Writing

"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case." -- Daniel Ash

Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent. I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I produce sounds right.

I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that I am able to write.

I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails. Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.

I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do anything.

In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will make things easier.

[/album] [permanent link]

NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.

I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.

As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be best to get there early.

My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the arena.

We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.

We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in line.

After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading "NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the procedure to me.

I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.

A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor tickets remained on the line.

Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.

It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing away from us).

After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite a while until the openers started.

I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did. I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.

At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you to all the people who cheered because they like us."

I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit longer, maybe another song or two.

At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd exploded.

The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which included a new rendition of Piggy.

After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song, which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise in the shape of a person's face.

At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.

The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather than distracting from it.

I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone. There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent during Hurt.

Setlist:

• 999,999
• 1,000,000
• Letting You
• Discipline
• March of the Pigs
• Head Down
• The Frail
• Reptile
• Closer
• Gave Up
• The Warning
• Vessel
• 5 Ghosts I
• 17 Ghosts II
• 19 Ghosts III
• Ghosts Piggy
• The Greater Good
• Pinion
• Wish
• Terrible Lie
• Survivalism
• The Big Come Down
• 31 Ghosts IV
• Only
• The Hand That Feeds
• Head Like a Hole
- Encore -
• Echoplex
• God Given
• The Good Soldier
• Hurt
• In This Twilight

[/musings] [permanent link]

JTHM

There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't help but look forward to where it's going.

-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"

[/musings] [permanent link]

The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script, it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin. Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively complete list of supported platforms can be found here.

Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC still decided this was the best solution.

I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash. While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is supported in Unix.

[/politics] [permanent link]

The DNC Hates Unix Users
Just confirming the Slashdot story (http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/08/25/229210.shtml):

We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following: Compatible operating systems: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5). Compatible browsers: Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.

My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"

So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining information.

[/politics] [permanent link]

FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my liking yet, but almost everything works.

The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the BIOS and none work.

If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner available.

I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me some insight into this issue. Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title for this either. I'm going to change that.

[/unix] [permanent link]

A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned by Google) removed the video immediately.

The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.

Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in Montclair.

We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.

We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our drinks.

We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25 minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant a little over an hour prior.

As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this point and starting to run short on time as well.

The food was all quite good. One friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak. The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it was the first steak I've had in several months.

As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.

Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly. The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay. I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd like to try it.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent Versions System.

Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several key points.

First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to be the first track on the album.

Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the album, and merge our changes.

Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.

The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had time.

Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.

It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?

Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction of the album.

If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is on this page.

[/album] [permanent link]

Another Demo Update
Two weeks! Ha! It's been closer to two months.

A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June. The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.

So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix. This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now, I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.

Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental mix found here.

If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments and criticism.

[/album] [permanent link]

CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one student made some recordings of the lectures.

Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present to you The Bloom MP3s.

[/musings] [permanent link]

NJ Governor Endorsement
I officially endorse anyone who is not Jon Corzine.

[/politics] [permanent link]

Last night I ran...
15 miles because I felt like it, again.

[/running] [permanent link]

I just ran...
15 miles because I felt like it.

[/running] [permanent link]

Excellent music. Go check out Android Lust now.

[/musings] [permanent link]

C#, XNA, and 8 Queens
I spent some time this weekend learning some C# and getting working a bit with the XNA framework. I implemented a solution for the 8 Queens problem in C++, then ported that class to C#. After getting that working in Windows, I started moving it to the Xbox.

It works there with little issue, but, as expected, writing to system.console doesn't produce useful output. My next step is to get some sort of graphical representation of the chessboard displayed with the solution set.

[/code] [permanent link]

XNA
As of this morning, I am now a member of the XNA Creators Club.

[/code] [permanent link]

Staten Island Half Marathon
Sunday was the Staten Island Half Marathon. I've been dealing with overuse injuries as of late, my IT-band has been acting up and I strained my right hamstring.

I wasn't sure if I'd be running or not, and the temperature was predicted to be in the low- to mid-50's, so I wore my coldgear; I didn't want to end up with hypothermia again if I was standing around for 2 hours in shorts.

It turned out that one of my teammates, Liz, wasn't sure if she'd be able to finish. We decided to run together. And we did. We finished with the exact same time of 2:34:00. I kept her from stopping and she kept me from going to fast and re-injuring myself.

It took me an hour longer to finish the race than it normally would, but I think it went quite well. My hamstring actually felt better after the run. My IT-band was a little sore the next day, but it was better by Tuesday.

Running at the slower pace, I was able to actually look around and enjoy the scenery. The shores Staten Island were not as bad as I was expecting. Over all, it was a good recovery run. A 13.1 mile recovery run.

[/running] [permanent link]

Bing!
It has come to my attention that searching bing for pictures of closed doors yields pictures of my DeLorean.

