An epic week-end with two concerts and a snow storm and a new camera. And with me forgetting to do some stuff I had meant to on Sunday.

The first concert was Empires in Toledo and that's where the snow storm was. ( stuff about the storm )

Ok, the concert. There were 4 bands total, Empires were third, most people seemed to have come to see them - just from what they were saying when asked at the door. I may not be very objective about it.

( people in the audience )

I ended up not taking that many pictures. I selfishly decided that I wanted to enjoy watching the concert more than I wanted to share it later. There were some funny/sweet moments, like Ryan hugging Sean real tight from behind, or Sean' wire getting entangled in Tom's guitar and Tom trying to continue playing while Sean was sorting things out. They played well and the audience was responsive and it looked like a good time was had by one and all. The new guy Bob who replaced Al seemed nervous but nobody was going to be mean to him.

( musing )

After the concert I stopped by to say hi to them and I ended up talking to Ryan and Max. ( more about talking to them )

I'll talk about the other concert and whatever else later. This is getting long enough as it is and I'll have to put some stuff under cuts.

I'm reading Lovely Bones right now thanks to a Xmas gift from a friend. She had recommended not to see the movie before finishing the book but I lost patience an saw it anyway. I was very much disappointed with it - it's like it didn't really have a point. The book itself is better so far but I hope that the girl becomes more explicitly involved in the action than in the movie.

sex, violence, and gossip. Not really, but I'm copycatting Neil Gaiman and adding gossip to the lot because that's one of the top guilty pleasures that nobody will admit to. He's often promising sex & violence in his tweets linking his blog and then ends up talking about his dog. In the abstract that would not have to necessarily exclude the sex and the violence, but practically it does.

The bit of gossip though is true here, and that's only gossip that everyone knows by now which is that Neil and Amanda Palmer are getting married. The news filled me with inexplicable joy, maybe because she really is the perfect woman for him. If I had to invent a girlfriend for him from scratch, I could not do any better. My best wishes to them both.

The thing I really wanted to say is that I've seen Legion tonight and was quite disappointed with it. I was expecting maybe something in the order of Dogma but less funny. It was very far from it. The plot was pretty much non existent. Bad guys are coming, you gotta shoot a lot of bullets at them. They want to kill a baby and that will be the end of the world. It's all there is to know about it. I really didn't expect one of those movies where your still have a problem only because you didn't put enough bullets in it. And then the question of the baby, why was it special? Whose baby was it? Why was the end of the world related to it in any way? I can't believe they ended the movie without explaining any of it. If anyone reading this complains about spoilers, too bad - I strongly recommend that you don't waste your time seeing this movie.

Also on the down side, the latest book of Laurell K. Hamilton, Skin Trade. Normally I'm following the series with interest but this one bothers me because Anita spends a lot of time explaining herself. Way more than I think is needed. Of course she has this weird love life and abilities, and the cops don't get it and don't trust her and are giving her a hard time because of it. All this is fine, but I suspect that it's there because the writer wants to explain the position Anita is in to the readers, maybe especially to the new-ish ones. What it actually accomplishes is annoying the veteran readers who know all of this already and could you kindly get to the point now is where I'm at.

Just before I left town I was at 2 concerts 2 days in a row, the first almost 4h away and the other one 2h. This in the middle of packing and last minute Xmas shopping.

First concert was 30 Seconds to Mars which I enjoyed a lot, especially as I haven't seen them in almost a year. I'm not crazy about Jared's new haircut but it's just a detail. One thing I really enjoy about the Mars concerts is how much Jared makes the audience interact with him and with each other. He's talking as if every one of the people in the room is his little cousin or something. He's also paying attention to what goes on, like he told a couple of people in the mosh pit to stop fighting. You shouldn't come to such a concert thinking that you're gonna sit down and be quiet. You have to just go with the flow and everything will be fine. I was thinking that Closer to the Edge is a better single than Night of the Hunter, but after hearing them both live I kind of changed my mind. I enjoyed Flyleaf opening for them and was surprised to recognize a couple of songs.

