Blog

Today is my Xanga’s 250th day.  That’s right, it’s the “quarter mille”.

I finally did my laundry today.  I’ve been keeping myself busy enough that I have been way behind.

For my student government position I often administer surveys to
various groups of students.  The other day I made three different
mockups of a single survey I’m about to give to the entire student
body.  I presented these mockups to my Human Factors: Interface
Design class to let the students test them out.  I learned quite a
lot from the process, and now I think the survey should be quite easy
to take (once I implement the best suggestions from the class).

This monday, the Data Destruction Tour is coming to Boston.  The
Data Destruction Tour is the only tour I know of that specializes in
the tiny little subgenre of music known as lofi or 8bit or chiptunes or
gamemusic or about a million other things.  The idea is to use
1980s computer technology or video game systems or similar sounding
synthesis techniques to make music.  Hear some at micromusic.net. 
I have considered burning a few CDs of a some songs I have written in
this style and giving them around to the people involved to sorta jab
myself into the scene a bit.

From a micromusic.com email:

Mar 14th 2005 Data Destruction Tour 2005
artists: Nullsleep, Bit Shifter, Covox
venue: The Enormous Room, 567 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, MA, USA
start:  9:00pm
fee: 21+ no cover
more info:  http://www.enormous.tv/

I wonder if it will be a snow day.  The weather is completely
horrible and miserable.  If it’s a snow day, it will have no
impact on me, however, because I have no classes on Wednesday.

A snow day on any other day would help me catch up so much, but a Wednesday snow day does nothing for me.

I say “catch up” but I’m not too far behind on things.  I
certainly have a lot going on, but when I sit down and think about it,
they are moving along fine.  Some of my things could use some more
enthusiasm, and the occasional jolt back into action, but really I am
on top of most stuff right now.

We made a transistor radio in Analog and Digital Communications,
hard-tuned to WEEI 850 AM sports radio.  The class is really
starting to make a lot more sense these days.  It only makes me
wish I could spend more time designing circuits or software for
processing audio.  Designing audio filters, in hardware or in
software, is one of my favorite activities.  Luckily, I’m majoring
in the right thing, Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Grant: “Why is J. Lo a popular singer?”
Dan: “Cause she’s got a nice ass.”

Wow, thanks Dan.  Really classy.  That wasn’t what I
meant.  Jennifer Lopez has an annoying nasal voice.  Her
latest song has an annoying sax line.  I… secretly wish that I
didn’t like it in a disturbing way.

I’m going dogsledding for the first weekend of Spring Break up in Maine.

I came up with a new way to make my todo list.  I put todo items
up on Post-It notes on my wall.  The higher notes represent more
important things I need to do, like get a job for summer.  The
bottom notes are not important, such as fixing my digital camera. 
That way I still see everything I have to do, but I don’t forget the
important stuff.  I’ll tell you how it goes.  I think this
will finally be the method I keep.

Today I stopped doing things for an hour.  It was splendid. 
Since last Thursday, I hadn’t stopped for even ten minutes. 
Constant activity, moving from class to party to class to meeting to
meeting to the candidate’s weekend and back again.  Finally I can
get some sleep.

Starting this Friday I will have an 8 am class, Complex
Variables.  I’m actually really excited about Complex
Variables.  They really come in handy for messing with audio
signals.  But anyway this means that my first classes each day
will look like this:

Monday 2 PM
Tuesday 8 AM
Wednesday (no class, nothing until CORe meeting at 6:30 PM)
Thursday 2 PM
Friday 8 AM

It doesn’t get any weirder than that.

Also, elections are going to be soon for CORe (The Council of Olin
Representatives), so I will sadly give up my post as Vice Presdient of
Communication.  I might run for another executive position, but I
haven’t decided yet.  The CORe Digest is my baby!  I will
miss it!

Someone needs to tell Google that their stuff isn’t in beta
anymore.  Napster killed that word forever, and now Google is
desecrating its coffin.

If you find yourself in a slump, as I have, then clean up your
room!  It does wonders for the psyche!  Throw away lots of
stuff.

Tucker IMed me today and we talked through some programming issues on
our software synthesizer.  Good news!  It works on my
computer for the first time!  Now we can finish up the GUI and we
will have a product that is ready for real-world beta testing! 
Keep posted.

The check came in the mail to Oklahoma yesterday!  I will probably cash it while I’m home for Spring Break. 

I remembered what I was going to blog about last night, but forgot to.

Yesterday my professor didn’t show up for my class
Synchronization.  There are 6 students in the class, but only 5
showed up.  We waited for a bit and then one of the staff came in
and told us the professor wasn’t coming.  We then spent the entire
remainder of the class period going over the homework, writing stuff up
on the board, and debating it.

I love this school.  The subject matter is interesting enough that we don’t even need a professor to hold class!

Back to blogging!  A lot of people are getting involved on the Olin College blogring these days.

We just had the first Candidate’s Weekend of the year.  It went
very well.  The students are getting inspired again to be at Olin.

Today I put a bunch of pictures up on flickr.  Just go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/nertzy for more.

