Caught In The Whirlwind
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Random Happenings
2977 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I’ve got a few things to report about since my last update.
First of all, I think I’ve finally settled on a basic color scheme/design for my mom’s quilting/craft website. I’m still tweaking it at the moment and I’m trying to decide if it looks too…web 2.0-y for the craft content. But I finally found something I liked well enough to take it out of the initial planning stages. Going to see if I can get some more work in on it during my lunch here.
It’s a good thing that’s getting finalized too since one of the first projects in the Digital Typography course that I’m taking is to do a business card/letterhead/envelope for something, so I figure I can work her up some stationary while I’m at it. The course is coming along quite well. We’ve finally started working on the computer and with InDesign which I’m finding pretty cool. I’m learning some stuff and generally enjoying myself which is a pretty good sign. I’m not regretting the decision to go back to school.
On a totally different note, I got a little bored yesterday and continued my blog transfer. I’ve got everything that I’ve posted on Vox from when I signed up through November 2006. Once I get out of 2006 the months will speed up as I settled into more relaxed posting style.
Lastly, on a product review front: The new Muse album has REALLY grown on me since I posted my initial review. The weaker songs clicked and it’s become one of my favorite albums of the year. Which only serves to diminish the Porcupine Tree album more…Oh well. I’ve also been enjoying Scribblenauts. But I’ll save that for a separate post when I get a minute to do a proper review.
The Incident
0979 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Porcupine Tree - The Incident
I mentioned yesterday that I’d be picking up the new Porcupine Tree album on my way home from work and pick it up I did.
As per usual, I’ve had a chance to spin it a couple times and…my feelings on this album are complicated right now. But first a description.
It’s a 2 disc album, CD 1 is entirely taken up by one long 55 minute song called The Incident. The second disc contains 4 separate songs. It’s definitely a move away from the heavier direction Porcupine Tree had been taking over the past several albums into more of the space-y, pink floyd aspects of their sounds. Steven Wilson isn’t one to be told what to do, as this album is proof of.
Now for my feelings. I like the album and it’s a solid effort. It just…right now feels like there’s something missing from it. I can’t pin down what exactly, but I’m having a hard time really connecting to it as much as I have past PT albums. There’s a lot of cool individual parts to it but I haven’t gotten a feel yet as to how these bits connect to each other.
When I was listening to it last night, I came to the realization that I think I’d like the album a lot better if it wasn’t associated with Porcupine Tree. Because there’s an expectation there that puts the bar so high for quality… If any other band came up with this album, I’d feel differently about it. It’s kinda a weird feeling.
So it’s definitely not my favorite PT album. But it’s a good effort and it feels like it’s a grower. I’m going to spend some quality time listening to it and trying to figure it out over the next few days and we’ll see if my opinion changes. Some reviews I’ve seen say that it takes 4-5 listens to really “click”
The Music Explosion Begins!
0980 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Muse - The Resistance
The section of the year which I’ve been looking forward to/dreading the most has arrived. From now until the end of October there’s a parade of new music that I’m looking to buy. I’m going to be a very poor individual indeed.
First up this week, was Muse’s new Album, the Resistance. I’ve spun it a few times so I think I can make a coherent mini review.
Muse continues their arc from the more guitar driven songs of Absolution into the invasion of synths and more electronic elements in Black Holes and Revelations to the much more synth driven The Resistance. It’s a very solid album with a couple of dissapointing spots in it which hold it back.
The opening track Uprising firmly establishes it as as Muse album. It’s a straight ahead rocker with lots of energy and it’s something that Muse is very good at. There’s some analog synth action to be had on this track which sets up the tone of the album to follow. The same vibe seems to flow forwards into the second track Resistance, but the chorus is something that’s pretty different for Muse. This song has a bit of a U2 feel to it at times.
These two songs pave the way for my least favorite song on the album, Undisclosed Desires. There’s no guitar at all and it’s very…pop-y. It’s the weakest track to me. I don’t hate it, but I have a hard time getting into it. That may change as time goes on.
However, the album makes up for it with United States of Eurasia next. There’s some epic piano work on this one. The song structure reminds me very much of Queen. By far my favorite track of the album so far. Guiding light returns back to the heavy synth style and I think it’s quite cool. I think I need some time for this song to really click with me, but it’s promising.
Unnatural Selection is another more guitar driven rocker with some very strange and proggy sections and then there’s MK Ultra which switches back to a heavier synth sound while keeping up a higher energy level.
I Belong To You is a strange song. Some very nice piano throughout breaking in the middle to insert a piece of music by a french composer (Saint Saens) and after a short reprise of the main theme, it heads into the final 3 tracks of the album: the Exogenisis Symphony.