[/dmc] [permanent link]

Self Documenting Code
Despite what you think about your code, it is not self documenting. When writing code add comments, describe what a function does, explain why you're using that convoluted pointer arithmetic and bit shifting. I'm sure it makes sense now, but someday you'll have to go back and look at it and figure out what the hell you were doing. Or worse, I'll have to go back and look at it and figure out what the hell you were doing.

Sometimes it is important to have some sort of separate documentation for the code; maybe some UML or ER diagrams, maybe some English text. Use what ever it takes to explain what you were doing. Do not paste snippets of your code into the text and call it documentation.That is not documentation, that is code.

[/code] [permanent link]

AFI: Starland Ballroom, October 10, 2009
Show was great last night. Here's the setlist from the show:

• Torch Song
• Leaving Song Pt. II
• Veronica Sawyer Smokes
• Ever and a Day
• Kill Caustic (With Lou Koller of Sick of It All)
• End Transmission
• Love is a Many Splendored Thing
• Beautiful Thieves
• Dancing Through Sunday
• Leaving Song
• On the Arrow
• Death of Seasons
• Medicate
• Love Like Winter
• Just Like Heaven
• Miss Murder
• Silver and Cold

I'll write more later, now it's time to get ready for the Staten Island Half Marathon.

[/musings] [permanent link]

It exists
As part of the DeLorean's restoration, I've been considering a backlit dash. I had considered sticking with the stock dash with the white light bulb in front of the gauges, but I thought a red backlit display would be better for night vision.

Then came the issue of whether or not something like that exists. Turns out it does. Speed Hut carries a line of customizable gauges for the DMC-12 as part of the EL-Glo line.

[/dmc] [permanent link]

Gmail and mutt
I like mutt. Of all the mail clients I've used over the years, it sucks the least. It works well with my mail server.

Despite having my own domain and mail server, I still use gmail for certain things; things I don't mind being retained for 3 years after I delete them, or more specifically, things I want retained for 3 years after I delete them.

I don't like the gmail web interface. I find checking my gmail to be annoying because of this. I remembered gmail offering POP and IMAP. I figured I could use that to get my gmail. Shouldn't be too hard right?

A quick search of Mr. Yahoo and Mr. Google gave me two good starting points: Lifehacker.com and MattCutts.com.

I read the sites and the getmail man page and figured out what I needed to do. First I enabled IMAP for my gmail account. Next, I created the .getmail directory in my home directory then created a getmailrc file there. I want all gmail mail to be delivered to a specific mbox file without going through my normal mail delivery channels. The contents of the getmailrc file are quite simple:

[retriever]
type = SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever
server = imap.gmail.com
username = username@gmail.com
password = usernamespasswordgoeshere
mailboxes = ("inbox",)

[destination]
type = Mboxrd
path = /usr/home/mforde/Mail/GMAIL

The retriever section defines how getmail will retrieve the mail. In this case it uses IMAP over SSL to connect to imap.gmail.com. The mailboxes setting can be used to specify only certain gmail labels to retrieve, but I want anything in the inbox.

The destination section tells getmail what to do with the mail once it has grabbed it from gmail. This configuration dumps it into an mbox file I've named GMAIL.

I chose IMAP over POP because of the slightly-less-than-documented "feature" of gmail only allowing 99 messages at a time over POP.

So to get the initial batch of 7000+ emails, I ran

> getmail -vvv -l 

to get verbose output and to leave messages on the gmail server. When that was done I pointed mutt at the GMAIL mbox and like magic, there was my gmail, organized nicely in my terminal.

Now, I want to check to get the latest mail fairly often, and I don't want to download messages already copied over. To accomplish this, I added a crontab to run every 10 minutes and invoke

getmail -l -n -q

This tells getmail to leave copies on the server, only get new messages it hasn't already retrieved, and be quiet about it.

This has worked out well for me. If you're interested in setting up something like this, I highly recommend reading the article at matcutts.com. That article also links to several sample getmailrc files.

[/unix] [permanent link]

Happy Anniversary
The Twilight Zone premiered 50 years ago tonight. Slashdot has a bit about it.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Marathon Tune-UP
This past Sunday was the Marathon Tune-Up, an 18 mile run through Central Park. My goal was to run it maintaining roughly a 7:30/mile pace. I had set a range of 135 to 140 minutes for myself. I would have been satisfied with any finish time in that five minute span.

At the 10 mile mark, I was averaging 7:27/mile. During that 11th mile, I decided to use a Gu energy gel. I was still feeling pretty good at that pace and I was hoping to time the gel right so as to not "hit the wall" at mile 14 or 15.

Instead, the gel started giving me stomach cramps. At mile 12 I was still well under an 8 minute pace and at the half-marathon mark, I was a minute off my best official half. I was clearly slowing down as the stomach pain increased.

