Here is a news item reminiscent of the film, “Die Fetten Jahre Sind Vorbei“:

A gang of anarchist Robin Hood-style thieves, who dress as superheroes and steal expensive food from exclusive restaurants and delicatessens to give to the poor, are being hunted by police in the German city of Hamburg.

The gang members seemingly take delight in injecting humour into their raids, which rely on sheer numbers and the confusion caused by their presence. After they plundered Kobe beef fillets, champagne and smoked salmon from a gourmet store on the exclusive Elbastrasse, they presented the cashier with a bouquet of flowers before making their getaway.

The latest robbery is part of a pattern over the past several months, suggesting that the thieves deliberately set out to highlight what they perceive as the inequality inherent in German society.

Do they wear tights?

Not much going on. Lots of nerding about on the computer with Typo3. You’d think the chachis at Microsoft would finally fix Internet Explorer’s world renowned crappy implementation of the CSS box model with its release of IE7 but no. Everything breaks. I know it is beta but that should be at the top of the list.

This brilliant pixel-based reenactment of Game Six of the 1986 World Series reminds me of hanging out for hours in Brian Allers’s basement and playing RBI Baseball on his Nintendo.

Here is a page full of all kinds of musical theory. Good reference for refreshing your memory.

I’m thinking about jumping the ProTools ship and moving to either Logic Pro or Nuendo. I’m frustrated with Digidesign’s hardware requirements and limitations. However, I love the software. I’ve been using it for almost 10 years and I am really comfortable with it. The hardware on the other hand needs to move into the 21st century. The main shortcoming is that you have to have Digidesign hardware attached to the computer just to start the software. That means doing edits on your laptop during a long plane/train ride is out of the question unless you have the M2, which is a piece of crap. That also means if you want to customize your IO interface to suit your needs, you are fucked.

The 002r, which is what I currently have, is okay but if I want to record a session requiring 16 simultaneous XLR inputs, it requires too many workarounds and pieces of external hardware (AD converters and ADAT interface). All I really need is a few of these Focusrites and I’m set. Unfortunately, it is directly incompatible with ProTools so I would have to finagle it together with the ADAT interface and then there are clock issues and more gear and cables to haul around and lots of other bullshit I’m sure. There is no elegant ProTools solution for under $13,000. In other words: fuck that. With Logic and Nuendo however, I can use whatever hardware I want. We’ll have to see what Digi releases this year and how well their Universal binaries work on the new Intel Macs.

Eventually this year I want to get a road case with the 2 Focusrites, a patchbay, channel strip(s), and maybe a nice EQ. Put this together with a new 17-inch MacBookPro, a small mixer and some decent monitors and it’s a mobile recording studio.

Oh, did I bore you with all that? Here…

Ballroom dancing making comback among German youth. I have yet to notice this trend.

What’s up with Germany and their friggin’ beard clubs?

Time for bed. I have a heart check up tomorrow.