very mëtal

so, yeah.

Heywood Jafakov — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 05:38:00 +0000

sometimes, Lake Michigan really stinks. we're not more than 1/4 mile from the lake, and today the whole neighborhood smells like, i dunno, stale fish er something.

so, what's new?

Heywood Jafakov — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:05:00 +0000

plenty of stuff going on, which is why i haven't posted in awhile...

1) before i forget, check out that PostSecret link over there on the right. i dunno how long that's been around, but i just found out about it a coupla days ago. great stuff. in other blog news, TMWCB has been doing some particularly great stuff lately.

2) recently celebrated my 37th trip around the sun at the Ancient Well, a surreal little chinese restaurant in the basement of a very institutional looking building down the street from our house. when i get a chance i'll post the flyer Jen made, as well as a photo of the fantastic Ding-Dong birthday cake Jen and her friend Holly put together. i've always liked having birthday celebrations in odd-ball places that i think my friends will get a kick out of, and i think this was the best birthday i've had yet!

Ding Dong Cake!

3) went and saw Martha Wainwright (sp?) and Neko Case at the Pabst Theater last night. that was pretty good.

4) i sometimes wonder about the symbolism (if any) of elements of dreams. a recurring theme for me lately has been bookstores and libraries. about a month or so i dreamed about an outdoor used bookstore--it was your usual tall, cramped shelves stuffed with books, except that it was all set up in a big parking lot. i seem to recall that it was a feminist bookstore, if that means anything. So then a coupla nights ago I dreamed that I visited a bunch of used bookstores in some section of what i assume was Chicago, and that at one bookstore I found a copy of the complete illustrations of William Blake, in color, and printed in the late 1800's (I have no idea if such a volume exists in real life, but that's what it was in the dream). for some reason i passed it up. So last night I dreamed that my pal Steve and I were back in Chicago to look for that book. except i couldn't remember which bookstore it was at, so we had to visit all of them. after lots of wandering around not finding anything, we stopped at some mom and pop Polish restaurant for perogies (sp?) but ended up leaving before our orders came. we passed the outdoor feminist bookstore at some point (all closed up, shelves covered with plastic tarps), and finally made it to one bookstore that looked familiar. had a feeling of deja vu that got stronger the more we looked around the place. finally found THE VERY SHELF where i'd seen the Blake book, but of course someone else had already bought it. i was bummed, but picked up the complete works of HP Lovecraft (a book I actually already own) and went home. the end.

5) so, I'm carrying 18 credits this quarter, more credits than i've ever attempted in a quarter or semester EVER. for the first 3 weeks it was pretty smooth sailing, and i kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. well, it hit this week, tho i think i'm gonna be ok if i get a boatload of stuff done this weekend. my VLSI labwork has sort of been a bust, but i'm trying. we shall see.

6) there is no number 6.

7) even tho school started kicking my ass this week, it didn't stop me from building a home-brew version of this thing, a graphical voltmeter so i can tell what some parts of my synth are doing in real-time...mine is a little inaccurate, but good enuf for what i'm doing. I'm pleased that even tho it took me awhile to get it done, it worked and i only spent about $7 bucks on it. a far cry from the $100 that Blacet wants for it. yay me. Next project, building Jen the sampler i said I'd have done by Valentines Day. the parts are in the mail...

Robot Goes Missing!

Heywood Jafakov — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 14:24:00 +0000

This file photo shows a reporter with Russian TV's Channel 1 interviewing an android version of science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick at the NextFest 2005 in Chicago.
Photo: AFP

Philip K Dick is missing.

Not the American science fiction writer whose novels spawned hit films such as Blade Runner and Total Recall -- he died more than 20 years ago -- but a state-of-the-art robot named after the author.

The quirky android, was lost in early January while en route to California by commercial airliner.

"We can't find Phil," said Steve Prilliman of Dallas-based Hanson Robotics, which created the futuristic robot with the FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis, the Automation and Robotics Research Institute at the University of Texas at Arlington and Dick's friend Paul Williams.

"We're very worried because it's been a few weeks now," said Prilliman. "We're pressing hard to find Phil."

Robotics wizard and lead designer David Hanson built the robot as a memorial to Dick, whose 1968 book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspired the 1982 classic Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford.

