So, Advanced Budget Studios took a bit of a break during the holidays, and with that came the usual curiosity as to how the new year would be. Well, I'd have to say that 2011 is looking great.  We started off the year recording a wonderful new artist named Taylor Miller.  He'll have a website up soon, and his music sounds fabulous! ...

So, when I started the re-design of my studio website, I knew I would need sliders, but I didn't realize how many unconfigurable, and generally static sliders were out there.  I must have gone through 5 iterations of sliders before I found one that matches my needs (and probably will be the go-to slider for any project I work on in the future)...

Man... I'm kicking myself right now for not taking a photo of this amazing musician, but I was way too interested in the music I was hearing to worry about silly cameras. Taylor Miller came in for a visit, and recorded 3 original songs tonight.  They have yet some proper embellishment to receive, but the tracks we got tonight were primo.&nbs...

About 2 months ago, a great musician, designer, and friend sent me a new design idea for AdvancedBudgetStudios.com.  After getting various opinions, I decided to have a go at it.  Also, with all the free time I had during the holidays, I thought it would be a good time to get crackin'. So, without further ado, I present you the new and ...

Okay.. Not really the "radio", but a cool little Internet radio station picked up Herod the Fink (a band I'm in), and decided to feature us.  They decided to play our song, "Desperate Husband's Chorus", and I think it's way cool. The radio station is called "LDS Music Today" and can be found at http://www.ldsmu...

Since we haven't been booking clients during November and December, we've had a few extra moments to really think about and research the needs of the studio.  The success this little studio has had is very exciting, and only makes us want to hone our craft that much more. Honing the craft is great, but pouring the success of the studio back ...

So, the Christmas season is officially here, and I'm feeling more Christmas Spirt than I ever have in my life - by a long shot. I attribute this to two things...  First and foremost, attitude, and making good choices.  To me, Christmas is a spiritual season because it's filled with love, good will, charity, friends, and family.  If...

Friday December 3, 2010 Today was filled with the usually chore, practicing for the Christmas Cantada, and puttting up the Christmas tree. Finally! me and my family put up our tree. We usually do it after Thanksgiving but we where a little late. You know. The more the years go by the faster Christmas seems to come. I can remeber when I was a litt...

Scramjet, a valued client of Advanced Budget Studios (and an amazing band, as well), has recently arrived in the top-ten list of a contest put on by X-96.  Please support them by clicking here and voting for them and their awesome song, "Tread Softly". Thanks, and thank you, Scramjet!  You guys are awesome!  ...

It might be that I'm a techno-geek, but the first thing I thought of when I read this was "social media".  People went from house to house and "labored exceedingly" all through the night to let it be known where Jesus was going to come the following day. Also interesting are the activities of the people when the arrived t...

So... I just checked, and throughout all canonized scripture, know how many times the phrase "solemn mockery" is used?   Yup - you guessed it.  Once.  And it happens to refer to the baptizing of children.  For some reason, I think God dislikes this act a bit. Verse 14 seems kind of harsh, but if a person has nei...

I almost didn't post anything tonight..... But... I've gotta. One thing which seems to irritate me quite a bit is this phenomenon among people of my faith which drives them to make some pseudo-philosophical yet some how not quite doctrinally correct quote and then follow it by "I'm sure it's in the scriptures. I just read it. I swear. " or, "I'...

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...

I just finished reading Alma 7 and, once again, am in a state of mind which makes it hard to actually get any spiritual nourishment from it.  I'm not entirely sure what's going on with me now-a-days, but I don't really like it all that much. Anyway...  Here goes with what I got from the chapter (it being among the best chapters in the ...

something I've never really learned? Yup. Today was the day I found out that one major part of my new job is to handle a data feed made purely of XML. Do I know anything about XML? Yes.. But have I ever done anything with it? Yes. How much? One simple little flash dealio, and I did that over 3 years ago. So... My point? I've gotta learn ...

