free zones” keep drugs out of neighborhood. Criminals will bring guns into a gun-free zone. Criminals do not obey laws, that is the definition of a criminal. (Note: the only place I’ve ever seen a “drug-free zone” sign is in the most drug-riddle junkie ghetto neighborhoods I’ve ever had the misfortune to live in.)

Crime goes down, not up, in states that increase issuing of concealed carry permits for law-abiding citizens.

The new thing that anti-gun politicians are pushing for is mandatory “ballistic fingerprinting”. Two firms, Smith & Wesson and Glock, are already doing it voluntarily. It was done on our new guns. Each one included one fired cartridge in a little evidence envelope, with a printed note that it had been scanned by technician number whatever. The idea being that cops can compare firing pin marks on cartridges found at a crime scene with those in the database. Only problem is, killers will hook up a baggie to catch their own shells, and get my shells or your shells, that they scooped up at a firing range, and dump them at the crime scene. Then if we don’t have an alibi, we’re gonna have to spend a lot of money on lawyers to stay out of prison. If we’re lucky.

Also, a few hits with a nail file changes the firing pin marks. Or you can replace the pin. Or barrel, if you wanna change the rifling marks. Firing pins and barrels are not considered “guns”, they are gun parts, and can be ordered through the mail, purchased at a gun store or a gun show without a waiting period or background check, and they are not used to fire a round for any database before sale.

Gun politics are something politicians use to get votes. End of story. And all politicians, even the ones who want to take guns away, are protected 24/7 by armed guards and secret service, so they’re hypocrites. They can be protected by guns but I can’t?????

I really believe in smart self-protection, not gun control. The cow is too far out of the barn for gun control. When guns are outlawed..well you know the rest.

Arm everyone without a criminal record and enact nationwide Castle Doctrine. Turn everyone into a cop, because the cops can’t be everywhere, and I wouldn’t want them to be. This works in Texas. Low violent crime rate because everyone’s packin’.

The NRA is in favor of background checks, and so am I. The NRA wants them on the spot, but the gov has squelched attempts make the databases work together to do this on the spot, because the gov likes waiting periods.

I think that the reason the NRA is against any gun control is that with politicians, if you “Give ‘em an inch, they take a mile.” Bans on “assault weapons” today can mean a ban on all guns next year.

=====-

P.S. A funny thing that store owners do in Texas is put a “No guns allowed” sign in the door. I’ve seen ‘em there a lot. But it’s only a “nod-nod wink-wink” to gun-shy people. People with carry permits in Texas can carry a concealed weapon in a business unless it has a very specific legalese wording in the sign. “No guns allowed” or a sign with a gun and a red line through it do not satisfy this requirement. Those signs are the gun-packin’ owner telling his gun-packin’ patrons “It’s OK” while assuring patrons who are nervous around an honest law-abiding armed population.

p.p.s., a very few states do allow NON-concealed carry, but I wouldn’t want to do that. In a bank robbery or mall shooting, a criminal is probably gonna shoot the one guy he knows has a gun first!

MWD

The Whole Earth Catalog was an amazing, large “Access to tools” book in the late 60s, early 70s that influenced EVERYTHING: Internet sharing of technology and media, affordable housing, Craigslist, BitTorrent, green energy, and more. And the visionary who started it, Stewart Brand, ran The Well (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), the first commercial online service company, even before the Web. (If you ever get an e-mail from someone and their e-mail address ends in @well.net, you can be sure they were using the Internet before you were.)

I had The Whole Earth Catalog as a kid, from my sister, Connie. I found her copy in the attic after she went off to college. I loved the WEC, and it influenced me a lot, opened my mind to ideas that I did not hear about in school, or anywhere else, in my little town.

Reading the WEC also made me want to seek out and meet inventor and visionary Buckminster Fuller. (The Whole Earth Catalog people loved Fuller, because he invented the Geodesic dome, which the WEC touted as cheap housing for hippies wanting to “get back to the land.”

(I met Fuller in Chautauqua, New York, when he was in his 80s and I was 12. Changed my life. He was the first famous person I ever met. Back then, my “rock stars” were scientists.)

Wikipedia says, “Apple Inc. founder and entrepreneur Steve Jobs has described the Catalog as the conceptual forerunner of the World Wide Web….”The WEC was sort of like Google in  paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.”

Article in Time Magazine by Stewart Brand called “WE OWE IT ALL TO THE HIPPIES.”

(My view of the Internet is much like Stewart Brand’s. That it’s majestic and spiritual. Which is part of why I don’t like social networking, even though social networking came out of those ideas. I just think most people doing social networking are not people I’d want to talk with in real life. There are a lot of weenies and dolts in the world, and before the Internet, I was blissfully unaware of what they were thinking and doing. I really don’t want to see pictures of your cat, I don’t want to hear your dumb jokes, and I really don’t want to take a “Do you like me?” quiz. I thought those were stupid in third grade. I still think they’re stupid.)

