The Oracle of Apollo
Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

I am now the proud owner of Ableton Live 5 and Ableton Operator, which I purchased this morning. When I bought my Oxygen 8 in December, I got a Lite version of Live, which is almost useless as a tool for anything significant (it’s limited to three audio and three MIDI tracks). Ableton Live 5 will allow me to upgrade to 6 for free.

Now that I’ve got Reason, Logic, and Live, I think I’m finished buying music software for a while. The next project is to learn to make these three magnificent applications work together.

My friend, SlackMistress is starting a podcast which will prove very insightful to us all (and quite useful to all of us who are single), entitled The Geek’s Guide to Dating. She needs your help, though. If you have questions about dating and relationships, particularly if you’re a fan of geeks, get in touch with SlackMistress. If you don’t know her, she put together a nice video introduction a few days ago.

I, for one, am looking forward to hearing her advice in her very unique voice.

Welcome, SlackMistress!

It arrived this afternoon. After I went out dancing last night and returned home at about 2:45 am, I woke up this morning at 8:15. The FedEx tracking notification told me that it was on the truck today. Miss the arrival? No, not so much.

I am now the proud new owner of a Yamaha WX5 Wind Controller. I unwrapped it this afternoon and hiked over to RadioShack for some batteries.

Initial impressions are that this is an incredibly complex, but simple to use, instrument that I’m glad is now part of my arsenal. The five octave keys enable instantaneous jumps of up to seven octaves with just a small shift of the thumb. The Key Hold functionality enables me to play harmony simultaneously with melody. With a pitch bend “wheel” under the right thumb, this instrument is powerful indeed.

I just need to get used to the way the fingering happens, how the keys are electronic (and thus easy on the touch), and how to be accurate in playing rapid successions without splashing notes all over the place. It’s really fun to play, easy on my jaw, and looks really sexy (grey body with black keys, despite the picture on the Yahama website).

After an eon of seeing the zippy wheel header and the same old Oracle for 18 months, I’ve finally decided that it was time to upgrade to Wordpress 2.0. I’ve also installed K2, an AJAXy theme, which I’ll be configuring over the weekend. Change is good.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my website and this blog. I haven’t cared to update the site in quite some time (witness the large gaps and sparse posting lately). I’m considering deleting all of the back archives (because do you really want to go back and read all this to January 1, 2000, when I started doing this?).

I’ve been more and more involved in my music now than ever before and I’m awaiting yet another instrument in my growing arsenal. I’ve got several rough drafts that I’ve played for people and I’m still learning Logic, which I recently acquired.

Now, though, I’m on Wordpress 2.0.4. I get Akismet, Widgets, and all this other niftiness. What do you think?

Last year around this time of year, I asked you all to donate to Seth Dillingham’s ride in the Pan-Mass Challenge. I was having a great year last year and I already had 4,000 miles on my chart by the time July rolled around.

In July this year, I rode about 80 miles. I just haven’t been on my bike at all recently, due to staggering changes in my social life, my musical output, and the fact that I’m just not feeling it. So, I have decided that donating ten cents for every mile on my chart, when I haven’t updated my cycling statistics in a while. Last year, I put my money where my legs were.

This year, Seth is the alpha cyclist. So, I’m putting my money where his legs are. Today, I’m pledging ten cents for every mile on his chart. It’s not as big as last year, but it helps. According to his site, he has ridden 2,557.05 miles so far this year. So, I’m donating $255.71.

I am putting a call out, because it really is the zero hour. Please donate to his ride today. All of the proceeds for this magnificent event raise money for the Jimmy Fund at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Seth, I hope you reach your goal. Please accept my apology for having spaced it out this long.