Showing posts with label Bass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bass. Show all posts
Monday, December 10, 2007
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
It's crunch time, whatever that means.
That was quick...
by AC - permalink
The end of the semester is suddenly here. I managed to get caught up in all but one of my classes, somehow. I still have labs due next week in PERL and HTML, as well as a test each, and my final HTML project, but at least I'm not behind anymore after last night's marathon coding session (thanks, Mountain Dew and cheap beer). I'm done, for all intents and purposes, with my 1001 Office class. The only thing left to turn in is PowerPoint tutorials 1 and 2, and I did them this afternoon. I won't even mention that geo class. I may be kinda screwed there, but it's my own fault. I got too behind while working on my short film.
Annie did manage to submit our tapes on Monday, and I owe her for that as she and CMB were evidently editing her short until 4am that morning. It's a good thing I got in, as I've been handing out copies of a flier to my friends at school that Monica threw together in class yesterday. I have a revised version I'm going to get approved for posting around campus tomorrow. We want as many people as possible to come out to the fest on the 15th.
My mobile playlist in the car and at school lately has condensed to Deftones, Flyleaf, Portishead, and Violent Femmes. At home I'm still looping my .flv library of cool bass songs. More school work has meant less TV and more music as I'm spending hour after hour in front of my PC. All I've really made time for is Heroes (which is over now) and Grizzlies games, which are bittersweet most of the time. I've been breaking from work to play bass and write email, and occasionally to eat. Haven't had time for much else. I guess this is what the next three semesters will be like.
Finally managed to speak in person to my new advisor today, he seems like a nice enough guy. He's actually involved in planning courses for the Web tech major, so he should be exactly the guy I need. Have a meeting with him Thursday at 4, so by the end of the week I should know what kind of course load I'll have in the Spring. Trying to balance it with what I'd like to do in the local film scene will be the tricky part. Turns out a local director/musician, who I randomly bumped into twice in the last week, lives like three blocks from me. Hopefully some opportunities will open up for me there. We'll see.
by AC - permalink
The end of the semester is suddenly here. I managed to get caught up in all but one of my classes, somehow. I still have labs due next week in PERL and HTML, as well as a test each, and my final HTML project, but at least I'm not behind anymore after last night's marathon coding session (thanks, Mountain Dew and cheap beer). I'm done, for all intents and purposes, with my 1001 Office class. The only thing left to turn in is PowerPoint tutorials 1 and 2, and I did them this afternoon. I won't even mention that geo class. I may be kinda screwed there, but it's my own fault. I got too behind while working on my short film.
Annie did manage to submit our tapes on Monday, and I owe her for that as she and CMB were evidently editing her short until 4am that morning. It's a good thing I got in, as I've been handing out copies of a flier to my friends at school that Monica threw together in class yesterday. I have a revised version I'm going to get approved for posting around campus tomorrow. We want as many people as possible to come out to the fest on the 15th.
My mobile playlist in the car and at school lately has condensed to Deftones, Flyleaf, Portishead, and Violent Femmes. At home I'm still looping my .flv library of cool bass songs. More school work has meant less TV and more music as I'm spending hour after hour in front of my PC. All I've really made time for is Heroes (which is over now) and Grizzlies games, which are bittersweet most of the time. I've been breaking from work to play bass and write email, and occasionally to eat. Haven't had time for much else. I guess this is what the next three semesters will be like.
Finally managed to speak in person to my new advisor today, he seems like a nice enough guy. He's actually involved in planning courses for the Web tech major, so he should be exactly the guy I need. Have a meeting with him Thursday at 4, so by the end of the week I should know what kind of course load I'll have in the Spring. Trying to balance it with what I'd like to do in the local film scene will be the tricky part. Turns out a local director/musician, who I randomly bumped into twice in the last week, lives like three blocks from me. Hopefully some opportunities will open up for me there. We'll see.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Finding something meaningful.
Bail out now, because this post is just for me.
by AC - permalink
The word "busy" cannot even begin to approach how complicated things have gotten lately. But I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. First, of course, we have school. The semester is winding down, and my workload on that front has jumped up considerably. While I've managed to stay ahead of things in my HTML class despite a pretty imposing workload, I'm barely keeping up with my programming. Each lab assignment is built upon the last, which was built upon the last, etc. That means each of the three to four programs in every lab incorporates everything from each previous lab's programs. Things are getting complicated here, and I'm working my ass off to maintain the A average I promised myself I would have in my second stab at college.
