<--{i am thezer0ist}-->

what the fuck is wrong with this world?
cliché as it may sound, i really do have to question how anyone can believe in any sort of compassionate omnipotent (creator) god. as i see it, there are a few possibilities:

1. God does exist, and is a benevolent moron: God intended to create functional sentient beings in order to love them, but seriously fucked up the whole creation process, and instead produced a broken species
2. God does exist, and is an omnipotent sociopath: God created sentient beings into which it built flaws and kill-switches so that it could watch them suffer and crumble to pieces slowly and painfully
3. God does exist, created us for some reason, and really doesn't care what the fuck happens to us
4. There is no god and the world is a cruel and painful place
5. Free will is a fucking illusion, so none of our suffering means anything because it cannot be anything else and nothing can happen but what is happening, has happened, and will happen

Mortality and illness are fucking horrible.
Also, i absolutely recognize that my experiences in these things are not unique or special in any way, nor are they even close to being the worst ones out there (but that's kind of my point).

ever have one of those moments when you are pulled back from yourself just far enough to realize that you don't really recognize anything and you just want to obliterate everything because you can't bear the prospect of returning to the never ending blind push onward that seems to have become your life?
it has been a strange few months and i seem to have been alive and conscious throughout most of it. there is something so profoundly unreal about all of this. i work full-time. i do essentially the same thing every day. i have virtually no social contact. i keep thinking that i'm in some sort of transitional and temporary state, but really i'm as settled as i've been in many years. on sunday i attended the funeral of someone that i really wished that i had known a lot more than i did. i'm laying in bed as i do every night accepting the fact that tomorrow will be just like today.

i've set up an artist account on last.fm. i posted most of the stuff i've recorded (only some of which is at all recent). a lot of the songs up there are older versions. i really need to record more.
anyways...
http://www.last.fm/music/thezer0ist

cat and i are going to be subletting the apartment of a professor of mine for the summer. i was sitting around talking to her and the TA's with a few other students (she managed to get us all into the nice faculty dining place for lunch), and i mentioned that i've been trying to find a place and hadn't had much luck.... and she says that she's not going to be in her place for the summer, and hadn't even thought about subletting but thought it was a good idea. so yeah... it's working out nicely. and i totally don't deserve it, since i really didn't do as much as i should have to find a place... one just sort of appeared in front of me. awesome.

also, http://remix.nin.com/. yeah. multi-track recordings all in raw format (massive wav files), and some of them have project files for Live (and GarageBand, but that's really not worth mentioning).
so i've spent a bunch of time in the past few days working with that stuff. i like it.

"reflect on the way different kinds of composing (with visuals, audio, music, sounds, hyperlinks, etc.) have helped you learn more about yourself as a writer and about the writing process in general. Specifically, I’d like you to reflect on the ways your experiences writing in one medium or genre influenced, informed, or affected the way you composed in another."

it's due on wednesday.
i don't really have much of an idea what to write about... the only decent thing i've come up with so far is to discuss the differences between the organization of arguments presented in written essays and video essays (and the role visuals play in that).
it's a pretty okay idea, i think, but there's no way i'm going to be able to write 3-4 pages about it. i need more. and i can't think of anything.
this is the sort of thing that cat's good for, but she isn't here, and i'm not going to be able to talk to her until wednesday. fuck.

also, on a completely different topic... why the hell is it that our culture requires us to say "bless you" (or its equivalent) when someone sneezes? really.... wtf.

also, on another completely different topic... i wish there were varying degrees of italic text... so you could have something that's sort of italicized, and things that are really really italicized. as it is, they all look the same. i think it would make written communication a lot more clear. often, i want to emphasize something, but i don't want it to seem too important, but i'm stuck choosing between normal and super emphasized


also....
i have a video essay that i need to finish... and my AfterEffects installation (which takes almost an hour) is fucked up and won't open. there are public computers on campus that have it, but they don't have the codecs that i need to use the video clips we have, and it's not possible to install them... fuck again.

