Liberteria World Premiere
Poster art for the world premiere of Liberteria.
premiering <<< right now >>> in south florida,
very privileged to have taken part in this cutting edge piece of mashup art,
what a great cast and amazing creativity, storyline and execution.
a feature length, animated science fiction opera
from composer Sabrina Pena Young
Libertaria: The Virtual Opera
“one girl to save the world”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQqnHt3a-Oo
quoting the article:
Peña Young, a bubbly, intensely energetic native of South Florida, has created an animated “virtual opera” called Libertaria, a self-scripted sci-fi dystopia she cast entirely online, finding her singers through websites, Facebook and other Internet forums and having them send in vocal recordings of their parts. She’s never met most of the volunteer cast.
In addition to playing the music herself on an electronic keyboard, Peña Young also created about 75 percent of the animation for her hourlong work. Libertaria is probably the very first machinima opera, and its world premiere screening is set for Saturday afternoon at Calvary United Methodist Church in Lake Worth.
“If ‘Star Wars’ had taken place 100 years ago, it would have been an opera,” Peña Young said last month from her home in Buffalo, N.Y. “That’s what I’ve been trying to bring to people, that you can listen to this music, that you can enjoy this music, and it doesn’t have to be something where you’re sitting there saying, ‘This isn’t for me,’ or ‘This has no place today’ …
“It’s a way to bring opera to a wider audience, a younger audience, and then also a way to bring it online,” she said.
Libertaria is set in a post-apocalyptic United States in 2139, which has been devastated by a nuclear war that has ruined the environment and transformed the polity into warring factions. A castoff girl named Libertaria, abandoned in the Lady Liberty Souvenir Shop as an infant, has escaped the Factory (an evil place of test-tube human manufacture) and made her way to the territory of New Miami.
There she meets Simeon, an underground guardian of children who are being victimized by the masters of the Factory, an alliance known as the Collective. The seeds are sown for rebellion, which Libertaria is soon to lead.
Peña Young, who is currently finishing on a novel based on her script, said she could see something along these lines happening.
“Part of the reason I wrote the opera was to be a prophet: This is what could happen, but if we change things now, it probably won’t happen … It’s taken to the extreme-extreme-extreme, but on the other hand, the threads that run through it are threads of what’s going on now,” she said. “For instance, our government is supposed to be representative of the people, but if you ask anybody, they say, ‘What are they doing up there?’”
[ from here ]
what a beautiful day!!! thank you so much, sabrina!!! brilliant!!!
-rango
Matthew Meadows – Product Engineer
Founder & software engineer in the Seattle area. Over a career spanning from 1995 to present I have worked for both startups and enterprise customers, from a 10-person operation in Austin to Microsoft. I’ve developed backend services, frontend UI and everything in between, from APIs to kernel code.
Currently active skill set includes Javascript/Typescript, Angular, React, .NET & .NET Core, C#, Node.js, MS-SQL, Oracle & Postgres. Proficient with both AWS and Azure cloud services. Expert-level user of Visual Studio, VSCode & Claude Code.
Correlation Studio
1/2026 – Present
Seattle, WA
Role: Founder & Product Engineer
Sole creator & founder of Correlation Studio, a powerful new SaaS statistics application that brings the power of bulk correlation analysis & discovery to less technical users. I engineered everything from the database schema to the UI, including the high-performance storage layer, the API, and the low-level statistics programming. It leverages Claude, Gemini & Grok for dataset search, Claude for AI analysis, and OpenAI & Haiku for creating & resolving a RAG queue for public discoveries. Built on C# .Net 10, React/Typescript, Postgres & R2 object storage.
https://correlationstudio.com
Boeing – TCS
5/2024 – Present
Seattle, WA
Role: Senior Software Engineer
Senior Software Engineer currently employed by TCS on contract with Boeing. Performing application modernization porting legacy .Net applications to .Net Core and cloud services. Using C#, MS-SQL, AWS, EC2 and AWS RDS Postgres. These so-called lift & shift operations are extremely delicate, operating on 20+ year-old applications with no source control. They require the utmost in planning and careful execution. My duties include design, implementation, and interviewing candidates for new hires.
