Mars Mumbles

Life on Mars? Yearly Check-in

2006-10-29T17:59:00.001-05:00

Well, a year ago - I announced that I'd be taking a podcast hiatus. Little did I expect it would be a year long one. The move I spoke of back then has turned into two, approaching number three. Real Life 2.1 is now at version 5 due to the contant crashes of the previous versions. Not at all what I wanted but as Mick sings "You can't always get what you want.."

I had hoped sometime to get back to this and at least try to do something with the show, but here we are a year later and still no cast. I still want to do the online gaming show - I just need to find a time my guests and I can set aside and get it done. Beyond that is the vast open expanse of topics to do and guests to find in order to break up the monotony of my "mumbles". On that, however, there is a possible light on the horizon.

Recently I learned about a new service called "Talkshoe" which is a Talkcast/Podcast system that provides a no-login streaming listen-only audio feed, and for registered users, a directed/threaded text chat, and access to a commercial grade voice bridge that allows callers to conference live - and record/stream simultaneously. Registration is free and allows both participation in shows, or the ability to host your own show.

So why is this any different that tossing a bunch of people on teamspeak and doing a regular shoutcast/podcast? While you can get quite a few people on teamspeak with a good server, there is a limit - plus Teamspeak has a ton of lag.

Since this service uses a telephone number as its access, you open it to home phones, cell phones, and VoIP with free programs such as Skype and SJPhone allow computer users to dial telephone numbers at zero cost. Also a commercial grade telecommunications bridge could handle hundreds to thousands of callers at once with very little lag! It's a major change to how this has traditionally been done by the average internet talk shows and opens a huge potential base of both listeners and show hosts.

So I've gone ahead and created a Mars Mumbles Talkshoe show. You can click on the Talkshoe button in the left column to get to the show page. I can't promise how active that show will be but I'll do my best to make at least a few episodes.

And I'll see if I can get it all done before Oct 29th 2007 too. ;)

Sony Online Entertainment Releases Planetside Reserves

2006-03-26T11:29:00.000-05:00

SOE has released the Planetside Reserves promotion. Planetside is a MMO First Person Shooter, and the Reserves program allows new users to create an account for the game for free, with certain limitations to Battle Rank and Command Rank. Apologies for posting the story twice, but the official link just came up now with a new URL for download.

Check out additional information at http://www.planetside-universe.com Planetside's #1 fansite!

read more | digg story

PlanetSide Buddy Key exchange

2006-02-06T12:59:00.000-05:00

Members can now share their 10 day Buddy Keys with this Key exchange program for Sony's PlanetSide - a 100% Player vs. Player MMO Shooter. Try Planetside Today!

read more digg story

Podcast Hiatus

2005-10-29T12:30:00.001-04:00

Well I know I said I'd have a Podcast up for this week, but Real Life 2.1 has kicked my butt. My work hours just haven't let me get the time I need to coordinate with my guests for the show and I really didn't want to just toss something together solo.

In addition to all this, I'm moving at the end of this week so that's going to kill any chance of getting a show out for next week as well since my machine may not even be setup in time.

So I'm declaring a short Podcast Hiatus and hope to be back with the first guest show two week from now. By then, I should have the new digs all setup and ready to get down to some serious podcasting and get back on a regular schedule.

Sorry for those expecting a podcast this week but that darn Real Life 2.1 with the expansion pack is a killer. Take care all and see ya in a couple of weeks.

No PodCast this Week

2005-10-22T12:00:00.001-04:00

I've decided to take a week off from the podcasts for a couple of reasons. One is that I just started a new job and started out with a six day stretch which left me with very little time to work on the cast. Second is that the format is going to expand on the next cast to include guest(s) which is going to take some addition technical demands - which will take some additional time to configure.

So due to these factors, I felt taking a week off would be better the trying to jam something together at the last minute and compromise the quality of the show. So no cast this week - hope to be back this Saturday with a fresh new cast for your listening enjoyment.

See ya then!

Episode 3 - The Road: Final Part

2005-10-15T11:51:00.001-04:00

Welcome to Episode 3 and the final part of "The Road", a personal look at the "Road of Computer Technology" as I've seen it over the last 30 years. In this episode, I look at the last days of the 8-bit personal computers, my very first IBM XT PC, Telephone BBS's, Early Internet, "Packet Racket" - Digital Communications over Amateur Radio and more.

