Badgering me actually works

So I'm hanging with my friends Mary, Meghan, and Nicole, and Nicole is talking about how she is going to Madison for Halloween tomorrow. Then I start talking about how I'm going in a few weeks(possibly) to go see subtle. And now a half hour later, Mary Meghan, and I have decided to go to Madison as well. I can get to see Julie, who actually throughout the summer told me to goto Madison, because it is like the largest party ever. And I always said if I had people to go with, and split the gas, I'd do it. And here I am. Wow. $25 to get to Madison isn't that bad at all, and it is a rare chance and the type of random idea that I love. So yeah, just thought I'd let ya know.

TWIMMWAKUMM: SEPOMBDWDM

This week is TWIMMWAKUMM: Special Edition Post On My Birth Day With Downloadable Music. I have all the music to be put into the station and am currently ripping them all so I can have them and so I can make a mix of defining tracks off of each album.

**EDIT**
Okay, so I started this on tuesday and have not been able to find a place to host a 48kB file without taking an hour to upload. So, until I can get it uploaded, here is the rest of the original post.

Here is the track listing (there isn't a specific order to it):
Artist - Album - Track
Annuals - Such Fun - Springtime
The Noises 10 - The Hammer, the Anvil, the Stirrup - Lay This Armor Down
Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads - Never Miss a Beat
Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul -
of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping - Gallery Piece
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - Cardinology - Magick
Roster McCabe - The Rythm/The Elements - The Traveller
Ray La Montague - Gossip in the Grain - Sarah
Lake Street Dive - Promises, Promises - The Panhandling Song
Diet Kong - Coma Motor Inn - Lines and Lines
Frances - All The While -
The Mighty Orq - To the Bone - Rainy Day
FM Belfast - Made in Iceland - Lotus

More info on each track, artist:

Annuals - Such Fun - Springtime
This band kept reminding me of weezer, but then would stop it immediatley, it was very annoying. So I don't know exactly what to call it or what to say about it. It sounded like ben folds(thanks meghan for that) but with guitars, and some very rocking guitars at that.

The Noises 10 - The Hammer, the Anvil, the Stirrup - Lay This Armor Down
This band sounds a lot like the local band the alarmists, and so I kinda like it. I dunno.

Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads - Never Miss a Beat
This is an album I liked a lot, but for a somewhat different reason than usual. The music isn't the greatest in the world, but it brings me back to sophmore year when I went to a Weezer concert with my brother, and kaiser chiefs opened. It was actually a birthday present, so hey look at that, four years later, here I am. But anyways, this CD is very much like the Kaiser Chiefs first CD, Employment, but it is a little more calm. They are a lot more like blur this time around, which i also like. So if you enjoy blur or their first CD, try this one out.

Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul -
This is probably the first actual CD of Oasis that I've heard. I've only really heard Wonderwall, Champange Super Nova and Sex in the Bushes. So for me, I'd day this album was a little more rocking and louder than their other stuff.

of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping - Gallery Piece
I've heard of the band many times, but never really heard them. I think that this CD might be the wrong one to start listening to for the band, it's kinda really weird. the whole album is almost all about sex or some related topic. The songs are good and if you look past the lyrical content, it's all good.

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - Cardinology - Magick
I'm not too familiar with Ryan Adams, so I don't have much to say about this one.

Roster McCabe - The Rythm/The Elements - The Traveller
I love this band. So much. I first went to see them with some friends from morris and it was such a great experience. The band is 6 people that know how to jam. Each song they played felt like they played the song and then kinda improvised over it again. It was great. The style is like reggae mixed with jazz. I highly recommend this band live, you can find some shows recorded live and they are pretty good as well. And this song is just my favorite, the guitar is soo good!

Ray La Montague - Gossip in the Grain - Sarah
An interesting guy, but I liked it.

Lake Street Dive - Promises, Promises - The Panhandling Song
A jazz oriented band that just kinda knows how to make good music.

