So, Advanced Budget Studios took a bit of a break during the holidays, and with that came the usual curiosity as to how the new year would be. Well, I'd have to say that 2011 is looking great.  We started off the year recording a wonderful new artist named Taylor Miller.  He'll have a website up soon, and his music sounds fabulous! ...

So, when I started the re-design of my studio website, I knew I would need sliders, but I didn't realize how many unconfigurable, and generally static sliders were out there.  I must have gone through 5 iterations of sliders before I found one that matches my needs (and probably will be the go-to slider for any project I work on in the future)...

Man... I'm kicking myself right now for not taking a photo of this amazing musician, but I was way too interested in the music I was hearing to worry about silly cameras. Taylor Miller came in for a visit, and recorded 3 original songs tonight.  They have yet some proper embellishment to receive, but the tracks we got tonight were primo.&nbs...

About 2 months ago, a great musician, designer, and friend sent me a new design idea for AdvancedBudgetStudios.com.  After getting various opinions, I decided to have a go at it.  Also, with all the free time I had during the holidays, I thought it would be a good time to get crackin'. So, without further ado, I present you the new and ...

Okay.. Not really the "radio", but a cool little Internet radio station picked up Herod the Fink (a band I'm in), and decided to feature us.  They decided to play our song, "Desperate Husband's Chorus", and I think it's way cool. The radio station is called "LDS Music Today" and can be found at http://www.ldsmu...

Since we haven't been booking clients during November and December, we've had a few extra moments to really think about and research the needs of the studio.  The success this little studio has had is very exciting, and only makes us want to hone our craft that much more. Honing the craft is great, but pouring the success of the studio back ...

So, the Christmas season is officially here, and I'm feeling more Christmas Spirt than I ever have in my life - by a long shot. I attribute this to two things...  First and foremost, attitude, and making good choices.  To me, Christmas is a spiritual season because it's filled with love, good will, charity, friends, and family.  If...

Friday December 3, 2010 Today was filled with the usually chore, practicing for the Christmas Cantada, and puttting up the Christmas tree. Finally! me and my family put up our tree. We usually do it after Thanksgiving but we where a little late. You know. The more the years go by the faster Christmas seems to come. I can remeber when I was a litt...

Scramjet, a valued client of Advanced Budget Studios (and an amazing band, as well), has recently arrived in the top-ten list of a contest put on by X-96.  Please support them by clicking here and voting for them and their awesome song, "Tread Softly". Thanks, and thank you, Scramjet!  You guys are awesome!  ...

It might be that I'm a techno-geek, but the first thing I thought of when I read this was "social media".  People went from house to house and "labored exceedingly" all through the night to let it be known where Jesus was going to come the following day. Also interesting are the activities of the people when the arrived t...

I'm always pleased and grateful that the Spirit comes so quickly when I read the Book of Mormon.  Sometimes I forget how much I love how the Spirit of God makes me feel and think and act. Anyway...  Great chapter this was.... Of all of the stories in the Book of Mormon, I think I like the one of the 2000 Stripling Warriors the best.&n...

The first thing that stood out to me this time around was the anger of Lamoni's father.  Try to place yourself in the situation Lamoni found himself in.  There are so many variables in the situation, it's hard to imagine exactly what was going on with the family undercurrents, but holy cow.  Lamoni's father drew his freaking sword an...

Holy cow.  My journal is done.  I still can’t believe it.  Wowza. I started writing in my journal every day on January 1st, 1990.  About ten years later, I found that I had journals scattered all over the place, and with my technical background - I hated the disorganization of something that might be precious someday.&nb...

Well.. Yesterday, I rode home in an airplane for the whole day, but everything was cool.. I rode by David and Sharon that have a 19 year old daughter, Mormon, and single. I didn't get her phone number - just ask me why, I could kick myself. Anyway.. I listened to my music for most of the way home and just enjoyed myself. I actually like flying,...

WOW, feels like forever since I last came in here to write. My comp crashed and just now got back up. For now....  I am really glad that I've been able to talk to Christine, she's a really great girl!  I signed up for a website she sent me. I'm going to try and find her LOL I had a lot to write, but just don't feel much like doing it a...

