How exciting...

OK Which idiot invited the Doctor to the Daleks Office party?

... it's been watching the Olympics! Not only because watching fine young athletes compete is pleasant on the eye, or because most of the medals New Zealand has won so far has been won while sitting down (equestrian, cycling, rowing...), or because we are currently scoring higher on the medals table than our arch sporting rivals the Australians but mostly because every time the Olympic TV coverage breaks for some advertising they tell us that the latest series of Doctor Who is going to be showing soon! The Wizitch personnel are all confirmed Whovians and I personally have loved Dr. Who ever since I read the first book (Doctor Who and the Daleks) when I was a kid. I can still remember how cool it was that, in the first chapter, the Doctor had matches that never went out. Now that's what I call style!
It was that simple idea - everlasting matches - that triggered my life long love for everything and anything Science Fiction (with the possible exception of that irritating kid with the equally irritating fluffy robot dog in the original series of Battlestar Galactica and of course Jar Jar Binks).


Speaking of style and excitement an unusual thing occurred the other day when Witchy and I were picking up some groceries from New Brighton village. As we crossed the car-parking lot we stopped to chat briefly with an attractive young lady who was just getting out of her 4x4. This in itself is not unusual in New Brighton which, for me anyway, rates as perhaps the chattiest and friendliest place I've ever been to. What was odd though is this young lady asked me if she could photograph me! In the 55 years I've spent so far in this incarnation this has never happened to me before.
Of course (in the interests of art) I agreed and she proceeded to take a nice picture of me with her iPhone. It was only after we had said goodbye that I began to wonder why she wanted my photograph? I suspect it was something to do with my style - I was wearing black and white basket canvas ball boots, faded black denim jeans supported by navy blue braces with white stars on them, a black roll-neck skivvy, my round Harry Potter/Gandhi glasses and my black Bowler hat - oh and I had my black walking stick with me too.
Witchy says the look I had was 'dapper' - which according to the Urban Dictionary means "A compliment made to someone who looks incredibly smart, sexy and stylish". Yeah Baby! I can live with that!

Perhaps the young lady wanted my photo to illustrate to her husband how one can be 'dapper' - after all New Zealand men are generally renowned for not dressing all that well on average. My chief fear however is that she wanted the photo in order to show her husband how NOT to dress! I guess I'll never know!

Southern Sunset

This 'oil painting' image started it's life as a photograph I took from our back yard several years ago. I've run it through a series of filters and effects firstly in The GIMP - one of my most favourite pieces of software - and secondly in Picasa. I only wish I could paint with real oils this well!!

Once among the trees

This image, also from several years ago, was made entirely with software - in this case with 3d landscaping software Vue Studio. Anyone following my art will soon discover that Vue is one of the software packages I use most often in my art. I'm particularly fond of this picture as it reminds me of a very special Easter I once spent in the fabulous New Forest near Southampton in southern England.
This was in the late '70's when I was on the first of my trips back to Britain and I was taking the holiday weekend to drive about and see some of the south coastal areas. We spent the Saturday night sleeping in the car and were awoken very early by the scuffling of many squirrels in the undergrowth. It was a postcard perfect spring morning and we seemed to have the entire forest pretty much to ourselves for about four hours as the morning mists cleared. Driving slowly around the area we were lucky enough to see not only some herds of wild deer and groups of New Forest ponies but also a fox and a very brief glimpse of a badger. And lots of squirrels.
This was a truly magical moment and even now 34 years later I can still recall the sense of timelessness and serenity and solitude of that sunlit and golden misty morning. For me it was a 'one in a lifetime' event that touched me deeply and holds a special fond spot in my memories.  

Black Swan

Black Swan on the Otakaro

 Black Swan

Today's blog starts with another older photo - taken from the bank of the Avon River (Otakaro), outside our home.  A crisp morning fog heralds the arrival of a majestic black swan.

