Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Dr. Milo T. Pinkerton III's LiveJournal:

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Friday, May 18th, 2012
8:12 am	Well, here we are! Just a few days from the commencement of our next tour, and my Pinker-senses are quivering wildly... so much work to do in such a short space of time, but it's proceeding apace, and the days are bright with promise. Here's a recap on the stuff I've been working on behind the scenes. The COG Adventure Van, our touring behemoth Dodge, is currently at a master mechanic getting some TLC for the long trek up to World Steam Expo in Dearborn, MI. I took the repairs as far as I was able, replacing electrical parts, the front end idler, a fuel injector, and a steering pump hose, but the mechanic is completing the job with the transmission fluid and filter, cleaning the rest of the fuel injectors, and changing the throttle body gasket. Hopefully she'll be purring like an overpowered kitten when we pull out of New Orleans on Tuesday! COG 1912, our offshoot 'Steampunk' alter ego combo, has now been stage-tested with a little exhibition gig at Kerry's Irish Pub (photos of this when I receive some...) The gig was a little rough but nothing went too wrong and everybody there had a great time. The whole crew stepped up and played a great little set in full costume, and my new COGsworthy Automatic Drumset worked great in its first public performance! Instead of using the big COG show rack, I ran that show's midi off a tiny Acer netbook connected straight to the drumset. I guess it was effectively hidden for I was actually asked at the end "so are those drums actually clockwork powered?" Sheeesh... This offshoot of the band shows great promise at getting its own little life in the sun (well, it certainly will be easier to perform in the sun with this group!) I may have to start booking it separately; it really feels like an entirely different band despite most of the music being SO STRANGELY FAMILIAR. It's CERTAINLY easier to road, although somehow, the costume requirements are MUCH worse. And somehow, I've created an acoustic band that STILL needs to be plugged in, but hey, when did I ever make it easy on myself? The COGsworthy Automatic Drumset continues to receive minor improvements at this point - I'm out of low amperage pinball coils to add more drums and cymbals to the contraption, but as it stands I have the bass drum, two on the snare, a ride cymbal, a splash crash (new 8" Wuhan I bought for the occasion), and the hi hat fully operational. I actually have two more solid state relays that aren't even being used but no time to add them. Last minute addition is a controlled motor that makes the 'clockwork crank' on the bass drum turn while the music is playing, like a giant wind-up music box. Later today I'll be working out some more details on the COG 1912 sequences (in several cases, they're playing the exact same midi as drumbot's sampler normally plays, and with no toms to hit, there's some really big holes in the performance that need to be replaced by other drums or cymbals.) I need to record Joe Panno's acoustic guitar again for a COG 1912 song we're releasing next Friday, and I'm getting through a recondition on those crazy platform shoes I wear onstage in modern-day COG. Tick, tick, tick... time waits for noone, but it sure is tough watching it fly by so quickly when you're under the gun! But I have no complaints; pressure suits me fine for getting things done - it's the best, most unsympathetic taskmaster I've ever known. Tick, tick, tick... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
1:17 pm	My dastardly new device Between getting my Steampunk costume together and getting the new van shipshape for our expedition to Michigan at the end of this month, I've also embarked upon another interesting and long-delayed little project: the de-virtualization of drumbot! No, we're not retiring the beloved video-animated face of drumbot; I'm merely adding some physical 'arms' and 'feet' to aid in his drumming prowess! After buying most of the parts for this project over a year ago, I have finally begun earnestly working on the construction, and am happy to report that it's working pretty darn well in rehearsal. The basis of the system is a midi-TTL controller from Highly Liquid designs. The interface is programmable in lots of cool