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Friday Musings

I’m coming up on my birthday this weekend. I’ll be 45. I know it’s just a number, but I know there’s things I have to work through.

I know I need to simplify my life… I’ve been writing for years on minimlism, but I need to put more of it into practice. I moved the G4 Mac to my coffee table today. I’m thinking I might still give the iMac to Andy… there’s not much it can do that my laptop can’t. And in the case that the laptop dies, I can just get another one. That’s just less stuff I have to work with. I could just use a decent monitor with my laptop (any laptop) instead.

Minimalism. What does it really mean? I slimmed down my phone, removed as much junk as I could. I’m scaling back my website so I don’t have to worry about constantly fixing it, or updating it from hackers. I just want stuff to work. I want to find the Rambler a better home(sort of, I still like it). I would like to take that money and put it into playing music and furthering my ministry. Lord knows, there’s plenty of music gear I could use. But even that: how much is enough?

And what is my ministry? What exactly is it that God wants me to do? Do I even know?? Should I consider myself qualified? No- I’m not qualified. But God will work through my weakness. I need to remember that. Even when I fail- sometimes daily- God wants me to seek him and believe in his salvation for me. If I don’t really believe in his work on the cross, can I really understand his love for me? Can I really know his heart, if I can’t accept his gift freely?

Freedom- freedom from things, freedom from fear, religion, from condemnation, and shame. Freedom from guilt- not guilt from my sin, but from feeling guilty for being who I am.

I think I really do have a worship pastor’s heart, but only God can make that happen in my life. And I haven’t been very faithful. Not in my heart, not in my actions, not in my mind. Not in my body. In fact, I’m a pretty horrible person by God’s standards, so it’s really hard for me to understand his love for me in spite of that.

I need to pray for God to show me his love for me the way he sees me, not the way I see myself.

I think I like journaling with mostly text. The Gopher server project is coming along nicely, and I expect to have it up and running shortly. I might need a better keyboard if I get back into writing, though. This one is better than nothing, but it kind of sucks.

Okay. Will post more soon.
(This post was composed in RedNotebook, and copy-and-pasted into WordPress.)

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Digitech Jamman Replacing Ableton Live

Music/guitar nerd alert.

I rebuilt my guitar pedalboard a while back, and one of the things I added was a DigiTech Jamman Solo XT pedal, with a homemade 3-button remote switch.

The DigiTech Jamman Solo is a solid little looping pedal- it records input and plays it back, like a looping tape recorder. There are plenty of looping pedals out there, but I picked the Jamman for a specific reason: it has a 32 GB micro-SD card you can store about 10 hours of .wav files on.

I saw someone was using one to play ambient backing pads for a church service, and it got me thinking. I’ve been spending a lot of time researching software (like Ableton Live) that can seamlessly play backing tracks on command, including the ability to move back and forth between sections in a song, and transitions.

I immediately thought “why couldn’t I do that with the Jamman?”

So I did a little experiment. Continue reading “Digitech Jamman Replacing Ableton Live”

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My How You’ve Grown

I was looking at specs for my shiny “new” Mac G4, fresh out of 1999. I mean, it sold for around $1600 when it was new! I loaded it up with 1.25 GB of RAM, a fresh HD, and man, this thing is rocking!

Well, sort of.

That’s when I realized that a new Raspberry Pi 3 B+, which costs about $60 including a 32GB flash card and a power supply, is faster. It’s also way smaller, more power efficient, quieter, and generally better in every way.

Except it’s not a Mac G4, and it can’t run OSX (which, arguably, the G4 can’t really run now either).

The RaspPi is based on ARM architecture. It comes with four (4!) CPU cores, 1GB of RAM (running at 400 Mhz), n-band WiFi, Bluetooth, and HDMI with hi-def audio built into it. For $40.

My Mac G4 was also about $40 once I souped it up. It has a single 400 Mhz CPU, and 1.25 GB of RAM (running at 100Mhz). Everything else is pretty much on par, more or less.

But gosh darn it, I just like the G4. I like the “ooohm” sound it makes when you turn it on. I like looking at it. Sure, it’s a little noisy. But it has clear handles! And a DVD drive which isn’t fast enough to play movies on. And 64-bit PCI card slots. And did I mention the cool boot-up sound it makes? It’s like magic.

sigh

I know progress is never-ending. But you know, it makes me think:

If most people can get by with using a Raspberry Pi as a very basic computer- which is what it’s aimed at- then what’s wrong with using a 20-year-old Mac for the same purpose if their performance is even closely comparable?

Seriously though, I’m going to have to get one of these Pi 3’s. Would make a killer little NAS file/cloud server.