We spent nearly 10 years living beside the river (in 2 different abodes).  There is a peace and beauty to be had watching the water flowing past. The sounds of the local wildlife were just wonderful.  There was always somone going past, enjoying a stroll (with children or their dog ~ or both!), having a run, out on a cycling adventure or power walking.  The blend of bi-peds and quadrupeds made for interesting viewing and never a dull momnent. 

Our time there came to a rather abrupt end after the series of devasting earthquakes that rocked Otautahi.  The land was too serverly damaged to be rebuilt upon and our wee river community was forced to split and neighbours went their separate ways.  We have stayed in touch with most of our neighbours - when you experience a natural disaster together like we did, you are no longer neighbours - you become very good, close friends. This photo captures some of the peace and serenity that we enjoyed on the riverside. Sadly, the quakes caused significant damage along this stretch. The black swans still swim here but at the moment it doesn't quite have the same sense of serene peace that we all loved.

Black Swan and cygnet

New Zealand Black swans (Cygnus Atratus) are probably Australian immigrants like almost all creatures in New Zealand. There was a native population in Aotearoa New Zealand prior to the arrival of the Maori peoples but they were hunted to extinction by the time the first European people started arriving.
 Fresh stocks of Black Swans were later reintroduced as a game bird and there is good reason to believe that other swans have arrived in Aotearoa by flying here directly.





On a completely different tangent we watched the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games which was a great treat. Due to the time difference we in Aotearoa had to get up early on Saturday morning to catch the opening on Friday evening London time. Witchy is a big sports fan and hopes to watch as much of the games as she can. I, on the other hand, am not really interested in sports and find myself a little bemused that so many folk get so much from it.

I can easily see the joy of watching sport without needing to actually exercise much more than the remote control finger - but for me the entire focus on 'winning/losing' thing seems a little pointless. Of course sports is big on points - if the guys in the blue shirts get more points than the other guys in the red shirts they are deemed to 'won' and the others lost. Along with this comes the inference that the team with the highest number of points is somehow 'better' than the other team and that's the bit I really don't understand.

Winners and losers are opposite ends of the same stick - a winner or loser is only called so when compared with the other competitor at the time of that particular match. Whatever the scores may be they are a function of the dynamics of the interaction and the comparison between the two! Your team cannot win unless mine loses and vice versa.

For me the relative scores of a sports match and who wins or loses is far less interesting than watching the displays of individual excellence and physical and mental prowess exhibited by the competitors. So often a 'losing' team (in the sense of acquiring fewer points or goals) actually puts up a better game than the 'winners'.

Ultimately there is a huge selection of variables including quantum indeterminacy which really really determine the outcome of any sporting event so, for me anyway, the pleasure of watching sport comes from the sheer aesthetics of watching superbly trained people performing at their best.

In the sports that I watch every entrant is a winner unless they deliberately under perform - which in itself must still be a type of performance!

Dawn Anchorage

Today's 3d image is a recent one, part of a series of renderings based loosely on actual photographs.

Till next time.....

Wzrd

Fond rememberances

Hi y'all

Our recent spate of nice weather has moved on leaving us with classic wintery grey skies, overcast and sunless. The forecast is for rain. The great thing about weather like that is that its perfect for sitting at the computer and keeping warm.

Life has been ticking along nicely since my last post and there's not a lot to report. One highlight was a lovely visit from Trudie, our friend from Kiapoi (which is a small community to the north of Christchurch). Another highlight was the utterly awesome pumpkin soup and cheese toasties Witchy brewed up for dinner last night. You know how some meals are just perfect for the weather and the mood? Well this was one of those - delicious! (Or 'devicious' which is a special Wizitch Word meaning 'Divinely Delicious).

