Digital Free Association

i have a blog!!

2008-10-26T21:39:00.001-07:00

i saw the presidents of the united states of america (that band who wrote that song "peaches") on friday. it was surprisingly not bad (although that could have been the whiskey sours enjoying the show for me).

also saw bruce mcculloch do a show with jeanine garofalo, and kevin mcdonald, and jeff garland. that was really great.

sometimes i really enjoy living in/near los angeles.

100th post

2008-03-28T00:02:00.001-07:00

so i'm engaged, and that's good. i'm glad to see in the comments that you are all excited and stuff.

i had a talk with my boss today that lasted about 2 hours, and he optimistically decided that the new idea we are working on will change the way people do experiments and process metallic glass drastically for the better.

my woman's basketball team is trampling their way through the NCAA basketball tournament.

i have a rugby match on saturday.

all in all, i'm having a pretty good day.

also, this is the funniest website i have ever read.
this one has it's great moments too.

oh yeah, and i can't get to the florx7 blog anymore either. maybe it's been because of my inactive blogging techniques.

Let me introduce you to my financier

2008-03-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

so jane and i got engaged last night. thought some of the world might be interested.

thanksgiving at mcsweeney's

2007-11-21T11:20:00.000-08:00

this website is great.

Thanksgiving 1

Thanksgiving 2

Andrew Bird

2007-10-08T15:37:00.001-07:00

This guy is really good. Life is pretty good too

woo hoo

2007-05-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

it's amazing how much difference a day makes. the future even looks more bearable now.

residue of the day

2007-05-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

i guess i shouldn't really lie to you. you're all my friends. i know exactly why i'm sad today. i just don't feel like sharing.

out of . . . it

2007-05-21T15:57:00.000-07:00

i'm having a bit of an odd/off day. i'm a little hungry, but i just ate. i'm a little tired, but i slept plenty. i'm a little sad, and i'm not sure why. i'm feeling a bit out of touch with people because they're trying to go places and do things and talk to me, but i'd rather be left alone. it's a cloudy day in southern california, and my mood seems to match it today.

julius caesar

2007-05-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

present from my girlfriend: first t-shirt on the page

proposed present from my brother: El Nacho Grande

which do you think is better?

world's best human

2007-05-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

i just started reading this comic called dresden codak and in devouring the archives of comics, i came across one of the most awesome sentences i've ever read in the text post that accompanied one of the comics:

"Klingons are loud, smelly and are in no way related to Patrick Stewart, the World's Best Human."

also, i know i've been back from europe for like 3 weeks now and haven't posted any words or pictures about the trip, but i guess you'll have to wait 'cause i'm lazy.

buddha's passport

2007-04-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

i found this module on my personalized google homepage, and it contains one buddhist thought each day, you can grab it with an rss/xml reader too. buddha buddha

i also found out this morning that my passport has been shipped and should be getting to me in the next two or three days. woot.

wow. karl rove.

2007-03-30T11:01:00.001-07:00

travel.state.dammitwhere'smypassport

2007-03-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

i have a plane ticket to fly to barcelona on april 10th. i'm pretty excited about this trip. i've never really been out of the country before, and it will be awesome to spend some time in europe.

since i've never traveled outside the country, i've never needed a passport. so about 7 weeks ago, i go to the post office, and send in my application for a passport along with my birth certificate and a couple of those little pictures that have come to be known as passport photos. they tell me it will take 6 weeks for the normal processing time.

seven weeks later, still no passport. so i start looking stuff up on the internet (as is the usual way people fix problems these days), and i end up calling the national passport information center. the first day, their automated system tells me that all the reps are busy and that i should call back later then says goodbye and hangs up on me. so i call that number about 10 times that day and each time it's the same thing, to which i think, "balls, i'm never going to get my passport." the next day i call and i get through to a human after 10 minutes on hold (surprisingly not too bad. apparently all people with passport problems call on tuesdays and don't even try to call on wednesdays.) so they get my information and put in an urgent request to get my passport to me by april 10th. i really hope it gets here before then.

first fridays

2007-03-27T18:57:00.000-07:00

does anybody want to go to the natural history museum to see plaid and dntel on april 6th? it's only $6.50 if you are a student.

hamster-themed amusement

2007-03-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

this morning, my girlfriend and i were working out the details of our new idea for Hamsterdam, the new hamster-themed amusement park. i envision humans crawling through hamster tubes and running on wheels. as chinchillas are the sworn enemies of the hamsters, there would be a rollercoaster called Chinchillazilla: The Ride, and the cars would be furry with big sharp teeth and claws and furry ears and a tail.

it seems that the most pleasantly surprizing part of the park will be a high class restaurant run by a chef of much cullinary prowess. i'm not sure what the name will be or what will be on the menu, but all the food will be served in pellet form.

i also think there will be a small amusement park within the amusement park where the people can go to watch actual hamsters ride the miniature versions of the rides in the park. i'm pretty sure hamsters like rollercoasters.

i guess we'll see

hey you!

2007-03-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

Caltech is a very surreal place. just when you really get into the daily routine of your ordinary every day life, you see Stephen Hawking rolling down the sidewalk in the opposite direction and passing you.

2007-03-01T13:33:00.000-08:00

have you ever wondered what it is like to be a tiny chef in the world of regular sized chefs?

i can't stop reading this comic.

it is keeping my mind off of more important things.

facemelting

2007-01-23T12:26:00.000-08:00

Slayer rules.
Being president of rugby club sucks.
Metalocalypse rules.

i swore at a bank teller today

2006-11-17T16:09:00.000-08:00

if i have time and simmer down a bit, i'll expand upon the idea that i abhor financial institutions like wells fargo.

11-21-06 UPDATE: long story short, they wouldn't take my coins for deposit. my question: why don't they have one of those coin machines that counts the coins for you? my parents' bank in dyersville iowa has one of those. the bank i used in college had one of those. instead i had to take my coins to the grocery store where they have a machine that takes 8% of your money. that was great.

music

2006-11-16T11:36:00.000-08:00

i haven't posted anything about this here yet. i think my little brother might be the only one who checks this page regularly, and he already knows about this.

anyway this is the page for the musical endeavor i've been involved with lately. it's a lot of fun. i hope you can find some enjoyment from it too.

yeah, voting!!

2006-11-07T17:21:00.000-08:00

I voted today. It felt good. I hope you voted today too.

Democracy always fills me with hope until I see the results of elections and the legislation that begins to happen a few weeks later.

two months out

2006-10-31T14:45:00.000-08:00

first post in two months, it better be a good one, self.

i'll be in iowa from December 20th through December 27th. and probably Ames on the 21st or 22nd. cool?

cool.

i've been politics-obsessed lately. preparing for elections, deciding who to vote for, looking at who gets money from where, preparing my team for the start of the fantasy congress season, reading about pirates.

ok, so the pirates thing doesn't really have to do with politics, but it I've only read the first chapter and a half, and i think it is one of the funniest books i've ever read, and good too.

"And what's my motto? 'I like ham.'"

harry potter y la piedra filosofal

2006-08-31T13:24:00.000-07:00

so i just started trying to read the first harry potter book en espanol. after 4 years of high school spanish and a minimal amount of usage since, i figured it would be worth trying again. so i bought a spanish-english (espanol-ingles) dictionary (diccionario)(ok i'm finished with that) and started reading, wait a minute, i should put that in quotes . . . and started "reading" last night. It took me 15 minutes to completely comprehend the synopsis on the back of the book. and another 30-45 to read the first two pages. I actually did manage to read one entire two-sentence paragraph without looking in the dictionary. I hope the rest of my attempt to relearn spanish isn't this slow.

yeah...

2006-08-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

yeah.. i broke my foot. I went to the orthopedist yesterday and he looked at the recent x-rays of my foot and said something to the effect of, "Yeah, so you have two fractured bones in your foot, and i'm gonna say you should wear one of those kick-ass orthopedic hard-soled shoes with the nylon upper and killer velcro for four weeks and hope it heals itself. then you should come back and see me and we'll see if it did." (the embellished description of my new awesome shoe was my idea, not his.)

bitter bitches

2006-08-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

I've noticed myself becoming a more bitter person lately (meaning the last few years). I've been getting more easily frustrated with people, and I get angry* with other drivers almost every time I drive (even though that's really fun).