But the real reason I've been so busy is the short film I'm making. I'm directing a short I wrote for Live From Memphis' eighth quarterly Lil' Film Fest. It's been a tremendous amount of work, but I don't think I've ever worked so hard at something so satisfying. Everyone in the Memphis indie film scene who has been helping me has been fantastic, as have my friends who have also never done this before. My friend Monica encouraged me to make this after reading my first draft, which I basically threw together on a whim out of sheer boredom, and before I knew it, she had contacted some great people who are volunteering to act in it, edit it, and just generally hold my hand as I try to do something I've never even considered attempting before.
To add to the stress, shooting was pushed back to next Saturday, just two days before it has to be submitted to be eligible for the festival on December 15. With so much going on, I feel like I'm on the clock 24 hours a day, unpaid, as I'm continually fielding questions about the film from those involved and perfecting the script and schedule, all while trying to take care of my house and my dogs, who are getting needier every day because of my long absences, and trying to maintain my insane grades in school.
Going back to school, I'm sort of in uncharted territory here. I'd never been more than a C+/B- student before, at least outside of standardized testing, and I'm averaging high-A's in everything now. This was my goal when I decided to go back to school, but realistically, I didn't think I could pull it off. Now I'm trying to maintain it, and the pressure is building. On top of that, I'm putting more into my music (playing bass guitar) than I ever have before. I still can't explain it, but I've never been better, and I'm determined to build on it. So I'm forcing myself to find at least an hour every day to practice. All manner of songs and genres, in multiple keys and styles. If I didn't enjoy it so much, I wouldn't be working so hard.
But all this is wreaking havoc on me physically. My insomnia is worse than ever, despite how tired I am. I'm also losing weight, which is not a great thing, as I've always struggled with gaining weight, and right now I'm 6'2" and barely reaching 160. My appetite is virtually nil, I have to force myself to eat. I'm intentionally eating healthier food, and I started working out again daily two months ago, but I think all that's doing is decreasing what little fat reserves I have while building a little muscle mass, which my abnormally high metabolism immediately starts consuming. If I had the resources, I'd consult a nutritionist, but I don't even have a fucking GP.
Still and all, I think I'm getting to a really good place. I'm done playing catch-up to my younger days, when I was first on my own, going to college, and things were still on the upswing. Trying to get back to that point -- over a decade ago now -- was a fucking pipe dream, and I held onto it for far too long. I'm hitting a new plateau now, doing things both personally and professionally that I didn't know I ever could. I have a great new friend with a beautiful little daughter, and this afternoon she handed me a painting she made, and said it was just for me. I have no idea what the hell it's supposed to be, but it's one of the most beautiful gifts I've ever been given. That's the kind of purity, artistically and personally, that I'm trying to reach now. I don't care if it's with music, or film, or web design, or just being a good person. For the record, I put it on my refrigerator.
A while ago, Monica said to me, just in passing, referring to another conversation she'd had, that we're just into our thirties, and that's not old; we're entering the prime of our lives. When she said that, everything went blurry for a moment as I realized I'd just heard something very important, and I needed to figure out why. No one had ever said that to me before. And she was right. Now is the time to make the most of life, because this is when the really good shit starts to happen. I'm grabbing every new opportunity that comes along now, because I'm tired of playing conservatively. I feel like I have the tools to do anything now, and if I fail, fine. It's a feeling I haven't had since I was as little kid, and the implications of suddenly finding my potential again at 31 are so profound that I'm sort of still processing it. The only thing I know for sure is that I'm, if not entirely happy, at least hopeful again, and that's not a feeling that you can fool yourself into believing in.
by AC - permalink
The word "busy" cannot even begin to approach how complicated things have gotten lately. But I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. First, of course, we have school. The semester is winding down, and my workload on that front has jumped up considerably. While I've managed to stay ahead of things in my HTML class despite a pretty imposing workload, I'm barely keeping up with my programming. Each lab assignment is built upon the last, which was built upon the last, etc. That means each of the three to four programs in every lab incorporates everything from each previous lab's programs. Things are getting complicated here, and I'm working my ass off to maintain the A average I promised myself I would have in my second stab at college.
But the real reason I've been so busy is the short film I'm making. I'm directing a short I wrote for Live From Memphis' eighth quarterly Lil' Film Fest. It's been a tremendous amount of work, but I don't think I've ever worked so hard at something so satisfying. Everyone in the Memphis indie film scene who has been helping me has been fantastic, as have my friends who have also never done this before. My friend Monica encouraged me to make this after reading my first draft, which I basically threw together on a whim out of sheer boredom, and before I knew it, she had contacted some great people who are volunteering to act in it, edit it, and just generally hold my hand as I try to do something I've never even considered attempting before.
