Oh how time flies

5/27/2025 While I feel like I should comment on the terrible things Trump and the Republican Party are doing to this country, it could easily become the only thing I cover so I'm not going to dwell but if you are someone who watches Fox News, I strongly recommend you watch the Daily Show and John Oliver specifically but Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Myers are also in the business of making people laugh at the actual dumb things people do, not invented bullshit so they end up reporting what's really going on. The Daily Show is probably the most honest news show on the air (and they are on fire this season) and they call themselves "fake" news. Not because they are inventing the stories but because their primary mission is to make you laugh. Making you better informed is [at least] second but the stories are only funny because they are true. Lying-to-you is sort of the opposite of what they do. Nuff said except to remind you that Fox News was sued and settled for pedaling false stories to boost their viewership, something that none of the so-called "FAKE NEWS" has been legally exposed doing. They settled (didn't go to court) for a huge sum of money but the result was unambiguous: they were telling their viewers things that they knew were false to get them worked up so they would come back tomorrow boosting their own stock options in the company. Literally caught lying to stoke their viewership. They are not a network you want to expose your brain to.

Okay, onto something we actually have control over..

The Gerrymander-My-Love saga continues. After getting away from the mix for a while, the timing just felt too sloppy on the jam version of the song so I've redirected my efforts to the official draft of the song which is mostly midi with perfect timing (its own problem). I also found I was having trouble hitting some of the notes updating the lead vocal so I decided to move the key down a whole step. I thought for sure the combination of a hard, fixed timing reference and changing the key a whole step would render Ken's guitar takes unusable but miraculously I've been able to manipulate them to work on the new version of the song. I'm hoping to release the song and possibly two others ("Molsen The Dog" and "Sea") in June, life's whims allowing.

One of life's more ugly whims you might be encountering is harassment or extortion via email or by invading your computer or computer systems by some very bad people. StecRecords.com has been around since the 90s so we've had our share of incidents but I wanted to direct people to the www.ic3.gov (the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)) web site where you can report information about entities who are somehow attacking you electronically. You won't necessarily get any overt action or response about complaints you file but these threats usually contain bitcoin addresses and other information (IP address, etc.) that can be traced back to a user helping law enforcement locate and prosecute these scumbags. Please note that It's important to never respond to someone who attacks you electronically. Any response at all tells them that you actually got their threat otherwise they can't be sure and end up spinning their wheels wondering if their threat got (rightfully) chucked into the trash. If you respond, they know what to do next. Don't show them your hand. And always report it to the IC3; they are surely pulling this scam on others and your information could help make connections to move these investigations along. I should also note that I think it's important to always have multiple backups of anything you hold dear on your computer, phone or tablet. My work doesn't always involve the computer so I go hot and cold on it so I only do intermittent secondary backups every month or so. You want at least one backup of the important stuff to be offline; i.e. a flash stick or external hard/ssd drive.

Be safe - Bob

Tone Generator

Beep, boop, boup. Yes. This does nothing but generate annoying test tones.

more..

ST Metronome

My online metronome lets you set the tempo, choose a sound and to save different settings for quick recall. Check here for more info or go directly to the metronome here.

4/10/2025 Updated! The ST Metronome now includes a precision mode, the ability to set the number of beats per second, a reverb level adjust, an accent level adjust and more.