track 2 on the soundtrack for the fountain is most certainly on my list of best songs of all time.


in fact, i'd go so far as to say that this soundtrack is a nearly perfect example of nearly everything that i've been striving to acheive in my own music. i rarely end up actually getting close too it, but i still try. it's a sort of sadistic desire. i want to make people feel like they're dreaming of (or perhaps remembering) being slowly torn apart by rusty metal hooks, covered in a thick layer of dust. (i'm not sure what it is with that image, but it's been the driving motivation for a lot my work..) i try to work around a sense of distant memory and longing built out of suffering. clint mansell does it really quite well. the elements of distortion and overdrive that he works in gives it just the proper edge. i'm still trying to do that.

a few days ago i got the brilliant idea to do the main user interface for my thesis project in flash. i was updating illustrator and i remembered that, years ago, i was decent with flash. and there's the flashserver max object, so communication between flash and max should work fairly smoothly. what i didn't realize is that flash is fucking wierd. flash cs2 introduced a feature which allowed one to create a document that was designed to be a form-based application... which is what i want. also, they have UI components like buttons, checkboxes, even a sub-window component. what they don't have in cs2 is a slider or knob component. so i figured that cs3 would maybe add such things... and i was right, at least about the slider (though i has a fixed width and really isn't very customizable). however, they got rid of the form application stuff, and the window component. why, i don't know. i really don't. i'm pretty sure that when one is creating a new version of a program, one adds features as opposed to taking them away... but i suppose i just don't understand adobe's genious plan...

i haven't posted in a while...
i'm currently working on a big max patch as part of my thesis.... (http://code.google.com/p/scrlt/)
you can even download it... though you'd need max and whatever externals it depends on (i haven't gone through and done a dependency graph yet... though i'm pretty sure i'll end up doing it eventually, because i'm crazy like that)
also, i've been doing improvised sound with a few guys as part of my Electronic Arts Theory class... it involves a guy with a turntable, a guy with an acoustic guitar, a guy that runs around the room hitting things with other things, and me making droning sounds with my laptop and midi controllers... it's fun.
woo. update!

also, i love the weighted companion cube.

instructables
plushie!
wallpaper

did you know that pat robertson can leg-press 2000 pounds due to his "Age-Defying energy shake"?
"For comparative purposes, when Dan Kendra set the Florida State University record of 1,335 pounds, the leg press machine required extensive modifications to hold the proper amount of weight, and the capillaries in both of Kendra's eyes burst during his successful attempt. Thus, Robertson's claimed achievement would add 665 pounds to the best-ever total of Kendra, a top athlete in his physical prime, who later played in the National Football League and become a Navy SEAL."

i love wikipedia


also, sudo always reminds me of vic.

check out my mixer interface.
i made it today.
(it's mono.... i know... i'll deal with that later)

i'm done. after this i no longer have to configure cisco networking devices ever again (assuming i passed the course). this pleases me.
however, there are of course a great many things that are causing me to be a bit... worried. it is an unpleasant state of being.
so... i'm probably just going to try to keep myself distracted for a while, but not enough that i won't take care of the things i need to take care of as far as school goes.
i'm likely to go to connecticut for a bit, then to my mom's for christmas and some surrounding days, then to boston. hello vic.
i feel kinda crappy! yay!!


update:
i got a B in networking!!!! wooooooo!!!!
now i just have to worry about multivariable calculus, database systems, and setting things up properly for next semester..... fuck.

i managed to produce a simple recording of a piece that i've been working on called "haven lost".
this is the 8th version..

apparently there's another F.E.A.R expansion pack called "Perseus Mandate"...
it didn't get particularly good reviews but that's largely because people were upset that it wasn't significantly better than the original (and prior expansion pack), but since the original was fucking amazing to begin with, i don't see a problem.
go go bittorrent.... i hope it actually downloads....
also, i miss demonoid.... stupid canadians..

