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...

  Poetry by Kelly Miller   THis is dedicated to my son Shawn VanWagen who left on his mission in 2005 and that next week I started writing poetry. It has been a big part of my life since and has kept me very busy.  Also, to President Hinckley and his challenge for the members to read the book of mormon. and to Bernice Hutchenson w...

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 ...

Today was pretty laid back.  We watched one session of conference (Annie and Craig were gracious enough to let us watch it on their TV), played a lot of Brandon's new Wii, and went to a park which was pretty cool. Other than that, today was .... average. Here are some pics of the park. Collin found some guy who was quite nice, flying ...

Oh, man...  I just got back from a wonderful geek lunch with the guys 'n' gals from UPHPU (Utah PHP Users Group), and it was a blast.  ... heh... makes me smile just thinkin' about it.  Okay... I didn't just get back.  I had to make sure I could get done today what I promised my boss, and then I would write about it. Well... ...

Some quotes from the talk I found quite inspiring: Are we consciously creating righteous traditions, or is life just happening to us? Are our traditions being created in response to the loud voices of the world, or are they influenced by the still, small voice of the Spirit? Are the traditions that we are creating in our families going to make i...

Wow....  This is gonna be one of those entries which might just take up an entire novel, if I were to write down what I wish I could. To begin, yesterday Sarah and I went to Vegas to celebrate Shaun Roos's birthday. The whole kit-'n'-kaboodle began about a month ago when Tiffy, Shaun's girlfriend, emailed me asking me if I thought I coul...

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 think this is the first time I'm not really inspired at all to write anything. This is frustrating because I can tell there's a lot of meat to this chapter.  I guess it's partially because I really am not into the whole "gathering of Israel" thing.  That's horrible to say because it's such an integral part of the whole plan ...

This might be the only "current events" post I ever do, but something has been puzzling me for the past 6-12 months. Last night, I watched the last half of the democratic candidates' debate on TV, and although it wasn't mentioned much, there were still a couple of references to a "downward economy", and the need for "job...

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'...

Interesting that in verse 7, the example he uses of an unrighteous king pretty much parallels what happened to the Nephites in the Land of Nephi under king Noah.  Couldn't have been many years since the people of Limhi had come to join Zarahemla, anyway.  I've never thought of that before. Verse 13 is always a fun one.  It's great ...

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...

I just got done reading an account of a guy who, for reasons having to do with his own personal HD video editing of his own personal HD videos taken by his own HD camcorder which I suppose he didn't steal, decided to purchase an HD monitor. Due to his desire to experience true HD, for unknown reasons, Microsoft decided to not let him. Although ...

I just finished watching the Pixar movie, "Cars" for the 45th time.  Or maybe it was the 4500th time.  I don't know... I lost count. Anyway... During the movie, despite my having seen the movie more times than I've kissed my kids, and even though those kids were crawling all over me and generally trying their best to be a nui...

Soon after I began recording audio, I had a feeling I would be in the pursuit of an unattainable goal.  Finding that "perfect" recording space, or even creating that "perfect" recording would be difficult, if not entirely impossible. 10 years after I began, I was able to pour my heart and soul into a new recording space, ...

Today during gospel doctrine class, we got talking about gratitude, and there was an interesting question posed, which I hadn't considered.  It was incredibly vague, but sometimes those are the best questions to ask.  The question was simply, "What do you think of gratitude?" At first, I thought it was a horrible question, b...

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...

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...

 So, a few days ago, a friend of the studio called up and asked if I would help him out with a project.  As he described the project, I grew more and more interested. The project is called "Sacred Sounds: Cathedrals of Europe" The gist of it, is that a group of researchers are going to be travelling around Europe studying th...

 When I first installed the 64-bit version of gentoo on linode, everything looked good - except I couldn't get apache to send email.   When I emerged PHP, it pulled in ssmtp by default, but that didn't seem to be sending mail at all.  So, I emerged sendmail.  That got me a little bit further, but the logs were giving me an error...