Today the rest of the CORe E-Board and I went to the senior
administration meeting for Olin.  We gave student feedback to the
President, VPs, and heads of various departments.  I think it went
well.  I got to learn a lot of details about running a new school.

I got my camera back today in the mail.  I’d left it in Drew’s car
in LA.  It reminds me of all my broken items.  My camera’s
flash doesn’t work.  My palm’s screen doesn’t work.  My next
palm’s screen cracked.  The face broke off of my nice watch. 
If only I weren’t so lazy I would fix them all.

Now all I really need is a summer job.  A nice internship.  I
have some wonderful contacts lined up so I guess I should start asking
them for advice.

The new Chemical Brothers album, Push the Button, is
very nice.  I like the first two tracks best, “Galvanize” and “The
Boxer”.  I didn’t like “Galvanize” the first time I heard it, or
even the second, but now it’s one of my all-time favorite Chemical
Brothers songs.  It’s interesting to note that I also didn’t like
“Block Rockin’ Beats” the first few times I heard it.  I still
haven’t figured out how the Chemical Brothers are able to evoke this
initial disinterest.

Well I shall try to get into a better habit of posting on here.

Today.
Check local listings.
Interview with the Edmond Sun.

Hello everyone.  It’s been too long since I’ve posted.  The
next installment of the Innermost Cabin stories is “Not a True Story”.  Enjoy.

I’m about to embark tomorrow morning on a grand trip from Oklahoma City
to Los Angeles, for 22 hours.  I’m going with Drew, who lives out
there with my friend Jon.  I will be flying back to Oklahoma City
on the 18th.  I hope to bump into as many people in LA as I
can.  I went last year but only knew three people from LA. 
This year I know at least ten.

Other than that I’ve been reading V. by Thomas Pynchon.  I’ve finished The Crying of Lot 49
and will then move on to Mason & Dixon before tackling the
grand-daddy Pynchon book of all time, Gravity’s Rainbow.  Wish me
luck, this is not an easy task.

Austin and I continue our work on Gamecube games.  I have ordered
the hardware that will allow me to load my code from an SD card, so
everyone at Olin will finally get to see Snowlords in action!

Other than that I applied to some jobs at The MathWorks and
Apple.  I will apply to some less ambitious places too so that I
don’t yet again come up empty-handed.

My next computer will be a Mac, perhaps a G5 tower.  Mmm.

“Not a True Story”
Amanda Deinstadt
Kristina Putnam
1/3/98

*This is not a true STORY*
At ten of ten p.m. Me and my friend were eating raisins we both chocked!!
Lucky we didn’t die.
After that the disidid to go play and feed the brids. Then they went for a walk
in the woods They saw more brids. So they fed them. Amanda and Kristina
both goth a big brid It bit off there hand! They still did not die.
They saw a werewolf. They both ran and ran. The werewolf finally goth
them. He ate them!  In  15 years there were two girls the
same age the died to the Same Way.
The End

I’m back in Oklahoma City for Thanksgiving.

Last night I went to Rima’s birthday party and saw some old
faces.  Afterwards we watched Spongebob Squarepants: The Movie,
and I believe I was the only person to laugh at the fact that the
boss’s name is Eugene Krabs.  Eugene Krebs was a perrennial
Socialist presidential candidate back around the 1920s.

Today we had early Thanksgiving in Enid.  We had some good
lasagna.  Also, my grandfather gave us his 1985 Toyota Camry,
which hit exactly 100,000 miles on the drive home.  I am
considering taking it up to Boston, but it’s not looking too up to that
task as of now.

Time for part two of the Innermost Cabin series.

Nature
Greg Miller
no date

The cabin is great, small, warm, quite, and peacefull. The trails long
and spooky! nature just singing birds, the ruffles of the water the
trees swaying back and forth, the wind blowing, deer running, and frogs
jumping from lilypad to lilypad. Nature is great. Till the one eyed
deer hunts you down and craps on you. So be aware of the dunt dunt
dunnnnn the One Eyed Deer

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while.  To tide things over, I’m going
to start posting some of the Stories from Innermost Cabin. 
Freshman year, 4 of us stayed at the Innermost Cabin
at the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary.  In the guestbook, we
found a bunch of stories written by schoolchildren that had stayed
before us.

Now, get ready for the first installment, “The Coyote Man”

2/23/01
Greg Miller
The Coyote Man

Walking down the icy path to get to the cabin I saw a coyote but it
didn’t look like one eather, and then I saw it a Coyote Man we were all
scared to death, so we ran to the cabin, we were safe. When we got to
the cabin me and my friend Justin wrote in the Jurnels and and Started
to make a fire. Then we started to burn up from the fire so we took a
walk out to the bathrooms to cool off a little and then it Happend
Coyote Man jumped out and pit a piece of Justin’s arm then Justin got
eatin It was grose. I was running realy fast to get to the babin then
Justin’s dad tripped and Coyote Man eat the whole half of his body now
I was scared. Walking down the path hearing footsteps all the Sudden it
happend Coyote Man bit my head right off.