One thing that's been bothering me about Mars is all the bad reviews This Is War is getting. It seems to me that people with little creativity or independent opinions as critics are either being very positive about something, or very negative. Both of these attitudes are usually lacking objectivity and are probably not even theirs - they just go with the trendy thing to think. For some reason they have collectively decided that the cool thing right now is to see Jared and his band and his music as losers, and they don't even make an effort to listen to the music before they comment on it. I am getting so annoyed with all of them - I will just stop reading altogether. I happen to like the album quite a lot and think that they've put a lot of effort into making it elaborate and artistically sound, while keeping it fairly accessible. I wish that people could forget who they are listening to. On the other hand, other musicians are now endorsing the album, like Bill Beckett (<3) and Pete Wentz. But they are not critics, they make music themselves and thus their opinions matter more.

An example of some stupid thing a critic said, approximately, "...Mars made an album that sounds like emo/alternative music but does not understand its soul". What does that mean? That there is something about Mars that is fundamentally different from other alternative bands? Why would that be a bad thing? Why would you want another Fall Out Boy/Panic at the Disco/Death Cab for Cutie copycat? Those kinds of bands are a dime a dozen (not the big names, the copycats). Shouldn't we encourage the people who have their own voice rather than those who sound like everyone else?

Anyway, and so the next day I saw Bill Beckett all alone in a charity concert, acoustic. There were 5 other bands playing before him (at least), but none of the TAI guys made it to this concert. That was sweet although I have decided that 2 bands I have never heard before are more than enough for one night. The highlight of that evening was Bill playing the Marching Bands of Manhattan from Death Cab for Cutie. That was a treat on so many levels, and Bill said that it was one of those songs he wishes he had written himself. A lot of talking from Bill too, which is something I like, and if you're a fans of his you may want to check out Fantasy Football and Team Tightpants. I'm not making it up, that's what he said :P

That's about it, more concerts I'll be going to for the next 3 months. One that I'm really looking forward to is Muse with Silversun Pickups as opening act. Nothing short of the H1N1 will keep me away from that one.

I'm in Texas right now visiting with my sister and family. I meant to post some pics and comments from recent concerts, but it will probably have to wait until after Xmas. In the meantime, this is what I've been up to since I got here, and it was so much fun to do:


empires strike back by ~chimeer on deviantART

It's his fault I am still awake at this hour. The last episode ended with him in the trunk of a car so I had to watch another one.

I'm really getting into this show. If you're in the right mood there are a lot of great lines in it. "Oh, great, she's got issues. So she's not out of my league" (quoting one of the characters). I guess I should be looking for a guy with issues - oh wait, I already had one and I've let him go. Oh wait, his issues Were too big for me. Too big for anyone, probably. Oh well. So much for that.

I can't wait for my road trip to sun and warmth.

Starting the day with a post just because I have things in my head I might forget by noon.

It's been a very eventful and emotional 3 days. For one thing, Empires have released a new single, Bang, and it's been like an internet party. Everyone getting excited, talking about it all over the place, counting down the hours and minutes together until we could get it. I felt like I was part of something. It was great. Oh, and the song is so good, I've listened to it about 20 times in the meantime. It should be a big hit. I wanna find out more about how we the fans can help promote it to radio stations and such.

In other news I found that Bill Beckett has a 2 year old girl. The irony is that it was also in a magazine article I've had for at least 2 months but haven't bothered reading. I am quite happy to know that there is a little girl out there carrying his genes, that is so totally cool. But it changes a bit how I see him. There is nothing like having a kid to make a boy suddenly look like a man. So far I've been keeping myself at a good distance from him at concerts because I was seeing him as this young, pretty, fragile thing I could hurt by just staring at for too long. I guess I don't see him as fragile anymore. I might stop and say hi if I happen to see him after a concert and he's not surrounded by adoring fans.

I guess you forget to pay attention for a couple of years and the boy becomes a man. You forget to pay attention to yourself for a few years and all of a sudden the happy go lucky party girl is now a professional whose major question is "how well did I do my job today?". Time flies, it's the nature of things. Life is what happens when you're busy doing other things (right, John?)

The last eventful thing - I've discovered a very unexpected fellow Wow player. Somebody interesting. If I can stop beating myself over everything that is wrong with me for a minute I might pursue trying to do a dungeon or two with him. It might be a lot of fun.

Ok, I'll end this on a note on Lady Gaga. I hate her name, I don't like her, I hate Poker Face, I dislike how much publicity there is around her. But I have to admit that it is not possible for a song like Bad Romance not to appeal to me. It easier to just accept it.

