The week in review.

Before I begin. Posts like this are why I do not share this blog with many, nor do I currently mind that it has a low to non-existent readership. These posts are more for my own organizational good than anything else. However, they are helpful in that they get me to write something, which, I hope, will lead to me writing other things of substance.

This blog is turning into a bizarre to-do list with a self-therapy session overtone.

Anyways, here's the run down for that list of goals I posted last Sunday.

• I didn't write a post that night, but who cares.
  
• Also didn't write that letter until later in the week. It was good timing.
  
• I don't think I got any guitar in this week. No no, I played once for like 20 minutes. I think what I need to do is go through the mess of papers from lessons and organize them (regardless of teacher) by difficulty, then go though them spending a day or two on each section. This will help bring me up to the level I should be at, without having me jump into it right away. I'd also like to retry Mitch's improv approach with better backing songs.
  
• My room was cleaned in stages. It's clean right now, decorations are probably going to find their right place eventually. I spent a lot of time in there today, and realized that I've always tried to make my room an extension of my personality, and my room at home is finally achieving that with a mature design sense. Or I've just accumulated a lot of cool shit over the years and now have an idea of how to put it together.
  
• I haven't read a Bio chapter yet, ostensibly because I 'don't have the syllabus yet.' Whatever, I should just read the chapter on viruses. Viruses are awesome, and I have so many questions about them. To make this work I need to get a notebook (Or binder?), cook something really good then sit down with Bio at the kitchen plastic table and chow down while I study. I also still might have an adderall pill from Matt.
  
• I did one better than not apply at enough places, I didn't apply at any. Big fail. I need to go out and hunt every day after Tuesday when my Mom gets home. And I need to just go into Blockbuster and see what's up. I could do that, but I'd want some daytime shifts.
  
• Sometime that week I rode home from Jack's on my bike at 5 AM and did some reading that wasn't Lem, which was fine.
  
• I couldn't find a way to have blogger publish my del.ici.ous feed. But I didn't search with the keyword 'publish.' Hmmm...
  
• I actually wouldn't be surprised if there isn't some kind of a way to make a computer publish information to a blog. It's not something I'm going to look deeply into doing for some time.
  
• I didn't read any Kant. Maybe before I dive into Bio.
  

My plan this week is to focus on the paper. I've got some appointments to make too. I did that math, and if I bust my chops, I can make the money to buy the things I want this summer. Doing that AND having spending money- to do that I need a job. The summer's social life is steady, which is good. I'm always more introspective in summer, but I can't let that be to the detriment of my social life. Also, buy a bike lock. My mom said she'd pay for it. My bike goal this week? Well, I need to start riding around with a bag, carrying stuff. But that's not hard enough. Maybe bike part of the way to the lake? (take the bus the rest?) Hopefully an opportunity will present itself. I need to get to the apple store at some point and look into getting that keyboard fixed. I should try calling first. I should also call Kilpsch and see about that bent-ass pre-amp input.

That's my plan, yup.

Kantent

Unpacking today I came across Immanuel Kant's seminal work Critique of Pure Reason, and thought:

"Damn, this would make a good book box."

The only problem? I would feel bad destroying a book I hadn't even read, especially such an important (read: expensive) work as the Critique.

"But what am I going to store contraband in then?"

I concluded the only way that I could properly deconstruct the Kantian turn (to my heat's Kantentment) would be if I read it first. But I'm not going to try to read this book in long sittings, as I'd rather not develop narcolepsy. Reading it in short sittings every once in a while means I'll forget the line of reasoning that brought me to the point I'm at. So I've decided the best way to digest this high-cholesterol thought-clot is a page a day.

Hopefully this will work better than my goal of reading a page of the dictionary a day. Although both works have about the same amount of narrative thrust, I feel like Kant's will be a little easier to hang on to. I'll try to post a short synopsis of each page I read, to keep from reading without thinking. There is also the reward of being able to destroy something at the end.

Maybe I'll read the first page tonite. First, I'm going to stare into space like I have a head disease. I Kan't wait!

And another thing...

In addition to there being no elegant method of tagging music,* why can I not have my computer aggregate the total of those tags every week and post it to this place?

THESE PROBLEMS NEED SOLVING

*There is a somewhat elegant solution using Quicksilver (Mac).

Delicious.