The symphony is really cool. Very beautiful and atmospheric and very different from anything Muse has ever done before. It retains a few signature Muse stylings of course, but it’s a sign of a band that doesn’t want to get pigeon-holed into a certain style after achieving some success with it.
Very solid album and it grows on me with each listen. One other thing I wanted to mention was that the bass work on this album is very nice. Muse has always had interesting bass lines, but these are out of the park good.
Next up, I’ll be picking the new Porcupine Tree album up on my way home from work (and scribblenauts for the DS…couldn’t resist that). I should have some thoughts on Porcupine Tree tomorrow. I’m a bit apprehensive because that album has gotten some mixed reviews.
[Plinky] Can’t I be a mechanic?
0981 days
If you were drafted into the military but could pick your branch, which would you choose?
Ok, lets get one thing straight right away…I’m a total wimp. You don’t want me hanging out at the front lines with a loaded weapon. I’d be more dangerous to the people on my side.
Therefore, Army is out. I would be a very horrible field grunt. I think we can take the Marines out of the picture too for the same reason.
So my two choices would be either the Navy or the Air Force, preferring Air Force. Of course people who get drafted don’t usually work desk jobs…but if they did my skills would lend more to that sort of work. More of a support role. You REALLY don’t want me on the front lines. Trust me on this one.
Long Week…
0983 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Man, I’m glad it’s the weekend. This week at work was really hectic. We’re extremely busy right now with stuff…we could use a couple extra employees but that’s not going to happen due to the money crunch we’re under. And that was before they cut our hours. Now it’s even worse. I have a bunch of projects going on at once that are taking up all my time and then they add some other stuff on top of it… Sigh. It’s just frustrating.
Makes me kinda wish that I could just stop and do the school thing full time, but that doesn’t work for me financially either. I’m more interested in doing that than anything at work right now. Ah well. Just need to keep on plugging.
At least my work has gotten recognition by the president of the company. He apparently really likes what I’ve been doing on my web billing project. So that’s a definite plus right there.
I’m going to take this weekend to relax and decompress a bit. I want to work on some design stuff this weekend too since it’s been a little while since I’ve touched some of these things I’m working on. My mom’s website particularly, as I started that a looong time ago and haven’t really gotten anywhere. Hopefully I can get moving on it somehow…
That’s One Way To Do It
0985 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
For my Digital Typography course this week we had to do a little homework assignment. The instructor gave us a sheet with 6 different kinds of type and we were supposed to look through magazines, newspapers and things like that to see if we could locate examples of each one.
I was able to find every type pretty easily in the newspaper and the copy of Cycle World magazine (wonder what the person at the Rite Aid I bought it at thought of me, a guy who most definitely has no business on a motorcycle buying a copy of Cycle World). Except for one…the gothic old style calligraphy type font. It’s just not used very often these days. I found one example (Colonial Laundromat) but Wassy had already used that and I wanted to find something different.
So I jokingly mentioned “Oh, I know! I’ll go get my diploma and cut that up!”. This brought up the fact that my friend Jay actually has two diplomas from when he graduated college. One of them was screwed up and didn’t list that he graduated “magna cum laude” so he got a replacement. But he still kept the screwed up one. So he offered to give it up to the homework gods and so it came to pass that I glue-sticked calligraphic text reading “Bachelors of Science” to my homework. I put the colonial laundromat one just below it in case it had to be from a newspaper…but I figured it doesn’t hurt to be unique!
Lots Of Foot Related Stuff
0986 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I’ve noticed I’ve started to get a bit lax about updating around here…again. Dah. Hopefully I can pick it up a little bit. Haven’t been in much of a mood for writing recently.
I went back to the doctor for my followup appointment for my foot. It consisted of me waiting for an hour while they tried to get my X-rays from the other office faxed over so they could look at them where I was. Now, in this day and age of computers and networks, it strikes me as strange that two doctors offices in the same medical group can’t just walk over to a computer and pull up a digital copy of the x-rays for view. I mean, I know when I looked at them a couple weeks ago it was on a computer. So they are in some sort of digital form. Why do they need to FAX them over?? Anyway, I ended up going back to work and then returned back to the office once they got the x-rays.
They ended up doing another set of x-rays just to see if it was healing. I should know more today about that. My doctor said that as long as it felt like it was still healing, I don’t need to go to the podiatrist. But if it’s still bugging me in a couple weeks that’s something that I’ll probably end up doing. It’s healing decently well, but it’s still bugging me. Especially my big toe.
But today I wore my real shoes to work for the first time in 2-3 weeks. Which made me realize that I really need a new pair of shoes. Which then made me realize I would have to go shoe shopping. I’m a size 13 wide which is not very common. You can find them here and there in a store, but it’s a crapshoot if it’s going to be a shoe I want since I’m pretty picky about shoes for work. A lot of the styles look stupid to me and/or aren’t comfortable.
