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By
anders pearson
28 Oct 2002
spent the weekend in virginia with lani, my sister, cj, and his roommates.
on friday night we drank. saturday i pretty much spent throwing up. after i’d spent enough time lying on the couch with my head under a blanket trying to stay perfectly still so my stomach would settle down, we watched Stephen King’s Rose Red, which was long but entertaining and then some episodes of the Young Ones.
sunday, lani and i managed to get corey to drive into DC and we showed her the über-vending machine. i’m sure that will be remembered as the highlight of her vacation. then we (me and corey) drove back up to new york.
By
anders pearson
24 Oct 2002
jP
[before you go poking around in the archives at hotendotey, be prepared to be offended. it’s funny stuff but not for those with weak stomachs. don’t say i didn’t warn you.]
By
anders pearson
23 Oct 2002
i’ve mentioned before that the name ‘thraxil’ came out of some old sci-fi book on my parents’ bookshelf that i haven’t been able to track down since.
today i had a breakthrough.
my dad mailed me a bunch of books of fantasy art (including HR Giger, Rick Griffin, Moebius, Mouse + Kelly, and others). in the stack of books was “The Garden of Unearthly Delights: The Paintings of Josh Kirby.” in it i recognized a painting as the <a href=”http://pc1.klmsz.sulinet.hu/gabo/daw/DAW7/DW128_X.JPG”>cover of the book</a> from whence ‘thraxil’ came.
the book is called “<a href=”http://www.flyingturkeys.com/gsg/gsgbarrettneal.html”>Stress Pattern</a>” by <a href=”http://www.nealbarrett.com/news.asp”>Neal Barrett, Jr.</a> it was written in 1974 and seems to be well out of print now. i’ve found a few spots online that have used copies so i’ll probably pick one up just to have around. if anyone else is interested in the origins of the name, i recommend you do the same. i remember it being a fairly good book.
By
anders pearson
22 Oct 2002
i would be derelict in my duties if i didn’t publicly congratulate cristian and his wife on their new addition.
By
anders pearson
21 Oct 2002
tried to give blood today, but they sent me away because my pulse was too high. i think i just have a higher metabolism than normal. any time anyone’s checked my pulse, it’s been really fast, my normal body temperature is closer to 99.5 than 98.6, and i seem to be able to eat huge amounts of food without gaining any weight.
<p>sister was down visiting for the weekend. we basically drank a lot of beer, watched some movies, and hung out. on saturday we went to a nice party at <a href="http://www.cynthialawson.com/">cynthia</a>’s apartment. on sunday we wandered around chinatown a bit.</p>
By
anders pearson
17 Oct 2002
when i bought my desktop machine a little over 3 years ago, it came with an onboard yamaha soundcard that, at the time, didn’t have any linux support. for a couple months or so i just lived without sound.
by november or so of that year, i’d gotten pretty tired of not being able to listen to my mp3 collection. but, being an extremely poor student, i couldn’t exactly spend a lot of money on a new soundcard. i got about the cheapest one i could find, an ISA soundblaster 16, for about $12. all i had for speakers at that point were a couple little computer speakers so it really wasn’t that bad a setup. the card has served me faithfully ever since.
a year ago, when i moved into my apartment and actually had a bit of money to spare, i bought myself a very nice, high quality surround sound receiver and speaker system. so at this point, to listen to mp3s, i was taking the output of a headphone jack on a $12 sound card and running it into the input of a $600 receiver.
eventually i got a big hard-drive, ripped my entire CD collection, and filled the rest with music gotten from my <a href=”http://www.emusic.com/“>emusic.com</a> subscription. now i’d turned the computer into the centerpiece of my entertainment system. virtually all listening to music in my apartment was through the computer, and hence, through that $12 sound card and cheap 1/8” to RCA converter connecting it to the stereo.
last week i finally smartened up. started doing some research into cards with optical SPDIF outputs (since my receiver has an input) and eventually selected the <a href=”http://www.digit-life.com/articles/zoltrixpro6/“>Nightingale 6</a>. it was reasonably inexpensive, had optical SPDIF (without requiring a full drive bay like some of the creative labs cards), and advertised full linux support (this was confirmed on some linux mailing lists).
it came in the mail yesterday. installation was almost too easy. i stuck the card in, compiled the <a href=”http://www.alsa-project.org/“>ALSA</a> driver for it and it worked. well, the analog output worked immediately. i was unable to get the digital output working until i realized that that digital output channel was muted by default.
so now my setup is vastly improved. i’ve got a perfect, distortion free link straight from the media player on my computer to a high quality digital receiver. life is good.
By
anders pearson
14 Oct 2002
last night, comedy central showed a movie called ‘Porn n Chicken’. quality-wise, it was about what you’d expect from “comedy central’s first feature-length film”.
but it was filmed at <a href=”http://www.columbia.edu/“>columbia</a>. living in new york, you get used to having to detour around film crews. at columbia, we probably get more than our fair share of filming (eg, parts of Spiderman were filmed here). but actually seeing this movie explains some of the stranger things we saw out our office window this summer. like two people wearing chicken masks and nothing else running back and forth on the south lawn with security chasing them.
the plot basically involves a bunch of students who decide to film their own ivy league porn movie. they film it in the library after hours and called it ‘the StaXXX’. i found this pretty amusing because my office is in the library. they have no idea…
By
anders pearson
12 Oct 2002
the Pink Dots were amazing.
<p>just four people playing in a small club, but they manage to sound as big as an orchestra. since their music ranges from industrial to goth to psychedelia to folk music, they tend to draw a diverse crowd. kids with tattoos, studded leather clothes, mohawks and excessive facial piercings came with their moms, who seemed just as excited about the show. </p>
<p>the opening act, Origami Galactica, was mediocre ambient stuff. pretty boring to watch. he almost redeemed himself at the end by taking a hacksaw to a bass guitar, but even that didn’t sound quite as interesting as you’d think.</p>
By
anders pearson
10 Oct 2002
got a ticket to go see the Legendary Pink Dots tomorrow night. i’m very excited.
<p>i’m disappointed though that there really seems to be no other decent concerts coming to new york anytime soon (aside from avenue d shows, of course). there isn’t even anything good going on on halloween.</p>
By
anders pearson
09 Oct 2002
you’d think i’d have learned by now that staying up till all hours at night watching movies wouldn’t exactly make it easier to wake up in the morning.
<p>alas, i did it again. up till 2 last night watching <a href="http://www.donniedarko.com/">donnie darko</a>, which was excellent.</p>
<p>i only had the TV on because i was testing out a homemade coax to optical <a href="http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/spdif.html"><span class="caps">SPDIF</span></a> converter (you can do it with just a red <span class="caps">LED</span> and a 120 Ohm resistor). </p>
<p>on a related note, does anyone have any suggestions for a good linux compatible sound card with <span class="caps">SPDIF</span> (preferably optical) output? my old soundblaster 16 isn’t really cutting it anymore.</p>