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Digital Minimalism

As funny as it seems, there is an entire movement that exists to resist advancement and innovation in technology. There have been books written about it, movies made about it, and who knows what else. It’s called “Neo-Luddism” though I don’t necessarily subscribe to it. However, there are several reasons for resisting technology and wanting to go back to the way things used to be:

  1. The new thing isn’t really better than the old one, it’s just more expensive
  2. The new thing does one thing better, but everything else worse
  3. The new thing requires you to upgrade other things you didn’t want to upgrade
  4. The new thing requires more personal sacrifice than you’re willing to give

There are examples of this in every aspect of the marketplace now. Even when buying a car, the car is “connected” and wants to pair with your phone, your personal information, and possibly share that with the manufacturer- and you can’t turn that off. And when the marketplace only has vehicles with these “features” you don’t really get a choice. As I’ve said before, freedom is choice, and when you’re only offered choices you don’t want, you’re not really free.

This is the driving force behind Digital Minimalism: choice and freedom.

Continue reading “Digital Minimalism”
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Adrenalinn III Review: Part 3

This is the third (of 3) installment on the Adrenalinn III effects pedal, by Roger Linn Designs. This will cover the drum machine and MIDI implementation on the pedal, and wrap it up with a summary. I hope you’ve enjoyed it so far!

The drum machine in this little box is, for all intents and purposes, pretty decent. It’s not as good as a full-blown drum sequencer, but the plus side is that it’s pretty easy to use, and can be controlled right there with your feet. If you want to run a small musical group without a drummer, this is a definite possibility.

It basically only plays 4 sounds (or variations of sounds) at a time. Bass, snare, hi-hat, and percussion (which can be a ride cymbal, shaker, triangle, cowbell, etc). This is enough to give you pretty basic beats. It also allows you to pass the drum sounds through the effects section of the pedal, so you can use reverb, delay, treble filter, and distortion on the drums. This is nice if you want to “tweak” the sound for that gritty “in the stairwell” drum feel, like on Led Zeppelin albums. The distortion also works pretty well with the TS808 sampler beats, as it gives it a lo-fi sound.

The sequencer lets you do 2 measures of 8th or 16th notes. It can also do 3/4 measures, and swing patterns. You program the beats on the main control panel of the pedal. It’s a bit klunky, but it does work.

When programming the beat, each sound has a volume set for each time it’s triggered (9 volume increments), which gives you some flexibility.

image

The downside to having a drum machine in your pedal is that you really can’t run stereo out into stereo effects afterwards. The AdrenaLinn does have stereo outs, yes. You can split the guitar and drum sounds into the Left or Right channels, but that eliminates using any stereo effects *within* the pedal. 

Continue reading “Adrenalinn III Review: Part 3”

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The Increasing Irrelevancy of Digital Technology

I’ll admit it, I’m a nerd. A geek extraordinaire. A pseudo-hacker-wannabe.

But I hate using digital technology.

Let me clarify: I love the idea of technology. But I can’t stand the way it’s being, and has been, developed.

When I was young, I devoured sci-fi books by great authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and so forth. I was absolutely enraptured by the idea of what technology could theoretically do. Robots, artificial intelligence, space travel, and all sorts of fantastic things. Along came Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Star Wars, and it seemed like our bright future was right around the corner. And you have to understand, we were all waiting for that utopia. We wanted it to become reality.

Then we started noticing the warning signs. George Orwell’s 1984. Films like Blade Runner, Ghost In the Shell, (the original, not the live-action remake) and even The Matrix warned us of possible ultimate end-game scenarios. It was exhilarating, yes, but also a dark foreshadowing of the consequences of technology.

Fast-forward thirty years. Now we have smartphones, internet-connected fridges, self-driving auto-updating cars, toasters that can tweet, and absolutely none of it does what I thought technology was supposed to do: make life simpler. The idea was that computers and technology were supposed to take care of the mundane things, so that people could get back to just enjoying life. But that’s not what happened at all.

Continue reading “The Increasing Irrelevancy of Digital Technology”
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Macwards Compatible

I recently had a discussion about Apple products with a friend. As usual when I discuss Apple, it reminded me of how much control companies have over our overall technological experience.

I recently picked up a vintage Power Mac G4 (a Graphite G4 AGP, for those wondering), and the first thing I thought of was “what OS should I put on it?”

If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time, you’d know that I’m a proponent of Linux, and I knew Ubuntu at one point had a distro made for PowerPC-based computers, so I started digging. And what I found kind of both disgusted me, and confirmed what I knew about Apple all along.

Time warp: I remember, back in the late 90’s, when they first introduced Mac OS X. It was a huge slap in the face of Microsoft at the time, because it signaled a transition to a “real” operating system, based on Unix. Which of course meant that it was stable, fast, and easily extended. And then of course, Apple took the very best things about Unix, locked them down, and made it into a proprietary platform that was (in some ways) worse than Microsoft Windows.

