Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

STOP! You’ll poke your eye out!
Please thanks,
Sincerely, Richard James Seymour
Look out, you might lose your id card too, err… what’s that there for again?

Riff on that peoples.

And you get seven years bad luck. A lot a kids learned that that I know.

I knew this global joke had a punchline. Thanks to near dr. CZ for this one. Sheer entertainment.

MIDI_Scrapyard_Challenge_Workshop.JPG

Originally uploaded by mark allen.

I have been so “all talk” lately that I’m beginning to tire out, or perhaps it was the other reasoning around. Here’s to what to some degree started all of this out of the box thinking. 3 wise folks who decided to share some of their riches (which were really just trash) with ~10-15 people who thought it would be neat to try something new. The photo here sums up the event better than words. Ask questions.

Thanks to Mark for uploading such a nice shot on flickr. A sight (I mean site!!) somewhat dedicated to the original thought that, from enough angles, someone’s bound to catch what’s really goin’ on.

I still haven’t uploaded my shots, waiting… biding my time… till I well hell, I’ll put ‘em up now.

Please take a moment to read the definition of the word rote. It exists as both a beautiful word and a great way to learn.

Here lies an elegantly written reasoning behind when and where to use rote learning. Well not that elegantly written, in that it seems to never argue for a case where one could actually use the power of rote learning for one’s own personal benefit. Like learning to hammer nails, shoot staples, etc. etc. it looks easy, because it is… but it isn’t when you first try now is it.

Props to Jan for making me think about this as we fixed the acoustical damping properties at Jan’s very scientifically (German/Spanish/American (thx Josh, I barely know yah)) engineered recording studio. Very important to take the Fourier transform of the entire sound spectrum of the drum kit (including cymbals) into account when you start damping, so make sure you work out the math first. Please, we don’t want anyone out there getting seriously hurt making or recording music. Trust us we’re scientists.

I want to thank Interweb pioneer (who hosts on revver, who I think I will host with soon too… met someone that works there, and they seem good, youtube is nice too (abc vs cbs vs nbc all over again?)) ze frank for some of the chutzpah required to put my ugly mug online. And Roboppy for always being pretty cool to peeps online included jaded ones like me and reintroducing me to ze’s site.

Anyway, here goes nothing. Thanks too to apple for making it too easy to do such fun stuff (my own energy was added somewhere in the mix…) but the choppers are already circling the city in that way they do, so that’s my cue to sleeeep!

the Zidane a stylish cultural phenomenon. Please play nice kids. :) Remember you’ll be telling your offspring you you did the Zidane. Songs will be written “Let’s Zidane again, like we did last summer” “Who let the Zidane’s out?” All of this with utmost respect to the man, the player, and most importantly someone who doesn’t let you badmouth his mom.

State of the blog. I have some sweet posts on the back burner. A meta review of why the band the studiofix is so good (and guess what, it’s not because they’re a bunch of beautiful young ladies, that’s just a side effect or something.) A full report on the scrapyard challenge I was lucky enough to participate in (w/ photos, or as NYC coolness maestro Trudy calls ‘em, woah-tos). Oh an interview with Trudat’s awesome friend Pei Pei (and her rockin’ partner Gio) who both kick it in a hip hop dance fashion. That should show up in a zine too.

Some sort of report on what the heck I’ve been actually doing at work. And maybe a brief materials science related post, since that’s really what I love. I mean I love making music and listening to music and riding bikes and blah blah, but materials science seriously (to me at least) undergirds just about all of that in fundamental ways. I hope everyone feels that way about what they like to study. Ooops what am I now, a fundamentalist? A materials science fundamentalist… eek!

Bottom line, more sharing, less secrets (except for the confidential stuff) and you know… more fun on the blog.