I need to find a way to have it so whenever I add a link to del.ici.ous, it posts it to my blog. Can I do that?

I'll investigate later today.

And The Results Are In...

These are the goals I had.

-Apply for a job at AT LEAST ten places
-Put air in my bike tires
-Clean my room (aka, unpack finally so I can stop dressing myself out of garbage bags)
-Totally fucking beat Ape Escape. (N.B: this goal is not important)
-Read a chapter of Biology
-Play some guitar

-3. Real win, champ.
-Yep. 'Bout to go ride.
-Yessir. Well, the first wave. The second is just some books, clothes and posters.
-Nope. Pretty glad I didn't. On the last level. It turns out that game is actually boring and games like GTA IV are not.
-No. I don't know what chapters to use, which is a bad excuse.
-No. Grr.

How can I improve my results? Stagger the goals.

TONITE:

Write a blog entry not just about the 'dealing with my stuff' side of my life.

BY MONDAY:

Write a letter to Rose.

BY TUESDAY:

Play some guitar.
Finish cleaning my room.

By THURSDAY:

Have read a Bio chapter
Have called everywhere by me and asked if they were hiring, and have applied at the ones that are. Also check back in with the places I did apply.

SOMETIME THIS WEEK:

Ride to Jack's house on my bike.
Read some Lem.

And that's the run down.

How To Download Music From The Internet

A Guide for the Confused.

Reposted from Facebook.

I've had some people asking me how to find music lately so here are the answers to those questions.

I find most of my music these days using Google Blog search.
Step One. Pick an album you want to download. Two, go to Google Blog Search and type in the album name/artist. Look for the links that don't look totally sketchy. Unlike a web search, you might have to dig a little deeper than just the first few results. Alternatively, just check out the aggregates in the links below. They look good.

The downloads are usually uploaded to rapidshare/megaupload/zshare, etc. If you're looking to download a bunch at once, go for the links that aren't to rapidshare since they make you wait a while between each download. (And enter a bunch of fucking cats) You can do a couple downloads in a row with Megaupload, and other sites have even high limits. Most of these sites have prohibitions against downloading more than one thing at once, but there's generally a variety of options of where to download from.

Here's the fun part. Once you find the album, which is usually on a blogspot blog, look around the rest of the blog, because they'll have things related to what you were looking for and it's a good way to discover music. These blogs also have long lists of links on the side to other music blogs. I usually open all the cool sounding ones in new tabs and go apeshit downloading everything I can that sounds good or looks interesting. Here's a list of blogs that I've found cool stuff from.

General Experimental Music

Mutant Sounds They write reviews too, which is cool. Lots of Krautrock/related.
Rusted Noise Industrial stuff
Silent Noise Control All sorts of weirdness.
Because God Told Me To Do It Weird shit.
Tonton Mahood More of the 'rock' side of experimental, but still a buncha weird shit.
Deleted Scenes, Forgotten Dreams All these experimental blogs have cool weird stuff, actually.
DualTrack Recently posted a horror movie starring Tiny Tim as a clown, if you're into that.
Experimental, Etc Lots of good stuff here.
Museum of Imaginary Histories They write reviews too.
The Thing on the Doorstep I ended up with some cool post-punk (I think?) stuff from this blog.
A Closet of Curiosities Lotta field recordings on this one.
Astraal Tempel RhytHymns Drone, krautrock, anything with a more meditative vibe.
Electronix Obscure

Grab Bag

Staring at the Apocalypse
It's Coming Out of Your Speaker
Infinite-Machine Everything from Jazz to Anarchopunk. There's a bunch of Crass up right now.
Psychotic Leisure Music More than just the name.
Square Dancing in a Round House They categorize by genre on the side-bar, which makes it easy to explore.
Anticonsciousness Hipster stuff, I think. I dunno?
In the Crowd! "Soul, Blues, Jazz, R&B, Ska, Punk, All Stuff and More" to quote.
Querbeet From William Basinski, Miles Davis, Flipper, Einsturzen Neuabaten, Devendra Banhart, Brianiac. Just to name some shit.
Seven Spaces of Empty Place "Pop/Psych/Folk/Noise/Jazz/World and other things..."
Chronic Music
Musical SchizophreniaIndie/Rock/Hip-Hop
Caucasian Tabloid
Steal Bars Check out the Ratatat remixes. Also, they have some rare Girl Talk.