I'm happy to report there's been some progress with technical matters too - we can now plug the laptop through the big TV (it's a beautiful monster Mitsubishi Diva which is just old enough to not have an HDMI input). I've also finally succeeded in getting trueSpace (my favourite 3d modelling software) installed on the laptop and configured to use with both dual and single monitors. So far tS seems to run beautifully with Windows 7 on my laptop. This means that almost all of my favourite softwares for graphics, 3d, and sound are now installed and set up to use on the laptop anywhere I go. We've really only had the laptop for 6 months and it's great to have it finally configured the way I always wanted it to be, and, as an added bonus it just works like a dream!

Today's old photos were taken (an unremembered number of) years ago. As a younger man in my twenties a common way to spend a nice day was to take my camera out into the countryside to see what results I could gather.
In those days I used either a Pentax K 1000 or, later on, a Pentax ME Super both of which were very nice camera's. I 'developed' (photographic pun there!) my love of photography from my Father who was a keen amateur photographer himself. My Dad is a Newspaper man and from as long as I can remember he has been a font of information about photography.
I can still remember as a child hanging out in the heat and red light of his little darkroom watching the ghostly images slowly materialise out of the developer chemicals.

Window

At the time this photo was taken I was using AGFA slide film which I bought in bulk and developed in the kitchen. After a day out (either on motorbikes or in my van) with fellow photographer-biker-workmate-buddy Razz (more about him in the future no doubt as he was a central character in my life during my twenties and thirties) taking photos I would return home and load the days films into a developing tank and process them with the necessary chemicals. Once the developed films were dry I would cut them up into single frames and mount them in individual slide mounts then project them up against a screen. All the photos in this post were done like this.

This photo was one of a series of shots taken at the old Dovedale Railway Station on the long disused Kawatiri line. New Zealand has a history of old train lines which sadly no longer exist. This railway station is one of the relics from that past era. Situated at 41'38'51.13"S by 172'38'59.76" at an elevation of 381M's (according to Google Earth) this old structure still stands surrounded by sheep paddocks and an aura of forgotten sadness and neglect. There has always been talk of a restoration project but this hasn't yet happened as far as I'm aware.

Frost on the fields

 Photo number two was taken one frigid morning on the Tadmor Hill road looking north toward Tapawera. This area in the northern South Island is quite beautiful. Good soils, plentiful water and sunshine makes this area good for farming and for forestry. Golden Downs State Forest is nearby, a large plantation of mostly Pinus Radiata which grows extremely well here.
I was working in a cable laying gang running a new telephone cable down the hill when I took this snapshot.
Just out of frame to the right is the tiny village of Tadmor. At the time this was taken there was still a manual telephone exchange at Tadmor. I recall talking to one of the locals whose phone number was "Tadmor 2". He had recently returned from a holiday in Hong Kong and had been unable to phone home as the International Tolls system at that time had no way of recognising that number.
I was one of the Telecommunications guys who converted the old manual party line phones (with the crank handles on the side) to modern DTMF push button phones. We spent many months in this widespread rural area and got to visit every house in the district in order to replace their phones. I have many happy memories of my time working in this lovely area.

Window

The last photo was taken looking at the reflection in the window of an historic church in the village of Wakefield (where, incidentally my sister and brother-in-law live today). My paternal Grandmother is buried in this lovely spot and you'd be hard pressed to find a nicer resting place.
Not far up the road from here is the small farmlet that belonged to my Parents. This was another beautiful spot now sadly slowly being absorbed by suburban expansion from the nearby village.

These photos and memories are all twenty to thirty years old now - a sobering example of how time move inexorably on. Echoes from the last millennium these photos connect me to places and times that were particularly beautiful for me.
Even though this selection of snaps are not intrinsically the most interesting of photos I do hope that you who are taking the time to look closer will absorb some of the serenity and sunlit beauty of that increasingly distant time.
After all, memories are meant to savoured and shared aren't they?

~W~ 

Bottled moon....

