Two Day Weekends Are The Best

I can't remember the last time I felt this confident about a test I probably did badly on. I mean, the lab practical in the morning went exceptionally well, probably a 100%. But the lecture exam most likely kicked the crap out of me, despite actual effort to study this time around. If it does go badly, I'm going to blame it on having to be awake and in class by 9 am for the first time in a month. This is, in fact, an awful excuse and I know it. But I have to blame it on something, right? Who's with me on this? It couldn't possibly be my own fault for playing Sega Genesis games during lecture, could it?

Just finished Soul Nomad, too. What a mix of really cool and exceptionally disappointing that was. It's no Disgaea, for sure. I didn't even enjoy it as much as Ogre Battle, which came out more than ten years ago and seems to be the major source of inspiration. But it filled the void in a way that Halo 3 simply can't. In fact, I haven't picked Halo 3 up since the moment I brought Soul Nomad home. Probably time to give it another shot, before I fall too before behind the competition.

We got partial schedules for next month today, and for the first time in months I have classes monday - friday. Excellent! Two day weekends are the best! Oh, and it's 3 am. I suppose I should get some sleep. I'm on it!

And In Today's News: Awesome Time

Well, I didn't exactly waste the day. Spent roughly four hours working on a group project. But those meetings tend to tax me to the limit for the day. All I really wanted to do when it was over was plop down on the couch and order a pizza. And so I did. Awesome Time, woo!

Yesterday when I got home from class, I found a note on my door saying that the power company would be shutting off all power in our complex at 2 am, and that they chose this time in particular so as not to interfere with people. Of course, I had to curtail everything I was doing around 1:30 am and crawl into bed with a flashlight to read. After a while, I look at the clock. It's 2:30 and the power's still on. Yeah, it stayed on all night. So today I got another note on my door saying that instead, they would be shutting off the power on Monday at 10 am. "Off-peak" hours, never mind the fact that may day generally starts at noon and if my alarm batteries die I'll end up missing class, etc. Hooray, power company!


I have two tests tomorrow, one at 9 am and the other at 1 pm. I should be asleep by now. In fact, that's a brilliant idea.

Spells Poorly, Rocks Massively

What an incredibly uninteresting couple of days it's been for me. School, video games, school, video games. Mostly video games. And I missed a day with the blog, that's like the kiss of death with me and things. Like how I used to go to the gym, then I missed a day and now it's been two years since my last visit. Oops.

The school did something really good today, though. Two things, actually. The first was that instead of a straight up lecture, we head a guest speaker/performer come into class. This guy was awesome. His band is not so bad, either. His schtick is that he uses an MPC sampler as an instrument rather than a looping machine, and he uses three of them at once. It's pretty impressive to watch. The first video is a past performance at the school, and the second one is a better view of his hands.




We actually got to spend a little time with the MPC this month in lab, and it gives me a greater appreciation for what he's doing here. I have to think to myself "I could do that," but I doubt I'll ever be able to devote the time required. LOTS of work.

Oh, I mentioned there were two good things. The second was getting out of lab two hours early. Yep, that's freakin' awesome. So I came home, ordered some General Tso's chicken and watched the first three episodes of Boston Legal Season 3, which ware awesome. If you've missed out on this show so far, we need to do something about that immediately. In fact, I think I'm going to watch episode 4 in a couple of minutes.

Lastly, brief travel update. I should be heading out west to Phoenix for a few days around Thanksgiving, and getting to Pittsburgh towards the end of December. Plan your lives accordingly. That is all.

Bad Grades, Muggery

Back to school after my day off, and wow was it awesome! I got my lowest test grade so far from last Saturday, woohoo! Could have been a lot worse, but is this where being a cocky slack-ass starts to catch up with me? I suppose this is my warning to buckle down and start taking everything seriously.

And then they let us out of lecture two hours earlier, which is awesome for people that didn't have to head right back to school in two hours. Not for me, though. Back to school for lab which was entertaining for fifteen minutes. True, we did get to play with MPC sequencing hardware, but the number of patches and sounds available on it was underwhelming.

Took a friend out to Sam Ash to pick up some guitar strings for him, and grabbed some for my 12-string as well. It just hasn't been the same since one friend broke them while messing around, and another one broke the replacements while restringing it. This is why I play the drums. Drum heads don't break when you put them on. Usuaully.

Grabbed Halo 3 tonight as well, and it didn't disappoint. Of course, my expectations were low going in and I'd still rather play Team Fortress 2. Orange Box can't get here soon enough. Also shortening Halo's lifespan is Soul Nomad, which comes out tomorrow and is a sort of spiritual sequel to Disagaea. It's like crack for Phil. And so is Civilization IV, which I spent several more hours tonight playing instead of reading like I promised myself.

