Happy May Day. It's also another Bandcamp Friday, so yeah, I'm plugging "Dangerous Babies" again. I know I'm biased, but it just seems to fit the times so well.
I'm well-pleased to report that not only am I playing guitar regularly again (every day for the past week and a half or so, and my calluses are building back up), I've also started working on a few new bits and pieces. Oughta be a new song or three coming out in the not-so-distant future. OK, that's probably more music to my ears than to yours, but still.
Hopefully, the Subvert platform will be live soon, and a new forum for me to share the new music. I've finally gotten around to uploading the I'll Live album there, and I'd like to see good things happen.
Can the rain and the wind and the heat and the cold all just pipe down already?!? I don't know about the rest of you, but I could use a string of seasonably/reasonably warm sunny days without 30mph gusts. I'll meet you outside...
Most people don't have any concepts of a plan of an idea what the hell a phone app is. They were hiding all the cats and dogs on National Taco Day. Why are National Coffee Day and International Coffee Day just two days apart? Someone's not drinking enough coffee, or maybe too much. What's that? The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact-check!
Bandcamp Friday
Anyway, International Music Day just passed, too... Now that I've gotten all of that out of my system, I'd written previously (almost exactly a year ago, in fact) about Bandcamp being sold to Songtradr. While there was a lot of concern at the time about what would become of the music platform beloved by independent artists like me, and dismay at the layoffs that ensued, things seem to be going OK for now, and in fact today is another Bandcamp Friday, when music fans can buy music from indie artists (like me!) and Bandcamp will waive its usual revenue share so the artists get that much more. Needless to say, I haven't hopped off the bandcampwagon yet, but I've been hearing lately about a "collectively-owned successor" in the works called Subvert. While I've never made much money from my music, and I don't expect that to change now, I am intrigued by Subvert's admittedly lofty goals, and I'm looking on with interest.
What else... Gina and I spent two nights in Beach Haven on LBI in July, and saw the "Footloose" musical at the Surflight Theatre there, which was a lot of fun. We ended up going back in August to see "Titanic," then took a trip out to Foxburg, PA and enjoyed both the Foxburg Inn and Foxburg Wine Cellars very much. The two of us brought her dog Bailey with us to Vermont over Labor Day weekend, a relaxing getaway we all needed. Gina and I saw "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" last month, and it was such a great movie! I took her and her daughter Hannah to the New York Renaissance Faire for the first time, and I suspect it won't be the last. And another trip to Vermont, to glimpse some of the amazing foliage, is imminent...
I haven't upgraded to macOS Sequoia yet, but soon. I did update the ol' iPhone 12 Pro to iOS 18.0 (and now 18.0.1) with no hiccups; I'm thinking it's just about time for a phone upgrade, though. At work, we've been incorporating more AI into our routines, as is probably the case with many of you, but I hadn't played around with it too much on a personal level... until last week when one of my colleagues, Monica, let us know about Google's latest toy, NotebookLM. I decided to feed it two of the pages from my Website, and this (after I did a little editing, and added some music and visualization) is what it created. Just a little bit spooky.
Vosita
Oh, and speaking of work, Vosita Healthcare is giving away a Cybertruck for Kids in December, and I'm in the promotional video! Check it out, and see more details at https://go.vosita.com/win.
That's no temporary moon, that's a spa- oh, my bad, it is a temporary moon.