I had a dream this morning just before I woke up. Someone had taken a fish out of a basin of water and they were going home with it to cook it, but the fish slipped out of their hand and it started to jump and wiggle its way around the room, in search of a water it could get back to. But of course it couldn't, because the rim of the basin was too high up and the fish was nowhere near it. But the fish had quite a lot of life left in it, and it kept struggling, even though it was clear to everyone but it how things would turn out in the end. We were all chasing after it and I asked with sadness, "can't we just kill it?" That's when I woke up.

And then I realized that sometimes this is exactly what love feels like. There is no way for it to accomplish anything, or what it was based on is already over and done and boxed and sealed, but some part of it is still full of life and it struggles not to give up. And I wish I could just give it a blow to the head and silence it, whenever that happens.

I have declared myself satisfied with how far I got into my Flash game. Here is the version I'm settling on, if anyone is curious:
http://chimeer.deviantart.com/art/Shoot-the-Moon-145352303

I'm also making progress with my Cocoa iPod game, but for every 5 steps forward I take I run into an impasse and there are no straight answers out there. Sure, you can find a few tutorials that might point you in the right direction. Each of them is long and takes careful reading and going through the steps at the same time, and it's not easy to spot what the answer to my question would be at a glance. I was hoping to find the one missing link I need to finish my program in a half hour of search plus 1 hour of reading, but it looks like I might need a lot more.

I find it a lot easier to find good documentation about Flash than about Xcode. Of course, Flash being more popular and a simpler environment to some extent explains this.

The last thing I might do with my Xcode game is port it to Visual Studio, maybe the XNA version. But that won't happen in time to show it in my class, I'm afraid.

Each of these things I've been trying to learn could probably take a whole semester just by itself to master properly. Maybe I should rethink my goals better the next time - if there is a next time, that is.

I've been in a strange mood lately. It's like my subconscious is anticipating something big/important/awesome happening soon but my conscious has no idea what. Of course, it's probably related to the semester ending soon - I seem to have lost patience with it. And I'm not the only one. Everyone wants it to be over. Should we go to a trimester system, maybe, if 14 weeks are too long?

Anyway, I find myself impatient with everything - it's like my mind refuses to cooperate and find anything interesting beyond the thing it's looking forward to - which I don't know what it is. It takes effort to concentrate on anything.

It will pass.

I might go see New Moon again. Though I'm definitely not a fan - or at least that's what I tell myself - and there are 3-4 other movies out there I haven't seen that I could go to instead.

I'm off to a Thanksgiving lunch now with my lovely usual hosts. It will be good not to think of myself for a few hours.

I managed to finish the Wind-up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami and I'm reasonably happy with the ending. I mean I suppose that part of the Japanese state of mind and philosophy or tradition is not to explain to the audience absolutely every detail of the story and to leave some of it up to their interpretation. Or at least to make the reader think/understand some of it by themselves. So in that sense I didn't expect everything to be crystal clear, but I think I got it over all. Just don't ask me to explain it. Or I guess I could try to articulate it - but if you haven't read the book yourself, it doesn't make sense to read an interpretation of it.

One funny thing about it - I have been picturing Dr. Lee from Three Rivers in the role of Toru, and since then I got a weird feeling watching the show. It's like I have a secret relationship with Dr Lee now - and once in a while I'm wondering what Toru is doing in that hospital. It will pass. Btw, he's hot - you should check him out.

Talking about the wind-up bird, I was thinking that we go through our lives like some wind-up toys too, and that our spring has a given energy to begin with, which winds down little by little as we grow old. Many things and people can wind us up again from time to time. I was just wondering how do you know where your spring is at in terms of winding down, and how that doesn't necessarily go with the physical degradation of your body - there are old people who are very sprite and younger people who are sort of tired all the time and blase.

Anyway, it was a good book all things considered and I'm glad it was pushed on to me. Not really pushed, but if you leave a book in my house, sooner or later it's gonna get read.

I don't often repost clips but this one is really well made - for cat lovers:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/what-cats-are-really-thinking-cci

In other news, I am learning about 5 new libraries/APIs for writing games this semester, which is sort of awesome, but can get confusing. I have been writing this iPod touch game using the Game Salad, a pretty nice program overall but with some limitations. I'm still learning my way around Flash and plan to do a memory game to hone my skills. And turn it into a lab for my game programming class. It looks like the students would really like to learn a bit about the XNA - so I will be installing that on Windows soon-ish and start playing with. And last, I just installed the full iPod/iPhone SDK on my office Mac because I think that if you're serious about writing iPod games, you need more than the Game Salad. I will start looking into it some more any time now.