Hi there

The gorgeous spring-like weather is continuing for us, a far cry from the frigid blizzard conditions of a few weeks back. Yesterday was spent in the back yard where I finally installed an nice new door on the wood shed (the old one had seen better days and was rotting away to nothing) whilst Witchy reorganised the placement of the BBQ and many potted plants and garden furniture, trimmed branches from our tree that got damaged by the snow and a veritable plethora other small tasks that had thus far managed to escape attention. Although the garden is still a long way from ship-shape we've made a good start and we want to be ready to take maximum advantage of the spring regrowth that will soon be here to get some veges growing for the summer.

Today we went out to the Waimakariri River for a lovely picnic lunch in the sunshine.  A splendid afternoon was had.

Moon in a Bottle

Here's another old photo I've always had a soft spot for. Taken with a Pentax K 1000 waaaay back in the 1980's it was something of a 'trick' shot. The somewhat blurry moon was actually a slide photo projected on a screen behind the crystal bottle - which if I recall correctly was in fact a wedding present. I guess my ex-wife must have got it because I haven't seen that bottle in many,many years.

I was always intrigued by the way the light played in the glass. Of course I've leared a lot since the day I took this shot - today there's no way I'd cut the side of the moon of with sloppy framing!

Country House

Today's 3d art piece is a rustic country house.The inspiration for this piece came from my Grandmothers collection of Lilliput Lane models - little ornamental houses she kept in a glass fronted cabinet. I was always fascinated by these charming little places - it looked like a tiny village in her cupboard - and so one day I went looking at the Lilliput Lane Website for some ideas for building computer modelled houses. Whilst Lilliput Lane house are models of real buildings in the United Kingdom my versions are completely imaginary.

This picture, made with trueSpace and Vue, is one of many that serves to support my ongoing Sci-fi/fantasy story "The Chronicles of Inthandonia: The Wizard Wars" which can be seen on our website at www.wizitch.com in the 3d art section 

Familiar Faces 

Hubble

In my last post I introduced my wonderful companion Witchy. Pointy hatted perople are generally accompanied by Familiars, freindly animals who associte themselves with the pointy hat wearing person. Witchy and I have three such familiars and I'd like to start by introducing Hubble the Cat.

Hubble, so named because, like the telescope, she spends a lot of time just staring into space, arrived at our doorstep and essentially just kept yelling at us until we let her in. Gremmels (see below) our existing cat didn't seem to mind and so Hubble became a member of Wizitch.

Sputnik

Some time after that Sputnik turned up in much the same fashion, demanding to be let in and be part of the fun. Sputnik (the only other male here besides me) got his name because, like the satellite, he seems to constantly orbit around us and is almost always somewhere in our immediate vicinity. The original Sputnik was the first ever satellite to orbit the Earth, launched by the Russians in 1957, the year I was born.     

Perhaps because we lived on the river and people dumped their unwanted pets there or perhaps just because... these two cats have become constant and much loved companions and entertainers here at Wizitch H.Q. They are as much a part of Wizitch as Witchy and I.

Gremmels

Whilst I'm talking about cats I must add a word or two about Gremmels. Sadly she passed away last October, after a long life. Her kidneys just gave up on her. I've had many cats in my life but Gremmels was the classiest lady of them all, a truly aristocratic creature. Small (she was mostly hair on legs) light but very tough and wiry, Gremmels was utterly fearless. In the face of the largest attacking dog she would suddenly inflate herself like a puffer fish, sticking all her fur out and making herself as big as possible. In the neighbourhood she was undisputed top dog (if you know what I mean) and all the other animals, including the two HUGE black dogs that lived next door, walked in fear of her.... She will be long remembered.

Wzrd in I.C.U.

In my last post I referred to the bout of Legionella Pneumonia which had me hospitalised for over a month at the beginning of the year. I had renal failure, respiration failure, heart failure - the whole works packed up and for a three day period there was apparently a great deal of concern that I wasn't going to make it through alive! Here's a picture of me in the Intensive Care Unit, hooked up to a kidney dialysis machine, a respirator, assorted breathing, heart and blood pressure sensors plus tubes for nutrition and  many other things. Anyway, I eventually got myself together (obviously or you wouldn't be reading this) and started breathing on my own. I was still in an induced coma at this stage when Witchy asked me, "Is it all right if we get a dog? I'll take silence as a yes".

