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// posted by Me @ 1/09/2004 03:43:00 PM

Postmodernism 

I suppose I'm guilty of Jargon in my papers too but I like to think that a lot of it is necessary as a shorthand for what would otherwise be more complicated descriptions. I am not, however, well versed in literary criticism and have trouble truly engaging the epistemlogical hermeneutics of syntactical signifiers in musical problematics. Or something like that. But this guy does. The best part:

The essential paradigm of cyberspace is creating partially situated identities out of actual or potential social reality in terms of canonical forms of human contact, thus renormalizing the phenomenology of narrative space and requiring the naturalization of the intersubjective cognitive strategy, and thereby resolving the dialectics of metaphorical thoughts, each problematic to the other, collectively redefining and reifying the paradigm of the parable of the model of the metaphor.

// posted by Me @ 1/09/2004 01:40:00 PM

1/07/2004

Say What? 

Speech recognition is getting there...but ever so slowly. Of course, if you're mean to your recognition engine, the results can be pretty bad. Don't talk with food in your mouse, don't speak too loudly, don't slur things, etc. But when you give it music...well, it can actually be pretty poetic in a screwed up random kind of way.

I fed the MS Speech Recognition system a Ben Folds Five song (Magic). After the first verse and refrain, this is what it came up with:

From my own land and and a two-man a plan Pan am up the zero there's a good man a tan and And they uses new as is today and you knew In her hand who so a and stuck And they a gang and gave a ten Z. A. A.

// posted by Me @ 1/07/2004 04:57:00 PM

I want funny "haha" not funny "hoho" 

I've always loved going into Chinese supermarkets. First of all, I love the food there, my being as mainland as one can possibly get. But also, I love the labels. Everything's wrong in wonderful ways and when I pretend to be some ignorant foreigner, it's hilarious. Everybody laughs cause it's funny. But I just wanted to share some amusing examples. These were taken with my phone so the quality isn't great but here goes:

Does whatever a Spader can! Got his Spader powers when bitten by a radioactive Spader. What's a Spader? And he is obviously cool because is "unmatched." To the eXtreem!	Ok, really, there are plenty of other stereotypically Chinese things you could slap as a brand on your noodle...but Kung Fu? And we wonder why all foreigners think every one of us can do martial arts and scream as if we had no balls like Bruce Lee...
I kid you not. I think Gatorade has some pretty disgusting commercials with their neon-colored sweat but who would really want to drink sweat??? And no, I don't think it's "sweet".	Other stores hope you come back again. Chinese markets thank you for your patronage but then demand that you not only come back but HURRY back.

And I'm done.

// posted by Me @ 1/07/2004 10:49:00 AM

UCSB Teachers Blow! 

Well, no they don't. At least not all of them. But some do.

After Monday's big fiasco with weight training and Hayashi sensei, I get up Wednesday morning thinking "well, no Japanese, but at least weight training will finally start." That would be an incorrect thought. Our lard butt[1] of a weight training instructor failed to show up AGAIN! Once bitten, twice shy, if we get to three, I'm just going to call him a retard. This, coupled with my fumes at Sugawara sensei and a certain head of the piano department elitist shiri yaro[2], taints the reputation of UCSB teachers a bit.


[1]I don't know that he is a lard butt or that he even has lard in his butt. I just dislike his absence.
[2]shiri yaro, directly translated from Japanese, would probably be something like "Butt-Bastard." I'm pretty sure nobody in Japan uses this phrase but I like it so there.

// posted by Me @ 1/07/2004 10:34:00 AM

1/06/2004

Cardinality 6 

PCSA now has display options and Forte names work up to cardinality 6. I think I'll generate the rest of the info (cardinalities 7-9) with already-entered info (deducing it from cardinalities 3-5).

Japanese is hard! or, at least, there are way too many things to write. The katakana/kanji/hiragana system wasn't quite as confusing as I thought, but if it took almost half an hour to get good with writing and reading a/i/u/e/o. Never thought I'd just sit down and practice characters again but here I am.

Been vegging (sort of) and just *thinking* random thoughts all day. Time to go practice me some pia to the no. This 11:00PM bedtime thing is kinda nice in that I don't get up at 12PM anymore. It's also freaky when I do fall asleep at 11:30 but don't wake up until 9:30. Sleeping 10 hours a day is not normal, I swear.

Oh, and Bilbo and company are running away from the goblins, it seems, with Orcrist and Glamdring in posession. The silly little hobbit also just fell down a dark tunnel and now has Gollum's precious.

// posted by Me @ 1/06/2004 07:24:00 PM

Screw You, Hayashi Sensei! 

So first day of classes was half a bust.

I get up early (8AM!), get ready, and go off to the RecCen (Gym) for my first class of Winter 2004 quarter - weight training. God damn you stop laughing. So I figured I would warm up and stretch before the instructor got there. Ended up doing half a workout before the instructor DIDN'T show up and one of the gym admin dudes cancelled the class at 9:30, half an hour after when the class was supposed to start. Screw you, whoever.