cat found it. she's super neat.

apparently, lt. commander data's positronic brain has a storage capacity of about 909 terabytes. so i know people with more storage capacity than that... wierd. still, i like him. he's my friend.

i've started doing some work with reaktor again, and i'm remembering why sort of hate it a little. the problem is, i sort of hate max/msp a little, too. it's definitely much easier to make much nicer looking stuff that's easier to deal with in reaktor, but there's a certain wierdness about how it's all run. the interface between core modules and the rest of reaktor is kinda strange.
all i'm trying to do is make a module that has two buttons on it (not toggles, but simple buttons), that maintains a state (numbered 0-3) which transitions to other states depending on a few simple rules... as in, if button A is hit in state 0 it transitions to state 3, etc. but no... the concept of an 'event' (like a press of a button that isn't a toggle) is all wierd. it seems to prefer to think of everything as a constant stream of values... as in, the button is sending out 0 except when you push it, it sends out 1, as opposed to the button not doing anything when you aren't pushing it, and simply sending out an event when you do. as in a bang in max. a simple fucking bang. why does it hate me?

it's funny how when you spend a lot of time fucking with digital sound, you eventually learn that it is, in fact, possible to overload your computer's sound drivers. lol.

god has a page on imdb. seriously. with 229 listings. including one played by tim curry (in Animated Stories from the Bible: Music Video - Volume 1).
yeah
wacky indeed

omg omg omg ....
MAX 5!!!!!
aaaaahhhhh!!!!
they finally fixed the interface that seems to have gone basically unchanged since 1987. not that i don't like 1987, but there have been a lot of nice new ideas for GUIs since then. also, it looks like the new api will be slightly less horribly wierd and such. i'm totally excited. i want it .... now. unfortunately it isn't coming out until "the first quarter of 2008".
a first look at max 5
max 5: what it is (and isn't)

also, i totally got a 99% on my databases exam. and i didn't study for it. at all.


oh wow... also, Live 7. yeah. wow. this is totally amazing. reason 4, max 5, and live 7. wow. it's going to be released before the end of 2007 (supposedly). it's going to include a new physical modeling string synth (and i love physical modeling string synths).... and some sort of physical modeling electric piano (though i'm confused as to how that would be physically modeled)... and... some sort of vintage analog synth thingy. and it's got a new audio engine and a new midi timing engine and support for multiple time signatures in a single set... and .... support for REX files!!! wooooooo!!!! also a new drum rack!

yay.
totally hot.

demonoid is down?
wtf.
i just got an internet connection at home, too.

apparently a relative of mine was executed for attempting to assassinate hitler.
wierd.

yesterday, a chunk of the ceiling in our kitchen fell. most of the apartment has regular ceilings, except for the kitchen, which, for some reason, has this layer of big foam-like tiles that are suspended about six inches below the real ceiling. anyways, one of those just kinda fell. and now it's just leaned up against the wall.
other than that, i like the place.
also, i miss cat.
and... i played a set at gz open mic last night. i think it went decently. hopefully i'll be able to get recordings from kyle, in which case i'll post them.
and... verizon totally sucks. we signed up for their dsl service 2 weeks ago, and they basically just mailed us a box containing a dsl modem, some cables, and an "instruction" booklet which contained such useful things as a list of common IM acronyms. yeah. helpful. so i had been trying to set the damned thing up, and found out that there was a "dsl line number" that we were supposed to have been given when the order was completed. so i called their 800 number, and talked to some woman in india for a while, with basically no progress. the connection kept dying, and from the lights and the pattern of semi-functionality, i came to the conclusion that there was some kind of problem in the line. so i asked how i could get a technician to set it up... and found out that it would cost $40. so we cancelled service. the phone call took roughly 45 minutes. so we still don't have an internet connection at home, and we're going to try time warner... hopefully that will work a bit better.

