11/01/2003
And I totally forgot: Saw Stephen Hawking at UCSB (in fron of Panda Express of all places...he didn't eat there...). Caught me off guard when I saw him and I just assumed that there's another guy with an advanced LCD control system and wheelchair who REALLY looks like Stephen Hawking. But not. It was the man himself. Wish I'd...I dunno...done something...though it's not like I could have asked for his autograph or anything...
// posted by Me @ 11/01/2003 11:24:00 PM
Mwa. Delicious. Beautiful. Well done, if I do say so myself. And I do.
Pages and links and things are working the way I want them to. Navigation links are externally sourced in a JScript file that every file refers to so the formatting is the same across the board. Also, that means I only have to change one file for the content to reflect on every page. Same thing with the stylesheet that I use. I can change one stylesheet and it will apply to every page. Obviously, individual pages can be manually overriden to use different styles. Yum.
Well, not much content is up since I just spent 2 hours formatting and making sure everything works. So many bugs...so hard to get everything exactly the way I want it. And little things like adaptive spacer tables take forever to fix.
// posted by Me @ 11/01/2003 09:14:00 PM
And did I mention my desktop also now looks like this?
Thank God for photoshop...
// posted by Me @ 11/01/2003 01:24:00 PM
Well, following the bert, here be my workstation. It's not nearly as bert's ergonomic insane dual monitor CS setup. But for now, I can revel in having two laptops. Yeah, I know the picture "blows shit", to borrow a phrase. I don't have photoshop yet...
- Cheapo Altec Lansing computer speakers
- Sony Ericsson T616
- IBM Thinkpad T40 + Port Replicator II
- Crappy MS mouse
- MaPod and MaPod carrying case
- Dell Inspiron 4000
In other news, there's a Halloween '03 album up. Frightening.
Still kinks in the coding of this site that I'll have to work out at some point. I think the best thing to do is to do keep to normal HTML for the rest of the pages and just have the external source JScript business be only used for blog. Should work, me thinks.
// posted by Me @ 11/01/2003 01:02:00 PM
Mmm. Halloween came and went. A costume? What costume?
Well let's see. Friends gave me the choice (since I wasn't really wanting to get into a costume) of being a butterfly/fairy-type thing or a vampire. Now a vampire is easy. I get to get into a tux and I just need some white face paint, maybe a bit of blood and some fake teeth, and a cape. But not cape could be found. So I didn't really think about what to "be". So friends came over, gave me some fairy wings, told me to put on some white pants and go as some sort of a butterfly [read: gay butterfly]. So I did, switched a shirt for a muscle shirt wife beater thing, put on some shades and wrist guards and went out like that. What was I in the end? Beats me. Suffice it to say, condemning picture were taken and just like all the other pictures I promised, they'll be up eventually...
And now it is most definitely sleep time.
But perhaps a little Ben Folds first...
// posted by Me @ 11/01/2003 01:08:00 AM
10/31/2003
Halloween? What's Halloween? I have to go in a costume??? oy...
Took the T40 to the library today and am I glad to have this thing. It's just light enough to carry it around in one hand among in the stacks. Copied Bibliographical info. (call numbers most importantly) on to some text editor and ran around the stacks looking for books. Granted, not quite as good as a piece of paper in terms of portatbility but much more versatile and connected to the rest of the digital world that I live in.
Since I think the external case is fugly, I downloaded some Mac OSX and Jaguar themes to overlay on my windows and toolbars since I've got the power to run them now. It's not a HUGE difference but brushed graphite certianly looks better than the default WindowsXP (Windows Xtremely Poor) theme.
Halloween festivities tonight...uhm...right...yeah...party. woo.
// posted by Me @ 10/31/2003 05:22:00 PM
I wake up in the night
All alone and it's alright
The chemicals are wearing off
Since you've gone
The days go on, the lights go off and on
And nothing really matters when you're gone
If you think that you feel nothing at all
If you don't (If you don't)
Then you don't (No, you won't)
If you won't
Then you won't
And I will
Then I will
Yeah, and I will consider you gone
Am I obsessed with this song? Why yes. Yes I am. w00t! T40!
