July 26, 2005
cullyfawnia
well, i've been in san diego aka "whale's vagina" since sunday and it's going well. the weather is great: 70 degrees all the time, no rain or clouds in sight. i got a little sunburned (big surprise) sunday because we were waiting outside to get in a restaurant for about 20 minutes. the 2 hour difference in time is messing with me, though.
our hotel is somewhat difficult to describe because i don't think i know the correct adjectives to use for it. i'm going to work on that and see if i can convey what it's actually like. the convention center is pretty kickass, but i'm here two weeks after comicon and that sucks.
so i'm learning about 3D visualization of GIS data and it's actually stuff i'd learned on my own...really useful to sit through, but i don't care. the class following this one is better.
yesterday, kevin and i were walking back to the hotel when a guy riding a bike with a passenger thing on the back offerred us a free ride. we said "why not" and hopped on. first thing the biker said was how bad his day had been and proceeded to tell us this story that smacked of fabrication. however, the highlight happened about 2 minutes after the ride began: we pass by another bike/rickshaw and our driver calls to that driver and says, "hey, you wanna smoke later on?" the reply, "sure man." the closer, by our driver, "alright then. meet me up at the store later and we'll get stoned." this was in broad daylight, in the midst of busy intersections, with a multitude of people that poured out of the convention center.
he sucked. out for now.
July 14, 2005
i still have the ones from ten years ago
i saw a slashdot article yesterday that plunged me back to nostalgia: "MP3 Celebrates its Tenth Anniversary". yep, my preferred audio format is 10 years old. i first encountered mp3s when i was downloading music from the sega cd rpg lunar: the silver star. this was probably later in 1995, but i was blown away by the quality and the size of the file. later, i spread the word about how great mp3s were, even if i didn't understand what they were: "it's some kind of highly compressed audio file that doesn't skimp on the quality."
other notes: i finished sirens of titan by kurt vonnegut and shadow puppets by orson scott card. with those out of the way, i started haunted by chuck palahniuk and shadow of the giant by orson scott card. i'm decently into haunted and on the third chapter of shadow, but i'm gonna try to drive through those so i can devote time to harry potter once we get it at midnight on friday.
finally, jessica and i have gotten into firefly. the ritual is this: every evening, usually around dinner time, we put in the dvd and watch the next episode. tonight's episode is "ariel," an episode we've heard good stuff about. the show is good....great dialog and story, really believable acting, and humor that only joss whedon seems able to deliver. jessica likes the theme song, but i find it tolerable. you should check it out because it's definitely more than just a space western. out.
July 11, 2005
warren ellis
a while back i talked about comics, specifically transmetropolitan by warren ellis. it turns out that he is an imminent web presence. i just have to admit that this guy is amazing. everything he has written that i've read, i've enjoyed. it has a cool, slick, sexy sound to it in my head and his settings/scenarios are quite fresh. here's a tidbit (from his frequently asked questions section regarding his creative process:
I still get asked with appalling regularity “where my ideas come from.”
Here’s the deal. I flood my poor ageing head with information. Any information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking about sex and making appointments to wash the dishes.
Eventually, you get a critical mass of information. Datum 1 plugs into Datum 3 which connects to Datum 3 and Data 4 and 5 stick to it and you’ve got a chain reaction. A bunch of stuff knits together and lights up and you’ve got what’s called “an idea".
And for that brief moment where it’s all flaring and welding together, you are Holy. You can’t be touched. Something impossible and brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would be like if Einstein’s brain was placed into the body of a young tyrannosaur, stuffed full of amphetamines and suffused with Sex Radiation.
That is what has happened to me tonight. I am beaming Sex Rays across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy Fire. If I felt like it, I could shag a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.
if you can dig that, you can dig anything he writes. it has that same ring to it when you're reading. out.