November 08, 2004

• I decorated my bedroom with The Rasterbator.
• Alex: Really? Do you have any pictures? I wanted to try something like that, but wasn't sure about it... Anyway, I don't have something wonderful, but I do have something awful (my favourite article from that site) Not fpp worthy, but worth sharing none the less.
• I just got a phone call from my dad, just to say hi, followed (coincidentally) by a phone call from my sister to let me know that she's doing well. Then, I went to buy ice cream and check my mail, and discovered a check that I didn't know was coming to me. It's wonderful!
• Meh, I just used a portrait shot of my s.o. Faceshots seem to work well -- anything which requires detail, like a landscape or other physical landmark, doesn't seem to render as well. I think the brain is more tuned to rebuilding a rasterbated faceshot.
• Oh, something else weird happened today. I was driving down I-95 and a large number of bikers revved down the road alongside me. I think they were part of a Toys for Tots group, or something. Anyway, dumbass that I am, I think I'm reading the word "Vegans" in gothic script on the back of their jackets. Turns out it was "Pagans".
• I'm at rehersal for my show. It's going pretty well!
• I installed a big sound system instead of the cheap-ass 10$ computer speakers I previously had.
• My son learned how to crawl today. I just posted my new tattoo on the MoFi Flikr group.
• ooops. Flikr=Flickr!
• Zanshin, that's great ink.
• Ooh, love the tat, Zanshin.
• After being overwhelmed by the hate on this site in response to the election I started going through all the various Meetup pictures today and it really lifted my spirits. Reminded me why it was created in the first place and what a nice group it has evolved into, regardless of the day to day turmoil some may face. Alex, I tried the Rasterbate thing but being the overzealous person I am I wanted to make a 7x7 horizontal piece and gave up less than half way through. Got any pics of your attempts? I love those things.
• Today, I had a cheese sandwich.
• After having to get up early for some form of work 7 straight days, I went to bed around 11pm last night and slept until 11am this morning. I like sleep.
• My Dad just IMed me to say that there's a very bright aurora over Stirling, Ontario. Also, I think I'm almost over my cold.
• Less politics, more monkeys!
• Genial: Stand far back and let your eyes' focus relax
• More bananas, less flinging?
• I just invented a great sandwich: Indian candy (sweet preserved spiced salmon), red peppers, chopped walnuts, and mayonnaise on toasted whole-wheat. It might be even better as a panini. Motto on taxicab: "Courtesy is our motto". Okay, maybe you have to be a programmer or mathematician to find the contradiction funny... I discovered the band Medeski, Martin, and Wood, an incredible futuristic jazz trio.
• I'm going to take a shower soon. Never underestimate the soothing effects of a hot shower.
• My lasered face is finally back to normal. Yay!
• Yay moneyjane! Argh, you are really awesome for starting this thread. I just got back from a weekend at my mother's and a trip down south for my nephew's third birthday. It was great. I forgot my camera. I ate a lot of kids' birthday-party-food - chips, lollies, fairy bread, chocolate biscuits. Today I pay the price. Also, just found out we're going to have a one-time All Black on our crummy social touch rugby team. It's pretty cool.
• tracicle: please explain lollies and fairy bread.
• Today, we had had enough to eat and clean water to drink. Although it is cold and wet outside, we are warm and dry. Here, for us, tomorrow will likely be the same.
• i am going to the pub tonight. where there is frosty beer and fine company. hurrah!
• Zanshin: lollies <=> candy, sweets fairy bread <=> buttered bread with coloured sprinkles
• Lollies = "suckers" up Canada way. Also, a Coke, or other carbonated artificial-type beverage is a "pop", where in the US, I think it's a "soda". Cats are called "get the fuck off the table, you bastards". Man, I love to swear.
• I spent saturday with my fellow bikers, doing a toy run for the local kids. I spent today, with more bikers raising money for the Shriners children hospital in St. Louis. I love this type of thing. Had a wonderful time, visited with a lot of interesting people. All in all a good weekend.
• Experienced something of a serependitious sequence of events today, which brought me quite some peace of mind. Which I used to spend time with loved ones. Sun, greenery, relaxation. Nice food, too. A nice sunday. Guess it's gonna be one of those days one remembers, many years after.
• I played badass bass until 4 in the morning. Hot cheese!
• I blew off all my homework for my college classes this weekend. It was nice. I slept till noon yesterday, did massive grocery shopping today and vegetated with the family. Seriously relaxing.
• oh man, verbose, you're in serious trouble. I'm a total MMW fanboy. They always do a Halloween concert in NYC, and I just attended my fifth one last weekend. It was my fifteenth overall show. It totally smoked. I have about 10 or so of their shows on cd, and always love to share, so if you want to drop me an email we can figure out how I can get you a couple of them (they are taper friendly, so it's all totally legal to trade bootlegs). And if you get a chance, go see them live - there's nothing quite like it. When they really click, it's like the three of them share one brain - playing off each other, moving back and forth between tight grooves and total chaos and ambient soundscapes. Also, nobody moves through beats like Billy Martin. Nobody I say. Nobody. If you want any album recomendations, too, let me know. Their sound is totally different from album to album. Combustication is when they started incorporating in more hip-hop like beats, and DJ Logic sits in on a few tracks. Uninvisible used an overdub process to create some beautiful electronic/jazz moods. The Dropper is totally off-the-deep-end avant-guard crazyness. Okay, sorry, I get so excited when someone gets turned onto MMW, I could talk (er...write) for hours. I'm a little obsessed. But more along the lines of this thread, I also blew off work this weekend so I could visit my girlfriend. She was in a dance show, and it was great. I want to be with her, instead of procrastinating from the work i should be doing right now.
