2005.10.19 1603pdt on the plane over the midwest. i heard over the communcations channel about turbulence near sioux falls, so maybe this sunset that's starting below me is erika's. i think we just crossed over the missouri but im not sure- the radio talk is for a control center in minneapolis and it sounds like it covers a pretty big. also flew over tri-cities earlier and i took some pictures. here's one- clouds cover what would be exciting landmarks such as the cooling towers from the nuclear plant and rattlesnake mountain.
2005.10.16 1844 the further adventures of sir spendalot: got the latest canon PowerShot 5.0Mpixel camera at Glazers in Seattle. a bit of an impulse buy because it's about $100 more than i wanted to pay for a camera, but it seems that cameras in the 2something hundered range have generally crappy optics (visible distortion of images for distances closer than about 3 feet). this may not stand up to real scrutiny (like the comparisons i should have been doing over the past month instead of the past 24 hours). i also picked up the Jackson and his Computer Band album and the 2-disk High Llamas retrospective collection. i stand by the assertion Jackson = a fad but fun. the High Llamas CD is a different story: i guess i havent read enough of the liner notes to figure out the chronology of their sound, but the songs cover a wide range of instrumentation from full-on analog electronica showdowns to the calmer and string-infused tracks of what i imagine to be their earlier work. still should have bought that microdisney record in LA back in March.
2005.10.16 207 first ever post from my new ibook g4. it's on a local version that will hopefully be rsync'ed later to my account. im really happy about 3 things:
* seeing tim, ali, rick, neal and their assorted significant others this evening and being part of a group of people before i head off to unknown populations and what will probably be a challenging social situation. i realized last night hanging out with ted's friends kate and luci that i can be difficult to read, especially when language, age or even regional language differnces provide further separation between me and the people around me.
* as shallow as it sounds with all the ipods and such, im glad that music that i enjoy can now be portable.
* my dad knows what my silly attempt at a moustache is going to look like. i really love my family a lot.
2005.10.12 1248 advancement yesterday means sushi last night and
getting to work at noon after picking up 3 CDs. that's right, CDs. why?
because soon (later today?) im going to go drop a pile of dollars on an ibook
and with it will come with an iPod mini. too bad it's only a 30Gb hard drive
(which seems to be reduced to around 18 by the time you open the box...) not
enough for my current itunes library but certainly enough for the stuff i
actually listen to.
the cds:
* new defjux sampler "Teaser" which does have a Rick
Ocasek version of an RJD2 track- straight throwback to 1982.
* latest quasimoto album
which is great and includes the rappcats track. the video for it is amazing and has clips of pretty
much every old school rapper.
* the new live MF Doom cd, 'live from planet x'. it's one 38 minute track on the CD for 14 songs
including some soundchecks and whatnot. im not impressed by the production
quality but it's the least i can do to try and make up for being such and
idiot: last year doom and kweli played in portland and i didnt go.
also the new Boards of Canada album is available for
preview at the Bleep site. i
think the US release date is in a week, so i'll have to pick it up in sweden
but damn, it's great. if you're interested in hearing more
than 30 seconds of a song at a time on Bleep, let me know...
2005.10.11 1520 The Candidate Reports my comprehensive exam went
well. committee seemed happy with my answers to questions and my presentation
covered all the stuff i wanted it to.
now i get the pleasure of trying to update some things around here:
the latest gallery from the JR on leg 311. i dont think my
dad is in any of this one but he is among some other cool pictures here. evidently i dont know how to put captions with
pictures. my dad is on the left and the guy loading up dewars with liquid N2
is peter.
ll and st finished a deluged, flat and windy century sunday before last-
hooray for them!
some progress has been made on the Best Burger In Eugene front: rennies still
cleans up in the Dependability Department but Turtles, Cornucopia, Flying Dog
and Dish have all served up overcooked patties and largely questionable buns.
2 things:
a 1/2 pound burger needs a tough bun that wont turn to
slime
flying dog's seasoned burger could have been a contender if it
weren't so woefully overcooked.
yeah, i leave for sweden in a week plus 20hrs.