Short stories by Dick, who died in 1982, served as inspiration for other hit films including the 1990 Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the 2002 Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise.

link

Oh Good, my upstairs neighbor is a nutjob part 2, and ESVC stuff...

Heywood Jafakov — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 19:29:00 +0000

a coupla weeks ago he attempted to keep us from "slamming" our front door by actually jamming something into the lock. we got the landlord involved at this point, who didn't seem surprised, and sent a repairman out toot sweet. landlord musta told the upstairs neighbor to watch it, cuz its been pretty quiet. then yesterday, the neighbor was in the basement, apparently upset cuz he couldn't do laundry (we have seperate washing machines, but one tub that both drain into--if both washing machines run, the tub overflows). suddenly, the DSL goes out and the phone gets really fuzzy, and the neighbor bolts from the house and leaves until last night. Now, I can't prove it, but it seems clear to me that the guy yanked on a coupla phone cables, probably breaking or fraying some of them. I can't prove anything (hence no call to the cops) cuz the phone cables thru the basement are some sort of rat's nest due to a good 90 years or so of retrofitting old equipment. We got the landlord involved again, tho i haven't heard back on the result of that. fortuately we have line backer insurance w/ our phone service, so someone will be out today to work on it. But in the meantime Jen has to stay home today to let the workers in.

i am pissed.

on a lighter note, ESVC is back up and running. we've lost one member and added another--Grant Richter, the inventor of the Wiard synthesizer, and member of seminal space rock band F/i and the Midwest Experimental Music Ensemble (MEME). from the sound of practice yesterday, we really shoulda gotten this guy involved a lot sooner. I am quite excited about where this will all go.

here's a coupla Pre-Grant sound files, recorded live at the Flux Show in November. Good stuff, it was our best show to date! Unfortunately you kind of miss out on Jamal's and George's stunning video work that went with these, but it'll help you get the idea. it sure ain't rock n roll, tho.

Call to Prayer37MB, 14 minutes.

11-05c30MB, 13 minutes.

hope y'all have a fast connection...

oh good...my upstairs neighbor's a nutjob.

Heywood Jafakov — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 01:00:00 +0000

details later.

On a one way track and you're not coming back 'cause the killer's on the attack

Heywood Jafakov — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 04:53:00 +0000

ok, let me just say this: Good news, Sisters o' Mercy are playing in Chicago in March, I should really look into gettin tix to that. Bad news, Senor Eldritch is looking a little rough these days...

so, made it back from Texas and lived to tell the tale. which i will. maybe tomorrow. It was great to have the whole family together, and my sister and brother-in-law sure have a nice house, but wow, I'm sure not a big fan of the area they live in (exurb, as they say, of Dallas)--1/2 hr drive from Dallas to their house, and the freeway is completely lined the whole way on both sides by chain retail/restaurants. a little depressing that was.

but yeah, Jen took lots of great photos of the weird landscape around my sister's subdivision, as well as fun family fotos and home movies, etc. hopefully she'll post some of that stuff to the web so I can post some of it here. stay tuned.

Don't rain on my parade. Or I'll fuck you up.

Heywood Jafakov — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 21:45:00 +0000

Hope the two or three folks who read this had a nice New Years celebration. we sure did--got to see The Mistreaters (best i've seen them in years!) and Aluminum Knot Eye (fantastic, but they usually are), then hit a couple of nice, low key shindigs with old friends. not too bad.

I kinda wish I hadn't worked over my xmas break--i would have liked to get more stuff done around here, but i couldn't pass up getting paid for not much work--not too many people come to the helpdesk over break.

well, I'm skippin class tomorrow so Jen and i can jet to Texas for the weekend to visit my sister and bro-in-law. in the meantime, go check out these goofballs: Finntroll, I guess its a bunch of Finnish folks who sing songs about trolls. I guess they started this as a joke, then decided to run with it--its a type of Finnish folk music reminiscent of celtic folk and polka called humppa played by a death metal band. Sure, its a little goofy, but i dig it.

keepin the Yule logs burnin....