Diet Kong - Coma Motor Inn - Lines and Lines
Kinda strange music at times, but good.

Frances - All The While - Cousin
Kinda one of those indie bands. Not bad, not anything too new.

The Mighty Orq - To the Bone - Rainy Day
The cover of this album is somewhat misleading. In fact, the picture of the band and their names are also misleading. Overall, I'd say I wasn't expecting this type of music from this band. They play kinda grungey blues, but the song that is on this mix is a little different from the rest of the album.

FM Belfast - Made in Iceland - Lotus
This blew my mind and I had to share it. It's from this CD that was a mix of bands from Iceland and though we don't really put mixes into the station I gave it a listen and this is the first track. It is a cover of Rage Against The Machine's Killing In The Name Of. Just listen.

Yellow Eyes

So, I was in the campus cafe today, and I went to the bathroom and when I looked in the mirror, my eyes were yellowish. Like, a tint of yellow. I was kinda freaked out, so I went to WebMD and found that it is something that happens when your liver isn't happy. When you have hepatitis or mono. But then I thought to what I have been up to the last few days and it made more sense. Last Friday I hung out with friends and went to zombie prom and stuff and stayed up to 5. Then Saturday I hung out with more friends and drank an entire two liter of Shasta cola and a starbucks double shot energy drink. I also ate like 5 grilled cheese sandwiches, 4 cinnamon rolls, and in the morning ate two McGriddles (each 440 calories). Then I went to bed at 10 (on Sunday) and woke up at 3 something. Ate more and drank more cola till Monday morning at 8 when I went to bed for two hours. Then I woke up at 10:24 to goto calculus. I never really go unless I have to turn in homework or take a quiz, and I thought we had a quiz. So I get to class, sit down with just my pencil and guess what, no quiz that day. but we got out midterm exam back and it reminded me why I don't goto class, 95/100. So then I goto my second class and then do stuff, review music, play guitar hero until I have to go watch a movie for my English class. Then I eventually went to bed at 11:30 and woke up today at noon to get back to work, cutting stencils, reviewing music, and such.
So I am not overly surprised that my eyes were freaking yellow, although it is a little scary. But they are back to normal, according to Mary and Meghan at least (but they never actually believed my story).

Live concert archive

So I was browsing the Roster McCabe website and found this archive of their live shows. I was pretty excited with the 4 or 5 shows. But then I started digging around the site and found that they have an archive of band's shows with 60,000 items in it. So I browsed and there were some notable ones in there. Fugazi, Mountain Goats, and the Decemberists were some one I recognized. So, take a look at the list and see if your favorite bands have some live shows up.
Here's the link.

P.S. There are about 2,000 live grateful dead concerts on the site, talk about a touring band.

reword'd

Like Tasha did, I used what Julie wrote To write something about me. It wasn't as easy as I wanted.

"This year is" "active." "I like my" "active" "life." "I like my" "habits and tendencies" "this year." "The logic behind" "me" "is" "not" "all" "negative and" "lately" "I'd" "note" "that" "what" "truly upsets me" "is that" "things happen" "and" "my person" "is" "not" "responsive." "My cynicism" "is" "a side" "that" "is" "pressing." "It" "is" "me;" "a side" "that" "I" "know."

mARTin: kumm shirt

Okay, so this is my rough design for the new KUMM shirts. I would like as much feedback as possible, because at this point I dunno what to add/remove/change/if it's any good at all.

