Check This Music Out

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

New Website: checkthismusicout.com

Why I created checkthismusicout.com

I created this website for 2 reasons. The first is that music recommendation algorithms are imperfect, and the second is because you are not as smart as you think you are.

Music recommendation algorithms that analyze the qualities of the music, such as The Music Genome Project, are pretty cool. There is a lot of technology there, and how it works is not what I am saying sucks. What I am saying sucks is the entire concept in general. It’s because they are very good at finding music that sounds the same. Let’s face it, a lot of music sounds the same. Bands can’t afford to be experimental, and being experimental is not what fans want*. For more on why music all sounds the same, check out Kirby Furgusons Everything Is A Remix video series. Us pathetic humans are totally OK with this – I am not saying it’s a bad thing – But what is bad is not exploring. Listening to similar sounds is not bad. If it sounds good, it sounds good! But when we forgoe exploring and listening to new artists in favor of the familiar, this is where things go sour. I look at my friend Camerons library. Not one artist is not some subgenre of metal. I try and show him some fast Techno, but he doesn’t even bother listening “Oh” he says. “I don’t like techno”. But he has never listened to it! This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Another friend only has artists that have appeared on Billboards top 50. This drives me insane.

In summary: Be Eclectic. Music recommendation algorithms are not good at helping you be eclectic.

You don’t know what you like to listen too. You think you do, but you don’t. If you think I am wrong, go listen to Fanfarlo. You liked them, didn’t you? Yeah. Everyone does. But you didn’t know you liked them! People are too comfortable listening to the same music, and never finding anything new. Try something new sometime. Trust me, you won’t regret it. But where will you ever find this new artists. Oh, wait – I just helped solve that problem with the site Check This Music Out.

As a side note, I didn’t really create the site. Alec Gorge did. We have been working together on code projects for a little while now. He is the code guru. He code’s like beowulf. I just get the idea’s, and I help out with User Interface and Design. I also contribute some code, but this is usually replaced by him later with a mumbling of profanity and confusion. I give Alec Gorge a high five. And some money. If you play Minecraft and have an iPhone, you should totally check out his iPhone app: Adminium.

How The Site Works

It’s pretty simple, you go to the site and it commands you to check out a few tracks by an artist. It’s really hard to pick just a few tracks, and I don’t like the site working that way, (check out this album, or check out the band would be preffered) – but it’s the best way to do it. We put a few songs on there because it gives you a starting point, something to search for and actually listen to. If you like the songs, you know how to delve deeper, look at albums and such. Personally, I buy (yes, buy) music by the album and never sort by genre, but that’s just me. If you don’t like the songs, then just go back to the site and look at another, we have a lot of different styles of music in here.

Speaking of purchasing music, the site does not display advertisements. Instead, at the bottom of the page there are to buttons that link to amazon. If you decide you like the artist, and want to show us some love, buy them after clicking one of those links – we are part of amazon’s associate/referral program. Cool, right?

There is also a page where you can view the entire database in a nice list, if you prefer that to random chance. It’s even alphabatized.

 

*There are a lot of exceptions

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I am not an adult

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

culled from the notebook on 10/18/11

Today I was called an adult. That’s right, someone called me an adult. And not some guy who I held the door open for, an old teacher asked me how adulthood felt like, about college, freedom, the path of my life.

These are not questions I can answer. Fuck no.

