I plugged my ears at the end.

Date:	2008-01-23 21:50
Subject:	back to the good ol' days
Security:	Public
Mood:	distressed
Music:	donovan

I was "let go" from my job today. At least they were decent enough to offer me another week of work in the frameshop in addition to a week of severance pay plus references. I am looking forward to having time to breathe again, cause I was really starting to hate it in the past couple weeks, but....being unemployed blows. Especially now there's a recession.

What a bizarre cycle. I've found myself unemployed every winter that i've lived in this city, so far. I'd really thought i'd broken it this year.

cause that's how i roll - thx cb


orange and black noise


"Orange noise is quasi-stationary noise with a finite power spectrum with a finite number of small bands of zero energy dispersed throughout a continuous spectrum. These bands of zero energy are centered about the frequencies of musical notes in whatever scale is of interest. Since all in-tune musical notes are eliminated, the remaining spectrum could be said to consist of sour, citrus, or "orange" notes.

Black noise, or silent noise, has several different definitions:
Silence
Noise with a 1/fβ spectrum, where β > 2 (Manfred Schroeder, "Fractals, chaos, power laws"). Used in modeling various environmental processes. Is said to be a characteristic of "natural and unnatural catastrophes like floods, droughts, bear markets, and various outrageous outages, such as those of electrical power." Further, "because of their black spectra, such disasters often come in clusters."
Noise that has a frequency spectrum of predominantly zero power level over all frequencies except for a few narrow bands or spikes. Note: An example of black noise in a facsimile transmission system is the spectrum that might be obtained when scanning a black area in which there are a few random white spots. Thus, in the time domain, a few random pulses occur while scanning. [7]
Whatever comes out of an active noise control system and cancels an existing noise, leaving the world noise free. The comic book character Iron Man used to have a "black light beam" that could darken a room like this, and popular sci-fi has a tendency to portray active noise control in this light.
As seen in the sales literature for an ultrasonic vermin repeller, black noise with a power density that is constant for a finite frequency range above 20 kHz. More accurately, ultrasonic white noise. This black noise is like the so-called black light with frequencies too high to be sensed, but still capable of affecting the environment."


white, grey, brown noise


"One use for white noise is in the field of architectural acoustics. In order to dissemble distracting, undesirable noises in interior spaces, a low level of constant white noise is generated.
It is used by some emergency vehicle sirens due to its ability to cut through background noise and its lack of echo, which makes it easier to locate.
White noise has also been used in electronic music, where it is used either directly or as an input for a filter to create other types of noise signal. In this respect, it is the analog to the violin in classical music. It is used extensively in audio synthesis, typically to recreate percussive instruments such as cymbals which have high noise content in their frequency domain...

Grey noise is random noise subjected to a psychoacoustic equal loudness curve (such as an inverted A-weighting curve) over a given range of frequencies, giving the listener the perception that it is equally loud at all frequencies.
This is in contrast to white noise, noise which is in fact equally loud at all frequencies but not perceived as such due to psychoacoustics...

[Brown noise] can be generated by an algorithm which simulates Brownian motion or by integrating white noise. Brown noise is not named for a power spectrum that suggests the color brown; rather, the name is a corruption of Brownian motion. (Nor is it to be confused with the so-called 'brown note.') Also known as 'random walk' or 'drunkard's walk' noise..."

Date:	2007-07-23 16:30
Subject:	im in ur kupkakes, eatin all ur frostins
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

Date:	2007-07-23 15:49
Subject:	Censorship!
Security:	Public
Mood:	nerdy

Rev. Sharpton backs idea on rap lyrics

BUFFALO, N.Y. - The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has challenged the entertainment industry on denigrating lyrics, on Monday supported a state senator's idea to pull public investments from companies that won't clean up their act.

Holding the entertainment industry accountable will be a primary goal of the newest chapter of Sharpton's National Action Network, said the activist minister, who announced the formation of the Buffalo-Niagara branch while in town to address a convention of black criminal justice professionals.

