A couple of buddies of mine and I have started studying for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam in the fall. This is going to be one of the first major steps in working toward a PE certification, which I'm quite excited about. It's going to be a lot of work, but I think it's worth it. Anyway, my point is, I was on Amazon last night shopping for a review guide. I found the book, but thought it was hilarious that it says ""Popular In: Lubbock, TX". Neat.

I saw "Requiem for a Dream" last night on DVD. That was an amazing and depressing film! Don't go looking for happy endings and walks into the sunset on this one. I won't give away plot details (you have to watch this one on your own), but it basically examines the downward spiral of 4 people looking for happiness despite their addictions. Don't miss this film. It was directed by Aronofsky, the same guy who directed "Pi". It's a really different style, but you can still get the same feel from a great director. His use of music was really amazing. Kronos Quartet did much (most?) of the soundtrack...I dig those guys. I think it's great to see such young, talented directors doing new and innovative things with the film media. This film reminded me of an interesting combination of Fight Club, Go, Magnolia, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (mind you, Gilliam isn't exactly young). Aronofsky's use of "hip-hop montages" was fuckin intense. It made me wish I had a better sound system. :)

Woah. We just experienced the most fucking insane hail storm I've seen in my life. Mass quantities of hail comes flying down at high velocity, makes a very loud noise for a very long time, and covers the ground in white stuff.

I capped this picture of the drift in front of my front door after the storm had died down. CRAZY! That blocky part is what fell off the door itself when I opened it to get outside.

As much as I hate this hell-hole-of-a-cow-town, I do have to admit that they have really impressive storms. I watched an amazing lightning storm the other night...lots of big bright cloud-to-cloud for a really long time. Quite amazing.

I've finished the majority of the work in bending this micro jammer monster. I still don't have a 9v battery connector hooked up for power, no human contact bends on outside of case (yet), and no LED for cap switch-in...but for the most part it's nearly complete. The web page for it still hasn't been touched and I still haven't recorded any samples to mp3. It's on the TODO list. I'm pretty happy with the results thus far. Some of the things aren't operating exactly as intended, but I guess that's part of the enjoyment in this whole process...figuring out new things and getting new sounds. I'm already looking forward to my next bend...the Mega Mouth Jam'n megaphone. Never underestimate the power of a black epoxy blob.

Alright, that's fucked up. I leave the circuit alone for a while, go play some action HL, come back, power it up, and it's in my good warble mode again....WTF? I'm at a loss...

Alright dammit... I'm in the process of circuit bending this "Micro Jammer" handheld drum toy. I've made some really cool progress on it, but now it seems like this picky ass thing is going to change its mind every other day! I've been able to get it into this great warble sound mode that is varied with hand distance to a couple of points/probes...but alas, it goes away! I had the thing in this mode for a few hours last night, but now it's resorted to this random-like garbage mode. The sound output also seems to be worse (distorted) when put back into its "normal" mode of operation. I much prefer the other way it worked. The kicker is, I have no idea what changed. To my knowledge, nothing has changed in that part of the circuit since last night. In fact, this isn't the first time this has happened!!! Dammit! I don't want to continue with this until I get this figured out! Argh!

Well, it's been a few days since I got back from the Sonic Youth show in Dallas on the 4th...I figured I should just take some time to try and convey just how amazing it was. I have more respect for SY now than ever...they are truly artists! They played an amazing set, although it was pretty short at 90 minutes. I could have listened all night. They played a good number of songs from "NYC Ghosts & Flowers" and also managed to play many of the oldies but goodies. I think the most phenomenial moment came at the end of NYCG&F when they produced this growing wall of sound. I think it's pretty pointless for me to even try and explain what this sounded like. All I can say is that it was the FULLEST sound I think I have ever heard. Very strange. They wrapped up the encore with "Drunken Butterfly" and I was really blown away. This goes down as absolutely one of the best shows I have seen. Period. I picked up the ultra-hard-to-find Negativland "U2" CD while in Dallas. I paid way too much for it, and now I'm a bit sceptical as to whether or not it is authentic. I wish I had a way of knowing (if you know of a way, please let me know). If it's not an original, it's a really damn good copy.

Well, I may have to kill my 150 day uptime on my linux box tomorrow to throw in some more RAM I think I found (should get me up to 64Mb, but I'm not exactly sure yet). I also might put in a different (read: working) CD-ROM drive to replace the shitty broken Creative drive that's in there now. I'm getting impatient about trying RedHat 7.1, but I guess I'm in no real rush...

Well, I never got around to showing these off, but stm imported me into NHL2k1 a while back, and the results are pretty interesting. Check them out here and here. Ok, so maybe it doesn't look exactly like me, but I think the results are still pretty interesting. :)

I actually sent email to Meg Lee Chin. It's not like she'll actually respond personally or anything, so I guess it's not a big deal. I feel like such a kid though...I haven't sent fan mail in ages. On a completely different note...can freedom really be obtained through mass quantities of 486's?