Dungeons of Daggorath PC Port Web Site:
http://mspencer.net/daggorath/dodpcp.html
Game Intro Movie (IE required):
http://members.dragonwolves.com/marsman/nsv/

Software we used for R.A.C.U.G.
(Rockland Area Computer Users Group) BBS

Amateur Radio "Packet" Terminal Node Controller (TNC)

A "stack" of TNC's like you would see at a repeater site.

Maine Packet Radio Map ('96): http://members.dragonwolves.com/marsman/96MAP.TXT

Next Week: Subject TBD, but will most likely will be the first show with guest(s).

See ya then!

Podcast: Episode 3 - The Road: Final Part

http://members.dragonwolves.com/marsman/Mars_Mumbles_Episode_3.mp3

Running Time: 34:04

Episode 2 - The Road: Part 2

2005-10-08T12:00:00.001-04:00

We're back with Part 2 of The Road - a personal look at the road of technology as I've seen it over the last 30 years of being around computers.

This week takes a look at my experience in the military and my very first personal computer.

While today's military is far more current technology wise, back when I was in, the computer explosion hadn't quite begun and the military was a little behind.

Here is an IBM 360/30 (NASA used these to put man on the moon). You can see a couple of disk drives on the right with some tape units behind them. The main computer is the large box to the left with a teletype sitting in front.

Below is another picture of the main computer.

I couldn't find any pictures of the Honeywell H16 that I used in the Air National Guard, but it was a single box that looks similar to the IBM pictured here.

Below are pictures of a collator, sorter and a keypunch machine that initially makes the punch cards.

Take my word for it: Be glad we are done with the punch card days!

Here's what got everything started: The Tandy Radio Shack Model I (and II, III, and IV).

And the star of the show: The TRS-80 Color Computer Model I

Here a Floppy Drive and the Controller Pack along with an RS-232 Serial Interface Pack.

Here are some other pictures of Color Computer and some of the accessories available including the original CoCo 1 package with game packs, 1200 baud modem, the multi-pack expansion, a CoCo Mouse, a speech pack, and a CoCo 3 system which had a number of improvements such as 128k expandable to 512k, composite monitor out - 80 char capability and more.

You can see more at http://parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/coco/index.htm

Next Week: The first PC, Phone BBS's, Ham Radio and "Packet Racket" (Early Wireless), Internet, and Multi-Player Gaming.

See ya then!

Podcast: Episode 2 - The Road: Part 2

http://members.dragonwolves.com/marsman/Mars_Mumbles_Episode_2.mp3

Running Time: 37:21

PodCast! Episode 1 - The Road

2005-10-01T00:00:00.001-04:00

Well here we are. The very first podcast. "The Road" is about my experiences growing up in an age when computers, as we know them, were born. In this show, I recall my first experience with a computer and what it was like back in the late seventies.

To the left here is a picture of an ASR-33 Teletype which is where I spend a fair amount of my high school years sitting behind. Running at a blistering 110 baud, it's a far cry from computing today but at the time it was quite advanced considering the state of computers at that peroid.

Missing from the picture is the acoustic coupler used to connect the phone that we used to dial up the Digital PDP-10 mainframe down at Bowdin College in Brunswick, Maine.

Here is picture of a stand-alone one. Ours was was attached to the right side of the teletype.

Here is another picture of an ASR-33 Teletype.

Quite the Beast eh?
Pictured below is a couple of pictures of what this thing was connected to...
A Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10 MainFrame.

Sure glad they aren't this big today!
Next Week: Part Two of "The Road" where I'll talk a little about life after high school, my experiences in the Military and my very first personal computer.
See ya then!
PodCast: Epidode 1 - The Road
http://members.dragonwolves.com/marsman/Mars_Mumbles_Episode_1.mp3
Running Time: 25:29

Podcast Coming Soon!

2005-09-28T15:50:00.000-04:00

The very first PodCast will debut on October 1st 2005

What's this podcast about?