I gather no moss when I'm rolling like this

So I got like 10 minutes until my radio show, but I'm doing pretty well at pumping out these posts so here's another one.
Last week I had an internship interview with Thomson Reuters, the largest IT employer in the state and the largest bandwidth user in the 5 state area. It went pretty sweet, I think I did alright in talking and answering questions. So hopefully I can get an internship there for the summer, 9 to 5, 5 days a week of technology internship with pay, sounds good right. I figure if I don't like it, it's only a 3 month deal and I can drop it and never work in an office building again (yeah right).
But the best part of it was a question they asked me during the "so you think your a compsci major?" part. The question is this: How do you determine if an integer is odd or even?
I'll let your brain digest this one for one sentence.
So, the next day after the interview, I have my comp sci seminar with my co compsci peoples. After class I was walking in front of a few of them and heard one mention the interviews. So I slowed down and started chatting with them about it. This one guy mentioned how he didn't know the answers to the questions they asked and I was like, well, I felt alright about them. So they talk about the even or odd question and they go over what they said for it. The first kid's answer was: "I said I'd divide it by two, and if it's divisible by two, then it's even. But they asked how I knew if something is divisible by 2 or not, and I didn't know." So, the next kid chimes in: "Wouldn't it be something like checking if the last digit is a 0, 2, 4, 6, or an 8?" Well, those are both really inefficient ways of doing the problem, which is why I was smiling the whole time because in my interview I got the question and replied: "Well, I'd mod 2 it and see if the remainder is 1 or 0." Then one of the interviewers slammed his hand on the table and exclaimed "That's what I'm looking for!" It was great at the moment, bu now I have the suspicion that I was after a string of wrong answers, meaning I probably left an impression, which is a great thing to do in an interview.

While were on the topic...

Stencils are cool, like really cool. I remember learning about negative space in art classes since 6th grade and I never knew it could be so much fun and such a challenge to only use not only one color, but in such a way that you can't have an unfilled space surrounded by filled space. In stencil art, you're cutting out of paper, and if you cut an O for example, there isn't any white space in the middle, it's paper and just falls out. So you have to be creative in your methods. Using that idea, you get into things like implied shape. That's where you use the stencil to create what the shadow of the object would be, tricking the human eye to then see the object even though it isn't inherently there. I've been trying to get better at stenciling and after looking at a gallery of banksy, a british street stenciler, I now really want to get better at the art. It's something where my lack of painting and drawing skills are augmented with my use of technology and controlled settings. i can create most of a stencil on the computer then print it out and cut it. If I mess up, I just reprint it, no biggy.
I'm always looking for new things to create a stencil out of, if you've seen the helloblacksmith shirt design or the shirt that was last weeks mARTin update, check them out and send me a request. I figure I can stencil most things and get them on a shirt for you for about $7. That depends on how hard the image is to design. But yeah, let me know.

mArtin make up post

ubuntu stencil:

I've been driving too long

So it's 4:10 on this fantastic wednesday morning and I've gotten back to Morris safely. I am now listening to Yell & Ice by Subtle, which is amazing music. I am waiting for the next w00t. I am reading my friends blogs. I am regretting drinking the tasty mocha double shot star bucks energy drink. But here I am nonetheless. Fall break is over and I am glad to be back in Morris for a few reasons. Wednesday nights are a basically free night to do whatever because I don't have to get up till noonish. Then Thursday is the office and possible swing dancing. Then it's Friday and the weekend. And it's my birthday weekend, so yay. Then it's next week (who knew?) and that means that it is close to next weekend where I will see atmosphere. then the next weekend I am going to drake, then I will probably go see subtle, then I'll probably be in (bore)is. then who knows. but that's like a month in advance. Thanksgiving is somewhere in there.
Okay, cognitive sentences from now on.
So, this weekend was pretty great. It was like a mini reenactment of the summer. I played a HBS show with colin on friday and like 5 people came, it was fun times. Sad thing was we hadn't practiced in about a month, and not just with each other, like total lack of practice. So we weren't as great as last summer, but I still had a blast. Then I played poker two nights in a row sunday and monday, which is always a lot of fun. I got to see Jenny's apartment, which was cool. I now know my way moreso around the U of M campus. I also got to eat Mesa pizza, I had the taco+guacamole pizza and then it was so tasty and because Jenny said "Well, your already here" which is like the most motivational thing to say to me besides, "just cause".
Then colin and I worked on helloblacksmith stuff and got set up with recording using a amazing mixer. Basically, we need 2 or 3 more mics and we can record ourselves decently professionally. It will be done hopefully over winter break, so keep your eyes open for our EP.
Other things to blabble about....hmmm....how about....blogs!
Yeah, blogs.
I like blogs, and I'm glad that more people are starting to have them, it makes me happy to have a somewhat easier way of keeping up to date with the happenings of my friends. And it's not just keeping up to date through wall posts and messages, it's a very self informing way. Like, I say what I want people to hear, and sometimes more or less, but because it's me posting for the general populous, it can have more detail spread to more people with less effort. I have a hard time keeping in touch when I don't see someone very often, and I know that. If people read my blog, then I can post something once and have multiple people read it. Granted, it isn't as personalized as, hey I want you and you to hear this, but it's kinda similar. But the fact that people are getting away from Live journal makes me happy. No offense to those who use it, I just generally see it as a more emotional outlet than not. And as good as emotions are, I feel it created the need to post emotional and personal things in an unproductive way. I dunno what I'm saying really. It just had a bad connotation for how people are. As good it is to have an outlet for that stuff, i think there are better outlets.
Blogs are a different kind of outlet, where you can post about what happened to you that day or week, and it can just be the facts. Or you can post your feelings about something. Or you can post links, art, music, or ideas. Or you can be me and just kind of word vomit onto the internet. But I figure that is my style or whatever. Anyways, I guess I chose a fitting name for my blog. I like it. Wherever I start is very rarely where I end up. But yeah, lets end it at that for tonight. Think of this as a makeup post for the week or two of slow posts.
And sorry.

