iG.STUDiO: Ilya I. Gerasimenko

For some reason, unknown to me, today I made a bitmap version of the logo I designed for myself years ago (I added the word "web" just to have an excuse for doing it). Probably, for therapy - I find pixel-level editing very comforting sometimes. Another strange thing I did today: googled up Alexander Rastopchin (we use to more or less know each other during my playing at the cafe "Suzorie" back in Minsk more than 20 years ago). Apparently, he moved to New York in 1993, one year after we moved to Cincinnati, and still lives there, still plays guitar (still very well; he was always great, and he only got better, judging by the samples he has on his site ), and still builds all kinds of guitar-related gear. Now I am very tempted to send him an email and say "Hi, remember me?" He, probably, doesn't. It would be fun to jam some day.

And I am. Between the employment search episodes, however, I posted two new songs to MacJams and my new site . Seriously, this is that time of the year (or life), I really don't like that much: job hunt (due to a termination of the project I was working on, my contract ends four month earlier than I expected; of course, I don't have anything lined up...)

It's beginning to shape up, or, at least, I think so... New in Take 2: Sax (x2) melody out (AULowpass filter to make them sound somewhat like brass) Vocal (x4) melody out by my daughter Dar (AUParametric Equalizer applied twice - one to kill iMic / Line Level Transformer "dynamic duo" noise, the other one - to remove "p"s; I really should get a decent mic preamp, and windscreen, too. I bounced four mono tracks to one stereo track, then added AUMatrixReverb to set it back in space) Background strings fill (Apple MIDI "Orchestral Strings") Sax melody in and solo unchanged with the exception of AUPeakLimiter filter, appears to work very nicely in combination with AUMultibandCompressor, applied to the Master Track. Last but not least - gorgeous piano solo by McBoy. Actually, more, then one solo - dude, you sent me so much of great stuff, so I still don't know how to put everything in... Consider this a teaser preview :) I still need: 1. Real guitar, pi...

How come in the movies they never light up a cigarette from a disposable lighter? Seriously, it's either a match, or a "Zippo". I think, I only saw a disposable lighter once in my movie watching life—it was "L. A. Confidential", if memory serves me well—and the lighter didn't work. Sometimes I make very keen and equally useless observations.

How come the emergency fire drill always starts when you (quite unexpectedly) feel like working? I just figured out that "page contains both secure and insecure items" warning only pops up on the pages, where I have dynamically generated <iframe> with the src attribute set to "about:blank". The idiot browser (IE|Win) thinks that it is a reference to something outside the secure server domain. The nastiest part of the "procedure" is the siren, which never stops, followed by the incredible annoying male voice, repeating over and over "...you are in a safe area... prepair to receive evacuees......you are in a safe area... prepair to receive evacuees...". What a splendid word: "evacuee". There went my inspiration for today. Well, I did fix the security bug... Oh, yea: zeldman.com is now blocked by the Smart Filter as well.

Smart Filter at work has finally caught up with me. Now I lost access to ALA , Apple Discussions, BLOGGER, and some other sites, also "characterized" like "Chat". Good thing, it's not "Porn", or "Entertainment" (the last one, however, could be true to some point, for it's fun). I think, I might have called a wrath of gods called upon me. I should clean up my harddrive, delete all .mp3 files, uninstall iTunes, QuickTime, HarmonyAssistant, and all other "unauthorized" applications, delete all browsers' caches, and wait for an execution. Like my job is not boring enough...

OK, here is an idea: go to Apple Discussions/GarageBand forum, and holler "who wants to jam?". I wonder, how many people would actually respond... there is no way, however, to know, other than actually go and do it. So... The story is: Over the last week I have come up with a little jazz tune (sixties-style bossa-nova in C minor/Eb major at 140 bpm, 2x8 bars melody, no bridge yet - and may be never - neither there is an arrangement). I invite everybody interested to a virtual jam session - let's play and see what happens. Here is how it will work: If somebody answers this "ad", I will upload three .mp3 files to the Public folder of my iDisk: 1) 16-bar loop of the tune (melody + accompaniment), everything is "penciled in", for I have no keyboard (I am a sax player myself). 2) 16-bar loop of the jam track (accompaniment only), for you to solo over. 3) 16-bar loop of the melody (currently played by somewhat cheesy synthetic cello I found in Melod...