I think the two things that have been bothering me the most lately are people who are selfish and people who are ignorant of their surroundings (another thing that bugs me is the sheeplike complacency of the average american citizen). I'm trying not to turn this into a hugemongous rant. I'll try to keep it mostly contained.

In these recent months I've been trying to figure out why I'm feeling more bitter. Is it because I am becoming a more testy person? Is it because my surroundings make me more frustrated than before? Or am I just finally noticing something about myself that I've never seen before? Maybe it's just because I spend way too much time at work?

Selfishness

It has been postulated by several people that I work with and know that in order to complete the research necessary to get a graduate degree, one must become a selfish person. I don't think this is true. I consider myself, most of the time, to be an unselfish person, and I plan on getting a PhD without turning selfish. I do think, however, that in the production of experimental data, things get done faster if one is selfish. I've observed more than a few cases of this in close proximity.

Ignorance

This also shows up at my current institute of study. Some peoples like to know everything even when they know nothing.

Example: Dude with office down the hall from me can't figure out how to get something to work. He tells everyone in the lab that it's broken. I show up in the lab to use it and everyone tells me it's broken. I use it and it works perfectly. (I guess in some respects I like when this happens because it makes me look smart and good with lab equipment. (which i like to think i am)).

This has happened three times that I can think of in the last month. All with the same dude with office down the hall from me.

In addition to this, he likes to make up explanations for stuff with no evidence to back his claims. This really fries my spinach and bacon quesadilla because his research and my research are so closely related, that his claims apply directly to my research, but published data by others in my lab and unpublished data collectctly refute his claims.

so i guess this just turned into a rant about a few people in my lab who i consider less than desirable coworkers. i guess that's just gonna happen in the clash of egos and intellects that is graduate school

*I didn't really want to use that word because it felt too strong. I don't get to the point of road rage. It's more like a minor and mostly humorous aggravation. So I decided to look up the word angry, and I found out that angry is actually a noun, an adjective, and a verb. So you could say, "The angry angry angried the other angry." and still be grammatically correct. And apparently the only one that is rare or obsolete is the verb angry.

neurobiologicalism

2006-07-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

This is pretty killer.

This is too.

beyond thunderdome

2006-07-05T17:56:00.000-07:00

So the end of the world must be close. I'm not sure why. I just kind of always wanted to say that somewhere in a public space.

I work in a laboratory. Today was a very tedious day in the laboratory. I spent 2 hours taking pictures of coworkers' samples in a microscope with them over my shoulder telling me what to look at. One of those samples were dirty and as a result looked like shit in the electron microscope, so I spent another half-hour waiting for this coworker to clean his sample so his pictures represented acceptable data. Then I spent an hour-and-a-half (more than is really necessary (this is a greek dude who cares way too much about getting perfect data and does way more fitting data to curves with a computer than doing experiments to collect said data)) taking pictures of the sample which now didn't look like shit.

Then I ate lunch with my girlfriend. Fantastic.

So I head back to the lab after lunch and we have a group meeting. For the most part this was interesting, but not very aesthetically pleasing (scientific talks rarely are), and when the lights got turned off so the projected image was easier to see, I almost got punched in the face by a table as I started to nod.

Who hid the monstertrucking 9/64" allen wrench.

phildickian

2006-06-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

I'm reading this book called The Shifting Realities of Philip K Dick. It's a collection of his nonfiction stuff: essays, speeches, etc. and I ran across a speech where he's talking about his book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. There's a single paragraph "preamble" to the book which he says is actually the entire novel. The extra 200 or so pages are apparently the back story to explain the single-paragraph novel. I haven't read The Three Stigmata, but now I want to as this paragraph is an amazing summary of a way of life.

"I mean, after all; you have to consider we're only made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. But even considering, I mean it's a sort of bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we can make it. You get me?"

blark like a bloggy doggy

2006-04-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

I have a couple of new blogs to add to the sidebar over there ------------->
my little bruhvuh
the man i know who lives in mexico

enjoy. arf. arf.

"I like you so much, I'm REALLY looking forward to us working together
And just, as of now that I'm calm
And after I've apologized profusely - probably too much
I am available, call me doggie - woof!"

-master shake

my branes

2006-04-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

so i've been playing with this aluminum soldering flux today in lab. it's this fluid that is supposed to get rid of oxide coatings on aluminum and other metals so that a solder can wet them and get them to stick together when it heats up.

so i'm using this stuff to try to get a metallic glass to flow between two foils of soft metal and stick to them. in order to get the metallic glass to flow so that it fills the space between the foils, you have to heat it up, and when you heat up the flux, it gives of some fumes. but when you heat up the flux a lot, it gives off a lot of fumes that smell somewhat like peanut butter.

well, i've managed to get a couple of whiffs of these flux fumes today, and it kind of gives me a headache. here's a chunk of the materials safety data sheet (MSDS). i put it in fine print so it feels like you're actually reading it from the hard copy of the MSDS.

EMERGENCY OVERVIEW: This product is a viscous, amber liquid with a strong ammonia odor. This product is a primary irritant and can be mildly to moderately irritating to contaminated tissue (depending on the concentration and duration of contact); prolonged contact may result in tissue damage and skin sensitization. This product must be substantially pre-heated before ignition can occur. Thermal decomposition of this product will produce toxic fumes and vapors or zinc oxides, fluoride compounds, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen and tin. This product is not reactive. Emergency responders must wear personal protective equipment suitable for the situation to which they are responding.

i think i'm gonna be a bit more careful when i use this stuff in the future. then again, i might not even use it because it really didn't work.

Prince and the NPG

2006-04-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

So I've been hooked into Nature magazine and it's many subsidiaries (Nature Materials, Nature Physics, etc.) lately. Today I found an article on the Nature Materials rss feed about shampoo (and other liquids) and how you can get it to look like it's bouncing off of a hard surface (here).

It turns out that it has to do with the fact that the liquid becomes less viscous when it is sheared. So what happens is that the fluid falls in a stream and starts to pile up. As more stuff piles up, there are stresses induced that cause the liquid to shear and form a small divot in the pile of fluid. The falling fluid changes direction and flies up in the air "just as an Olympic ski-jumper leaps from the lip of a ramp."

They have some really cool videos that show this phenomenon in slow motion (woot!!). 1 (not in slow motion), 3, and my favorite, 2.

Anyway, the thing that originally made me want to make this post is that every page on the nature website has this little red circle with a white "npg" inside, and every time I see it I am reminded of the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince, and his band, the New Power Generation. So, I guess this one goes out to Prince and the NPG.

do college sports and poetry mix?

2006-02-08T14:47:00.000-08:00

so i play college sports (to a certain extent: i play rugby for a team of graduate students who forfeit all of their games because they don't fulfill the league requirements for being a collegiate team) and i try to write songs (some of which have lyrics that may be considered poetry), but my college sports affiliation doesn't make me well known in any circles and my "poetry" probably won't either, but i know when the stuff i write is bad (then i don't share it). i believe that trouble arises when you have someone relatively well known for his college sporting career tries to write poems, doesn't realize that they might not be that good, and selects certain pieces of work (pun strongly intended) to be published by a large sports magazine's website.

goofytoon

2006-01-19T12:29:00.000-08:00

so my friend patrick pointed me in the direction of this interweb cartoon. one of my recent favorites is flew around a little. i hope you laughed half as much as i did (or more than that if you'd like).

Refenestration

2006-01-16T16:54:00.000-08:00

So I haven't been up here in a while. I had a little of time today (MLK, Jr. day) to sit around in my office and not be bothered by anyone. I was going through some pictures I took over the last few months and I thought I'd share a few.

This is one that was taken last June when I traversed the pacific northwest with my mother and father. I'm a big fan of this picture because it is of Mount Hood, which can actually be seen from Portland, Oregon, my current favorite city. woo hoo!

Mount Hood in June

So when I went home for the holidays, my little brother, Tim, got married. This is the best picture of them that I found on my camera. Aren't they cute. I got to play the part of the best man at the wedding, and pretend to lose the rings during the rehersal.

My Brother got married too.