Heywood Jafakov — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 14:07:00 +0000

It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten. Mine were an old people, and were old even when this land was settled three hundred years before. And they were strange, because they had come as dark furtive folk from opiate southern gardens of orchids, and spoken another tongue before they learnt the tongue of the blue-eyed fishers. And now they were scattered, and shared only the rituals of mysteries that none living could understand...
Holy Smokes, what a great christmas i had! I think it'd be no stretch to say that it was my favorite of the 36 that I've experienced thus far, and i hope everyone else had as much fun as I have.

I got a lot of nice things from my immediate family, and my new extended family, but the gift that i liked best is my new xmas stocking. Jen wanted to hang up the stocking she got from her grandmother when she was little, but didn't feel right about hanging hers without having one for me to hang up. She'd been talking for weeks about a "super secret craft project", but i had no idea what that was gonna be.

If you think I’ll sit around as the world goes by, You’re thinkin’ like a fool cause it’s a case of do or die

Heywood Jafakov — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 17:21:00 +0000

i guess i don't always have that much to say, since its occured to me that most of my posts are links and whatnot to stuff that's already available elsewhere. ok, after the first of the year I'll just post stuff i've created myself. in the meantime, check out this person's xmas lights...

ok, so that didn't work. it occured to me after the fact (actually, after i tried to haul up this blog entry in FireFox, only to be greeted by a big blank space) that trying to embed a .wmv file in this here web space might be a little discriminatory towards our Mac brethren and sistren. not to mention those seperated by the great I.E -- Netscape -- Mozilla divide. i dunno, i thought this video file was hilarious, so i'll just post it as a link and see if y'all can view it that way. let me know how it goes.

Another prophet of disaster who says the ship is lost

Heywood Jafakov — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 15:50:00 +0000

Finals are over! some of them actually went ok, for once. I'm at work for a coupla hours, but there's really not much going on...most of the students have already left for Thxgiving break.

if you think that's funny, check this out: Angry Alien...30 second re-enactments of classic films performed by bunnies. I dig the "Pulp Fiction" one, especially.

Can you help me Occupy my brain, oh yeah

Heywood Jafakov — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:42:00 +0000

1. first thing i did this morning was glance in the lizard tank, as is my custom. Davey was perched on a branch, and appeared to be covered with huge blisters and a fine covering of gray mold. before i could shout "what the hell?" i realized that she was just molting, like she does every couple of weeks. you'd think i'd be used to that by now, but it always freaks me out at first glance.

2. Jen and i started off bread and soup season by having my mentor/pal/part-time-employer Grant over for dinner last night. on walking in the door the first thing Grant sez is "show me the basement of this house!" so we go downstairs, and Grant is looking around and saying "aha! i thought so!" Turns out one of his bandmates used to live in our apartment, and F/i actually practiced and recorded the album "Merge Parlor" in the room that i use as a workroom. strange coincidence, right down to the fact that Grant's 4-track and synth equipment sat right where my synth is now...

3. kudos to the Man Who Could Not Blog for keeping this here blog on topic, i.e. Very Mëtal. On his recommendation I just ordered the new SunnO))) cd, "Black One" which sounds really great. Go to Southern Lord's site and give the track off the new "Earth" album a listen, too. also, check out "Twilight", which reduces mëtal to one of its logical conclusions, a big old buzzing drone. Nutty. i think i need to pick that one up, as well.

"someday you'll be just like me, and that's free, but still your chains are on..."

Heywood Jafakov — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 17:21:00 +0000

1. I don't want to say too much and jinx anything, but i think this whole cloud of depression that i've been laboring under for the last three years has lifted, finally. normally winter is the hardest time for me, and i knuckle under pretty soon after Daylight Savings. as of a few weeks ago, tho, things are picking up. my concentration is excellent, productivity is up, mood is elevated. barametric pressure holding steady. Winter quarter is usually something i dread, and by the end of first week I'm usually cutting out at 11am to get completely drunk, and decide which classes will be dropped. Not this time, tho. Granted, i don't have the luxury of dropping classes anymore anyway, but i pulled thru this first week with flying colors. I'm looking forward to all of my classes, and especially kicking ass at them (all repeats too: this is the 4th time I've taken the 2nd transistor course, 3rd time i've taken Physics of Semiconductors, 2nd time for Electric Fields and Generators/Motors). this WILL be the last time for all of them.