To add to the stress, shooting was pushed back to next Saturday, just two days before it has to be submitted to be eligible for the festival on December 15. With so much going on, I feel like I'm on the clock 24 hours a day, unpaid, as I'm continually fielding questions about the film from those involved and perfecting the script and schedule, all while trying to take care of my house and my dogs, who are getting needier every day because of my long absences, and trying to maintain my insane grades in school.
Going back to school, I'm sort of in uncharted territory here. I'd never been more than a C+/B- student before, at least outside of standardized testing, and I'm averaging high-A's in everything now. This was my goal when I decided to go back to school, but realistically, I didn't think I could pull it off. Now I'm trying to maintain it, and the pressure is building. On top of that, I'm putting more into my music (playing bass guitar) than I ever have before. I still can't explain it, but I've never been better, and I'm determined to build on it. So I'm forcing myself to find at least an hour every day to practice. All manner of songs and genres, in multiple keys and styles. If I didn't enjoy it so much, I wouldn't be working so hard.
But all this is wreaking havoc on me physically. My insomnia is worse than ever, despite how tired I am. I'm also losing weight, which is not a great thing, as I've always struggled with gaining weight, and right now I'm 6'2" and barely reaching 160. My appetite is virtually nil, I have to force myself to eat. I'm intentionally eating healthier food, and I started working out again daily two months ago, but I think all that's doing is decreasing what little fat reserves I have while building a little muscle mass, which my abnormally high metabolism immediately starts consuming. If I had the resources, I'd consult a nutritionist, but I don't even have a fucking GP.
Still and all, I think I'm getting to a really good place. I'm done playing catch-up to my younger days, when I was first on my own, going to college, and things were still on the upswing. Trying to get back to that point -- over a decade ago now -- was a fucking pipe dream, and I held onto it for far too long. I'm hitting a new plateau now, doing things both personally and professionally that I didn't know I ever could. I have a great new friend with a beautiful little daughter, and this afternoon she handed me a painting she made, and said it was just for me. I have no idea what the hell it's supposed to be, but it's one of the most beautiful gifts I've ever been given. That's the kind of purity, artistically and personally, that I'm trying to reach now. I don't care if it's with music, or film, or web design, or just being a good person. For the record, I put it on my refrigerator.
A while ago, Monica said to me, just in passing, referring to another conversation she'd had, that we're just into our thirties, and that's not old; we're entering the prime of our lives. When she said that, everything went blurry for a moment as I realized I'd just heard something very important, and I needed to figure out why. No one had ever said that to me before. And she was right. Now is the time to make the most of life, because this is when the really good shit starts to happen. I'm grabbing every new opportunity that comes along now, because I'm tired of playing conservatively. I feel like I have the tools to do anything now, and if I fail, fine. It's a feeling I haven't had since I was as little kid, and the implications of suddenly finding my potential again at 31 are so profound that I'm sort of still processing it. The only thing I know for sure is that I'm, if not entirely happy, at least hopeful again, and that's not a feeling that you can fool yourself into believing in.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
School, music, and Halloween.
Whoops.
by AC - permalink
Funny thing about my last post: I did actually have a lab due after the break in my logical programming/PERL class, but I somehow misread the due date. I explained this to my professor after miraculously getting two-thirds of it done in the half-hour of lab time she gave us during class, and she said I could just finish it and turn it in next class, only losing the standard 5 points (out of 100) for being one day late. Oh well, I thought, but after lunch I was feeling productive, and wrote the final, unexpectedly complex program in about an hour. I printed out the source and console and brought the final lab to her in her office. And surprisingly, I got full credit. Let's have a round of applause for her flexible grading, and for my procrastination skills. I never had a wasted, beer-and-football-filled weekend be so productive in my first go-round at college ten years ago.
School has taken up so much of my idle time that I've been neglecting most of the things that used to make existence bearable, including gaming and music. I'm spending so much of my time in front of my monitor, both at school and at home, that I haven't played much of anything lately, only spending an hour or so every now and then on a new play-through of Far Cry, which just never gets old. But tonight I devoted a couple of hours to my sadly neglected bass guitar, digging up some old songs via YouTube that I used to play religiously years ago. Amazingly, not only could I still play bass lines like Radiohead's "Paranoid Android," Clutch's "The Yeti," and Flea's immortal line in "Soul to Squeeze," they actually came pretty naturally and easily. I can't begin to fathom how going from playing almost every day to playing three or four times a month can have made me better, but that's how it feels.