More from the realm of blog, one of the links in my blogfriends is ET11Robot. In a recent post, he unveiled his plans for a new podcast. I am quite excited as I can not think of a single time when clake has ever disappointed me with his creativity and humor. woo hoo!

life in my new

2005-07-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

i mean new in my life. 1) i got a new pair of ugly shoes. maybe i'll put up a picture. 2) heading back to iowa on august 5th. as you may know, my little brother, tim, is getting married in december and we're doing his bachelor party that weekend. then i'm sticking around the midwesterly regions for aeryk and KEN's wedding (if they let me attend). 3) it appears that i may finally be purchasing an automobile for hauling myself around. 4) google earth. have any of you guys seen this program yet. it used to be called keyhole, but now it's called google earth and it's this nifty 3d map/globe/yellowpages/nearly-infinite-coolness-machine program. the only trouble is that you need a fast internet connection to make it worthwile. it runs pretty slow on my computer at my apartment (the connection is cable, but the digital electron box is about 4 or 5 years old). 5) podcasting of morning becomes eclectic. this is one of my favorite radio shows, and now you can download and listen to it on itunes or through kcrw. rock.

insanediego

2005-07-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

hey e'erybody. in case you were wondering, i passed my candidacy exam back on june 10th. it was easier than i expected it to be, but i was still sweating and nervous.

right now i'm in san diego at my uncle's place listening to david byrne's grown backwards album and typing this entry on his new g5.

having steaks this evening at my other uncle's place. looking quite forward to it.

i've also been reading a bunch of papers on cosmology lately. i guess it's to pass the time until i'm ready to start doing research again. i read one about the ability of multiverse theories to actually predict reasonable results. i also have a couple on varying speed of light theories... this dude claims that allowing the speed of light to vary explains things back further than the current big bang and inflation theories. i am quite an amateur when it comes to cosmology, but i love reading this stuff because it is right on the line between science and philosophy. cool.

candidacy exam

2005-06-07T00:27:00.000-07:00

so my candidacy exam is tomorrow morning. 9am. and guess what i can't do. that's right, fall asleep. i've been laying in bed for an hour and it's just not working. i guess it doesn't help that my feet are cold, but sweaty. for some reason that's really bugging me. my mind has been wandering from women to rugby to drinking to the stuff in my presentation for tomorrow to music to family to my plans for vacation. i've spend about 5 weeks being as relaxed about this thing as i could be (although i've still been a bit tense the last week or so) and now i can't. i've resigned to the fact that there isn't really anything i can do now to improve my chances of passing (not that i think they are small).

i think i'm mostly worried about waking up and getting to campus on time.

bar bee qqqqqqqqq

2005-06-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

From the onion's hosting a barbecue.

"When barbecuing veggie burgers, be sure to tie your long hair back. That will keep it away from the flames, you stupid hippie."

i apologize if i offend any veggie burger eaters, longhairs or hippies with the previous quotation. it just made me laugh. i feel entitled to share as i have eaten veggie burgers, been a longhair, and hung out with tens of thousands of hippies in my life.

2005-05-28T14:32:00.002-07:00

laboratory art in magnet and tools

a birthday card from my brother andy. inside it says "i don't get it either. happy birthday"

lights in the elevator

2005-05-28T14:32:00.001-07:00

don't panic

cool

candidacy

2005-05-13T17:31:00.000-07:00

i would like to congratulate Aeryk on his becoming an official phd candidate.

i, too, will become an official phd candidate on june 7, 2005, if my oral exam committee deems me worthy. my trouble is that i don't really want to study for this exam. and i really find it painful to try to get four full professors to be in the same spot for 3 hours. as usual i'm procrastinating, but it's never killed me before.

dream. wake up.

2005-04-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

i woke up at 6 this morning after having a dream that i was a murderer. i had apparently shot some people in a very cruel and cold-blooded way. i'm actually very relieved that that portion of the dream is not at all the most vivid in my memory at this moment. the part i remember best is afterwards when i, for some dream life reason, flew to australia with some friends. i had come to terms with the fact that i was going to be held responsible for my actions and i/we were worried about the repurcussions of me going to australia (on a trip that had been planned for a long time) before i had even been arrested. a couple of bizarre thoughts that i had during this period pertained to seeing myself in prison.

i wondered how fashionable i would look in the orange jump suit

i wondered if i would be able to have a guitar in prison

i decided that playing and singing songs by neutral milk hotel would help me through my incarcerated years

i wondered if i would have trouble with getting my ass kicked in prison or would my crime be infamous enough to be sure that i was considered rough enough that people wouldn't mess with me

then i woke up and was really relieved after i got through that moment of wakefulness when one questions whether the dream was a dream or not. i think the most amazing thing about this post is how difficult it was for me to think back into my dream and remember enough to write those first two sentences. wow. 'twas a very jarring dream.

mitch hedberg was funny

2005-04-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

-I can't eat spaghetti. There's too many of them.
-A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.
-When I was on acid I would see things like beams of light and would hear things that sounded an awful lot like car horns.

hi. we're the mountain goats

2005-04-12T13:36:00.000-07:00

if you haven't already, please listen to the mountain goats. they've released a new internet-only ep on their record label's website. it's called dilaudid (apparently after a quite strong narcotic analgesic) and the title track is one of the most beautifully intense songs i've ever heard.

in other news, my middle brother, tim, who most of you are familiar with, has proposed to his girlfirend of 5-7 years (depending on whose side of the story you're listening to). they are getting married in late december and i get to be my brother's best flower girlboy. apparently we are using leftover bows from christmas presents as the bows for my hair.

the only way i ever could have found this website is with the help of aeryk and KEN (thanks kids).

pope gambling

2005-04-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

Hey! Does anyone want to bet on who will be the next pope, what his chosen "popename" will be, or how long it will take the cardinals to decide who is going to get popeified?

picking up girls

2005-04-07T11:07:00.001-07:00

If you have some spare time to listen (between 5 and 47 minutes), this is really funny.

Crazy Russians

2004-12-29T22:33:00.000-08:00

so, as some of yo may know, I have this russian roomate (the reason russian is not capitalized is not out of lack of respect or english ability, but because i'm kind of drunk and lazy) and he has this friend who came out here to the infinite suburb to visit him. his friend is actually pretty cool. we've had a few discussions about the international perception of our respective homelands which have been rather interesting and enlightening. but this dude decided that he needed more russians to hang out with here, so he started going on the internet into chat rooms and meeting russian people. the result of this chat room action is the fact that there is a russian woman and her armenian sugar daddy (my roommate and his friend keep telling me that she needs some way to pay for the lexus sc 430 that she drives) hanging out in my living room, watching some russian movie that my roommate's friend pirated (so it has no subtitles =>hence i'm lost). My roommate has participated in the consumption of a bottle of vodka and a bottle of bourbon (which i had a bit of myself) and has decided that it is a good idea to lay down on his bed until he passes out. a bit earlier in the evening they were all hanging out in the living room speaking russian (or some language based on the cyrillic alphabet) as i sat there (lost, but enjoying my knob creek bourbon (it's pretty good stuff, it has my reccommendation). now i'm busy typing a blog entry and filling my newly acquired ipod (thanks mom and dad) with ones and zeroes that represent my favorite compressed audial experiences as my roommate is passed out in his room. it's a good thing it's only 10:30 in the evening because i have to get on the metro at about 9:15 tomorrow morning to meet a good friend and former roommate of mine at the airport. this is a good thing because i will have another english speaking person to join in the neo-cold war. that's a bit of an exaggeration. my current roomate and his friend are pretty cool, but when i met this armenian sugar daddy, the only word he uttered to me all evening was his name, and i'm not even really sure what it was anymore (maybe because i've had a bit to drink, or maybe because he didn't have any interest in talking to me (that was obvious anyway)(i'm not bitter, i'm just trying to state the facts)). anyway, thanks for reading. now i must pay attention to an invention that i think is one of the greatest things since sliced bread (wheat, not white). i'll let you guess what it is.

