Posts tagged with "music"

Schoolwork, Pensive State, Scratching Posts, etc.

My cryp­tog­ra­phy midterm was eas­i­er than expect­ed. I was the first to leave, and I was able to answer every ques­tion. Whether I was right or not is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

I have only four projects left to do. A cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion on mes­sage authen­ti­ca­tion, my hon­ours project on Rubik’s cube time com­plex­i­ty, an essay on gold price fluc­tu­a­tions, and a final OpenGL pre­sen­ta­tion pro­gram. They’re all due one after the oth­er, so I’m try­ing to take one at a time, even though the going is slow.

I went out to sup­port a few friends of Wheaties, in a band called Pensive State yes­ter­day. I did­n’t real­ly feel like going out, but I fig­ured that it would be a good break from being stuck in my apart­ment all day. It was much warmer than expect­ed.

CAt told me about a ver­sion of Autumn Leaves by Eva Cassidy, and I think that it’s my favourite ver­sion so far. Apparently, the song has been com­plete­ly over­done for over half a cen­tu­ry, and I’ve only just heard of it.

Jeff’s com­ing over tonight to catch up a bit.

I’ve been see­ing a lot of use of Moveable Type. I’m not very good with Perl yet, but the code will prob­a­bly be much clean­er than what mine is now, and more mod­u­lar. On every blog I’ve seen, the author keeps one large page of the cur­rent months entries. I much pre­fer to have one entry at a time, so that there can be more depth to my writ­ing with­out flood­ing the page with text. I would also want mul­ti­ple queries from the data­base, so that I can dis­play my rec­om­mend­ed and analy­sis sec­tions at the same time. I’m just not sure if Moveable Type can pull all this off, or whether my host even sup­ports the right script per­mis­sions.

Wheaties, Aaron, and Trolley are all com­ing over on Tuesday for a sort of guys night. We’ll be watch­ing Swingers, and maybe some Basketball.

With dual sisal scratch­ing posts, 3 car­pet­ed loung­ing sur­faces with climb­ing holes, hang­ing sisal toy and stur­dy, wide base? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet.

Old School, Frozen Carrots, Etc.

I was exhaust­ed yes­ter­day. I worked almost all day on my graph­ics project, and Aaron came over to work on his Scheme assign­ment. I was able to talk to him for a few hours before start­ing the work. We caught Old School at the Coliseum near his place, but it was still a thir­ty minute walk in one direc­tion. The movie was too pre­dictable, but had some very well done scenes, such as Will Ferrell get­ting shot in the neck with a tranq dart. I thought some parts were almost insult­ing though, like a com­plete­ly gra­tu­itous cam­era shot of Elisha Cuthbert’s ass while she was lay­ing on a bed. It’s not that I don’t find her behind to be a thing of beau­ty, it’s that it feels like the pro­duc­ers are adding shit like that in just to get more peo­ple in the audi­ence. I guess it’s been hap­pen­ing for a while now; ever since Shannon Elizabeth bared her twins in American Pie, teen movies have been becom­ing more and more sleazy. I still enjoyed Old School though, and gen­er­al­ly laughed my ass off.

Watching Old School allowed me to dis­cov­er a decent song called Dust in the Wind by Kansas. I’ve also been down­load­ing a lot of Canadian singer Holly Cole, who has a beau­ti­ful­ly expres­sive, olive oil voice. I enjoy Bagdad Café in par­tic­u­lar. I found two ver­sions of the song, one live and one stu­dio, which are good but with their own unique flaws. I pre­fer the live ver­sion because it has a sim­ple piano and bass, instead of synth sounds in the stu­dio ver­sion, but at one point she becomes obnox­ious­ly loud, as if she was over­sing­ing the notes, the way a trum­pet would sound if the trum­peter was blar­ing. It makes her voice seem almost mas­cu­line, which is a big turn-off. The way she mix­es her vibra­to with her flar­ing is very seduc­tive though. In the stu­dio ver­sion, how­ev­er, she seems to start off one line a lit­tle flat, before push­ing her diaphragm to hit a note with­out going falset­to. It sur­prized me, since stu­dio songs tend to be a lit­tle too per­fect.

I final­ly put up my poster of Dominique Swain. Aaron helped me decide on the linen clos­et door, since the walls in my room are so big they dwarf my mod­est­ly sized poster. I haven’t put it up since sec­ond year because it did­n’t seem to fit into the sim­ple­ness of my room.