ways and changes midi notes into TTL messages (a lot like the old Atari 400 in our show rack that handles our legacy and special-effect stage lighting, but much more compact! Also more outputs - 24 instead of 16. One downside; unlike my Atari which I programmed with pulse width modulation outputs, the Highly Liquid controller presently only supports on/off messages (although it also supports servo outputs, which I'm not using.) I'm taking those TTL outputs into solid state relays for the outputs. These are pretty cheap on ebay and pretty massively overspec'd for what I'm doing here! Most of them can handle over 8 amps and I don't think any of the coils I'm driving currently is over 1 amp, except for the bass drum - more on that in a minute. The coils for most of the drums and cymbals are from my other hobby - pinball! Most of them (so far) are Bally ball-serve mechanisms from late 70's/early 80's games. These are all DC coils and are being driven by DC-DC relays. For longevity, I'm driving them with 20V (instead of the 40V they'd get in a pinball machine) so they are really safe and just barely get warm even during intense drum licks. A coil could lock on, and it still wouldn't burn up. The bass drum however required a little more oomph, and I went a bit higher power on that! It's driven by a disemboweled Arrow electric stapler. I was driving it directly off a DC-AC solid state relay, but if the coil were engaged for more than a quarter second, it would smoke! We can't have that. In the end, I took the driver circuit out of the stapler itself - it's debounced with a 555 timer and can't engage the coil for more than a tenth of a second (still gets pretty hot though; I've got it forced-air cooled with a fan.) The 40 amp AC-AC relay's probably indignant for being made to pass a .01 amp 5V trigger instead of coil-wattage, but it's working so I am not going to complain! In case something DOES happen, I have built the setup really flexibly, so that I end up with a lot of drum armatures that are similar and can be reassigned. Outputs for the coils are on polarized Molex connectors, and if I coil went out, I could steal one from a less important playing surface, and go on with the show! In addition, I'm powering the whole thing off a pretty standard laptop power supply, which kicks in about 4 amps, enough to get the coils clicking nicely (I was considering going with a heavy class-A power supply like a pinball machine would use, but the laptop power supply is much more compact and pretty ubiquitous too; besides, I carry a spare with my current laptop.) It's worth noting that this system uses standard drum mounts and can be clamped to almost ANY drumset. It remains to be seen how many drummers would allow a machine to hit their precious instruments though! I have a small kit set up for it right now, and it doesn't sound half bad. But I would love to hear this thing play an old-school jazz kit... ;^} Been working with this system in rehearsals, refining it over the course of the last week of practices. It's working out pretty sweet! Some things that have to be accounted for are pre-delay on some of the more sluggish armatures (like the snare, for instance) but that's all easily accomplished in software. Really looking forward to debuting this system onstage! Hearing the drums onstage has been a problem for the longest time, and I think this little rig is gonna make a big difference for both modern-day COG and the COG-1912 lineup. Plus it's just fun to watch! (as usual, click pictures to embiggen) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
8:57 am	new C.O.G. tune? YES, NEW COG TUNE! Go get it. ~~=(o)=~~ P.S.: to all you alternative history buffs, time-meddlers, and scientific souls joining us up in Dearborn Michigan for World Steam Expo - tomorrow (May1st) is the last day to pre-register for the World Steam Expo for our advanced $60 rate, so get to the website while the getting is good & EVIL! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 27th, 2012
3:50 pm	YOU are invited to participate on C.O.G.'s upcoming song... The time has arrived for a little audience participation. We of the C.O.G. are looking for some fan-sourced audio to include in our upcoming new song (coming out early next week!) I need YOU to record a SHORT (<2 second) response to the question: "DO YOU THINK I'M MAD?" Mail your audio snippet to: drpinkerton@consortiumofgenius.com Top three will be included and credited in the new song, to be released on the Funny Music Site page, on Tuesday May 1st!!! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012