Home Soon

2004-12-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

Some people might be envious of me for this, but since I live in one of the two cities in the world in which Wes Anderson's new film "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is playing, I went and saw it last night. This is the first film of Anderson's that has computer generated stuff in it, and it isn't too bad. Bill Murray is brilliant, Cate Blanchett is awesome and hot, Owen Wilson is on par with his earlier work with Anderson, and the way music was used in the film really caught my attention. all in all, three thumbs up, but i'm a little biased and i'm going to have to find another thumb if anyone asks me what my rating of the movie was.

so i'm leaving the infinite suburb for midwesterly locations tomorrow. i have to get on the metro sometime between 5:30 and 6 am in order to get to the airport and wait in line.

awesome.

eggs

2004-11-20T01:07:00.000-08:00

i was the victim of an unsuccessful quasi-drive by egging this evening. i went out to have dinner with the rugby team (as we were supporting each other in not drinking this evening (i can't imagine it would be enjoyable to play a rugby game with a hangover)). then four of us went to one dude's apartment to make the hamburgers that will be grilled at the after-game party tomorrow. once that was finished, i decided to walk home as the tire on my bicycle was flat (i have had a slow leak in the tube for a couple of months now, and still haven't fixed it. if i pump it up, i can ride it to campus, but if i leave it overnight, there's not enough air to ride it home. the bike has been sitting on campus since wednesday morning, hence, flat tire). i walked up to colorado boulevard and turned east. as i was walking past pasadena city college, an suv with four presumably high school-aged males pulled up and politely asked me, "excuse me sir, do you have a second?" they proceeded to ask me where the 210 was from here and if the street they were on was, in fact colorado. i replied that it was at the same moment that the two on the passenger side of the suv chucked eggs out the windows at me. one of them hit me in the left shoulder, bounced off and broke on the sidewalk and the other hit me in the ribs on my right side, bounced off and landed on the sidewalk without breaking (i was wearing my fleece which apparently made me eggproof). at this point, they drove off and one of them shouted "the fuck it is" in response to my affirmation that the street in question was colorado boulevard. being a fan of the absurd, i found several things in this scenario quite amusing. first of all, their faux politeness (how arrogant). next, my seemingly eggproof quality in the face of their weakly tossed chicken embryos. thirdly, their apparent lack of geographical knowledge. "the fuck it is," idiots.

as i walked along beginning to contemplate the recently occurring events, another dude who was dressed up kind of nice (collared shirt and nice pants) who didn't witness the aforementioned events, asked me if i had the time. i pulled out my cellular connection to society's perception of time and told him that it was eleven thirty. then he asked me if he could use my phone, to which i replied, "no. sorry." i was in no mood to trust anyone at that time.

i continued my walk home, laughing out loud several times at the eggproof (i like that word) nature of my stylish outerwear, especially when i passed broken eggs on the sidewalk.

Polyganomials

2004-11-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

i got to see davíd garza at the largo on wednesday evening. i think the largo is one of my favorite places in los angeles. the band that opened is called flight of the conchords. they are from new zealand and they play folk-parody music like folk-hop, folk & B, reggae-dancehall-folk. they are as funny as the pope is catholic.
here's a couple of links 1 2 3

big rugby match this weekend. for any of you who feel the desire to come, it's on the south field at caltech this saturday nov. 20 at 1pm against uc-irvine.

annoying things at work

2004-11-04T15:54:00.000-08:00

-whistling office mate
-piece of equipment across hall from office that makes whistling noise not unlike whistling office mate
-computer next door that recites all its error messages in computer voice at unnecessary volume

p.s. that last post wasn't exactly meant to be a poem. i just felt the need for a different structure than the standard paragraph prose. (i guess that probably makes it a poem. whatever). i'm really digging the lack of capitalization, but i agree, aeryk, that last post really does suk gnutz.

thoughts

2004-11-04T01:19:00.000-08:00

--it's been a while
--the beginning of november already
--election come and gone
--left with
--four more years four more years fourmoreyears
--of which i look forward to the end
--hoping for a change
--of the collective heart

--good try michael moore
--but you're a jackass too

--i miss people
--especially the ones i've loved before
--yet i do little
--to maintain contact
--stupidly assuming they will always be there
--whenever i decide to reach out

--my body is hard
--but my brain is harder
--in terms of understanding
--i generally know what makes me tick
--physically, but
--i often feel like i have no control
--over what goes on in the attic

--electronic forum where i share my thoughts
--with the few, who to me are the many
--but it's still just for me
--let it flow
--free association in the digital realm
--sans capitalization (but there's
--still plenty of punctuation)!!?

--thanks for reading

this band is cool
this store is cool
this city is cool
this is a governor?

New Toy

2004-10-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

I bought a new toy. Maybe I'll put up some sound files when I figure out how to record onto my hard drive. Rock.

Also. I was talking to my roomate about death and the possibility of afterlife today. I got thinking about this for the first time in a while (which was really cool. i feel like this is something that has been missing from my life recently. recently meaning, since i moved to california. basically i'm saying that this type of thought about being, existence, philosophy, and other stuff has been absent because i haven't really found anyone who likes to talk about it as much as me (my roommate decided to turn his mind into a pittsburghian steel trap that could not be penetrated by the possibility that the thoughts in his head could be changed {frustration for me.}). that's one thing i miss about my friends from iowa state and even further back to high school). Anyway, i found this cool bit from an essay by Albert Einstein on the blog of wiley wiggins (yes, he rules. if for no other reason than that he is associated with richard linklater, the creator of such great films as slacker, dazed and confused, and waking life). This deals with exactly what I was thinking about, and makes my faith in the existence of something greater than this objective, scientific world that i am surrounded by a little less wavering(by that I mean the world of caltech and the very objective and scientific minds that i interact with on a daily basis). I guess I like to believe(sometimes, at least) that coincidence isn't really just coincidence.

Springing Cleaninging

2004-10-08T01:06:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of going through all the pictures I have on my computer and putting up some of the most noticeable ones. Here's one from when I was on the east coast visiting Aeryk and Kate. More specifically, this one took place at Monticello. (be sure to click the picture to read the sign)

. . . and this was an unidentified roasted object. Aeryk considered it one of his best creations ever.

Picture of mountain.

2004-10-06T08:12:00.001-07:00

Picture of mountain. This is a bit old. I took it when I was on vacation with my parents, but it's a really cool picture of the Grand Tetons.

HuminaHuminaHumina

2004-09-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I'm so lazy at keeping this going. I got this free photo hosting, so now I'm going to start putting up a lot more pictures. I got a haircut. I went to the beach with my friend bob from Iowa State. I bought plane and concert tickets to go to san fransisco to see rachel and celebrate the seventh anniversary of Tiny Telephone.

that's the short update on my life. I'll continue rocking if you do.

Wiley Wiggins

2004-09-16T16:58:00.000-07:00

Wiley Wiggins is cool because he was in Waking Life and Dazed and Confused, but especially because he posted this on his blog.

New Links!!

2004-09-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

I added some links to the right-hand column of the page.
-Rafblog is the blog of my friend Raf. He goes to caltech, likes the wrens, and one of his nicknames is grapes.
-troybriggs.com is the site of one of the ridiculously cool people I met in portland. Troy is an artist (painter and sculptor), and although is website is still under preliminary construction and I haven't actually seen his work, I have complete faith that it is very awesome. I know I'm going to keep an eye on this page for its grand opening.
-Matt's page is the website of my roomate who some of you have met through the previous weenie smoothie post. I feel the need to say no more.

Portland Rules

2004-09-13T16:33:00.000-07:00

I just got back from an extended weekend in Portland, Oregon. I found Portland to be one of the coolest cities I've ever spent time in. The reason I went to Portland was to attend an art festival called T:BA:04. It is happening this entire week, but work sucks so I have to be in Pasadena. I saw some really intense and interesting and moving and funny performances. You should check out this dude. He's an eBay Power Seller!

This weekend was also the Musicfest Northwest festival in Portland, so my friend Justin and I spent one evening in a bar drinking whiskey sours and listening to live music. We saw audio learning center, crooked fingers, the swords and the wrens. Audio learning center isn't worth mentioning again. Crooked Fingers were really good folkish music. The Swords were fantastic. The wrens were a bit disappointing (the first two times I saw them, the sets were longer and they didn't take as long to settle into them)

Anyways, that's all the updating I have for now. I'll blog you peeps later.

Joe Yes Blog

2004-09-08T01:08:00.000-07:00

If you're a fan of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, or just a fan of interesting/strange/disgusting foodstufs, you'll probably dig this. My roomate made a weenie smoothie. I documented with digital cameras (including some videos).

Weenie Smoothie

Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?

2004-08-12T10:03:00.000-07:00

Hey peoples. I have a quick update on my life here and now. I spent last night on top of a mountain watching the Perseid meteor shower (i don't know if that's what it's called, but i think it's close). By last night, i mean all night. I watched the sun come up from the top of the mountain and only got about 2 hours of sleep. Cool.