Life and such

It's been a bit since I posted last, and although I don't feel the need to apologize, sorry. I haven't been up to much at all really, fall break ends today. Last week was a long week in some ways. Stayed up late most everyday, something I should probabably stop doing, cause school should be the most important thing on my plate. I kinda haven't made it as important as I should be, although I don't nessicarily slack off that much, I just could try harder. But hey, isn't that my motto, there's always a way to be better or try harder.
But yeah, music has been good to me lately. Hello blacksmith had a preformance on friday, which was awesome. We weren't as fluid or practiced as last summer, but it was still great. And now I have concerts on the horizon. There's an atmosphere concert Nov 2 that I'm going to. then there's subtle in Madison on Nov 13 that I haven't commited to, but am probably going to. Then there's Bon Iver in December that I'm going to again in madison. And who knows what other shows will pop up in the cities that I'll spend the 30 bucks to drive home to see. Soo many concerts, so much driving, so much money.

Feel the windchill?

So winter is on it's way. And I live in Minnesota, so it is really starting to show. Our fall is like some cities worst winter. But we deal with it, but not as quietly as I would think. Last year, more than any other I saw what could be described as SAD, seasonal affective disorder. Not really like horrible, but just a long spurt of lower than par happiness. It really hit me when summer came, which is by far my favorite season of them all. Apart from everything that happened last spring, I was just so overjoyed that the sun was warm and people were more friendly.
But spring is gone, and fall is here, and I feel the slight lack of joy setting in. Like, maybe it's just the things I've seen and been thinking about in the past week or two, but I think how happy I am is somewhat brought down by winter. It's beautiful and makes Minnesota what it is and Minnesotans who they are. It partially defines us, our character. We take a sometimes unbearable cold for months and stick it out with a smile on our face. The extremes in this state are amazing. And I do love it to death.
I hope I'm wrong and things get better, just overall. I can't predict what will happen, I gave that up a while ago. I do know that this will be a winter unlike others I've been through, here in Morris the wind chill gets to be 20-30 below whatever the temperature already is. It sucks, and I bike to school. My life, and myself, have changed enough to say this will be different and new, but I feel something else coming. I can't figure if it will make it colder or warmer this winter.