Today I needed to encode a movie I bought on Friday (Fearless), and I wanted to encode it in its native language, but have english subtitles.  The command I ended up using was this: transcode -a 0 -i Fearless.dump -M 2 -w 2200,250,100 -A -N 0x2000 -y xvid -o Fearless.avi -Z 854x480 -J extsub=2:0:0:0:0:100:255:2:3 The "a" takes care...

Since we haven't been booking clients during November and December, we've had a few extra moments to really think about and research the needs of the studio.  The success this little studio has had is very exciting, and only makes us want to hone our craft that much more. Honing the craft is great, but pouring the success of the studio back ...

  Poetry by Kelly Miller   THis is dedicated to my son Shawn VanWagen who left on his mission in 2005 and that next week I started writing poetry. It has been a big part of my life since and has kept me very busy.  Also, to President Hinckley and his challenge for the members to read the book of mormon. and to Bernice Hutchenson w...

 So, before I even begin reading this chapter, I've gotta say that this is one of those chapters which is seriously deep in doctrine.  I could probably spend the better portion of 2 or 3 days studying this one.  That said, I don't have much time to spend now, so I'll get as far as I can. Verse 1 : An "exceedingly high mountai...

Well today my maw had this big Womens class about an hour away from here. So me and my family took her up there and we spent the few hours at the mall :-) We don't go to the mall to much cuz it's so far away! But I ain't t so sure I like it all that much, I ain't a people person my self. But it's ok some times. While I was there some very funny thi...

Wow....   This will probably be a short entry, but I thought I'd write down what is the first hardware failure of my server! I built this server 3 years ago, and it has been serving up everything that is served in my house (mythtv, web (this site), ftp, ssh, music, photos).  Well... Yesterday evening, we tried to fire up mythtv...

Soon after I began recording audio, I had a feeling I would be in the pursuit of an unattainable goal.  Finding that "perfect" recording space, or even creating that "perfect" recording would be difficult, if not entirely impossible. 10 years after I began, I was able to pour my heart and soul into a new recording space, ...

My job has me creating a website derived from data housed in an Oracle database. It's getting to the point now where we're going to co-locate the server and press the big green button. Well... My boss came in today asking about the connection between my postgresql database from which the website runs, and Oracle from which Postgres is populated...

So...  Yeah... Holy cow.  I started writing this as a Facebook update, and quickly realized ther was too much to say, so, into the blog it goes! The bottom line is - We are back in business, people! As of right now, the new studio is close to being finished, but the good news is - we can record.  I've got 3 channels wired up, a...

What do you get when you mix a couple of black lights, a fog machine, a strobe light, a dark hallway, and a couple of demented minds with Halloween?  I'll tell ya what you get: A whole lot of scared teen-agers. WOOOO HOOO!!! With the debut happening just last year, there hasn't been a whole lot of time for refinement, but all things cons...

I was gonna read something spiritual tonight, but I got sidetracked by American Idol. I started surfing around and before long, I came upon this video which, to me, is both absolutely amazing and freaking hilarious at the same time. I had no idea (although I'm not surprised) that so many people were doing remixes of his song "We Are Brot...

 So, a few days ago, a friend of the studio called up and asked if I would help him out with a project.  As he described the project, I grew more and more interested. The project is called "Sacred Sounds: Cathedrals of Europe" The gist of it, is that a group of researchers are going to be travelling around Europe studying th...

 When I first installed the 64-bit version of gentoo on linode, everything looked good - except I couldn't get apache to send email.   When I emerged PHP, it pulled in ssmtp by default, but that didn't seem to be sending mail at all.  So, I emerged sendmail.  That got me a little bit further, but the logs were giving me an error...

 So, lately I've been thinking a lot about what life is all about, and kind of pondering upon times when I've been doing well, and times when I've been doing not-so-well. I think the most important thing you can do in life is stay close to the Spirit of God.  Lots of things seem to get in the way from time to time, but that's the nature...

We've been recording a bunch of drum-takes to be added to otherwise "ready-to-go" songs lately here.  The latest of which happened to be a genre I particularly don't like much - country. But, the music sounded so good for this particular song, I decided to have at it anyway - and 4 hours later, we came up with the final result. I...