I am reading this book that Chrys left for me last summer, The Chronicles of the Wind-Up Bird by Haruki Murakami and it's sort of different from my usual lectures. The book feels very strange, although nothing really that abnormal (or paranormal) has happened yet per se. When I started I had a suspicion that the lead character was in fact dead, kind of like in the Sixth Sense style, but I don't think that's the case. Although I'm not completely convinced yet either. It has a little bit of the Ring feeling, the original Japanese movie. Just a type of voice that I'm not used to that given me a feeling that anything can happen at any time.

I also find it funny how people in books and movie tell their life stories with intimate details to complete strangers within 10 minutes of meeting them, just because the author needs to tell that to the reader, or because the detective needs to learn a clue about the murder, and so on. How many times did that happen to anyone real? Not that I'm complaining about it in this book, it's just funny when you think about it.

I haven't posted here in a while, it's true. This one is about a trip to Toronto to see a play of Matthew Ferguson, Vigil. He produced it himself with a new company he started out, Long Eared Plays. The play was about a guy who is asked to come visit by a dying aunt to say goodbye and he ends up staying a lot longer than planned because the aunt isn't really dying that fast. It was really funny, like almost every line was amusing. Matthew was excellent in it and it was great to be able to enjoy his acting up close (very close).

( More details )

As a footnote to this adventure, I discovered in the meantime that Malcolm Gets, the one who played the quirky but charming Richard in Caroline in the City, another actor I happen to like, will be playing the same role in NY soon. I wish I could go. I'll have to figure out if I can, by any chance.

Lots of things happening around me. Not directly involving me, but I feel close enough to everyone that it affects me. I'm good for now, but it's not the right time for anyone to be snapping at me. Especially for no reason. I feel like the more I try to fix everything around me, the worse it gets.

I've been obsessing these days over Empires. Actually it's We Are Empires (because the name was taken). I'm going to see them next Friday in Chicago and right now that's the thing I'm most looking forward to. I will just be there for the music, and ignoring some people I might know who will probably be there. Not because I don't want to talk to them, but because I don't think they need my company. There is just one person I could tolerate at this concert, but I can't ask them to come. And I'm not even sure if this is their kind of music. Basically I'm playing anti-social right now. To some extent.

I am relieved to find out that 30 Seconds to Mars is reaching a settlement with EMI Records. 30 millions (one million for every second I guess) is a lot to gamble in a guy versus big corporation game, even with a chance to win. So a new album and maybe concerts should be on their way now. Yay. At least someone is seeing reason (unlike other people I know).

Lately I've been feeling like a noble at the court of the Tudors or of one of the Louis French kings, but without all the sex. It all sounds so glamorous. It ain't. I'll have to take things in my hands soon and try to get the machine running smoothly again, but I'm concerned that I might be clumsy and break more stuff than what I would like to fix. It doesn't look so far like I've done anyone any good trying to mingle. I might learn to keep my mouth shut from all this, after all.

Anyway, I gots a neural network and data to feed it, and I'll get more data soon and that is good. Now the real hard stuff starts, which is making it do what I want. But it's fun and it feels good to make progress.

I've been to New Orleans this last week. Taken off in the morning, drove all day, spent two days in good company and being warm and walking a lot and seeing lots of things, including a panel that gave me ideas for a course. Everyone else (almost) was there for a conference. I felt like a fraud being there just for fun. Then drove back to Chicago for an amazing concert at the Bottom Lounge. And I'm posting the link here because We Are Empires will be coming back in May and I intend to go if I don't have something else to do that very day.

Evan Taubenfeld was the first act and I enjoyed it, mostly because he must be the funniest emo guy in Chicago, with a cute and touching style. It was hard not to smile/laugh and he knows very well how to engage a public who was there for someone else. Apparently he was featured in an Avril Lavigne clip once, if I got that right. Next was Empires, acoustic, and even though I'm quite familiar with the music, it's the first time I saw them. A really good first impression. The singer's voice sounds just as good live, with a disturbing but appealing quality, and he can do interesting stuff with it. It's a group to keep an eye on.