Anyway. Halloween is here, and like every other holiday, I was sick of it weeks ago. The other day I was in a Rite-Aid and they were stocking an entire aisle with Christmas items. What the fuck is that? The orange-and-black-labeled Skittles aren't even in the discount bin yet, and you're trying to sell me wrapping paper and garland? In another week I'll have had enough of Christmas, and it won't even be winter. Bah.
by AC - permalink
Funny thing about my last post: I did actually have a lab due after the break in my logical programming/PERL class, but I somehow misread the due date. I explained this to my professor after miraculously getting two-thirds of it done in the half-hour of lab time she gave us during class, and she said I could just finish it and turn it in next class, only losing the standard 5 points (out of 100) for being one day late. Oh well, I thought, but after lunch I was feeling productive, and wrote the final, unexpectedly complex program in about an hour. I printed out the source and console and brought the final lab to her in her office. And surprisingly, I got full credit. Let's have a round of applause for her flexible grading, and for my procrastination skills. I never had a wasted, beer-and-football-filled weekend be so productive in my first go-round at college ten years ago.
School has taken up so much of my idle time that I've been neglecting most of the things that used to make existence bearable, including gaming and music. I'm spending so much of my time in front of my monitor, both at school and at home, that I haven't played much of anything lately, only spending an hour or so every now and then on a new play-through of Far Cry, which just never gets old. But tonight I devoted a couple of hours to my sadly neglected bass guitar, digging up some old songs via YouTube that I used to play religiously years ago. Amazingly, not only could I still play bass lines like Radiohead's "Paranoid Android," Clutch's "The Yeti," and Flea's immortal line in "Soul to Squeeze," they actually came pretty naturally and easily. I can't begin to fathom how going from playing almost every day to playing three or four times a month can have made me better, but that's how it feels.
Anyway. Halloween is here, and like every other holiday, I was sick of it weeks ago. The other day I was in a Rite-Aid and they were stocking an entire aisle with Christmas items. What the fuck is that? The orange-and-black-labeled Skittles aren't even in the discount bin yet, and you're trying to sell me wrapping paper and garland? In another week I'll have had enough of Christmas, and it won't even be winter. Bah.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Putting off the inevitable.
Why spend money when you can wish you had? Wait, what?
by AC - permalink
I'm getting really tired of this old borrowed NEC monitor. I can't seem to do anything to get the brightness/contrast high enough, and the refresh rate is so low that the ache has moved past my eyeballs and into my soul. I mean, it supports a really astonishing array of resolutions for a 15-inch CRT, but it's just killing my brain. But I can't find a good CRT anywhere, and I hate to mail-order something so big and so fragile. But that's what it's going to come down to eventually.
At work I've been training a new guy to take over my graveyard shift so I can work the much busier 3pm to 11pm slot. I like working nights for a lot of reasons, but one of them isn't crazy motherfuckers who smash all the goddamned lobby windows with an aluminum bat, and that was the final impetus to get off that shift. The security we have is, at best, pathetic, and in that part of town you should have professionals. I make peanuts, and it's not worth getting my brains blown out over nothing. But this week's training combined with not taking a single day off, ever, and in fact never being more than two minutes late, while working a minimum of 20 minutes extra every day is starting to push me towards the schizoid side. I need a vacation. Now.
Unfortunately, I don't get paid days off at this place. What I do get is a wide range of nicely numbing first-person shooters on my hard-earned, fast-as-hell PC at home. And Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is looking so good right now I'd kill a guy (the guy who smashed the fucking windows at work) to get it. Not only is it more aligned with the original Ghost Recon than the console version, early playtests indicate than it runs well enough even with a Radeon 9800-series graphics card. I'm drooling a little just thinking about this thing.
I've also tried to set aside a little of my free time to keep up my plucking skills on my bass guitar. I've picked out most of American Idiot, my new favorite bass CD. And by the way, have you heard the new Tool single yet? Oh my god. I thought progressive rock peaked around 2001, but this plus the new Korn track plus what System of a Down is doing, and throw in Nine Inch Nails' With Teeth, has me thinking that prog might be back. I hope so. All we need now is a new Deftones album...
by AC - permalink
I'm getting really tired of this old borrowed NEC monitor. I can't seem to do anything to get the brightness/contrast high enough, and the refresh rate is so low that the ache has moved past my eyeballs and into my soul. I mean, it supports a really astonishing array of resolutions for a 15-inch CRT, but it's just killing my brain. But I can't find a good CRT anywhere, and I hate to mail-order something so big and so fragile. But that's what it's going to come down to eventually.
