Who is James Aric Keith

Born January 6th, 1972 in Flagstaff, Arizona. Lived in Arizona until the age of 12 then moved to Siloam Springs, Arkansas.

Married at 17 in June of 1989, and has been happily married for the entire time (to the same wonderful girl Lisa DeMoss).
Two and and a soon three children, Rick (19) and Arica (17) and Future son-in-law(in August) Josh Bishop and one cat, Willson aka Willie

A proud member of the Scottish clan Keith. But also proud of my Cherokee heritage. I like to do things with my hands, as well as opening my mind and just letting it flow. I entered the NaNoWriMo Competition in November and reached the 50,000 word challenge. In progress are five story lines, one of which is a trilogy, another is written for animation in the anime style. So I guess I'm a writer too.

Is an imagination freak. My ideas frequently drive me to extremes.

Loves to do too many different things. But, cars, computers, music, and audio are on the top of the list.

Just spent my first career in 24 years of floorcovering,and will be writing how-to's for DIYers here at squidoo very soon.

Recently the family business, suffered loss due to builders bankruptcies because of the housing market in the US, and subsequently lost my store. So along with my new found career starting me out at near minimum wage, now having worked my way up to Assistant Manager, and also having more time on my hands than before, I have decided to approach networkable income as a second job.

Now I am asked all the time about my nick. Key is derived from my last name Keith. At some point my addiction to hard Christian rock caused someone to call "my music" Key's Tone. Well that was prefixed with Sir, because in my family's history is the fact that our family held the position of Marishal of Scotland so the kids jokingly called me sir.

Now for the zerofourfive part of my name. It's my racing number. And eventually I will get back to the track, but the number actually comes from the Arizona license plate that was on my first car. (Watch for an upcoming lens on Patriot soon) The plate number was VAN 045 and I still have it.

The last sticker was 1982, when we moved from Arizona to Arkansas. My parents bought the car new in 1976 and it became mine around 1988, though it never saw the road after that.

My 1976 Dodge Colt Carousel has lost it's Denim top and most of it's paint, and it's engine and tranny is sitting in the engine bay of a 1978 Chevy LUV (look for a lens on Dezert Cruzer soon). Anyway, that's that story.

Other places I have been (or some of my other projects):
Keystone045 my main dA site
CSC Club a club I run dedicated to the use of Child Stock Photos
5m4rtThr08 where most of my writing is
False Hope Band until I get around to doing our website
False Hope Swag

It has recently been suggested to me that my philosophy of being an old fashioned gear-head isn't that far from being a SteamPunk.

Interesting...

I have always liked that genre, and it makes sense. Thanks guys, for find me a genre to fit into!

Cars -
Design and art (from concept drawing to ergonomic design)
Mechanical (several years as my own mechanic)
Painting (I always do my own painting)
Fiberglass (Mostly from the audio work, but have built my own ground effects kit)
Bodywork (Hammer and Dolly, man)
Welding (Not that great at it, but I can get by)
Metalwork (again, hammer and dolly)
Window Tint (Thousands of feet of film and several gallons of the spray)
Vinyl Graphics (don't have a die cutter, so I have to knife cut all of my own)
Audio!!! (sound quality and SPL, design and install, as well as building some of my own components)
Apholstry (years of carpeting staircases has help to create some imaginative designs in interiors and audio sculptures)
Racing (drag, autocross, rallye, drift, dirt)

Computers and Electronics -
Keeping old computers running (lots of different kinds)
Basic software manipulation (pipes, plugins, some compiling)
BASIC and Visual BASIC (especially for PLCCs)
HTML and web design (learning SEO stuff again)
Digital Art (Photoshop and Painter, and 3D. Getting ready to start a comic strip and an anime based on some of my writings)
Robotics (and toyed with traffic light programming in school)
Building hardware (soldering, design, troubleshooting)
Electronic music equipment, see music below
I can fix a TV or VCR or microwave but the parts are worth more to me than the equipment...

Music -
Guitar 6 and 7 string (own 8 - 6 strings and 1 - 7 string)
Bass Guitar 4 and 5 string (own 3 - 4 strings and 1 - 5 string)
Some Keyboard/Piano (enough to get me in trouble)
Drums
Repair (electrical and hardware)
Computers (played with numerous concoctions of Sonar, Acid, Audacity, etc.)

Software I Play With -
Photoshop 5.5 (I'm not going to upgrade either)
Illustrator 8 (I don't use too much)
ImageReady (Optimising images for web is awesome)
HTML-kit (My favorite editor, does HMTL, CSS and also is great for ftp uploading)
FlipBook (A sweet animation software that works much like the old school way of cartooning)
ToonBoom Studio (Even sweeter, creates animations very similar to working in Poser. Can also do 3D camera work and Flash)
ToonBoom Screenplay (A compiling software for working with a group or just putting your outlines together)
Painter 8 (A hearty natural painting program)
Firestarter (The natural progression from ImageReady into a Flash animation)
Acid (A sequencing software)
Sonar6 (Sequencer and Arranging software that can also finalise)
Audacity (Opensource audio that nearly compares to Sonar)

Audio -
Sound Engineer for a number of bands and churches over the past 25 years.
Recorded my own stuff on occation
Mild competition in Sound Quality
Mild competition in SPL
Owned an auto audio shop for a while
Built several custom audio vehicles

I will of course have links to all of my favorite sites on these subject as I open up my hot rod favorites list up to you.

I'm a complete car nut. I follow the old hot rodder ways: If you can't do it yourself then it doesn't need doing. Or run what you brung.

I'll be getting to much of my stuff as I go along here. For now check up on my car stuff at my kustom blog.

I have always done all of my own computer repairs and even as it sits right now, I have an old server running next to me at this very moment, while I type this out for you to read.

