Go see CitizenFitz.com!

It’s been a year of so many zigs and zags I’m not sure what to make of it. On the positive side I release my first solo album, Will and I celebrated a decade of living together, and my Web developer career really peaked in terms of pay, control, and responsibility. It was a stable and productive year punctuated with a great trip to Burning Man.

However, he karmic balance was very expensive on the other side. The loss of Pronto really hurt – and continues to. The release of the album was something to be proud of but the lack of a promotional strategy was most certainly not. Ten years with Will in this house have been wonderful but there is a strong pining in both of us to break out of the routine, live some where different, see different vistas. And finally, the peak of my career also means there is nowhere else for it to go. Like it or not, Web design is a dead end for me. It’s well time I moved on to something that will challenge me and make me grow. That undoubtedly means a pay cut and some stepping beyond the comfortable bubble I’ve enjoyed for many years now.

This new year has then the feeling of holding one’s breath. Of ice ready to crack. Of pressure building for big changes in the next 12 months. We’ll see how that goes.

Best Pictures of 2010

subway-cover-final	Cloghan Castle	Falling Water Classic View	Freddie’s Frozen Fowl
Snow Cushions	Ghostly Snow Tree	CD	Vernon Peter and Pronto
Basic RGB	Out of the Office	Cubicles	Exit
Ninja Mindy	Matt	Settings	Spooky Baby Head
Man Double Rainbow 2	Fitz Spinning Home	The Man In Clouds	Dawnshine Woman
Watson Dog	Carrillion	Wine Label

Trips

• Deep Creek for New Years
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water
• Steve’s Farm
• Burning Man

Of Friends and Family

• Will had an accident in his truck
• Chris and Dave broke up and Chris moved to Fairfax
• Tom and Mike got married
• Rob published his first book
• Mindy started her sewing company

Arriving

• Watson the dog
• Eliana Camille

Passing

• Actor Robert Culp
• Max the dog
• Painter Frank Frazetta
• Law & Order
• Actor Gary Coleman
• Actor Denis Hopper
• Senator Andrew Dyrd
• Uncle HF
• Fangorn the bonsai tree
• Pronto
• Mistletoe the cat
• Actor Tony Curtis
• Porn Mogul Bob Guccione
• Sony Cassette Walkman
• Actor Leslie Nielsen
• Director Irvin Kershner
• Basil the dog
• Will’s Dad’s Cat

In the World

• Both Hati and Chile suffered massive earthquakes
• Snowpocalypse! D.C., experienced two separate snow storms in quick succession that dumped 2-3 feet of snow. This is apparently is an event so rare it should happen only once every 300 or so years.
• Gay marraige spread to DC
• For good or boad (I’m not convinced either way) the U.S. passed sweeping health care reform.
• Water was confirmed to exist on the moon
• There was a massive oile spill in the gulf coast that took forever to cap and excessivly monopolized the news for months
• Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was ended – gays and lesbians will be able to serve openly in the US military next year.
• Wikileaks dispensed a large number of US secret documents via the Web.
• Massive flooding in Pakistan
• The US economy began to limp back to recovery. A very slow limp…

Films & Shows I’ll Remember

• Mad Men – season 4
• Lost – season 6
• Avatar
• Up
• Inferno
• Drunken Angel
• One Wonderful Sunday
• Downtown 81
• Rashomon
• The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
• The Naked City
• Surfwise
• The Lost Continent
• Getaway (1972)
• Bullit
• On the Beach
• Kiss the Bride
• Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam
• Classic Albums: Fleetwood Mac: Rumours
• Classic Albums: Steely Dan: Aja
• Classic Albums: Elton John
• Classic Albums: The Doors
• Classic Albums: Queen: A Night at the Opera
• The Lost World
• Tales of the Gold Monkey: Complete: Disc 1
• Mulligans
• The Sensei
• You I Love
• Vernoica Mars series
• Californication series

Books on the Night-stand

• Deeds of the Disturber – Elizabeth Peters
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson
• Bomb Power – Garry Wills
• The Odyssey – Homer
• The Future of a Radical Price – Chris Anderson
• Rework – Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
• Grounded – Seth Stevenson
• The Last Camel Died at Noon – Elizabeth Peters
• The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution – Jody Zall Kusek
• The Power of Super 8 Film – Phil Vigeant
• How to Promote Your Music Successfuly on the Internet – David Nevue
• Fourth World Omnibus, Volume 1 – Jack Kirby
• The Eternals, Volume 1 – Jack Kirby
• Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life – Neil Strauss
• On the Road the Lost Scroll – jack kerouac
• The Eternals, Volume 2 – Jack Kirby
• Sex at Dawn – Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha
• The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog – Elizabeth Peters
• Beyond the Moons – David Cook
• Into the Void – Nigel Findley
• Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life – Thich Nhat Hanh