Me? An adult? Don’t I need a newspaper subscription to be an adult? I don’t host dinner parties and I hum a rhyme when I tie my shoes. I take lots of candy whenever a bowl is on a counter. I’ve never enjoyed wine for fucks sake! I don’t give a damn about televised news channels or local elections. I still watch complete episodes of Spongebob Squarepants – and not just when it’s on, I netflix that shit.I don’t listen to NPR or iron any clothes, ever. I don’t own dress shoes or socks (not just dress socks – I don’t own any socks). I don’t know how voting or taxes work and I have never bought furniture that isn’t filled with beans. My savings account has 17 cents in it and a month ago I went 4 days on nothing but 1 box on apple jacks. My resume, entirely hypothetical, boasts that I once stayed awake for 5 days. I have never had kiwi or owned an umbrella. My close has over 40 t-shirts and my one jacket isn’t earth tone. I don’t know what 401k means. Recently I ate an earthworm because a friend dared me to. When I go to concerts, people stand. My bookshelf is mostly comics. I put clothes in my microwave to dry them. I spray deodorant and my underwear is not white. I read The New Yorker for the cartoons and don’t know my relatives birthdays. I have never used a filing cabinet, and I draw on placemats at restaurants. I’ve never changed the oil in my car or had someone call me “sir”. I don’t golf or play poker. My bed sheets have rockets on them, and up until 2 days ago I though “Manilla” folders were “Vanilla” folders – due to their color. (Why was I never corrected? Oh, right, I never use them!) I don’t watch documentaries, drink out of flutes, or have an insurance card. I still drink chocolate milk for breakfast, every breakfast. I feel uncomfortable in Nordstroms but right at home in a arcade or lazer-tag place. I don’t have reading glasses or ‘special’ cuff links. If you put my in a casino or at a bar, my mind would insist I was doing something very wrong and should leave. My wall has movie posters, not nautical maps or landscape paintings, I’ve never been to an art museum outside of a field trip. I say ‘bro’, ‘dude’, and ‘peace’. If needed, I could survive 3 weeks on hot pockets. At a gym, I dont use the elliptical. In front of a skeeball machine, I wont look like a dork.

I am not an adult.

When people call me teenager – that’s not right. That label puts me in the same group as fans of Glee and Twilight, eye-rollers who worry about rumors of rumors and what everyone else thinks. I’m not that. So what am I? ‘young adult’? – That sounds like your complimenting how nice your 11 year old nephew looks at a wedding. “Mature teenager” doesn’t give the pop-listening (and by this label, immature) ones enough credit. They have suffered more relationship drama in 2 weeks than an adults past 3 years. ‘college student’? No – to many connected memories to drinking and acting like 6 year olds.

I am in a confusing crossroad of cultural identification. I can’t be labeled by any symbolic of sweeping term. So what am I to do?

I don’t know. Whatever, I guess. It doesn’t really matter what you stereotype, group, label, or call me. I am still an individual.

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More Juggling Practice Advice

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

I am working my way up to a 5 ball shower, with the arrival of 5 new dube stage balls (bringing my collection up to 9). Here is my personal roadmap for this:

(3 ball shower each way)
3 ball snake (follow?)
Flash 3, clap
Continuous 3 flash (clap)
some nice tricks to stay happy (mills!)
-
4 ball fountain
552
5551
-
The actual learning 5 cascade: [start from both sides!]
4 ball throws (in crossing 5 pattern, catching)
5 ball throws (flash) let drop
5 throws, catch them
move up one throw at a time.
6 toss, 7, 8, 9, 10, long as can. (don’t always try to keep going continuously)

And some quotes to keep in mind:

Learn juggling with 5 in steps. First learn 5 throws. Then learn 6 throws. Go on to 7, 8, 9, 10. Then try to juggle as long as you can. Don’t always try to do endurance runs. Set your goal to perhaps 20 throws and make sure that you can do that really good, and perhaps with a neck catch as finish. – Peter Olin

I found catching the balls rather than trying to go for extra throws was really useful because I didn’t have to chase them all over the place. The extra throws just came naturally, and I added them only when I was ready rather than going until the pattern fell apart (thanks to advice from Steve Ragatz on practice style). – Steve Joyce

quote from this great page

The idea is that setting solid benchmarks will help. I have been doing this to a limited extent in my juggling thus far, mostly I just go for it and try to keep going continuously. I do stop myself when the pattern breaks apart (i’m throwing forwards or backwards, or the timing is off), so I have the same idea of only practicing doing it right (learning correctly!), but with explicit throw number goals, it puts definitions on this ideology of juggling.