today was my last day at work. wooo. i am actually really quite happy i don't have to go there tomorrow. it's nice.
i am, however, really bored. i'm around for a few more days. adunno.
also, i ate way too much food and now i feel ill.
also, the movie Primer (which i'm in the midst of watching) is really neat.

i hate this time on sundays when pacing about in the living room and kitchen basically just waiting either for someone to wake up or for some sort of desire to actually do somthing. it seems to happen a lot. pretty much every weekend i'm not with cat.
she makes that sort of thing better.

on tuesday afternoon, i started to get this pain in my wrist. within an hour or so, large segments of my arm were kinda numb and the same thing had started in the other arm. naturally, i was worried. it continued to get worse, and when i got out of work, i was convinced that i was either having some sort of circulatory problem, or i'd fucked up a nerve somewhere. so... my dad took me to the urgent care facility at a nearby hospital. on arrival there, some admissions guy told me that the "urgent care" facility was basically just for people with coughs and sore throats and such, and that i needed to go down to the ER. so... since i was there already, we went down. by the time that i actually saw a doctor 6 hours later, the symptoms had largely subsided and they sent me home with a print-out that basically told me to take ibuprofen and that i might have carpal tunnel syndrome.
since then, the pain and numbness has been returning in waves. research that i've done seems to indicate that there have been maybe 1 or 2 documented cases of carpal tunnel syndrome having any sort of rapid onset. in my case, the onset was over roughly 2-3 hours. not several weeks. so... my current theory is that a nerve somewhere in my neck is being pinched or something, which is then radiating out to my extremities. so, i'm going to try to see a chiropractor.
in the mean time, i'm wearing braces (which helps a bit), and i'm in some degree of pain most of the time. there are good periods (such as right now... hence the typing), and there are bad periods. overall, it sucks.
yay.

i often find myself staring at my computer, attempting to recall the procedure used to make myself feel not alone
then i realize that there isn't one
stupid computer.. not being able to completely satisfy all of my needs..

does anyone even read this crap?

i had my second day at meditech today. it was filled with really dull and largely irrelevant training. it was really really really difficult to stay awake... to the extent that i had to keep moving my eyes around in order to keep them from closing. then i drank some kinda nasty coffee. then i was nauseous for the rest of the day. yay!!
tomorrow i... well, i really have no idea. i'm not even really sure where i'm supposed to go in the morning... i suppose i'll figure it out. and if i don't, i'll just sit at what i'm fairly sure is rumoured to be my desk and read slashdot until i hear something.
mmmhm. my life is exciting.

i had my first day of work today. it was intensely boring. some sort of training session. and... i'm signed up for 2 more!! woooooooo....
then i went home, decided i was too tired to go out and do anything, and subsequently watched 10 consecutive episodes of the venture brothers.
and now i'm still conscious, and it's fscking unpleasant. i've been having that sense that life is completely without value or purpose again. poo.

i shall be arriving in the boston area on tuesday.
also, my head hurts.

i finally got my alesis nanosynth. it's super neat. it's from 1997. mmhm... that was 10 years ago (which is a strange thing to think about, because in my mind it's still roughly 2002). my desk looks really fantastic covered in audio gear and cables. the only problem is that i'm really not sure how to go about incorporating the nanosynth into my ableton live/reason setup.. especially since it's a particularly crazy little module that can act basically as 16 different synths simultaneously (each responding to a separate midi channel). so i really don't quite know how to set each synth up when i start working on a particular piece. i suppose i'll have to do some sort of parameter dump or something. if anyone has any experience or suggestions, i'd really appreciate help.

i've been awake for far too long. i've been laying about in my room doing pretty much nothing at all for hours now. i did the same thing last night, except i eventually gave up and just stayed awake, which i really really should not do tonight.. assuming i have any say on the matter.
wtf.
my neck hurts. a lot.
also, the quietness is really really unnerving, and no amount of sound seems to have any effect on it.