You never know :)

We'll be talking about a variety of subjects which could include Casting, Gaming, Clans, Computers, Technology, Programming, Sci-Fi, Musicians, Amateur Radio, and more.

My first cast is kinda a personal history since I'm an old fart... :)

The series "The Road" will be a general recallection of how I've observed the Road of Technology progress in the last thirty years or so. See ya on the 1st.

Life on Mars - Yearly Mumble now?

2005-09-21T01:51:00.000-04:00

Yes there is life here on Mars. Talk about slacking huh - no posts since almost a year ago even.

Well lots of things have changed. PSU is now gone the way of the dinosaur. Was a great run and I think we did the game of PlanetSide justice as a fan site. We did a lot of very innovative things with AGN as well but it just didn't feel the same when Sporkfire left. In fact PSU lost a lot of steam about the time when SmokeJumper left. I think we all saw the writing on the wall that Planetside's time has come and gone. PSU hung around into the beginning of this year but slowly died a quiet death. I stand and salute the PS dev team, Hamma and the PSU staff, and all the fans which made the heart and soul of PSU and the PS community.

Clan Draconus Lupus continues on and is thriving with World of Warcraft as well as BattleField 2, firmly established as a multi-gaming clan of solid friends who will be playing online games together for many years to come. WoW has been an amazing game so far and attracted an enormously diverse player base. WoW allows for user created addons, one of the more popular collection/compilation is 'Cosmos'. I had been originally assigned as Tactical Assests Officer in CDL back in the Tribes 2day as that game also had a staggering amount of available scripts which sometime can be difficult to manage. As part of those duties, I began to hang out on the Cosmos developers areas and eventually became a "Cosmos Community Helper" helping post in the forums to answer users questions. So from the gaming aspect, that's what keeps me busy.

My personal life has been a rollercoaster ride.

My latest amusement has been with the recent craze of podcasting. The old TechTV folks, Leo, Patrick, Kevin, Alex, and others are all producing shows on the net often distributed by podcasts. http://www.thisweekintech.com is Leo Laport's project and strangle reminds me of AGN's Community Night from it's general format. Shoutcaster have been doing this stuff for years now. It's funny how this is now something "new". Kinda gives me the urge to put something "on the air" from the podcasting side. Who knows - perhaps? I'm pretty sure Hamma gets the urge to dust off the mic as well. We'll see what turns up.

Enough mumbles for now .. podcasting.. hummm :)

Monthly Mumble

2004-10-15T01:01:00.000-04:00

Well I'm getting better... only let a month go by this time. Lets see where did I leave off, oh yeah - just finished my marathon video editing session. Well I jumped right back into it and did the PS News Video from the old school days of of PS back when it was in St. Louis. Kinda cool to look back and see how it all began. Never did get back to the blog - obviously, lol.

And now it's October - these last few weeks have gone by way too fast. The leaves are starting to turn up here and the temps have been noticably colder. Maine winters absolutely suck and the older I get, the more I hate them. PSU is now 2 years old and AGN is about to celebrate a year of Ask the Devs - hard to believe its been that long. It's been a great run and we all are so proud to have been a part of the community experience.

I've been fairly busy with computer work the last couple of weeks - although Murphy has been a house guest a little too often - has left me with "Anti-Midas" syndrom (You know, where everything you touch turns to $hl+, rather than gold?) - worked on a friends machine which had been royally screwed up and after I'd put a bunch of time into it pulling out virus's and spyware, I'd deceided it was just easier to rebuild it, and had set it aside. Pulled it out, plugged it in - went to turn it on and the MB blew up on the stupid thing. So that was depressing. My sons machine hasn't been in the best of health either and an aquaintence of his was going to sell him a 100gb HD - went to install that and it first of all had a boot sector virus on it - went to delete the partition and sudden his machine shuts down like it's was in suspend mode - Power supply blew up - Hard Drive turns out to be fubar as well - will write but fails to read properly. After screwing with that for a few hours, finally it starts failing the S.M.A.R.T. test so it's a doorstop. Better to find out "before" the new OS gets installed on it I guess, but still. So XP with an intergrated sp2 was overlaid on his existing drive and after a good couple of days of updates, installs, defrags, tuning, etc... he is back in business and a happy camper again. Also completely rebuilt another friends machine - 233 Mhz PIII - like watching paint dry for that - and a "real" customers machine (another damn 233 Mhz pos) in that time span as well, so I've spent a lot of time "watching the wheels go round and round" (thanks John L.). New MB should be in any day now for my other friend (John - who I've mentioned im my blog a few posts back) so he should be back in business soon. He's doing much better these days and seems much more like his old self. Still has his moments of course (who wouldn't) but I'm happy to see him in better spirits.