Continue reading “Macwards Compatible”

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New Directions

I feel like God is drawing me into wanting to do music ministry full time. I don’t know what that will look like yet.

I don’t know if that’s something I need to go back to school for, and I’m not really thrilled about that. It would be exciting, but at the same time… I don’t feel like I could do it with my current job.

I really like my current job, but I know it is not my life’s calling. I would much rather teach music and lead worship for a living. But how can I do that? I can’t just quit my job. Not yet, at least.

What would that (going back into music ministry) look like? How could I (understanding it’s not me) make that happen? Why is God showing me this? Why is God giving me a desire to make worship my career, after so many years of me saying “I will never do professional music ministry again”? Can I do that without sacrificing my heart? I want to be pure in motivation. I never want to make money worshipping. But I would love to be able to do that all the time.

Continue reading “New Directions”
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How Luxury Makes You Lazy

Luxury: a condition of abundance or great ease and comfort : sumptuous environment: something adding to pleasure or comfort but not absolutely necessary: an indulgence in something that provides pleasure, satisfaction, or ease


Merriam-Webster

Have you ever heard the phrase “Affordable Luxury”? The biggest rage nowadays is “affordable luxury” items. This is a marketing exec’s dream come true. But by definition, a “luxury” is something you don’t need: it’s something you want.

There are entire industries built around this tactic. Billions upon billions of dollars of stuff that people don’t need. Sometimes, you didn’t even know you wanted it until some salesman shows you. But all of a sudden “now you have to have it.”

What a crock of baloney.

The truth is, comfort is overrated. Convenience is overrated. Sometimes it’s better to work through something than just have an “Easy Button” (there you go, marketing in action…) Because when you do more, you learn more, and you make mistakes and grow. If everything is easy, then you never learn how to struggle through difficult things.

Sometimes people say “I’ve worked hard for this” as justification for buying something expensive or luxurious. But you didn’t earn anything that God didn’t give you the ability for in the first place. We don’t deserve it, we don’t need it, and almost every time, it ends up being all about us- and nothing to do with God.

Continue reading “How Luxury Makes You Lazy”
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Things of Eternal Impact

Triangulum Galaxy

A while back, I started working through a book titled “The Nine Laws” by Ivan Throne. There’s a lot of philosophical content there, but one of the biggest things I really had to think about was the Third Law of Purpose.

Clearly, my purpose in this world is to worship God. This has been evident in my life for as long as I can remember, though as a child I didn’t know what it was to be used for. Everything I am passionate about, everything I am gifted in, every opportunity I have taken has led me closer to this realization.

I am a worshipper. So why doesn’t my life reflect that singular purpose?

I am distracted by non-essentials. I think one of the greatest crimes of our generation is pushing the idea that nothing has eternal value. And if nothing is eternal, then everything is temporal, and you might as well get whatever you can, right?

But there is so much more to life than “getting the most toys.” As a Christian, we know Jesus (the Ultimate Sensei) was focused on things of Heaven, not of Earth. He knew the mundane things we care about have no lasting impact in the spiritual realm. Repeatedly, He spoke “What is the Kingdom of God like?” because people naturally have no clue.

Which parts of my life have eternal impact? Which parts of your life have eternal impact?

My job? My writing? My music? My prayer life? Where do I see God moving, and where do I want to spend my time?

I’ll be honest, I don’t see God moving much in my job. I work in an office. It’s nice, I like my coworkers, and I like my job. But it’s not a ministry. It’s not serving God as much as it’s serving my family and myself by providing a wage.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong with providing for my family. But despite people telling me “that’s a ministry!” I never feel like it is. It doesn’t fulfill me, it doesn’t provide opportunities to minister, and it doesn’t fulfill my purpose- to be a worshipper.

I don’t know where God wants me to be just yet. But I’m praying that He shows me where I can minister, and what that will look like. I’m okay with going into ministry full time now; but for years I wasn’t. I remember telling God “I will never do worship ministry for money ever again” because I’d been burned so many times.

There’s something to be said for that, though… most churches I’ve been in didn’t have worship ministry as much as they had music ministry. And just because you’re playing music in church does not make it worship. Not even close!

No, I don’t want to be part of “music ministry.” I want to worship with everything I have. No restraints, like King David. Holding nothing back. This is true worship. Most churches have never seen that, and wouldn’t know what to do with it if they did.

But I’ve seen true worship, and it’s changed me. And I’ve discovered it’s an honor to help train other people to be worshippers as well.

This is my life’s purpose: to worship God with complete self abandon, and train up others to do the same.

This is my eternal calling. This is my purpose.

Everything else in my life is secondary: I need to live like it.