8:29 am	C.O.G.'s touring machine... Well, I should have seen this coming. The upcoming tour to World Steam Expo in Dearborn is a good excuse for advancement in several areas and the latest advancement is the need to get a good number of us bad guys on the road... we needed a van! So yesterday, I bought one: It's a fixer-upper for sure, but with more than a month till the event, I think that between my genius and Prof. Chronotis's, it'll be shipshape in time! Aside from that, French Quarter Fest was quite a lark. We made a lot of new friends and pleased a large crowd of people! A fan captured some footage of the performance... Hopefully they'll let us play again next year! If nothing else, the fact that we've played Voodoo Fest and French Quarter Fest successfully will look REALLY good on our band resume when booking other festivals. (it also means I'm going to have to redouble my efforts to give Drumbot better outdoor visibility. Need to construct some wind-permeable sun shades for him, and I don't mean for his eyes!) Onwards and downwards... tonight we are rehearsing the acoustic version of the band for the first time in over a year. What will THAT be like, you wonder? Wait and see! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 14th, 2012
10:51 am	What a fantastic time yesterday at French Quarter Fest! Both our substitute players (Dr. Rachnid on trumpet and our brand-new Russian sub keyboardist Veniamin Konstantin) did great and the show went off without a hitch (up until the point where Dr. Morgus electrocuted me long-distance via cel phone, that is!) We had the crowd dancing enthusiastically during the ska songs (we played a lot of ska variants of our usually heavier material) and were greeted with record numbers of CD's sold afterwards. All in all, a fantastic time, and one that we'll be quite interested in repeating soon... must try to book us at more festivals! (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 12th, 2012
6:12 pm	SCIENCE PARTY tomorrow! Hard to believe, but tomorrow at noon the Consortium of Genius is playing the prestigious French Quarter Fest, right in the heart of New Orleans! This amazing opportunity will also be the first outing for our new secondary keyboardist, whom you'll meet tomorrow, and a return by Dr. Rachnid, who hasn't been seen on a C.O.G. stage in many moons... Aside from that, work continues on planning our end-of-May tour up to World Steam Expo in Dearborn, MI. We're planning quite the assault on this event with showing by both modern-day C.O.G. AND Grandfather Pinkerton's 1912 band... more on this soon! But for now, relax and enjoy a bit of video from our last show - 'Why Do We Do It', videotaped live at Triage venue in Jefferson, LA: (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 24th, 2012
9:51 am	TONIGHT! Wow, I can't believe TIME has already bludgeoned it's way forward to March 24th! The big show's TONIGHT at Club Triage, a brand new club in Jefferson Parish, not 5 miles from the Secret Lab. We'll be pulling out the stops for the grand opening of this wonderful new place! The expanded lineup will be onstage, with two guitars and our horn section, and we're going deep into the Lab vault for some old favorites that haven't been heard in years. (for you Doctor Who fans, see how many classic episodes we reference in our new snog 'They Said I Was Mad'!) Opening act is The Help, the latest incarnation of classic New Orleans pop band The Cold. Their new music is great, Barbara Menendez is as energetic and amazing as ever, and they'll be playing some old Cold songs as well. The show starts at 9pm, $10, Age 21 and up. What a night this promises to be! Hope to see you there... And now, for those of you NOT in driving distance, C.O.G. taped some more segments of 'Good or Evil' at Marscon a couple weeks back. Enjoy! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
4:11 pm	So much going on, so little time to tell! This kind of snuck up on us, but tonight (Tuesday, March 20) C.O.G. participating in a benefit show for the NOLA Defender. It's a big multi-band bill, MC'd by none other than Harry Shearer, and we're on first, at 7:30pm! Come on out if you're free... NIGHT OUT FOR NODEF Blue Nile (7:00 PM) 532 Frenchmen Street, New Orleans, LA 70116 Help NOLA Defender recover from a burglary at HQ that wiped us out. Featuring Harry Shearer, music, burlesque, art and more! (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
