My advanced 3D graphics class is looking like its going to be extremely unkind to me. Already I’m staring blankly at the first lab, the instructions for which pretty much amounted to: “Texture mapping. Go do it.” I don’t even need this class to graduate, and I’m intimidated enough to be thinking about dropping it. Unfortunately, that would make lose my full-time student status, which I believe would do several unpleasant things to me, such as causing me to lose my loans and health insurance. Looks like I’m going to have to muddle through this and hope for a sudden burst of geniusness.
Monthly Archive for January, 2002
I shot my first hologram today, just a simple diffraction grating which produces lots of spectra in different patterns when viewed in the right light. The image didn’t quite come out looking like I had hoped, but honestly I was just thrilled that I got an image at all and that I didn’t break any of the equipment in the process. I was terrified of all the delicate equipment involved, but I managed to fumble through it alright. Also, I had never developed any sort of film before so I wasn’t too confident that I wouldn’t end ruining my shot there, but again it came through ok. This was the simplest and most forgiving of our assignments though, and it still took me a hour and a half to setup, shoot, and develop.
New Pornographers Embark on U.S. Tour. Stopping, naturally, in Cleveland and not Columbus. Why does Columbus always get the short end of the rock and roll stick? What’s so gol-darned great about Cleveland anyway? Its things like this that really make me wish I had a car that could endure the trek up to Cleveland to bring me to the rocking. I’m not all that jazzed about taking my 1984 Corolla, as I really really really need it to survive long enough for me to graduate and find a job so I try not to subject it to anything to strenuous.
Looks like I’m late to the party again. How did I go so long without trying Audiogalaxy? To me, this seems like the only music sharing service I’ve seen done correctly and in a way that I’d be willing to pay for if necessary. Cross referencing by genres and similar artists, as well as displaying search results by popularity make finding new and interesting music and artists easy. I got sucked in for hours last night, looking up one artist and then following the genre and similar artist links around forever. This just seems like the kind of system that could potentially benefit less known artists by making it easier for people to stumble across them, rather than just serving as a mass piracy tool for the latest Limp Bizkit album.
Another thing that happened while I wasn’t updating this: I saw The Royal Tenenbaums. Twice. Easily the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. Ok, its the only movie I’ve seen this year, but it sets the bar pretty high.Also, as an indirect result of the soundtrack (which featured songs by both
the Velvet Underground and Nico), I’ve realized that I could really stand to pick up a few Velvet Underground albums. Downloading the Nico tracks from the movie lead to me downloading VU tracks featuring Nico which just lead to more VU downloading which then left me wondering just how I’d missed out on something this good before.
Apologies in advance for any spelling errors in this, my long awaited return post. Blogger no longer has spell checking, and I’m trying to type with gloves on since its so very very cold here at work. So far so good. I guess a lot has happened in the time that I haven’t been blogging. For one thing, it seems that apparently we have a new year, did you know that? Well, we do. The New Year is a magical time, full of hope and dreams, in which I feel that all the various peoples of the world should put aside their differences and come together to give me lots of money and ceaseless adoration. Also there should be buildings named after me. Inexplicably, this has yet to happen. Instead, I just find myself getting around to blogging about the new year just about the time everyone else has given up on their resolutions. For the moment, I’ll presuppose that you ask “Why is that? What was the reason behind your brief blogging break?” Well I’ll tell you. You see, I realized that there was more to life than introspective naval gazing placed on display for the whole world. I wrote a novel. I travelled abroad and had a series of sordid affairs with exotic international women, each more torrid than the last. I brought new life into the world, yet I became Death, destroyer of worlds. I petted puppy dogs. I sampled an astounding array of gourmet ice creams and frozen confections. I had my name legally changed and forgot what it was soon after. I said a lot of things that I thought were terribly clever at the time, only to realize how inane and cliche they were later on. I rambled. I used an ellipsis… I played Final Fantasy X for a total of 82 hours. There.
Elsewhere