Jeff

overdue

So I haven’t updated this in ages (like 3 weeks…) and I hit the button in my bookmarks toolbar and realized that I’ve grown tired of the design. I’m also getting up the energy to stand up and sit on my bed to work. I probably will get around to redesigning this sometime, I have an idea mocked up on paper, which means little since my ability to recreate paper concepts on my computer is very limited, but we shall see. It looks good in my head, still very simple and I’ve gotten a few different techniques to try with it.

Anyhow, I’ve been busy with classes. Senior design has consumed a lot of my free time along with my part-time job. I’m already on my second task and pretty far into it, it’s pretty neat and I think I will implement another neat feature that will make it even neater for now. For our senior design project, we have settled on a quad-rotor. You can follow it here: LINK. I am the one updating the site mostly, hopefully in the coming weeks I will add pictures. I will probably end up mirroring all of them here anyways. I also am getting back into Java and undertaking Operating Systems. I have confidence I should do fine in both courses, I just need them to get rolling.

I’ve been enjoying going out and doing things with friends (mostly Devin and Dave). We have visited Chumley’s twice and then the other day we played Edward Fortyhands and had a very fun time. Nothing really matches the absurdity and entertainment you get from doing everything with two giant bottles of beer taped to your hands, well almost nothing. Try it sometime, petting the cat… with a forty taped to your hand, standing up from your chair… with a forty taped to your hand, scratching your arm… with a forty taped to your hand, opening a door… okay you get the idea I hope.

Well, I’m going back to Java, my good old friend… for now.


home tomorrow

So I shall be going home tomorrow (more like later today). I am not sure if I will be sleeping tonight or how long it may be. But I am looking forward to getting home and seeing my family and home. This will be among the last days I will be sleeping in that house when it is my home. This May I should be moving out and becoming gasp an adult. sigh I am sadly not prepared mentally for it just yet. I still want to enjoy parts of life a little more. I am not sure I feel completely ready to make that step for super responsibility. I am sure I will be come May, but knowing that my life is going to make that transition to being an adult is tough, because I can never go back. I may not want to, but being apprehensive is natural I guess. Oh well, I plan on raiding my parent’s music collection when I get home. I’ve fallen into more of a classic but great rock stage. I am currently listening to some Elvis Costello, and will probably go through and pick some more bands to put into my circulation… I haven’t really expanded my music collection much these past two years… I really need to try and stretch my legs again, I’m getting old and sticking to the same old stuff and not being young and musically adventurous any more :3. Well, I should get back to coding, I have to try and get a big chunk of coding done tonight and tomorrow so that my next two weeks isn’t complete and utter hell, just a milder, lighter, low-calorie form of hell.


top 5 favorite

I just had dinner with my sister and she told me she asked my father earlier this week what his top 5 favorite songs were. I began thinking what mine were and realized I can’t name them. I struggle to think of 5 songs I always like or can always listen to. I jump between music so randomly and get stuck listening to things for long periods of time. I think if I were to name my top 5 favorite songs, not a single one of my favorite artists would sit on that list, because to be my favorite artist, I enjoy the entire album or albums. This means that no one song stands out above the rest, or not to the point where I can definitely pick it. I love Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen, but being asked to pick one song off that album as my favorite I just can’t do. It would mean demeaning the rest of that wonderful album. I then end up going to singles that are alone on their album, where the rest of the album falls far short of the mark set. I also find new and wonderful music on an almost weekly basis, just this past week I began obsessively listening to Muse. I have already racked up over 600 tracks listened to (just check my Last.FM) and I think I could consider one of their albums among my top 5 albums. But to have to go through all their tracks and look at one and think “that’s the one” is probably too hard. I also listen to a lot of trance, I like it to work to, not many lyrics and good melody makes for amazing background noise while I work away. I enjoy some of the tracks to just close my eyes and focus, no real words or expression. But would trance fall into the top 5 ? My most listened to song on Last.FM is a trance song (White Sand by Sunlounger and Armin van Buuren, its amazing). I like Beck and the Flaming Lips a bunch, but neither has one of those stand out songs.

I don’t think I can answer someone when they ask for my top 5 favorite songs, I can give them albums or artists, but I enjoy entire albums more than singles. I like the concept of an album. A complete album trumps a mix of great singles. A great album blends and builds up. It lasts for an hour and the entire album is unique, no repetition. A mixture of feelings and expressions that creates this fantastic whole. It gives you a mixture of up tempo and mellow, of heartfelt and casual, of emotion and thoughts. It really grabs you and doesn’t stop after one track, it takes the entire 12 tracks to finish it. My top 5 albums would have to be: Born to Run, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Black Holes and Revelations, Greatest Hits (Queen), and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Those are whole albums I listen to on a regular basis. It may change occasionally (like Black Holes is recent, like within the past month I discovered Muse, I highly recommend them). But again, I scroll through the other albums I listen to and can find another 10 or so that can compete for that list and I begin wondering if I should put them in, my mood can change just enough where one of these albums sounds better than one listed at that moment. It’s a challenge to name a top 5, because I have an attachment to many other songs and it feels sad almost to leave them out. I guess I’m just a sappy loser who doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of singles or albums…

What are your top 5?