Forgery League

With the focus of this blog veering wildly about from electronics to urban design to music, I think it’s time to divide things up a bit. Over the next little while I’ll be shifting the DIY project talk (“mad scientisting”, as my SO likes to put it) to a new section called The Lab - better to have a home for it so people can find such posts without having to sort through my ramblings on pop culture and cats. And likewise, friends who want to keep up with those ramblings won’t have to go crosseyed at sudden dumps of Arduino or Flash code.

Likewise, I’m thinking of having a separate section for discussing urban design, public spaces and so forth. (A while back, in a giddy moment near the close of the Open Cities unconference, I promised to start a site or blog devoted to DIY projects in the public realm, and this would be the logical place to put it.) Music and art will probably be the “main” blog.

As I mentioned recently, I’ve become a fan of Expression Engine. Serendipity’s been good to me, but for various reasons I’m switching over this site. Among other things, I use EE for most of the dynamic sites I build, and I’d just like one less technology to think about for a while.

I’ve been porting over my entries little by little, and the site’s finally ready to go. It’ll be a mess for the time being, but I’ll get to tidying that up eventually.

Things I’ll miss: entry tagging (surely someone is working on a plugin?), threaded comments, the nicer interface when uploading images.

Things I like better: you can set up different upload areas so that EE inserts the appropriate code for an image (for example)... I’ll see if I can make a little Flash player hook to allow audio files to play on the page, in the same way you can share YouTube videos. Much easier to set up additional blogs with custom fields. I’ll probably start an “Upcoming Events” roll.

There’s a new RSS feed, but I’m maintaining one at the old address too, and if all goes well, subscriptions to the old one will continue to work for the new site without a blip. (Fingers crossed.) And there’s now an Atom feed too. I’m finally learning the ins and outs of web-syndication, and it’s not as scary as I feared.

I thought I’d peek at my server statistics for Forgery League, and see how people found their way to the site. One person apparently Googled “mbox high pitched buzz”, so I figure it’s a good time to mention:

I figured out what was causing the quiet whining noise on the Mbox’s monitor outputs. It was happening every time there was audio, which gave the impression that it was the data stream coming in through its own USB port. However, it turns out it was actually the video output. I’d attached a monitor to my PowerBook (an “Aluminum” series G4 with DVI video connection), and when I disconnected it, away went the screech.

Strange: the signal to the Mbox is digital, so you’d think it wouldn’t be susceptible to interference. Does the monitor signal introduce so much noise that it can travel down a USB cable and get picked up by the analog circuitry in the Mbox?

Sadly, this means having to use Logic on one small laptop screen some of the time, but I’m certainly glad I don’t have to get another outboard audio interface.

I haven’t yet tested whether it only appears on the monitor outs, or whether it gets recorded too, and whether it helps to use a different/better USB cable. I’ll do some more playing around when I get a chance. Stay tuned.

I figured I’d turn forgeryleague.com into a blog - better that than a plain old bunch of links. So there are the links, and I’m about to start scouring my notebooks and older web journals for things to post and cross-post. Welcome!

Addendum:

I definitely feel like there is Work To Be Done in the world, and among other things, having an ‘official’ blog seems like a useful tool in that work. For the past several years I’ve been trying out one kind of web site after another, looking for the right format to house things like essays, journals, photos, musical bits, and other media. And the blog seems to fit the bill the best. Maybe it’ll be a collaborative thing eventually.

For now, I’m hoping to do a lot more writing here about music, politics, the environment, design and human spaces, and I’m in the process of collecting a lot of older writing to put here. Longer articles would be cool too, maybe one ‘feature’ a month. Maybe I could stretch out and do some educational/informational Flash pieces too. Some map geekery, or a lesson in different musical tuning systems…

Ah, the possibilities!

Crossposted from flickershow.com - which also has the details on where-when-how much.

Catch our final headlining gig of the year this Friday at the Renaissance, along with Jess Graham and Uncle Seth. And on the 8th we’ll be opening for Archery at the Cameron House. Come out and catch some new tunes!

In side-projectland, Clark will be drumming with our man David Hein on a couple of upcoming gigs (Catch-22, Oshawa on the 29th and Healey’s in Toronto on December 2nd). Davey’s got a kickass new CD on the way in the new year, so watch his site for news. I’ll be playing bass with Some of the Parts at the Renaissance on December 3rd.

Meanwhile, if you’re into podcasting, or indie music, or both, check out Jay Moonah’s Toronto Independent Music Podcast on BlogTO.com. Each week, Jay spins half a dozen tunes from cool bands you might not have caught anywhere else. And this week, we’re leading off the show!

I’m discovering far too many cool blogs to keep up with. RSS doesn’t help - it just seems to make it all even more overwhelming. When will I ever have time to read all this stuff?

WorldChanging is an environmental blog with a futurist stripe.

We’re up against some heavy, heavy challenges, and it’s understandable that some people feel paralyzed by despair (heaven knows I get that way sometimes) or want to turn back the clock to some idealized vision of the past. But those aren’t terribly useful. If we’re going to make it through all this while saving something of this planet, it’s going to take effort on every front. WorldChanging’s got reports on ecosystems and innovations from around the world, and occasionally a personal piece or two, like A Love Note To New Orleans.

(I’ll have to jot down more of my thoughts on the environment some time.)

The Spacing Wire is from the people who bring us the excellent Spacing magazine - thoughts on public space, urban living and Toronto.

The Toronto Psychogeography Society blog is along similar lines (and shares some contributors, such as Matt Blackett). It’s more about the experience of the city; the Spacing Wire is more about issues.

CBC Unplugged has news and podcasts from the locked-out employees of the CBC, nationwide. I haven’t had a functioning TV or radio in quite a while, but when I did, I listened to the CBC almost exclusively. Now employees in several cities are turning to the web as an outlet.

The first English-language community radio station in Canada was formed by idealistic, disgruntled volunteers from Radio Waterloo, the University of Waterloo’s cable station, after RW was closed down by the student federation and reluctantly re-opened with a quarter of its original budget. I’m not expecting massive revolution at the CBC - it’s not going away - but still… this could get interesting.