I'm moving into a new apartment tomorrow. This is good news because i don't like my current living situation, but bad news because I haven't started to clean or pack yet (not to mention that I have little to no furniture with which to furnish the new, unfurnished apartment). Pretty cool.

I met this girl who lives in West Hollywood, and she's been on my mind a lot lately. She's pretty damned cool, in my opinion, and I think she kind of likes me too. Pretty damned cool.

That's about it for me. Research is going slow because I still don't really want to do it. I'll put it this way, "The laziness has been flowing like wine around here lately." I'm currently hoping I can remain in a pseudo-alert state of quasi-wakefulness for a couple of hours before I need to crash.

Girlie Men

2004-07-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've been here. I promised a post about my vacation. I don't know if it will happen.

On a californian note, check this out. (courtesey of drudgereport) I'm amazed at how sensitive the public can be. I'm also amazed that the governor of california is an actor who hasn't done anything cool since Terminator 2 and uses lines from saturday night live sketches that mock him to express his political beliefs.

bacation

2004-06-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

i'm back from vacation. i'll update with more depth soon. and pictures. mostly of mountains.

currently listening to: the sounds of sherman fairchild library

To the people what do rock, baby.

2004-06-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

I stole that title from the website of the darkness. I haven't been here for a while. Classes are over now. I've started research. Learned to use an arc melter today. Cool.

aeryk and kate proposed!! WOW!! congratulations from me and the happy milk people. My friends getting married makes me feel old (and behind in the game of getting married as early as possible (i know that's really not a game or if it is, i like to think i don't play it)).

I'm flying home tomorrow for to spend some time with the family. then mom and dad and i are driving our vacationing selves back out here to california. i like to call this the vacation what do rock, baby.

i gotsta get lunch. watch out ernie, here i come.

Quickly Beating Heart

2004-05-31T20:54:00.000-07:00

Present reason why I am looking very forward to having a new apartment/roomate:

Current roomate tends to cook lots of meats (bacon on stove and others in the largest reason why I dislike george foreman (lesser reasons exist, ask if you're curious and I'll answer)). Every time roomate cooks said meat, there are lots of cooked/burnt meat smells and fumes. Not that I'm a vegetarian, but I don't really like the smell of this stuff throughout my room/clothes and nose (especially the Foreman grills, those things have a way of making meat smell amazingly disgusting to me (except of course for fish like salmon which I don't think will ever smell bad to me)). Another thing is that these meat fumes waft their way from the kitchen into my room (which has a ludicrously sensitive smoke alarm and a worse than normal alarm sound) and set my smoke alarm off. This really pisses me off because it scares the shit out of me and at this point in time excited me enough to stop doing homework and rant about it, bloggystyle.

well, back to work.

currently listening to: The Beta Band - Monolith

Bleep

2004-05-26T18:03:00.000-07:00

No, not bleep because I said a naughty syllable or two, but bleep because I dig electronic music. I know most people won't find this as awesome as I do, but I'll type about it anyway. So Warp Records has their entrie catalog of a couple hundred releases available for purchase and download on this website. It takes some time to download, but if you have a reliable internet connection it works well.

I just downloaded Autechre's EP7 and Plaid's Not for Threes for approximately 17 american dollars. I am enjoying them thoroughly. (especially Autechre. they rule.)

currently listening to: Autechre - Ccec

Vonnegut

2004-05-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut always has the coolest way of saying things. Read this.

He Is Franz Kafka

2004-05-24T17:29:00.000-07:00

I know some of you have seen the cartoon network/adult swim show Home Movies. Sadly, this show has been canceled, but I ran into some great internet stuff yesterday. So the dude who came up with Home Movies, Brendon Small, has a website. Some of you may be interested in the music files from Home Movies that he shares on his site (like "Don't put marbles in your nose. Put them in there. Do not put them in there." and the rock opera based on Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis). He also has a link to a petition to try and get Home Movies uncanceled. He's also done some standup out here in LA and is working on a concept album he wants to release on the website. Cool beans.

Also. Gomez just released a new album called Split The Difference. I'm a big fan of Gomez, and in my opinion this is a fantastic album. I got their second one, Liquid Skin, back when I was a freshman at Iowa State and really dug it. Then I got their third one, In Our Gun, a couple of years ago and thought it was pretty good, but nowhere near as awesome as Liquid skin. I just bought the new one last weekend and I dig it almost as much as Liquid skin already. Quite rock (I'm getting pretty good at these html italic tags.)

currently listening to: Starboy (and the Captain of Outer Space) by Brendon Small, from Home Movies

specific gravity

2004-05-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

I played a basketball game this evening and came back to my apartment. Upon entering, I hear Guns 'n' Roses' version of "Knocking on Heaven's Door." This resulted in the commencement of one of my favorite self-defence mechanisms. My ears shut off and my brain finds the last song I heard, which happened to be from an album that, in many respects, could be considered my favorite of the last few years (or possibly second only to the newest radiohead disc), Meadowlands by the wrens. I love the music on this album because it is so emotional and raw. It feels real.

This got me thinking about why I can't/don't seem to express myself in such an emotional manner (artistically or not). Basically, I've been wondering why I'm always on such an emotional plateau. I never get too excited or angry or sad or . . . If my mood does change it is relatively slowly and with small fluctuations. I think this is because I don't take many risks in my life, and I find that to be a direct consequence of the fact that I've never really needed to take any big risks. My life has been pretty damned easy, from being raised by two of the best parents a kid could ask for to never having any financial setbacks to having inherent abilities to understand science and things. I don't really work that hard. Lots of people tell me that I work hard and that's how I've gotten into this PhD program and survived through it so far, but staying up late one or two nights a week and writing equations and numbers on sheets of paper is not hard work, or if it is, it doesn't seem that way to me. I long for some kind of "work" that results in an outcome that means more than a piece of paper with my name and some other accredited words on it. I want to do something that creates a deeper connection or understanding between people. I want to take an emotional risk that makes me develop further as a human being. I want to write a song that means something to someone I've never met, a song that makes them feel like they know me. I want to fall in love and fall out of love and have the experiences that go along with it. I want to write a story. I want to learn a new language and then go to a foreign country and speak it.

I guess I just feel like my life has been a bit sterile lately, and I want something big to change. Now I just wonder if I'll have the willpower to get off my ass and make the decision and take the risk instead of my long-time philosophy of floating through life and passively enjoying as much of it as I can. Don't get me wrong. That philosophy has worked fantastically and my life has grown richer because of it, but I just don't know if it will deliver the kind of change I feel I need right now.

Well, I'll check all yalls later.

musical recommendation: Listen to Tom Waits!! He may take a couple of listens to dig, but it is so worth it.

currently listening to: Autechre - "P.:NTIL" from Draft 7.30

A Music-Filled Weekend Ahead

2004-05-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

I get to see two shows this weekend. Quite excited i am at this moment. Tonight, Friday, I'm travelling down to San Diego to see one of my favorite bands, My Morning Jacket. I once read a description of them as "a little less cosmic than the Grateful Dead and a little more spaced-out than Neil Young." They play the southern rock that rocks in a manner that lynyrd skynyrd could never imagine to.

Tomorrow, Saturday, I get to go see Einstürzende Neubauten. They are a nihilist german industrialish band that's been around for about 25 years. One of my friends really digs and asked me to go along, so I am.

In other news: So I downloaded a wav file from the movie "The Jerk" last night. It's the one where he's singing about picking out a thermos for his wife. and I loaded it into my buzz software to start making a remix out of it. it's progressing slowly, but i think it'll be good and funny.

I gotta go. Laters. Continue rocking.

currently listening to: My Morning Jacket, It Still Moves

... but it's dry heat

2004-05-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

It is about 5:15 pm on the afternoon of our fourth or fifth consecutive day of high temperatures in the 90s here in the sweltering infinite suburb. It's a bit warmer up here in Pasadena than it is by the ocean. At least three of these days have had highs at either 98 or 99 degrees Fahrenheit. I know, I know ". . . but it's dry heat." that's what everybody says all the time (even the people who live here permanently tell me that to give me a reason to like it).

I want to get one thing straight Hot is hot. It doesn't matter if it's wet or dry or light or dark or early or late or good or bad smelling. Hot is hot. I was walking across campus this weekend thinking about how much I hated living in a place that will have possibilities of temperatures in the high 90s for 7 months out of the year.

