Me Bro got a Blog!

cool. Very cool. I'm gonna have to get him to post some more on it. I put it in the links. His name is Abraham if you don't know him. He has a great post up about his trip to bab al mandab. More soon.

On Philosophy and other stuff...

I think I am a connoisseur. Of rock. I like and admire all sorts of things in music that drive my parents and friends and siblings, and everyone else as well for that matter, up the wall. I just read a SF short story/novella on the nature of connoisseurs, time traveling and the human spirit. Brilliant piece of work, only problem is that I don't remember who wrote it or what it was called. I have it upstairs, If anyone is really interested, I can dig it out for you. At any rate, one of the themes was that a connoisseur is someone who can really enjoy something that the proletariat can't, or rather, doesn't. Now however, we are all doused in different things to different levels, so while I am a connoisseur of rock, I can't stand other things, such as the twentieth century classic novel. People must like them, 'cause they're classics, but somehow when I read I experience, not just hear, and most of twentieth century literature is gloom, doom, despair, and agony, which I can't say I like.

I doubt I will start a major trend or anything here, but I want to post a list and see if anyone else has come up with a list anything like it. Ok:

Interesting things I have done while the electricity is out:
Burnt my hair (not intentionally)
studied computer programming by candlelight... (didn't notice anything ironic for a while)
made strike on box candles (by wrapping matches in melted wax from candles)
Studied AP chemistry (I felt like an alchemist fooling with archaic symbols by candlelight)

to end on a happy note, I CAN DO IMPLICIT INTEGRATION FINALLY! Yeah! happy. That may be the single hardest math concept I have tried to date...

The Track Meet

Yes. Last Wednesday, seven or eight big schools emptied out into the city stadium, and then chucked flat rubber things around, grunted under the weight of canon ball things, went flying over bars, jumping into sand pits, and running in circles. To the outside observer, we were all bonkers. However, to the carefully trained insiders eye, it was all carefully controlled chaos. It was the city track meet.

At any rate, I helped pile things into a car to take out to the stadium, helped set up all the high jump equipment, rolled shots and discii across the soccer field in preparation for the big day. Then the chaos began. Abe took first place in shot put in his age category and second in discuss. He may have taken other things, but I don't know. I took first in discuss, second in high jump, and third in the relay. I was rather disappointed with myself in high jump. I only cleared 165 cm this year, when I had cleared 170 last year. Ah well, such is life. I also competed in shot, but I didn't place.

We all came home at the end of the day, happy, hungry, thirsty and sun burnt. There was not one instance of cheating reported to the best of my knowledge, which was remarkable. Unfortunately, SIS (my school) lost the trophy to Yemen Modern School, but we lost a lot of brilliant athletes when the seniors graduated last year. I think we would have won the relay had Tarik been there, as well as several other sprints. Additionally, Hazim could have done something about some of the long distance events, and Jeremy could have put me in my place with Discus. We only had two really serious female athletes as well, which is where YMS made over half of their points. Only one or two more girls would have made a big difference on the number of points we had at the end of the day. I doubt we would have won even so, but it would have been much closer than it was.

100! (And other things)

This is very cool: post one hundred. *Bells and chimes and angels singing hallelujah and fireworks and other stuff along those lines* I have also been attacked by a very large and very vicious army in imperia online... 1000 troops I think... not sure there, the read out was this bizarre mix of Arabic, Chinese, English and other bizarre characters and numbers. One of the numbers was 1000. Ok on to more interesting topics. A random fact of life: cat + laser = fun. A tad sadistic, but highly amusing. There are some really pretty animated fractal flames at image savant, I linked it, you really should go there. Amazing stuff, but not for slow Internet, unless like me you just can't stay away from the stuff. Its so... amazingly... beautiful!

To relate a small experience or two from the day. Tonight, I had a mountain of homework. Several evil teachers ganged up on me and decided that they would try to kill me with sleep deprivation. It failed haha! I stoked up on techno (the really really fast kind) and I was somehow able to manipulate my iPod, read my text book and still do my calc homework at about 2 normal speed. I doubt I can do that many times, but it sure was amazing tonight. I also got physics out of the way as well as government. By my teacher's admission, I probably shouldn't be taking the class, but if I drop it I have to leave the honors program, so I won't. A note to those who don't know me well: I hate politics. The only excusable instance of politics is in Frank Herbert's Dune. Amazing stuff that, somehow I have to read conversations through multiple times to understand half of whats going on, but the thorough dousing in it has (I like to think) made me slightly more subtle. Jeffrey and Jeremy are going to laugh in my face here, but then to quote Marvin the depressed robot; (not part of anything Frank Herbert) "Its part of the shape of the universe."