Pretty soon (next?) I will be making a post covering my juggling equipment. In other words… Pictures!

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Unicycle / Juggling act in Depauws Talent Show

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

Here is my act from the talent show I was in last night.

Some things to learn:

  • Get the audience laughing, they won’t expect skill. Surprise them.
  • If you drop on stage (mess up), just laugh it off.
  • When doing a routine to music, make sure it’s dead solid. A mistake throws you off, because the music doesn’t stop!
  • I didn’t ride the giraffe because backstage, I didn’t have enough headroom. I couldn’t fit through the door. Because I still can not free-mount the giraffe, I would (should?) have played it over-the-top difficult. Get some assistants in hard hats to hold a latter, draw out getting on the thing, be funny.
  • Funny is good
  • Rings are awesome for stage performance. I was juggling rings on stage beforehand, and they are large, visual, high, lots of fun.
  • At least have a general idea of what you are going to do. The entire club part of the act was improvised, I wish I at least thought of some tricks to do ahead of time, practiced them.
  • Just because something is difficult does not mean the audience will appreciate it. When I did ‘factory’ I got a huge reaction, but the mill’s mess/pistons combinations were confusing. (although I did get comments on that trick after the show). Flashy is good, difficult does not = good. What I am saying is juggle for an audience, not for personal skill or other jugglers. There is a reason why taking a bite out of an apple (maybe the 2 trick I learned) is so popular.
  • Be personal with the audience, casual. This may not work for everyone, but I like being really relaxed and loose, doing a trick like i’m showing the audience some cool secret. Drop a few times, they are with me trying to succeed. When I do, all the better.
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On the Future of Comics and Technology Memo

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Comics are a visual medium, and they are printed on paper. Here is the strange part: they no longer need to be printed on paper. Monitors are the new paper, computers, the internet, and other electronic mass communication technology is surpassing printed issues as a means of distribution. Comics are trying hard to stay away from the hellhole that newspapers have trapped themselves in, most notably, how to sell papers and compete digitally. Comics have one thing on their side that will keep people coming into stores and buying well arranged ink on paper: They are made for paper. Newspaper columns, for example, are text. Text can be transposed from one medium to another easier than any other. Comics can not traverse well.

Painting and technology is tricky. Because many paintings can’t be digital, they stay away from being trapped in the ridiculously widespread (and socioeconomically speaking: interesting, but not what I am going to talk about) Internet mindset of ‘open source” (free stuff is good). There is a problem when people make Digital Paintings (woo wacom!). Most artists just post these things online for free, without fear of theft of appropriation of their work. Why? Another interesting issue, but I want to stay clear of Internet societal reasoning’s. I will say this: Posting something online ensures it will get stolen, kind of. Most people who steal things do not claim it as their own, this is very rare. What they do do, is steal it and punish it. The problem is not with intellectual property theft, but rather with content distribution rights. I have written a lot about this, and how to fix it elsewhere, and I think I am supposed to be talking about comics. Right then: Comics! When one thinks of comics and the Internet, usually we think of things like XKCD. Strip comics, the digital alternative to the funny papers. What I want to address is not webcomic issues, but the transition of Graphic Novels to THE COMPUTER.

