PhD program. I think the tendency here is to describe all other post-graduate programs by their more specific titles (law school, med school, dental school, etc) with exception of Masters and PhDs.Grad school. Right. Which kind is that, for the non-US citizens?
In this case, it's just my ignorance of the higher education opportunities in the US that got me wondering. Oddly enough, we don't study these things in the university, despite my education profile being "English linguistics" (which implies that we get some sort of familiarity with the culture of the English-speaking countries - mainly, England and the US). I feel like we're missing out on what's really important by figuring out what's the difference between public and private schools.
Solid progress on nearly every front. I've got eight runs of Cat5E under the house going where it needs to go. Which means I was able to relocate my network world to "beside the furnace" from "under the house". In the process I discovered that the horrible smell in 2004 wasn't the neighbor's cat spraying everywhere under the house, it was the other neighbor's cat dying. Fortunately he's long since stopped stinking. He's about two feet to my left and about three feet down as I write this; I may have to pull him out at some point but the crawlspace is only about 12-18" so it takes about ten minutes of tunnel-ratting under sagging fiberglass and over broken rock just to get to him. I put in about five hours in that environment last week and sincerely hope I never have to do that again. This work permitted me to begin reassembling the studio in earnest, because the gear is now 4 pipes LAG'd to the server, meaning I can actually work on stuff across the network. I've managed to decant three (of five) giant boxes of cable onto the gear; it's impressive how many interconnects are necessary just to get things talking to each other. The move was fatal to a video monitor and to the Kyma, which let the smoke out day before yesterday when I powered it up. A melancholy moment as I spent $3200 on that thing back in 2002 but they don't update and they don't give you any credit to their new stuff and it's such a pain in the ass to use that I'd long since started doing most of my tweakage in Reaktor. On the plus side, disinviting Kyma from the setup freed up approximately 8 lbs of cable and peripherals. Also on the plus side, I noticed my environment up here is quiet enough that the noise of my Pro Tools I/O is annoyingly loud. This is not a problem you have in LA. Our daughter is in a new daycare, and she loves it. We had to scramble to find one when we landed. She ended up at a place that got scarier with time; we were playing once and she said "you didn't listen so I'm giving you a time out and leaving you alone in the dark!" The new one sends us like pictures during the day. And she's learned the names of the other kids there (the old one, for some reason the lady never bothered learning them, even though she had to make a binder with sign-in sheets for all the kids). It feels more like dropping the kid off at a nurturing environment and less like sending her to a CIA black site. It didn't help that the only kid whose name she ever learned was "Isis" and we kept hearing "Isis didn't come today. We think she's sick." Bosch has done the most amazingly shitty job of customer service I've ever encountered. It takes a special brand of callousness to give you a new dishwasher and a thousand bucks to fix your floor and make you swear off all their products forever. In part because the dishwasher they're giving us is still two weeks away (minimum), worth less than the one that burst into flame and utterly non-negotiable. In part because their insurance company knocked $15 (yes, fifteen fucking dollars) off our quote for "depreciation." Apparently this is the drop in value our floor experienced between the contractor coming out and Allianz Capital Partners getting their shit together and sending us a settlement. Between Bosch and VW I'm essentially done with the whole of the German economy. I've determined that the commonality of all German companies are (1) precision engineering (2) catastrophically bad failure modes and (3) cataclysmic customer service and I've decided that (1) simply isn't worth (2) and (3). Kinda bummin' because I'm still fond of Miele but seriously - fuck Germany and all things German. Thanks, Bosch. I might fuckin' Craigslist that piece-of-shit $800 dishwasher just because it'll make me mad every time I look at it. But that decision is still at least a week away, because when the Germans nearly burn your house down, they'll make you wait six weeks before making you whole again. But hey. Two weeks from now, I'll be able to have a