Steam powers my addiction

So I really want to play video games. Like, soo badly. In my past video games have been like 4 years of time and energy spent, and I was happy. So I can associate them with being happy and content with them. But apart from that they take my mind off things, which is why last year when I installed Diablo II, it was a interesting two or three weeks where I didn't really talk to people or do anything much. But it distracted me from everything so it was good. This past month I've wanted to play some time wasting mind numbing video game, but I didn't know if I should. I brought up Battlefield 2, cause that was the first multi player game I saw at home. But luckily I didn't bring the manual which has the serial number on it. Dang. But I really want to buy the orange box and play team fortress 2. But I also know that fallout 3, GTA4, and a bunch of other games come out this month, so I dunno if I should save my money. I have a steam account, but don't know the password, so I can't play the games I've bought already, like counter-strike and half-life 2. Or I could find one of the newer games and buy it for the mltiplayer and not pirate it for the singleplayer. But then I get into issues of feeling like my computer can't handle some of the newer games. Sad day. So, like most of my obsessive thoughts, it'll probably blow over in a week or two. But by then new games will be out and I want something. Argh, choices. But yeah.
I've also thought about getting an xbox360 for the reason that it's cheaper than buying a gaming rig and I could play really high quality games with no lag. But that won't happen.

I put on my trenchcoat and detective's hat

So, today I went to the radio station to drop of the mail and hang out for a bit cause I got done with my calc exam early. So I open the mail and get the music and stuffs and I decide to do charting during data structures, so I send myself the play lists of the week. But when i go into the station, I notice that the desktop background is really blurry, like a jpg stretch to fit the screen. Then I see what it is. Tubgirl. Fuck. I quickly change it to the default abstract bg, but goddamn it, tubgirl. (If you don't know what tubgirl is, DON'T look for it, it is one of those shock pictures on the internet.) So I end up back at the station after my classses and I'm labeling CDs and Ben, the Programming Director, comes in. He's the man who runs the discipline so I tell him about it. And then we start thinking who it could be. Cause the door was locked this morning and the last show was at 3 yesterday. We use firefox to determine the pic was set up yesterday, but for some reason firefox wouldn't tell us what time it was used. So, we have a list of suspects, but we are hot on the trail on the perpetrator. The thing is, if anyone else saw it, it is really offensive and fucked up. So I'm glad I got to change it before the day's DJs started. But the person, if we find them, will probably get the boot. Which is a big deal cause that doesn't happen often at all.

Amazing site

So, I guess blogs are one really great way to give shoutouts to other blogs and cool sites, which I haven't done too much, but this site deserves it, because it is amazing and makes me so happy. The site is Tour filter and it is like a craigslist of concerts. It shows most all touring bands (so no local shows, which is kinda lame) that come to the twin cities. So I know that TV on the radio tickets are up to 66$ each, gwar tix are 59, as are atmosphere tix, Hold steady tickets are in the hundreds. But it also shows me that tom morello is coming to the fine line and kings of leon are playing on a weekend Im home. Like, this is so amazingly easy to use and understand. I don't know if anyone else will be as excited as I am, but whatever. And they have RSS feeds and customized lists of artist that you can set up.

I think I'm back to being an indie kid

Cause the music of choice has been: Spoon, Bon Iver, Okkervil River, Built to spill, and the shins. All great, but all soo so indie. I'm not saying I wasn't indie before, I feel I am indie in the way I like bands that are a part of a small community and are actually independent. But yeah, I've made a somewhat smooth transition from just hip hop to a blend of Aesop Rock and college rock. It's nice. I do think I am behind in the listening timespan, I mean I'm listening to year old CDs for the first time. But whatever. I have a fairly large headache from the weekend, so I'll leave it at that.

mARTin: week duece

So I started to call this mARTin, or at least that's what I'm tagging it under. I wanted something clever, and that's what happened. Anyways, I did two stencils. Pretty basic and non-final stuff, just wanted to spend some time stenciling. I realize now, though, my room is not ready for me to do stenciling. It is a complete mess and I have no workspace. But I did it anyways. The iron I got from my grandma leaks for some reason. Like it just starts spewing water like a newborn child, complete lack of bladder control. Anyways, so the doomtree one (thats the top one) is somewhat dry, but the flobots one (the bottom one) isn't really.
Heres a pic:



Also, here's a poster that I found in the morgue, the CSci kitchen, next to the dungeon. The two CDs are Knoppix live CDs. I thought it was cool/funny.



