Monotonous songwriting

Dave’s not here. Well, sort of. Dave here. For a minute. Di’s taking the weekend off. I sent her a bunch of material that she’ll work in next week. I just spent a lovely day cleaning my apartment, reading a few chapters out of the book of Matthew, and catching up with friends. My ex-bandmate Will Matherly (if we ever were a band, I don’t know) called early this evening looking for lyrics. I gave him some of my old lyrics (a pop/punk number reminiscent of The Cars and a dreary, gothy tune that was trying to sound like Joy Division or The Cure but ended up sounding nothing like either), then I started rattling off some lyrics I’ve been carrying around for two years but never finished properly. I told him I’d fix some dinner, finish them as I ate, then call him back in a couple of hours. The result was a hard-driving punky number called “Not Much Like You” using a really uncreative straight-A rhyme scheme (the exception being a brief “But Wait!” interjection). For some reason, my specialty seems to be breakup songs.
“She stands erect like you / She walks upright like you / She breathes oxygen too!”

Oh well. I’m actually supposed to be trying to write a song that works in the words “Celebrate Faith.” Unfortunately, I’m most effective writing about things that hack me off. While I frequently don’t know or understand what He’s up to, God doesn’t really hack me off, so it’s hard to write songs about Him. Hey, maybe that’s my start.

Anyway. There’s a busload of musings, reader mail and replies, and an announcement sitting in an inbox in Kansas City. Seeing as it’s really late on Saturday and I’m going to be shooting pictures all day Sunday, this is probably it for the Silicon Underground for this weekend.

I’m at Notepad’s limit. See ya.

Busting ads

Spam. Brightmail caught three pieces of spam for me in the past week. Four got through. It’s disappointing, but maybe they’ll get better with time. And 3 out of 7 is pretty close to Mike Sweeney’s batting average with the bases loaded, and no one complains about that.
Calling it a week. My apologies for Wednesday’s post not making it up until Thursday night. I wrote it, then forgot to upload it. Figures. The things that make me creative also can make me eccentric and scatterbrained sometimes.

I’m out of town for a family event. I’ll be in Kansas City, and while I have relatives with computers there I doubt I’ll be using them. So have a good weekend. I’ll be back Monday, in all likelihood.

Mail.

From: “al wynn”
To:
Sent: Friday, September 08, 2000 1:15 AM
Subject: What is the best COMMERCIAL ad-blocking utility for Windows95 out there (that is better than Proxomitron) ?

Can you tell me what is the best COMMERCIAL ad-blocking program for Windows95 out there (that is better than Proxomitron) ?
h question. The only commercial program that did that that I know of was WRQ’s AtGuard, which is now part of Symantec’s Norton Internet Security 2000. I played around with AtGuard a while last year when I was writing Optimizing Windows, but I didn’t like it any better than Proxomitron or Junkbuster (or the enhanced version). You might also check out AdSubtract, which is based on the Proxomitron engine but is less configurable and does a better job out of the box.

Another publication

Published again! Check this out, if you haven’t been there already. One of O’Reilly’s marketing guys dropped me a line early last week and asked how I liked voice recognition software. This die-hard Kansas City Royals fan told him I’d rather see another Yankees/Braves World Series than use it again. Next thing we know, I’m writing about what went wrong and why. For your reading pleasure, a brief essay written by me, with examples that prove my point, Voice Recognition to the Rescue? is available, at O’Reilly.
The big comeback? No. I’m going to do my best to post a little something on something resembling a daily basis. But as my time constraints are tight and my wrists still a little questionable, the days of daily 500-word essays are over.

I notice my book sales are down now that I’m not posting much. I also notice I’m much healthier when I’m not trying to write a half-million words a year. Looks like time for a compromise.