Memorable Music in the Player

• Digital Dream – Neuronium
• Éléments No.2 ‘L’Eau’ – Tambour D’o
• MoonWater – Rudy Adrian
• The Boogey Man soundtrack – Synthe Sound Trax
• Gwendoline soundtrack – Pierre Bachelet
• Ringside – Ringside
• Quadra Station – Lorne David Thomson
• Constellations – Patrick Remy
• Turulences – Joel Fajerman
• Tra Scienza e Fantascienza – Moggi (Piero Umiliani)
• Synthetic Music – various
• Tame Impala EP – Tame Impala
• Innserspeaker – Tame Impala
• Take It and Drive – Smadj
• Love and Terror – The Cinematics
• A Time For Lies EP – The Hollow Hearts
• Trans Canada Highway – Boards of Canada
• Far Away Trains Passing By – Ulrich Schnauss
• Soundtrack From Twin Peaks – Angelo Badalamenti
• Synthesizers Dotcom – Collective 2009 – Various
• Out of Style – The Sobriquetes
• Cable Mounds – Three Oh Three
• Hawk the Slayer – Harry Robertson
• Loor Ambient – Loor Ambient
• Panamericana – Federico Aubele
• Synthomani – Marcello Giombini
• Contra – Vampire Weekend
• In The Wee Small Hours – Frank Sinatra
• The Lord Of The Rings – Bo Hanssen
• Saturn Drama – Miro Pajic
• Moondawn – Klaus Schulze
• Ylang – Robert Rich
• Record Collection – Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.
• a funneled stone – Streda
• Blind Threshold – Beats Antique
• Third – Soft Machine
• Honky Chateau – Elton John
• Rumours – Fleetwood Mac
• Transit Transit – Autolux
• Resistor – Micronaut
• Rules – The Whitest Boy Alive
• Dreams – The Whitest Boy Alive

Reason Tree

Horse Wagon on snow

Tired Horses

Horse Wagon

Smith Island Cake

Farm Xmas Tree

2010 Lunar Eclipse on Solstice

It’s been a busy one this year. My mom hosted a large party up at the farm on the 19th complete with Belgium draft horses to pull folks around in a wagon and a pony for the kids to play with. Over 75 people showed up and it all turned out very nicely.

Then we had the solstice with its once-in-hundreds-of-years full lunar eclipse. I slipped out of bed around 2:30 to take a look and a few pictures. I’ve never been about to photograph celestial images worth a damn and this was no exception. I think it must require better equipment than I have. Must look into that…

Next up was Xmas at the farm with my mom and brother’s family. His two little girls were really fun to have around. They are two and four and at the perfect age to enjoy all things “Santa”. When the gifts were finally opened it was an explosion of pink and Barbie as that’s what they’re into these days.

Immediately following was Lea and Jay’s St. Stephens party. St. Stephen’s day is the day right after Christmas and they have taken to throwing a casual gathering for those wanting to escape their families. It was a small gathering this year but very enjoyable and excellently appointed with lots of tasty treats and drinks.

Okay, two laps left in the Yule, Saturnalia, Natalis Invicti, Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, Festivus, Kwanzaa, holiday marathon: New Years and our post-New years getaway.

I FINALLY got around to fashioning wedding gifts for Jay & Lea and Peter & Jen. Large 16×16 “paintings” I created in photoshop and had printed on canvases. The subjects are the buildings where the respective matrimonial ceremonies took place: the Carillon in DC at Arlington Cemetery and Cloghan Castle in Ireland.

It’s not been a good year for pets. Today my brother has to put his dog Basil down. Basil lived a fine life and almost made it to 13 – which isn’t bad for a royal-sized poodle. But it always hurts to see them go.

Freddies Cake

Johnny and Freddie

Cutting the Cake

In the Drag Closet

Last night Will and I attended Freddie’s 60th birthday party and it was quite the event. Fully catered with a piano player, a fanciful cake, and I even got a tour of his commodious drag closet – more wigs and sequins than you can imagine. The man knows how to throw a celebration.

However, I did take the time today to crafts some spooky sound effects on my appropriately-colored ARP 2600. On the way to finding the perfect sound for my new tune I made these two little tone colors that I call “Astrometrics” and “Mynocks”. Perfect for the myriad of Star Wars-themed costumes that I’m sure are out there.

• Astrometrics
• Mynocks

Astrometric Patch:

Mynocks Patch:

Okay, as wind noises are among the most common and overblown (har har) analog synth textures of all, “the best” may be a bit strong. But it is a damn good one that sounds very natural and is almost endlessly random. The secret is to smooth out the randomness of the filtering with a slew limiter (Q105) so changes are nice and gradual. Add in the great Fixed Filter Band (Q127) for some additional tone shaping and it’s a pretty damn good simulacrum if I say so myself. Which I just did.

The second version adds in the sound of a tent or flag flapping. It was pretty challenging to make and required some cross patching with the ARP 2600 and pitch shifting in the DAW afterwards. Hence, I’m not including a pic of it as I never ever want to cable that ugly puppy up again.

• Modular Wind Noise
• Modular Wind Noise with flapping cloth

Quite by accident I created this pretty convincing galloping horse sound on my modular synth (AKA “Gorf”). Version 1 is pure white noise and version 2 adds in a little sine wave for some low-frequency “uhm”.

• Modular Galloping Horse Version 1
• Modular Galloping Horse Version 2

The secret to all of it is my new Fixed Filter bank by Synthesizers.com. Its quite the handy sonic sculpting tool.

Pretty nifty eh?

Michael Biggs and Tom Goss at their wedding reception

Last Saturday I had the privilege of attending the wedding of Tom Goss and Mike Biggs’s wedding. It was held on a putt-putt golf course and performed in the Quaker style. Yes, a gay, Quaker wedding on a putt putt golf green – it made for good water cooler talk at work on Monday. Both the ceremony and reception that followed were sweet, endearing and entirely unassuming – just like Mike and Tom themselves. Very nice.

This is my second gay wedding. It seems to be becoming a trend (especially with friends named “Tom”) and I have to say it’s a bit of an odd feeling. I remember when I was first coming to terms with being gay in my early 20s the notion of gay marriage was, well, it really wasn’t. It didn’t register as a consideration or even remote possibility on anyone’s mind. Maybe some activists dreamed of it in some far off time but in 20 years? That seemed so unlikely. But here it is – fancy cakes and all.