In particular, the use of an infinite canvas. Comics on paper are bound to have borders, and to be read more-or-less like a book. (zag down a page, turn it, etc). When companies like Graphic.ly, Marvel, or other distributors scan their comics (not scan, as they have probably been created digitally anyway) and place them online, (behind a pay-wall, perhaps?), the transition of form is rather ugly. The comics do not read easily, and one is forced to turn digital pages as they read a paper comic that is plastered to a screen. It doesn’t work well. Now, it can work on things like tablets (Ipad) or touch screen displays, which add a level of control over viewing that is closer to that of paper. Tablet’s are still in their infancy, and most touchscreen smart phone’s just are not big enough to read comics easily on. So what does one do? How do comic creators contort their form to fit the new screen? Having the screen zoom in and follow a pre-set path (where the eye did this work before/on paper). Letterbox away and focus on one panel at a time? Tricks like these may make comics more applicable to a digital presentation, but one is ignoring the real problem: we are trying to put paper on screens. Screens have always worked better as a small view window into a larger canvas (think scroll bars and text/web site design), as opposed to a complete paginated/tabbed representation of the content. (we like scrolling over click-next-page-ing. Graphic storytelling (comic) artists have to take advantage of this property of screens. Make a comic like one could on a giant piece of paper, stretching the boundaries of what is possible in this new medium. Comics displayed on a computer are still in their infancy, which means that analysts’, reviewers, critiques, and formstudy-ers should stay the f*ck out of this medium. But we invite experimental artists to enter, and play around with creating forms and techniques, from there other artists can build on them and the medium can develop. Let  Cayetano Garza, Patrick Farley, Dresden Codak, Daniel Goodbrey, Scott McCloud, and many others experiment and create in form, and other less creative adventurous can use their work as a base. (Defiantly check out http://e-merl.com [tagline: New experiments in fiction].

I am personally playing around with different experimental things to use with an infinite canvas, And I am curious if I could do something like this for the Final project in this class.
Some Ideas I am playing around with

  • Choose your own adventure comic
  • Time is x axis, character moods are y
  • literally parallel, crossing, circular stories
  • Separate stories share same environment
  • Pacing and timing can be made with physical space
  • Panel layout can have more meaning: a stories L-R path changes suddenly, (start reading down or up) as plot changes
  • Stories themselves can be more interesting, veritably looping, etc.

The point of this memo is not to explore the new way graphic stories could be told with a digital medium, but rather point out that this is a very necessary change, and that it’s past time for experimental artists to break some boundaries and preconceived notions of the comic environment. Thusly: It’s past time for experimental artists to break some boundaries and preconceived notions of the comic environment.

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Wikipedia

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Support Wikipedia

I donated to Wikpedia. Read my post on communication here. Lets go people! Wikipedia is too awesome for us not to contribute in some way.

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Graph title goes here

Monday, September 19th, 2011

image

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SigFig practice

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Check out this little sigfig test that a friend of mine put together: http://alecgorge.github.com/sigfig-practice/

the reason it looks so damn pretty is because he used Bootstap. It is very pretty, and simple, and all javascript. Neato!

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College Story Round Up #1

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Story Round up taken from a letter I wrote. Names have been changed.

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic. As you probably know, orientation is a pain in the ass. We want to get past the ‘freshman-who-does-not-know-what-he-is-doing’ stage as quickly as possible, but the 4 day long orientation forcefully dragged it out. Having come here early, I already had a group of similar-interest/like-minded/interesting/funny/cool/fun to hang out with friends, but I could not hang out with them, I had to go to meetings with my mentor group. At one point, I was holding hands with some sweaty people, with my arms wrapped around 3 others, and somebody stuck between my legs. They called it ‘the human knot’ and the goal was to free ourselves into a circle. It took my group and hour and a half. While invading an impressive number of peoples personal spaces simultaneously, I was able to watch a few good friends (some from high school) have an awesome time jumping rope with the president of the school, playing a giant game of ninja, and haveing a watermelon eating contest. Out group was veritably the lame one.

