The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Two questions for everyone:

1- the timely question: Any good costumes this year?

2- the personal question: My laptop is dying, so I need to look into a replacement. I wanna make sure that whatever I choose will be great for music (listening & making) while not too pricey. Any suggestions?

Q1: I saw a few good ones out this year. Around here, being a reletivly small college town, it's usually Halloween weekend no matter what day the actual Holiday falls on. To name a few, my girlfriend was quite a stunning peacock (even though I reminded her peacocks are boys...), kratos from god of war, a dude dressed like Katy perry complete with cupcake bra, several really really good drag queens, and the obvious plethora of angels/demons/Mario-luigi teams. I was shin chan, and no one knew who that was.

Q2: I am probably no help here...

i applaud your Shin Chan costume. I love that show.

Not too excited about Halloween this year, so no costumes.

I have bought a couple of refurished Dells direct from them. I think their prices are good for it. You can usually find an additional 15-20% off coupon online as well.

http://content.dell.com/us/en/dfh/d/cam ... id=1937257

Ken

I donned my (properly hand-made) Jayne Hat and and Blue Sun shirt to hand out candy tonight. Saw the cutest little toddler as a pirate (had a loop earring nearly as big as his head).

Dells are a good bet; I've had nothing but good experiences with their stuff.

My son just bought a really nice HP quad core from Best Buy for $600. 8 gigs of ram, a huge h/d, bla bla bla. A lot of ram and huge hard drive = good for music.

Sat with the candy bowl waiting for someone to come dressed as Stephanie from Lazy Town... left disappointed. Actually, most of the people from our block gathered outside, somebody set up a fire pit at the top o' the cul-de-sac and everybody just took their candy up there... when t/t'rs came by, they'd just go around the circle and be done with it

Most clever costume... little backstory, last August our next door neighbors were in a bad accident coming back from Las Vegas - the dad was killed and the others who were in the car are still recovering - two of the girls who are in wheelchairs at the moment came costumed as a Jeep, the one in front had a front hood made from a cardboard box, big silver hubcaps on the wheelchair wheels...

Computers for recording, I am no help, other than to say that I have a dedicated Yamaha audio workstation that I use for doing my recording; other than the fact that the original CD writer they sent with it was crap, I've been very pleased to not have to "fight with the computer" every time I want to record a song. I got a TASCAM interface for my new Windows 7 machine (one of those "stupid deal of the day" things, and it has been a constant reminder how glad I am that I'm not trying to record on the computer... I mostly just use it to send MIDI drum signals over to my synth module and plug that into the Yamaha DAW. No latency issues, good mic preamps, etc. Only suggestion on a dedicated DAW would be to get something that can hook to the computer via USB so that you don't have to depend on a CD writer to move your mixes over, and to make backups of raw tracks...

Charles

king_arthur wrote:Sat with the candy bowl waiting for someone to come dressed as Stephanie from Lazy Town... left disappointed.

You ol' perv.

If you recognize this costume, you clearly have good taste in television.

Did you shave your head for that costume? Cause that's dedication.

On a strange side note, I see in the baggie what I assume are bath crystals (or candy I suppose). There is actually a broblem right now with a chemical similar to meth being sold in stores as bath salts... How weird would it be if you were actually un-knowingly toting drugs around with you?

BBABM wrote:Did you shave your head for that costume? Cause that's dedication.

On a strange side note, I see in the baggie what I assume are bath crystals (or candy I suppose). There is actually a broblem right now with a chemical similar to meth being sold in stores as bath salts... How weird would it be if you were actually un-knowingly toting drugs around with you?

Nah, it was rock candy. Actually, after gathering all the materials for the costume, I learned that blue rock candy is the same stuff they use on the show. It's "Cotton candy" flavored, which leads me to believe I may have even picked up the same brand. Go figure.

But I did actually shave my head.

It'll grow back.

1) The only good costume I saw yesterday was Hipster Mario, hanging out in front of Bender's bar. Of course being Hipster Mario he was too cool to wear gloves or overalls (he just had a hat with M on it, a red t-shirt, way-too-tight blue jeans, and a bushy fake mustache). Other than that I saw several zombies and way too many self-entitled assholes with poor driving skills (but I'm not sure the last one was a costume).

2) A year ago I'd have said MacBook, no contest, but OSX Lion is progressively pissing me off more and more with every update. I think my next computer will be a PC running Windows, for the first time in over a decade. I have no idea what specific ones are any good; every brand seems to have equal amounts of "THEY SUCK!" and "THEY RULE!" folks.

Generic wrote:If you recognize this costume, you clearly have good taste in television.

I have been a glutton for Breaking Bad lately (finally broke down and acquired it), so I thoroughly approve. Did your wife play Jesse? Because she totally would work.

(I'm only partway through season 3 so if Jesse finally gets what's coming to him please don't spoil it for me.)

fluffy wrote:

Generic wrote:If you recognize this costume, you clearly have good taste in television.

I have been a glutton for Breaking Bad lately (finally broke down and acquired it), so I thoroughly approve. Did your wife play Jesse? Because she totally would work.

(I'm only partway through season 3 so if Jesse finally gets what's coming to him please don't spoil it for me.)

She seriously considered it, but opted not to. She had just dyed her hair black earlier that day.

And this is why clear communication is the secret to a successful marriage.

yes, I did grow the beard just for that. that's dedication.

Spud, you look like a giant gnome.
...that has been drinking.

Generic wrote:Nah, it was rock candy. Actually, after gathering all the materials for the costume, I learned that blue rock candy is the same stuff they use on the show. It's "Cotton candy" flavored, which leads me to believe I may have even picked up the same brand. Go figure.

Now that I've seen most of the first four seasons, I'm guessing they probably just make it themselves. A lot of the "meth cooking" scenes show a blue syrup being poured into a tray, and then of course there are several scenes where they're crushing the trays to break it up into small crystals. Looks a lot like sugar glass to me.