New Additions, Thesis, & What's Cooking?

So, firstly I would like to show you all some additions to the hallway. It makes it a bit dark but still I like, ominous though. Thoughts suggestions?



I had a bit of time before school started up again to cook cook cook. Decided to cook up a nice London Broil roast. I haven't cooked this in probably like 7-8 years now, it's been a long time. It came out well though so worth the effort. Also, the meat dry aged for 20 days, gosh dang it was good meat, I wish I had pictures of it when it was raw. Anyhow I got some pics of it just about done.





The beginning of the end has begun. In fact its now two weeks in and for some classes three weeks in. I'm only taking three classes this semester. One on java and basically working with massive amounts of textual information. It's supposed to be a hard first 4 weeks and then downhill from there. I was on the verge of head splode. Yeah, regular expressions in java, TreeMaps, HashMaps, and Big O! (I miss watching that show on Cartoon Network, I miss cable, CalArts dorms the good ole' days) But ya, head splode it was like the TreeMap biz today with mentions of the HashTable, gosh, talking about stuff like the amount of cycles it will take to index into a concordance N amount of numbers ends up being things like, N to the 12th power, but then we can get it down to N log base 2 N. It's like gagh!!! Next week it's bayesian filters and the hash. Gonna need some hash to get through that class.

Second class is Sousveillance Culture, which is pretty cool, seminar on inverse surveillance. Pointing the camera back at the Man wherever he may be. Have a good teacher, so it should be a good class as well as a nice compliment to my last class the biggie.

THESIS! Yes, it is here, the thesis seminar. Well looks like from the schedule we're presenting every single week 10-15 minutes or more, with weekly crits. This week we had to present some contextual references and contextual projects, present on parts of our personal statement, our background for coming to this project, and our methodology. Pulled out of course some Michael Foucault about the panopticon and then went all og like that and went to the source. Mista Jeremy Bentham himself, the father of the panopticon, 1780's baby. Oh yeah, if that don't get you excited hell I dunno what would. Anyhow, it actually is quite interesting and I have come to realize on re-reading some of the Foucault that Tekserve's database system and its way it operates is a panopticon. The database is always observable from any point and all work is tied into it along with all marks on productivity. Anyone can see what anyone is looking at, at any given time, or working on for that matter, before or after any sort of transaction. Complete control. Anyhow, that aside the presentation went well, I felt I covered all the points that needed to be covered. I presented for the project references Finishing School's "Today It's Voluntary" and Meagan Collins, myself, and Roman Jaster's street sign project back from 2005. Made me start to miss CalArts thought thinking about the street sign project and the people's.

Back to the Tekserve, had a bit of an issue a bit ago had to take somethings up with the HR. However, I may have a chance at a paid internship with Turnstone Consulting LLC. It's the company of one of my professor's. So, if so more than likely I will be taking "this time to tend to my resignation." I'm pretty excited about this prospect. We'll see.

Other than that, it's been mostly school. I didn't even get to watch the super bowl. But I did find the most awesome commercials aired during it. Audi's. The first is the Godfather one, I love the detail with the oil stains all over the sheets, as if it were blood. Take a look here.



However, the best one though is this one. "Truth in the Blacklist." Showing off one of the evilest cars ever made, the Audi quattro S1, the Group B version. Group B rallying that is, aka unlimited technologies, only need for 5000 car production numbers, unlimited boost = unlimited power, basically the monsters. So the quattro, pretty wicked, 600-1000 brake horsepower, 4WD, 2.1L 5 cylinder turbocharged engine, 0-60 in just over 2 seconds. So, fast it was claimed to drive faster than a driver can think. So, yes the best commercial goes to the Group B Audi spot. Enjoy.



Oh, and I almost completely forgot, news. "Death, Destruction, and the Weather Coming Up Next" is coming to NYC in April. It's going to be screened at the Anthology Film Archive. It's going to be part of the New Filmmakers series, I'm going to show with a group of friends from CalArts both the experimental animation program and film/video program. It should be awesome. Lots of CalArts nostalgia going on lately. Anyways that's it for now, back to it.

Colin & Other News

First off, I want to pay some respects to Colin McRae (1968-2007). For those of you who don't know who Colin McRae is, he's a Scottish rally driver. He won the World Rally Championship in 1995 for Subaru. He was runner up in 1996, 1997, and 2001. Known for being quite a fearless driver which resulted numerous times in offs, crashes, and the like due to pushing just a little to hard. Always haven driven flat out there was no toning down his tenacity. I had the chance to see him in 2006 at the X-Games, the first year they held a rally event. He was well out front of the competition, however he landed wrong after the final jump and rolled his car. He landed wheels down and took off as soon as they hit the ground and finished only a tenth of a second shy of 1st place. I was utterly shocked and amazed that he could pull off almost winning even after rolling his car. Here is a video from that day.



It's been a very rapid ascent this fall semester. right off the bat during the first week and continuing on I've had on minimum 150-200 pages of reading. Now this ain't your light reading it's all freakin' dense as hell. A lot of modernity, postmodernity, globalization, hybridity, economics, cultural relations, and the list goes on. I had two presentations this week and a paper due on top of that so I'm pretty spent. The paper and conjoining presentation was rather interesting material. It was a response to chapter by Flusser on the camera as an apparatus. Talked a lot about power relationships, medium, the "program" or design, and the entrapment of apparatuses. One of the examples I threw out during my presentation was the fallacy of power afforded by the Web 2.0 phenomina. Some people had some ardent arguements about that. My teacher backed me up on it, but it was definitely interesting discussion. However, all this left me very tired. I do have to say it's all very interesting reading and I enjoy it even if it's utterly draining sometimes. I find it will probably come in handy during thesis time this coming semester.

I am still coveting the blasted iPod Touch, but seriously, I need to know if it can be jailbaited before I buy one. I'm telling myself I want it for the N.N.W., but another part is I just want it. Really it's just trying to justify the means. Oi! Maybe I should take up a collection for "The Buy Emery an iPod Touch Foundation." I've also begun to eye the Logitech Revolution MX mouse, it feels so good, nice and heavy, and really nice ergonomic fit in the hand. It's got a place for your thumb. It feels real nice. I have to see if I will need it for the amount of time I'll be on the comp. We'll see. That one is a lot more in reach than the Touch.

On the 14th, "Death, Destruction, and the Weather Coming Up Next" screened in Milan, Italy at the Milano Film Festival. It was part of the "Different American Cinema" program. I'm still really shocked that it made it there. Sometime in this week or next week it will be getting shown in Taipei, Taiwan, at the Taiwanese International Animation Festival. I guess it has a hint at having legs.

Anyways I got more reading to do, so I'm gonna head back to that. but before I go here's a few little random tidbits. The first from the military industrial complex, of Russia. The other from the G-Train stations. Enjoy.


Amazing jet the Russian SU35.



"Me and Pookie put something special in the 'Special Sauce.'"