What is the occasion for this ambitious meta post? Well this blog has officially made a quarter (over it’s entire lifespan, mind you) from that little ad to the right (those ads don’t reflect the anything of this blog, but you know that) and with the help of nearlyfreespeech web hosts, this thing may become somewhat self-sustaining, which was always my plan. Sorry to the ad free blog movement, but magazines like tapeop have shown me that entirely (100%) ad supported mags can be even better than some idealistic hope for adless existence. Heck, sometimes a small business throws up a google ad and maybe it’s something someone actually wants?!

Or you know, I may not post again for 2 weeks… heheheh. Bogged down in some fresh thing.

Man, why is youtube filled with junk like this?

Actually that’s me jammin’ out a bit this morning. Check out some of the super lofi vids of people just jamming out in front of a videocamera. It’s like when I was a kid and just found MTV again (not that my Dad was all that into me watching it) First video I saw… Van Halen … JUMP!

Might as well, huh?

I think when my own personal history is written and I tell people about what I was doing in the summer of 2006 in LA one thing will stand out. That I stood by blocks away while the South Central Farm got bulldozed. It’s not a 100% binary issue, since it does involve to some degree squatting, but not like squatting and making a crystal meth factory, more like squatting and growing edible plants. So for that, I feel sorry, I think it could’ve been done a different, more interesting way… why not warehousetop farms, why wasn’t there a proper migration plan laid out for the individual farmers. Why didn’t people take the time to do the right thing. Sure plants can grow back (and will in my opinion, somewhere somehow), but the very act is so disheartening.

But on another note, if you’ve heard the words net neutrality and don’t really know what it means. Imagine if your favorite toll road all of the sudden started charging variable tolls, with certain large corporations (the telephone companies here on out referred to as the telcos) choosing who pays what size toll. As it stands now, the telcos compete to offer service to both providers (ie Yahoo, Google, About.com) because these service providers need wires to hook up to the internet (this is done in big ol’ data centers or in Yahoo and Google’s case the telco wires usually go straight to their own server center) Anyway, then you and I (or our work) pays the telco to hook us up to the other end of that line, so we can see internet services anywhere from here to Zaire (with North Korea excepted (they don’t want to join in, but we would accept them if ready) and maybe some others… for example Iraq didn’t actually have internet properly (as in the .iq country extension) until after our invasion and some gutsy entrepreneurs went and set it up.) Anyways, as you can see a telco gets money from both ends, anyone who connects has to pay. And everyone pays based on some scale or other, but now they’d like to set the scales such that the people who pay them the most get the fastest transport through their lines. This would be like if 18 wheelers could slip the toll booth operator a $50 so that you could go 40 miles over the speed limit. Sure, they’d get where they’re going faster, but my oh my, things would get dangerous to the point where you’d see a lot less small cars on the road.

And lets remember that google, like a small car basically started out in a garage (actually a dorm room, but close enough)

Here is the link to the main hub for people fighting to save net neutrality (as in everyone on the net plays by the same rules in terms of speed):

Save the Internet

Note it’s couched in sort of breathless terms, but it’s true, when the post nuclear apocalyptic visionaries at RAND set out the first blueprint for what the Internet (then called ARPA/DARPA net) should be in order to survive a nuclear holocaust, this idea would’ve seemed pretty queer.

I apologize for the half truths, mixed metaphors, etc. etc. in this post, but I hope I got some one to get the concept of net neutrality that didn’t before. And peace to the displaced south central farmers, I am truly sorry that I didn’t even try to really help out.

Here. Not at all self explanatory, so maybe I’ll be able to write it up a bit later… you can see me hiding in there rocking an achewood shirt amongst all of the sweet people who made such awesome stuff. Honestly I feel like a Milhouse when Bart let’s him know the secret password and come up to the tree fort (note this is a meta simpsons reference, not actually referring to a specific show or anything, only the characters.)

