What I was like in Elementary School?

Posted on 16th February 2011 in Something Daily

I remember a time in elementary school when I was walking along right down the middle of the playground with my friends Ben and David. There were kids playing and having recess all over the place – the cool kids were over to our right playing kickball (Eric, Greg, and Zach especially – they had an immeasurable impact on my personality. I got bullied a decent amount in elementary school.) and there were probably some girls (Natalie and Stephanie) over in the trees pretending to be horses and playing in the dirt. Ben and David and I were talking about which animal we would morph into if we were Animorphs, and just walking down the middle of the playground. I was probably in the middle of a sentence (one of us was, at least) when I was leveled by a kickball that hit me directly in the side of my face, having been kicked from about thirty or forty feet away. I remember getting immediately to my feet and continuing to walk as if nothing had happened. On a related note, if I were an Animorph, I would morph into a wolf. My roommate says he’d morph into a dragon, and my other roommate says velociraptor (my second choice).

There was also a time before the tetherball got removed from our playground (because this guy tried to strangle this girl with the rope, or because kids were hitting it too hard, or something) when I walked over to a group of girls who I probably thought were cute and addressed them with “hi guys.” This girl Grace responded with something like “uh, we’re not guys…” Since then, I’ve always had it in the back of my head that girls secretly don’t like being collectively referred to as “guys”.


Look how cute I was in elementary school. Were you this cute? Probably not.
Picture me with a Gameboy and a Lil’ Bow Wow CD.

I was pretty cool when I was around the ages of 7 to 11. I listened to Nirvana and Wierd Al, and I have several distinct memories of running around the playground with my shirt collar around the back of my head screaming something about the end of the world. I was certainly “that one kid”. I still am. I played a pretty substantial amount of Diddy Kong Racing, XG2, Lego Racers, Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, 1080 Snowboarding, Pokemon Snap, Banjo Kazooie, Gex, Glover, Wave Racer, Mario Party 2, and Jet Force Gemini. But the first N64 game I ever played, before I even owned the console, was Rampage: World Tour. I was also a Pokemon card and game aficionado; I often brought my Gameboy Pocket to school to trade with people with the link cable. And I was crazy about Lil’ Bow Wow’s first album, “Beware of Dog”.

One of my best friends to this day is a person who I know because in elementary school, I heard that he knew all the lyrics to “All Star” by Smash Mouth, and I really wanted to meet this person. I was amazed that someone could actually remember all the words to a song so amazing.

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I am the Supreme Ninja!

Posted on 12th February 2011 in Something Daily

It had been a little while since I’d recorded or written any music, and today I had an excuse to do so again for my assignment in music theory. The assignment was to write something that uses an “exotic” scale, mode, quote, tone cluster, or something of that nature that was used a lot in 20th century composition. I sort of did the assignment, if you count writing a Mega Man-esque piece in LSDJ and including a few whole-tone scale runs and random note groupings as “doing the assignment”. I mean it fits the requirements, and nobody else is going to have one that sounds anything like mine (at least I feel like that’s a safe bet). I had intended to get a lot of homework done today, and of course I ended up getting totally caught up in the writing and recording of my Gameboy piece. That’s pretty typical of me – I always leave the work that’s not fun for last. Bad strategy. I still have to write a paper tonight (I know it’s Saturday, don’t worry about it). But check it out; this is the first thing I’ve written EVER to include a guitar track, let alone one played by myself. My guitar skills pretty much limit me to power chords, but that’s exactly what I wanted in this piece. I just finished recording and mixing it a few minutes ago, so here it is. I’m proud of it.

Level Two by Raised by Robots

On a totally unrelated note, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie “Shogun Assassin”, but if you haven’t, you should probably get on that. It’s a samurai movie that’s actually a compilation of the best parts from the first two movies in the “Lone Wolf and Cub” series; as a result, the plot makes a marginal amount of sense. But it’s got some sweet fight scenes and a lot of awesomeness packed into a small space. It’s all original Japanese dialogue, and dubbed quite badly in English, which adds to its charm. The special effects are totally sweet, mostly the awesomely not-real blood squirts, and there are a lot of good lines. All around good movie. Also, I don’t know if it’s close enough to claim that it’s the “basis” for Kill Bill, but Tarantino sure owes Shogun Assassin a lot – he even acknowledges this at one point in Kill Bill volume 2 when Bill asks his daughter what video she wants to watch before bed. Check it out.