dishwasher again. And at least (2) and (3) aren't going to take me by surprise. AND WE HAVE PERMITS. City and state. The city one is contingent on our passing an asbestos inspection, which is hilarious because the building was built in 1985 and asbestos has been illegal since 1979. So why inspection? Because corruption. Frankly, I'll take it; I used to do design work in New York and we'd have to hide "envelope of $100 bills" in the budget somewhere because that's what it took to get permits in Manhattan. We've been doing obnoxious things like picking out tile and cabinets and countertops. My wife and I got in a massive blowout fight yesterday over ceiling tile of all things, which is just an exemplar of how stressful everything is because we fight like once a year. We've also gotten two mailing list sign-ups in the past couple days because of our sign (our $5,000 sign...) and my wife has a client interview next week despite the fact that she's not really in business and despite the fact that we're minimum 8 weeks from occupancy. Which rules, but which sucks, because our model had us opening four months ago. If we're lucky we're six months behind schedule. It's a good thing I put in six solid weeks of suffering back in November/December (they still owe me the rerate, which is another story) because money. On the plus side, my wife is now in the power structure of the professional organizations up here that she's seen the actual data for the state and we're able to compare it to the modeling we did (with veen's help) in order to build the business. And if I knock about 25% off of all the numbers, the model is just about dead on. Which means, basically, our business assumptions were 25% more conservative than they needed to be, and our business assumptions still assumed we'd survive at 20% of the business we expect based on location and climate. So yeah. Still haven't figured out if I'm suing our property manager and had a crazy-expensive gadget crap out on me this week, but overall, it's been the first positive week in a long-ass time. Maybe I'll even give blood today, knock that one off the morale menagerie. Cheers, Hubski. EDIT: The soldering iron has also given up the ghost. RIP, Gen1 Weller Pyropen, 1996-2016. HOLY SHIT. I had that soldering iron for 20 years.
Technically, the dead bit is a Capybara 320: Kyma is a language that is technically hardware-accelerated; it could probably run on other shit but it doesn't because Symbolic Sound exists mostly to sell hardware. Backintheday (back when Carla and Kurt were at UI, where HAL grew up) it ran on a 66mHz breadboarded monster called the Platypus. The first iteration of commercial hardware was called a Capybara 90, I think, and it ran two Motorola 68k processors with four unbalanced outputs. They stopped selling them in like '96 and started selling the Capybara 320, which is cardframe-based. The mobo has 4 68ks and each additional card (up to 10) had 2 more. Additionally, it had balanced analog and digital I/O (up to 8 channels) as well as VTC, MTC and all sorts of other stuff that 99% of mortals don't need... or more specifically, 99% of the 1% of mortals that even know what sound design is, so in other words, a vanishingly small percentage. That VTC port was on a board-mounted BNC with no chassis nut, and it stuck out about 3/4 of an inch. Somewhere in the move it got bonked, which shorted at the board, which let out some smoke, and made me stop caring. I'd been about to offload the thing anyway; it's worth maybe $500, maybe a little more, in full working trim. I might be able to get $200 for each of my two cards, though, and maybe $300 for the I/O board. The Capybara 320 ran the same proprietary ISA card architecture as the Capybara 90, except they came up with this wonky firewire adapter gadget. You still couldn't stream audio to or from the thing, but you could cross-load files. Which is kind of acceptable in 1997, but reaches the limits of credibility in 2009. In 2009, fully 15 years later, Symbolic Sound introduced the Paca and Pacarana. The 68k processors were gone in exchange for one or two Motorola SHARCs. The audio I/O was straight-up gone. And the beasties were "as fast as base" and "as fast as fully-loaded" Capybara 320s. But now you need to buy a dedicated audio interface to talk to them... and you need to talk to them over Firewire. Yep. Firewire. And, by the way, if you bought your Capybara used, they extend you no deals on upgrading. And the price is fucking breathtaking - $3k for the baby, $6k for the useful one. So. 7 year old hardware that speaks Firewire using a language that hasn't much evolved in 20 years. RIP Capybara. More than you asked, but it was therapeutic to write out. Sometimes my resolve wavers.
