noise

On saturday, with nothing else planned, and no-one around, I decided to take my new laptop into the studio and record some stuff. The main thing I had intended to do was to record a song that we have been working on for a couple of weeks, before it disappears completely from my head. I did that, and am reasonably happy with how it sounds. The recording is just a rough sketch type thing for the other guys in the band, and we will re-record it good and proper some time soon. No vocals yet, so I'm not ready to share it with anyone. Yoko gets back on wednesday, so we'll see how we go over the next week or two.

After spending maybe 3 hours recording that, I went for food, and then went back to the studio with the intention to grab my laptop and go home. I did start noodling a little with my guitar however, and decided to just press record. I kinda liked the direction, so recorded some other stuff to go with it. The end result is the mp3 below. Be warned - it's noisy, and has 2 live drum tracks and a drum machine. Let me know what you think either way.

FX:
-DD-6 Digital delay
-Pi Big Muff (Russian)
-MT2 Metal zone
-Roland CR1000 compu-rhythm
-Behringer 91 delay
-Logic 7.2

Music for your pleasure

the rantings of an engineer

I think I mentioned in the last post that I am currently studying a subject called Internet Communication Engineering. I have one 2 hour lab and one two hour lecture each week, and despite my initial feeling, I am actually enjoying it a lot. On top of working in groups of nerds to complete the 4 lab assignments; each week I get to listen to the rantings and ravings of an old man. Well, when I say old, I probably mean mid forties. He is greying, wears glasses and is a little tubby. He always wears the same clothes - blue polo shirt, beige chinos - the standard uniform and dress sense of a typical IT guy. Trust me - I know.

At 5:30pm, he waddles into lecture theater 2 on level 8 of building 12, RMIT. 2 hours of ranting and drivel ensues. Sweeping generalisations, borderline racism, sexism, political discourse.. all standard fare. There is practically no structure to these "lectures", and normally I would have stopped going, but to be honest, the guy is nothing if not entertaining - in the same way David Brent was entertaining I guess, but more horrifying, because it's real. I should mention here that this guy is a really great programmer. He was my C++ lecturer and he wrote code that was used in Windows 2000 server. He is smart. He's also grumpy.

So for your amusement, and for as long as he remains entertaining, I will put my lecture notes for this class on my blog. The notes are in order, so try and imagine the flow of his ranting, from subject to subject. The views of my lecturer are obviously not aligned with my views - to be honest, he sounds like someone's dad, crapping on about how everything was better when he was younger. Oh also, he likes to talk about internet porn. A lot.

Enjoy.

Lecture 2 - 24/07/2007
Internet communication engineering notes.

Civilisation is a rip off of Empire for mainframe
Play wolfpack empire – apparently you have to be a super nerd to play
Security, etc
What are the legal obligations of a company with regards to storing electronic information.
Telstra = bad
Americans = bad
Timing is important in delivery of services
Why doesn’t telstra sell VOIP services?
Why did they show Die Hard, 3 times last year on TV?
English carry-on movies are for crazy insomniacs.
Find 3 examples of unusual internet offerings – what is different, why was it successful / not successful?
Americans = stupid and evil
Don’t use porn
All TV in Australia was better in the 70’s than it is now.
Kids today cant read
Qantas are stupid
Empire takes forever to play and like Double Dragon, only one person can win.
Old lecture note password: RMIT0896
There are web cams on the internet
Australians are lazy and don’t work hard.
Broome has the most beautiful sunset in the world.

..and we're back

Hisashiburi ne! Long time, no updates. I know you were sitting around at home all day, clicking refresh, saying "come ooooonn, update your blog already!" putting the rest on your life on hold. I know the feeling - I've been clicking refresh a lot lately, waiting for the delivery boy to drop off a new laptop. Well it arrived yesterday, and thus I no longer have any way of justifying the lack of updating the blog other than that I am lazy.

Which I am.

Well I'm not apologising. It's my crappy blogspot blog and I'll update it when I like, thank you very much. I probably shouldn't drink before I update this kind of thing however. Anyway, so I'm back at RMIT for semester 2. I am studying the following: Time Based Media, Digital Compositing, Internet Communication Engineering and Computer Sound Production. Usually you have 2 or 3 good subjects and one that completely sucks, but I actually like all 4 this time round. I am in a group of hardcore engineering nerds for the internet subject, and it's quite amusing to spend time with them. Their life currenly revolves around Cisco routers, Linux distro's and getting drunk in the vein hope that somehow when they are drunk, they may get to actually meet those other humans that have boobs. I do like 'em though - maybe it's my inner nerd coming out a little.

Ben and Yoko-chan have been in Japan for 3 weeks now, so I have had the place to myself mostly - Brad has stayed a bit, but I realised that despite living by myself for years, I dont think I would want to do it anymore. I miss those guys a lot. They get back on August 1.

Im only working 2 days a week now, around uni. Still 2 days too many at that place, but I can deal with it. I wont name and shame here - it's probably not wise.

As far as nihongo goes, I really havent done much lately. Yamaguchi-san still teaches me stuff once a week via jabber, and I am writing a kanji on my whiteboard every few days, but I really haven't devoted any real meat and potatoes time to going through exercises and that kind of thing. I will soon though, and maybe get Yoko-chan to help me a bit more. I really miss Alex's podcast though. I've also been told to not be lazy and update my mixi page. I'll do that soon too, I swear.

The new laptop is very nice - macbook pro core 2 duo 2.2, 2gb ram, 120gb hdd, 15.4". Everything is coming along nicely - the only thing I need to sort out is I am always resting my hands on the ambient light sensors, thus causing the screen to dim and keyboard to light up. I guess it's something I will get used to over time. So the next step is to buy a nice Nikon digital SLR, then I'll be prepared for travel!

More later..

またね。
ジャロド。