I failed on my work shoe quest but I did pick up a pair of sneakers. My current ones were starting to dig into the back of my heel I noticed. It was about time for a new pair. Still looking for work shoes though. I wish my sneakers and work shoes weren’t on the same replacement cycle…
2009 New York State Fair
0989 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I went to the state fair on friday with my Mom. We managed to catch some really nice weather and had a good time. Unfortunately, I accidentally left my camera in the car and my cell phone pictures didn’t come out all that great. I also left a lot out, I know. Too much stuff to write down and remember. If I think of anything else, I’ll edit it in later.
We went up early, before the buildings open since we’re both up early anyway. That turned out to be a really good idea since we were able to hit all the stuff in the buildings before it got way too crowded to move. We did the Center of Progress building first to check out the sand sculpture and see what products were being hawked this year. They had an amazing amount of dog themed booths this year and my Mom, being the crazy dog lady that she is, ended up almost buying several Maltese related items. Eventually she bought a hat. Mostly because it was really sunny out.
We made sure to grab some milk from the dairy building. The best milk ever. I have no idea how they make it taste that good, but…they do and it’s awesome. I wish I could have milk that good all the time…
One of the unexpected highlights was running into a guy who was doing a one man band type show. He had a drum kit strapped to his back, controlled mostly by his feet, a guitar and a harmonica. He was pretty goofy, but it was cool watching him play. You’ve gotta have a good amount of skill to play drums, guitar and lay a harmonica solo on top of it all.
We randomly ran into my uncle Dan and his family while we were looking at the chickens. Surprisingly we didn’t see them again for the rest of the day. Usually when something like that happens you tend to follow each other around (unintentionally or not). We also made stops over at the dairy barn to see the cows, and we also saw the sheep, goats, pigs and llamas.
The horse barn was closed for the day pretty much due to the fact that it was a horse team competition and it takes forever to prep for those shows. At the middle of the day we grabbed some ice cream and settled in to watch the horse show. My mom and I managed to randomly pick the top 2 finishers even though we had absolutely no idea what the judging criteria was.
We also wandered around the midway for a bit. I almost won a game of bouncy ball bingo or whatever it’s called. Tossing balls into an area with a grid. I managed to get 4 balls in a row but then somebody won. Boo. I also spent about $2 on a game where you had to roll a bowling ball down a track and get it to stop at a certain point. I was so close but didn’t manage to win.
As far as food goes, I mostly avoided eating stuff that was TOO bad for me. Specifically I didn’t get anything fried. Mostly because I had some cheesecake on a stick… I had some cotton candy too. My first bit of cotton candy ever. It was a bit weird but tasty.
We had planned on eating dinner there (at the awesome sausage place that sets up shop every year) but by the time that came around we were tired and hot and just wanted some quiet, so we left early and went to Tully’s for dinner.
It was a fun time this year. Very glad I was able to go to the fair and also glad to spend some time with my Mom. My fractured foot held up pretty good. It was my knees that were killing me by the end of the day. I’m becoming an old man. I even have a streak of grey hair now 
Meal Planning Update
0994 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m looking for ways to better organize our large recipie collection in an attempt to create a master list of all the stuff we (my roommates and I) can cook to aid in meal planning. I’ve tried out a few OS X based recipie organization apps and I think I’ve settled on SousChef. It’s $30, but, in our situation, I think it’ll be money worth spending.
The big thing for us is it keeps track of when a meal was last cooked, so we can see stuff that we haven’t had in a while. And we can search by ingredient so if something is on sale, we can get a list of stuff that uses that particular item. Another cool feature is a cooking mode that displays the recipe full screen mode in large type so you can read it from afar. It also responds to voice command so you can advance through the recipe without getting the laptop all icky.
I think it’ll work out well. Our meal planning process was taking much longer than it should have and something like this should help out a lot.
Now to enter all our recipes into the system…
Food. Like Eating It. Hate Planning It.
0995 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
One of the most dreaded times in the week for my roommates and I is the time where we go to decide what we’re going to eat for the next week. We hate doing it…it’s hard to plan that stuff in advance and we always tend to forget the types of meals we do. Always. It takes forever, sometimes it gets pushed off a couple days which throws off the schedule…it’s just icky all around.
So this evening I am tasked with helping to fix this situation by coming up with some way to list out and track all of our meal options and when we last had them. It’ll be a lot easier to slot in meals, I think, once we have a big list of stuff we can do. I’ve had the thought before, but now I’m motivated to actually do something about it.
I could just create a little spreadsheet for this, but I think I’m going to be investigating some applications built for the purpose. I want to have a centralized recipe storage location as well…to make things a little easier to manage and hunt down when the time comes to make the food. I’ve been eyeing MacGourmet as my option of choice so I’ll be checking it out tonight to see if it’ll work…
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