Capytalk (the language underpinning Kyma) is like the basque of sound design languages. The mother tongue of most competitors is Max, which begat MaxMSP and PureData. I never spent much time in Max because it won't do real-time processing, which means it's un-musical. At the time, NI Reaktor was proprietary, teutonic and mostly useful for modeling analog synthesis but in the intervening years, Kyma has languished while Reaktor has flourished. I'll probably go that way. Although if someone could figure out a way to make PureData run hardware-accelerated on non-proprietary shit I'd be all over it.
I played with Pure Data a bit working through Miller Puckette's book. I'm not intimately familiar with it and this is far from my area, but I think it being CPU-bound has more to do with them not caring than it being hard. Jack will talk to anything CoreAudio (or ALSA on linux, or whatever on Windows) will talk to, and SuperCollider uses it too.
I don't think "mixer" is an adequate enough title... but I can appreciate a little humility. I would have probably gone with something a little more along the lines of "designer" "architect" or the slightly more garish "demigod". anyway - cheers for the info and glad to hear that some things are coming together post-relocation (Germans and dead cats notwithstanding).
Finally done with this semester. First truly relaxed week in months. Suddenly I have time to do things like plan for the summer holiday. I'm hoping to do another road trip, this time to Czech Republic and southwest Poland. I got two grades back from last weeks' exams: one 9.5/10 and one 5.5/10, both needing a 6/10 to pass. Studied well for the first one and barely for the less important second one so it makes sense. Still, I've literally never had a resit since I started studying three years ago so breaking that streak is a bit of a bummer. But if it means not having to redo the differential equations exam - the reason I didn't study well for that one - it's totally worth it.
I don't have the technology (yet) to upload my own photos to hubski. I will share some descriptions in due course. Meanwhile, in Tomsk, it's -9 C. I checked the average weather in Tomsk in February and -9 is also the average high, with an average low of -19. This is much warmer than I imagined. Meanwhile today in Key West is a gorgeous 27 degrees C (80F for our American friends) with a gentle cooling ocean breeze. I'm getting off my laptop now and out on my bicycle. Too much working.
Sweet. Glad for you having such a good weather. Were you imagining -40 Celcius, with piss freezing as soon as it leaves the body? :) Truth be told, though, we've just had a really cold time - -30 Celcius - pass, and it was unpleasant. What we have now is the closest we have to summer in winter. If it keeps up - which it seems to be going for - I'm starting to run again.Meanwhile today in Key West is a gorgeous 27 degrees C (80F for our American friends) with a gentle cooling ocean breeze.
This is much warmer than I imagined.
I asked my high school lacrosse coach if he needed any help with coaching this year, and he said he'd love it if I came aboard! So come March, I'll be the strength and conditioning coach for the team, as well as freeing up Coach Merc to work with smaller groups as needed during practice. He's the most gifted, inspiring and tough-loving mentors I've ever met, I can't describe how much I grew up under him. A twenty-five year prison guard and police veteran, nineteen years of which he was riot control specialist. That translated to his zero-tolerance policy of any "Mickey Mouse bullshit." This is my senior year, I'm the white boy in the front, Coach Merc on the left. On another note, can you believe that the graduating year for high school freshman is now 2019?
LOL. Wow. I bet you feel old. ;) edit: what do you mean by designing a high school?
I was part of the design team. Of the 200-plus sheets of blueprints, I drew about 20 of them. Of the 4000-plus pages of spec binders, I wrote about 100 of them. The sound systems in the gym, auditorium, classrooms, etc as well as the acoustical treatments and layout for all spaces were engineered and chosen by me, as the junior member of a team of two people.
