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October 28, 2004I'm having a bachi ball!
I just flew in from my second evening of drumming with Senryu Taiko, and boy, are my arms tired!
No, really—they are.
What has passed from the realm of fatigue into the realm of actual pain, though, is the muscle group halfway between my left knee and where that leg meets my body. Just like anybody else faced with the prospect of doing an inordinate amount of the work in a group project, it ain't happy. Luckily, one of the other new members runs marathons (for fun, no less), so she shared one of those helpful, excruciating stretches with me. It hurt like two-term Bush, but I think I'd be in more pain now if I hadn’t done it.
Pain aside, however, I'm still loving Taiko drumming. The newbies all received their very own pair of bachi (drumsticks) today, and we spend maybe about half an hour giving them a rudimentary sanding down with pieces of sandpaper. The bachi are each 16 inches long, and just shy of an inch thick. I feel that I’ve forged a bond with them already, and why not? As has been stressed to us a few times now, they are (or should at least be considered) extensions of our hands.
My first though upon plucking my bachi out of the bag was, "Hey, I’m gonna name these!" I'm too lazy to look it up online, but I wonder how many early cultures had their equivalent of the Judeo-Christian Adam naming of the animals. There’s a very satisfying, effortless sort of magic in the act of naming something—inanimate object, pet, or otherwise. In naming it and not having it refuse its new moniker, you've bonded it (or them, in the case of my bachi) to yourself—and established who's boss.
Okay, guys. Any suggestions as to what I should name them?
Posted by patrick at 03:43 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2004
Know thy country, knaves!
My friend Rich sent me an interesting online U.S. geography test this afternoon. We both got 42 out of 50 right, although my average distance of error (63 miles) beat out his (78 miles) ever so slightly. Actually, had I not zoned out on the first state and dropped what I had momentarily mistaken as Idaho into Idaho's proper spot, I would have ended up with a pretty mean average. Give the test a whirl and let me know how you did!
Posted by patrick at 09:26 PM | Comments (4)
October 25, 2004
So re!
Well, if you don't count the quivering, burning muscles in my right thigh and left calf against me, then my first night of participation with Senryu Taiko at UCR went pretty well. I had a lot of fun, in any event. I think I've finally found an activity that is physical and enjoyable. That said, though, I do wish in retrospect that I hadn't fallen off of the gym-attendance wagon a few weeks back when I got busy with the VO work. Tonight probably wouldn't have kicked my butt as badly if I'd kept up with my working out.
Did I mention that Taiko is fun? Yes, I seem to have already said that in the above paragraph, but it bears repeating. Even when we were just practicing our kata and striking practice drums jury-rigged out of tires, plastic wrap and t-shirts, it was a real shot in the arm. The girl practicing next to me has done Taiko in Japan previously, and watching the fluidity with which she ran through a few positions between our exercises gave me a good example of how we're all going to look, ultimately.
Anyhow, I have Senryu Taiko to thank for a very enjoyable (if tiring) two hours tonight. I can count to eight in Japanese now, too, so long as I only have to go sequentially. To rattle them off out of order would still require much silent counting on my fingers. It might take me a little longer to walk across campus to my TA class tomorrow morning, but I'm looking forward to Wednesday night's practice already.
Posted by patrick at 09:38 PM | Comments (1)
Now all we need is a Mom-and-apple-pie trebuchet...
From an Associated Press article on Yahoo! News:
"In a trailblazing pairing of robotics and tractor companies, iRobot and John Deere announced plans Monday to build a 9-foot-long semi-autonomous battlefield vehicle.
"Burlington-based iRobot Corp. will adapt the artificial intelligence technology used in its Roomba vacuums and portable PackBot military robots for a two-seat John Deere utility vehicle similar to ones the Pentagon already uses." (emphases added)
Having seen "Team America: World Police" a few days ago, I know exactly what song will be blaring from this conceptual vehicle's speakers as it lays down indiscriminate smack on foreign civilians and combatants alike. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. If not, I'd hate to spoil it for you.
Posted by patrick at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2004
I did my part, America...
It's a quarter past five in the morning, and I just awoke on my bed, fully clothed, with all the lights still on. I knew I was tired, but not so tired that I wouldn't recall having migrated to the bedroom in the first place. Last thing I remembered, I was intent on finishing off the last few episodes of "Hellsing"; the TV and DVD player are still on, too.
Apropos of nothing, I exercised my civic duty on Monday afternoon, schlepping down to the Registrar of Voters and casting my absentee ballot via touchscreen machine. I had to wait perhaps ten minutes for a machine to become free, and since I had already marked my choices in my voter information pamphlet, the voting itself took all of three minutes. At the end of my Herculean efforts in representative democracy, I was given a sticker--"I voted electronically today"--which I promptly lost. Too bad, too, as I was going to scan it and use it as a graphic for this entry. It was cooler than the standard "I voted today," but not nearly so cool as the "I disenfranchised 50 million voters today" stickers I imagine the Supreme Court had printed up for themselves in a moment of private whimsy back after deciding the outcome of the 2000 election.