Will try to start jamming with friends in class more. I miss playing music a lot and it's starting to catch up with me. I think I was fine while Guitar Hero was still fresh, but since that's worn out on me it's time to get back to rocking out without a plastic guitar.

Point of interest: a friend of mine was mugged late last night while walking his dog in our apartment complex. This does not make me feel safe. In fact, it reminds me that while I've moved away from Phoenix and DC, the ghetto has moved with me. It took me years to (mostly) get over the paranoia from when I was held up in 2003, and this will probably send my mind down similar avenues. Maybe I should buy a gun.

Anyway, no school tomorrow but I do have a group meeting instead. They're much the same, without the 30 minute breaks. That said, it's well past when a sane person would have gone to sleep. And I used to need adderoll to stay up this late. Ha!

Short Post For Ya

Well, I've had a day to cool off and I feel a bit better about it now. Really took it easy today. It wasn't exactly "awesome" so much as it was chilled out. Picked up Civilization IV the other day and spent most of today with that. Really took me back to my kidhood. My grandmother's sister bought me the original Civilization for Chanukkah way back in the day and it was probably the most addicting thing I've ever encountered next to soda. Civ IV's the same deal with better graphics and... well, that's really it.

That's really all I have to say at the moment. I'm kind of burnt out from sitting in front of the computer all day long and having been hung over the previous two. Gonna start reading a new book now if I can decide on one from the pile.

Oh, and RIP Marcel Marceau. 'Cause mime is money.

Censorship: For realz?

I'm going to eschew the usual fluff and get right down to something that's really bothering me. In my online class which focuses on media and social issues, we were tasked with reviewing the Parents' Television Council's website and discussing it on our private discussion board. Now, these discussions are little more than people answering the questions posed in short-essay form and not so much a discussion. But it's appalling how many people simply said "I think the PTC is good and I think TV needs to be censored and America's Family Values are declining rapidly." Some choice quotes are uncut and as follows:

• "overall it does not hurt anyone physically and the PTC is trying to make television more appropiate for its viewers.."
• "f it werent for groups like this, young individuals would be exposed to the most raw and uncut television programs."
• "The PTC is just the cable police, this is the kind of police i think is alright"
• "PTC is an irritating acronym. I dont like acronyms with all consonants. Seems to me they should stop watching t.v. and spend time with their children."

I'm seriously appalled that students at a school for recording engineers can be this blatantly pro-censorship. Especially when the class we're in is beating them over the heads with why this kind of gross censorship is bad, and considering that every TV made since 2000 has a v-chip inside it. The PTC is absolutely unnecessary as long as the ratings board does their job(which is another entry entirely).

Okay, I'm done being political for a while now. That just made me so angry, I had to say something about it. It might have something to do with the fact that I've had a wicked hangover all day and had a lab practical which I lost points on because the software messed up and the lab instructors are unwilling to believe that it's possible for this to happen.

On the plus side, I got to watch This Film Is Not Yet Rated for the same class the discussion group is in. And we watched Thank You For Smoking earlier in the week. At least they're assigning interesting material.

In other news, I bought a whole bunch of CDs yesterday and that's been keeping me pretty well entertained. Picked up a few albums I should have bought years ago (Counting Crows, Green Day, etc.) as well as some British music that I discovered on the Now compilations.

And now, it's time to settle in for a long night of vintage gaming. I've decided it's the nerdy, male equivalent of a manicure. Or the thing with the towel on your head and the limes in your eyes, whatever the hell you call that. Peace, blogosphere!

Setting off for adventure

I have an exam tomorrow at 1 pm. I've studied a little tonight. Now it's time to go drinking for a friend's birthday. Consider it a study in how well I've maintained the ability to ace tests with a hangover.

Also, in lab today I put the finishing touches on the song I posted the other night. I've updated the link with the final version of the tune, although there isn't too much of a difference this time around. I just doubled some of the guitar with horns. Anyway, I realized that it's been stuck in my head for a week now and I' m wondering if it's okay to have your own song stuck in your head. Comments on this would be appreciated.

Short post tonight, there's cold beer waiting for me. And pong. Can't forget the pong.

Phil made a short film!

In keeping with our new theme of nightly updates, I present to you a stop-motion montage of one hour in Computers, Math & the Internet. There are some issues with the frame rate, but I wasn't able to turn it into a .mov at full quality. Thanks a lot, mac!
Party time!

Busy weekend coming up. Exam, two papers, jam sessions, and no days off until Monday. The entire week's been pretty frustrating, actually. Yesterday comic artist Darick Robertson was signing at the local comic shop but I couldn't make it thanks to school, and today I was notified two hours before the event that this guy was speaking at school, and again I couldn't go. Two weeks ago, guys from Sony were giving presentations about game audio that was during class as well. I think I was saving all that for a later rant about how the school doesn't let us know what's going on in time, but there's plenty of other ammo there.