In conclusion: 1) I don't like to be sweaty when I shouldn't be, and 2) nice weather is entirely in the mind of the one who experiences it.

i like the weather here in the winter. i wish it would be winter all the time.

currently listening to: Air - "Don't Be Light" from 10,000 Hz Legend

Fifteen Dollars!?!

2004-05-02T00:41:00.000-07:00

So I was at a bar in old pasadena this evening. I go up to the bar, and being quite tired of beer, order a double shot of johnnie walker on the rocks. FIFTEEN DOLLARS!! The last time I ordered that stuff here it was $8.25. As a result, I will probably never go to this place called Jake's again. Rediculous.

So I ordered these 3 DVDs from amazon.com they are the series of releases from Director's label. The works of Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Chris Cunningham. So far, I like Michel Gondry the best. Lots of crazy music videos from Björk, The White Stripes, Beck, and many others. Lots of really awesome stuff. (and some French stuff too, Bryce (yes, Eric, Bryce really does exist))

laters.

currently listening to: Einstürzende Neubauten, 9-15-2000, Brussels

Stuff and more stuff.

2004-04-23T17:26:00.000-07:00

I just finished my week of stuffs to do. This afternoon I spend some time in the basement of the library working on homework in the same room as Mr. Talks-out-loud-while-he-reads and Mr. Types-in-a-rediculously-loud-manner, both of whom were difficult to drown out even with my headphones. Then I went to my "office" which my friends and I call the study hole. It's in the sub-basement of this building, and it looks as if no one has been there for a couple of years. It's quiet though.

I recently downloaded a program called buzz. It is a piece of freeware wonderfultasticity. They call it a modular software based synthesizer. It's basically a program where you can make electronic music with a bunch of generators and effects that people have programmed. I've been working on some stuff, and someday, hope to have an entire song worth of cool sounds (i'm never really satisfied with my attempts at artistic impression). Anyway, it's fun, and easy, and if you have like 40mb of space on a hard drive somewhere and a bit of time and desire to make music, I suggest you download it. It's worth it.

laters

currently listening to: squarepusher-ultravisitor

Ugly Is The New Cool

2004-04-15T00:29:00.000-07:00

Hey peoples. I have a couple of raves to share. Firstly, I just got new shoes. They're pretty bitch-n. Asics Mexico Modern. Secondly, I just got Johnny Greenwood's Bodysong Soundtrack. In case you were wondering, Johnny Greenwood is the tall, skinny, guitar beating, drum machine building member of Radiohead, and Bodysong is a film that roughly shows the life cycle of a human being using old file footage. There are no words. The only sound is that of Johnny Greenwood's soundtrack (which in my humble opinion is really a gorgeous composition (warning: This opinion is formulated after only one listening (but I don't think it will change much))). I haven't seen the film . . . yet, but as soon as it comes out on DVD on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, I probably will.

Last Saturday night, my friend Matt, my roomate (codename: "economics"), a friend of Matt's (Naboon (female from Thailand)), and I went out to a bar. Matt, being the grand amuser, asked Naboon how many beers it would take her to find him attractive enough to go home with. She said 10, followed closely in conversation by the fact that it would take her about 12 beers to pass out. This got me thinking.
.
.
.
So my new shoes could be considered ugly. The colors are kind of a strange combination, but I dig them a lot. I was wondering if beer consumption would be correlated to the apparent coolness of shoes, so I'm going to use you as my test subjects. ~~If you think I'm ugly.~~ If you think my new shoes are ugly, check out my artistic rendering of the shoes after 3 beers, 6 beers, and 10 beers. Then tell me if you think they look better, or if my artistic rendering of vision at certain levels of intoxication are accurate, or just tell me anything you want to.

rock

currently listening to: Johnny Greenwood's Bodysong

hot chicks

2004-04-13T00:18:00.000-07:00

In addition to chilling with Aeryk and Kate over spring break, I got to spend some quality time with twelve hot chicks.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)

currently digging: art by kozyndan

Free Association Episode #2

2004-04-12T19:59:00.000-07:00

I just remembered that I had a dream last night, from which the only thing I can remember is my swollen right ankle. I remember thinking, "Oh man. My ankle is all swollen again." but my ankle is really just fine.

Free Association Episode #1

2004-04-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

I was walking along Del Mar Boulevard today on my way back from the laboratory for my x-ray diffraction class, and I thought, "I would really love to have children . . . someday."

Prolonged Absence

2004-04-09T20:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry about my three-week absence from the realm of blog. More updates to come soon. Lots of pictures from spring break with Aeryk and Kate in DC area, and some others of a 2-dimensional version of my cousin Ben. See you soon.

rock

currently listening to: Gina by Geggy Tah from Sacred Cow (cool because it's a love song written about the dog on the cover of the album)

Reading Material

2004-03-19T01:10:00.000-08:00

So I'm getting on a plane in about 5 hours to fly out to the eastern coastal areas of this country and spend some time with Aeryk and Kate (if they can stand me). I have all my clothing packed. And Aeryk's rediculously late Christmas present. And my musical collection for the trip. (it always takes me longer to pick out music for a trip than it does to pick my clothes. i guess if i actually cared much about how i look, i.e. wearing something nicer than t-shirt and jeans every day, maybe that would be the other way around. but if you think about it you have shirts and pants and shorts and that's about it. maybe jackets too. but on the music side, you have jazz, hip-hop, indie rock and pop, electronic, classical, etc. and each one of those can be split up into subgenres, and each one of those has artists that sound different. i guess what i'm trying to say is that there are more albums worth listening to released each year than new clothing styles worth wearing, but i guess that's just my fashion-dead opinion.)

The decision now is what to take with me to read. I already have one shoe in -> the new issue of Harper's magazine. I'm really looking forward to reading the article on how some of the poorest parts of our country are farming communities in the midwest, but because of their religious beliefs, they vote for republicans, who in turn enact economic policies that make the farmers poorer. Sounds like a vicious cycle to me.

The rest of the list of possibilities goes like this:

-One Flew over the Cukoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

-Fear and Trembling and Repetition by Soren Kierkegaard

-Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

-The Metamorphosis and other stories by Franz Kafka

-Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre selected and translated by Walter Kaufmann

-Dirty Linen & New-Found-Land two plays by Tom Stoppard

-Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstader

I think that's about it. I also want to reread the dark tower series, and the hobbit and the lord of the rings, and i have this biography of Neil Young (who I think is one of the coolest people ever to roam this earth that i've been aware of) that i can't seem to get into. I have trouble with biographies. They just don't make me think, or grab my attention, or amuse me. I think biographies are just somewhere between the excitement or interestingness (yes. that is a word. I looked it up.) of a novel and the mundaneness of daily life (like my blog here) that doesn't hold my interest. I guess I'm the one missing out. Too bad.

Well, I think I'm gonna grab the Kierkegaard and the Kesey. That should keep me occupied.

also, I want to post a couple of pictures that have been hanging around just waiting to be put on the internet. chess and my friend Ben.

rock

Final Exams

2004-03-17T18:27:00.000-08:00

Only one more final to go. This one is in a class on Transmission Electron Microscopy and Electron Diffraction. It shouldn't be too bad. There's no pressure to do well on this one.

I also learned this week that I don't know how to solve a second order linear ordinary differential equation despite spending 3 hours a week in lecture and at least 15 hours a week on homework for the last 10 weeks for a class where I was supposed to be learning just that. A bit disheartening.

The third test was on statistical mechanics. If I do well, does that mean I can become a mechanic when I grow up?

currently listening to: dreamscape radio from glowdot.com

Published Coolness and Recorded Coolness

2004-03-13T23:52:00.000-08:00

**published coolness**
Have any of you ever read Harper's Magazine? I subscribed about two months ago, and I can't get over the coolness of a couple of the monthly features. They have Harper's Index, which is a bunch of statistics they put together each month.

Example from the April 2004 issue:
-Number of articles in major U.S. newspapers that have called any White House statement on Iraq a lie: 0
-Number of the five tax-cut questions asked the president on Meet the Press last winter that concerned the cuts' inequity: 0
-Average amount a Bush Cabinet member will save this year due to cuts in the capital-gains and dividend taxes: $42,000
-Median U.S. household income in 2002: $42,909

These things help to put things into perspective for me.