Microsoft Cognitive Services – TEKsystems
5/2023 – 12/2023
Redmond, WA
Role: Software Engineer
Software Engineer employed by TEKsystems on contract with the Microsoft Cognitive Services AI Translation team. Roles include build engineering CI/CD using Azure Devops as well as software engineering tasks updating the Azure Cognitive Services Text Translation SDK in C#, Java, Python and Typescript. Implementing SDK samples required utilizing Azure Key Vault, Azure Storage and Azure Active Directory with corresponding toolsets across all four languages.
Nanostring Technologies
01/2020 – 11/2022
Seattle, WA
Role: Senior Software Engineer
Senior Software Engineer employed by NanoString working on the GeoMX DSP R&D team. Duties included debugging existing code, extending the feature set with new code and servicing tickets in Azure DevOps. Toolset included Angular 7, Javascript, C#, Postgres, Docker, Typescript, Powershell. Project tracked in Azure Devops.
My primary involvement with GeoMX was focused on extending and debugging Angular code paired with Microsoft MVC to a Postgres backend. Duties spanned all three tiers of the MVC, including client code in Angular and Typescript. Additionally, a significant portion of my time was devoted to debugging low-level C# code in the Controller layer with a focus on parallelism and synchronization.
Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit – Wipro
10/2018 – 10/2019
Redmond, WA
Role: Full Stack Engineer
Worked as an application architect developing privacy, security & data visualization software for lawyers and analysts investigating digital crimes. Developed an end-to-end privacy solution from inception to deployment including design, database architecture on SQL Server, all the stored procedures, a Node.js web API based on Express, Html layouts and styles and client code written in Javascript & JQuery using JSON as a transport. Deployed as an Azure Web App and maintained with Azure DevOps. Also developed a new front end for dataset visualization based on an existing Angular / ASP.Net Core. Also worked on a solution for capturing business email compromise information and inputting it into an Azure Data Warehouse. Utilized Azure Key Vault, Azure Storage and Azure Functions.
Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures – Gates Staffing
3/2018 – 07/2018
Redmond, WA
Role: Software Engineer
Contributed development & debugging of software for commercial greenhouse control systems. Focus was around improving reliability & performance of a highly parallel Windows server application that reads sensor information from greenhouses & uploads it to the cloud to improve yields & forecasting for resource costs, including predictive analytics around labor, energy, temperature, water, nutrients & reclamation. Debugging was primarily in C# and .Net. Provided additional contributions in React.js and Python for their greenhouse analysis software.
Microsoft OMS
11/2015 – 02/2018
Redmond, WA
Role: UI Engineer
Worked as a software design engineer embedded with the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS). Scope of work includes a long-running overhaul of the portal UI to conform with Azure specifications delivered by the design team:
- Html5 & CSS3 styling of the Azure Log Analytics portal.
- Typescript & C# development & debugging for OMS
- Accessibility refactoring for 502 compliance
- Daily scrum participation
- Live site production support.
My focus was on restyling the portal using both CSS3 & Html5 and modifying behaviors in both Javascript and C#. The OMS team required actively participating in daily Scrum, deployment of incremental changes several times a week, live site responsibilities, and continuously ingesting tribal knowledge. I also managed a contractor & worked closely with two peers to land a major accessibility project.
Koverse
10/2013 to 9/2015
Seattle, WA
Role: UI Engineer
Worked as a UI developer, helped bring their 1.0 product to a servicable release level. Developed the first generation of their logo & icons. Developed a new version of their search application with a method for identifying fields of material interest in no-schema datastore, a key component of their pending patent grant. Worked on Red Disk, delivering core product code delivered to the US Army’s INSCOM. Performed extensive JQuery debugging & integration with the Java back-end, and helped push the product forward to 1.4 as the code was adopted by the US Air Force. Netbeans & Eclipse with Maven build environment built on top of Apache Accumulo, Cloudera Hadoop, Centos Linux & open source integration tools.
Microsoft Research – TEKsystems
5/2013 to 10/2013
Redmond, WA
Role: UI Engineer
Developed features for the experimental Somex, a Microsoft Research Windows tray application built as a C# / .Net client using embedded Internet Explorer for UI features. Html5 / CSS3 / Javascript / JQuery communicating via WFC with SQL-2012 built using Entity Framework. Designed and built a journaling mechanism tracing JQuery events. Also contributed the public subscription UI and implementation. Contributed to data extraction and reporting for their published research paper.