Tycho (the wonder dog)

Well, even in the depths of my unconsciousness I had the good sense to say nothing, thus saving the dog from a life of cruelty and mistreatment. We named her Tycho, after the Danish nobleman and astronomer Tycho Brahe who is famous for showing that the so-called perfect and immutable heavenly spheres theory of the universe was wrong. Tycho proved that the universe is changing, once again proving that a good idea is not better than a better idea! In the Wizitch universe the theory was we would never get a dog, Tycho (the dog not the astronomer) disproved that theory thus demonstrating that nothing is certain. She is already quite old in dog years.We were told she was born 12 years ago but she seems to be younger than that. Whatever her true age is she is a fabulous friend and companion to us and she has settled in as part of the family so well that it seems hard to recall a time when she wasn't here! 

That about wraps up this post - now you've met the gang of corporeal entities that are Wizitch (actually there are several other less-than-corporeal entities that are an important part of Wizitch too but as they only exist on an imaginary level they probably need a post or two of their own). Watch this space!!

Hi!

We had a lovely day today although the sky was mostly overcast it was still warm for the time of year. Our unexpected guests have moved on and today we had the very great pleasure of attending a double birthday party at (of all things) the local Greek Orthodox Church hall. Finding a Witch and a Wizard in such a location  is an interesting story in itself but given that this is the Chinese Year of the Black Water Dragon its probably not surprising that interesting things keep happening!

Who is this Witchy person anyway?

Witchy is my flatmate, soul mate and best friend ever forever. I believe I am only still here and still breathing because of her! We met at work around twelve years ago when we were both employed as Faults Specialists in the call centre of the (at that time) largest electricity retail company in the country. We soon discovered a mutual love of language and laughter and developed a great friendship. For ages many of our colleagues assumed we were a 'couple' in the traditional sense of the word but that was never the case as far as we were concerned! We simply both loved life and music and spending time together.

A time came when she was looking for a flatmate at her house to help with expenses and so forth. It coincided with me looking for somewhere else to live - so it just seemed like the right thing to do. Witchy moved into her spare bedroom and gave me the master bedroom and things worked out perfectly. I'm the first person to admit that I'm not the easiest guy in the world to live with but somehow she was (and still is) able to put up with me even when I'm at my moodiest.

Eventually Witchy had to sell her house and we moved to different locations on opposite sides of town. The geographical separation did nothing to dampen our friendship and so, six months later we both moved into a rental house in the eastern suburbs of Christchurch. Witchy had one end of the house and I had the other end - in the middle was the kitchen and dining areas plus an additional lounge where we set up her piano and all my music gear - PA, microphones guitars etc.

This was an ideal situation which didn't last. We made the house into a home and when the landlord saw how good we had made his somewhat tatty old house look he promptly put it up for sale so we moved on to the first of two homes we shared beside the Avon River.

 Jumping ahead to post-earthquake Christchurch, both those homes were destroyed (more on that in future instalments) and so we moved to our current home here in friendly New Brighton beside the mighty Pacific Ocean. One of our mutually shared interests is gardening. It was late December, 2011 and high summer here in the southern hemisphere. We were setting up a new vegetable garden which involved the use of compost that was rich with the spores of an organism known as Legionella Longbeachea. I inhaled some of these critters and contracted Legionella pneumonia, a dangerous disease that kills about one person in twenty who catch it. I'll no doubt have more to say about that in the future too.

The outcome of this horticultural encounter was an extended stay in Christchurch hospital on full life support in an induced coma. It was during my recovery after the coma, as I recuperated in Ward 25 that I met the lovely Lilliana who cared for me as a nurse aid. Although she is a fully qualified nurse in her homeland of Romania her qualifications are not recognised by the New Zealand Health Department and so she is compelled to work as a nurse aid.