Good news is that there's only one more week of these classes left. Next month we have a class called audiotronics that's basically us dismantling electronics and putting them back together again. I'll get a chance to put my Basic Electricity skills to work. Thank you, public education, for required high school shop classes!

Lastly, I'm reading Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. This book is just about the most twisted thing I've ever read. But dammit, it's really interesting and I can't put the bastard down. In fact, everything I've read from Ellis so far has seemed like some sort of psychotic genius. Do read.

Time to try and finish the book. I expect it will leave me visibly disturbed tomorrow. Peace!

Phil Writes a Song and it Doesn't Completely Suck

Here is the result of two weeks' work in lab. I suppose I'm proud of it, since it's the second song I've ever written. I wrote the first when I was six years old and it's been retired for a long time. Don't ask me to sing it, I couldn't if I tried. I spent a lot of time nitpicking about stuff with the new one and it still isn't perfect, but I wanted to get it over with so I'd have time to try something else out next week.


Matt, I'm including this video since you mentioned Flight of the Conchords:


Lastly, work begins tonight on the new web page. If anyone wants to do some custom art, give me a heads up. Peace!

Nine Hour Awesome Time Extravaganza

I'm learning that having a day that starts at 1 pm is a mixed blessing. That is, I already knew it but had forgotten thanks to last month's ridiculous 7 am schedule. So now I have class from 1-5 three days a week and 5-9 on alternating days. Today I celebrated this remarkable schedule with Awesome Time. Nine freaking hours of it.

I feel completely hollowed out. It might be the effects of running Super Nintendo games through on XBox onto a large HD television. There is in fact something oddly perverse about gaming this way when I have a perfectly good SNES in the other room and a low-def TV gathering dust in the corner. Even moreso the fact that at my age I can still play video games for so many consecutive hours. When do I start feeling like an adult? Anyway, I haven't binged like this in a while now but today I was in just the perfect frame of mind for it. I think there's a book in there somewhere, "Zen & the SNES" or some such. Which reminds me, I still have a general outline for the "Awesometime Handbook" which I'm sure I'll start working on one of these days.

Is it possible to write a full book about being lazy? The last time I tried to write a book was in 12th grade and I got as far as a cursory outline of the plot and characters before deciding I'd rather do just about anything else. It really, really sucked and I'm glad I didn't save the drafts.
Awesome Time has had several projects devoted to it in the past that have all fallen by the wayside in favor of more Awesome Time. That's interesting, isn't it? I think that's a chapter in the book, right there. There was also a website planned, that never got off the ground even though the proper domain names were purchased. That's up there with Lopandemonium.com among the all-time greatest projects that never saw the light of day.

Group meeting tomorrow where we get to watch Thank You For Smoking and then write a paper about it. At least one class has interesting topics, yes? Meanwhile, today in midi we reviewed binary math and talked about... well, it's not interesting. But tomorrow we have lab and get to play with expensive keyboards and synth modules. I should be able to finish the song I was working on tomorrow and upload it later in the evening.

That said, it's after 3 in the morning and I should have gone to sleep hours ago, but I feel one or two more hours of Awesome Time coming on before I crash. To the XBox!

(For more of Phil, look for new rant on the frontpage of F13.net in a day or two.)

From the trenches

It was roughly ten minutes ago, I couldn't sleep, and I realized I haven't written anything of substance in years. Is it just a coincidence that I had to create this blog for class a few months back? By the way, you should probably not attempt to listen to the file in the original entry. There, you've been duly warned.

At any rate, I will be attempting to update this regularly now to get my creative juices flowing again. Anything to break the cycle of video games and boredom that I've been dragging myself through for the last few years.

For those that I haven't been keeping updated regarding my scholastic endeavors, here's what we've accomplished so far. We've: learned the ropes in Cubase, Nuendo and Logic digital audio workstations; discussed the history of the major forms of mass media; edited sound effects into a short clip from the film Ice Age (I failed to obtain a copy of this, unfortunately); began working with analog recording consoles (about half the size of the ones you see in the major studios); began working with effects gear like flangers and compressors. And currently we're learning MIDI sequencing through Logic. I'm writing an awful 80s-style song that I can probably post in a week or two.

Also, we're taking an online course. I have many and varied opinions on this, but you'll have to ask me elsewhere since they are probably reading this.

It feels good to write stuff again, even if it's mostly gibberish. I was even thinking earlier of getting back into poetry. I think I've still got my chops, even though it's been a good seven years since my last masterpiece. Well, I'll leave you with one last nugget: everyone else was right, the weather in Florida sucks and I really wish the school were in Phoenix. Or in Pittsburgh during the summer.

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