Post-solstice update
Well since it's been almost six months since my last post, I guess it is suitable to do an update. Executive summary:
- Spring semester was good.
- Summer is great so far.
Now for specifics. Let's see:
THE WUBS
In blogulation news, I've been a lot better about updating my Demented Dream Journal than the LJ, and I've also started a Points Of Interest Blog, which has a few posts so far and a lot more in the queue. I'm also working on a Web uploader for Taste No Evil, which with luck will smooth the way for Ben and me to update the site, so that maybe it will happen at all. It's pretty shameful that I haven't made a Pic of the Week for... over a year. A site redesign for TNE is also in progress and is mostly done; I just need to rearrange the PHP page-construction elements. Meanwhile, in non-blog webulance news, I've finally finished the Switzerland 2005 subsite after over a year of work on it (although little during the school year, natch), and it's gigantic. The Travelogue includes all the LJ posts I wrote on the trip.
SEMESTER
Classes and studio went well on the whole. There were two studio projects. The first was a duplex that you had to fit into a cubic volume 30' on a side, but there was the highly complicating factor that everyone in a studio section had to put their buildings together on a single site to make a kind of compact neighborhood. That made it a very interesting problem to work on. The other project was a library and digital archive for film, which had an uptown STL site near (and associated with) the central branch of the public library. The complex requirements of the program made for another engaging problem. I could go into greater depth on these or talk about the other classes I had, but it dredges up memories of stress (albeit less than the fall semester) that I just don't care to dwell on. So on to the summer.
STRUCTURES
Along with quite a few of my classmates and some non-classmate students, I'm taking the two structures courses required by the curriculum this summer. A lot of people do this because it frees up useful space in the subsequent regular semesters. Structures I just finished up last Friday (it started May 19 - I'm counting summer as May 8 on, which is the day after the spring semester finished), and given that the solstice was Friday afternoon, this means that the entire course was, oddly enough, in the spring. I thoroughly enjoyed the first course - the low-stress context surely helps a lot, as does the approachability and competence of the teacher, plus my interest in the material going in. Loads, reactions, shear, moment, beams, trusses, cables, frames: let me at them. It helps too that the homework is of reasonable volume and that the tests are open-book (and that I've aced them so far - haven't gotten the third test back, but it seemed to go just as well as the first two). There's only been one Structures II class so far, but it seems like it will be just as good as Structures I. Overall, so far, Structures is a near-ideal combination of (1) teaching me a whole lot of new things and (2) being easy. Nice.
RUNNING
During the spring semester, as during the fall semester before it, I usually only ran at most two times a week. I've been doing significantly better since the end of the semester. My base isn't too great right now because my mileage has been pretty low - the 8-mile run I did today is the first run over 7 miles I've done since last August (I didn't realize that until looking back through my log just now. ZOMG.), and it was pretty tiring, but I got it done in a 7:15 pace, which is pretty good. In terms of speed work, though, I've been getting some good fast workouts in, albeit probably not of a large enough quantity to get a really significant benefit; they've consisted of single test miles (after warmup) in the main. I have the Run for the Honey at the Hancock Old Home Days to train for, which is a good incentive for getting my running volume back up. (I also need to work a lot more on hills to prepare for it - Forest Park, which is where I almost always run, has good hills, but you have to seek them out.)
PROJECTS
I am not gainfully employed this summer. I interviewed for one summer internship at an architecture firm but never heard back from them despite a what seemed like a very good interview - not that surprising really, it sounds like it's been quite difficult for classmates to land summer internships this year. That leaves me feeling a bit guilty about being financially dependent, but on the whole it's incredibly nice to have a mostly non-stressful summer after the entirely stressful school year, which probably wouldn't be the situation if I were working at a job and taking Structures.
Anyway, it's meant that there's plenty of time for my mind to wander all around and grab around in multiple creative directions (adequate sleep is a key factor here), as seen in the aforementioned POIB and Switzerland 2005 site. I'm taking part in the Lifecycle Building Challenge with a couple of my classmates - it's a really cool premise for a competition, as you'll see if you check out the website, and one that I've actually given some thought to in the past (due to my radical ecoism - which I'm feeling pretty vindicated about these days, I must say).
I've got a few other things in the works that haven't really gotten off the launch pad yet. One is oil painting, which I've been wanting to do forever and obtained basic supplies for last month, but haven't actually started yet - although I did assemble a table for such purposes on my balcony out of a couple of nasty old sawhorses from the basement plus a discarded desktop corner from the alley. The table is currently used as a substrate for homework, competition work, and nature journal writing instead. The other one is digitizing the typefaces that I've designed over the past few years, with the intention of eventually selling them online. That this has the potential to be an ongoing source of income is a good incentive for me to work on it - for one thing it would make me feel as though I were actually making some money during the summer after all, although it would realistically only get to the stage of setting myself up to start earning money later. However, other things have been taking precedence. I still would like to make some headway on this.
MUSIC
Similar to the typeface work, I have an ambition to eventually release music for sale (completely synthesized dance music, specifically), probably only in digital format, self-released through TuneCore. I've been getting a lot more proficient at using Reason, so that it's getting much easier for me to get the timbres I want, which is good, since I'm all about the timbres. I'm also all about synthesizing all sounds from scratch as simply as possible. This is a particular challenge with percussion, but to my glee, I've figured out how to produce bass-drum sounds and a range of snare/clap/hi-hat-like sounds with very simple synthesis. Here's a short sonic example of the kinds of things I've worked out. The melody is from "Like a Pen" from Silent Shout by the Knife.
On the input side, new music (i.e. new to me) has helped keep me sane during the semester and served as inspiration for my own music work since then. I went through a few distinct listening phases during the semester: Siouxsie & the Banshees and early New Order; early hardcore punk; Neu! - with other things interspersed. The summer has found me more attuned to dance music, including 1980-vintage "post-funk" like ESG and Liquid Liquid, as well as adventurous disco like Metro Area, Black Devil Disco Club, and Hercules and Love Affair. It's really exciting that the H&LA full-length was released in the US today - I've been listening to it all day, and I recommend a listen. I also highly recommend the other dance acts I just mentioned, plus Neu! - all of them are worth your while, at least if you have any tendency to enjoy dance music at all.
WEATHER
May was, for the most part, lovely here in STL, with frequent mild and clear days. These, however, were punctuated by numerous severe thunderstorms, often accompanied by nearby tornadoes, though none approached the immediately vicinity, thank goodness. June has been pretty decent as well, with a few scorchers over 90°, but days mostly only getting into the 80s, with nights cool enough to keep the apartment comfortable with no AC during the daytime as well. The heat is supposed to return for the rest of the week, though, and we'll see how bad it gets in July. My guess: pretty awful.
FLOAT TRIP
Last weekend I went with a bunch of friends from school out to rural Missouri to go on a float trip and then camp out overnight. I have decided to give the description of the trip its own entry, which is posted after this.