Wife has been sick with bronchitus - which sucks. She's slowly on the mend but such things take time. Hopefully she'll be past this soon.

Finally finished Doom3 - Hell was hell, and about 1/3 of the way through, I finally broke down and resorted to the cheat codes just to get through the story line (which is much more the reason I play such things anyway) and I'm glad I did as seeing what I had to face beyond the point I was at, I'd have never finished it. I like to be able to make progress even if it's only a little progress and it was obvious to me that I'd have never made it much further. Storyline was good and despite that I cheated in the end, I thought I did well to get as far as I'd got.

T:V is out (Tribes:Vengenge for the unknowing) - After being in beta, and playing the multi-player demos - I'm in no rush to go out and get it - in fact I doubt I'll be picking it up until it drops price in several months. I understand they did a great job in the single player and I commend them for that, but... this is TRIBES and multiplayer is where it's at and IMO that part is very weak. They didn't even get a decent observer hud in the game, nor did they provide a dedicated server .exe - which it utterly rediculous consider that hosting servers aren;t going to be stuffing CD's into the racks. Thus there is a serious lack of retail version servers to play on - rather makes the whole shoutcasting and teamplay part a joke. Most people who were into T1 and T2 agree - it's "ok" but not what those original versions were all about and it's left most veteran players cold. Too bad, but not totally unexpected.

Played the Evil Genious Demo - that was fun. Demo was a little too "StarCrafty" for my taste but I understand the full version doesn't zerg the enemy quite as much as the demo does. That being the case, I may have to look into that.

My dog is once again shedding yet another 50 pounds of fur. Seems like we finally just got her clear of her winter coat and looking decent again instead of a stuffed toy with 9/10's of the stuffing hanging out everywhere. Now there are clumps showing all over her and seems like six inches of fur on the floor everyday - little balls of it slowly floating acrost the floor like miniture tumbleweeds. She's a great dog, but husky, wolf, sheppard is a bad mix for hair - lol. Wouldn't give her up for anything though - smart as a whip - even talks. All our animals are mouthy and wierd. We just seem to pick em.

Well I'm running out of things to mumble about - you'd think I'd have more after a month? Life in Maine just plain isn't very exciting ya know, so I suppose I'm lucky to have written this much in one sitting. I'll see if I can cut down the time interval to my next posting to less that a month - perhaps martyr won't even have to guilt me into posting something. :p

The rumors of my demise from here...

2004-09-15T01:33:00.000-04:00

Wow - some serious slacking on this one. As promised martyr, here I am. Well June huh..ok lets see - July sucked - nuf said. August was a rollar-coaster but was no doubt an awesome time was had at PSUMA. It was such a great feeling for Hamma and I to look at a PSU community we always hoped we'd have but never really expected. This community continues to blow us away time and time again with their support.
Upon arriving home, I basically crawled into a gopher hole with food, coffee, and a video editor and stayed there until the video was released today. I have emerged from my hole and upon seeing my shadow, I have declared at least six more months of PSU. :)
My work was interupted by a good friend who need a hand with a system upgrade, and a most happy and joyous event of Hamma and Jennyboo's wedding. I can't begin to express how honored I felt to be included in such a special occation. Was a beautiful event and I wish them both many years of happiness together.
Well it's been a busy day.. I'll mumble some more tomorrow when my thoughts are clearer but had to despell the rumors and make an entry here of some kind.

Sunday Slacking

2004-06-20T13:14:00.000-04:00

Well, it was a little cool in Main yesterday - 57° A little better today at 63, but could stand a little more solar energy. Hell I'm not complaining after winters up here.
Hamma Time was a lot of fun last night. Hamma always does a good show and it's fun to hang out as a listener. Noted last night on the show that I'm about the worlds worst slacker on blogging. Thus I feel guilty and well, here I am - haha. Hamma just reminded me the race in on - good thing to chill and watch today. Will really try to be a little more consistant on the blog here. Later...