Finally, Mr. George (my lit teacher, notorious for not being very good at much of anything) pulled an awesome stunt today. I asked leave to print off an assignment that I had done, and was granted leave to do so. So I printed it off and handed it to him. He put it down in front of him, and had lost it and was asking me for it again by the end of the period. Fun fun. I made him look for it (politely I think... hope) and he eventually found it again, but all the same, I think he just set a new record for speed of teacher loosing assignment in this school at any rate. Ok, I have waxed loquacious enough, I am now sated with penning my own existence to the Internet.

Yet more Fractals

I have just found one of the most amazing collections of fractal flames ever! Who ever compiled them is a genius; the colors are simply gorgeous! http://www.imagesavant.com is one beautiful fractal after another, and when you get to the bottom, there are a list of links to other pages of fractals! and you can download them all! Beautiful!

A legal A dolt

yep, eighteen. Bummer. I can now die for my country, not that I would or anything, I think I would try to get out of something as stupid as the army by claiming something weird like pacifistic objectionator or whatever it is that they call those people despite the fact that I am not actually a pacifist. Rather, I believe that the problems we have now can't be solved by military might. Look at how far that got us. We can't even find bin Laden. The only remedy I can think of is immaturity. I think I drove Jason a bit bonkers in Physics this morning with springs and weights...

Ok, something funny I saw in school today: go to http://www.caffeineweb.com for a funny page on the effects of caffeine on spiders.

Gone with the Hurricane

I have just recovered sufficiently to write cohesively. (I think. I may not have. Tell me if I haven't. If you understand this.) I have been blown away by two things very key to my life as a whole: technology and music. I just downloaded a music video by Evanescence: Going Under (live), loaded it onto my iPod, plugged my iPod into my guitar amp, turned the lights off, turned the volume up, and watched it. I can't believe the resolution on the iPod video! crystal clear! the pixels on the screen are tiny! It is phenomenal! Beautiful! The color range and precision! Gorgeous! And the music? Amazing. This is one of my favorite bands (obviously, as it is the same band I have posted at the moment) and they have done some very nice things to their music. While the recording wasn't as clear as I have heard in the beginning of the song, it does clear up a bit. Downs of the song include the fact that Amy Lee's normally crystal clear voice is distorted as if by pain in the second verse, and is almost totally wiped out in the first verse by the recording and the distortion used, but in the third verse it is back to the standards I have come to know and admire in that band. Ups include many things. They finally added a guitar riff to the song! Very cool. Also, the synth work in the background adds a new level to the complexity of the song, meshing the intense guitar perfectly with the rest of the music, giving the song a unity that it didn't have before. My congratulations and thanks go out to Apple and Evanescence for the very high high I just had.

Reponsibility

Blah. In next to no time at all I shall be 18 and shall have to bear up under governmental irritations such as taxes and the draft, and get sent off to Iraq and shot for all I'm worth! I still don't have a drivers license... I wonder how much longer that will last. Hopefully another six months at least. Ah well, birthdays aren't all evil: I got a music stand! And a musheda! Tallesin will recall how wonderful those can be from our travels to far off exotic islands... This one is really nice: its blue, very dark blue, and has gold colored stitching in it. Its wool too, so it should be nice and warm on airplanes and such. I like it a lot. Anyway, I finally noticed that the song wasn't all the way loaded, so I fixed that. (I hope.) It is Sweet Sacrifice by Evanescence on the album The Open Door.

