Behind the Screen
The opinions, views, and insights stated within this Monologue are my own. The facts, fallacies, and errors, however, belong to someone else (see disclaimer).
Saturday, July 24, 2004
Mom continues to crank out new music for flute choirs. This time she surpised me by dedicating a piece in my honor called Quicksilver Rag.
Quicksilver Rag
A brisk but not rushed tempo and precise dotted patterns will help depict the impish merriment of this piece. Composed in the style of popular American ragtime music that was in fashion from about 1890-1915, it exhibits stylistic syncopated rhythms.
Quicksilver is the common name for mercury, which is sometimes called "living silver" because of its liquid form. Thus, we have a quartet of silver flutes performing fluid ragtime!
The upper three quartet members take turns playing the melody while the fourth part "does its on thing". A few legato measures with even eighth notes provide contrast in the middle section. Either alto flute or bass flute is needed to play the fourth part and measures #1 and #67 can be repeated as a vamp if desired.
This composition provides the performers with an enjoyable musical interlude while teasing members of the audience into tapping their feet and smiling along.
I'm not sure why I received this honor. The only thing I can think of is how I used to love Quicksilver clothing (aka "rags") when I was a skateboarder in my Junior-High years. Thus, "Quicksilver Rag." But I like her explination much better.
Thanks Mom, I look forward to hearing it performed someday.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
I've been playing a lot of Halo lately with some of the Lambda Chi Alpha staff. Co-worker Joe Klimek bought a nice plasma TV about a month ago, which seemed to have spured more Halo.
It's really amazing that a game created in 2001 has a) kept my interest and b) is still the best game that I've ever played. We're all eagerly waiting for November 9 when Halo 2 is released.
Some of us need you Master Cheif.
On a similar note, I continue to enjoy the Red vs. Blue episodes. RvB details the life of two rival camps of soldiers, the Reds and Blues, who spend their time ruminating about life, the universe and everything, stationed in separate bases in a creek called Blood Gulch; the most popular multi-player game within Halo.
The series is unusual because it is created using the actual video game. The animators simply use the high-quality graphics engine of the game to create a believable animation world. It is akin to digital puppetry.
If you play the game, you'll love Red vs. Blue.
Looks like my neighboor had a fire yesterday. Her stove, most of her kitchen cabinents, and some other items are all charred and stacked outside for garbage collection.
Her unit touches mine, but her kitchen does not. She hasn't had much luck lately, for she also experienced the sewage backup in May. The backup trashed most of her garage.
This time, my place seems just fine. Glad her fire wasn't much worse, for I could have come home to charred underwear, melted CD/DVDs, and black walls.
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Remember Earl Brown? You know, the Peace Corps country director in Guyana who sent me home for maintaining this personal website? He still has it in for me; poor guy.
The GUY10 group's, the 23 volunteers I started my tour with two years ago, close of service is in August. Some have already returned to the US and a few will stay past August, but most will be coming home.
According to my sources, Earl is allegedly refusing to permit the remaining volunteers from including my name on a farewell t-shirt that we're creating to remember our experience and friendship. A t-shirt the volunteers and I are paying for and creating for our own personal enjoyment.
The simple presence of my name is allegedly so upsetting that he'll discipline whomever chooses to print it on the shirts against his will.
It's sad when someone could get sent home for having a personal website or sending a personal email to friends and family. But it's even more sad that a t-shirt that simply includes my name along with a list of 22 others could bring a similar fate.
Thankfully, Earl's service as country dictator will also end in August, or soon after. Perhaps the remaining volunteers will then be able to better focus their energy on helping the Guyanese and less time worrying about how the Peace Corps might be looking for an excuse to send them home.
Keep my name of the shirts guys. No need to have a t-shirt become an ET-shirt (Early Termination - Shirt).
Monday, July 12, 2004
RadioParadise.com is the single-best radio station I've ever listened to. It offers a wonderful collection of creative, eclectic, and diverse music that no FM station would ever offer.
I've been listening to the station for about a year now. Often, as I would hear a song or artist that I liked, I'd pop on over to Amason and add the album to my Wish List. About a month ago, I decided to act on this list and decided to buy all of the albums that were priced (used) less than $5. $200 and 40 CDs later, I've discovered 20 new artist and rediscovered the other 20. What a fantastic collection.
I can't wait to buy more.
I'm so hooked on RadioParadise that I've programmed my Xbox to automatically play the station when it boots up. And for those of you who know me, I turn on my Xbox quite a bit. Now when I come home, I just turn on my Xbox and instantly get to hear my favorite Internet-only station.
Here's how I do it.
- First, you modify your box and install Avalaunch as it's new operating system.
- Next, open up "avalaunch.xml" in your text editor.
- Edit the XML sound tag to match the following:
<sound>
<backgroundmusic enabled="4" cdda="1" cdmp3="1">
<path>F:\shoutcast\sample.sc</path>
</backgroundmusic>
</sound>- Pay attention to the "enabled" attribute/value and the folder that sample.sc must reside in (the drive may differ, but not the folder).
- Save your changes to "avalaunch.xml" and ftp it back to your Xbox.
- Next, retrieve "F:/shoutcast/sample.sc" and open it in a text editor.