Anyhow, placing my votes two weeks early was right convenient and ensures me an easier day of it on November 2. I just hope the Bush campaign wasn't waiting until the last minute to roll out a cogent argument as to why I should vote for him, as it's too late to change my vote now.
BwahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, that's rich! As if! As if!
Of course, I won't be laughing nearly so hard when a second-term Bush decides web entries like this one qualify me as an enemy combatant and sticks me in Gitmo sans legal representation for the rest of my natural life...
Posted by patrick at 05:32 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2004
I am Iron Man...
My cup runneth over—and if not my cup, definitely my car’s mileage. I had six hours of voiceover work between last Thursday and Friday, five hours of work today, and another ten hours to look forward to between now and Friday afternoon. On Friday afternoon, I’ll have set a new, sadistic, wonderful record for myself—driving into Los Angeles and back to Riverside for seven straight weekdays in a row (with a possibility for an eighth, as I’m in the midst of scheduling more work for either next Monday or Wednesday morning).
My trip into L.A. tomorrow night is to see a show at the Mark Taper Forum for the theater class I’m TAing, and I managed to convince my friend Maria to drive if I pay for parking once we’re there—both of which take a little of the luster off of my grueling endurance (or a bit of the gruel off of my lustrous endurance, if you prefer). But still. There’s no point in letting the minutiae distract from my being in both Riverside and L.A. for seven straight weekdays.
I’m working regularly, and putting in the miles behind the steering wheel to prove it. Lo, I am Iron Man.
Posted by patrick at 07:53 PM | Comments (3)
Time to rant about Mreea Aquillarr...
From a recent Yahoo! News article:
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Livermore, a California city that prides itself as a center of advanced science, is spending thousands of dollars to correct many misspelled names on a city library mosaic, including that of Albert Einstein, a city official said on Thursday.
The $40,000 mosaic outside the San Francisco area city's main library misspells the names of Einstein, the father of modern physics, William Shakespeare and other historical heavyweights. The city voted this week to spend $6,000 to fix the artwork.
"There were some members of the community who felt very strongly it had to be corrected," said city council member Lorraine Dietrich.
Livermore is home to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which does work on the U.S. nuclear weapons program.
Maria Alquilar, the Miami artist who made the mosaic, said the errors would have been discovered sooner had city officials inspected the mosaic closely before its installation as she had requested.
Let me see if I understand this all correctly. Livermore city officials pay Alquilar tens of thousands of dollars to produce a mosaic. Alquilar apparently doesn't feel such a paltry sum merits her taking the minimal time to spell-check her work before finalizing it, and blames others for not making sure she did her job worth a damn. Livermore city council members then fail to do their jobs worth a damn by rewarding the insipid Alquilar with another $6,000 (not counting her travel expenses). Of course. If she won't get it right for the original 40 grand, tossing another seventh of the original cost at her might inspire a work ethic within her.
But wait, it gets worse. The following, from another article:
Reached at her Miami studio Wednesday by The Associated Press, Maria Alquilar said she was willing to fix the brightly colored 16-foot-wide circular work, but offered no apologizes for the 11 misspellings among the 175 names.
"The importance of this work is that it is supposed to unite people," Alquilar said. "They are denigrating my work and the purpose of this work."
Alquilar said it took her quite a bit of her own time and money to create and install the work, and that it sat idle at her Santa Cruz studio for two years until the city cleared the way for its installation.
There were plenty of people around during the installation who could and should have seen the missing and misplaced letters, she said.
"Even though I was on my hands and knees laying the installation out, I didn't see it," she said.
The mistakes wouldn't even register with a true artisan, Alquilar said.
"The people that are into humanities, and are into Blake's concept of enlightenment, they are not looking at the words," she said. "In their mind the words register correctly."
So...this typo-riddled fiasco-fresco sat in her studio for a full two years, but Alquilar thinks the fault for not spotting the misspellings still lies with those who were merely in the vicinity during its installation? You wanted your mosaic to unite people? Mission accomplished. Folks from all walks of life, all across the nation, are now in agreement that you're pompous and unable to admit a mistake (or, in this case, 11 mistakes). And if nerve, chutzpah or sheer gall were precious commodities, the last two paragraphs of this other article would be quite literally priceless. Yeah, anybody worried about spelling people's names right just doesn't "get it". Your artistically enlightened elite are above the petty concerns of having the letters appear in the correct order--or, indeed, appear at all. You wanker.