Predixion Software
8/2011 to 7/2012
Redmond, WA
Role: UI Engineer
Most of my work at Predixion Software was focused on UI development for their client, primarily Silverlight but more recently Excel. Contributed to the core product data visualization features and helped built a set of Silverlight/Xaml controls used in development for their thin-client. Primarily ASP.Net, C#, and API development. Excel client port of Silverlight code and vice/versa.
Microsoft
9/2007 to 8/2011
Redmond, WA
Role: Software Engineer III
Worked as an Html, CSS & Javascript feature developer for Bing Local UI, including movie theater show times and restaurant reservations. ASP.Net, C# and WCF feature developer for Bing Local middle-tier. Write Silverlight/Xaml, Bing Maps API and WCF feature developer for Bing Maps Firstlight local events application. Significant experience with JSON, REST API’s & JQuery troubleshooting.
Provided production support duties for Bing Maps including deployment, troubleshooting & mitigation development. Front-line optimizer tasked with improving site performance and mitigating systematic attacks via parallelization and caching solutions. Developed WCF service to codify the DOM and allow developers to access Bing Maps user collections within Microsoft.
Microsoft – Volt Technical Resources
10/2006 to 09/2007
Redmond, WA
Role: Software Engineer II
HRIT Performance Management, Developer Division. ASP.Net/C# test harness developer for Visual Studio 2008 on Windows 2008. Html/CSS and Javascript feature developer for HR Performance application. Converted raw output from HR design team to CSS/ASP.Net component architecture. developed extensible Windows client shell in CSS & C# for use by application teams. Created and debugged manager feedback reports using SSRS on SQL Server 2005.
Microsoft – Volt Technical Resources
02/2006 to 06/2006
Redmond, WA
Role: Software Engineer IV
Vista OS developer. Debugged Windows Vista UI Automation library Win32 control proxy interfaces. Corrected event propagation through mouse and keyboard handlers. Diagnosed marshalling and threading issues across Win32/COM/.Net boundaries. Extremely low-level work in a massive project with thousands of developers & millions of lines of source.
Catapult Systems
11/1995 to 11/2005
Austin, TX
Role: Application Architect
Architect of Inquisite. Participated in each phase of the software development life cycle, from inception to production support, across the entire application suite. Developed critical infrastructure elements including the common business kernel, native service applications, data collection and transformation components, and advanced statistical reports. Developed foundation technology stack including kernel serialization and versioning, internal event propagation, process communication protocols, and web service interface definitions. Composed and reviewed core product documentation with an emphasis on the software development kit, extensibility tools, and reports. Optimized each tier of the application suite to ensure product scalability in a wide range of deployment environments and stress scenarios, including multiprocessor machines and load balanced servers. Performed technical interviews to screen candidates for software development, technical sales, and network engineering positions. Accompanied technical sales personnel to improve my understanding of their business requirements in order to translate them directly into design specifications. Created reporting solutions that featured a wide range of data transformations and statistical operations, including t-tests, regression analysis, and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Developed strategies, design specifications, and extensibility mechanisms in order to incrementally port the product to C# and ASP.Net. Created an integrated development environment, a form builder client application used to produce and publish survey web pages of arbitrary complexity. Developed commonly understood and widely used features for the survey builder, including Cut/Copy/Paste and Undo/Redo.
Also worked as the lead developer for a source code documentation system written in MS-Visual C++ (MFC) and Delphi. Developed classes to convert opaque binary and text sources into a parse tree suitable for semantic analysis via native code. Developed classes to drive Microsoft Word with OLE Automation to emit report documents.
Education
Graduated in 1986 from Ottawa High School. Accelerated student, graduated in 3 years.
Studied with the Houston Ballet Academy after graduating, became a professional dancer for Cincinnati Ballet, Eugene Ballet & Ballet Austin.
PORTFOLIO
Correlation Studio
Site: https://correlationstudio.com
A powerful new SaaS statistics application that brings the insights of correlation data science to anyone who wants to do research. Users bring their own data or discover it with our Dataset Wizard, driven by Claude, Gemini & Grok. Datasets are ingested to form the basis for Experiments which combine them together and analyze each column against every other.
These combinations yield Discoveries in the form of metadata, scatterplots & line charts with drill-down capability and geospatial views. The data points, P-values, Granger Causality & other metadata are all part of the Discoveries that can be analyzed.