My Long Christmas and Newyears Week

Well. I ran the sound system for the Christmas eve service. It was a mess! A funny one in retrospect, but rather bothersome at the time. I set most of it up with the help of a techie from SIS (my school, and where we had the service) on the 23rd, but there was this irritating buzzing noise from one of the mics. So, on the 24th, I went hunting for a way to get rid of it. I knew where the school kept the extra mics and equipment, unfortunately, they were all behind a locked door. Well, no problem. Locked doors are only a minor problem out at SIS, there are dozen ways by one. However, I didn't have my normal school equipment with me (my ruler) so I couldn't get in. However, you can climb over the back wall of the sound room from the boys bathroom and get in. Problems involved: wall is very high, around 4 meters. No problem. The walls in the shower block are two meters high, easy enough, and there is a ledge half way to help with that as well. Problem two: nobody ever cleans the tops of the walls. I mean, who ever looks there? The tops of the walls were very dusty, and I was wearing black pants and a black shirt. I assessed the situation and decided to take off my pants and climb over (here I must comment in gratitude to boxer shorts). I got my shirt dusty, but it was heavily patterned, so with a quick few brushes It was invisible. So I scrambled up and over the first wall, and then up and over the second, and faced a four meter drop down into the sound room, with very weak shelves to catch me on one side, and light bulbs sticking out of the wall on the other. Needless to say I did it very carefully. I got down safely, found the mics, and opened the door (all doors at SIS, when locked, do not open from the outside, but will open from the inside. This door was no different) and then stoped. Wait. The entire orchestra is sitting up on the stage, and I don't have my pants on, and I need to get back to the boys bathroom to get them. I looked up to analyze the reverse climb. Yes, the shelves were stable on the outsides, they were basically just a pile of cement bricks. I didn't exactly care to do the reverse climb (which was a sight harder than the first climb) while carrying a box of mics, so I set the mics outside on the floor and then started to climb back over. This is where things should have gone wrong, however, I got lucky. I managed to get back over the wall, only getting marginally more dusty than I was already, find my pants again and retrieved the mics. I live for crazy things like that, and nobody even noticed any dust! At any rate, Fate decided that I hadn't done enough in the service of the church that night: The entire sound system was up, running, beautiful, and clear. (I mean crystal clear, except for all the echos, which were unavoidable because of the design of the room. It was not designed with auditorium in mind. The ceiling is composed of several large triangular panels that incidentally reflect everything I have been able to launch at them with the exception of several very sharp darts (One of my friends' darts is still stuck up there, 7 meters off the ground. This is a big room) Including sound waves. Alright, so everything works well, but the sound is a little goofed from the acoustics of the room. Oh well, nothings perfect. This is where Fate kicks in. In marches the Ethiopian choir. All well and good. They sing a song or two every Christmas for the edification of the rest of the church, despite the fact that nobody understands what they are singing about. Then this bozo with a keyboard shows up and demands to be plugged in. Only one problem: no cables. So I rerouted some things and told him he could plug in to my equipment, that I was letting the orchestra use as a monitor. He wanted complete and total control, so he blasted the sound on his organ thing, and nearly cracked my amp open. I turned the master volume down, but my monitor was not connected to the sound system controls. Bad. At any rate, despite all that, the service was relatively clear, I got several compliments for the clarity of the sound. If it wasn't for my uncle it might have been much worse. My uncle runs the sound for his church, and I get to sit in the sound booth when I visit his church, where I learned how to do some things clumsily.

Anyway, that was the sound system mess. This is not where the story stops. Christmas dawned bright and early, and I had a wonderful Christmas. I am using the wireless mouse my brothers gave me even as I type. Well I would be, but I'm typing. But it is a really nice mouse. Ergonomic and everything. It works really well with age of empires, as it has two extra buttons that are very useful for idle villager and town center, for those of you who have played the game. What I want to play now is Mechwarrior 4 Mercs, but Jeremy up and went to college, so I can't. Ah well.

Camping at Hodeida has fallen apart. This year the Erskines, Kappers, Pahls, Libersomthingorothers (German name, unpronounceable), Mufurahs, Hudsons and McCulloughs went. Of those families five actually had youth group age kids, and only two had high school age kids. It was also short, lasting three days, and it rained. Twice. There is a long story about that, however, this post grows to ponderous lengths, so I will not include it here. The raft this year was a success! We went from being the only people not to make the wreck, to being the only people to make the wreck! We were not the only raft either. Tal is going to have a fit. He leaves and Abe and I beat the V's, and then we make it out to the wreck without him! I can't see that I blame him either. It took us an hour and seventeen minutes to go 4.4 km with the wind, and 4 hours to do it without it. Mr. Erskine designed the raft for us, and Jonathan and Timothy went on it, and I must say that I was skeptical, but it worked, and well. It was a brick! square and hard. It worked though! 9 truck inner tubes, 19 meters of 4cm by 4cm lumber, a huge pipe, a 2x3 meter tarp, and a kilometer of rope, and we made the wreck. The last 400 meters was purdy nasty. The water was choked with seaweed: the prickly type. Jonathan was howling. Good (if a tad nasty) fun. The wreck has disintegrated to the point of dangerousness though, so despite the fact that I have actually gotten to the wreck, I have never been on it. Bummer.

