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...

Since I've been job-hopping for the last bit, I've had the chance to install fresh gentoo builds on quite a few 64-bit computers in the last couple of months. I've also been looking at different IDEs for PHP development.  After using jEdit now for close to 5 years, I've gotta say the one which impresses me the most is Zend Studio for Eclips...

Here is another one of my poems, seems like all I do is write :-) This is one is not like my others, because this one is kinda happy. I think...... I wrote it back in December about how I felt about this guy, I was hiding from how I felt about him. So this is what I wrote. I can't let myself feel like this! It's so ridiculous, I find I'm always ...

Today has been ok I guess.. My Maw and I stayed in the house all day and cleaned, while the boys worked in the yard. I hate "womens work"!!!! I rather be out side, but of corse I can't. I'm tired!!! Tomorrow I'm suppost to skip out stake sports day and  go with my Maw to this womens class thingy, I'm hoping that some one I know fr...

Ya know... Chatting with good friends has its benefits.  Just like think-tanks and collegeate consortiums are good for concerted cognation, a good conversation with a concerned cohort can be just as contenting. I think I've mentioned this before in my journal, but in talking with a good friend of mine, I hadn't made the connection with just...

The beginning verses of this scripture were the ones of focus today. For the past 2 chapters (or more), the Lord has been chastising the Gentiles, should they fall into the pride cycle and not repent. The beginning 2 verses of this chapter basically says, "even though the Gentiles were bad, don't get on your high-horse, thinking you're any...

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...

I decided to get back into reading the scriptures now that I've finished the last conference talks. This has nothing to do with Mosiah 3, but one thing I neglected to write about was the last gospel doctrine class I attended.  Our wonderful teacher, Ryan Anderson taught again, and made a wonderful parallel out of Amalickiah and Satan. We...

Man... I'm tired...  I've got to see what I can make out of chapter 37 because I told myself today I would read and write about it.  So here goes. The first thing that comes to mind is that the popular verse 6 seems to come out of thin-air.  The verse before it talks about the plates of brass retaining their "brightness",...

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...

 Well, I'd say last week was a success for the progress of the studio!  I'd also say it was a pretty big failure for the state of my body.  Man, I'm getting old.  Even my 70-year-old dad out-did me, and that's just sad.  Even though my fingers are swollen, and my feet hurt, I've gotta say it was 100% worth it. We started ...

 Yup..  Today was awesome.  I had a 13.5 hour session, and it was just amazing.  The song creation process was a bit difficult at times, but little-by-little the song formed, and both me and my client (Jed Lefevre) were kind of dumbfounded at the end result.  In the first hour, we had a piano track, and that was it. At th...

 So, today's entry is going to be a bit less, but I still was able to see God's hand in my life quite a bit. I had a late studio session to tend to, but I had felt horrible all day long...  I prayed that I would be able to have a great session, and it went really well.  Everything that needed to happen, happened, and nothing too t...

Tired of the same old colors?  Try customizing the color scheme of your ILMJ blog!  Here's how to do it: First, make sure you go to your blog home page.  If you're not sure how to get there, simply click on "Blog", and choose your blog.  You will then be at the home page of your blog.  From there, you will noti...

Interesting that in verse 7, the example he uses of an unrighteous king pretty much parallels what happened to the Nephites in the Land of Nephi under king Noah.  Couldn't have been many years since the people of Limhi had come to join Zarahemla, anyway.  I've never thought of that before. Verse 13 is always a fun one.  It's great ...

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, 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...

I just finished watching the Pixar movie, "Cars" for the 45th time.  Or maybe it was the 4500th time.  I don't know... I lost count. Anyway... During the movie, despite my having seen the movie more times than I've kissed my kids, and even though those kids were crawling all over me and generally trying their best to be a nui...

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...

The main thing that stuck out in this chapter was obviously the destruction of Ammonihah.  As I've stated in a previous post, I find it so interesting that one of the judges of Ammonihah was the one who mentioned that "even if thou shalt declare this city shall be destroyed in one day, we shall not believe it."  It was as if the...

I've been reading the scriptures a bit lately, and I came upon a verse which intrigued me. That verse quickly made me think of this one, and this one. Let's not forget this one - that's a good one, too - verse 33 being the focus. Here's another really good one warning of the dangers of the previous entries, and further proving the point that at l...