Users compile their Datasets, Experiments and Discoveries into shareable Portfolios that combine them with markdown & multimedia to make interactive presentations featuring their podcasts & lectures. There’s much more to it, better to simply visit the site and see. We opened on June1st with over 20,000 discoveries and are currently seeing 2,000 visitors per day, with steadily-climbing registrations from data scientists & researchers.
Interactive Circle of Fifths
Site: https://interactiveircleoffifths.com
The definitive interactive circle of fifths. Select any key to see & hear related chords. Learn about the relationships of the major, minor & diminished chords relative to the tonic. Toggle the Inner Ring to study scales. A best-of-class music education tool that features interactive piano & guitar visualizers, harmonized scales, overlays and a simple progression looper. What will you compose today? Built with C# .Net 10 & React/Typescript. The only game in town with over 300,000 visitors since last December.
Rango.Music
Site: https://rango.music
A multimedia web app dedicated to the music of Rango. It’s an alternative to promoting on Spotify, the definitive Rango collection, with 3 hours of music ranging from masters to woodshed recordings. Hard rock, heavy metal & blues. The application was built with C# .Net 10 & React/Typescript. I created everything from the multimedia controls to the visualizers. Currently enjoying modest traffic with 25,000 users since March.
Rango Unmuzzled: Episode XXII 22/24 JQP
Rango Unmuzzled: Episode XXII – 22 24 JQP
Rango Unmuzzled: Episode XXII – LIVE from the Swamp Deck July 7th 2013
Exclusive World Premiere of 22 24 by Matt Young / John Q. Public
Rango brings spotlight focus on tracks from Matt Young / John Q. Public’s Greed, culminating in the world premiere of an Audioburger Radio Shows / Rangounmuzzled exclusive track: 22 24. Includes songs from Savage Henry, The People Now, JC Flow, Triage Revival Project, Joe Funktastic, Shade Law, Simon James White, Traffic Experiment, Matthew Martinek, Steve Gardner, Kara Johnstad, Patrick Kindy, Tim Hearn, Beth Hart, Volume Conflict, Janey Neal, Parker Bombshell, Civilized Tears, Jed McConkey, Dai Sharkey, Simon Collins, Ariel Eschar, MikeWhitePresents and other artists as Rango pays tribute to Franklin and finally brings an end to the 10 episode run of Season III: Agency.
\m/~(-.-)~\m/ooooooooooooo!!!
#rango #rangothedog #rangounmuzzled #audioburger #indie #metal#hardrock #plagus #franklin #johnqpublic #mattyoung #hero
original broadcast:
http://www.spreaker.com/user/reputationmedia/rango_unmuzzled_episode_xxii_22_24_jqp
post-processed and rebalanced for downloads:
https://soundcloud.com/matthewmeadowsmusic/rango-unmuzzled-episode-xxii
best link
for sharing & feedback:
http://www.fandalism.com/rangothedog/ce7z
Audioburger
Rango Unmuzzled: Episode XXI – 21 Gun Salute ( LIVE )
Rango the Dog
Rango continues the hunt for the world’s most wanted man, Edward Snowden, while taking the time to stop and skewer the roses along the way. Featuring tracks from Steve Gardner, Ben Badenhorst, John Q. Public, JC Flow, The People Now, Devoutcast, New Killer Shoes, Mike Hartman, Triage Revival Project, Budd Zunga, Scott Jones, Janey Neal, Joe Funktastic, Parker Bombshell, Jed McConkey & Tony Floyd Kenna, Don Sinyo, Savage Henry, Patrick Kindy, Tim Hearn, Simon James White, Bang Data, Sabrina Pena Young, Simon Collins, Ariel Eschar, Jed McConkey, Sean McGrath, Matthew Martinek, Shaun Peace and other artists from the most conspicuous top-shelf primo roster ever to litter the highways of the world wide webbiness~
#rango #rangothedog #audioburger #indie #indieradio #radioshow #hardrock #funk #metal #progressive #lovesongs #comedy #plagus #edwardsnowden #metalink #liberteria — with TheAudio Burger.
