Working on scoring a short animation

Ok, it's only a contest to score the 39-second title sequence of the Web animation series "The Zenoids". That's what I've been doing the past couple of weeks with my music. Contest closes November 6 and is sponsored by MyOuterSpace.com. Can't give you a preview as that's considered a no-no. The judges will pick their top 10 entries which will be posted online for the public to vote on. I'll let you all know if I make the top 10!

My hometown of Aiea in "Hawaii 5-0"

On the October 17, 2011 broadcast of the second season of "Hawaii 5-O" there were a couple of mentions of Aiea as a plot plot when one of the characters pointed out that a woman being searched for was staying at a small motel in Aiea.

So far as I know, there are no motels, small or otherwise, in Aiea. There are three "apartment hotels" that come up for Aiea in a Google Maps search. They're opposite the watercress farm on Kamehameha Highway that fronts the Pearlridge Shopping Center. I guess for TV, motel works better since it's one word instead of two.

Image-Line merchandising artwork contest for FL Studio

I submitted my first design to Image-Line's merchandising artwork contest for its flagship product FL Studio. The FL stands for Fruity Loops, the original name of this digital audio workstation software. See if you can figure out which one is mine. I'll be submitting a few others over the next several days, as many as I can come up with since the number of entries is unlimited. The contest closes October 31, 2011.

Uploaded excerpt of "Drum & Skull Ear Candy" to SoundCloud

This is the first minute or so of the 3-minute piece I entered into the horror music contest at DoYouKnowWhoIAm.com. It's called "Drum & Skull Ear Candy". You can download the excerpt on SoundCloud.,

Entered horror music contest with "Drum & Skull Ear Candy"

You can listen to and perhaps vote or comment on my entry in a horror music contest at Do You Know Who I Am? The instrumental is called "Drum & Skull Ear Candy" (this link may or may not work as I'm not sure if you have to be a member of this site in order to vote). Yes, I know, the title on the artwork doesn't match the title on the piece, as I was rushing to get the artwork done and didn't read it carefully enough. Duh!

Thanks for listening, have now surpassed 1,000 plays since joining SoundCloud

A lot of those were my own plays on my SoundCloud account, but I've now surpassed 1,000 plays since I joined in December 2010.

Surf's up in Hawaiian high schools

The State of Hawaii has sanctioned a plan to offer competitive surfing (on the water, not the Web) as an extramural sport to all its public high school students (about 50,000 throughout the 46 public high schools) by the spring of 2013. The plan's being paid for by private money. It's about time I say, though I wonder how they'll handle the liability issue as when a surfer is hurt. When I attended Leeward Community College in the late 1960s I took bowling as my required physical education course and the taxpayers supported that.

Here's a Google News link to online stories about this.

Source: Times Colonist (Victoria), October 8, 2011

Government of BC says "Canada Starts Here"

The Victoria Times Colonist newspaper reported on October 8, 2011 that the Government of BC "changed the province's international brand of 'Canada's Pacific Gateway' to 'Canada Starts Here'".... The slogan seems to have been unveiled in late September 2011 as part of a jobs plan announcement by Premier Christy Clark.

I wonder how the East Coast feels about that since they have more of a claim to that slogan than BC does.

A search of Google for "Canada Starts Here" reveals some interesting other uses by other parts of the country:

Canada Starts Here: The Great Waterway, a site promoting Ontario's 1000 Islands region

A Pro-Life Canada Starts Here, the tagline and motto of the Student Life Link site for high school students against abortion.

Your Fly-in Fishing Trip to Canada Starts Here! if you're into fly-in fishing trips in Ontario

And who's going to argue with Fodor's Travel Intelligence which clearly states in its Newfoundland and Labrador Travel Guide section "Canada starts here, from the east, on the island of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic. Known as Mile One, the province's capital of St. John's is North America's most easterly point and its oldest city."

Uploaded "Autumn Elegy No. 1" excerpt to SoundCloud

Here's a one minute or so excerpt from some moody strings backed by some stormy, yowling weather.  It's called "Autumn Elegy No. 1". The whole piece is about three minutes long.

Thanks for the Apple Steve

Another genius who died too young. My first personal computer was an Apple. So thanks for the Apple Steve. You gave a lot to the world, from computers to animated cartoons and all they spun off. I was very excited by your NeXT computer and know you found a way to bring that vision back in the Apple Company you revitalized. We will miss you.

Help me win a prize in the Untz Challenge II electronic musician contest

Update for October 12, 2011:

The Untz has selected the tracks to be voted upon by the public. Mine was not among the finalists. Maybe next year ....

I've another contest for electronic musician called The Untz Challenge II. The contest closes on October 7, 2011. The winners will be chosen by voting and only Americans and Canadians are eligible to enter one original track via SoundCloud.  Funny enough, SoundCloud had come under a denial-of-service (DOS) attack on the evening of October 4. I rushed my piece and uploaded for fear another DOS attack might occur and prevent me from uploading a track. It won't be visible for downloading or listening to on SoundCloud or wherever the voting occurs until the first round of your decision making begins on October 12.