// posted by Me @ 10/31/2003 01:05:00 AM
10/30/2003
Whoo hoo! Typing on my new T40 now. Nice lightweight all-purpose laptop. And sturdy. I still think thinkpads are fugly but at some point practicality overrules aesthetics. Mmmm...got two laptops going on my desk now. Fun. Got to go to a music jamming session now...maybe a pic or two later.
// posted by Me @ 10/30/2003 04:23:00 PM
Didn't go to the concert. Ah well. If it were Argerich, I definitely would have gone, seeing as how I'm in love with her playing. The pure passion of it is irresistable. But $30 for crappy acoustics isn't so good...especially if I'm hearing a damn good piano player.
So instead...Quote of possibly the *year*:
"OK, so there's this anus...have you licked it?"
'nuff said.
// posted by Me @ 10/30/2003 03:25:00 AM
10/29/2003
Murray Perhaia concert tonight at the Arlington. $30 for really crappy not-good-sound seats. Hmmm...Should I stay or should I go? If I stay there will be biblio. If I go there will be double. C'mon and let me know. Should I stay or should I go? Key point: I'm broke.
// posted by Me @ 10/29/2003 05:30:00 PM
Holy hell...I feel nice having a 1.3 GigaHURTS processor in my new computer and some people decide to release a freakin' 8 TERAHURTS optical chip. That's some mad hurtsage.
// posted by Me @ 10/29/2003 11:28:00 AM
Comments? Did someone say comments? BEHOLD!! COMMENTS!
Now all the people that don't read this site can berate me.
// posted by Me @ 10/29/2003 11:11:00 AM
Hell YEAH! I repeat: HELL YEAH!! Got Blogger to fully cooperate with my page, aesthetics, external sources and everything. The ability to design your own template with Blogger server-side filled variables is really nice. It took a couple hours to get this to work the way I wanted it to, but it's faster than writing my own program. And god forbid, a web-based interface.
Ah yes, my programming urge has been somewhat sated for a bit. That and I just didn't want to do music after today's midterm. I've been doing music non-stop for a loooong while now. Need a teensy break (which I took this afternoon and tonight, reading a book, eating some chocolate, programming, and in general trying not to think about all the work I've got to do by Thursday).
And there's plenty of things on this website to keep me busy...toying with the look, and adding all the content that I have. Alright, it's really time for sleep.
// posted by Me @ 10/29/2003 02:16:00 AM
Ben Folds (commercial site | fan site) of former Ben Folds Five fame (and currently of his own solo fame) is a frickin' genius. I've always liked the Ben Folds Five songs, especially Magic, Mess, Army, and Brick. The famous ones. Magic and Mess especially because they're both depressing as hell. After going solo, I'm terrifically glad he keeps the same sort of depressive subject for his songs on his Rockin' the Suburbs album.
I've just been listening to the album and been amazed at how many of the songs on it I like. I think I might buy the album ;) I've also always liked the harmonic vocabulary of Ben Folds. He's a nut on the piano and he actually uses interesting chords that are just freaking wonderful in their simplicity. I'm also just a big fan of Ben Folds's voice. So all things considered, I guess I'm a Ben Folds (Five) fan. Very few bands I actually like as a whole...of the random ones I've liked in the not-too-distant past: Offspring for various albums, Fuel, Guster, and Ben Folds Five. Not exactly a common thread through all those bands.
And that duet on the third verse of Gone is just effective...as effective as the creepy third verse of Carrying Cathy. Go take a listen. Simply great stuff.
And, to add to all of it, Rockin' the Suburbs (one of the funnier tracks on the album) was directed by Weird Al. Interesting.
I still want my computer! not coming until Thursday though...
// posted by Me @ 10/29/2003 12:26:00 AM
10/28/2003
So after an afternoon of reading and relaxing and now futzing around with JScript:
The only way to include an external file into a DIV seems to be to use IFRAME as a buffer and to load the source of the IFRAME into the DIV. One work around could be to use the SCRIPT tage with the SRC attribute to include in things. Problem is, then everything is read as JScript and everything then needs to be "document.write"-ed in, which doesn't work for dynamic files. Or rather, it would, but there would need to be a file parser, which doesn't work. So there we have it. This whole IFRAME thing works, but man is that annoying.