I struggled through miles 14 and 15, alternating running and walking every quarter mile. By mile 16, I could not run. The pain was almost unbearable. I ended up walking the last two miles, in the rain, with all my blood concentrated in my core, dealing with the Gu in my stomach. By time I crossed the finish line, I was a half over my 135 minute goal and had almost no feeling in my hands or feet.

I went to the medical tent and told the volunteer that I had severe stomach cramps and I was so cold that I couldn't feel my hands. He responded, "We don't got no blankets or nuthin' so we can't do nuthin' for ya." So I walked away.

I went to the tables where volunteers were handing out gatorade and pretzels. I stood there, shaking, until another runner came up to me and asked if I was okay. Before I knew it, another runner was keeping me from falling over while the first runner was coming back with two NYRR volunteers. One of them wrapped me in a plastic bag to keep the rain off while the other went for help. I explained what happened at the medical tent.

Two more people from medial came back and put me on a gurney and took me back to the tent. I told them what had happened at the tent and explained what I was feeling. At the tent I removed my soaked shirts and was wrapped in a mylar sheet and two blankets. I pointed out the guy who told me they couldn't do anything for me.

I managed to get in touch with my fellow Giraffe who ran back to our car to get my dry clothes. After about a half hour or so, I was feeling much better and feeling had returned to my extremities. I got in my dry clothes and my teammate and I walked back to the car.

So taking a Gu ended up with me being treated for hypothermia. I had had mild stomach irritation when using Gu in training, but never this bad. I'm glad I found out now instead of next month in Philadelphia.

during my 22 mile training run at the Tourne, I used prepared bottles of GuBrew and Gu2O. These liquids never caused the irritation that the gel did, so I should be okay using them during the race.

I've purchased a bottle that gets strapped to your hand for the purpose of carrying the GuBrew with me. I filled it with water and ran with it on the treadmill last night. It seems a little awkward, but it shouldn't be too bad. I'll use it to carry the GuBrew with me during the Staten Island Half Marathon on the 11th and see how that works out.

[/running] [permanent link]

Writing

"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case." -- Daniel Ash

Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent. I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I produce sounds right.

I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that I am able to write.

I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails. Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.

I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do anything.

In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will make things easier.

[/album] [permanent link]

NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.

I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.

As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be best to get there early.

My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the arena.

We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.

We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in line.

After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading "NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the procedure to me.

I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.

A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor tickets remained on the line.

Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.

It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing away from us).

After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite a while until the openers started.

I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did. I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.

At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you to all the people who cheered because they like us."

I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit longer, maybe another song or two.

At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd exploded.

The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which included a new rendition of Piggy.

After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song, which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise in the shape of a person's face.

At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.

The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather than distracting from it.

I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone. There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent during Hurt.

Setlist:

• 999,999
• 1,000,000
• Letting You
• Discipline
• March of the Pigs
• Head Down
• The Frail
• Reptile
• Closer
• Gave Up
• The Warning
• Vessel
• 5 Ghosts I
• 17 Ghosts II
• 19 Ghosts III
• Ghosts Piggy
• The Greater Good
• Pinion
• Wish
• Terrible Lie
• Survivalism
• The Big Come Down
• 31 Ghosts IV
• Only
• The Hand That Feeds
• Head Like a Hole
- Encore -
• Echoplex
• God Given
• The Good Soldier
• Hurt
• In This Twilight

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JTHM

There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't help but look forward to where it's going.

-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"

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The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script, it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin. Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively complete list of supported platforms can be found here.

Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC still decided this was the best solution.

I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash. While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is supported in Unix.

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The DNC Hates Unix Users
Just confirming the Slashdot story (http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/08/25/229210.shtml):

We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following: Compatible operating systems: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5). Compatible browsers: Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.

My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"

So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining information.

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FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my liking yet, but almost everything works.

The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the BIOS and none work.

If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner available.

I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me some insight into this issue. Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title for this either. I'm going to change that.

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A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.

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Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned by Google) removed the video immediately.

The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.

Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.

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Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in Montclair.

We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.

We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our drinks.

We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25 minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant a little over an hour prior.

As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this point and starting to run short on time as well.

The food was all quite good. One friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak. The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it was the first steak I've had in several months.

As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.

Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly. The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay. I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd like to try it.

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Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent Versions System.

Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several key points.

First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to be the first track on the album.

Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the album, and merge our changes.

Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.

The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had time.

Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.

It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?

Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction of the album.

If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is on this page.

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Another Demo Update
Two weeks! Ha! It's been closer to two months.

A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June. The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.

So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix. This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now, I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.

Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental mix found here.

If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments and criticism.

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CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one student made some recordings of the lectures.

Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present to you The Bloom MP3s.

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