so apparently at NAMM, propellerheads did a demo of a synth called "thor" that's going to be a part of Reason 4.. yeah.. Reason 4!!

this song always reminds me of the summer of 1999... neurological examinations and sitting at the computer in the dining room of my dad's old house, fiddling around with web pages, using napster, and wondering what the fuck was going on with my brain.
oh nostalgia...
almost 8 years later, and i'm starting on yet another medication. maybe this time.

why is it that barnes and noble can get me my order in 2 days with their cheapest shipping option and proaudiosolutions.com has so far taken almost a month to get me an order that they promised would arrive 3-7 days after i placed the order?
wtf?
i hate them.
i hate them soooo much.
i want my midi controller.

it's funny when pharmeceutical ads try to pass off the fda mandated warnings as things that normal people say in conversation. like when a woman is telling her friends that they should inform their doctor if they have adrenal problems or respitory problems.

has anyone else been having wierd bittorrent problems... like... nothing downloading at all.. for the past few days?

so crypt is over as of tomorrow. i'm pissed. i guess it makes sense from a business perspective, but still... i had just come to appreciate it, and i only got to go a few times.

i made a few new recordings...
recol
mild delerium
...
more here

i'm rather fond of the new priceline ad which seems to imply that they'll get william shatner to go out and seduce people into giving you good prices. yeah. he does that. for you. 'cuz he's totally sexy. mm... shatner...

i'm still sick!! and it totally blows!! yay!!!!!
on a totally different topic, i'm trying to hunt down a textbook on discrete math (not really any specific one, just anything that be a decent reference).
wow, the colbert report just showed a brief segment of the state of the union, with displays indicating how many times nancy pelosi and dick cheney each blinked. over the course of the clip shown, she blinked 40 times while he only blinked once. once. he's totally a robot.
and i'm totally sick.

i'm getting sick. again. i've been sick waaaay too much in the past few months. fuck.

i'm getting an Alesis NanoSynth for $50. yeah. wooo!!
also, a Behringer BCR2000 should be arriving like... today... except it didn't. and yeah... i'm getting super impatient.

i just had a dream in which i was hanging out at vic's mom's old place in lexington, and vic and emily were there, and vic and i were about to go out to get donuts and bacon, and since the stereo in his car was broken, i had to bring this large "portable" television/cd player that i had been carrying around with me for some reason.

should i bother to get my CCNA?
also, has anyone seen my playstation memory cards? i recall having loaned them to vic last summer, and then i think i might have taken them back, but i really can't recall.

i have no idea when i have class tomorrow because i'm locked out of the student information system for having mistyped my password several times... so... um... adunno. i emailed the appropriate people, and i'm gonna wake up early tomorrow and hopefully i'll have a response and such...
also, i've been searching for the playstation memory cards that i know i have somewhere...

i'm going back to troy tomorrow. it'll be nice to be back. been good to hang out with people here, too. mmmhm. and i'm tired.
i'll totally miss you all. and being able to go to ceremony and crypt... yep. 'cuz troy is super boring.
also, being at my dad's place has this tendency to make me really lonely and depressed. yay!!

i had forgotten that "eden" by hooverphonic is a really really amazing song.
also, it still amazes me how much i tend to get enthralled with songs that make me want to die

and i went to crypt last night(which sounds funny to say, since i'm still up). it was rather fun. and now i'm doing nothing at all really, and lots and lots of it, as will probably be the case for a while. sometimes i wonder why i live the way i do.

strangely enough, i'm actually at my dad's house at the moment... i ended up staying here last night, since vic is all ill, and my brother's roommate showed up, so i couldn't really crash there anymore. so... here i am. and i'm bored. and the last minute attempt to go to Elements last night totally failed, 'cuz people aren't good at following directions... or somehting like that. find me things to do..