At work I've been training a new guy to take over my graveyard shift so I can work the much busier 3pm to 11pm slot. I like working nights for a lot of reasons, but one of them isn't crazy motherfuckers who smash all the goddamned lobby windows with an aluminum bat, and that was the final impetus to get off that shift. The security we have is, at best, pathetic, and in that part of town you should have professionals. I make peanuts, and it's not worth getting my brains blown out over nothing. But this week's training combined with not taking a single day off, ever, and in fact never being more than two minutes late, while working a minimum of 20 minutes extra every day is starting to push me towards the schizoid side. I need a vacation. Now.
Unfortunately, I don't get paid days off at this place. What I do get is a wide range of nicely numbing first-person shooters on my hard-earned, fast-as-hell PC at home. And Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is looking so good right now I'd kill a guy (the guy who smashed the fucking windows at work) to get it. Not only is it more aligned with the original Ghost Recon than the console version, early playtests indicate than it runs well enough even with a Radeon 9800-series graphics card. I'm drooling a little just thinking about this thing.
I've also tried to set aside a little of my free time to keep up my plucking skills on my bass guitar. I've picked out most of American Idiot, my new favorite bass CD. And by the way, have you heard the new Tool single yet? Oh my god. I thought progressive rock peaked around 2001, but this plus the new Korn track plus what System of a Down is doing, and throw in Nine Inch Nails' With Teeth, has me thinking that prog might be back. I hope so. All we need now is a new Deftones album...
Friday, March 17, 2006
"Job satisfaction" is an oxymoron.
Wasting money I didn't have.
by AC - permalink
Don't you hate it when you deposit a paycheck, then a couple weeks later it shows up in your mailbox with "Insufficient Funds" stamped on it? What, that's never happened to you? Well, fuck you, because it happened to me this week, and it sucks. I got the money back in cash this morning, but somehow on my way from work to the bank I lost a hundred dollar bill, almost a fifth of that paycheck. So that was fun.
Took my mind off of it by buying a 12-pack of Steel Reserve and GTA: San Andreas. They should sell them bundled, because you need the beer as a distraction from the tedium of trying to get your rig to run San Andreas at anything like an acceptable framerate. I dunno what they did to the engine, but I can't get this thing to run over 30 fps no matter what I do. Quake IV runs faster. I mean, what the fuck, man?
Anyway. NIN's With Teeth is kicking ass. I'm going straight to it every time I launch musikCube. Then it's time to power up the bass amp to play along with American Idiot. The neighbors are probably wondering when I'll start improving.
I also dropped twenty bucks for Windowblinds 5 this week. I put it off forever, but I wanted those pretty shadows and alpha-blended transparencies, so I finally put up the cash. Now it looks like I'm running Vista, but I know I'm not because I don't have a pounding headache. Thanks, Stardock!
by AC - permalink
Don't you hate it when you deposit a paycheck, then a couple weeks later it shows up in your mailbox with "Insufficient Funds" stamped on it? What, that's never happened to you? Well, fuck you, because it happened to me this week, and it sucks. I got the money back in cash this morning, but somehow on my way from work to the bank I lost a hundred dollar bill, almost a fifth of that paycheck. So that was fun.
Took my mind off of it by buying a 12-pack of Steel Reserve and GTA: San Andreas. They should sell them bundled, because you need the beer as a distraction from the tedium of trying to get your rig to run San Andreas at anything like an acceptable framerate. I dunno what they did to the engine, but I can't get this thing to run over 30 fps no matter what I do. Quake IV runs faster. I mean, what the fuck, man?
Anyway. NIN's With Teeth is kicking ass. I'm going straight to it every time I launch musikCube. Then it's time to power up the bass amp to play along with American Idiot. The neighbors are probably wondering when I'll start improving.
I also dropped twenty bucks for Windowblinds 5 this week. I put it off forever, but I wanted those pretty shadows and alpha-blended transparencies, so I finally put up the cash. Now it looks like I'm running Vista, but I know I'm not because I don't have a pounding headache. Thanks, Stardock!
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