2005.10.04 1238 ive been hearing a few neat things from my dad off the
coast of Victoria Island on the JOIDES Resolution. i'll get some more pictures up
in here soon.
2005.10.02 1727 im not going to freak myself out by starting a
countdown to this month's two impending events:
the ineluctable Comprehensive Exam
and
the unavoidable Departure for Sweden
instead, i'll just mention that there have now been observations of a
live giant squid in the wild.
quite awesome.
2005.09.26 2200 now going to do my darndest to write a little
something about the Architecture in Helsinki show on friday night at Berbati's. Sadly
enough, I missed NewBuffalo's set entirely- hearing her tunes today makes the
regret even greater. I tolerated Dr.Dog's
sixties throwback set and also the constant comment from friends about how
much the lead singer was really tom petty or eddie veder or one of the allman
brothers or something... not my favorite band, but that's ok because once AiH
got on stage, i forgot about everything else. im prone to describing new groups
as superpositions of other bands but it wouldnt work in this case, even
if i wanted to. voices, horns, triangles, xylophones, 2x4s, drums of various
types, keyboards, delays, guitars and more were all selectively and
enthusiastically put to use by just about every one of the 8 delightful people on
stage. and 'delightful' doesnt really cut it- real excitement on stage is rare
but it was abundant and contagious at this show. their albums have many
wonderful works that stand on their own without any problem and maybe have a
little more intricacy than the live performance but now (right now, even) im
using the recordings to remind me of the sound and feeling of seeing them
live. and how do they pack so much into each song? themes float over and
through careful changes in tempo and mood and across more harmony than most
bands can muster for entire albums.
it was also great to see the brothers Kaffer having a great time- i hope their
hotel in wheeler goes well- maybe i can make a trip over there when i get
back.
also funny and fantastic about the show: they played SoulFinger by the
Bar-Kays and LivingWithoutYou which, i gathered from the inter-verse
description, is a randy newman song from his second album which was produced by Van
Dyke Parks and is really great.
long story short- the show has made me borderline fanatical about these guys
and i cant wait to see them again.
2005.09.26 1544 so as long as the red tape can be beaten back by the
forces of reason, it looks like im headed to sweden. that's good news. bad
news: my knee is fucked. right now im in Dropout status for the
PeachOfACentury on sunday... sunday's ride
highlighted just how bad things are:
*1 week isnt enough time to heal
*pain during riding increased with mileage
*continued pain after riding, including today.
moral of the story: dont increase your mileage by a million percent per week.
2005.09.23 1311 holy shit. this video
must be seen. all you need to know are these 3 things:
1. Bike Messanger Race
2. NYC
3. welcome to the jungle
2005.09.23 958 good morning. hopefully i get the Definite on the
Sweden trip within a couple hours... i'll feel a bit more comfortable when i
actually have the plane ticket purchased, although it means starting (late)
into the annoying moving processes. not annoying: Jackson and His Computer
Band, the latest hot-shit electropop from Warp. he glitches up pop like Prefuse73 did to hiphop but my
brief listening leaves me thinking it'll be a flash in the pan- and probably a
bunch of remixes i'll be subjected to in swedish bars. anyway,
this will let you listen to some of his
tunes quicklike. more music: tonight im going to see Architecture in Helsinki (how sick is that site?)
at Berbati's
in pdx. shit, AIH is playing in Lund on Nov. 10- im totally going.
2005.09.21 12:32 holy crap- look what im in for when/if i go to
sweden: a
whole bunch of lo-fi indiepop hipsters a lot of their songs are cute, especially
the occaisional funny english errors and the tales of singer-drummer relationship
woes relayed on blogs. what else? as MD pointed out- more fixed gear bikes!. these
guys are hardcore- cyclecross races on fixed gear bikes, sprint contests lit
up by car headlights, etc etc. also, i seemed to have injured my knee either
riding sunday or doing jujitsu with phg, so im off the bike for a few days.
i did, however, get some real bike shorts. let's just say that it was
the first time ive ever worn anything with the word 'thigh wings' mentioned on the
packaging, so it was pretty weird. thankfully, it all feels quite normal and
comfortable once im on the bike.