Here’s a cool article about the Whole Earth Catalog. Here’s some quotes from it:

Richard Wurman: A West Coast catalog for hippies that won the National Book Award [in 1972, in the Contemporary Affairs category]? It was a paradigm shift in information distribution. In the early ’70s, the public didn’t know what a yurt was, or where to buy one. But if you were interested in moving back to the land and needed sturdy, cheap housing, this was invaluable information. I think you can draw a pretty straight line from the WEC to a lot of today’s culture. It created an aroma that’s so pervasive, most people don’t even know the source of the smell.

Kevin Kelly: For this new countercultural movement, information was a precious commodity. In the ’60s, there was no Internet; no 500 cable channels. Bookstores were usually small and bad; libraries, worse. The WEC not only gave you permission to invent your life, it gave you the reasoning and the tools to do just that. And you believed you could do it, because on every page of the catalog were other people doing it. This was a great example of user-generated content, without advertising, before the Internet. Basically, Brand invented the blogosphere long before there was any such thing as a blog.

John Perry Barlow: Before the WEC came out, business was big and ugly. It was a kingdom of acronyms like IBM and GE. But Stewart saw sustainable small business as a virtue.

Fred Turner: The WEC set the stage for all of today’s social networks. This kind of collaborative communication and the emphasis on small-scale technology really hit home in early Silicon Valley. You have to remember that the first Xerox PARC [the Palo Alto Research Center, a division of Xerox credited with inventing laser printing and the Ethernet, among other things] library consisted of books selected from the WEC by computer guru Alan Kay.

SO….We’ve finally become comfy enough around guns to keep them loaded in the house. Because you know, an unloaded gun isn’t really a gun, and there may not be time to load it in an emergency.

I put a notice by the gun to remind me. Will keep that up for a while. Seems like a silly thing to need to do, but I’ve been practicing loading dummy shells so long that grabbing the gun from the corner and  flipping it around has become second nature, so I need to un-do that thinking.

Also, we went and fired our new pistols today. Took a one-hour lesson, then shot 125 rounds each, at 25 feet. We were pretty good for first time with new guns. (DJ and I have both fired pistols before, but it’s been many years.) I think we did pretty good, below is the last target we did…the 10 head shots are mine, the 30 center body shots are DJ’s (she’s a better shot than me):

I actually think that shooting with the shotgun made us better shots with pistols. I wasn’t sure it would transfer over, but I think it did.

We shoot without our glasses, as we want to practice under adverse conditions, rather than under optimum conditions.

After shooting that much, we both felt kind of mellow and excited at the same time. Kinda high almost. Went to McDonalds drive through on the way home, then both napped, hard, for an hour and a half.

When we woke up, we took the guns apart to clean and oil them:

I found an amazingly helpful video on YouTube, here, on the disassembly of this particular model. I love the video, it’s the only one this dude’s put up on YouTube, but it blows most “how-to” videos about anything out of the water. It’s very no-nonsense, and shows you exactly how to take it apart and put it back together.

It’s not that hard once you see it done, but I really doubt I could have figured it out on my own, and the owner’s manual that came with the guns is pretty useless. It’s not for our particular model, but rather a generic manual for all Smith & Wesson pistols.

We’re really enjoying the handguns, and plan to shoot at least 125 rounds a night each, two nights a week, until we’re really really good.

The handguns somehow feel more like “guns” to me. Maybe because I used to associate handguns with criminals but associated shotguns with my kindly old grandfather. Or maybe it’s because the bullet and the noise come out closer to your ears than with a shotgun (even though a shotgun is louder).

We love our new hobby, and love that there’s a lot to learn. I’d kinda gotten bored with filmmaking and audio production, because I know so much about both. It’s nice to have a new hobby. And our hands hurt from loading, shooting and taking the guns apart. We got little raw spots on the tip of our thumbs from loading all those bullets into the mags….It sort of reminds me of when I first started playing guitar, when I was 14, and the pads of my fingers would be sore after, but I got callous and the pain eventually went away.

I think it will work the same with this.

(Coming in 2010:$30 Gun School. lol…)

MEW!

MWD and DJD

Got two Smith & Wesson 9mms. Yay! (I love how the photos of me with glasses and the gun make me look responsible, but without the glasses, I look criminal. I’m not. They’re fully legal, registered, and for target shooting and personal protection only.)

Download 10-meg zipped PDF of magazine.

or

Download torrent.

This is the complete “Guns” magazine from Sept. 1957. Has lots of photos of family bonding over guns, advertisements for mail-order 20 dollar Remington shotguns and mail-order 40 dollar fully automatic machine guns, as well as an interesting  article (starts on page 22) called “Why Not a PRO-Gun Law?” (in which the author also admits he’s a felon, having purchased confiscated guns from cop friends.)

