Shifting buckets of suggestion
  - [wherein I am lame]
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 __________________________________________
|                                          | 
|  CROP CIRCLES WHERE ARE WE JESUS CHRIST  | 
|  not rings in deadend road brought this  | 
|  fields but a green furrow upon us with  | 
|  finite query gravel paths his parables  | 
|  based in the rusting plow faith judged  | 
|  concepts and the horizons by sightless  | 
|  ideals sewed stitched sum powers above  | 
|  up inside us trees shaded the possible  | 
|_________________________________________|

"was the answer in the question, all along?"

"Existence is no surprise."
       - Roadside Monument

Dive inside for FUN sea adventures!!!
  - Dan Fitch
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Six lines of six:


Opera 4 for Windows is out


RED HOT JAYCEE SENATOR CHAT ROOMS!!


Song Fight has its own domain


Tom the Dancing Bug parodies Matrix


Harmony Central article on digital modelling


Bach violin sonata #1, bass tablature




Now then, pull up a chair and grab the microscope.



Soundesign reminded me; I might finally be ready to check out Csound this weekend.

The definitive reference for this sound creation software might be cSounds.com, home of the in-depth Csound Magazine


Scanned synthesis with video demonstration, worth the 10 minutes in my opinion though you can't see his screen at all. If you don't want to watch, just read the information. Incredible methods for simulating waves.

Tutorial for later, which has good explanatory diagrams. I wonder if I can hook a tablet up and use it like his radio pad and sticks?

Related: Gesture Synthesis R&D by Nick Longo



Whoppers may contain peanuts, along with possible motives.

Also home of Flaming Grape. Yes.


Think! Bars For Greater Mental Health and Longevity!! [herbal Zippy] You have to love the empty thought balloon.


These food advisories are hilarious to me right now. They probably wouldn't be real funny if I was allergic to something more common than the mango family.



Peter Beardsley highlights this incredibly swift "eigenstates for perl" quantum computing article on Kuro5hin.

"I attended Yet Another Perl Conference last week and a very good talk was given by an aussie by the name of Damian Conway on perl, quantum mechanics, and yes, of course, eigenstates:

"All along, Conway had posited a perl module called Quantum::Superposition, which would add a couple new operators to perl, the any(), all(), and eigenstates() operators, and overload the basic unary and binary math and logic operators to work on quantum superpositions as well as ordinary scalars. Then he dropped the bomb. This module exists. He actually wrote it."

"Now, can it really do all that in constant time? No, because as he put it, perl has not yet been ported to run on a pair of supercooled, quantum-entangled calcium ions."

Regular expressions don't scare me quite as bad anymore."

"At first it's just a sort of lassitude or tiredness, as if you suddenly became aware that for a long time, for several hours, you have been succumbing to an insidious, numbing discomfort, not exactly painful but nonetheless intolerable, succumbing to the sickly-sweet and stifling sensation of being without muscles or bones, of being a sack of potatoes surrounded by other potatoes."

An anti-perspirant that smells like sweat
  - [cut out the middleman]
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Abe Books has incredible selection, with all sorts of independant bookstores signed on to their listing program. This is absolutely grand for tracking down out-of-print tomes.

Link in the resources to the BBC's Animated History of Books, narrated by the jabbering head of William Shakespeare. Nice.

Many thanks to Steven Baum's Ethel for the rare book tutoring.

I was finally able to purchase a copy of A Man Asleep which Pete over at the BrowsingTron recommended.


On the other front, Powells is a decent shop with good stuff as well, not as broad but also not as expensive. From there I got Vineland, Slow Learner [early Pynchon], some Hofstadter, and Link [a pulp novel recommended by a coworker]. My book stack is now officially two miles high.



Webmonkey's PHP/MySQL Tutorial, extended with threaded discussion. If I ever sit down on that again.



Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage has lots of blood. Everywhere. Nothing like cutting evil zombies to noodle-like shreds after a long day at work. Slash! Slash! Slash! [quicktime] No, I'm not a homocidal maniac... but my alter ego is!



I got some very fine helpful emails from folks, which I did not save to disk. Now the server is down. Tomorrow! Into the books. Here's a large section from the preface to Entropy in Slow Learner:

"Because the story has been anthologized a couple-three times, people think I know more about the subject of entropy than I really do. Even the normally unhoodwink-able Donald Barthelme has suggested in a magazine interview tha I had some kind of proprietary handle on it. Well, according to the OED the word was coined in 1865 by Rudolf Clausius, on the model of the word "energy", which he took to be Greek for "work-contents". Entropy, or "transformation-contents" was introduced as a way of examining the changes a heat engine went through in a typical cycle, the transformation being heat into work. If Clausius had stuck to his native German and called it Verwandlungsinhalt instead, it could have had an entirely different impact. As it was, after having been worked with in a restrained way for the next 70 or 80 years, entropy got picked up on by some communication theorists and given the cosmic moral twist it continues to enjoy in current usage."