2005.09.19 20:24 so im back- im sure everyone (all 2 or so of you)
has missed me. some news:
*Papa'sSoulFood is real good. at least their ribs were stellar. the sides
were decent but im not a huge fan of mac and cheese. but the ribs were damn
good. next up will be the pulled pork or the jerk chicken.
*i went to the msi retreat which was held
this year at skamania lodge, a yuppie golf/management resort thing up in the
gorge. we saw 3 snakes maybe doing it and another coming to the party. they
were beautfiul garter snakes. also lots of turtles in ponds/waterhazards.
jim
gimzewski's talk was amazing, as was conversation afterwards-really
quite inpsiring to see a scientific superbadass have such a far out view of
the world. (without reaching, say, Brian
Josephson's level of "far out".)
*i got to see my dad (and pk) off on the JOIDES
Resolution, which was all in all quite awesome. hanging out with
ship-people in the packed Portway Bar in Astoria while locals and drunken mariners sing
karaoke was a good time straight out of a movie. great to see peter and learn
of his worldwide exploits on and off the ship.
*good ride on sunday. as long as i get some miles in
this week and then hit a serious 75 or so on the weekend, i'll be sitting
pretty for the upcoming century.
2005.09.05 11:51 holiday? what holiday? after getting decimated on
a ride yesterday, im back at work to get some crap
done. heard from deergirl- her site is up and running and has lots of her
work. go look at it
here. also, since my big sister just moved from seattle to portland, i might make my
way up to PDX next weekend for MusicFest NW. and if i have
anything to say about it, i'll be seeing icu and prefuse73 on saturday night.
2005.09.02 12:02 putting up a little page of
graphs . also going to a newish place for lunch with glott1- Papa's Soul
Food... we'll see what it's like.
2005.08.28 17:50 stopped in on sunday to work on the International
IGERT application that may (hopefully) send me to Lund University in Sweden
this fall (Lund is in the SW part of Sweden, just NE of Malmo). on the way in saw a missing seat and front wheel in the bike
racks- i guess local dipshits had a good weekend of bike theft. on a more
positive bike note- i went on a kickass ride this afternoon, check my ride list for details. also, thanks to kerri at
blueheron, im a few inches closer to having the ideal handlebar-stem
setup... i tried a brooks saddle (just around the block a few times) but
couldn't get a comfortable position- maybe i'll try it again in after another
round of stem-bar adjustments. this is not the "it's not broken in yet" kind
of problem, it's a "the boys dont appreciate it" kind of problem... could be
fixed by adjusting riding posture, possibly. anyway, if you need a primer on
brooks saddles, you can either go to their slightly annoying website (with
sound and such) or to
Rivendell's neat little article about the company. i also got sweet new cork bar wraps and some
tire levers.
2005.08.26 12:08 could list very similar crap for the intervening
hours, but would rather not talk about it. how about these items instead:
* MD pointed me to the BBC
website about
cricket. if they're playing, you can go here to get
audio coverage as the English whoop up on the Australians. while you're at
it, try to figure out what the hell all those guys in white are doing running around
trying to throw a ball at some sticks.
* there is a bike ride called RideAroundMt.RainierinOneDay, that's right, RAMROD. 154 miles and
10,000ft elevation gain. maybe someday.
2005.08.25 9:20 we are gathered together to mourn the losses of yesterday:
1. 3 devices to poor wafer-cracking technique.
2. 2 devices to the ravages of solvents.
3. 1 day of productive data analysis to a stupid typographical error
2005.08.22 10:46 check out the updated
ride page for yesterdays trip. i've got a great idea for a ride- go out
dillard, drop down to creswell and then head to lorane and come back into town
via bailey hill or something. i'll try to get a mileage estimate or something
on that...