Lilli became more than a carer and went far beyond the call of duty in her care and support of me. Witchy (who visited me daily), Lilli and I got along famously and so we kept in touch after I was finally released from hospital.

A church, a bridge and a nightclub

This Saturday evening Lilli celebrated not only her own birthday but also the first birthday of her lovely daughter Alexandra, in the hall at the local Greek Orthodox Church and Witchy and I were invited! There was a wonderfully interesting mix lovely people there (including Toni, another nurse who had taken particularly good care of me), lots of kids running about having fun, lots of great music (ranging from traditional Romanian music to Rihanna!) and heaps of great food.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Lilliana and her family and friends for making Witchy and I feel so welcome. Lilli and Alex, Happy Birthday to you both.

Other things of interest, to me anyway, that occurred today - I finally got my little Akai MIDI keyboard hooked up to Acid Music Studio on my laptop so that's another little task of my list of things to do. In the process of tracking down the installation CD for the keyboard I uncovered some old forgotten photo CDs.

Today's photos come from a series of slides I took an unknown number of years back sometime in my mid twenties. This would have been around the late 1980's. The slides show the now vanished combination Road and Rail bridge across the Hokitika River on the South Islands West Coast. The railway line no longer operates and the road bridge is now a fairly ordinary concrete bridge. 

Interestingly enough, the timbers recovereed from the old bridge were later used to construct an unusual building in Nelson which became a popular night club. I don't know what its called now or even if it still exists but I played many gigs there when it was called the Cactus Club and was used for regular get-togethers of the Nelson Musicians Club.

Side note

New Zealand has a reputation for keeping things simple: thus the Island at the top is called the North Island. The Island to the south of that is called the South Island and the West Coast of the South Island, where these pictures were taken, is called the West Coast.

It will therefore come as no surprise that the name of the Golden Labrador sitting beneath the bridge was named Dog

Well its been a cracker day here in the shattered remains of Christchurch. Warm North-westerly breezes, sunny, very nice.
I had a loooong night last night, teaching myself to get around in Audiotool on the laptop and getting the first couple of tracks started. Quite a learning curve but fortunately I'm familiar with most of the conventions used in DSP (Digital Sound Processing) software and this helped me to make some good progress.
Finally got to bed about 09:00am then slept for about 5 hours before going out to watch our young friend Geena play hockey. We enjoyed a couple of nice cold beers with Geena's Dad Roger at his workplace over looking a golf course. A nice place to work, you wouldn't want to go home at the end of the day.
Unexpected guests this evening, an influx of girl power which had me running off to hide in the study until I was enlisted as official story reading person. Great fun, its been a while since I read out loud with a warm sleepy child on my lap. The young ladies are all asleep in bed now and Witchy and I are sleeping in the office for the night as our beds have been allocated to M, K, M and S. Its a nice feeling being able to help out friends in need.

Alpine Valley, Inha Sosul Mountains, Inthandonia

Here's another image of mine - this one is not a photo but is one of my recent efforts using some new software - well, new to me anyway.
The terrain, which defines the shape of the land, was created in the free version of World machine and textured and populated with trees and clouds and so forth in the landscape rendering software Vue. The end result has been run through some filters and effects in Picasa and resized in Irfanview (for anyone interested in technical stuff!).


This is an example of the 3d computer art that I've been making for the past 10 or so years. I'll be using a different version of this in a future instalment of "The Chronicles of Inthandonia: The Wizard Wars".

Historical Footnote

Snow on the Avon, Winter 2003.

Any visitors to our website at www.wizitch.com will soon discover that things have not been updated there for several years - although its definitely on the To Do list! As many of my intentions for the old website did not transpire I'm planing on adding photos and story snippets from the History Of Wizitch in this blog. The idea is to provide some sort of record of things that have happened over the course of this millennium.