Tuesday Trepidations

2004-06-16T01:36:00.000-04:00

Well, it was an amazing day. As much as I would have liked to attend the Planetside-Universe Mobilization Alpha, it appeared it just wasn't meant to be this year. Apparently the incredible PSU community had other plans and stepped up to the plate and hit a grand slam. As a result, Hamma, Jen, and I will be there in full force! I can't begin to express my gratitude to all those who helped make this possible. Just truly overwhelmed and I am greatly honored to be a part of this amazing community event. When Hamma told me a long time ago he's like to start a fan site for this game Planetside (What Side?) I don't think either of us expected it would lead to something like this. Most fan site fail within a short time. We've seen our share of PS fan sites alone come and go. It really is a remarable community we have at PSU and I look forward to meeting many of them in person. Viva La PSUMA! See ya all in Orlando!

Monday Mumbles

2004-06-07T13:32:00.000-04:00

Well a fairly nice day in the state of Maine today. Got an IM from an old friend I hadn't heard from in quite a few years. She's out in AZ now I guess. We've missed each other a couple of times on the IM - gonna see if we can get 'live' tonight and talk rather than pass messages. Real nice to hear from her again. Da Interweb is a wundaful thing eh?
Last week of school for my son CrawlingKane up here. 2 down - 2 to go. I'm very proud that he is going to hang in ther ein finish school. He's getting geared up for summer work at a resteraunt my brother-in-law works at (also the place I'm playing music at too). As most typical teenagers do, he walking around here planning how to spend his money before he even has it, hehe.
Lots of summertime plans in the air between this event and that event. Lots of coordination, planning, and preperations going on by everyone. Should be quite the year for such things. My hat is off to all those people who work tirelessly to make it all happen. Few realize the hours that go into these things in the planning stage.
Oh did I mention I'm going to be a Grampa for the second time now? My middle son's wife is expecting. How time marches on.
Been watching a lot of the 60 year specials for D-Day. Learned lots of intersting stuff I didn't know before. Perhaps I did once and didn't pay attention - funny how things don't mean a lot to you when you are young, suddenly become interesting as you get older. I find myself facinated with the details now and amazed at the courage and bravery of those who threw themselves in the face of almost certain death for the cause. The challanges were overwhelming. Great stuff to watch (well at least for me lol)
Ok enuf mumbles for a Monday I guess. Onward into the rest of this day and see what awaits. Till next time...

Slacking Mumbles

2004-06-04T13:09:00.000-04:00

Yikes, I have been seriously slacking in the blog department - haven't written here in quite while. I apologize. Been a distracting few days with some other projects going. Been trying to do a little research on my music gear. No gig last Wednesday - which was good as I wasn't able to locate an amp to use. My keyboard and rack use floppies to load sounds (720k ones even). It has the ability to use a SCSI hard drive, although getting that to work is a major pain. One problem is this unit is very fussy about what drives will talk. Second problem is I have an outdated version of the firmware which has real problems talkng to hard drives. Now the good news is that after about 6 years of promises, a site which supplies parts and pieces for these keyboards FINALLY has the new firmware for sale. So I'm going to try to get that as soon as I can. I du through the boxes this last week and located my 2 scsi drives I had set aside for this project. Hopefully they still work are being bonced around in storage for the last 2 years. I still need to find the custom SCSI cable I wired (hopefully correctly). It's an odd mix - 25 pin female D connector to 50 PIN IDC for the drive is a very hard combination to find. If I can make all this work, I can replace about 6 boxes of 720 disks, and be able to quickly load complex sounds and combinations live, not to mention leaving the 720k floppies in the closet. We'll see how that goes.
Been doing a lot of work with video lately. Still learning and refining the process to see what can be done. It's pretty amazing. In this day and age, with all the various software tools out there, we're getting real close to getting a complete video broadcast station in a box with ability to switch sources, put up stills, play movies, show multiple camera views at the same time - etc.. I see a real future in video and expect some exciting things down the road. More on that later.
Well it looks like the PSU Mobilization Alpha is a go. Still unsure if I can attend but I will continue to investigate options. A lot of things would have to come together and I am very doubltfull, but we'll see. A big hat's off to Trigger for all here hard work in getting this all organized.
Ok will wrap this out for now. Beautiful day here in the state of Maine today. Wife just walked in so off to spend time with here. L8tr peeps.