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What do you mean, “There’s no sound?”

Posted on 28th January 2011 in Something Daily

The thing about electric gear is that, a lot of times, it doesn’t work right. Hard drives fail, CDs get scratched, files get corrupted, Gameboy screens get cracked, whatever. Accepting these failures as inevitable, it’s the job of the troubleshooter (or “tech”) to correctly diagnose the problem and then efficiently and nondestructively resolve it. Simultaneously working as a studio tech and being poor, I’m beginning to gain some real experience in beating what usually seems like an insurmountable issue upon first inspection, regarding both the school studios and my own personal recording and computer gear.

My new-used copy of F-Zero for SNES, for example, wouldn’t start when I loaded the cartridge, no matter how much air I puffed into the contact. This isn’t an issue for me anymore, though, for any game, as I’ve discovered that a bit of isopropyl alcohol and a cotton swab fixes that problem a good deal of the time (in my experience, 100 per cent of the time). I did something similar with my friend’s Double Dragon NES cart, whose contacts were actually coated on both sides with a thick layer of white paint. The paint wasn’t anywhere to be found on the body of the cartridge, which makes me think that someone deliberately painted the contacts to make it unplayable. Who would do that to Double Dragon? Rubbing alcohol got it right off, though.

Of course, this is a very basic example, but it’s indicative of my movement away from the panicked feeling of having something for which I paid a lot of money suddenly not function properly. My tendency is to go into crisis mode as soon as my computer, SNES, microphone, etc. starts not working – a strategy which typically compounds the issue rather than resolve it. As I learn more about the common fixes and methods of discovering the uncommon ones, I move away from this habit. I attempted to repair my $300 condenser microphone not long ago, and though it was panic that drove me to remove the casing, I learned from the experience.

I woke up this morning, booted my Linux partition, and found myself staring at a hung startup screen. I could feel a bit of the old panic, but I knew at least that my files were all safe on the Mac volume. The most important thing I could do at that point was carefully remember any and all changes that I’d made to the system between this boot and the last one. That, combined with a few well thought-out googlings led me to the realization that I’d inadvertently disabled the driver for my GPU, causing a hung boot every time the graphics started to load. At that point, as with most Ubuntu issues, it was just a package download of the right driver to make it all better. This was a scary experience, but I’m a better tech for it.

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An Incomplete List of Movies and Music that have Made Me Cry

Posted on 19th January 2011 in Something Daily

I don’t know if I’ll ever get tired of listening to Enema of the State. I don’t listen to Blink-182 for the middle-school nostalgia, despite the fact that that would be a great excuse. I actually got into them just before coming to school. Pop-punk is sweet, don’t worry about it. I like how shiny and ‘produced’ Blink sound on that album, like that one Sum 41 album that has “Fat Lip” on it, and Dookie by Green Day. Those have the sound that I love, and the whiny teenage lyrics that I don’t really care about pretending not to love. I mention this because, as i sit here in my parents’ dining room, my laptop, trackball, and external drives spread out around me, typing whatever pops into my head, I am blasting the previously mentioned Blink-182 album in my earbuds and mentally adding a major 3rd harmony to every single vocal line, because even if it’s not ‘there’, it’s still there – and if it’s not, it should be. It’s not like I have any big memories attached to Enema, I guess it’s just the feeling. – I just noticed that at the beginning of “The Party Song”, you can hear Mark saying “here we go, motherfuckers”. As I mentioned, this album will never get old to me.

Also, the Green Day American Idiot broadway show was fairly rad. I don’t know if it’s still running, but I liked it when I saw it back in September. I cried a little bit during the title song.

  • Also at the end of the Peter Jackson King Kong movie, when the planes keep shooting him and his girlfriend is freaking out;
  • also during the Extras finale when Ricky Gervais looks right at the camera and apologizes to Maggie;
  • also at about six different points throughout the Lord of the Rings trilogy, including “You shall not pass!” and Theoden’s pep talk before the battle of Pelennor Fields where he hits everybody’s spears with his sword;
  • also the first section of “Echoes” from Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii;
  • also when Largeman and Sam kiss in the rain to Simon and Garfunkel in Garden State;
  • also at the part in the live version of “And You and I” where the build ends and they go to the “I listened hard but could not see” section;
  • also the second verse of Yes’ “Sound Chaser” from Relayer

That’s enough for now; seriously, I could go on.