- Simply throw in a list of your favorite streams, save, and ftp back to your box. My list looks something like this:
http://64.236.34.67:80/stream/2001
http://64.236.34.196:80/stream/1018
http://64.236.34.4:80/stream/2002
http://64.236.34.196:80/stream/1065
http://64.236.34.67:80/stream/1038
http://64.236.34.4:80/stream/1040How did I find the URLs of the stations I like to listen to? Easy. Visit Shoutcast.com, right click on the "Tune In" button for your favorite station and select "Save Link As." Open up that file in your text editor and you'll find the URL. It looks something like this "File1=http://64.236.34.4:80/stream/1040".
Next time you boot your Xbox, Avalaunch will automatically look to sample.sc and begin playing the first station if it can establish a connection. If you want to switch to the next station, press the left joystick in and Avalaunch will switch to the next station in your list.
Enjoy.
Isn't it rare to see both ends of a rainbow? If so, I've been rather lucky of late, for I've seen two rainbows in the past two weeks. I was able to easily see the beginning and end of each.
I saw the first one while wake boarding in the rain over the Fourth of July weekend. I saw the other on my way home from work today. Yep, I actually left the office before dusk today. Strange, but true. Maybe I'd see more rainbows if I left early more often.
Sunday, July 11, 2004
I bought some furniture today. It's true, I've been sleeping with my mattress on the floor for the past few months. Not that I haven't had the resources, I just hadn't had the motivation. Well, the folks just sent me a check with a note that simply said "furniture." I got the hint.
I pretty much bought an entire bedroom set from Ikea for less than $700 (not counting shipping). I can't believe how inexpensive their stuff is. And most of it is good quality. I just wish I could buy all of their stuff online. I'd guess that only a quarter of the things they have pictured online. The rest, they say, can only be purchased from one of their stores. To me, that means a trip to Chicago.
Thanks, folks, for the encouragement. Next, I need to find a coffee table that I like.
Lately, I've had an unusual attraction to birds. Rather, they've had an unusual attraction to me.
In the past two weeks, five birds have miscalculated their flight patterns and have flown directly into either my office window or one of the windows in my home. A I write this, there is a robin perched just outside of my window, watching me. If I were a betting man, I'd wager that he'd fly into my window before I'm done writing this post.
I have learned two things regarding all of this.
One: I am much jumpier than I ever thought I was. I like to think I'm laid back, but when a bird comes crashing into your window, you can't help but to jump. It startles me every time. Of course, I'm sure the bird is the one who is startled the most. Imagine flying along and suddenly finding a solid pane of air (e.g. glass).
Two: For all five instances, the bird hit with such force that it literally knocked the crap out of it. If you have ever wondered how bird crap gets on your vertically-standing windows, it's because one flew into it. I'd like to think they crap-on-impact on purpose as a way of letting other birds know that glass is nearby (e.g. if a bird sees suspended bird crap it means fly far away from here.)
On one occasion, the one that made me jump the highest of them all, the bird hit my window with such force that I thought it died on impact. It lay motionless for about 30 seconds on the ground before it finally moved to sit up.
It then sat for at least five minutes, just trying to catch its breath. Then my neighbor's cat appeared, in full stalking fashion. I thought to myself, "It's just not this bird's lucky day." The bird saw the cat. The cat saw the bird. But nothing happened. They just stared at each other.
Eventually, the cat walked away -- to my surprise. The bird, still recovering from its collision, finally got the break he needed. Five minutes later, he managed to fly away.
Maybe it's birds who have nine lives and not the other way around.
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Lambda Chi Alpha's conference, called General Assembly, is to be held in Indianapolis, Indiana, July 29-31 - just three weeks away! My goal is to build a demo of our new site, with two or more CSS designs. I have a lot of work ahead of me.
Since the entire site is going to use a single XHTML template with PHP includes for various blocks of content, I only have to build one full set of content. But I will have to use the exact same foundation of code to support multiple CSS designs. I'm kind of setting up a CSS Zen Garden of my own. This is going to test my skills.
In coming up with some fluid CSS design ideas I noticed a few nice trends in browser statistics.
- Mozilla is gaining ground over Internet Explorer
- The use of IE5 is declining at a fast pace, reaching 8.1% in July. This is great news since it has buggy CSS support. IE6 is also loosing ground, but at a slow pace. So where is everyone going? The answer is Mozilla/Firefox, which has rapidly climbed to 12.2%.
- Screen Size
- The current trend is that more and more computers are using a screen size of 1024x768 pixels. Sadly, nearly 40% are still stuck at 800x600.
- Color Depth
- The current trend is that more and more computers use 24 or 32 bits hardware to display 16,777,216 different colors. Thirty percent have only 65,536 colors. The good news is fewer than four percent are viewing the web from a 256 color (8-bit) computer system, which means I'm not going to bind myself to the browser-safe color palette of 216 colors.
Monday, July 05, 2004
I've spent the past two weekends learning how to wakeboard with my friend Rob Zajdel and his brother Mike. It only took me three tries to learn how to get up. Now, I can do surface 180s and some minor jumps. Though I have jumped across the wake, I haven't been able to land it.
It's a fun sport. I like it a lot more than water skiing. I look forward to spending a few more weekends out on Rob's boat. I also enjoy watching his brother Mike wakeboard. He picks up things really quickly. He has no problem jumping across the wake and is trying to incorporate a 180 into it. This weekend, he figured out how to do a surface 360. Pretty cool.
I hope everyone had a great Fourth. It's been several years since I spent the Fourth in the United States. Last year I went to Montreal and the summer before I was in Guyana. Where's my patriotism?