This is my very first journal entry. And I love this journal website idea! I am really excited about it. Maybe now I will actually write out many of my thoughts and spiritual experiences I have that I tend to never write out. I am going to just vent, because I need to; but first I will introduce myself.        ...

Why does Microsoft insist on making life so hard for developers? There are web standards, Microsoft, in case you missed the memo.  Please adhere to them.  It would do EVERYONE good. Here's yet another hack to get IE to work in cases where min-height is used (according to my browsers, this still doesn't work in even IE8) I found t...

Okay...  So lately the studio has been getting some serious upgrades, thanks to all of you who have been supporting me, and creating awesome music. About a month ago, I was chatting it up with a good friend, Jesse Crowley, about how in the world we were going to sell our fabulous new Herod the Fink album this season.  You see, there ar...

From the beginning of this chapter, it's obvious that Christ means business when he makes covenants.  Causing entire books to be written, and then keeping 100% of everything that is written means something. I wonder why the people thought that Christ's coming "destroyed" the prophets?  Interesting. I love verse 9.  &q...

Last week was a week of upgrades! The studio was able to finally get serious (well, at least semi-serious) about the way we look. Previously, the studio "rack" was nothing more than a cut-out backwards bookshelf bought at Walmart, and with all the stuff we were able to upgrade last week, it was finally time to buy a real rack. We...

Take a moment, now, and think about what you'd do if you had access to unlimited funds, and didn't have to "work" another day of your life. I once heard a multi-millionaire state that, "money brings out with clarity, that which is inside you."  If you love to watch football with a passion, then having loads of money would...

Okay...  So I own and operate a recording studio, and I've been using an M-Audio delta 1010 as my primary audio interface.  This provides me 8 channels of simultaneous audio streams coming into my workstation.  Up until about a month ago, this has been very sufficient. About a month ago, I ordered another Delta 1010, and planned o...

Linux + gentoo + jack-audio-connection-kit + dbus use flag enabled = doesn't work any more. Okay... Just a personal note to remember. DO NOT COMPILE jack-audio-connection-kit WITH THE dbus FLAG ENABLED!  IT REMOVES jackd WHICH IS WHAT  qjackctl USES TO START THE JACK SERVER. So... Unless I'm missing something, this is pretty much th...

Aside from being booked solid last week, Advanced Budget Studios has made some progress on the techinical side as well.  Up until now, we have only been able to handle 8 simultaneous streams of audio into the workstation, however, due to the success we've been having, we saw a need to upgrade.  We now have two M-audio delta 1010's synced ...

Some of you may know that I've been working on a Christmas music project called "Herod the Fink" with someone who has been steadily becoming a great friend of mine - Jesse Crowley. This started September of 2009, when he called me up and asked me if I wanted to work on a few Christmas songs he had been cooking up, and I accepted.  We...

Okay.... Something weird is happening inside me. I feel a churning in my gut. I feel spindles on my skin... I feel hair growing out of my HEAD!!!!! Oh wait... Ummm.... No I don't. None of it is true. So..... I go to work today and I'm talking with Matt (the new developer, er... lead developer) and .... we're having a heart-to-heart and f...

We've been trying to get into the habit of having Famiily Home Evening together as a family, and tonight Sarah planned a splendid lesson that would have been enjoyed much more if I wouldn't have been ill, and dead-tired. But... such is the life of a husband/father/bread winner. :) Anyway... After the lesson, she wanted all of us to write down ...

One thing that comes to mind while reading the first verses of this chapter is, "If I were a queen, and my servants brought me my unconscious husband, I'd immediately want to know who did it." - and Ammon did it.  That doesn't make much sense to me.  Obviously the times of the Book of Mormon were , uh, different, so that could e...

  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...

Wow...  What a testimony of the Book of Mormon, and of the prophets who wrote it. This whole chapter is a rebuke against people who don't accept the Book of Mormon.  Reading chapters like this strengthens my testimony concerning the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.  I mean, what are the chances, if the Book of Mormon were false,...