Also they have this thing called Findings where they summarize recently published scientific things. The last paragraph is always filled with bizarre stuffs. In the April 2004 issue they talk about monkey greeting rituals that include fiddling with each other's genitals or sticking fingers up each other's noses; how tight neckties are a possible contributor to glaucoma; fishes making farting noises with their anuses;and Tanzania outlawing the import of used underwear; among other things.

**recorded coolness**
The Bad Plus. Buy their music. Listen now. Immerse yourself in coolness. The Bad Plus are three dudes who play piano, bass and drums in a style not at all unlike jazz. Some might even say they play jazz. In fact most would. They play jazz. It's really cool. When they record an album, they go into the studio and record it on the first few live takes. No overdubs, no cut and paste. They just play. And they are rediculously good at it. I wish i could point you in the direction of some audio files, but the only place i can find them is the samples on amazon.com for their first major album These are the Vistas. They have some sweet covers too. They do "smells like teen spirit" and "iron man" all jazzed up. but it's not like cheezy lounge covers, they're really good. and their drummer blows my mind. I'm going to stop raving now so that i can get some sleep before getting up before 6AM so i can go and play in an ultimate frisbee tournament tomorrow.

rock

friendbloggolbdneirf

2004-03-10T19:17:00.000-08:00

I know the title of this entry is not a palindrome this language can make sense of, but it has meaning to me. That meaning is that I've added some links to the blogs of my friends. (To me, this is funny because I highly doubt that many people other than those who write the linked blogs actually visit this page, so in essence, I'm just giving them a quick ride home.)

rock

Crappy Music (in my humble opinion)

2004-03-10T18:40:00.000-08:00

I wish my roomate didn't enjoy listening to music that i consider crappy. I also get frustrated when he plugs his computer into my stereo (with sexxy speakers built by my friend damion) and streams internet audio through them because he finds no benefit to listening to something from a sonically acceptable source. (I have no problem with streaming internet music at reasonable volumes, but the compression on the audio cuts out a lot of the high frequency stuff and it sticks out like I would at a $2000 per plate fundraiser for George W Bush when the volume is turned up (like it is now). Then he starts singing along. arrrgh) (I'm sure damion will be as excited about having his picture on the internet as he was having the picture taken in the first place, but you can't tell me he doesn't look at least as sexxy as the speakers.)

**New Topic**
Fot the last couple of hours I've been thinking about my life and the direction it is heading. As you may already know, I'm in a PhD program at a technical institute in southern california. When I take a look at the people I know who have doctoral degrees in the stuff i'm studying, i find it really hard to find a single one that i would want to emulate in any capacity. I wonder if i'm heading in the right direction, and when/if i complete my current 4-year trajectory if i will "evolve" into something like the other PhD's i know. (for some reason, thinking about this put me in quite an introspective mood, so I'm listening to John Frusciante's Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt. good album. almost frighteningly introspective. (kind of like Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs) (when i go off on a tangent like this i think i should devote my life to music in some way))

But then I realize that I'm thinking about the future, and that brings me to the notion of time. I like to think (be it right or be it wrong) that time is an illusion and that the only thing that matters is right now because that's really all there is and ever has been/will be. Then I think about when i feel like i'm really living in that one eternal moment, like when I'm really content, almost complete. I feel like that when I'm with my closest friends, and I feel like that when I'm totally engrossed in music, and I feel like that when I'm reading something that makes me think, and I feel like that when I'm studying or working in the laboratory and something finally makes sense.

In conclusion, when I am closest to my ideal person (who I really want to be. living completely in the moment and aware of nothing and everything at once) this PhD program is really something that feels right for me. When I veer from that and begin to think about time and money (neither of which are of fundamental importance to me) then i begin to question my path. I guess I'll just go with the flow. It seems to be working so far.

**Political Awareness**
This topic is entirely different than the last one. My belief that being politically and nationally and internationally aware is a good thing may even be completely contradictory to the precept of living in the moment. I never said I had a coherent "unified field theory" of personal philosophy.

Read ZNET. It's a news source that claims to be "a community of people committed to social change." Sounds good to me. They are what the majority of people would call radically liberal. again, sounds good to me. If this doesn't sound good to you, maybe you should at least give it a shot. They cover lots and lots of stories that you will never hear about on the news on that box with the electrons shooting through a phosphorescent screen (for those of you who don't have one of the new lcd or plasma screens) and sucking your mind dry.

currently digging: The Bad Plus - These are the Vistas this is just some kick ass jazz.

Broken Legs, Jaywalking and Coaches

2004-03-03T22:25:00.000-08:00

broken legs
My legs don't work right.
I hope the biological conglomerate that comprises the corporeal manifestation of myself gets them fixed soon.

jaywalking
What's the point of enforcing a fine for jaywalking, especially at intersections with walk/don't walk lights?
you might say it's for the safety of the public. I disagree. Sure, the light is there for the safety of the public. It's excellent for someone who wants to know when it is absolutely safe to cross the street, but the enforcement of a fine for walking across a street when the light doesn't say "walk" seems, to me, to be a blatant (albeit somewhat trivial) violation of that person's basic rights. I may be wrong, but I am under the impression that, according to this country's constitution, one has the right to do whatever they wish as long as it does not impinge on the rights of another. When the light says "dont walk" (i've never seen a walk/dont walk light that actually had an apostrophe in the word don't) the crossing cars have the right of way, but if there are no cars, why should one be required to wait? No person is present whose rights could possibly be impinged upon. If i were in this situation, and somehow i were fined for unlawful crossing of a street, i would argue that it were a violation of my rights, then be fined anyway because the rest of society finds it perfectly acceptable to be automata and agree that the violation of a person's rights is cool.

when i really start thinking crazy, i think that we should keep all the current traffic signals and signs, but get rid of the fines for violating them too. This would 1)cause more accidents, 2)make people pay a little more attention when they drive, but 3)the roads wouldn't be quite as safe, so 4)less people would drive. 5)Public transportation would be viewed as safer than driving, so 6)there would be a driving force to expand it. I see four good things and two bad things. This would never actually work (in case you were as mad as my idealistic mind is) because human beings are not exactly the ideal, good-natured, individuals that i wish them to be. i guess i'm a romantic anarchist at heart, but my mind pulls me back down to a quasirealistic point of view. I still think they should get rid of fines for jaywalking though.

coaches
I don't like coaches. I mean i'm ok with coaches in organized sports. i played a bit of basketball and ran a bit of cross country in high school, and i understand the need for coaches, but i'm talking about the type of person that feels the need to coach people.

i went to an ultimate frisbee practice this evening. unfortunately, i couldn't play because my legs don't work. I sat on the sideline for a while and observed. it was really easy to pick out the "coaches". there are, of course, different kinds of coaches. i dig coaches that know their stuff and impart their knowlege through constructive suggestions at opportune times and still leave room for you to do your thing and make yourself better. my high school cross country coach was like this. I really admire him. then there's the "coach" who always feels the need to be saying or yelling something and telling you exactly what you're doing wrong and exactly what you need to do to fix it. i always feel as if these coaches are looking down on me, and maybe it makes them feel good, but it doesn't make me feel bad, it just makes me want to be lazier.

as i type this I am seeing my admiration of buddhism seeping through. i feel like the impetus to change comes from within the changing person, and when I am in the presence of the coach who tells me what to do i try to prove to them that they have little to no effect on my performance. this doesn't at all prove that the impetus to change comes from within the changing person, but in some possibly sick and/or twisted way, it makes me feel better.

the arguement in my head is going in loops. in order to understand things you have to stop trying to understand things, and in order to do that you have to stop trying to stop trying to understand things, and so on, and so on.

In conclusion, my legs hurt, i don't like the institution of "legal" street crossing, and i want to figure things out for myself, but in order to do that i have to stop trying to figure things out for myself, but in order to stop trying to figure things out for myself i have to stop trying to stop trying to figure things out for myself . . . . . .

i give up.

currently listening to: DJ Riz and his "variety is the spice of nice" show on the live stream of 90.3 kexp, seattle

rock.

Nice Weather

2004-03-03T18:53:00.000-08:00

'Twas a gorgeous day here in the infinite suburb that is los angeles. I took some pictures of the crappy view from the patio behind my crappy apartment. )i do get to see mountains though( )how do you like the backwards parentheses?( )1( )2(

currently listening to: Radiohead-Hail To The Thief, and some Oliver Future that my friend Damion turned me on to

rock

Magical Colors

2004-03-02T22:43:00.000-08:00

New colors.
Hopefully more pleasing to the eye.
I dig,
Do you?
Happy March 2nd.