So then I go to Japanese 2 class at 10:00. Turns out that there's a Japanese 1 and so I was way behind on mhy Nihongo. It's my fault for not finding out, I guess, but when I asked the teacher if I could catch up in anyway, she just shot me back a flat "no." Come on sensei. In English even! So she wasn't helpful at all. Even less helpful when I went up and asked her if I could buy the class books and study on my own. It wasn't that she withheld information or anything. She just seemed so reluctant about helping me learn Japanese in anyway. Well screw you Hayashi sensei! I'll show you. I'll gozaimasu your akemashte up the freakin' omedetto! Yeah that's right. You don't even know what that means!

German and Serialism went alright. No classes today.

Let's see if the instructor shows up to weight training tomorrow...

// posted by Me @ 1/06/2004 04:19:00 PM

1/04/2004

Mithrandir's Got One of them Damn Rings! 

...and other such little bits of trivia, like Aragorn, son of Arathorn, who in turn is son of Arador, descendant from the line of Isildur, who smacked the dark lord around with Narcil...or that the Prince of Dol Amroth is named Imrahil (I think...), or even the name of the brother of head poomba eagle Gwaihir (Landroval). Why do I know these things? Because I've read Lord of the Rings one too many times. So why am I reading the trilogy again? I dunno. God knows I already have enough things to do. Maybe I just want to know the father of Elrohir (who is Elrond actually) or maybe I have a thing for Glorfindel (yeah, he saved Frodo, not Liv Tyler!). I dunno. But here I go with the Hobbit. Wish me luck.

// posted by Me @ 1/04/2004 09:52:00 PM

Some Storiesss 

So my mom came and visited me in Santa Barbara. She only stayed for one real day (she was en route to China) so I decided to show her around Santa Barbara. Not that I know my way around Santa Barbara, mind you, but whatever. So after walking around UCSB for a while and visiting the buildings, etc., we took off for downtown SB.

We arrived and parked at the visitor center and asked the people there when the sunset was, since we wanted to catch it along Stearn's Wharf. The people said around 5:30. We had a good 2:00 hours before then so we decided to walk up State Street (the main drag) and look at the stores/people/trees.

The first really interesting thing we hit was "The Robert Craymer Collection". Not much of a story here but my mom and I both liked the guy. He designs furniture, gets them built with his own workers, and shows them in his own store on State street. What's more, the designs are quite good. I actually wouldn't mind having this guy design/furnish most of my house. Good entrepreneurial-self-motivation-skill-ship-ment-ness.

So it gets near 5:00 and we start taking the trolley down to the waterfront. 5:30 sunset my ASS! The sun had already long gone off to REM sleep by the time we got to the Wharf, which was at 5:20. Stupid visitor center *mumble mumble*. So we walked along the wharf and mom bought some over priced souvenir shells instead. We drove to a Mexican restaurant afterwards (Carlito's on State street), had some Mexican grub and a margarita each (with which my mom took some medicine...uh...), and decided to go bake to a bakery we visited earlier.

On the way there, I see a store with Kite Boarding[1] materials in it. I get all giddy and hyper and the owner comes over and starts getting all giddy and hyper too cause he's just stoked that somebody is stoked about kite boarding. Hell yeah! We get to talking and he seems like a pretty cool guy. Tells me kiteboarding stories, answers some of my questions, and insists that I take a quick ride around the block on his electric scooter. OK. Alright, it was fun, I admit it. Kiteboarding, I find out though, is damn expensive. Guy (by the name of Eric) quoted 4-6 lessons at $75 each and a ~$1400 package of board, bindings, harness, kite, and associated gadgets. Ouch.

So we get back to Andersen's (the bakery) and have the best coffee/dessert we've ever had. The place is, for some reason, lined with great desserts, 3/4 of which contain marzipan, the almond past of the Gods. I would gladly club baby seals for that stuff. No I wouldn't, but trust me, it's good. Eventually we find out that the owner came over from Copenhagen about 30 years ago and all the desserts are her own recipes (influenced by traditional Danish desserts, of course). Awesome. We finish our Sarah Bernhadt (butter rum, marzipan, and chocolate mousse on a coconut macaroon, covered in dark chocolate...holy...just...it's holy), complimented the owner, and left satisfied.

Dropped my mom off at LAX today and came back to SB all tired. I've got abstracts due, piano practice to do, papers to refinish, Japanese/German/Weight Training (stop laughing!) to start tomorrow and I still want to buy a Z3 and go kiteboarding. Just so happens I'm wasting time checking out craigslist LA and find an easy to do web job that I applied for (update a site, write some HTML, upload some stuff, get some money). Guess that will go to the kiteboarding/Z3 fund. My mom is right. With my aspirations of sports cars, 9-foot concert grands, and new boarding sports, what am I doing trying to be a professor in a field with very little money? Why am I not staying at Paris and watching Metallica (since Metallica Kicks Ass, remember) in Las Vegas on New Year's eve?

...


...


Music Theory had better be good to me. That's all I'm sayin'...

[1]Kiteboarding: where you strap your feet into a board (snowboard style), hold on to a big kite, and have the wind drag you through the water/sand/snow. SSX-length airtime is possible, if still somewhat dangerous.

// posted by Me @ 1/04/2004 06:50:00 PM