{"id":80,"date":"2008-12-09T07:10:54","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T07:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.gregbueno.com\/wp\/vexvox\/2008\/12\/09\/i_want_but_not_necessarily_for\/"},"modified":"2008-12-09T07:10:54","modified_gmt":"2008-12-09T07:10:54","slug":"i_want_but_not_necessarily_for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/2008\/12\/09\/i_want_but_not_necessarily_for\/","title":{"rendered":"I want (but not necessarily for Christmas)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For anyone thinking about shopping for me for Christmas, I have this one piece of advice: don&#039;t do it.<\/p>\n<p>The kinds of things I would ask of Herr Sinter Klauss are either too pricey for casual gift-giving or too specialized. It&#039;s not like you can pick up Hajime Chitose&#039;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hmv.co.jp\/product\/detail\/103592\"><em>Shima Kyora Umui<\/em><\/a> from Best Buy. And do I matter that much to you to spend $300 on a pair of studio monitor speakers? Didn&#039;t think so.<\/p>\n<p>I know there&#039;s some debate or other about giving cash as a Christmas gift, but for me, cash is so much simpler. I know where to get what I want, and I&#039;m not afraid to risk my credit card number to get it. My gift-givers in the past, not so much. And most of them can&#039;t read Japanese anyway.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gregbueno.com\/index.php\/vexvox\/entry\/3905\/\">first time<\/a> I made a list of various sundy items for which I was desirous, I ended up getting a lot of them. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gregbueno.com\/index.php\/vexvox\/entry\/3852\/\">last time<\/a> I made a similar list, I later decided I wasn&#039;t really in a position to make much use of them. (A camcorder? QuarkXpress upgrade? Really?)<\/p>\n<p>This time, I&#039;m making a list of things I actually foresee myself getting in the near future. That all depends on the tax return and the second half of the company bonus. It also helps that I&#039;m in the last few months of my car payment.<\/p>\n<p>So I want but not necessarily for Christmas &#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><del>A pair of studio monitor speakers. I&#039;m tired of using my computer speakers, of having to anticipate how the bass presence on these speakers may translate when I listen in my car or at work. I would like to have some monitors that have no color &#8212; like the headphones I bought in September &#8212; so mixing isn&#039;t such a guessing game.<\/del><\/li>\n<li>Bass traps. I&#039;ve already treated the room with some acoustic foam to handle the high frequencies. I&#039;m not sure if I really have much of a problem with standing waves, but I could feel a subtle difference when I installed the foam. Perhaps bass traps will enhance that difference even more.<\/li>\n<li>Singing lessons. My breath control sucks, my timbre is off and my mic technique is non-existent.<\/li>\n<li><del><em>Mastering Audio<\/em> by Bob Katz<\/del>, or <em>The Mastering Engineer&#039;s Handbook<\/em> by Bob Owsinski.<\/li>\n<li><del><em>In the Aeroplane Over the Sea<\/em> by Neutral Milk Hotel. I&#039;m probably going to get this when I start doing my Christmas shopping.<\/del><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now if you&#039;re <em>not<\/em> going to heed my advice and you insist on shopping for me, let me make it easy for you: Guitar Center Gift Card. I actually tell people this every year, and it never happens. One of these days, it&#039;s going to stick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For anyone thinking about shopping for me for Christmas, I have this one piece of advice: don&#039;t do it. The kinds of things I would ask of Herr Sinter Klauss are either too pricey for casual gift-giving or too specialized. It&#039;s not like you can pick up Hajime Chitose&#039;s Shima Kyora Umui from Best Buy. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Bkgj-1i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}