2005.08.18 9:44 i started a little cycling
log that should keep track of rides and mileage. tim already reported on
this dude's webpage, but his page on braking has
changed how i ride. well, at least how i brake. sheldon's bottom line- it's safer and
more effective to use your front brake only. also, MD, he has quite a bit to
say about which lever should go on which side in what country.
2005.08.11 9:12 fixed gear bikes are everywhere. first 2 people i
talked to today either had one or are going to do a conversion soon.
2005.08.10 13:34 this is so fresh, a google search for the title of
the upcoming album returns no hits... thanks to warp news, im totally on top
of this.
2005.08.09 18:12 before i go check home or to a bar to check out
the
Mariner's latest (only?) phenom in their homegame tonight, i
need to mention a few items:
item 1. ll, st, e? and i finished the 100km ride on sunday in about 6
hours. 1 hour was devoted entirely to lazing about eating watermelon at the
rest stops and/or fixing my 2 flats.
a million thanks to those who came prepared enough to fix them both. the
route was generally pretty flat- a few rolling hills and occaisional headwinds
but no real tough climbs. aside from the punctures, my bike did great.
item 2. the hops are looking great. some wilt on the Golding and Perle
plants, but the hop cones are developing well- showing little dustings of gold
lupulin glands and starting to smell pretty great.
2005.08.04 14:11 this just in:
an article has been published with my name on it! it's the old ASW research
from UW that finally got written up...
here's the pdf
2005.08.04 12:23 2 quick things:
1. im doing the the blackberry bRamble on sunday- the
100km version, not the gruelling 100mile one. and check out this tshirt logo. is that hot or what?
2. laura and enzo have a summer pop sampler up.
what are hip italian
kids listening to? go find
out.
2005.07.26 19:09 more babbling about my newyork trip here
2005.07.26 15:33 my sister sent me a clipping from Variety detailing
how her boyfriend is now becoming a fixture around Hollywood. or something.
i promise no more free publicity for D.Wilson and his book and the movie and
whatever else, at least until the book comes out.
check it out . and tsal, i have no idea how this shit works- from 0 to
book and movie in less than a year...
2005.07.20 19:09 two things of import
1. i got a new bike!
it's crazy rad.
2. this record
will also be
crazy rad.
July 5, 1244am EDT(originally)
my time in new york has been supergreat.
a list (as i am often wont to make) is here
2005.07.13 13:39 here are some more
images from The Phipps Conservatory
. the yellow thing is an orchid flower inside a big cabinet of miniature
orchids that were pretty rad.
2005.07.08.13:42 oh boy! back in eugene, sitting at the same
computer. check this out: it's the results from the 5k
in Boalsburg PA. ive got some nyc notes that i hope to post soon, but i need
to redo some of this css crap and possibly change the color from Terminal
Special to Something Else.
2005.06.22.16:04 check out these hot pics .
2005.06.22.12:14 as dw kindly pointed out, this page looks more
than a little matrix-like.
sorry. NOTE: i have now changed the colors. still too much matrix? go
talk to Far-Man or something
a possible glitch in the matrix: the brilliant red cardinal and
strikingly blue blue jay i saw this morning after finishing my practice 5k run. i did it in
about 25 minutes, which would have been good enough to get me 35th place in
last year's race.
important note: pierogies are delicious and possibly some of the best bar
food in the universe. had some at the BBT and then more at Gooski's- the
latter being a totally legitimate neighborhood bar that had a good jukebox,
good hoppy beer (denoted as 'hippy beers') and a pingpong table. i think im
going to quit grad school and do dishes at Gooski's for the rest of my life,
being paid only in pierogies and beer.
2005.06.20.23:47 watched most of the pirates getting beaten by the
nationals after spending the day at the Phipps and around CMU. maybe i'll even put some pictures up in this
piece tomorrow.
2005.06.20.17:47 what's amazing breakfast for less than $5?
Rocky's. ham, eggs, homefries, coffee, grapefruit juice and 'italian toast' for $4.20. here's a picture
of their sign.
