Because I’m such a modern guy, I downloaded Keith Richards” Life on my iPad, read it, and really liked it (see previous posting).
OK, the plot thickens: my son Will is a musician, living in Santa Cruz (Calif.) and is working with engineer Rich Williams of Paradise Recording studio on a recording device that, in Will’s words: “… (uses) analog tape to get a sound that feels good. Analog recording is like a hand built home, whereas digital recording is analogous to a prefab house. This way is old fashioned, imperfect, and feels better.”
If you read my previous post about what the Stones were doing 40+ years ago, it sounds a lot like what Paradise recordings’ hardware is doing in the 21st century. Why am I not surprised that deviating from the purely digital can up the soul factor?
Read More …
Stones fans (and blues guitar players): You’re gonna love this book. What a surprise! It’s not perfect, but in parts is insightful, truthful, and informative. Way interesting background stuff on this phenomenal band.
I enjoyed it immensely. There was a fascinating part about Keith plying an acoustic guitar directly into a cassette recorder and distorting the sound to get the desired effect. They were getting electric guitar out of acoustic guitar in ways you can’t do with today’s digital recording apparatus. I remember listening to a Stones song back in the day as I was returning to reality from an, ahem, chemically-enhanced state of consciousness. What was this sound? It was as if they were distorting time, stretching it, and compressing it.
The book explains how the Keith and Mick couldn’t believe that Americans were so largely unaware of Mississippi/Texas.Chicago blues music, their tangled relationship, how they wrote songs together, Keith’s formidable heroin/cocaine habits… It’s startling in its honesty about a lot of stuff. (And it also led me indirectly to an epiphany about ebooks, which I’ll tackle in another post.)
This was mid-day Thursday, near Pacifica ((Calif.). A Comcast cable had fallen due to the storms and there were six (6!) guys on six cherry pickers raising the line back up. This disjointed collage shows 4 of them.
When in Santa Cruz last week we went to Bookshop Santa Cruz, a wonderful bookstore. It’s in the tradition of The Tattered Cover in Denver, with tons of books face-out, chairs and couches to sit in, helpful bibliophile staff, intelligent arrangement of titles. Here’s a table reflecting the recent upsurge of interest in growing (at least some of) your own food, whether you live in the city or country. The book at top right with the red barn is titled The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love, by Kristin Kimball, which has got rave reviews. (I mention it here because you can’t read the title in the photo.) Another great bookstore I visited recently was Copperfield’s in Healdsburg, Calif. It seemed like most of the titles were on tables, face-out. For those of us who love books, there ain’t nothin like a real bookstore.
“Windows are very frequently a source of lost heat in your home. Older homes may suffer from only having single-paned windows, which lose a large amount of heat, and even newer double-paned insulated windows lack enough insulation against cold winter temperatures and wind. However, you can save home heating costs and easily bulk up the insulation around your windows by making your own inexpensive thermal curtains.
Thermal curtains are energy-efficient window shades* that insulate against the cold around your windows. They are a thick and heavy buffer and can significantly decrease the money you spend on energy to heat your house. If you are handy with a sewing machine or know someone who is, there’s not much more you need than some old blankets or comforters, fabric, and a fair amount of time.”
Instructions: https://blog.sustainablog.org/energy-saving-cheap-thermal-curtains/
From Make Online:
“Check out this super sleek wooden roll top cover for the iPad 2 from Dutch case manufacturer Miniot. Made from a single piece of cherrywood, the case fits snug to the tablet using internal magnets. The design differs from the stock Apple Smart Cover with its rigid rolling arch, smooth organic lines, and its lack of hinge. Though I have yet to hold one in my hand, from what I’ve seen in the video demonstration it appears to offer superior support when used as a stand to prop up the device.”
https://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/03/smarter-ipad-2-smart-cover.html
Spotted this on the way back from Santa Cruz yesterday. Looks smaller, more compact than many of the live-in type vans. Now if it had 4-wheel drive, you’d really have something. (When I first posted, I said it was a Ford, but got corrected.)
We were 2 days without electricity. At night we used this great candle holder (from Lehmans — I heartily recommend getting their Lehmans Non-Electric Catalog — especially if you are homesteading or gardening or pursuing the home arts).
Finally hooked up our Honda 3000 generator to get the office computers going. (This model is as silent as generators get, and has an “eco-mode” that conserves energy.) It’s kind of a shock to realize that our publishing business is pretty totally dependent upon electricity.
There’s something nice about candlelight and no TV, staring into the flames of the fireplace, the silence. One of my friends used to say, about being off the grid, “no 60 cycle hum.” But the reality is, our mail order book business and most of our publishing communication is electric, as well as electronic.
Also on Sunday, a tree fell on the only road into and out of town, so I couldn’t get up to Sebastapol Sunday for a screening of the 6-minute documentary on our homestead.
By Santa Barbara (Calif.) architect Mathew Hoffman
https://is.gd/airstrremodel