The way back was interesting. We had gotten very wet the night before, (it rained for 4 hours or so), and the mountains were full of fog. We were only going about 30 km an hour, and at that rate it was going to be dark by the time we got to Sana'a, so we decided to stay at a hotel. This was the 31st of December. The Coxes were having a new years eve party, and it was going to be good, but instead we spent it at a hotel with a bunch of Australians who got drunk to the sound of an Aud and drums. (pronounced sorta weird with a guttural in the first syllable Aood, or maybe Auood. Whatever). The Yemenis did their traditional synchronized knife dancing for us, and I abandoned the cause and went to bed. There is a lot of knife dancing here. (People who have been in Yemen and seen these dances will laugh at the description I gave.)

At any rate, this post is now at ridiculous lengths, so I will briefly conclude. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Faster Than a Speeding Car...

Today we went carolling. Cool factor of maybe a 2. I'm feeling generous. However, that isn't what I am going to write about. If you don't like hearing about peoples impressive (or not so impressive feats) this post is not for you. However, all you other people: I managed to outrun a car. In city, and on pavement. Light traffic. 1.2 km. Well, not quite out run. I got onto the street first, but our house was at the other side of it, so the car pulled up first, but that's not bad! I was at our gate before anyone could have gotten out of the car. Any way, its nearly bed time, I just thought I would spread my happiness on the web. Sing with me all you neohippies! Come on! Come on! Everyone, all together now: Kumbaiya...

Techno, Asimov, & Beta Blogger

Ok, for the sake of...stuff, I am going to address these things backwards. Firstly, I got upgraded to Beta Blogger!!! Like it? Google is amazing, simple and beautiful. My praise is never ending. I have only ever had one problem with any website put together by them, and I figured a way around it, so it wasn't even really a problem.

Secondly, I have taken it to my head to try to follow in Asimov's footsteps. Sort of. There is no way that I could write 400 boks before I die, inspired or no, neither are my skill sufficient for the task, or my mind acute enough. However, I figure that I have to start somewhere. If anyone would really like to see what I have done, send me an email at gmail.com. My address is the same as the URL in this blog.

Lastly, I have inundated myself with techno. It is a wonderful feeling. I didn't think it was possible to get hi off of music, but let me tell you it is. I have gotten one adrenaline rush after another listening to this stuff. It may even be addictive. The feeling of energy I get from it is just great! Where do I get it you ask? Answer: iTunes. Podcasts. Techtronic sound is amazing, I think there are some other good ones out there as well, but I will have to do some exploring to find out. Anyway, its getting late here, nearly midnight, I should hit the sack. Night dudes.

The Godfather

I have just discovered the second song worth memorizing! (on guitar that is) It is "Speak Softly Love": the love theme from The Godfather (incidentally, a movie I now want to see.) The first song worth memorizing was "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" but that one was a bit long, so I have parts of it all jumbled up. I should go back and work on it again. However, "Speak Softly Love" is purdy cool. I nearly have it, and I just got the music today. One of the great things about it was that to get it I had to learn a new key, but hey, this is exactly what I have been looking for: a piece of music that is quite a ways beyond my skill level that intrigues me, and I found it, and I got it and it was cool! I should record it and set it as my new song, but not tonight. I still sound terrible, and I have another 1000 words to write on my very large paper tonight if I am going to keep up with my quota... I think I am going to need more data by the end of this mess.

A Hair Straightening Experience

I finally have time to update! Cool. This last week I quite literally had a hair straightening experience. My hair was straight. You want the story? Ok. It all started in Economics several days ago. A girl I know decided that she wanted to see what I looked like with straight hair, so she announced that she was going to straighten my hair the next day in British Lit (we were watching some Shakespeare thing). So the next day I wandered into class, and she pulls out all this freaky equipment and starts clipping it all together. Eventually, she was up and running, and she got all my hair straight. The result?
Funny, huh? I should get a perm. It is perfect rock god hair.

What a Day!