With that in mind here is a photograph from my collection of pictures of the Avon Otakaro River here in Christchurch. This was taken the first time I saw snow on the ground in Christchurch since I moved here at the end of the last century. Witchy and I had been living together for some time and our house (off to the left of this picture) was right across the road from the river. We spent five and a half years at this address (there will be more photos to come in future) and many happy memories were shared there. Sadly the house was severely damaged, as was this lovely riverside area in the big Quakes of 2010 and 2011. We hope that eventually this area will be reserved as a park but at the time of writing there is still much uncertainty over what will happen here.

Here we go!

Awesome Audio app and another announcement

Well day two of my incarnation as a blogger and I've yet to achieve much. What I have been doing is discovering some hoopy cool stuff that I didn't know about previously. First up is Picasa - as a graphic artist I never really gave any consideration to Picasa even though I'd heard and read nothing but good stuff about it. I'm a huge fan of The GIMP which I use for both photo manipulation and for building custom textures for the 3d models I build and I find that there's not much I can't do with it. Picasa's editing set up in comparison is far faster for many tasks and sooooo easy to use. It's effects are intuitive and simple to use. I've yet to come to grips with Pacasa Web Albums - I publish much of my artwork on our website at www.wizitch.com and also in my online gallery at Renderosity  where the images are related to my ongoing Saga: The Chronicles of Inthandonia; The Wizard Wars - but I'm eventually going to set up some Picasa web albums for my other art and graphic work so people can see stuff I've done that has previously only been on my own hard drives.

Here's an example of one of my photographs after I've subjected it to multiple Picasa filters. The original

photo was of a foggy winters morning on the banks of Christchurch's Avonside Otakaro River. Sadly this section of the river has been extensively damaged in the earthquakes - more on that later also.

Audiotool

I am a MASSIVE fan of Google - I use Google Chrome as my browser and have just found a very cool Flash driven app in the Google App store. Called Audiotool it's a web based music creation package that runs within the Google Chrome browser. I've been listening to tracks made by other Audiotool  users all evening on the Audiotool Radio. This app lets you create very sophisticated music - for free. You can upload it for the listening pleasure of anyone. The user interface is very slick and intuitive consisting of a node type editor which looks and works like the real instruments, mixers effects and so on that a musician would encounter in a working studio.

For a newcomer to multi track recording I suspect the interface would be somewhat daunting at first. As I'm a musician with a reasonable amount of experience with recording and digital sound recording I'm hoping to use this very cool tool in future projects of my own.

This afternoon I spent some time setting up my laptop with an extra flatscreen monitor and my sweet set of Altec Lansing speakers. I'm listening to Audiotool Radio with the app running in a Chrome browser window on the external monitor - the radio feature has set of graphic visualizations (similar to Windows Media Player) and this provides a nice ambience for listening to other folks Audiotool creations whilst giving me a series of funky beats to type along to as I write up todays entry to this blog.

So that's it for today - I'm off now to play some more and see what fun I can have with this very cool software.

Have a nice day!!  

Who's that?

 The Wizard! Thinker,dreamer, musician, artist and now - blogger (amongst other things).
As I've literally just started this thing I haven't even completed my profile yet. I'll get to that shortly.

In the meantime I'm thinking of using this blog as an online diary and organising tool. Being somewhat creative I have a vast array of projects - some under way, others as yet unstarted - that I wish to complete. I hope that commiting myself to do this blog here will assist me to stay on track.

So, in the unlikely event that you are already feeling a strange magick complusion to find out more about me let me direct you to my website at http://www.wizitch.com/ where you can find much of my graphic art work and other info. That website is currently a little outdated - it's not been updated since 2009 - but one of the array of projects mentioned earlier is to revamp the site and add more current material (in conjunction with this blog of course).

There's enough material on the website to keep you entertained in the meantime. So I'll leave it here and go and edit my Blogger Profile.