Hmmm....  It's hard to write about something so wonderful when I'm not in the mood...  But I've found that when I feel like "blah", and I write about something wonderful, I usually am feeling closer to wonderful when I'm done... So, here goes. First off, I'm at work, so I don't have any pictures, but I'll update it when I get...

Me and my good friend Scott chatted for far too long today about a very interesting subject.  The subject was brought about by this article, which, in essence is just a conversation between an aethiestic professor and two of his students. In a nutshell, the professor makes the claim of God creating Satan, and thus creating evil, and thereby ...

Okay... So, I've been reading quite a bit about cats lately (in blogs of others) and looking at all the freaking / crazy / awesome cat pics people have out there..  I just have to add my two cents. I grew up with cats.  I love cats.  I pretty much love everything about em', except when they wake me up by their incessant meowing outs...

My wife left this morning for Girls' Camp (she's a leader), and so my mom came down to help with the chil'lins.  It's been good to spend some time with her. We watched The Eagle's Concert "Hell Frozen Over", and she not only watched the whole thing, but she *really* enjoyed it.  It was great. We then talked about this site I...

Something in verse 13 struck me as interesting, even though it probably could be considered common knowledge among the LDS population. I never remember seeing anything quite as obvious relating to happiness as Alma 41:10, which states "Wickedness never was happiness".  Well...  It's easy to inverse-ify it and say "If wic...

I read Alma 34 two days ago, and haven't written about it.  I hate it when I don't have time to write about the scriptures when I read them, because each time I read them, I feel something different about different portions of the scripture.  Ah, well..  I'll read it again and see what happens this time. Right out of the gate, Amul...

So a little more than a year ago, I took my mustang out for the first time on the Salt Flats.  I had a blast out there with my good friend Steve. On the way home, Steve had some problems with salt lining his rims, causing some tire imbalance, so we  got off the freeway, I showed him what the problem was, and as I was getting back on th...

So, about 4 or 5 years ago, I met a guy named Jesse Crowley, and we played music together.  At first we played music that other people wrote, but then Jesse got bored with that, and decided to write Christmas music instead.  We recorded a few Christmas albums, and I think they turned out pretty good. So, Jesse decided that wasn't enough...

 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...

Quote - "Sometimes, the truth may just seem too straightforward, too plain, and too simple for us to fully appreciate its great value.  I wonder if we as Church members might also benefit from asking ourselves from time to time: “Is my experience in the Church working for me? Is it bringing me closer to Christ? Is it blessing m...

I'm still kind of in awe of it all, but ....  holy cow..  Samuel Jason Jones has arrived! We got into the car around 4:30pm after Sarah had been in labor since around 6:00am.  Wow... What a trooper. We arrived here at the hospital at 5:00pm anticipating his arrival around 10:00pm or so...  Yeah right...  Samuel had ot...

 So, I used to use the -dumpaudio switch in mplayer to get audio extracted from random videos, but now that seems to do not much of anything.  I found this site which had a great explanation of how to get it done a different way, but was a bit out of date.  The newer version is found below: mplayer -vo null -ao pcm:file=audio_file_...

Within the first 5 verses of this chapter, I'm reminded again of how a person works who is truly interested in God's commandments. Lehi was commanded of the Lord to have his sons return to Jerusalem to get the plates of brass from Laban. Telling Laman and Lemuel would most certainly have some consequences in that they would automatically assu...

I just got done reading about and listening to a wonderful audio-bite from good ol' Steve Ballmer.  Honestly, I don't understand why Microsoft keeps him employed. Anyway...  According to Mr. Ballmer, Linux is no longer free.  So, with that in mind, please do not try to download Linux from here, or here, or here, or here, or here, o...

 So I wasn't really interested in getting yet another member of my little growing studio family, but I couldn't help but get this one after playing it at the local music store.  Found it on a killer sale at samash, so I pulled the trigger. Available to all studio clients for recording. Isn't she gorgeous? She sounds awesome, too....