This mag, and all the photos, somehow kinda make me miss my grandfather.

==

“Guns is a magazine for the recreational and competitive shooter, hunter, collector, and firearm owner. Each issue features new products, shooting competitions, history, and trade show coverage. From handguns to shotguns, this monthly magazine provides the ultimate coverage in the field of firearms.Features proper gun use, hunting techniques, collecting, firearms legislation, and new guns and accessories.

“Since 1955, sportsmen and enthusiasts have turned to Guns Magazine for the latest news on firearms, training, hunting, accessories and more. In the field or on the range, you’ll find the information you need to make the shooting sports more enjoyable.”

September 1957

I just finished reading Black Man With a Gun by Reverend Kenneth V. F. Blanchard. It’s a short primer on gun ownership, great tips on choosing and using a weapon, with very interesting parts on the racist roots of gun control and a Christian take on self-defense vs. the “thou shall not kill” commandment. (The author is a Baptist minister, as well as a Harley rider and ex-gov shooter.)

Reverend Kenn is a great guy, we’ve been e-mailing and exchanging books through the mail. He does two wonderful podcasts, one on gun rights called “The Urban Shooter Podcast“, and one about sex, marriage and God called “Naked but Not Ashamed.” I’m subscribed to both. I’m happy to have this cat as a friend.

The second book I’m digging is ex-cop Massad Ayoob’s “The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery.”

Great book, with a mindblowing amount of information. Aimed at training cops, but useful info to civilians, especially about disarming armed people if need be. This book also has enough smarts and class to mention Reverend Kenn.

Here’s a PDF scan of that section. (Excerpting covered under US Copyright law under “Fair Use of short excerpts for Literary Critique.”)

Michael W. Dean

Little side note: Anyone who thinks that legal gun ownership is a white-boy sport, I have to point out that I’m learning more from a black guy and an Arab-American then from anyone else at this point.

Debra Jean and I bought two new 9mm handguns today. We went to buy one, but couldn’t decide on which to get, so got one for her and one for me.

She got the “girly gun”, the Smith & Wesson Model 908S semi-automatic pistol. It’s a small concealed carry model. (We’re gonna apply to get carry permits. Wish us luck. We live in California.)

DJ’s gun (expanded photo size not actual size. They’re small, but not that small, and are pretty hearty):

I got the 910S semi-auto pistol. It’s basically the same gun, but an inch longer, a little heaver, with a larger-capacity magazine. (10 shots max in California, hers holds 8.)

My gun:

We have to wait ten days to pick them up, but we bought ‘em. They were on sale. They list for 650 each. We spent 1200 Including the testing, the background checks, tax, and a book on self-defense laws and technique, and a book on first aid.

We had to pass a state-mandated written safety test. It’s got 30 questions, you are allowed to get 6 wrong. We studied on the car ride there. DJ missed none, I missed one. Here’s the PDF of the California government study guide we used.

We’re psyched! Can’t wait to play. (And practicing at the range will be much cheaper than with the shotgun.  9mm parabellum ammo is about 30 cents per shot, shotgun is a dollar a shot.)

We bought them now instead of later, because if Obama gets elected, he plans to make it LOT harder to buy a gun. He’s got a bad record on legal gun ownership and gun rights.

Julie Peasley (who is a good friend, and also taught me how to use Quark, which is what I use to lay out my books with) has come out with a line of plush toys that are subatomic particles. They’re doing so well that she’s had to hire people to help keep up with the orders. I’m very proud of her.

This just goes to show what I have always believed: that if you just do art for the sake of art, and you’re good, eventually, something will catch on commercially, create a zitegiest.

Here’s an article about her company in the Denver Post.

Here’s her company’s website: ParticleZoo.net

(Photo above by Sean Maytum.)

The Peter Principle states that “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.” This is true, people get to where they’re doing a great job, then get promoted to where they can’t do a great job, but don’t fuck up enough to get fired, and stay there for the rest of thier life.

I find this true also with software. There is even a name for this, “software bloat” or “bloatware.” I think the reason this happens is because software companies have to keep rolling out new “features” to stay in business, even when the “features” turn out to be annoyances.

I use a lot of legacy software (older versions) that I like a lot  better than the latest version. Here’s a list of programs I have tried the latest version of, and reverted to an older version because I like the older one better:

• Microsoft Windows (Currently at Vista, but I use XP Professional on all my computers. I just bought a new laptop, and actually had to look hard and pay extra to get one with the older, cheaper, XP installed.)
• Microsoft Word (Currently at 2008, but I use 2000.)
• Sony Sound Forge (Currently at version 9, but I use version 8.)
• Nero disc burning suite (Currently at unnumbered version from five years ago.)
• AudioCatalyst MP3 encoder (no longer made, now part of RealPlayer. I use AudioCatalyst version 2.1, from 1999.)
• WinZip (Currently at version 11, I use version 10.)

