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i'll say what i want
2004-04-07 23:23:44
Current video: Subway Mirror, "Forever Young" to Stratos 4. Progress check: 95%. Expected catalog number: #87. The video is fully drafted and looking good, with effects also complete. There weren't that many. I'll have plenty of time between now and Saturday to produce the HQ version and do a mixdown, even considering the time I need to finish the current programming project (hopefully to be accomplished in major part tonight) and wrap up all my TeX stuff. I really should have done some of this earlier, but ofcourse I had other stuff due back then.
I put up #45 on direct earlier today. It already has 52 downloads. My guess is that it will get to at least 500 before an op is registered, because it is dead-brutal and lo-fi, and that op will be negative because the reviewer did not get the lo-fi-ness, or does not like grayscale.
Speaking of ops I have six to pass out, which will probably work out at one per day between next Monday (581 presentation) and the time the Compilers project is due. I should probably also finish the TeX stuff and the two short stories I have in the pipeline before I drop those 9000 words, but that will be as it may.
Three weeks left of school...hopefully my stomach lining will make it.
--Kai out
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open the grave, let me out
2004-04-06 10:44:44
Current video: Subway Mirror, "Forever Young" to Stratos 4. Progress check: 85%. Expected catalog number: #87. I got half the drafting done last night, and might have done more except for health and morale issues. The environment crashed, and I had to rebuild like 30 seconds of timeline (this is a 2 minute video, so this accounted for a lot), and as I had gotten like the third lowest score on that Compilers test (scary that someone did worse than I did), and missed the first class of my post-secondary career due to extreme exhaustion, I decided that I didn't have the will to attack the video further. Plus I think I'm deficient at some vitamin or another, so I need to secure some hippie food and bump my hp back up.
So instead I watched some Yaiba. That was at least a morale restorative. And I cranked up Heathen's mp3 re-releases. Now all we need is for Xentrix, Epidemic, Devastation, Onslaught, and Denial to come back -- Infernal Majesty's already putting out another CD -- and we'll have another shot at making the world free from posers.
There is too much flashy nonsense in the video as it stands. The next one will have to include much brutality and verfremdungseffekt. I'm thinking Kawarazaki with false-color filters and blasphemously remixed skinhead music. (It is video #88 afterall.....)
--Kai out
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tell me we can start the rain
2004-04-04 16:59:30
Current video: Subway Mirror, "Forever Young" to Stratos 4. Progress check: 75%. Expected catalog number: #87. And how many cuts went into that last 9%? That's right, ONE. ONE cut from ep 6. The final result is six and a half minutes of source, which is more or less three times what I need. If Yufan and I finish the documentation tonight, I may have time to do up the timing chart (and lyrics block, because Swano didn't post 'em) tonight or early tomorrow; I've got to be down the post office to mail out my job app as soon as they open tomorrow morning.
I've been listening to _Dance of Death_ virtually nonstop since I got it and listened through everything else I bought. It's different from what Maiden's been, but solidly in line with where _Brave New World_ was going. It's kind of like _Piece of Mind_ to the last record's _Number of the Beast_, which in combination with the two-DiAnno-albums/two-Blaze-albums duality makes an interesting angle to look at this one from. If this impression of periodicity holds up, I can't fuckin' wait for them to put out this era's _Powerslave_.
In terms of similar periodicity, there's Metallica, whose Pollard-Rho cycle consists of:
* formation
* establishment
* elaboration
* clunky, poorly managed album with no bass player
Map stage one onto _Kill 'Em All_ and the Black Album, 2 onto _Ride..._ and _Load_, 3 onto _...Puppets_ and _ReLoad_, and 4 onto _...Justice..._ and _Saint Anger_. Given the huge change between the first and second iterations of the cycle, there's no telling how the next CD will come out...and given how bad the last one was, it's doubtful that anyone will care.
--Kai out
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lives for his sword and his gun
2004-04-03 00:19:26
Current video: Subway Mirror, "Forever Young" to Stratos 4. Progress check: 66%. Expected catalog number: #87. Cut through ep 5 before coming in to work tonight; may finish it up over the weekend, but Yufan and I are pretty much on deathmarch on the Crypto project. It's a short video, but I still need about 5 hours of prod time, and that may or may not come to pass.
Also need to send in my job application materials; I've got five days (four mailing days, more like) due to stupid HR policies, but I think I've got everything under control. Controls...MFC....automation....VC++....<insert sounds of UNIX hackers choking and dying here> Nothing against them, but people whose reference for difficulty is Digital or VxWorks have it easy; they've never had to learn postfix command-line stuff for something like iRMS, or faced up to a Gray Wall with a deadline at their backs.
I went in to Encore today and left with my wallet $38 lighter...and I didn't pick up the Falkenbach, Cerebral Fix, or miscellaneous French black metal that I might have. I did finally get _Dance of Death_, Tourniquet's _Where Moth And Rust Destroy_ (best Christian CD since Believer's last one), Stonehenge's _Scum Brigade_ (and here I was thinking that these guys had never recorded anything), Dark Angel's first record, and a promo from Thy Primordial. They actually have a metal section now, but I anticipate that it won't be too long before they have, in its place, a bunch of empty shelfspace and 50 copies of _Saint Anger_.
As soon as I get more cash I'm going back; however, I strongly suspect that the Falkenbach, Cianide, Cerebral Fix, Defiled and Bal-Sagoth won't be walking out the door in a hurry. Even in this world of obscurity I'm out of the mainstream.
--Kai out
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in a black van with no windows
2004-03-31 23:09:05
a koan:
There was a test in Compilers.
It was written to be two hours long.
It took three hours to complete.
When it was over, even the honors students were gasping for breath.
At that moment, we murdered all of the undergraduates.
(kinda have to be at UM to get it, but that's the point of a koan.)
Somehow in between studying and working on the ever-mutating Crypto project on Tuesday, I managed to roll up another oskulumObszenum track. I also have some good ideas for the next 1-3 tracks that will be needed before the demo is done. Of course, this WILL mean that I have to install my "borrowed" copy of Macromedia somewhere and gin up a webpage to promote it over, but that can wait till the actual recording is done.
The problem with the current track is that it's going to be a cast-iron bastard to segue from it into anything that's currently in the pool of possible tracks. It's hardcore verfremdungseffekt industrial, and everything else is sickeningly boppable IEM (Incompetent Electronic 'Music'). Maybe the stuff as yet undone will bring more variety and smoother transitions; maybe it'll just be a choppy demo from someone who has no business working in this style.
Regardless, it won't be a priority of any sort for another 3 weeks. After that, the projects will all be in on all of my classes, and I can spend a day or two grinding out the final release before I have to start packing up. The video will definitely be done first; I promised Kalium something showable for the end of next week. That oughtn't be too hard; I'll have a little slack this weekend and a lot of space next week, after Yufan and I have to have our code and paper in. Most of the code is actually done....and we can work on writing the paper while we debug it.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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