Alright, enough futzing around for one night. Time to draw transformational networks, don't ya think? Yeah...
Oh, and w00t! I got my port replicator. Now I just need that computer...
// posted by Me @ 10/28/2003 06:06:00 PM
Mmmm...yummy. First midterm of my UCSB career. Topic: Shostakovich. Length: 1hr. 15 min. Status with the ladies: They all still want me. What can I say? I'm a chick magnet...a babe conductor...a logarithm...for the ladies. The test was OK. Quite fair though there seemed to be a lot material to cover beforehand. Though now, in retrospect, it wasn't so bad at all. It's not like the teacher asked me how the manuscript of the as of yet unfinished seventh symphony was packaged when it almost got lost on the train from Moscow to Kubiyshev (to which I would have said "Cloth!"). Overcompensation and worrying the heck out of oneself can be a good thing though. You think you're going to fail. You go in and fail. And then you get your grade back, and hey! what do you know! You didn't fail! I mean, a D- is NOT failing.
So armed with a couple of tracking numbers, I can now say I've got an IBM Thinkpad T40 coming my way. Specs for the nerds out there:
- 1.3 Gig Pentium-M
- 30 GB ATA-100 hard drive (4200RPM)
- 512 MB RAM
- 32MB ATI Radeon 7500
- 14.1" Screen (1024x768)
- DVD/CD-RW combo drive
- Bluetooth
- No wireless (yet). Gonna upgrade me some Wi-Fi at some point.
- 1" thick, 4.5 pounds (travel weight) light, appx 5 hrs battery life
- Some light to light up a keyboard when it's dark, and a magnesium alloy casing
Oh, and I also got meself a nice Port Replicator II to go along with the 'pooter, so I won't have to plug in/disconnect a mouse, AC adapter cord, ethernet cord, keyboard, stereo connection, S-video connection, printer cable, and god knows what else every time I go to school with the 'pooter, which is, as of now, almost every day.
So now that the midterm is over with, I've still got to do a transformational network graph, and get familiar with 15 music-related periodicals. oof. And I'm supposed to have a costume for Halloween? Maybe I'll just show up half naked. That'll scare people. On second thought, disgust might be a better word.
I really got to get around to actually making a website, instead of half a blog...will see what I can do about that perhaps this weekend. Javascript calls me.
Oh, speaking of JScript, and in order to satisfy my programming urges (EASY programming urges), I think I should make a nice Pitch-Class Set analyzer. A PCset is an abstract (integer-based) way of looking at musical pitches in the western 12-note chromatic scale. Order is discarded and octave equivalency holds so that an A waaaaaaaaaaaaay up on the piano is the same as a low A farted out by a tuba. So let's say you have a major chord: C-E-G. That's 0-4-7. Makes sense, right? C=0, C#=1, and so on. The weird part is abstracting out these sets into prime forms, which are a "normalized" version unordered version of these notes. So C-E-G is actually (037) (which is the same thing as a C minor chord). You can see this if you take a look at the intervallic content of C-E-G: rather than having a major and a minor third, a minor chord is just a minor and major third. So it's just a major chord in reverse. Which means that 0-4-7 = 0-3-7. In any case, certain types of post-tonal [read:second viennese school] music lends itself well to PCset analysis. The problem with generating the data (we haven't even gotten to the analytical part yet) is getting everything into prime form. You get used to it but it still takes a while to think Bb=10, and D#=3 and G=7 so we have 3-7-10, which reduces down to a prime form of 0-3-7, which is set 3-11, in Forte nomenclature. Thinking of doing a JScript based set calculator that generates, given a set, pertinent information. Like Z-equivalents, interval vectors, inclusion relations, inversion/retrograde/retrogade inversion forms, M relations, and so on and so forth. It's going to take a while to code in all the set names and everything but lord knows I'll probably be using it again at one time or another so why not. Maybe leave it for posterity too.
OK, time to rest a bit and be lazy (not too much though). I think it's well deserved after a midterm, don't you? Of course you do.
// posted by Me @ 10/28/2003 11:52:00 AM