12:44 pm	Successful tour completed! Our tour up to frozen Minnesota is now receding into the past! It was quite a good time, and a great warm up for May, as World Steam Expo awaits us, provided gasoline doesn't get to inordinately expensive between now and then. Things I learned: 1> Tops might have been Elvis's favorite BBQ joint, but we have better BBQ down here in NOLA. (I just ate some last night at Squeal! Sorry, Elvis.) 2> All the old '19th Century Newsprint' tables from the old Wendy's restaurants are now in a bar named Murphy's in Memphis 3> If you're at Frank's Power Plant in Milwaukee and your bartender is English, he'll reward you with shots for playing the theme from 'Doctor Who' (the 'Doctor Who Night' posters on the wall were the first hint that we were on friendly ground.) 4> Marscon in Minnesota is an utterly fantastic time and one of the best cons I've ever attended! WOW, what hospitality... I've never seen so many people BOW to the COG!!! Onwards and upwards... our next target is the newly opened Triage club in Jefferson. We'll be playing the grand opening on March 24th! (What did I ever do to deserve such a great band? Finally, this is the crew to follow me to the ends of the Earth, and they thoroughly deserve all the accolades and spoils that are beginning to follow... and we're loving every second of it!) (Comment on this)
Monday, March 5th, 2012
9:16 pm	Tour time! With the Rock'n'Roll Marathon behind us now, it's time for a little road trip - up to MARSCON in Minneapolis! Along the way we'll be hitting Murphy's in Memphis, TN and Frank's Power Plant in Milwaukee, WI! It's gonna be quite a week so, I must dash and make sure the C.O.G. Aircar is fully packed, but hope to see you out in the audience soon... (Back here at home, there's more great stuff coming... including our first appearance at French Quarter Festival on Friday, April 13th) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
9:40 pm	OMG... amazing stuff coming up right around the corner! Just one week from now we're going out on tour, hitting Memphis on Tuesday, Milwaukee on Thursday, and settling for the weekend at Marscon in Minneapolis, MN. Lots of other fun stuff going on behind the scenes, and I can't wait to tell you about it... but I must! (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
10:43 am	Rain or shine? Well, the Krewe of Chewbacchus rolls tonight, and rain or shine, the Consortium of Genius will be playing the Chewbacchanal Ball afterwards at the Howlin' Wolf club... (what a blast from the past that will be! We haven't disgraced that stage in over 5 years!) I predict quite a party, and like last year, we've prepared several more science-fiction theme covers for the occasion - 'Firefly', the 'Hitchhikers Guide' theme, and a medley of some music from the film Labyrinth. It's gonna be a fun night! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
12:01 pm	Our 2012 full lineup! ...click to embiggen... (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012
1:38 pm	Great photoshoot last night at the Lab! Last night at the Lab, everyone was there, so we took the time to get a great photo session together with our official photographer Amy Enyart of JazziPhoto. Great stuff as usual, with new individual shots of everyone (including our newest colleague... more on that soon) and group shots of the full band and the touring lineup for Marscon next month. But meanwhile, we're furiously preparing for the Chewbacchus ball in a week and a half. Whew! Not enough time!!! But I guarantee it's gonna be a great big good time. And after that, things continue at a fast pace with the annual Rock'n'Roll Marathon preceding our tour to Twin Cities, followed by C.O.G. helping open a new local rock club two weeks afterwards! Our schedule: February 18, 2012 - Krewe of Chewbacchus Ball, New Orleans LA March 4, 2012 - Rock'n'Roll Marathon, New Orleans, LA March 6, 2012 - Murphey's, Memphis, TN March 8, 2012 - Frank's Power Plant, Milwaukee, WI March 9-11, 2012 - MarsCon, Bloomington MN March 24, 2012 - Triage, Jefferson LA (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, January 27th, 2012