Friday December 3, 2010 Today was filled with the usually chore, practicing for the Christmas Cantada, and puttting up the Christmas tree. Finally! me and my family put up our tree. We usually do it after Thanksgiving but we where a little late. You know. The more the years go by the faster Christmas seems to come. I can remeber when I was a litt...

Today was a good day.  I didn't get enough sleep, so after our work lunch party, which enabled us to eat large amounts of Korean food (seasoned beef 'n' stuff wrapped in lettuce was good, but I didn't like the "kimchi" which was nothing more than hot and spicy rotten cabbage), I felt a bit tired...  Too tired to work. So, I wen...

While my wife and I were watching The Office tonight, we got wind of President Obama being on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, so we decided to stay up to watch it. Well, I just got done watching it, and before I forget, I have to write down some initial thoughts. To begin, I am by absolutely no means whatsoever any source of any credible politi...

I'm not entirely sure where to even begin with this chapter.  So many good stories are found in this one, which can easily be likened to our own lives and our own times.  Various lessons come to mind.... For example, verses 1 through 3 are a magnificent litmus test of personal righteousness.  When someone comes at you and truthfull...

Awhile back, almost every gentoo / gnome computer I built would do this wonderful thing called "auto-mounting" all devices plugged in via USB. Well, I really didn't know what or how this was done until it started not doing it any more. So, I went over to my brother's house armed with a determination to figure this stuff out, and I'll ...

Wow... About a week ago I got an email about a job offer here in Springville. The offer itself did not really have anything to do with any of the current skills I have. However, moments away from just discarding it, I decided to take the plunge and I sent an email in response. Here's the email: To whom this may concern: My name is Jason J...

Tired of the same old colors?  Try customizing the color scheme of your ILMJ blog!  Here's how to do it: First, make sure you go to your blog home page.  If you're not sure how to get there, simply click on "Blog", and choose your blog.  You will then be at the home page of your blog.  From there, you will noti...

I'm not in the mood to write much, but I figure that since work is kind of slow today, that it would do me good to watch and write about a conference talk right about now. Elder Perry's talk seemed to talk about a topic which would benefit a lot of people today - simplicity. As far as I go, I can think right now of one specific thing which I co...

Wow....   This will probably be a short entry, but I thought I'd write down what is the first hardware failure of my server! I built this server 3 years ago, and it has been serving up everything that is served in my house (mythtv, web (this site), ftp, ssh, music, photos).  Well... Yesterday evening, we tried to fire up mythtv...

 Yup..  Today was awesome.  I had a 13.5 hour session, and it was just amazing.  The song creation process was a bit difficult at times, but little-by-little the song formed, and both me and my client (Jed Lefevre) were kind of dumbfounded at the end result.  In the first hour, we had a piano track, and that was it. At th...

 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...

I was gonna read something spiritual tonight, but I got sidetracked by American Idol. I started surfing around and before long, I came upon this video which, to me, is both absolutely amazing and freaking hilarious at the same time. I had no idea (although I'm not surprised) that so many people were doing remixes of his song "We Are Brot...

"God's people have not always been worthy of the marvelous experience we have shared today. The Apostles, after the Ascension of Christ, continued to exercise the keys He left with them. But because of disobedience and loss of faith by the members, the Apostles died without the keys being passed on to successors. We call that tragic episode &q...

What do you get when you mix a couple of black lights, a fog machine, a strobe light, a dark hallway, and a couple of demented minds with Halloween?  I'll tell ya what you get: A whole lot of scared teen-agers. WOOOO HOOO!!! With the debut happening just last year, there hasn't been a whole lot of time for refinement, but all things cons...

The main thing that stuck out in this chapter was obviously the destruction of Ammonihah.  As I've stated in a previous post, I find it so interesting that one of the judges of Ammonihah was the one who mentioned that "even if thou shalt declare this city shall be destroyed in one day, we shall not believe it."  It was as if the...