As a high school senior, yes I sure can. They can be really damn stupid. I mean, my friends can be dumb, I can be dumb sometimes (a lot of times) but these freshman can be straight stupid way to much of the time. And they were born in this century, have smartphones before they graduate middle school, and don't know how to take care of their own damn selves. Or at least, the ones I have to deal with can't.On another note, can you believe that the graduating year for high school freshman is now 2019.
How frustrating. The scripts I have been pounding out for my current client are basically ready to be filmed... when they tell me that they have changed from being product training videos to on-stage product demos to be delivered at a Google conference. Fuck. That ain't the same audience, gang. And all of the work I have hammered out between my writing/vision, the web design team, and the video production team... well, it all deflated like a big helium balloon today. And our deadline - which was already ridiculous - has remained the same. Now I gotta figure out what is going to happen in our time slot on stage. At Google. In a week. Shit.
I have a massive splitting headache and a bit of a fever. Normally this is bad, but in my case it means that the sugary poison I have been eating since the accident has realized it is no longer welcome and I am entering ketosis. I gained almost 30 pounds since the accident, almost all of it water, and I should be back to the weight I was when I broke my wrist three months ago. In other news, February is awesome if you are a chocolate lover. All you couples buying each other chocolate? I'll put up with your nonsense the other 11 months for the high end good stuff I get after Valentine's Day on sale. I've got the credit card ready and have been prowling the websites to see who will win my $100 or so. Now, I hear what you are thinking. Diet + chocolate? Sure man, lol. Good, high-end chocolate with more than 60% solids is good for you health wise as long as it is in moderation. I get the 90% stuff and nibble on it when I get a sweet tooth. Buying a few weeks worth saves on shipping and I get to share it with the D&D group.
Went to a used music store and bought this bad boy just now: Now I can have two pedals going, looping loops of loops upon loops. It will be madness. I want to buy a table for my peddles for vocals and a board for my peddles for guitar. Put together a setup. I need a second amp too. I'm pretty damn excited about my live-music possibilities right now. I haven't played this much guitar since I was 15. I am thoroughly enjoying myself.
Do you use tubed amps? I'm into tube hifi, but the only reason anyone still makes vacuum tubes is because of guitar players.
So. I think I know what I want to do for work 6 months from now. And I think I know where I want to live 3 months from now. Surprise they're in the same ballpark but I'd probably have to find a roommate, crazy expensive up in Seattle. Going to start looking at apartments in a couple weeks to shoot for a May move-in. edit: I've been pitching this idea in my head of creating some sort of a "coffee consortium" which would bring together professionals (baristas, roasters, people like me...) from the coffee industry in/around Seattle maybe once a month, at a coffee shop, to discuss the industry and blah blah blah. No idea how to go about this though.
Welcome (in a while) to Seattle! The consortium is already underway, and there are multiples of them. (Dude. We do coffee here.) I know of baristas that meet, shop owners that meet, and roasters that meet. I just need to dig up the deets... but you can google probably as well as I can. Happy to help you find a place, if you need it. Be ready to spend $1500/mo minimum for a shithole. Welcome to Seattle.
Thanks! Eh, seems to depend on where you're looking. I'm looking at the southern end which is slightly more reasonable, as in, $1500 for not quite a shithole, at least for the time being. Up in Ballard or Capitol Hill or some of the trendier spots, completely agree. While I agree that Seattle does coffee, I will say that some of the best cups (very subjective, I know) have come from places not named Seattle. That said there's a stupid amount of depth to the coffee scene here. re: coffee, yeah I'm not finding anything that would point more towards anything beyond coffee enthusiasts, which is great, but not exactly what I'm looking for. La Marzocco does events every so often, that's as far as I've got. There's also Stumptown Cuppings every day and those are always a good time and way to meet people who roast/whatever else.Be ready to spend $1500/mo minimum for a shithole.