https://soundcloud.com/matthewmeadowsmusic/rango-unmuzzled-episode-xxi-21
Audioburger
Rango Unmuzzled: Allies
Rango Unmuzzled: Allies
This weeks’ episode for one more day:
Season III – Episode 6 LIVE
#rango casts the spotlight around the room and hits some favorites from prior episodes going all the way back to the first shots fired by Simon James White on Season I – Episode 1, Riot in the UK. We hear from Joe Funktastic, Southern Experience, Six String Woody, guitar heros Katsumi Yoshihara and Rick Rousseau. Amidst random jabs at the sore spots in the UFO community’s most recent disclosure we also hear from John Q. Public, newcomers Janey Neal and Kara Johnstad, as well as staples Savage Henry and The People Now. Includes tracks from Jed McConkey & Tony Floyd Kenna, Simon Collins, Don Sinyo, Shade Law, Shaun Peace, Budd Zunga, Civilized Tears, Anchorage, Alaska, Kevin Byrne & Parker Bombshell along with plenty of messages to the NSA and opaque duck humor for Mike Hartman since we forgot to play his track after a shakey start. Tim Hearn contributes his lead guitar mastery to one of my tracks, as he tends to do \m/
http://www.spreaker.com/user/reputationmedia/rango_unmuzzled_axis_2
Tomorrow’s Episode:
by popular demand, Sunday June 16th ~ LIVE
Rango Unmuzzled: Who’s Your Daddy? (Unscheduled Father’s Day Show)
12:00 PM Left Coast – 3:00 PM Right Coast – 8:00 PM Old Mother Hubbard (UK)
Rango Virus
we couldn’t fit everybody into the Season III, Episode 6: Allies, our scheduled season finale. so we’re going back on the air to hear from folks like Mike Hartman, Patrick Kindy and Bullofa Cristix, along with Rangounmuzzled regulars Simon James White, Savage Henry, John Q. Public and The People Now. expect to hear from JC Flow, Joe Funktastic and Janey Neal, as well as more blather on UFO’s, the NSA and other topics of various degrees of irrelevance as we unmuzzle the old black dog and let him roam around the 19th episode without a leash.
also expect: better narrative audio, an angel has given us a new microphone .
“don’t pee there. please? ok fine, that’s your spot now” – rangothedog to rango the <actual><dog>
\m/~(-.-)~\m/oooooooo!
and
Rango Unmuzzled: Roger, That ( AudioBurger Retweet )
Rango the Dog
Ok so with the growing amount of people asking why we are not conversing over Facebook we (well I) feel maybe to give facebook another try but this time just post stuff that we find interesting instead of Spamalot city lol (GUILTY) and as I am serving my 60 day sentence I have now as said before decided to go shouting over at twitter…..and loving the vibe there too
……………………
Ok well a few things have happened since I last splurted my mouth off to you and it goes a little something like this..
…………………….
To start it off I need to say that the whole point of this AudioBurger Radio / Promotions thing was to bring you an eclectic mix of radio programming and to some extent we provided this…
We always listen to our feedback and we value the comments emails and private messages about the shows…we might not agree with all of them…lol
but never the less we listen….
…………………….
It quickly came to our attention that some changes had to take place
Some people who we started out with are no longer with us and although we wish them all the very best for their future , it none the less meant we had to make those sacrifices to evolve..
…………………….
Rango Virus
The shows we have right now are strong and consistent with their ability to deliver the quality week after week….yeah so it’s Internet radio and some times technology can play its part disrupting the shows delivery from time to time but that is (i’m afraid) to be expected
The presenters we have each week pushing out quality and consistent material is in my view above the level !!!!
many thanks to Matthew Meadows to Tom McNeil and of course Pete RingMaster for their continued support and fantastic radio shows long may it continue
………………………..
The future is very bright with us as we continue to bring you the music from today’s independent music profiling and promoting the outstanding talent found out there..
On our twitter page we regularly profile such artists …when you can pop over to
http://twitter.com/audioburger
follow us and keep up in the loop
…………………………..
Rango Unmuzzled: Big in Japan
Great news on the bands and artists can always be found on our main site at
audioburger.com and we are now about to venture into the promotion of Tours and events from today’s top independent
AUDIOBURGER SHOWCASE PRESENTS
will be kicking off with New Killer Shoes as they embark on their tour
promoting the Album ”I aint even lyin”
New Killer Shoes have just come off a very successful uk tour
supporting Adam Ant amassing an amazing yet well deserved
amount of respect for their LIVE stage work & we are very pleased to be supporting
future UK planned gigs and events concerning this band
……………………………
So moving on we are set to keep that Independent vibe going and
this is all down to your support thank you..