I have this bad habit of getting totally obsessed with a project until it’s finished. It happened a few weeks back when I reworked my automatic data backups, and when I thought I was going to get totally into drawing, both to varying degrees. Something similar happened this morning when I got it in my head that today was the day I would finally draw the new header for this website. I worked from about 11 AM to 6 PM without stopping or eating, scanning each section of this new monstrosity separately, eventually creating this…thing right here.

I think it looks wonderfully homebrewed. We’ve got a stegosaurus, a Gameboy, an LED, a capacitor, and a little pink guy all hanging out and playing some classic video games. They’re having fun. I wish I had a sentient Gameboy to chill with. Break would have been significantly more fun, at least. I realize that there’s only one stegosaurus on it, and no moon to be seen. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, I hope you like it, but that’s where my involvement with your opinion on the matter ends. If you don’t like it…..GTFO. Or wait a few months for the day when I get bored with it and make a new one.

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Close to the Edge

Posted on 19th December 2010 in Something Daily

I had one of those days today. By that, I mean that I went to bed at 1:30, woke up without an alarm at 7:15, and had nothing too pressing to get done. As a result, I’ve spent the whole day in a state of lethargy and lack of interest in anything. I had an interesting night last night, for sure. Among other things, London, Bryant and I watched Shogun Assassin and ate Insomnia Cookies together. London really liked the movie, which I’m so happy about! I’ve always thought it’s awesome, and for some reason assumed that no one else would. I’ve noticed, actually, that that’s a theme of my life. I have a certain set of interests, which I think are awesome (obviously). I have this perception, though, that by the simple virtue of me thinking something is awesome, other people automatically don’t. I’ve come to learn recently that this isn’t really the case through meeting certain people and being upfront about my interests, but for some reason I have this perception nonetheless. I’m getting over it, it’s just a pretty slow process.

So yesterday I discovered that Stuyvesant town is actually a sweet place to skate, even for someone with skills as limited as my own. There are a lot of nice smooth streets with not many cars or people around. It’s a pretty secluded apartment complex, and I get the impression that it’s expensive. The people that live there seem nice enough. But I went there yesterday and today, and succeeded in not eating pavement on one of those two occasions. Like I said before, I’m getting better, slowly but surely.

I also listened to “Close to the Edge” by Yes for the first time in ages yesterday. I mean I just sat in front of my speakers and listened for all eighteen minutes. It was incredible. The bass tone on that song is unbeatable, the groove on the verses is just nuts, and the organ/synth solo segment still gives me chills. As Jon Anderson said, that song is such a journey. It got me pumped up for the evening, at least.

Today was all about catching up on last-minute homework that I procrastinated on and watching Arrested Development. I’m actually going to go finish world 8 of New Super Mario Bros. Wii right now. But first, by way of an apology for yesterday’s musical travesty, here’s a slightly better-tuned piece that I composed about a month ago with a Gameboy emulator for the video game I’m designing.

Level One by Raised by Robots

I love this piece. It’s probably the most complex composition I’ve ever written, but I don’t write that much, so I see this as a success. Check my soundcloud for another Gameboy song and some beats that I made a while ago. I’m quite, quite tired right now. Goodnight!

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Secret Santa and Sufjan

Posted on 14th November 2010 in Something Daily

I haven’t been paying very good attention to blogging for the past week or so. It’s been an incredibly hectic and stressful bunch of days recently, and blogging hasn’t been foremost in my thoughts, which is why posts often go up at or around midnight. It’s also why they’re sometimes devoid of much content. But as of right now, I’m trying to get back into it.