Weekend rather. Wednesday was school, school was good, played volleyball after school, worked on spiking, came home, led youth group, went to bed. Slept in. Woke up late (ten or so) worked on homework and such for five hours. Played Ultimate Frisbee for two hours. Came home with a friend (Jeffrey). Worked on a RPG we are making together. He spent the night. Next morning is church. After church is church picnic, with another game of ultimate and a game of volleyball. Get home with six friends. Test our RPG game for two and a half hours with friends. Update blog. Go to bed. I am all sore from all this running and jumping and throwing and catching, and my brain is dead from one hard core thinking session after another (my calculator program that is supposed to calculate die rolls for me is still not working, four versions latter...) and several major revisions have been made to our RPG. I can't think straight anymore, so if you want an analysis of how the RPG test run went, you can go to Jeffrey's blog, which is fortunately already linked. I hurt all over. Good night.

I'm Flying!

Whee! 256kbps internet! (Be though silent all you people with mad fast internet.) everything goes twice as fast as before! I am feeling the inexorable call of research...gotta run. Sorry people.

All Alone

Well, Abe went to Bab al Mandab for 10 days, Mom and Dad went hiking with some visitors for the next day and a half, Peter and Lydia are spending the night elsewhere, and I've got the house. I am considering moving my amp downstairs and really blaring pieces of my music collection over it. I could play some of the really heavy ones that the rest of my family doesn't appreciate too with out any complaints... Demon Hunter, here we come. I am looking forwards to being a bachelor. Hahaha! I could also make an addition to Xebec... We shall see. The day stretches full of possibilities before me...

Violin Run In

Well, I forgot my guitar to band class today, so I had to make due with a violin. Curious things them. First you get this thing and you put it under your chin. Then you look at it. Then you take this stick thing with more strings on it, and to produce horrid noises, you rub the strings on the stick thing on the strings of the violin thing.

Half an hour latter, I was able to quasi sight read the simplest of songs. If you gave me an hour and a half or so in a quiet place with a stick thing, a violin, and some music, I should be able to figure the basics out. My intonation was terrible, but I have a great ear for that kind of thing. It was one of the things I was born with: the ability to hear these really irritating out of tune things that nobody else can hear. It drives me mad. I was nearly ready to beat the violin thing against a wall and break the stick thing over my knee by the end of it all. (out of tune noise is one of the best ways to irritate me.)

Something May Be Wrong...

I just finished taking a shower, and instead of trying to put my shirt over my head like I'm supposed to, I for some reason tried to wear them like pants. I was busy fantasizing about beating up robbers in a break in. I woke up when I realized that my foot wasn't fitting. I then began to worry about the state of my mind. I tried math. Things seemed to be working, but then, has two plus two always equaled four? I asked Dad. He said yes. However, he then said, "but if you had said five I think I might have said yes to that too," which got me even more confused and worried, so I called after him, "so is it four or five?" no response. This is where you can help. Is two plus two five, or is it really four after all?

A Holiday from Heck

That about sums it up. I have done a large amount of school work on almost every day of this week off. Tomorrow school starts up again, and I still have a 1200 word paper to write that is due tomorrow. The econ project that has been killing me for the past several days is mostly out of the way now, all I have to do is rehearse my lines and wave pieces of paper around now before I give the presentation. If we don't get an A on this project I am going to go postal. The type in a school. The one day that I did nothing was the very first day of this crazy "vacation." I have done more work this week than on a normal week that had school. Largely school is when they teach you stuff, you don't actually work, its the homework afterwards, of which I have been doing an inordinate amount. The goal of teachers is to kill seniors. I am convinced.

Ultimate Dinosaurs

I just got back from ultimate Frisbee, where I ran around in circles for two hours straight, attacking my team with a piece of plastic. I hit Keith's hand today. Most people don't come back for seconds... I throw fairly hard. I love that game, but for some reason nobody was playing very well, so it was a sort of muted fun.

Ok, I just finished listening to "kingdom of the Dinosaurs" by five iron frenzy. However, it is far too stupid to update. This guy just yells "kingdom of the Dinosaurs" again and again to this stomping tuba music in the back that is not all that well orchestrated... I have no idea why I just listened to that. Don't listen to it unless you need a sanity check. If you think this is good music, you failed. This is kinda like the insanity test: http://www.owenrudge.net/various/insanity.htm I crack up every time... Legally insane.