Just had a friend list a 2 BR condo in Des Moines for $1500/mo. Rented in two days. Best of luck on the place search. Got a lot of friends doing that right now, all over the city and the 'burbs. It's a cash-in-hand market. Re: Coffee. Ah... so now we are talking about the best coffee? Ok, the best I've ever had was in a tiny village in Montenegro. But pretty much anywhere in SE Europe is going to be mind-bendingly good.
I pay 1700 for a 2BR on the hill, 1500 with a roommate is crazy. The best way IMO is don't look online. Walk around neighborhoods and call. Places fill up so fast many landlords don't bother to advertise. Random spots in Seattle are sketchy, do your research on a neighborhood before you go. In my spot you might get mugged and you definitely will get your car window smashed, but no one will murder you. Make sure you aren't in one of the more murdery spots. I like the idea of a coffee meetup, sounds fun! Have you tried Victrola? They're my favorite.
That's what the plan is! Aiming for Columbia City, or Beacon Hill if that doesn't work. The former is near some sketchy areas, but I have some friends there and where they are is totally fine and not super duper overpriced. The hill is nuts at all times of day. Victrola is alright, it's good but it's not my favorite. The spot is cool though! Very very very big fan of Milstead & Co., and Slate. Those two in particular always wow me. Do you know them?
I've posted about my blog's progress in January. It's a bit, but it's an important bit: the first step, the first month. I don't have much to write about it, but it's an achievement I'd like to share. I've been learning about relationships for the past month, as well, and it's been a tremedous progress. My first step was to get out of the gutter I've landed myself into while doing my best to "help" people, which wasn't real help: it was me trying to make them into better versions of what they are without their consent, and it never ends well. I did so by getting rid of people who poison my life; I'm still in progress, but there's not much left. Overall, I've been learning to be open and honest about my feelings, as well as understanding that I don't owe anybody anything. Good progress there: it's getting better with every day. What's more important, however, is that I finally learned to care for myself. A year ago, the thought of me writing all of the above in public would sound ridiculous to me. Who'd want to listen to me mumbling about my life? But it came to me quite recently: I only believe so because I, myself, don't feel worthy of listening to, and that's ridiculous. If others speak up, how am I any worse? It's still quite uncomfortable for me to talk about it - feeling vulnerable like this has never been the state I was comfortable with - but it has to be said because I believe it. Overall, I've been thinking a lot after declaring my ultimate decision for the next three years on Hubski. Things start looking differently after you've given it a good, hard look and asked yourself whether this is what you truly want or truly believe. It turned out that a lot of things are just my projection of insecurity, fears, anxieties and anger, and it a lot of those things I never truly believed in: I just used them, unknowingly, to defend myself from the harsh reality. It's amazing how a human mind can create an echo chamber of their own, almost completely severed from reality, but in a world this safe, it's a dangerous activity to partake in. Sometimes, I wonder how much of what I talk about as revelations of my own is known to those I talk to. While it might be my insecurity talking - I do enjoy feeling superior with knowledge and wisdom - I'm also sincerely curious of how much people know and don't know about the world they live in. Sadly, the world doesn't work that way: people prefer to stay quiet about their experiences - perhaps because they assume them to be commonplace? - thus taking away the opportunity of such curious Menschen to learn about others' inner worlds, places sometimes as fascinating as the real world. Or maybe it's not it: maybe it's that other people - most of them, at least - don't experience such an excitement from discovery as I do; I am sensitive, after all. P.S. I keep forgetting: whoever is in charge of Hubski's CSS, please set the font-family setting to sans-serif. It's jarring to see the Russian phrases turn suddenly into Times New Roman glyphs.
Well had a terrible interview that kinda crushed me a bit. Spent my allocated one evening of wallowing and now I'm back on the hunt! Resume looks good, just need to figure out what the dream job is. It's really hard in the games industry, if you aren't careful they work you to death then lay you off once you ship. Not really ideal.