1a. been trying to puzzle out what's different this time around...cutting out getting drunk every night/day has helped some. stabilized medications, check. a Good Woman at my side, check. i have been chain smoking this week, tho. gotta keep an eye on that.

1b. My Electric Fields prof looks disturbingly like Phillip Seymore Hoffman.

2. ESVC is on hiatus for a bit. looks like some internal conflicts need to be resolved. one person has left the group, so i hope we can limp along or get this straightened out. hopefully my pal/mentor/part-time-employer will join us. its probably for the best that we take a little break, i want to concentrate on school until i know i can handle it, and i want to take some time over the holidays to make some additions/upgrades to the synth.

3. over there on the right is a link for Montery Bay Aquarium's real-time shark cam...on the same page, check out the penguin cam. it's just a corner of their environment, as they hang out, eat fish, and walk around. its as relaxing as watching fish. I could watch this all day.

4. it's been a rough year for Synth icons. we lost Dr. Bob Moog a few months ago to cancer, and Larry Hendry, a Synth DIY pioneer was killed recently in a motorcycle accident. Now it seems that John Simonton, from PAIA inc, has died. this one especially hits close to home, as John's designs for low cost kits did more to put synth gear in the hands of experimentors than possibly any of the other synth designers around today combined. Not to mention the fact that he was just a really great guy, always willing to share his knowledge and help out. I've had a few very nice email exchanges with John over the years when I couldn't get this thing to work or that thing. I also interviewed him for a class a few years ago, and he was very gracious with the time and info he was willing to share. John will definitely be missed. RIP.

Kick Ass Tortilla soup.

Heywood Jafakov — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 05:49:00 +0000

inspired by the astounding tortilla soup they got over there at the Xel Ha restaurant down the street....

ingredients:
6 TBS vegetable oil
8 (6 inch) corn tortillas, coursely chopped
6 (or more) cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 an onion, chopped
1 (29 oz) can diced tomatoes
2 TBS ground cumin
1 TBS chili powder
3 bay leaves
6 cups chicken broth
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper

Do this:
1. in large pot heat the oil. add tortillas, garlic, cilantro, and onion. saute for 5-6 minutes. you want the tortilla chunks to get a little crispy. otherwise, they'll completely dissolve in the soup and everyone will point and laugh when you say its "tortilla soup". it'll still taste really good, it'll just look a little weird.

2. stir in tomatoes, and bring to a boil. dump in everything else. make it boil again, then cover and let simmer for, i dunno, 30 minutes or so. remember to remove the bay leaves.

hoo boy.

Heywood Jafakov — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 04:36:00 +0000

Are you an able-bodied Sasquatch aged 10 to 150 who loves his or her country? If so, The Republic of Cascadia needs YOU to enlist in the Sasquatch Militia and defend our homeland against our many enemies, including such nefarious evildoers as:

* Canadians
* Southern Californians
* Geoduck & Tree Octopus Poachers
* Paraterrestrials
* Americans
* International Organized Crime Syndicates
* Nosey Cryptozoologists

Besides serving your country, you will also be improving yourself. Sasquatch Militia will teach you many valuable skills that today's employers are looking for in Sasquatch. You will gain a sense of determination and confidence that will help you succeed. And you will also experience compatriotship with your fellow Sasquatch as you work together to secure the freedom of the Republic of Cascadia.

The Republic of Cascadia needs you now, more than ever, in these trying times. Do your part for your nation and don't let another Sasquatch take your place in the ranks of the Sasquatch Militia. Enlistment stations can be found throughout Cascadia's forests, just look for the poster of Uncle Sas.

Effectiveness of aluminum hats

Heywood Jafakov — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:19:00 +0000

I've long been fascinated by the paranoid notion that "they" are attempting to read and/or manipulate our minds by electromagnetic means, and that this can be thwarted by covering our heads with aluminum foil. when i still had a Live Journal acct I once re-published a guide to constructing such a hat.

but now, it seems some MIT folks have actually tested the effectiveness of this psychic defense, and found it wanting:

Abstract:
Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We theorize that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

read the full article here.