The solitude over the weekend was strange, but frankly quite nice. I had a chance to do quite a bit of recording and I consider the new album nearly finished (although there's still much work remaining). Even already, I'm much more satisfied with this one over the last one. I also took a trek out to Oregon City and took a bunch of photos that have relevance to my childhood. It's strange to visit a place with so much [personal] history....especially when it's been a few years. I can't even imagine Roseville anymore. Apparently Stacy missed her flight out of Vegas (overslept? Hmmmm :)) and will be returning tomorrow. On a similar note, this dog is driving me crazy. For now, though, I'm sitting in the backyard, piggybackin on some wireless on the corporate laptop, watching the grass grow....muthafuckin literally.

I think it's only fair. If some of those robot guys are allowed to call their constructions "semiautonomous", then sound/noise/art geeks should be able to use the term "semigenerative". This one time, I had a German professor who was fond of saying "kick it". Please note that Google returns about 10,600 hits for "semiautonomous", but only a mere 3 hits for "semigenerative".. The hyphenated and quoted "semi-generative" still only returns 104 short hits...but at least one of them is Nullpointer, who does some mad sick work with pd and quake and the like...

The ideas and the bits run rampant as the noisybox recording session has begun. As such, I'll be online in a limited capacity for the next few days. On top of that, kopete decided that it doesn't want to log into ICQ anymore, so until that's fixed I'll only have limited (AIM) IM capabilities. pd, ardour, alsa, jack, virmidi, amsynth, and various physical items to boot. Demolition ensues.

Something I forgot to mention...on the 28th of June, the noisybox site got a pretty big speed boost. I found out that I could get a better DSL package for less cost. Instead of peaking out at 640/640 (as I was previously), I'm now up to a solid 1.5M/896k. I think it's quite the improvement...and I think it's quite noticeable. That's all. Just thought I'd let you know. Nah....you don't care. :)

Recommended listening for July 4th, 2004: Negativland - "Free". That is all. Listen to the pops, watch the bombs, and listen. No seriously, listen. Following up on yesterday's neighborhood/fireworks comment: SE Portland has some serious fuckin fireworks representation.

I guess one of the benefits of living in a, well, "less developed" (that's one way of saying 'sketchy') part of the city is that fireworks are more prevelant. Way more. Especially in a state that has basically outlawed all non-wussy fireworks. I guess the drive to Vancouver or to the various reservations is easy. So it's been booming around here all day. Literally. Now that it's dark, there are big flashes over the roofline. In a way, I get a sense of what it must be like to live in a place like Tikrit...only, you know, without the actual fear of dying.

So >BLAM<, new layout. Sure, it's not terribly different, just a bit simpler I think. I did like the old design and didn't want to change things too much. Hopefully this new thing reduces the overall boxyness of early times... And then I saw Skinny Puppy a few weeks ago. Great show, but not exactly what I expected. It was a strange night. I couldn't bring my camera in (special request from the band apparently...the Roseland always lets people bring cameras). I met some herion freak ("Yeah, I shoot herion...") and was approached by a hooker. Weird. Last weak was Legendary Pink Dots, and I went with Bill and Kim. LPD put on a great live show! I hadn't been to Berbatis until then, and although I liked the atmosphere (kinda dark and smoky barish setting), the conversational chatter was a bit much. I guess the music could have been louder, or people could have been more into the show. I dunno, I had a good time. It seems that this is THE summer for live music. Even tho it doesn't look like I'll go to Bend to catch Pixies again, I found out that Le Tigre isn't opening for SY this month...but instead, it's WOLF EYES. I'm very very excited about seeing those maniacs. If I wasn't so broke [constantly], I'd get some merch (is it true that they have like 50 albums?)... So I still have to fix the photo page...it's hosed with the new layout. I suppose I'll end up doing some housework too this weekend...even tho I just plain despise it. Update: Ok, the photos page shouldn't be as hosed anymore.