Music Mumbles

2004-05-27T01:13:00.000-04:00

Well, that was ... different. Not quite what I expected. Musicians were good, but since it was an open mic night, it seemed every folk singing, man hating, frumpy, off key, Alanis Morreset wannabe wanted to jump up and sing their originals. I honestly wanted to slit my throat after a while. Once all those types cleared out, the band played a few more and then called it a night. Kinda cool to get out again, but this is not what I normally associate with a night out of playing. Would have been just as happy sitting home, playing planetside, and drinking coffee, but I'm glad I went at least.

Musician Mumbles

2004-05-26T16:15:00.000-04:00

Well I've blown all the dust out of my gear - set it up - checked it out - still works (amazingly). So I'm just getting ready for tonight. Been 2+ years since I've played or been on-stage. I hope I remember all the chords. After 20 years of being a musician, it's about like riding a bike, but still there is always a little anxiety especially since I've never even met yet along played with the guys I'm playing with tonight. I'm pretty used to pulling crap outta my butt so we'll see. I am kinda excited too - I always enjoyed playing - especially if the band is cooking. A good crowd helps as well. Anytime, need to go jump in the shower. I'll probably post when I get home in the early morning hours and let you all know how it went. Wish me luck.

Phew Friday

2004-05-21T19:09:00.000-04:00

Well it was a rompum stompum evening last night on AGN - maxed out the shoutcast system at 500 users with a waiting line of users trying to find an available slot. Huge PSU and SOE news - was a true joy doing that show - however hectic it was. Hamma and I both were right out straight the whole night. I'm sure we're both recovering today.
Well, looks like I might get my hands back into the music scene - seems a local spot here in town has an open mike night with a core band and they need a keyboard player. Should be a lot of fun. I haven't been on the road playing for over 2 years now - kind of excited to think about being on-stage again. That starts next Wednesday so we'll see how it goes.
On a sad note, I just recently learned another ex-band member is not doing well at all, in fact dying from cancer. He did his last public appearence a few weeks ago. Keith is another very talented singer and guitar player whom I've been very fortunete to have worked with. This on top of John's wife is a real double whammy to me. I'm almost a little worried to be back in the music scene with all the bad things happening recently.
Another nice day here in Maine - getting warmer each day - hot as hell in the apartment right now, so windows are open. I look forward to more of this great weather.

Blog Links added

2004-05-18T01:11:00.000-04:00

Well I managed to add some blog links to my sidebar. They didn't make it easy as the sidebar titles are pre-created .gifs - and they didn't have one for "links" - so I summoned my feeble photoshop skills and created one. It's not perfect but close enough for government work. As usual such projects are always performed in the early morning hours - must have to do with mal-adjusted brain chemistry in tech types. I need to get cracking on the weather script for the bots too. I've been dragging my feet as a bout of coding for that script is usually is good for a migrain and many empty coffee cups, but it won't code itself so I'll at least try to take a look at it. Well enough for now, just had to post after my template mods - sort of techs way to celebrate victory over the tools that enslave us.