…………………….
See you out there
Johnny xx
Rango Unmuzzled: Axis (Live)
Rango Unmuzzled: Axis
Rango Unmuzzled: Axis (Live)
Recorded Live: Sunday, June 2nd 2013
Season III Episode 5 finds Rango flying solo at the console looking for choicest cuts from the Rangosphere. Featuring the music of Joe Funktastic, The People Now, JC Flow, Matt Young’s John Q. Public, Matthew Martinek, Gregory Boyce Halls, Ben Badenhorst, J@Jed McConkey & Tony Floyd Kenna, Savage Henry, Paul Taylor’s Anchorage Alaska, Budd Zunga, Shade Law, Kerry Kelley, Ariel Eshcar, Kyle Person’s Postmodern Troll, Steve Gardner’s The Condition, Sabrina Pena Young and one from an old, wet dog. Ranging from hard rock to neoclassical shred, from zulu inflected metal to the face-melting drama of a classical dubstep, it’s the range and breadth of artistry demonstrated on shows like this that set Rango Unmuzzled apart from your momma’s radio \m/. Produced for Audioburger.com, making this face:
\m/~(-.-)~\m/ooo~ ( divinely bovine )
http://www.spreaker.com/user/reputationmedia/rango_unmuzzled_axis
Return of the Post Man
Rango the Dog
Hello friends, it’s been weeks since I’ve posted through Rangothedog.com, the official mouthpiece of the beast. I’ve been on hiatus. Life served me up some great raw material for a screenplay,but it wasn’t conducive to writing at the time. Through the skillful work of realtor Amy Trout I was finally able to sell my house in Lynnwood after being stuck there as a single dad, underwater on the mortgage and spuriously unemployed, for more than 18 months. Very happy to see that place go, not only the 1/2 of a large U-Haul truck full of garbage that was hauled out of there (including 3 couches), but particularly the demon that lived in the refrigerator. That thing was nasty.
Big deal, I moved. Seems like fodder for some interesting posts. So why the quiet period?
Aside from the time and energy spent on the move, which ended with a 70 hour continuous test of endurance that bridged two overtime weeks at the office that included such highlights as losing my glasses/contacts for four days, conditions at Amazon became completely intolerable and I was looking for work even before my contract terminated. I continued to produce Audioburger Radio Shows during the interim, each of them a little late (with a nod to Tim Hearn), but decided that it was a good time to suspend the blogging in lieu of preparing for interviews, unpacking, and catching up on my recording obligations. I was moody and experiencing inflamatory circumstances at the house such that I decided a quiet period would be less likely to result in some regrettable comment archived for all eternity on Google complicating my job search.
So, one life reboot later, I’m back. I’ve moved into a rental in Kenmore, closer to my kids and my new job. It’s an older house overlooking an acre of wetland, with a compliment of neighborly chickens and ducks next door, which makes for some very animated and fun radio skits and photographs to use as honey pots on Facebook. It’s a definite upgrade, and playing out on the deck for Franklin with a backup chorus of frogs is pretty much my new favorite thing (and his too, judging by the amount of thumping and binkies he delivers with every set).
The Neighbors
As for the job, I managed to stop the countdown to eviction after only 8 days, my fastest time-to-contract ever in nearly 20 years of professional development. I actually landed multiple offers on the same day, so serious props Tek Systems and recruiter Brian Vivaldi for helping me put together the play. I’m working at Microsoft Research now as a contract research development engingeer, at least for the short term, and very happy about it. Between parking and drive time alone I expect to save $4,000 US and 400 hours per year compared to my previous location and job at Amazon. The work is also extremely interesting, will vary continuously, and they’ve given me a lot of autonomy to simply work the way I work best: closely with one person, with no designs or specifications, but rather immediate objectives and a concensus on the tasks needed to achieve them. I was checking in bug fixes on my second day and by the end of my second week had prepared a new feature with that touches the client, the middle-tier and the backend. To contrast, at the same two-week checkpoint at Amazon I was wading through the permissions and developing the proprietary systems knowledge needed to implement specifications down to the pixel on a new device that was extremely sketchy, while simultaneously deep-diving on wikis in a war room with six other people on a schedule with literally zero wiggle room.
