Giving is Fun

Posted on 8th December 2010 in Something Daily

Yesterday evening at work as a tech was frantic. At about an hour into my shift, about five people asked me do help them out with various tech things within five minutes of each other and I was forced to run around trying to please everyone. More than one of the requests had to do with the impending final project due date for electronics lab. That’s the class for which I’m making the MIDI controller, and though I feel like I don’t exactly know what I’m doing, I’m still able to give help to some people due to my coding experience which, short as it is, constitutes a larger body of work than most of my Music Tech peers. So I helped out a couple of my friends on shift last night and got a cupcake out of the deal (red velvet from Crumbs!). That’s the second time something like this has happened. My friend Amy, who I also met through teching, gave me a Hershey’s bar after I stayed after hours to help her in the studio. So the job can have its perks, mainly in the form of food gifts from nice girls. I say girls because I don’t feel like I know of any guy who would do that for someone (I mean other than me of course).

The final bit of secret santa news has arrived, and honestly it’s my favorite of all. My giftee got the present I had shipped to him (a custom name placard for his desk with an Arrested Development joke on it) and registered his reception on the redditgifts website! It’s amazing to actually see the gift that I had ordered for him, and also to know that he’s happy with it. It’s really an awesome feeling.

Of course, we’re getting close to the completion of the final mix of our bluegrass “Get Low” cover. We plan to finish the mix tonight, so you can expect the final mix online some time tomorrow. If you didn’t hear it, here’s the rough mix on my soundcloud. We think it’s a pretty funny song in the bluegrass style.

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Secret Santa Came Through

Posted on 7th December 2010 in Something Daily

I’ve been literally singing and dancing frequently the last few days. I’m in a really good mood recently, and I’m not really sure why. It’s just that I’ve been realizing more and more that I’m in complete control of my life and I can make anything that I want happen. I like to phrase it as “I’m the man”, which you might find egocentric. I don’t mean it in an ego way though, it’s really just my way of saying that I realize my efficacy in all situations in which I may find myself. I don’t really need to worry about anything when I’m the one controlling the events in my life. See what I’m saying? I’m becoming ‘the man’ of my own experience.

I didn’t really do anything today other than go to class and catch up with my friend David (where I just returned from). Something did occur to me in class today, though. I have rarely gone through the exercise of trying to picture someone’s face – not just remember what they look like, but actually building a picture of them in my mind. I was trying to do this today in class, and realized that it’s extremely difficult for people that you haven’t seen many times, or quite recently. Building a mental image with any degree of substance (accuracy in the recreation of real objects) is really difficult, and it’s something that I’ve hardly ever thought about. I once heard of an exercise you can try with yourself in which you picture an apple in your head and try to apply physical characteristics to the image while maintaining it. Like you don’t just picture any old apple, but you actually have to see the spots on it, and the stem and the leaf and the bite you took out of it and whatever else. See how concrete you can make that in your mind. For me, at least, it’s a lot more difficult that I thought it would be. Doing that with someone’s face is incredibly difficult, especially if you’ve only seen the person a handful of times.

Anyway, I got my Secret Santa gift yesterday from Reddit! I guess my santa read my twitter and picked up on my love of Arrested Development by way of my tweet on the gift I bought my giftee. He or she sent me 500 business cards that claim I work at Gobias Industries as an analyst/therapist (analrapist). Check it out:


I don’t know what I’m going to do with these, but they are hilarious and certainly one-of-a-kind. Thank you so much, secret santa! You are the man/lady! Also, reader, you are the man (or lady).

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The Importance of Being Tidy

Posted on 30th November 2010 in Something Daily

I’ve decided on my Secret Santa contribution. Rather, London came up with an idea and I decided on it. Since my giftee is a lawyer, London came up with the awesome idea of a custom name placard to sit on his desk with a funny phrase or quote or something underneath. My giftee is known to be familiar with Arrested Development, so I’m thinking about some different law-related quotes from Bob Loblaw or Tobias. So it would be the guy’s name (Matthew _______) in big type, and then smaller type underneath saying something clever. Some that I’m tossing around:

  • Analrapist
  • Why should you go to jail for a crime someone else noticed?”
  • No Habla Español

I can’t decide. It’ll come to me though. I’m leaning toward No Habla Espanol, because it seems like the safest and also most recognizable reference to Bob Loblaw out of the three.

It’s been two whole days since we all returned from Thanksgiving break, and already the kitchen is a horrible place. I knew upon cleaning it top-to-bottom the night before break that this would happen. I just found a half stick of butter that had been sitting on top of the microwave since last night, open and melting. Am I the only one to whom this makes no sense? Obviously not, but it can seem that way. This may seem a bit obsessive, but I really do think it’s important to have a tidy space in which to live. I think (and Eric agrees with me here) that your space acts like a mirror to your mind, and vice versa. That is, if your mind is fragmented, your space will be messy, and if you’re untidy, it can lead to anxiety and mental clutter. At least that’s how I see it. It’s not that I try to be incredibly organized and uncluttered in my spaces, it’s just that it feels completely wrong to me if I’m not. It’s not even an effort, it’s just the way I have to live. That said, I think there are definitely positive aspects to my compulsive need to clean.

Some miscellany:

  • I’m listening to the Octopus Project. If you like electronic music, check them out! Their album Hello Avalanche is what got me into electronic music.
  • This is a cool audio transcoding tool that was recommended to me. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks very useful.
  • Found this sweet T-shirt company on Anamanaguchi’s twitter.
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They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard!

Posted on 27th November 2010 in Something Daily

I’m still at home, which means not much is getting accomplished. Other than practicing and slowly but surely mastering Bach’s 8th Invention, I’m not doing a whole lot of anything over Thanksgiving break. I did finally get my secret santa match yesterday after a longish delay, apparently the matching process was taking an especially long time to run. After being matched, I have my work cut out for me. I’ll have to find an appropriate gift for this guy despite the fact that he’s only ever made seven reddit comments and one post, and lists three interests on his profile. I’m sure I’ll be able to find something though. It’ll just be interesting.

I’ve been reading up on designing and building computers recently, and I plan on building one of my own next time I need an upgrade. Unfortunately, that’ll be a while, since I just got my MBP last December. It’s fun to look at parts, though.

I’m going out now to have an all-day Lord of the Rings marathon. I’m really excited, haven’t seen those movies in ages. Because this is what a break from school is all about: not doing anything and enjoying it.

Here’s Tim and Eric, the best IRL trolls I’ve ever seen.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey-Sy4Qh8vI&fs=1&hl=en_US]

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Happy Thanksgiving, and hi secret santa!

Posted on 25th November 2010 in Something Daily

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving today (if you’re in the US (who am i kidding, right? (How do you like my use of nested parentheses?))). My relatives are all in town today and I haven’t gotten a single thing done – which is what Thanksgiving is for, I suppose. Actually I did – I started learning Bach’s 8th invention this morning and I’m decently good at it already. It’s going well. And now I’m watching Rocky III and redditing intensely. Speaking of, my Secret Santa assignment comes soon! I’ll post the thought processes and gift ideas, of course!

I saw this thread on reddit yesterday and wanted to follow up on the “pics or it didn’t happen” idea, so here’s my contribution.

I don’t feel like writing, but I hope you had a wonderful thanksgiving. (And if you’re reading because you got me for secret santa, welcome! Feel free to read and comment!)

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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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