My friend John

2004-05-17T12:54:00.000-04:00

Yup, been slackin here. I've meant to write something here for several days now, but to be honest, I've been avoiding it. Last Thursday afternoon, I received some sad news. A long time friend of mine, and former Band mate, unexpectedly lost his wife. She was just 47. I met them as a young adult, barely 19 and fresh out of the service. John, my friend, had heard I was a drummer and he was looking to fill that spot in a band, one of many in his career. We developed an instant friendship and I spent many hours at their house practicing, talking, goofing off, etc... We had a fairly successful run for a couple of years, but life and it's curve balls ran its course and that band dissolved, all going their seperate ways. Over the course of the years, we stayed in touch, often teaming together for short projects, fill ins, recordings, etc.. here and there. John's wife developed some medical issues and there was a peroid of years where we lost touch as they moved to New Hampshire. One day, John rolls back into town and knocks on my door with the idea to start yet another band and Flashback was born. 7 years is a long run for a band. I think we did some of our best music. It was funny as we went back so far, the music we played back then had become "classic" now, so we dusted off the old playlist and has a full night's set list within a couple of hours. It ended.. as all things do and life goes on. Again, we kinda lost touch a little for a few years, but John being who he was, started asking around and tracked me down and he and his wife popped in for a visit a few weeks ago. Was nice to see them again as it'd been several years since we last spoke. John is an amazing person and just an incredible musician. Can play damn near anything on the spot, and has music knowledge that would make many websites envious. He's the kind of musician that knows every part in the band, can play most instruments, can lead sing, and knows everyones vocal harmony parts, knows the lyrics to 100,000 songs, who did them, when they did it, who played with them, what studio it was done, what year, well you get the idea. I've never met anyone else with this level of talent - a truly amazing joy to play on-stage with. A true friend - as much the older brother I never had as anyone I know. I know he is hurting right now, and time will be the only medicine. I was truly in a daze from the news for a couple of days. It made me reflect on 25 years of life in a single instant. I'm not really sure if I've fully come to grips with it all even now, but I know I could not make a journal entry here without talking about this. Perhaps putting down a little of what I'm feeling here will help with my thoughts of my friend John and his family. My thoughts and prayers are with them in this difficult time. To my friend John - I'm thinking about ya bro.

I've played a couple of demo songs from the band (Flashback) on AGN. For anyone interested, here are links to the 3 demos we did in the Studio in 1999.

Flashback-Have You Ever Seen the Rain:
Flashback-Jenny:
Flashback-Gimme Some Lovin:

Thursday thoughts

2004-05-13T09:51:00.014-04:00

Welcome to Thursday. Looks like another great day here in Maine, which is a beautiful place in the spring and summer. The leaves are out in full force after the last few days and it's starting to seem like there is life here afterall. Community Night for AGN tomorrow. Now many have signed up yet, but I suspect they'll trickle in. Plenty of things around the house to do today... been slackin a little with my back, but it's not feeling too bad today, so I suspect I shall get to it and get some things done. Didn't see a lot of earthshattering news from E3 yesterday, but I suspect things will pick up today. More later as the rest of the thoughts fight their way from brain to fingers...

Midweek Mumble

2004-05-12T10:34:00.000-04:00

Well it's hump day and this morning, I got to the caffine first today. E3 (well, the good stuff anyway) begins today so we should be seeing some good stuff comming out of there soon. Looks like it's going to be another great day here on the coast of Maine. My daughter-in-law just stopped by with a list of baby names. Yup, ole' Mars is going to be a Grandpa for the second time now. How time flies when everyone else is having fun. :) Well time to hit the web and see what new and exciting things are out there and time for a fresh cup as well. /me mumbles into the distance....

Ah, better

2004-05-11T17:03:00.001-04:00

Amazing what caffine and a nice long shower can do. Back is better, about the way it was a couple of days ago, sore but livable. Was a very nice day here today... warm - probably about the best day we've had all year. Slowly it's warming up here. About damn time. E3 is getting ready to start soon. I look forward to seeing all the new cool stuff there. Time for a fresh cup...

Morning Mumbles

2004-05-11T11:24:00.000-04:00

This is sad. I'm writting here before morning coffee. NOTHING goes ahead of morning coffee, but my back feels better today as a result of a half decent nights sleep. I hope it remains that way. Supposed to be warm today here also. Good deals all around. Ok, I have a date with my coffee cup. Be back later.

My first offical Mumble

2004-05-11T01:14:00.000-04:00

Ok there you have it. My first post and I'm off an running as I finish this up in the early morning hours (when most techie work is often done). Been a pretty non-productive day as a back strain I did a few days ago deceided to nag at me. Not much computer time today as a result. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

Well, lets see if this works

2004-05-11T00:22:00.000-04:00

Here goes the first test. Seems to be working ok. Bear with me as I adjust this to my liking. Canned templates are just so much fun to deal with, but I'm sure I'll find something I can live with. So much for the first post. We'll see where this goes.