More Exciting Indecipherable Ableton Bullshit

I'm now one step closer to getting this to happen in my bedroom. This being the ability to create any number of looping music samples in real time with my voice in order to create a song. The main thing that was stopping me was a lack of understanding how an incoming MIDI signal (say, hitting the middle-C on my piano keyboard) could be converted not into one, but several keystrokes in a row. I've now figured out how to do that with MIDIStroke, a free software program expressly for that purpose. Now that I know how it's done, I just need to get the template all set up to record and control the loops in real time using the right combination of keystrokes.

"It's *ALIVE*!"

Seven or eight months ago, my roommate Echo left me with her Geo Metro, which would no longer go into gear. The agreement was that if I fixed it for her, I could use it in the intervening (and, at the time, unknown) time she would be gone. My friend trippedbreaker and I pulled the engine, removed the transmission, diagnosed the problem, replaced the clutch assembly, and put the whole fucker back into the car. Then, naturally, the project stalled, and months later, Echo is back. :)

So after several days of fucking around, posting things on message boards, and reading codes, I'm happy to report that, for the first time since we pulled it, the engine actually *ran* today. It responded to the throttle, and deigned to be manhandled into a rough idle after a few minutes of running. I'm still getting an engine timing code from my scanner, but this is the furthest progress we've made so far.

Now we need to put the drive shafts back in, put the wheels back on, and see if it will successfully transport passengers from point A to point B.