EDIT:
Any ideas for band logos, let me know. If you want one on a shirt or just cool stuff, gimme gimme gimme ideas.

TWIMMWAKUMM 2

This week has been an interesting week for me and music. As always, I have to choose between listening to new music and music that I know I will like. This causes some infrequency to my listening habits, but generally comes out balanced. This weekend, Colin came up from the cities and so I didn't get a whole lot of new music listened to. It's hard when theres bands like P.O.S., Subtle, TPC, and even playing guitar. But there were some good adds that I got in the mail, I just don't have a comprehensive review of them yet. So I think I will delay my actual post until I have more to say. So I'll eventually update this post with the new info.

I think I said firday updates...

Here's my idea for a shirt/poster/stencil/something. It's a dropped bomb with a plant growing out of it. I tried thinking of a slogan or words to go with it, but couldn't think of anything. So my ideas were Drop Life, the H-Bomb (the h stands for healing), and something like We don't have to use technology to take life.

anyways here it is.

Yes, this class is that boring

So here I am, sitting in data structures and i've given up on paying attention. So now I'm typing this and smiling at KK's story. But yeah, I think I'm going to try and build one of my unassembled guitar pedals today, cause why not? My espionage class was canceled so I'm done at one today. I got most all the motivation that I need to start and hopefully enough to finish.

What I needed

So after the chipper post previous to this.post, I had an overall good night. I set off my room's smoke detector with incense, genius move on my part. But that got me upset enough to know to gtfo my room. So I went over to Meghan, Mary, and Nicole's place and watched brick, shot the shat, ate grilled cheese, and watched some flight of the conchords. It was very good. Sometimes I wonder if I should remove posts after I "get out of the mood" that I posted them in. But since I didn't go off to bad on anyone specific, I'll leave it be. But it's nice to know I still am human and can get unreasonably upset. Ah, I'll just blame it on hormones.

Facts

Fact: Mocking the way I do my job in front of me pisses me off. Sorry Matt and Adam, but if you think you can do my job better than I can, which you couldn't when I asked you if you had any better ideas, then go ahead. But until then, keep it to yourself. Everyone likes to bitch, but watch who you do it to.

Fact: Tonight isn't starting off great. I had sorta gotten over the above fact, but now it's back. There is no office tonight, which I was looking forward to. No swing. I'm pretty sure I have homework to do. I thought Colin was coming up tomorrow, but that's on Saturday. I was up too late last night dealing with an overly drunken large man terrorizing my house. And because of the said terrorizing, I now have an upset house mate who I will probably be avoiding.

Fact: Large men exposing themselves in my kitchen is a little too far. Once, and maybe it's funny to the drunks, not to the sober people. But the fourth time? Really?

Fact: It is thursday, my supposedly easy day. I spent from 12:45 to 7:00 in the radio station. I did have an hour break, which I spent arguing with CSci majors about open source crap.
SubFact: This thursday was not an easy day.

Fact: I think this post is getting me more upset than I need to be, so sorry bout all that, but I'm going to go try and find something relaxing.

3 things I did that made me happy

I made a salad for dinner. It was great, I got an cantaloupe in the cities and cut it up and added a sliced apple and lettuce. Pour on some ranch dressing and bam! A tasty dinner that is good for me.

When I was cutting said cantaloupe, Bob asked if he could eat the extra on the rinds that I didn't get. I let him and it was a great feeling. In a house that doesn't share, the times I so something nice it makes me feel even greater.

I played guitar for about 45 minutes. At least 15 were doing scales and 15 were at least spent learning some songs. I practiced handlebars, wrong way, dust in the wind, and music for shoplifting. All great songs that Colin and I are planning on playing acoustically over the summer.