World

Awesome Tapes from Africa Legit.
Sun of Latin Music
Abracadabra- LPs do Brasil LPs from Brazil.
Brazilian Nuggets More on the Brazilian music tip.
Reggae Roots Downloads One love, man

Funk/Soul

Funky16Corners This guy knows what's up when it comes to all things soulful.
Iron Leg The 'Other Blog' of the Funky16Corners guy. Focuses more on Garage/Psychedelia. Check the Digital Trip archives.
Sounds of the 70s More than just funk, but that too.

Hip-Hop

The Smoking Section For more mainstream rap. They're good at posting stuff that's going to be popular before it is, for those of you concerned with that.
Beats and Blood Mostly hip-hop. Currently some Glam-Rock goin' on.
Real Hip Hop Beholders
The Essence of Hip Hop
[ [ dope blog fresh ] ]Both dope and fresh, I suppose.
The Hip-Hop Collection
Diggin in da (indie)cratez Unheard of vinyl rips
Hip Hop - 12"
Underground Hip Hop Collection Blog
Original Underground Hip Hop I had no idea that Nas was 'underground,' but so it goes.
Underground Rap US & French
Strickly 4 th G's Please, no non-G's.
The Best BLOG of Hardcore RAP
Strictly Beats Instrumental stuff
Underground Dirty Rap Shaolin Soul
Underground Hip-Hop for Dummies Only for dummies.
Another Sound Mission Lots of influential artists/albums

Electronica/Dance

The Sexy Result The only decent strictly electronica/dance blog I've found so far. It's alright.

Aggregates

Link Talk This is a forum. Referred by Elliot. Looks like they have a ton.
Chewbone
XChannel

Wishlist

This is stuff I want that I either haven't found or haven't looked for yet. Lemme know if you find anything.
-Movies. Apparently you can download whole movies in good quality online. Where? How?
-80s/New Wave, beyond the usual litany of 80's one hit wonders- or the albums the good ones are from.
-Disco, not the mainstream stuff, but stuff from when Disco was still an underground thing
-Good Dance Music, whatever you think that means.
-Some Masters at Work, Frankie Knuckles or other early Chicago House music
-Jungle, not the watered down stuff. ShyFX and related artists would be good.
-Oldies, pop and rock & roll from the 50's, 60's. It'd probably be in a torrent, but I'd like some sort of compilation that's basically all the stuff they play on oldies radio
-The GTA IV soundtrack
-More Trip-Hop

Alright, there it is. That's how I find music online. Hope that helps those of you that were asking. If you have a method for finding music, what is it? What are some good sites? Let me know.

Don't be an elitist fuck, share music. Being greedy doesn't make you cool, it kills music.

Any questions, ask.

See Me In A Year, You!

I went to see the Audiologist today, since when people talk to me I can't hear them very well.

My hearing is normal, but it's borderline. Literally, there's a line on the chart that demarcates the split between 'normal' hearing and shitty hearing. My hearing is pretty much on that line.

The diagnosis? Come back in a year. It's possible my hearing has always been that way, or it could be diminishing. We'll find out in a year.

Stuff like that makes me think about where I'll be in a year, and more mysteriously, who I'll be in a year. If nothing changes drastically, next year I'll be enjoying the last 'summer break' of my youth. Will I have an internship, or even a job? Will I know what I want to pursue by then? Will I still have the same friends, be in the same relationship? What will I look like, how will I feel about myself? How much money will I have?

More directly, how will my hearing be?

These are questions I can't answer. (But I can guess: no, yes, probably not, yes, hopefully, handsome, good, still not enough, the same.) A year is a good benchmark to see change and growth in oneself, but it's hard to prognosticate that far in the future. Who knows, by June 2009 we might have a Black President. Or perhaps by June 2009 the terrorists will have won.* Who can say? Not me. I can set some goals for the end of the week, though:

-Apply for a job at AT LEAST ten places
-Put air in my bike tires
-Clean my room (aka, unpack finally so I can stop dressing myself out of garbage bags)
-Totally fucking beat Ape Escape. (N.B: this goal is not important)
-Read a chapter of Biology
-Play some guitar

That's all. That's it. There's nothing else.
*Terrorism always wins.