Other pearls of artistic wisdom from Alquilar, and my replies:
''Quite frankly, I'm really upset about this. Nobody at the library has said what a great work it is.''
They didn't get a great work. They got a $40,000 lemon. You'll have to forgive them if they didn't hurry out to kill the fattened calf for you when their eyes stumbled across the likes of Eistein, Shakespere, Van Gough, and Michaelangelo, to name a few.
''I wasn't concerned with the words, they were signposts."
We know you weren't concerned with the words--that's the problem. And even signposts usually try for correct spelling. That's how I can tell whether I'm headed for Chino, Chino Hills, Corona, or Norco.
''People that really love art, they wouldn't even have noticed it if they hadn't pointed it out."
Hey, sure. When I think of art lovers, I think of a moderately illiterate segment of society. Riiiiiiiight.
''I didn't go to the book and flip it open, because you don't do that when you're sculpting."
Quite right. You flip open a book before you sculpt.
"And I didn't even think of checking because I thought they were right.''
Lesson learned. After this, I hope you wouldn't try to spell the letter O with your pointer finger and thumb super-glued together without the aid of a dictionary.
''Wasn't it Shakespeare who wrote: 'That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet'?''
Wait. First you misspell his name, then you swipe one of his quotes to try and defend the misspelling? If lazy pretentiousness were a religion, this would serve as a damn good koan.
Did I mention that Alquilar is a former schoolteacher?
Pardon me while I grind my molars down to a fine dental dust...
(The upside to all this is that, in spell-checking this entry before posting it, I now know I'm just as qualified as anybody--and more qualified than some--to create and install artwork for Livermore, CA.)
Posted by patrick at 07:48 PM | Comments (5)
October 09, 2004
Getting paid for writing? What madness is this?
I just received word in today's mail that one of my non-fiction pieces was chosen for inclusion in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul IV! It should be available in bookstores on or around November 2nd.
Posted by patrick at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)
"R.O.D. the TV" on TV...
I found out on Thursday that "R.O.D. the TV" has been playing on TechTV's "Anime Unleashed" lately. I don't have cable, and didn't manage to catch the most recent episodes they aired last night, but they're running them all more than once. The first two episodes are slated for tonight (9 to 10 p.m., Pacific Time), so I'm going to head over to my mom's house and we'll watch them together. She's asked a few times if any of the projects I've done have ended up on TV, and so this'll be a nice treat for her.
To peruse the "Anime Unleashed" schedule (which I found a bit confusing, admittedly), click here.
Posted by patrick at 05:43 PM | Comments (3)
October 06, 2004
Those Germans sure do make a good multimedia viewer...
I had myself a David-versus-Goliath moment yesterday evening.
I'd driven into L.A. and picked up about half a dozen CDs with anime fansubs in .mov format. I got home to discover that--lo and behold--QuickTime doesn't have a clue as to how to run them. Oh, I'd get sound, and I'd get a cute little thumbnail preview of what I was supposed to be seeing, but no image.
The next three hours were an increasingly numb blur of downloading, installing and uninstalling sundry codecs, none of which did the trick. I also waded through help forums for various programs, the users/designers of which all seemed to look down their noses at PC users, and to whom would hardly deign to give troubleshooting tips.
The situation was getting grim. I was faced with the prospect of having to drive into L.A. to watch the fansubs--which would have been fine, had I not made the Riverside-to-L.A. round trip excursion four times since last week, and have it on my schedule another three times in the next week and a half. Looking around the internet for a non-QuickTime .mov viewer, I found a page that hawked QuickView Pro.
QuickView Pro is a DOS-based multimedia viewer that weighs in at a whopping 500 kilobytes. I laughed at the thought of this tiny, puny program succeeding where the likes of QuickTime and DivX had failed. I ran the program, the menus of which instantly reminded me of the good old pre-Windows days of Norton Commander.
But would you believe the little bastard got the job done?
There are occasional moments of lag, and it doesn't like to resume the movie if you employ the pause function mid-clip, but I'm still impressed that a random piece of shareware out of Germany out-performed the ubiquitous QuickTime. He'll get his recommended donation, which is what I would have spent on gas out to L.A. and back, anyway.
Anybody else have stories of old, antiquated, or simple items putting the newfangled contenders to shame?
Posted by patrick at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2004
Quo vadis, Sir. Mix-a-Lot?
I remembered this site while I was driving back from a brief meeting in L.A. this afternoon, and couldn't believe I didn't think to link to it when I first discovered it.
The translation is split between two pages, which is a bit of a pain--but believe you me, it's worth the extra click:
Part ONE
Part TWO
It makes me wish I hadn't dropped my Latin class two weeks into the quarter and signed up for tap-dancing instead that one quarter during my undergrad days. Well, almost.
Posted by patrick at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)