Amazon’s an amazing machine and may very well rule the world some day, but it was just a terrible environment for me, somebody who can work extremely fast but is easily distracted, particularly by noise as it imprints upon my visual spectrum with growing acuity as I face sleep deprevation. This is due to chromesthetic synesthesia that emerges as an adjunct to my manic bipolar phases, and the extra time pressure from the commute and simply being expected to absorb overtime hours just made things all that much more unpleasant and less conducive to success. Indeed, by the two week checkpoint I was referring to it as my “soul-sucking” job, a clear indicator that things are trending more positive now.
Rangovirus
Finally. Hopefully. We must stay the course, because just like Amazon, there’s no wiggle room here. A few more days and I would not have been able to pay my rent, and I have slipped further into debt. Because this is not just My Life as a Musical, it’s actually my life.
So, quiet period’s over. We’ve got a new pace, a new rythmn, a new job with new projects and goals. Due to a burgeoning collaboration schedule and a rising arc of popularity it’s still a lot of time pressure here, enough to keep me busy every minute of the day for the next year. But with some minor discretion of my time I was able to find a few minutes to go out and play for Franklin tonight. That’s critical, because as I bring my guitar hiatus to a close and look forward into the next year, I need to find some time to play music every day and get my chops up again. Because this is My Life as a Musicial, and this is the Year of the Dogg.
-rdogg
This week’s radio show was recorded and broadcast directly from our new studio in Kenmore, live with my brother Patrick Kindy.
Season III Episode 4 – Recorded Live 05/26/2013
===================================
Rango & Rivera (aka Patrick Kindy) take inventory of their assets on the first live show of Rango Unmuzzled. Featuring the music of Simon Collins, The Condition, John Q. Public, Mark Robinson, JCFlow, Matthew Martinek, MikeWhitePresents, Jenni French, Jed McConkey, Tony Floyd Kenna, Ben Badenhorst, Mike Hartman, Shaun Peace, Budd Zunga, Simon James White and Savage Henry.
“Gratuitous production failures at the beginning of the live broadcast have been averted from history’s eyes forever, but can never be erased from our memories” – rango, sobbing into his tequila
http://www.spreaker.com/user/reputationmedia/rango_unmuzzled_assets_live_v1_1
Rango Unmuzzled: Plagus Steals the Show
Every week after I produce the radio show, I immediately burn it onto CD so I can listen to it in my car all week long. It helps me understand what works and what doesn’t, and cracks my son up when he’d otherwise be ignoring me (or whatever’s on NPR, pretty much the only station I listen to). So after last weeks’s avante-garde jazz outing, and the previous week’s trip to see gypsy folk jazz Pearl Django, the contrast to this week’s show is striking:
This show rocks. Hard. Plagus is a horrible DJ, only rarely names the musicians or the songs, but he picked out a list of face-melters and managed to hit up some of my favorites from the first two seasons. It’s got bilstering techincal accumen from Rousseau and Katsumi, sublime pschedelia in the form of the Dr. Who theme, sci-fi theater of the mind with Morrison’s Prohpecy and Liberteria, and a double-shot of love songs. I’m not endorsing what he did, and there were still penty of production errors in the show(!), but I had to go to work and wrestle with pre-production kindles (sit kindle. good kindle :-D). just super busy, so I’m happy to be able to offer you a show from the Dog Hause’s favorite distributed agent of evil, Plagus the Recycler. Mona pitches in too, can’t forget her, she would never let that happen. And now it’s time for you to do your part, which is conventiently enumerated in two bullet points here since i’m Wednesday lunch posts tend twoards verbose:
1) Listen to the show, at this location on my fandalism page, an audioburger.com, on the audioburger channel at spreaker.com, or my soundcloud. It’s not hard to find :-D.
2) If you like the show, consder sharing it, reaching out to the artists and letting them know. And if you’ve got enough extra coin for a cup of fancy coffee, consider spending the equivalent on some new music and actually showing them how much you appreciate their work.
Rango Unmuzzled at AudioBurger.com
The truth is, none of the indies are getting paid, and they should be. Everything you hear at audioburger.com can compete directly with FM and TV for your entertainment clock cycles, and it’s all mashed up in facebook so you don’t even have to leave your chair. You could even have a sandwich, just like when you’re watching Jersey Shore, if you’re lucky enough to have somebody to make you one (Rango doesn’t cook).
Make this face: 😀 and this one 😮 and this one \m/. Actually make two of those and toss in an earworm and some cow.