In my storage is a monster project that I have dubbed Admiral TuRuS. Turus is the name of the super computer that was built in one of my short stories back when everybody's idea of a super computer was inaccessible by layman's hands, much less the fact that todays gaming computers dwarf those capabilities a thousand-fold.

Anyway, Admiral was an HP1000 mainframe. The hard drive is as big as the desk this keyboard is sitting on, (an old school desk BTW), the computer itself is the size of a small deep freezer, and had to be accessed by dummy stations, which were just monitors with keyboards built in.

When I'm finished of course, Admiral will have the mother boards of about 20 to 30 old computers all networked together, with a huge raid array of USB drives. Of course, the problem is...

This computer has been sitting on one of my back burners for about 15 years... Even with computers being given to me, I still can't make the transitions to get admiral to work.

Eventually this computer will be instrumental in my render farm for my animation projects, and the robotic controls for my assembly line, when I restart Arachnid Audios, product line.

"Your going to build a robot assembly line?" Yeah, with all of these printers laying around I have the perfect parts to make all kinds of CNC styled machines.

Stay tuned you'll see.

My art is complicated.

I have may different influences from photography, traditional painting, digital painting, photo effects, photo manipulation, casting, pottery, swordsmith, luthier (yes guitar building is an art!), woodworking, sculpture, etc.

But, I am really looking forward to creating my first manga comic. This project will probably be Online in a blog format, like many of the online comics these days.

To see what my first attempt will be based on, I am writing the novel form of it now over at WEbook. Make sure to read Maraude. Neighbor's Basement is my NaNoWriMo entry, and Stage is going to be the basis of my second web comic.

Anyone interested in helping, just let me know!

Ok, first, there are very slim chances that you will find something I can't sit through and have positive comments about. Music has been a mainstay of mine for so long, that you won't find a genre that I won't listen to. Even rap and techno. I may not care much for ska or disco, but each have positive points too.

I think a person is too closed minded if they listen to only one genre of music, though I do tend to lean toward either heavy bass (gotta give those sub-woofers something to do, and I am a bass player) or heavy music, from the hard 80's rock, 90s metal, to especially new stuff from the melodic death crowd, and some techno and hyper soul and everything in-between.

Musically, right now False Hope is not my only outlet, though I do have some sound-tracking coming up, My brother and I are also in an, unnamed band that plays Christian Hard Music.

Also, I might just have to put a fake band together to promote an upcoming novel I'm writing over at WEbook. So I might be hitting the road for auditions soon. Interested? Let me know, I'm also looking for voice actors and artists for the anime.

NEW!!!
Stage may have just been selected as a run for a new podcasting company. So my fake Blown Pageant may have to come sooner than expected! Looking for some help!

Constantly expanding, this area will be the eventual posting and RSS feed of the False Hope band blog, covering everything about the band from how I set up the sound system or what repairs were made to our old equipment, to what cover songs we are working on at the next rehearsal.

Also, this up and coming blog will feature highlights from each gig we do, and/or what I'm doing to promote us online.

A professional sound tech and designer for 15 years, I run the sound for our band, which everyone knows that from the stage, isn't an easy task, especially if once we're playing, I can't go out front anymore.

Much of my experience comes from running worship systems as well. Any one who has done that knows that's not easy either.

I have competed in SQ and dB over the years with several different systems, and my rebuilt amplifiers and home-built crossovers, line drivers and signal processors aren't just run of the mill.

I have build and maintained many hundreds of sound systems over my 20 years of playing with car audio, and am proud to say I'm going to be starting yet another soon.

Working my way through the mess in my head. Organization is a skill I have, but I let everything pile up, and with NaNoWriMo coming up I just don't have much time...

Music is a passion. I'm not the best at it but I have always enjoyed it. I put up a bio lens on False Hope, and I thought a how-to lens dedicated to making a band would be handy, because I have been through this several times already.

Floorcovering, well it was the family business. Until the recent housing fallout killed off my biggest clients it was successful too. Anyway, I hope to unload my 24 years worth of experience on you guys here. Dealing with everything I can think of, from choosing the product to installing it properly... *cups hands to mouth* I said Install it properly HGTV

That series of lenses has been started here. Look for much more in this one and a new parent directory linking not just to carpet but tile, vinyl, laminate, hardwood, how to build showers and etc.

Also, one of my pageviews than anything else is 10 Ways Expensive Gas Is Good. I will be re-editing this one often so make sure to come back to it. You can see this work in progress ...here... So come on over and see what my new buzz is about.

This one is one of my design passions at the moment. New Urbanism is sweeping the nation as a move toward our heritage as well as making things "greener." New Urbanism is currently under fire because many of the projects are being built on fresh ground rather than renewing old neighborhoods and towns.

I'd love to see more from you guys on this subject. And while I haven't started my massive project yet, because of lack of funding, much less I would have to find a town center that would agree to my designs. I have already started work on much of the building design and important changes such as wastewater and storm water removal, and ideas for being self powered and self sustained. More on this later.

Now you can also go to new urbanism dot org for lots more information.

This one is still in infancy. It will be a while before this one is ready to put together.

Other ideas will also be: guitar lessons, how to lessons in several contruction trades, how to in several woodworking trades especially luthier and miniature modelling.

Music production and mixing, as well as PR and marketing a band how tos will be combined in with the on going How To Build A Band lens group.

I will also be linking to my other online enterprises as I develop them.

Right now I have been focusing my affiliates on music so without further adieu:

Musician's Hut: music for musicians, currently one of my favorite eshops for drums, with either a 10% discount for orders over $250 or a $100 gift certificate. This one of the little guys like me, so I hope to help them against Musicians Friend and Guitar Center (even though I'm an affiliate for them too.)