4:12 pm	Woot! All charged up and ready for Wizard World Comic Con! Well, it's that time again! And it feels like only yesterday, but it's been a whole year since Wizard World Comic Con came to town, and now we're primed and ready to do it again tomorrow! We've put all our instruments on battery power and are ready to dispense SONIC SCIENCE to all within earshot! And our tech has advanced way beyond last year's capabilities, so BEWARE. If you're going to Comic Con, look and listen for an irregular band of villains roaming the concourse with the Krewe of Chewbacchus! SEE YOU THERE!!! (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
11:13 pm	Amazing and wonderful things... Things are afoot! Amazing and wonderful things... things that I can talk about and things that I can't! For starters though, there's this - our first show of the year, Friday night at the Squeaky Lizard club in Ocean Springs. This is going to be quite a show! For one thing, we'll be introducing our newest Genius - our new trombone player, Nurse Ivana! She's quite a potent player, and complements the sound exceptionally well. Sorry, I cannot show you pictures of her beforehand... you'll have to wait, or show up tomorrow night... In other news, we're filling in the dates for our March tour up to Marscon (the one in Minnesota), with C.O.G. appearances in Memphis on March 6th and Milwaukee on March 8th. March 7th however is a hole in our schedule and needs to be filled with a stop in Chicago. Any Chicago fans out there think they can help? Please drop me a line ASAP!!! Also have been getting some wonderful covers ready for the Krewe of Chewbacchus ball a month from now... music from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Firefly, and Labyrinth! LOTS of fun working on all of those and they're sounding absolutely great. Onward and upwards (or is it downwards? Sidewards? Diagonal?) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 6th, 2012
6:18 pm	The initial S.P.R.O.C.K.E.T.S. conscripts! ATTENTION: the following individuals have distinguished themselves from the rest of humanity by joining the official C.O.G. fan club 'S.P.R.O.C.K.E.T.S.' - don't let your puny brain hold YOU back! Join today and reap the benefits! S.P.R.O.C.K.E.T.S. 9th class: The Baron Cornelius Rottersham III, Dr. B. Munchausen, ComputerKing S.P.R.O.C.K.E.T.S. 5th class: Doxy Cotton, Dr. Deathwish, Prisoner 416, Dr. Incog Neato, Granny Drumbot, Prof. Bonck, Dr. R. Sole, Dr. Pepperpot, Rev. Dr. Felix 'Chili' Concarne, Dr. Dog E Bones, Prof. Bond, Dr. Sven T. Sexgore, Dr. Wild Card, The Invisible Raging Cod S.P.R.O.C.K.E.T.S. 4th class: Chief Technician Lug & Plug, Dr. Psyche Tropich, Dr. Hacksaw S.P.R.O.C.K.E.T.S. 3rd class: Lab Asst. Jezebel Erlenmeyer, Prof. Oswald Ignatius Reynard, Dr. R. Gaijin, Dr. R Video S.P.R.O.C.K.E.T.S. 2nd class (highest rank to date): Asst. Professor Dr. Doctor And how do you move up in rank? SIMPLE! You must EARN it by putting your MIND to work and write and submit an article or illustrate an illustration that is accepted for publication in the S.P.R.O.C.K.E.T.S. official bimonthly newsletter THE SPOKESMAN! Those ranked better than 6 are currently receiving the 2nd issue. Here's the first issue in PDF format CLICK HERE to join this almost criminally great fan club NOW! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 1st, 2012
10:40 am	Happy New Year! There... at last, I've done it. In a fitting tribute to the apolcalyptic aspects of the New Year, I have just composed and perfected the world's MOST ANNOYING SONG!!! I simply cannot wait to unleash it upon your ears ... bwaahahahaAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ...but how to best broadcast this biting ballad? Hmmm.... (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 29th, 2011
2:47 pm	Amazingness ahead in 2012... As we head headlong into 2012, apocalyptic plans are being drawn (and quartered) in the C.O.G. Secret Lab! We are the guests of honor at MarsCon in Minneapolis-St. Paul on the 11th of March, and will be touring on the way up there. That means people in Memphis TN, Chicago IL and either Madison or Milwaukee WI will be able to BOW to the majesty that is the Consortium of Genius! We're lining up the stops now - if you are in one of these areas and know any good places to play or bands to play with, please drop me a line! (Comment on this)