• Great band, MM&W. Don't let any big jazz snob (like me) tell you different.
• Behold the spirited Cossack dancing of this festive crab!
• Wolof, is your bass badass because of its bridge?
• I'm having fun learning Ennio Morricone guitar parts and trying to learn some songs well enough to play one man thing at a cafe or something. Anyone know a good application for playing songs and looping little segments of them?
• My girlfriend's coming up for the weekend. Yay!
• The rasterbator is great. I didn't do anything spectacular today - tried catching up on some work and failed miserably at it. Watched the last episode of power of nightmares (again) listened to the new U2 album (it's horrid and can't understand why anyone would want to steal the master ... heh)
• I'm totally jetlagged after flying back home from the Netherlands. I'm happy to be back home, because my old country is not doing well.
• I spent the weekend with a old friend in Spokane Washington, a place I dearly love. On Saturday we took a beautiful drive in the mountains of Idaho and Montana, visiting historic sites, hiking a little, and making stops for great beer and coffee. For lunch we had buffalo burgers!
• Friends that we hadn't seen for a long time joined us for dinner on Saturday. I discovered something: the only thing better than homemade black beans and rice is homemade black beans and rice mixed with little bits of chevre. Don't forget the chopped avocado and cilantro. Yesterday I made a lasagne, did laundry and watched this documentary. Highly recommended if you get the chance to see it. This morning I'm trying to type this with my Rent-A-Cat on my lap. Enjoying some lovely jasmine tea sent by Alnedra. Contemplating a walk instead of finishing the writing I know is due today.
• there was a great askme post recently asking people to share the simple pleasures in life. i'd post the link but i'm getting jrun errors right now...but people could share those sorts of things. just reading that thread made me feel better.
• I'm in Amsterdam for a week, in a little apartment right in the center, with wireless broadband as an added plus. I get a week of touring, museum-going and general fun. And somebody else is paying. :^)
• My sister came up to visit this weekend! We had a great time. (She is as full of silly as me.)
• I went out to a Monkeyfilter/Metafilter party on Saturday night and a Fark party on Sunday afternoon, in between that I wandered through the Queen Anne neighborhood looking at wonderful old turn of the century houses. Remarkable! I also went happened upon a rally at Westlake Center, and wandered the shops at Pike Place market.
• I had the house to myself over the weekend. It finally stopped raining, so I was able to mow the yard, but the ground's still pretty wet. I'm very near to finishing Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I'm frigging loving it. Oh, I had to miss my niece's fourth birthday, so I sent my wife ahead with a letter and a crayon drawing of the two of us. She dragged that thing around the whole weekend, showing everyone "what Merry Matt (that's what she calls me) made for me." I would eat glass for that little girl.
• Over the weekend I shaved off the beard that I'd been growing for the past month. Saturday was goatee day. Sunday was mustache + handlebars day, then plain old mustache day. This morning I finally shaved off the mustache. Now my face feels naked.
• Alnedra - you can rent cats in England? Wonderful!
• jb, I think your question is for me. The Rent-A-Cat belongs to my brother-in-law, who frequently travels on business. Right now we've got her for 3 weeks while her momguy is in Korea.
• The sun came back out, after a burst of snow squalls. Our first snow this year and it's gone. Now we can barbeque some burgers and keep working outside in the sun. Best of all, the damn parrot has stopped his jungle calls and is crooning his delightful little lullabies as he prepares for the afternoon nap.
• / did anyone else see this first picture on the somethingawful site? I kinda like his spirit.
• Oh my God, dxlifer, I swear I know the guy in the pirate costume! He went to my local community college in Santa Cruz and wore that costume for Halloween.
• Alnedra - you can rent cats in England? Wonderful! *feels totally befuddled* I think what shinything meant was that the tea was from me, and the cat was rented from...somewhere. If I could rent a cat, I'd be up to my ears in them right now :)
• Speaking of tea Alnedra, please send me your addy. I have a small thank-you gift I'd like to send to you.
• I performed the necessary voodoo to get the images from the NJ MoFi meetup out of my digital camera, and as a bonus found that pictures I took of a friend who came to visit me from Texas last month were not lost after all.
• Double the joy for tracicle who has been reunited with a long-lost pirate, and perhaps a rather large leprochaun?
• Wolof, is your bass badass because of its bridge? Partly so, yes. But mainly because I gave it a few hundred watts through four tens and a fifteen.
• Yes - sorry shinything, and Alnedra. Got confused - was scanning quickly and saw rent a cat, tea and Alnedra all close together, and thought "wow, I thought she had just arrived". But I'm glad to hear about your cat - I get to pet my roommates cat, and thus have the pleasure of pet owning without much of the bother.
• I'm a total MMW fanboy. Listening to End of the World Party right now (went and bought a copy yesterday -- this thread kind of reminded me to). Quite funky in parts. Got Marc Ribot on it, too, so, you know, hippish.