And last, there was Bill Beckett from The Academy Is... The poster had the name of the group, but it was just him. Sisky was supposed to be there but he got injured saving a girl from a dragon. I suppose a big model of some sort that was falling on the girl and his hand got in the way. On purpose. Bill didn't tell us the whole story. Back to Bill. I was impressed with his guitar skills. I mean the man can play (insert here a slightly modified chorus from Ziggy). The songs sounded great with just him and an acoustic guitar (actually two of them that he kept switching, for some reason), and we got to hear a lot of little stories about them. I didn't know, for example, what His Girl Friday was about (go Bill, that's a cute one). I also gotta give him props for his Rubik solving skills (see a recent clip on his blog above). He's my hero. Also an acoustic show meant that he didn't get to run around the stage and do his usual rock star routines, but he talked a lot more instead. I will take that for a change. Right in front of me there was this old guy with a little hat who didn't seem to be watching over anyone else (I thought he must be some girl's dad), but seemed to really enjoy the show and the music instead. I wanted to give him a hug. Then I wondered if it could have been Bill's dad by any chance, given that this was his home town.

Down to earth from there (or Earth 2, according to BSG). It's been a rough two months for everyone, it seems. I don't know why that is. Maybe the world has used up their good karma when Obama was elected and now we're paying for it (most likely not - but I do believe in a sort of universal balance and that if something really good happens to you, something really bad has to happen to cancel things out or not necessarily in that order - it can't rain or shine all the time for anyone). I know that people would like me to be well. ( Cutting the details as not interesting but it's my blog and I'll rant if I want to )

I've been reading The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams. At first I was disappointed to find out it wasn't fiction, but a collection of essays. But now I'm glad I picked it up. Everyone should read the cookies story. It's absolutely hilarious.

One of them sent me back to the parallel universe issues and reminded me of Neal Stephenson's book that I read recently. And it made me remember a question that I have: say, in all these alternative worlds just a little bit different from ours, there's a version of me, right? I mean in many of them. But it's not me. It can't be someone else either that looks like me. What if these parallel world simply exist, none of them more real than any other, and then our conscience/soul chooses a path in this multi-dimensional universe. So those copies of me are only probabilistic echoes and not beings with soul. Then I wonder, how do I know that everyone else's soul travels through the universe on the same alternative path as myself? What if we only cross paths from time to time? How many souls do really reside in this world and how many of the people I meet are only probabilistic echoes of beings from a different universe? Because if the multiverse exists, and it most likely does, there is no reason for my path through it to be the same as anyone else's. And of course, this is just speculation because I like to let my mind wander.

Coming back to American Idol, I am sorry for anyone in the competition who is not Adam, because they are a whole league behind him. He's got it all: looks, voice, energy. I just hope America knows what they're doing with the votes (guys, you got it right recently, don't screw up now, please).

Otherwise I'm sick again and totally miserable. ( Cut for whining. )

I can't believe I didn't notice before that I had the Fuse channel, in HD even. And MTV hits and VH1 classic. And Paladia apparently. It's decided: for the rest of my life I'm gonna just stay home and watch music on tv. And talking about it, I love this Dido song and it kind of reflects how I feel atm. Not that it makes any difference to anyone.

I'm thinking of taking a trip to NY in early April. I was kind of looking for an excuse to get out of town for a little while. It would be to see a musician I like, and there are other things I could be doing while there. Maybe even visit with an in-law. We can probably both use the company.

I've started to watch American Idol again last week. I like to wait until they are done with the first steps of the selection. That's when they are left with the best singers. I already have my clear favorite: the emo guy, with a Pete Wenz look and a voice that can hold a candle to Amy Lee of Evanescence. But I'm afraid he's too much into his style to go all the way through: he managed to make a country song sound like Marylin Manson (Randy said NIN - could also be).

Oh, I also finished a painting I've had in mind for a while, and it can be seen here.

I watched the Oscars yesterday. I was rooting for Kate Winslet for the lead female, not because I thought that role was good - I haven't seen the movie, the subject didn't appeal to me - but she's an amazing actress who should have won one already. Like everyone says. No surprise on the Heath Ledger best supporting, just a question: of the two women who came on stage, which one was the mom and which one the sister? I couldn't tell. Props to the mom for that.

I didn't expect Slumdog Millionaire to win so many of them, though. I've seen the movie, by myself, even though someone told me they wanted to see it, and I said I was interested. They never came up with a precise plan and I wasn't in the mood for waiting for anyone to make up their mind. Anyway, I think people should go see it. I know it's superhyped, but it's good. It's as simple as that.

I hate Jason Mraz. ( Cut for more silliness. )