Pragmatistic plagiarism
  - dgfitch
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Another "shoulda seen this sooner": Harmony Central and emagic's Logic Rocket

A distributed digital audio sequencer, allowing anyone to collaborate in a sort of virtual studio. Do I need to add some exclamation points here? This is incredible!! You're going to need a relatively beefy Mac or Windows machine and a good connection, I think. Then fill out some more boxes with frosty white flakes, and you're good to go.

Catch: It's going to have to be a Windows 95 or 98 machine. I will try to figure out how to get it going on my 2000, but the install kicks out. Someone will have to let me know how it works! Should have seen it before I upgraded... [barely audible muttering]



Elsewhere, I was looking in the wrong place for realtime sound processing. The Audio Processing software list is handier.


Analog Box can be used to create "jambots" and also process realtime audio. Again, while it is hyped as realtime, there's still a delay. This one might be slick for handgrown sampling circuits. Sound freaks, cower before the circuit. Tried the Jambots... you can actually see the music arise from circuits. Tweakable, too. Incredible. Try 2, 8, 12, 13a... I just finished enjoying 13a for a half hour there.

"4 additive circuits, each playing a different note. The first ADSR chirps the frequency, the second sets the amplitude. The large fraction on the second add knobs causes a suspended fourth from time to time."



Wave Warp from Sounds Logical looks similar, is more expensive and doesn't even accept input from my SB Live.


Well, I had fun anyway playing old video game bass lines and not learning anything at ALL. Then I swung over and attempted to play along with Doug Pinnick and the boys. Who now? Pop metal funk masters King's X. There's a streaming mp3 from a new album [!] on the page, and it's a play on the Beatles. Not as good as the early stuff.


Listen all ya'll, it's sabotage!



YOU CAN STILL LIFT THE MATRIX OF BUNKUM AND PSEUDOSCIENCE FROM YOUR LIFE



[ripped right from the page of Dave's List of Words That Are Fun to Say]

Funny when used in a sentence: vituperating

"17. Wherefore, though there be indeed many ways in which latent heretics may be sought out, without vituperating the catholic faith or praising heretical impiety..."

"...followed by vituperous words putting you, or any third persons, down."

"...and in general by vituperating Jesus."

"Here the whispers of vituperating foes cannot injure, nor the smiles of those fondly cherished deceive."
[Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth]



Big slap on th' back to everyone's favorite search engine for passing a billion nodes in the index. I'll be real impressed when they actually get a google of something in there.



Someone left this Warcraft III interview in the reflog.



Fun fact: I walk everywhere, and very rarely leech rides like the remora.



Someone riffed on the "FF" yearbook symbol in a meeting. No idea why. I blurted out "FF EQUALS SIX SIX" real loud-like. Everyone was probably thinking "SHUT UP DAN YOU LOUD JERK!!" Now the song is jamming in my head.

"Reified and refined, blurring every line
 I just want a way not to be what gets sold to me
           ____   ____       __   __
 FF = 66  |  __| |  __| __  //_  //_
 FF = 66  |  __| |  __| __ ( O )( O )
          |_|    |_|        \_/  \_/
 Six
 Six feet deep in the irony
 You see the light?  Yeah, it's getting bigger!"

 Jawbox - "FF = 66"

Got any spare rhythm you could lend a poor sap?
  - This page brought to you by the power of trees
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BuzzTrack is somewhat back. I have some rockin' Tetris-ish foundations down now. Too much fun for a free thing, it truly is addictive. Because of the bass, I didn't find many drawing links. Soon, T. Soon.



Target Quake for Q3A

Haha, sidescrolling deathmatch is the biz, combining Mario and shooting. Check it out if you have Quake3, it's fun.

I couldn't find the original TargetQuake1, which was a full sidescrolling game. Shoot me a link if you have it please: dgfitch@yahoo.com



Lazy Eye indie zine

includes neato things the rock kids will like, such as:

Ye Olde Built to Spill interview, Dismemberment Plan interview, Fugazi, usw.

The reviews just rate by "yes" or "no", which is simple enough.



So glad Morimoto won. [No, I didn't read that before and spoil it.]

FoodTV's webserver got taken down hard immediately afterward.

"WAAH! I'm sure to be the champion! Raise the roof! More stupid pro wrestling clichés! WOO!"

 - Bobby Flay [obviously not a real quote, silly]



There was even more randomized stuffing last week. Believe it.