Pictures from Coachella 2004 are here. I also took some pics when I went up to Seattle to see my bro's band The Drop play...check 'em here. I continue to get bizarre, cryptic emails from strangers. Somehow I've given the impression that these crackheads and foreigners can just send me nonsense...and that somehow I can make sense out of it all. Unfortunately, that's not the case. If you're a 17-year-old Indian dude trying to hack together a wireless robot video system (or something, hell, I can't tell!), I probably can't help you. :) And I've been playing around in fluxbox. It's a nice lightweight window manager that continues to grow on me...tho I do wish it had some more built-in features. Overall, it's a nice, snappy and responsive WM. Been doing some prep work for my next recording project, which should hopefully materialize in early July. I'm borrowing a nice Peavey midi controller from a buddy of mine...I've interfaced it with pure-data, and it's tremendously helpful! I'm still drooling over the Behringer midi controllers tho. Since I'm on the topic of pd, I guess I should also mention that I put up a quickie little page to share some of the abstractions I built. I've been obsessing over lots of the amazing and great free music available at archive.org. The netlabels and open source audio stuff is really fascinating to me. Some of it's horrible, much of it is brilliant. I've found a great number of just awesome, drony, electronic/experimental pieces, and I enjoy the occasional field recording. The archive folks are definately worthy of my tax-break-donation this time around. And so I think the site's about due for a redesign. I'd like to simplify things a bit, and perhaps get away from the whole block-block-border-block-rectangle thing. I still like the overall look/feel, but I'm ready for a change. Maybe I'll try it piecemeal, maybe I'll just tackle it all at once.

John Hunnicutt wrote:

Not to worry, wouldn't pay 180 K or even consider (starting salary for that
position) someone with such flippant responses. If you are going to post an
internet resume, you might want take all inquiries/comments seriously, you
never know who is shopping.
Not to worry, I wouldn't accept 180 K or even consider working for somebody who uses such a cryptic, and frankly backward-ass way of soliciting potential employees. Let's recap how this went down... You send me a one-line message, out of the blue, with no sig: "What do you do for a living? Know anything about telecom?" Hmmm. Complete stranger. Asks me what I do for a living. He couldn't have read my resume online, otherwise, ya know, he'd have a pretty good idea already. I wonder what this maniac stalker psychopath wants...so I reply with a light-hearted and friendly "...What made you decide to email me out of the thousands of people on the internet?....why do you ask?". To which you replied with the absolutely eloquent: "Job silly" email (again, no additional explanation, and no sig). "Job silly?" I wonder to myself? What the hell could this mean? Does this man/boy/stranger thinks his job is particularly silly? Does this guy work in a particularly hilarious sector of telecom? Is this guy wanting to hire me for a silly job? What's the mode of communication here? Is this yet another one of those guys who insists on stringing random words together in hopes that I can magically derive meaning? I picture a guy with a clown nose crimping RJ45 or something. So I reply with some continued babble-babble-doublespeak nonsense, and I state that my questions remain unanswered...and I get

I honestly have no idea who you are. Please send me the original email and possibly I can determine what is going on. John Hunnicutt
Director
TRCA

Wow. This dude can't manage email, but he's a "Director". I wonder how many film's he's made...but I guess 20 minutes later you've managed to remember how to use Outlook:

I believe this might have been via your web resume? Not real sure. Looking for a high end Avaya PBX technician...or Meg Tilly, whichever comes first. Would even settle for Meg Ryan.

Whatever. Ok. I suppose I don't make $180k, but I can certainly tell that the background on John's "portrait" image (seen above, source from here) isn't white. Nice work man. I also like the use of the tag. Even though I haven't seen that in a while (say, circa 1994 web design), it just SCREAMS professionalism! Even though I suppose this shit happens everywhere, I'm fucking happy that I don't live in Texas anymore.

If you stopped by looking for pics from the Portland Noise Festival, they're posted over here: Portland NoiseFest 2004 pictures. The noise festival was amazing. Let me repeat that for emphasis: The Portland 2004 Noise Festival was amazing. Evil sick perfection. Very huge props to the organizers and promoters. In fact, the show beat my every expectation. I have to admit, I had pretty minimal (pessimistic) expecatations going in, but things were so great that I was forced to return on Saturday...and I don't regret it for a second. There were so many phenomenal performances, but my memory keeps focusing on the Sleeping With the Earth set. Holy shit. Wow. Kudos again to everybody who put forth the time, energy, and money to make that thing happen. It was certainly a defining moment in my short existence. So yeah, on a less serious note, this is one of the most fucking awesome things I have ever seen in my life. Listen or die: Devastatin' Dave. It's like an 80s version of Super Greg. Or something.