- @ladolcevitamin go go go! how’d the paper turn out? in reply to ladolcevitamin #
- library -> bevmo -> pizza port -> brentmeistergeneral’s #
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- oh how i’ve missed this ♫ http://blip.fm/~38wns #
- anyone want to chat about favtape/muxtape/mixtape.me? #
Aquapuke reprises our piece on the life and times of Bobby Jindal as part of Technomania Circus’ Absurd and Ridiculous Music Night.
2438 Commercial St. San Diego, in Logan Heights, 8pm start time, $10 tickets.
I must say, I was very excited by this beer. A certified organic old ale at 9.7% – sounds great. Not too expensive, either. I have to say, though, it’s pretty disappointing. There’s some malt flavor there, and then a big gob of bitterness. Not the kind of hop bitterness that can be described as floral, or even citrus-like. It’s just a bitterness that clings to your mouth for dear life. And then, really, beyond that, there’s just the flavor of alcohol. This beer doesn’t hide its decent ABV at all – you can’t not notice it. Blech. It got me a bit buzzed, but that’s about the only positive thing I can say. Seven thumbs down.
- Rode 33 miles in 2 hours and 30 mins and felt great. Awesome ride. Hills felt great, but as always recovery at the top of the hill is s … #
Lots of retrospecticusing tonight. The Palomar trip was last weekend, and it was definitely the most amazing cycling experience I’ve had so far. I met up with Ross and William out on Highland Valley Road, and we headed through Bandy Canyon past the Wild Animal Park, out to Lake Wohlford, through the Rincon Valley, then up toward Palomar. My n00bishness kicked in here, and I had to stop before we reached the base. If I’d known we only had around 8 miles to go, I’d have tried a bit harder. But still, it was around 40 miles and 4000 ft. vertical for me, so I felt pretty good about that.
A week or so later, I can definitely say that this trip really helped. For one thing, my confidence has gone way up. Hills are definitely less intimidating now. I still have a bit of trouble getting right back up to 100% speed after some climbs, but still it’s drastically improved from even a few months ago. My butt callus is the next thing to work on, because that’s actually the earliest source of discomfort on my rides.
On the whole, this tour was a great success. To put it as plainly as possible, it was very different from what we had originally imagined, or maybe even hoped. Then again, I’m not really sure that I had any particular notion of how things would go.
Jonathan Berger brought up the idea of brining us back in the spring for a brief residency (as in 2 days or so) at CCRMA to work with the computer music students. We’re keeping our fingers crossed, of course.
The trip also allowed us to fully work out the plan for proceeding with our “catalog.” We’re definitely headed toward a self-supported website, with all text released for free and all sound and video recordings under a generous Creative Commons license. We don’t want to claim any ownership over the material, so this just seems to make sense. That’ll hopefully go live in the spring or early summer.
- Rode 8 miles in 1 hour and felt great. Last day of riding before the big trip on Saturday, so to make most of it I hit the hills. 8 mil … #
Hoo boy.
Today was the last day for me to ride before the big trip out to Palomar on Saturday. I didn’t have much time, so I just rode the hills around the house. Lots of 12-15% grades. I got to about 8 miles/1000 vertical feet, but my lungs really started to hurt from the cold air. It’s unfortunate because I really feel like I could’ve doubled my progress. That means that my endurance has really improved significantly. My strength still leaves something to be desired – the 15% hills feel like running into a wall – but I can push through without stopping. I can only hope Ross and William will hang with me.
This week is also the big part of the tuba tour, in terms of both distance and exposure. Tomorrow we drive up to Palo Alto for Tuesday’s presentation, then on Thursday we swing over to Berkeley. Friday morning is the drive back. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine. Maybe if I repeat that enough I’ll start to believe it…
To pile it on, this is also the week my family comes back from Greece. Poor Jacky has to handle that by herself while I’m away. She’ll be alright, but it’s still going to suck. There are going to have to be some serious ground rules established for the coming months. Who knows, they might read this at some point, so… Ughers!
Today was day one of the big tuba tour, with a lecture presented to Michael Dessen’s composition class at UCI. All in all it went very well. I thought we would struggle to fill an hour (as happened in our initial Composition Focus presentation at UCSD), but we easily filled our alloted time to the point where Michael had to cut off the Q/A. The students (7 in all) were very attentive, very enthusiastic, and very receptive to our idea of collaborative composition.
Michael made us think about the notion of the catalog a little more than we had previously. He primarily asked us to focus on the problem of notation because of our largely phenomenological approach. In order for the catalog to be useful to composers, it should present a certain level of notational standardization, but often such rigid systems disagree with or run counter to the phenomenological understandings of the players. In a way, it sort of sums up the central issue of the catalog: we are presenting the results of a collaborative process, imploring whoever reads it to engage in something similar, and yet the information contained within is automatically divorced from our personal experience through the act of publishing (or, at least, printing it out). We want composers to talk to performers, but we’re giving them examples of techniques. We want performers to experiment and discover things on their own, but we’re giving them a list of things to work on. It’s going to be an interesting struggle, but I think we have a good idea of how to push through.
Up next: Wednesday, 2/11 at UCR; Tuesday, 2/17 at Stanford; Thursday, 2/19 at Berkeley.