Here is my current paint-by-numbers. mk will be glad to hear I have caved and ordered plain canvases and charcoal pencils. Also today I made a regular favorite: cauliflower mac and cheese combined with a new one (actually, it's still in the oven): balsamic chicken thighs. I got 10 chicken thighs for $5 today at the mart, that made me feel good. I filed my taxes over the past weekend, and today I tried to start running again with a 1.5 mile job in the temperate rain. By around 1.5 miles I was starting to feel the bad muscle in my groin so I stopped. Went home, have done more stretches and exercises. Would really like to get back to running, though. It makes it so much easier to eat without feeling guilty. I guess things are good. This past weekend was hairy-sticky-funky, but hey, aren't the best of us? Oh and I'm starting a horror blog.
Have you looked into any running groups in your area? (Maybe you prefer running alone?) It seems a lot easier to stay motivated when you're doing it with other people. Plus, if there are any groups like the one here, maybe you'll find one that does a weekly bar run.
I've been struggling to sleep, but I'm getting up earlier. It's weird and torturous. I'm gonna try to sleep earlier from now on. Last time I deprived myself of sleep things got really loopy. In other news, I found out that apparently my school is trying really freakin' hard to get Obama to speak at our commencement this spring. That would be pretty incredible if it worked out, but I don't have my hopes up or anything. The election time has been huge everyone in the Poli Sci department has been buzzing on about it (me included). I figure if Bernie Sanders could possibly get the nomination i might put some of my career goals on hold to work for his general campaign. I hope everyone is doing great. Give me three words to describe your week so far or how it will be in the coming days!
I have been trying to wake up earlier for the past 3-4 weeks. I know I function best in the early hours 5:30 till 9. I try to use the time for brain-intense work. It is working out good and I rely on a few things. First, install f.lux, it makes your life easier. Then, make sure you reduce light two hours before you sleep. Don't be too hard on yourself but try. Third, work out. I am also trying out Sleep Cycle, an app that determines your current sleep cycle by your movements and sounds etc. I am not sure how well that works though, Once I got that running, I sleep easier and wake up earlier.
There's a thing about REM cycles and how waking up earlier but in accord with your sleep cycles will be - or, at least, feel - better than waking up exactly 8 hours later if that's doesn't agree with your cycles. You might want to read more about it: I'm not knowledgeable enough to explain this stuff - only just enough tell you that it seems to be working. Heh. My week so far: lazy, relaxed, computer-addicted (let's say that's one word). I've been home for the last five days after finishing my first exams at the university, and I've never worked or did anything productive less during the last five months. I spend my time in front of the monitor because I have barely anything less to do. I don't even have books to read here - they're all back in my apartment in Tomsk.Give me three words to describe your week so far or how it will be in the coming days!
I'm not job hunting anymore. It's an amazing feeling. I came home tonight and for the first time in months I've been able to putter around on the internet without feeling guilty for not using my time job hunting on Craigslist or Monster. It feels great. I kind of spammed front page with 3 car related posts in a row. In fact, all I've done tonight is catch up on cars. Motorweek's Youtube Channel posts a lot of their classic car reviews. I just got done watching a bunch of reviews of '80s hot hatches. Mazda 323, Honda Civic, Isuzu I Mark, Suzuki Swift. It's interesting. Turbos were a huge thing in the late '80s and early '90s. They're becoming a thing again. I'm sure that all has to do with fuel efficiency regulations and such. They have tons of great cars in their Retro Review section. I'll probably spend more time checking them out. kleinbl00, I found this one of the Avanti just for you. Thought you might appreciate that.
I'm having a hard (not to be confused with rough) couple of weeks. It's exhausting and it's leaving me depressed.
I got a haircut, and I really really hate it. We've now gone out for lunch and my head is so cold. There's lots bothering me today, I've got a big to do list of things I want to achieve today, already got 3-4 things ticked off! Edit: Oh and I'm trying Jack Daniels and coke, it's yum.