You’ll get my legacy versions when you pry them out of my cold, dead hard drive.

I heard something last night about home protection that I like, on this podcast, Black Man With A Gun: “You don’t shoot people just to kill people, you only shoot people to stay alive.”

But being prepared to do so involves training, practice, safety, and accessibility to your weapon. And accessibility to your ammo. An unloaded gun will not keep you alive. (Unless you bluff, the criminal isn’t brazen, and bluffing with an unloaded gun can get you killed. Non-brazen criminals rarely break into houses in the middle of the night willing to kill you. Non-brazen criminals steal iPods out of unlocked cars.)

There’s a lot of debate among gun owners about whether to keep your weapon loaded or not. Keeping it loaded makes it a better bet for home protection in split-second emergencies, but also can increase the chance of accidental discharge. Even though we don’t have kids, we do have cats, and they like to mess with everything. So I won’t keep my gun loaded. But I want shotshells readily available, and I can load them in seconds, even in the dark. (I practiced with non-active plastic dummy shells.)

I had bought this shot saddle (from TacStar, which is where this photo is from) to mount on the side of my shotgun:

(I was inspired to get it because Lem on The Shield has one. I am a little embarrassed to say that  - one probably shouldn’t take gun cues from TV shows, but it looked like it made sense to me):

But after I bought it, I realized that to mount it you have to push out the pins that hold your gun together. And that can, according to the directions, cause your gun to jam if not done right. So I decided to mount it on the wall in my bedroom.

I used a stud finder to find a place to nail it:

Had to drill a couple extra holes in the metal saddle. (I wore my shooting eye protection for that.) Then I just nailed it into the wall, and added shells:

Yay! Shells totally ready to go, without having a loaded weapon in the house.

Now, I can hear you saying, “But what if the crazed addict / killer / rapist gets into you and your wife’s room before you have time to load up?”

Well my friend, our bedroom has the window boarded up with three layers of plywood (we use it as a recording studio). We have a several-room house, so I would have some notice if I heard anyone come in the other windows or the door before they got to my room. (I did last year when someone tried to get in, I stopped the guy from coming in, called the cops, and they caught him). And I am an insomniac guy with audiophile hearing who works at home, is usually awake all night quietly reading, has cameras pointed out all his windows, and leaves the house a total of about three hours a week, not in any set schedule.

“Do you feel lucky? Well do ya?”

So, I bought a new computer. Transferred all data over to the new one. The hard drive (among other things) was failing on the old one, wasn’t really worth salvaging. And the hard drive has lots of saved passwords and personal info, so I didn’t want to just chuck it.

First, I formatted the drive.

Then, I took out the RAM, to keep as spares:

I removed the battery, as it fits my new computer, and I can keep it as a spare:

I figured the best tool for the job of making the hard drive absolutely unrecoverable was the shotgun:

My wife came home during this phase of the operation. She’s smarter than I am, and reminded me that we have neighbors who might not like the sound of a shotgun blast. She suggested an alternate tool:

I hammered away at the hard drive for a minute or so:

(A good-sized hammer would also work. But a crowbar is a lot more fun.)

It reduced the drive platter to glass dust. (Modern platters are made of metal-treated glass, not metal.) A little bit of it fell out, but I could hear a sandy shake of glass chips and glass dust when I shook the case. (Note the sticker that reads “Warranty void if seal is broken.” I guess the warranty is now void):

I threw the drive full of powdered, deleted data into the trash on top of the coffee grinds:

I covered that with used kitty litter (not pictured) and took the laptop to the recycling place (not pictured).

I won’t guarantee that the drive is 100% unrecoverable, if one had NSA-level resources, but I’m not that important. And I still think it would be a hell of a challenge. If anyone knows a way to turn about a thousand tiny chips of glass back into data, let me know. This process is good enough for me.

—–

(Note….I wouldn’t REALLY have used a shotgun like that, especially without hearing and eye protection, and not where it could ricochet and hit me or the house. But if I lived in the country, I certianly would have set it up further away and tried it.)

Well, we finally got to shoot our shotgun (which the wife suggested we name “Li’l Debbie) at the range. It was a BLAST, no pun intended.

You can see the expended shell flying out of the gun in this photo of Dollie:

Below are a few of the targets. We were told it was pretty awesome for first time. We hung the targets up in our window, facing out to our patio. Crime deterrent….It lets people know what they’re in for if they jump our fence and keep going.

…your wife looks better than you with a shotgun in her hand.

We got the gun today. 10-day wait was up. Yay!

And we did a series of pix inspired by American Gothic (this pic) :

(Note to self: don’t ever commit any violent crimes or these photos will end up on the evening news.)