2005.06.17.13:05 details:
J-Live: i've seen him here before and seems to always come through with a
good show- solid beats that even got PHG's head nodding and a slightly
melodic lyrical style that kept the crowd active. local b-boys busted
numerous power moves after his set, but only a few real dancers in the
circle.
Vast Aire and vordul mega: 2 great things-
* rumbling Cannibal Ox beats rolling out of a full sounds system is a full-body
sound experience
* vast aire's lyrical skills and vocal quality made his set pretty great, even
if it was mostly running through the amazing tracks on cannibal ox's The Cold
Vein .
C-Rayz Walz: continues to impress. he moved the crowd with veteran skill and
seemed genuinely happy about the highschool kids who drove (supposedly) 400
miles to the show and the way that everybody in the place nailed all the
lyrics to a couple of his songs from Ravipops. he also was having
fun making jokes about the absence of ghettos in the Eugene area and fucking
with the beat while 4th Pyramid was rhyming.
overall, the best damn rap tour pretty much lived up to its name.
2005.06.16.15:28 running has been slow to get going, due in part to
a spat of cardiac arrhythmias that kept me awake monday night, thinking of my
own death. doctor and nurse next day say it's
a) not (strongly?) correlated with other heart problems
b) nothing to freak out about, but something to keep track of
especially if it seems to happen during exertion
it doesnt seem to happen while running or swimming, which is very good, but
the lag has set me off my training schedule for this 5k...
unrelated: the show on monday was really great. real hiphop is live hiphop
and all three of the guys we saw brought real hiphop to life at the wowhall. more details to come, i hope...
2005.06.09.13:36 as the invitation
indicates, there will be a 5k at 8am on the morning of josh and randa's
wedding. i plan on running it even though i havent ran at all in months and
haven't ran on a regular schedule in years.
ingredients:
* new shoes- brooks trespass again, this time they're grey and red
* running, lots of running.
2005.06.08.10:11 two hoorays:
1. congrats to heiner and
annika on
their new baby!
2. tim is alive and well, as evidenced by new IR posts!
2005.06.07.9:36 rampant dumbness on the part of some folks down
around the wowhall means the show that i
went to see last night was, in fact, not on at all. moral of the story- look
before you link: C-Rayz, Vast and J-Live will be here
next week. on the plus side, some drinking was accomplished.
2005.06.03.9:07 yesterday afternoon i walked down to house of records to get tickets to the
emminently hype-able
show on monday. instead of jinxing what may in fact be unjinxable, im
going to mention that toshi from seattle's undergrad physics scene of the
early 2000s is soon going to have a sweet website up and full of paintings-
until it drops in final public form, look at the cool Speak & Spells.
2005.06.01.9:13 welcome to june. these lucksmiths tracks via the
italians are running through my head constantly- it's a kindof crappy live
recording, but there's something exciting about the way they sound in person
that's still there. steve is getting
a
lot of press about his work on the instability of
wormholes. funny thing is that the BBC first contacted him because of his paper on arxiv hep-th.
2005.05.26.11:47 OMGWTFBBQ has prefuse73's One Word Extinguisher
available for willamette hall's listening pleasure- an all-time favorite of
mine. dont follow this link
unless you have a few minutes to sit around while a 20MB text file file loads- it's
poorly arranged statistics (281k lines?) about and you can see how many times your
files have been accessed in the past month. in my case by bots, im sure.
2005.05.24.12:57 thanks to a postdoc down the hall, i now have
all(?)
spinanes-related music ever made, more or less. 1991? i was in 6th
grade or something while RG and SP were making some really great songs. and
from the pictures in liner of
imp years they dont look much older.
2005.05.13.09:18 machaca burrito from MuchasGracias = delicious.
machaca used to be made from rehydrating dried beef. now? who knows.
2005.05.12.xx:xx a quick attempt at setting up an include to a txt file was
unsuccessful. but the magic marker comp 'a house full of friends' sure is great.
2005.05.10.09:10 let the fun begin