The past week has been full of projects for school, essentially. I had a big pileup of audio projects due in a really short span of time, some of which were remembered a lot later than they should have been, resulting in frenzied last-minute sessions and desperate text messages. Our bluegrass Lil Jon cover encountered a major setback this week when all of our previously recorded material mysteriously vanished from the tape. Additionally, we remembered the fact that the music for the student film for which we’re doing audio post was due about fifteen hours before the deadline, which of course resulted in a bunch of extra work for me. Normal homework levels persisted in other classes, as well as the final electronics project looming closer. I plan to build a MIDI controller for Logic with an Arduino, but haven’t really started with that yet.

Somehow in the midst of all this, I managed to make a rage comic, write a bit of new Gameboy music, successfully scan and enhance a pencil drawing I did, and configure my MacBook for a dual boot with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx and Mac OS X. I just need to have projects, I guess. I feel wrong somehow if I don’t. I may draw something later today, or try and enhance another one of the old drawings I did a few weeks ago. But having time to recover from these (and some other unmentioned) stresses is the main plan for today. I’m going to play some New SMB Wii and do some drawing as I get ready for the Sufjan Stevens show tonight. As I type this, in fact, I’m giving my first full listen to Age of Adz in preparation for seeing it live tonight. I’m quite excited for this show, as I’ve never seen Sufjan before and I’ve loved his music since middle school. You can be sure that there’ll be a rundown of the show up here tomorrow.

Additionally, I managed to find time yesterday to sign up for Reddit’s Secret Santa gift exchange. So I made myself a profile and checked out the subreddit – as it turns out, Redditgifts admins use an algorithm that pairs you with someone based on geography and common interest, and then you go out and buy them a little gift and ship it to them. I haven’t really done anything like this before (that is, becoming so IRL involved in an online community), so I’m quite excited for this, both to see the reaction when my partner gets a rad gift, and to see what someone sends me! Check it out – Subreddit or Reddit Gifts. It’s going to be so much fun for me.

That’s a synopsis of most of my life at this point. We’ll see where I go from here. I’m going to go now and play some New SMB Wii, but here’s Link rising from the dead first. Have a great day, if you can!

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Down in town

Posted on 6th November 2010 in Something Daily

So I spent all of yesterday either at work or traveling – from 8 AM to 6:30 PM. It was a really long day, so please excuse me for not posting yesterday. I was absurdly tired. I came home from New York to the Philadelphia suburbs for the weekend to see my family, and the trip yesterday took about five hours from start to finish. That’s a subway from NYU to Penn Station, then a bus to 30th Street Station in Philly, and then the SEPTA R5 home. I wanted to sleep on the bus but I couldn’t…the ride was bumpy and I couldn’t rest my head on the window. I know, poor me. But I did get some new Gameboy music composed in my bus-induced stupor, and listening to it now in a more lucid state, it actually sounds pretty good. Definitely worth working on. Actually, I think I’m going to make a Soundcloud account or something today so I can link to tracks I’m working on from here. That would be cool, because then you could hear them…and realize how awesome they are! EDIT: There it is, check out some of my music!

Also, I watched Zombieland with my family last night. I love Jessie Eisenberg’s screen persona, I really do. And I love watching zombies get owned. I also enjoyed Bill Murray’s amazing cameo, and some of the jokes in this movie were really funny. Despite all of this, and despite me really wanting it to be good, it just wasn’t that good. I mean, I enjoyed watching it quite a bit due to the plentiful destruction of zombies and Jessie Eisenberg (and Emma Stone, of course) – but it really isn’t a good movie. It’s got issues, mainly about the plot being totally contrived and predictable I think. Also, I know this was really to be expected, but WTF is the deal with shoehorning in a romantic subplot to every single movie these days? At the beginning of Zombieland, I was almost allowing myself to look forward to the story of Jessie Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson as two lone wolves, which would have been awesome – then I quickly realized that this was wishful thinking. Here’s someone who says it better than I can. That video sums up my thoughts about horror/zombie movies pretty well, as it turns out.

Oh and my sister wanted everyone to know that she learned how to do the dance to that song Apache yesterday. She showed me. It was funny.

I’m listening to Black Star now. That’s Mos Def and Talib Kweli together. You know they’re awesome, and so is their album.

This is another render I did in Blender a little while back.

Goblet, rendered 9/27/10

Yeah. So I’m home for the weekend, coming back to NY on Sunday night. Looking forward to another long bus ride, and hanging out with Quinn tonight!

And here’s proof of who the bed intruder actually is.

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