Betty's room is all ready. You can see her already-impressive collection of stuffed animals and books, as well as her time travel poster, her vietnamese fake Phong, and her retro air france poster. Also visible: sleep sheep. about 15 hours to go...

A comment on this TTAC post about people who are unhappy with their new smaller cars is mostly amusing (one person downsized from a trailblazer to a mini, and then discovered it was too small; did she take a, you know, test drive?), but one comment kind of has me worried, from a parent-to-be perspective. time to get that large cruiser I always wanted? or minivan!

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Three new pieces of music for the fourth trimester. E and I worked on wish you were here together. It has trains, lots of wind, and a clip from one of E's favorite songs. Persuasion is a bit different from the others I've done so far, partly because it doesn't have swooshy white noise stuff (I have some noise-based drum sounds going instead) and it has samples from a favorite movie instead of a song clip. Finally, I added an old song of mine, One Breath, that fits in nicely.

Betty is almost fully formed (she's still working on her lungs) and, word is, she has turned and is in birthing position. just under six weeks to go!

E and I are having fun thinking about our recipe repertoire in general (trying to develop a set of recipes that we can reliably make well any time), and our kid-friendly repertoire specifically. So last night we tried chicken nuggets. They came out great, and are the perfect vehicle for dipping sauces, which we also worked on (barbecue, spicy peanut, and wasabi-honey). Everything came out pretty good. The nuggets were great, the peanut sauce was tasty without being too oily, and the barbecue and wasabi both came out pretty well.

E and I are filling out our amazon baby registry for the convenience of ourselves, grandparents, etc. and let me tell you, it is providing a hilarity-filled evening of What The F*** Is This Baby Thing For.

We'll start off easy: Cloud b Sleep Sheep On the Go - Four Soothing Sounds from Nature. What the fuck is a cloud b sleep sheep on the go?

Okay, how about Kiddopotamus & Co Bibbity Rinse And Roll Bib Yellow 2-Pack ? Okay it's a bib, but what the hell is a bibbity rinse and roll?

Okay you want more of a challenge? I ask you, what is the deal with Skip Hop Chow. And before you recover from that, what about Skip Hop Splash?

Dylan did a song for Betty's fourth trimester too. I just did another as well. This one features thunderstorms, subway trains, and some orbital.

When I posted the last one I forgot I was going to explain about my ocean waves patch. In here comes the sun, I'd done the standard synth waves patch: a low-pass filter sweeping up and down, occasionally playing with the lfo rate, depth, or cutoff. It's pretty nice and does suggest the ocean. But when we were in hawaii, I took a walk on the beach one night and tried to listen to the waves and figure out how to mimic them with a synth.

I ended up making a patch where each keypress is a single wave. Each wave has a gradual build (when the wave is coming in toward the beach), which is a low-pass filter opening. Then there's the crash where the filter's all the way open and you get the full noise, then a high-pass filter sweeps up and it fades out with high-frequency noise (like the wave washing itself out against the sand). I randomized the pan position of each wave, and use velocity to control the duration of the build and crash segments. I was pretty happy with the result, though it was much simplified from what I originally planned -- I don't have a hardware synth with enough modules, and the software I had started having trouble with the more complex pieces.

I added a couple more songs here, and Kent did a track as well. My new ones are here comes the sun and black mountain side. yes, I'm putting samples of songs I like into my betty tracks (and the first one I did was ceremony).

it would be cool if some of you wanted to make fourth trimester tracks too. all it takes is some whooshy white noise, maybe something resembling a heartbeat. throw in a soothing sample from a favorite song, heavily processed. and don't be shy with the noise -- it's supposed to be pretty loud (people often use appliances or radios tuned to static). it's fun!

A book we've been reading argues that babies are born not entirely ready and that their first three months or so are like a "fourth trimester". Therefore, the author says, to calm your crying baby, simulate the sensations of the womb. One of these sensations is the constant background white noise of being inside the womb -- which is why shushing, appliance noise, etc can help calm a baby. For fun, I spent a few hours today making some noise-based womb music. Aside from various noise sources and some of those wavestation sounds I love so well, I slipped in a pretty loop from one of my favorite songs. The first is the finished track; the other two are some bits of noise I recorded while assembling it. I plan on making a cd of stuff like this to try on betty when she arrives.

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jupiter waves
juno phase

I got to feel Betty kicking last night.