Thursday, December 25th, 2008
"If I ever become a comedian I'm going to change my name to Joe Kingman. Think about it."

What's up everyone? Just wanted to do a quick check in before I went back to re-arranging my room/studio. Oh, and welcome anyone coming in from UG. It is such an honor to be included in the list for the top unsigned artists of '08. Thank you Sam! Oh, and sorry the MySpace page looks so horrible at the moment. I'll explain real quick.

See, most of my customized graphics and stuff for MySpace and several other files were saved in my small space on hometown@aol. Unfortunately, without my knowledge, AOL has decided to shut down the hometown service. Thus I lost my files. That's why there isn't a background on the MySpace page or a contact box and some pictures are missing. It's the same way with the Taking Out Anger MySpace page. I can't really do much about it right now, but I assure you that after I get situated properly I'll go through and redesign both of those pages so they look a bit better and blend with the new look of EmbracingFate.com too. Onto more recording related stuff.

So I bought the Fostex MR16HD. At first I was a little worried because I thought I might not be able to do the drums the way I have been, which is crucial for me because I can't really record a live drum set and whatknot. But I found a program that Fostex themselves make called WAVManager and it allows you to export wav files from your pc into the digital recorder and vice versa. I've been playing with it a bit today, checking out the EQ presets and whatknot. Unfortunately it is kinda limited. You can't make custom EQ settings, the presets are all that are available. But that's not so bad. The ones they give you seem to be pretty well suited to their respective tasks. It's the same for mastering. You only get three presets though. But seriously I don't know jack about mastering so I'm hoping it'll work out anyway.

I also bought a 5-string bass guitar. It's a Rogue LX205B. I think. It's hard to read the headstock from across the room and I'm too lazy to go check it. The guitar was only like $130 and it'll go really well with my 7-string guitar. Now I have the low B string no matter what I'm playing. It's very nice and I believe it'll get a lot of use.

With the monitor speakers I bought it is kinda hard to get them up very loud, but despite the lack of umph they still have a really great quality of sound so I think they'll be okay. All-in-all I am really looking forward to recording some songs whenever I get things situated and x-mas dies down a bit.

In other news, I'm still working on ideas for the website design. I know that it's going to be very different and the website itself will be smaller (as in less pages, not width or height). Essentially I'm going to get rid of the stuff I don't need so I can focus on what I'm best at. Writing stories and recording songs. The art pages and whatknot will be removed and so will a bunch of extra fluffy stuff that doesn't really matter anymore. I'll probably take the videos off the new site, but later on they may come back up as I begin doing more and better albums. It'd be fun to try and do a music video sometime. Vince has been doing a lot of videos lately and it makes me want to as well, but I don't think I'd actually be in them. I'd probably just do like a video-story to go along with the song. Something artsy or cheesy. I dunno. I don't really have a camera so it doesn't matter much at the moment. But like I said, in the future it may happen.

I would like to wish my girlfriend a happy birthday, but I don't have a girlfriend so that's fucking pointless. HAH! You thought I was going somewhere with that didn't you? Nope. I got nothin'.

Oh, and I saw the Dark Knight. It was long, boring, batman was hardly in the damn thing, and Heath Ledger played a horrible fucking Joker (though it was nice to see a decent portrayal of Two-Face). I also saw Bottoms Up. I don't recommend either. I DO however recommend Futurama - Bender's Game. That movie rocked. Not that my opinion matters to anyone but me... But it IS my website so I can say whatever I want.

Whenever I get done setting everything up and get to a point where I can start working on the new site design and the new album and whatknot, I'll take some pictures of my room/studio so you can all see how it is set up. Not that you care, but it's kinda neat to me (and again, it is my website). Until then I'll be around.

Also, one last thing. My email address has changed! It is now kainvinosec@embracingfate.com. So if you wanna email me... Y'know. Go ahead. I'll be there.

Lataz.

Thursday, December 11th, 2008
"I'm back. Na na na neow." - Vinnie Scullo

I know it's been a really long time since I posted. Here's why...

My PC ended up catching a trojan (I believe it was from a file I downloaded from ffdream.com but if so that sucks because that website has always had great stuff...). This trojan was quite overpowered. Normally I can get rid of stuff like that on my own but this was way over my head. I had to get my PC reformatted. It took awhile and ended up costing me $155. Either way it is done and I'm back. Sort of.

So here's the thing. I lost a lot of files when I reformatted the PC. Including the entire website design that is currently being used. At the time I was working on a new site design and I've got all of those files backed up, but it's incomplete. I could grab all the files from the FTP but it'd take forever and there are other reasons I'm not going to mention here but... Basically I'm going to start all over. It's going to take a lot, a freaking lot of time. Just bear with me please as I work on an entirely new website design and whatknot.

Also because my PC was down I didn't get to do any recordings and I didn't work on my book (Ick) at all. I've decided not to go back to the recording software I was using. In fact I've pretty much decided to take down the old albums whenever I get the chance and begin working on all new albums through a digital multitrack recorder. I'm currently looking at which one to purchase. They're pretty expensive and I don't have a lot of money to spend so it's rather complicated. Anyway. You can basically expect me to be shut down for awhile. The website will stay up so if you want you can download the old albums while they're here, but sooner or later they're gonna be gone and new, higher quality, better sounding, more frequent albums should begin to be uploaded. One of the first things I wanna do is combine The Nightmare Battles and The Championship Battles into one ultimate 'Battles' album. It'll be the last incarnation of the 'Battles' albums. After that I may do the same with the Embracing Fate albums and simply merge them all into one ultimate 'Em Fate' album. I'm not sure yet what I'm gonna do with Taking Out Anger or +255. I may merge the TOA albums as well but that still leaves +255 kinda on its own. I may just pick the best songs on it and re-release it with a smaller, more focused tracklisting. I don't really know yet, but we'll see.

I'm gonna wait a good while before I attempt to work on anything else. As much as I want to, I've gotta get everything straightened back out before I jump into anything new. In the meantime just enjoy the site as it is and please be patient as I go through a much needed transition into whatever the future holds.

Lataz.