I’m not espe­cial­ly hap­py with yes­ter­days entry, but I des­per­ate­ly felt like I had to get some­thing down. It’s a lit­tle too trite for me to be sat­is­fied.

I bought a bag of frozen car­rots and pearl onions to try out the last time I went gro­cery shop­ping, since I’ve been try­ing to eat more veg­eta­bles. I found out today that I real­ly don’t like pearl onions. They taste like what I imag­ine an onion would taste like after being soaked in water overnight. I tried to have the car­rots only, but the bag is sup­posed to be a mélange of the two, and the taste of the onions ends up seep­ing into the taste of the car­rots. I real­ly enjoy hav­ing a bunch of onion slices sautéed before adding in a pork chop or what­not to the fry­ing pan, but pearl onions seem to be a dif­fer­ent breed of onion.

Emotion As Pain, Unproductive Days, More Music

I feel a bit bet­ter today, but not much. Rest is good for clear­ing my cache of emo­tions. Emotion is pain. Ground zero indeed.

I still had a great time last night though. There were 14 peo­ple at one point in my apart­ment yes­ter­day. I did­n’t get as much gam­ing in as I want­ed, but I sup­pose the host is nev­er the one with best time. I also sobered up before the night was half done, which was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing. We end­ed up order­ing five piz­zas, and an entire piz­za was left over. Everyone kept telling me how much they liked Dolly, even the peo­ple who gen­er­al­ly don’t like cats, except for Ian since he’s a hard-core cat hater. It was an amaz­ing night which I’ll have to do again.

Yet anoth­er day of absolute­ly no work done. I have many things to do this week, which is wor­ry­ing me, quite the flash­back from last term. I’ll be meet­ing with Aaron and Nick ear­ly in the week to dis­cuss our tech­no­log­i­cal busi­ness ven­ture. On Wednesday I’ll need to meet with my super­vi­sor to dis­cuss the progress of my hon­ours project, but before that hap­pens I’ll need to meet with my part­ner to dis­cuss what we’ve learned. Then I have three mid-terms on Valentine’s day, none of which I’m pre­pared for. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull some­thing off again like last term.

Sometimes I’ll find a song that I enjoy so much that I can put it on repeat with­out get­ting tired of it, although such songs are few and far between. Songs such as Anger Management by Lovage, 96 Quite Bitter Beings by CKY, or Acid Rain by Liquid Tension Experiment. I was lucky enough to dis­cov­er a band called Nevermore recent­ly, and one of their songs, The River Dragon has Come, is anoth­er song that just blows me away. The last time I found a song like this was last September, so I’m extreme­ly pleased with my dis­cov­ery.

Thoughts On New Years Eve

I haven’t been able to get any read­ing done. I stayed over at Aaron’s the night before, and we spent the night play­ing Gamecube and XBox with his broth­er. We went shop­ping and saw Lord of the Rings when we woke up a few hours lat­er.

My par­ents bought me a great cook­book for Christmas, so I’ll be attempt­ing a few recipes. Unfortunately, I can only try a few of the recipes, since most of them serve four or more. Jamie Oliver always seemed sexy in a dorky sort of way, until I real­ized that it was his mas­tery in the kitchen, and the loss of his mul­let.

I’ve real­ized that lis­ten­ing to The Gentle Waves fills me with a sort of con­tent­ment and hap­pi­ness. Their music is not bit­ter­sweet or trite, and some­how calm­ing and mov­ing at the same time. I think I might end up keep­ing their songs sim­ply because I don’t have any­thing quite like them.

I’ve been in such a strange, unde­fin­able mood late­ly. It feels like I’m apa­thet­ic to every­thing, while the future seems hope­ful. It’s prob­a­bly just a mix­ture of every­thing that hap­pened in the last term, the odd ups and dys­thymic downs.

You

It’s very hard for me to get some­one out of my mind, once they are there. I have some very odd ideas. My mind starts to won­der.

I wish it was some­thing that I could con­trol bet­ter. It’s quite an embar­rass­ing afflic­tion. If any­one real­ly knew what I was think­ing, I don’t think they’d under­stand. I always use my imag­i­na­tion to fill in the blanks, and it ends up dri­ving me nuts. It feels as if I need to imag­ine, in order to give myself hope, that my faith in human­i­ty can be renewed. I end up being frus­trat­ed at myself, and jit­tery.

Something which only music can cure.