Quarterly Update (another long ramble)
--------------Class and School-----------------
Only taking 13 credits but busy as hell. Therese Hannigan said Career Skills would be "the easiest class we've ever taken" but there's so much work its easily my hardest. We have to have a logo, business card, letterhead, and envelope designed by next week. Arg, I hate doing that shit. I'm taking QTVR which is pretty sweet, get to pick up the trusty ol' digital camera onceagain and make 360 interactive flash projects. Project. We only have 1 for the quarter. For mine, I was planning on doing a Mortal Kombat based VR fighter, using photographic loops of my friends in QTVR-style landscape settings of the player's choosing. It would have been sweet with 360's around characters on select, personalized characters with their own voices and special moves. Alas I don't think I can accomplish that with my workload so i'll probably end up doing an interactive map of Letchworth State park. I'd do Mt. Hope Cemetary but everyone does that for all of their projects in the design school at rit... and plus someone was already doing it. On to Dynamic Persuasion Design with Jason Arena, we broke up into groups of four. We did this by "leaders" nominating themselves then standing in front of the class, picking out members by hand one- by-one like middle school dodgeball teams. Our assignment is to work with a real world client and give them a complete logo, business, card, letterhead, and website. We're working with an Art Therapist which turns out to be Jason's wife, I wasn't so sure in the beginning, but our group is doing great so far, I've been creating a pretty sweet flash site for it. Our team name is Five Lazy Mimes, even tho there are four of us. Newswriting class is ok. The teacher reminds me of "Asian Reporter Trisha Takanawa" from family guy. She always inderectly tells us how she's the token asian at the Democrat And Chronicle. The D&C contact her when they need an "asian source" on anything. I need to register my car, I think I've gotten 4 tickets already :/
------------Wrapping Up My Summer----------------------
I learned so much about flash this summer, and ServerToGo liked me so much they want me to come back after I graduate which is awesome. Now I can rest easy that if I dont find the dream job that I don't know I want, I'll always have that to fall back upon, which is something I'd still be happy with. Maybe i'll even take mauvis with me. Here's something I was working on when I left. I though it turned out pretty nice.
I bought a pair of Etymotic Er-4p in-ear headphones during the summer (I still use the other pair for my computer), they block out like 30db of noise and are pretty damn awesome once you get used to them. They're reference quality phones made for performing musicians. I hear things with these things in music that I wouldn't hear normally, like the tapping of a foot or even voices and instruments I haven't noticed before. Check out a review HERE and you can get them for like half price on ebay.
---------------Recordings!----------------
Check this out! I also bought Binaural Mics!. What are binaural mics? Well, when I was walking back home with Jen after work during the summer I was saying to her, "wouldn't it be awesome if there were stereo mics that you could put in your ears to record with?" and I looked it up that night and found them. They're 2 stereo mics that look kinda like regular earphones that sit in your ear to record. Doing this makes it "hear" naturally what you would actually be hearing yourself, Your big head blocking out noise on each side just like they do for your .... regular ears. This makes playing them back create the feeling of being there again what with the pseudo 3d environment the binaural recordings creates. Capturing from 29decibels (30 DB is the equivalent of whispering from 5 feet away) to 105dB [120 db is a jet engine], the recordings are pretty "CD quality" from my iRiver with no external battery. BTW, You have to wear headphones to get the binaural effect, not nearly as 3D with regular speakers. Here are a few things I've recorded that you can check out:
Boarding the 17 Bus in Manhattan
Panhandlers singing for change on a subway train
Subway Musician playing the drums
Subway Musician playing the drums
Union Square Protester (14MB)
Wouldn't it be cool to create an NYC street album with a variety of tracks from different street performers maybe with interviews? Theres such a variety of them. I saw everything from guitars, saxaphones, drums, electric flutes (?), to even bagpipes being played while there. I can think of so many cool projects with flash and such I could do with this. I'm going to use it to record the ambient sounds for my QTVR projects for now.
--------------------Random Shhhtuff----------------
I saw a bumper sticker today that read "An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind." I thought it was a pretty sweet bumper sticker. Mauvis should make that into a shirt.
-----------------Onto my favorite topic Music!---------------.
Still digging the Sufjan Stevens. This New Yorker native to Michigan made a cd dedicated to the state called "Michigan: Greetings from the Great Lake State". Among such titles as "Say Yes! To Michigan!" are very profound melodic ballads to specific areas/cities/people in Michigan. I like this album the way I like the Postal Services's "Give Up" or old school Cranberries's "No Need to Argue" albums. I never get tired of them when I'm in the mood for something melodic or soothing. My favorite tracks are "Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid)", "For the Widows in Paradise; for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti" and "The Upper Peninsula." Here's a verse in the last one that I really liked:
"I live in America
with a pair of Payless shoes
The Upper Peninsula
and the television news.
I've seen my wife at the K-Mart
In strange ideas, we live apart."
Here are a bunch of other albums, artists, singles I recommend because i'm sure you care and want to listen to it. Feel free to AIM me and I'll.... loan you a copy of them. Which you should delete within 24-48 hours. Because file sharing is bad.
Arists and albums
Bueno Vista Social Club (self titled)
The Polyphonic Spree - 24 white-robed secular choir that sing catchy upbeat pop songs verging on... gospel?
Bjork - Medulla - Bjork can get old quickly but her new album is her most experimental. Most tracks consist of only layered voices. Worth a listen.
Iron and Wine - The Creek Drank the Cradle - great mellow music in the same vain as Sufjan
Garden City Sountrack - "very ok" soundtrack for a "very ok" movie. With some addictive singles. Like Frou Frou and teh Shins.
Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist - this group from australia made their album mainly out of old snippets of audio taken from decades of old records.
TV on the Radio - Mr. Greives - acapella cover of a Pixies song, its so awesome. Its great. Its great. Check out "Staring At The Sun" Too!
Dresden Dolls - Coin-Operated Boy, Girl Anachronism - Videos. brechtian punk cabaret.
I know theres a ton of others I'm forgetting to mention but i'm getting sleepy, maybe i'll add them later.
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Car. Hmm I had so much I wanted to post about that I wrote down a few keywords to remember the subjects. This one says car but I don't remember what it was about.
----------------------------Life----------------------
I'm turning 22 this Thursday. I'm getting old :o. My family asks me what I want for my birthday but I have pretty much everything I want right now. Except maybe a nice home theater projector system. Like the BenQ PB6200. Which I'll buy sooner or later. Or sooner. Imagine... up to a 20 FOOT wide picture on the wall for movie nights. That would be sweeeet. But thats a story for another day :)
I'm pretty happy though at this stage in my life. Me and Jen will celebrate our 1 year anniversary on the 28th. Things are goin pretty good.
Damn that was long. My eyes hurt. Goodnight.