Roughly $3 billion from New York's state pension fund is invested in the entertainment industry, according to state Sen. Antoine Thompson, who requested an inventory of entertainment industry investments from the state comptroller earlier this year.
....
In April, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons said the recording and broadcast industries should consistently ban three racial and sexist epithets from all so-called clean versions of rap songs and the airwaves. Expressing concern about the "growing public outrage" over the use of such words in rap lyrics, Simmons said the words "bitch," "ho" and "nigger" should be considered "extreme curse words."
....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070723/ap_on_el_st_lo/sharpton_buffalo

Heh heh. This is pretty awesome, thanks cb.

The chilled out violinist is the best.

on the left is the guy from "The Squid and the Whale" movie... which I'm not going to see because it looks too painful.

I stole this from L-Boat cause it's AWESOME.

Date:	2007-02-26 15:54
Subject:	Bivouac
Security:	Public
Mood:	bitchy
Music:	Jawbreaker + Frank Black

I've been lovin on Jawbreaker lately. Its been a while since we spent time together. Bivouac is such a lovely song, and I applaud it for achieving triple duty today: splendidly covering up my awful housemate's obnoxious telephone conversations, annoying her enough to close her door, and thusly making me fall in love with it all over again.

Anyway, the voice-over sound-byte in the song (what do you call that? there's gotta be a term for it) talks about army ants in a documentary style voice. So I had to look it up. The word, that is. Finding the source of the sound-byte seems too difficult. Wikipedia quotes from The Cal Academy of Sciences.

Totally creeps me out/intrigues me, so I had to share.

Army ants are migratory hunters that feed mainly on hard-bodied creatures such as insects, spiders, and scorpions, but they will eat just about anything they can subdue. Colonies of E. burchellii are enormous, sometimes numbering up to 2 million individuals. They can devastate an area of more than 1,800 square yards in a single day, so they must constantly move to new areas. During what is called the migratory phase, the ants set up a temporary camp called a bivuac in a new site nearly every night. As many as 150,000 to 700,000 worker bodies cover and protect the queen, linking legs and bodies in a mass that measures a meter across. Thousands of larvae are located near the center with the queen, and workers are responsible for feeding them. Larger workers also serve as porters, carrying larvae to new bivouacs. In the morning, the bivouac dissolves into raiding columns that form a fan-shaped front. These raiding columns can travel up to 20 meters per hour with lead workers laying a chemical trail for other workers to follow. Smaller workers lead the column, while larger, formidable soldiers protect the flanks.
...

Cooperative behavior of army ant colonies takes many forms. When they come to a stream, some species interlock their legs and bodies, forming a bridge up to a meter across upon which others can walk. When caught in a flood, they quickly form a ball that floats down stream. It is also claimed that the jaws of the soldier have been used as sutures to hold together the edges of a wound.

Date:	2007-02-05 15:57
Subject:	I wasn't put on this earth so i could be a janitor for the rest of my life
Security:	Public
Mood:	contemplative

I read Paul Pope's "100%" the other night, a comic book from the illustrious library of Josh. I was entranced.
Quote from the book, pg. 223:

He wondered if there ought to be a shining moment, like a pinnacle, a flag above the mast of the ship. A moment when you just know in your gut that your destiny is something big. A moment of brilliant certitude, of swift clarity.

But that moment never comes. No, there's just the work and the instinct to work.

...Most of the personal conflict we ... experience in our lives comes not in the form of some earth-rattling apocalyptic drama, but rather in the ongoing, unfolding, daily experience of our most intimate relationships. Often because somebody's not giving us something we want or else they're asking for something we just can't deliver, period. That's where things start falling apart.

Date:	2007-01-30 04:16
Subject:	science sciuks!
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished

You fit in with: Humanism Your ideals mostly resemble that of a Humanist. Although you do not have a lot of faith, you are devoted to making this world better, in the short time that you have to live. Humanists do not generally believe in an afterlife, and therefore, are committed to making the world a better place for themselves and future generations. 0% scientific. 80% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

now i am spesh too.