I’ll update this with more (including flickr jazz and maybe the video if it gets youtubed)…

Is it ok computer? ummm well anyway, the www.machineproject.com / www.scrapyardchallenge.com thing I did today was officially the funnest (technical term synonym being: most fun) thing I’ve done for an entire day since oh… I don’t really know, definitely a long long time. (Our workshop at my lab was pretty darn fun too come to think of it, but less anarchic) It was just stupid smart fun. I didn’t know what to expect. There will be videos, pix, etc. etc. Every single person there (who went to the end) did something totally awesome and original. I’m going to work on getting a variable voltage -> midi box put together (it’ll go to the front of my things to solder queue) so I can play this instrument I made. Which… is a red office chair that you play by scooching around on it. And I wasn’t really thinking about the playing it with your butt aspect when I made it (originally the design was to incorporate an endless potentiometer on the rotational axis, but the pot didn’t fit right! and I didn’t want to dremel it down) The result was definitely way funnier to watch, at least I think… although people said it looked like I was in pain. It was just weirt because I had to really sit on the dang thing to make it work. And _really_ sitting takes effort.

Also met ~15 or so people who, if impressions based on spending one day working super hard side by side (and sweating a bit, cause it was hott up in the machine project), do really really great things.

Mega propers to the organizers of this roving band of construction Katherine and Jonah who not only now live in my former digs Park Slope, Brooklyn (repruhzent) but are getting their PhDs from Trinity College Dublin… and think about and do big things for a living. And Mark of the machine project who has built an amazing space… One thing I would’ve done differently… bring my friggin’ notebook. That was a rookie mistake there. As made exemplary here by the fading memory of the guy who actually set up the synth itself (MAX/MSP) and the names of a lot of other people although there were a lot of Marks (one Makr…) and so I guess the rest of us were the funky bunch (badum ching) … fading … darn… oh well, we’ll cross in flickr or somethin’ like that. (speaking of flickr, I took a few photos, but others got video, etc. etc. etc.) Too bad my instrument made me look like a damn fool. Damn fool. I could dream about becoming the next star wars kid, but I doubt it looks that purely true and awesome.

… in other news:
We all missed the world cup final… I hear that some famous dude tried to crack open a dude’s sternum with his head. It’s like Alien (aliens, alien^3, alien resurrection) in reverse! (oh man check it, with the french commentary, et pour quois?) I would hasten to bet that the one guy said something so wrong, so unrepeatable, that it would’ve made any red blooded man head butt him in the chest. (hah)

Clark 8 practiced tonight in a sweet sprint fashion and we f’ing killed it. If we don’t play a show it’s basically your loss (you being the world at large). Because we’re good, and I’m not just saying that cause I’m in the band. We kick it super hard and then head butt you in the chest. (Song to sing in your head while reading me writing like this: Red Hot Chili Peppers “If you see me getting high if you see me getting high, knock me down…”)

finally, I tried to play through the ‘in my tribe’ 10,000 maniacs songbook that I’ve had since time immemorial. I could play the songs, and lord if Rob Buck (RIP) and those guys pick some sweet, sweet chords, but I just started crying like a little baby by the time I got to about the weather (that’s three songs in)… it’s just too much, it like tore me up with homesickness and reminiscence and wow… Natalie Merchant when she was who knows how young wrote some of the most righteous words, perhaps I was just too young to get it when I was actually able to meet her a good 3 or four times. I think I was pretty deep into my too cool for 10,000 maniacs and their major labelness by the end of it, but my god, even “candy everybody wants” is like such a perfect meta pop song. Insane. (oh, btw her solo work and the 10k maniacs without her, sweet too) (for those of you who don’t know, I’m from Jamestown NY which is the home of Roger Tory Peterson (bird books, if you know), one supreme court justice (chief maybe) named Robert Jackson (thanks for the reminder Dad on the name) who had a good hand in forging the international law system post WWII that our country has now taken upon itself to forget about, Lucille Ball (she had this TV show or something ;) ), and the 10,000 maniacs, and about 28,000 maniacs doing amazing things within the city limits these days and some 230,000+ more living in Chautauqua county at the westernmost tip of NY state)

My batteries are shot so I’m sleepin’ now.