\m/~(-.-)~\m/ooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!
Rango Unmuzzled: Plagus Steals the Show
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Nobody’s safe in this episode as Rango abandons the comforts of Facebook for a new home, takes time out to focus on love and family, and finds all of his efforts sabotaged by his evil nemesis Plagus. Join the circus to ride as we feature the music of Twisted Folk, Rick Rousseau, Katsumi Yoshihara, The Shanklin Freakshow, Simon James White, TRAFFiC EXPERiMENT, Savage Henry, Sabrina Pena Young, Morrison’s Prophecy | Seattle, WA, The People Now a dude named Tim Hearn, as the Songs of the Emerald City take to the streets in our season II spotlight, a little bit late.
http://www.fandalism.com/rangothedog/b0bt
and
http://www.spreaker.com/user/reputationmedia/rango_unmuzzled_plagus_steals_the_show
and
https://soundcloud.com/matthewmeadowsmusic/plagus-steals-the-show
The Seattle Police vs. Preston from Capitol Hill
On the way home from the art show i today was on the approach to I-5 north on Denny, facing an extremely steep hill. In fact it’s really the hill in Capitol Hill. I noticed a man in a powder blue zuit suit and a black vest mortally struggling with his shopping cart full of his possessions, a common sign of a homeless person in Seattle. He was strugglng so hard i couldn’t tell if he had a disability that affected his walking or was just at the edge of what he could handle, so i decided not to get on the freeway, but instead to turn around and help him.
seattle police: shopping carts shall not pass, and you’re on your own, punk.
It took a few minutes. i had to drive up into Capitol Hill, turn around on the one way streets, and wait for at several lights. I got a little turned around, and by the time i was coming back down the hill looking for a place to park i saw that he didn’t need my help anymore, there were two cops there, lights flashing, making a big scene. They were out of their cars. The woman officer from patrol car #109 was engaging with the man directly, and the male officer from patrol car #156 was standing less than a car length away behind her, posturing with his billy club out, casually swinging it and spinning in it like he’s prepared to use it at a moment’s notice. this cop was either living in a bad 70’s movie or simply making a blatant attempt to intimidate the man. I was shocked. traffic was horrible, and I again got routed in circles, but i decided to go back and try to get the scene on camera.
Preston Terry vs Seattle Police
When I turned around to go back up the hill again, the cops were gone. The man was gone, too. I kept driving, went looking for him, and found him at the top of the hill. he was exhausted. I pulled over and parked beside him and spent a few minutes talking to him. his name is Preston Terry, and he’s probably in his late twenties or so, fresh-faced, clean, looked like he could be working in any random theater on the hill. I asked what the cops were saying to him, and he indicated they must have gotten a lot of calls about him, because they stopped him at the edge of downtown and demanded he return to Capitol Hill. He claimed he must have been “doing too much scarf dancing” and that they knew he normally hung out in Capitol Hill and they wanted him to go back there. they demanded him to return and would not let him cross into downtown. I asked him why the male cop had his billy club out, if he was threatening him. He said “i noticed that, too. He just wanted to be a badass. he wanted to intimidate me. He wanted me to go back to my box”. This overtly friendly man, who indicated he was a musician and a “scarf dancer”, gave in to the pressure and clear threat of violence, and struggled to get his cart back up the hill, alone.
I’m so disgusted with these cops that I’m going to read this post on this week’s Rangounmuzzled. I’m also going to contact the Seattle Police Department and ask them for a full accounting of what i just witnessed, and please share it with theACLU Nationwide, ACLU of Washington and the The Seattle Times. Because i think the officer from car #156 was way out of line, and i think the officer from car #109 was negligent in her duty for not telling the other officer to stand down, put his weapon away, and stop trying to intimidate this young man.
rango wondering who’s getting sent back next for being to colorful, or ‘scarf dancing’.
They both failed. From this witness’s perspective the proper thing to do here for anybody with a sense of moral rectitude was to help that man with his cart. I’m really interested to hear their accounting of the stories, and I wonder if the officers would like to be identified, and tell us why they felt they needed to demonstrate physical force to coerce and corrale somebody who seemed capable of breaking out into a song and dance routine at any minute, nothing more menacing than that. It’s possible they had a legitimate reason to do so, and I think we’d all love to hear it. For the moment I’m simply disgusted.
-rango
Rango's Dog House 