A girl (the same one who’s cousins house I am writing this in) has a sister. Her sister turned 15 on Saturday. She came to visit her sister and… let’s call them Jill for the girl and Meagan for the sister? OK, where was I: Meagan turns 15 on Saturday and is visiting/sleeping over with Jill. After they ate dinner, myself and Hank  met up with Jill and Meagan, and with some other irrelevant people, made a night of it. It started with an 80’s themed dance, where only 3 songs that were in any conceivable way connected to the 80’s were played (I did a pretty sweet MJ dance, moonwalk ftw). At one point, while running away from Hank (he was made I was introducing him as ‘hank’), out of the tent the dance was set up in, around the open campus lawn section-y area. We laugh it off and run back and I realize my Leatherman (big muilti-tool with knifes and such) is missing. Clark/Hank helps me try and find it, and I do, 30 minutes later. It had opened up and some particularly nasty blades were open, and on the ground. Did i mention the Leatherman is black? It could have ended badly. After we get tired of listening to LMFAO, we all head back to one of the dorms, to chill in the lobby area. We weaved a 15 year old (who has already witnesses some questionable content a la dance) around 2 seperate drunkenly passed out people who were more in than on the sidewalk, As it turns out, a drunk passed out guy marks an excellent location for people to gather and chat, and we had to stop and talk over the hopefully-not-choking-on-vomit guy for a bit. Did I mention 15 year old? We get back to the dorm, and talk/play pool for a few hours. Twice police officers and ambulance(s) are called to cart away somebody (right past us) with alcohol poisoning. Some facts worth noting: 15 year old. Depauw is #15 top party school in country. (down from #10). It was the greatest birthday ever!

My parents have not heard much of me. . . Mostly to the fact that I have made virtually no attempts at communicating with them. Some advice: Email. You can stay in touch without having to have personal or timely responses.

I was able to have a 6 day Wal-Mart visit streak. I am probably the only student in the history of Depauw to show up to an English class without paper. Or Pens. I barely had clothes.

Laundry! More advice: Don’t wait as long as possible, because doing one load is easier than doing two. Now you, like me, grew up in a household with parents. This means we do not know how to do laundry.

Ok, here we go. I walked into the laundry room with an overstuffed bag of clothes and dreams of cleanliness. I walked out with an impressively diminished sense of self-esteem. I confused the Washer with the Dryer and started loading up clothes in the dryer. My friend decided to stop me as I was about to toss in the detergent. These are what good friends I have. So Laundry done, I suppose my clothes are clean enough, but I am as of yet unable to master the ability to keep them wrinkle-free. I will be that freshman.

I have not yet locked myself out on accident, but a suitemate did. I come home and he is sleeping in the suite area, which was reaaaallly funny, and I woke him up laughing.

 

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Our Contradictory Culture

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

There were Germanic Tribes in England. (The Angles and the Saxons, sound familiar?). Then some Christians showed up. Instead of the Christians getting rid of the germanic culture by replacing and driving it out, they mixed together. This mix of ridiculously separate, and often contradictory and confusing cultures can be argued to be the basis of modern english and thusly american culture, most notably with ideals. This mixing also explains Christmas and Easter, in case you were curious.

We idealize and value all of the following:
LOVE and WAR.
FORGIVENESS and REVENGE/VENGANCE
AFTERLIFE and THE FINALITY OF DEATH
PROVIDENCE and FATE.
Christianity on the left, germanic on right

I could but won’t go on. You may argue that we do not idealize war or revenge, and that after death is a matter of opinion/religion. You might have a few good points, because it all differs on an individual scale, but as a culture, (look at the stories we grow up with), these things all mix! It’s crazy!

It is because of this mixing that our culture is so contradictory. We love the war hero and pray for world peace. Great stories of revenge are told while forgiveness is the mental law of the land. What is this? Answer: America. This christian/germanic mix is the base that entered america, and the melting pot of america today continues to mix and change. There is no american culture, america is the combination of culture. Just think about food. We mix things together. It’s pretty awesome. The government as set by our founding fathers set up rules that lets this happen. (Freedom of Religion, etc), but in order to recieve the awesome and nifty benefeits of the mix, we have to deal with segregation, discrimination, and seperation that is inheireit in . Taking something and routing its history is always fun, particularly with food.

So can I be american? I often hear people tell me that I can’t say I am american. “But what is your ancestry”. America is from somewhere else, so you are from somewhere else, so where are you from?
Well that doesn’t make any sense! I was born here! I was raised by america! (Television!). Why, because my grandfather was born in Germany, am I German? On my father’s side, I can’t be more american (that’s a lie: Native American). I am a direct descendant of Samuel Huntington. (Huntington is even my middle name, people), and you say I am not american. I am a mix of the cultures around me. That’s as american as it gets!

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