Live Music is better than Dead Music

2004-03-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

I went to a concert last wednesday night, as mentioned in my previous entry. I was going to write about it after i got back, but i guess i was too wet to worry about it. Then i started doing homework and other things and i forgot about it. So here i am, and here are my comments on the concert, among other things.

the show was at the knitting factory in hollywood. i walked over to a friend's place, and my feet got really wet as I was wearing my 7-year old Chuck Taylors and it was raining like mad (brilliant move on my part). So we got on the metro and rode it down to hollywood. we get off on the corner of hollywood blvd and highland and take a right to wade down hollywood blvd (did I mention it was raining like mad) to go to the knitting factory and we run into a barricade. you see, it turned out to be the wednesday evening before the oscars, so they were blocking off the sidewalks so people wouldn't piss on the red carpet or something. we had to take a "pedestrian detour" (if i would have had my camera at the time, i'd put up a picture of the sign) through a mall to get out the other side and walk through the rain some more to get to the knitting factory.

now for the show: enter venue. i think it was the back room at the knitting factory. relatively small, but nice. get me a beer. mmmmm Bass be tasty. They played the new Four Tet album (I believe it's called Rounds) a couple of times before the show. quite electronic groovetastic.

First band. The advantage. They play music from nintendo games with guitars and drums. excellent. website.

John Vanderslice's hip-hop/rap mix tape between sets. I recognized outkast and geto boys.

Vanderslice's set ruled as usual. The new drummer is no Christopher McGuire, but he still sounded good. Also bassist and Scott Solter on 2nd guitar and keys. lots of stuff from new album. highlights for me "heated pool and bar", "coming and going on easy terms", and "speedlab" as encore. quite rockin rendition of "big band style" also.

cool sounding indie rock between sets. I think i heard the dammitheads but i'm not sure. whether i heard them at the show or not, it's still worth checking out (they remind me of spoon.

the wrens rule! I don't think i need to say much more about them. great show. The lead singer said something about how people from LA tell him "our city kind of sucks, but at least we have good weather." my kind of humor.

We actually had to leave a bit early to catch the last train back home. i'll blame los angeles for that one. I walked/waded about a mile from the train station back to my place in the rain/running water. all in all a good evening, but a bit wet.

i went to another show on friday night. quite good. at club violaine. the meeting places and the autumns. the autumns were really good. between their first and second songs they made a swell of sound that just got louder and louder and more gorgeous for about 2 minutes. quite fantastic. i wish i could describe it better, but the words escape me at the moment. about halfway through their set the bass amp broke, and while they were getting a new one, they played the first couple of verses of "I believe in a thing called love" by The Darkness. wild.

good weekend

this morning i was feeling like black and white pictures, so i whipped out the digital image recording device and had some fun #1,#2.

currently listening to: beatles, sonic youth, beach boys, spoon and others on accuradio.com's high fidelity station.

rock.

Vanderslice in under 3 hours

2004-02-25T17:24:00.000-08:00

I'm going to a John Vanderslice show this evening at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood. Very excited. He's one of my favorites if you don't already know that.

Currently listening to: The Wrens - The Meadowlands (also playing this evening at the knitting factory)

I'm a lazy bum

2004-02-23T17:56:00.000-08:00

So I got up this morning and was all ready to go take a shower at 8:30, when I remembered that my first class was at 10am and not 9am. So I went back to sleep. I ended up deciding in my sleepy stupor that I was just going to skip my first class. So I did. Then I ended up rolling out of bed about 5 minutes before my second class, so I skipped that too. I had some really cool dreams though.

In one of them, I sent an email to John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. I apparently didn't get a reply, so somehow my parents got me some information on where he lived. The next thing I know I'm wandering through a house that feels like a maze, but there's only one direction to go, so I guess it's more like a hallway with a lot of switchback turns. I come around this corner, and I see John Darnielle with a woman (presumably his wife) sitting on a couch watching television in a room that has the feel of a basement. He looks really sleepy, but still alert. I don't remember any of the words in conversation, but he seemed confused that I (a stranger) was in his home, but still amiable enough not to want me to leave.

In another of my dreams, I was in a car with some people who were my aunts, uncles, and/or cousins. I couldn't really tell which ones they were though. There was a golden retriever in our car and we were going to a park. I remember walking around the park with the dog and my family members. Then I saw another one of my uncles (absolutely no clue which one) up at the top of a hill with his dog, wich I believe was a darker colored labrador retriever. Now this is the weird part. He started yelling down at us about drugs that are used in lobotomy procedures. He was yelling at us asking us where we got them, then he started throwing these clear jars with white labels with black print on them. The jars apparently contained the aforementioned lobotomizing drugs. He came really close to hitting me with a couple of the jars, and I picked up one of them that hadn't broken on impact. The label looked like this from what I can remember.

Heated Pool and Bar

2004-02-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

I wish I had a heated pool and bar. And a city that wasn't pollutified. The smog was pretty bad today.

I went to the Getty center on Saturday. That was quite enjoyable. Art is fun. I could spend days in that museum.

I just took two midterm exams yesterday, so now I feel like doing nothing. That's probably why I'm typing here right now.

Well, that's about all I have right now.

Current listening infatuations: Tom Waits and Frankenixon

Soda of the People

2004-02-12T01:30:00.007-08:00

Check out this soda. It's called Leninade.

Label 1

Label 2

I'm a big fan of the fine print on label 2.

This seems like it would go well with a visit to StalinWorld. (Link courtesey of the Annals of Improbable Research and their Ig Nobel prizes. StalinWorld won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.)

I hate public computers

2004-02-09T23:51:00.000-08:00

Don't get me wrong, I am greatful for the ability to use a computer in the library, and I am even more greatful that that computer has cool, homework-simplifying programs like Mathematica, but why must the help library think I'm opening it for the first time and rebuild the Help Browser Indes each of the 13+ times I need to open it. I guess I have several solutions, 1) Learn to use Mathematica without the help, 2) stop complaining, 3) keep complaining so that I can write in my blog about it.

I pick #3.

the keyboard likes to stick toooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

tee hee

Quick Move

2004-02-09T18:42:00.000-08:00

I've moved my blog from my educational institution's public site to the blogspot website. Find me here.

Currently listening to: The Mountain Goats-We Shall All Be Healed

Monday Morning Webcheck

2004-02-09T09:25:00.000-08:00

Last Plane to Jakarta talks about new age music this week. Here's my favorite sentence from this week:

"because while i have always deplored the sorts of people who are always bustin' out with the "oh writing about music, what a waste, you have to feel the music" and so on and so forth as though feeling were somehow wordless (it's not) or words were the enemies of emotions (they're not) or there were some uncrossable divide between thinking and feeling (there isn't)"

Also check out the Thnikkaman and his Technochocolate.

Time for thinking and class.

"Yeah. shut up kids."
-The Thnikkaman

Smooth Love

2004-02-08T14:23:00.000-08:00

Smooth love, that's how I'd describe the musics I'm listening to right now. Geggy Tah (album:Into the Oh). It's gorgeous. Also, this blogging is working wonderfully as an excuse for not studying for my ODE test that is due on Tuesday. Maybe I should be startin to be studyin.

I'll leave you with some lyrics from Geggy Tah

"Our solar system is just a teardrop in the eye
of a rare bird who nearly never cries.
Our solar system is all behind the eyes
of the one you love
who's your space heater tonight"
-from Space Heater

2004-02-08T13:25:00.000-08:00

Hey. First blog entry ever. Right here. You're experiencing it along with me. I've wanted to do this for a while. As I have named this blog "Digital Free Association," you might guess that this might end up being a kind of stream-of-consciousness free-for-all. I hope it doesn't digress to that too often. My ideal blog is going to be a place where i can just get things out of my brain and into the quasi-open. So, yeah, there will be a bit of streaming consciousness, but I'll try to keep it to a minimum. I'm also not a big fan of capitalization when I type, so that might lapse a bit too, but I'll try to keep it legible.

I don't have too much on my mind right now, so here's a link to lots of cool music that I've never heard www.epitonic.com