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Entries from December 2017

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Anagraphs and Generalized Kerning (22 Dec 2017 at 18:17)

Well, merry checklistmas etc., I finally got something done this month; it's this:

Anagraphs movie; rated G for general audiences

The movie above is another fun project, I hope entertainingly explained, with some twists. It concerns the dismemberment of letters to generalize anagrams, which I call anagraphs. It was presaged in post 1146 which may give you some idea how long it takes me to finally finish such projects. This one lended itself to some interesting computational problems, which I wisely realized would better exist in a completely separate video; it's this:

51 minute lecture about Turing Machines, Linear Logic

This latter movie is far less polished and rated C for College, because it's basically a lecture about decidability, specifically two uses of the technique of reduction to prove an undecidability result, and then a decidability result. If you like that kind of stuff, you will probably enjoy it, but if not, you were warned!

Also crossed off the checklist, I 100%ed Super Mario Odyssey and finished some books I was reading, as well as keeping up my streak of running every single day (today was #159). This makes my slate clean to start on new projects, a state that I just love being in, and will likely postpone through the holiday! Happy new year to you!

Categories: hacks video

(11 comments — 9 months ago) [ comment ]

Entries from November 2017

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Seismograph (30 Nov 2017 at 23:22)

Too bad, so sad, I didn't finish anything interesting yet for a blog post for November. I have an in-progress video about something previewed in post 1146, but other than that and some regular musical doodlings, this month has been pretty light on the creative projects. Exacerbating factors include: (1) "Super Mario Odyssey," a real nightmare for completionists like me with its apparently ~1000 stars to collect. Have about 800. (2) The fine-as-in China game "Cuphead" which I am really enjoying. Aside from one flameball sprite that is really bothering me, it has one of the most incredible visual styles of any game in recent memory, and I personally think the difficulty is spot on. Almost done with this one. (3) Traveled and read some books, finishing "Station 11" (★★★☆☆) and almost finishing "Inadequate Equilibria" which has some flaws but is overall very interesting. (4) The busy time of year at work. (5) Continued my now pretty long-running streak of running every single day no matter what. Due to poor record-keeping at the beginning (not knowing that it would become a streak), I'm not completely confident what date I actually started on, but by now I've worked out that it's at least 137 days, so we're calling it a 137-day streak. I have some software to process the run data, which could produce graphics for a future blog post, but right now it's just some squiggly lines that don't make that much sense, like so:

Squiggly lines that don't make that much sense

The running is hard and saps the creative energy but it's good for me. I'm pretty invested in the streak now, thinking about the endgame, but it's a bit tricky since I don't want to encourage myself to do something stupid (e.g., get to the point where I dangerously run through an injury to unlock some achievement).

(2 comments — almost 7 years ago) [ comment ]

Entries from October 2017

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OLD: Why can't the band skate? (31 Oct 2017 at 22:58)

I have a bunch of old, almost-finished projects kicking around on my hard drive, including a number of recordings of Sick Ridiculous and the Sick Ridiculous tracks that we wisely recorded sloppy versions of just before Nels moved to Belgium (and then elsewhere). Since I haven't plugged in my Roland SC-880 and something changed about the sample rates my sound card is willing to play (?), it's been a bit of a pain to mix and master these, but today I figured out a workaround for one of those problems. So I finished off this old track "Why can't the band skate?"

Why can't the band skate?

We made this track for dwrensha's (and his twin brother's) birthday on 11/11/2011, making it our third or fourth birthday song. That was six years ago (in fact I was reminded by the sequel of this birthday party coming up shortly) but the thing about Sick Ridiculous is The Band is Still Active and Never Forget and A Watched Pot Never Boils! So, Solicit MP3 from emporium.

Categories: mp3 sick ridiculous

(3 comments — almost 7 years ago) [ comment ]

Entries from September 2017

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Old man gets older (30 Sep 2017 at 23:40)

Oops, I accidentally played Zelda: Breath of the Wild until after midnight and missed my reserved time to post a September update. Part of the update is that I played this game a whole lot, and it's really great for someone of my sensibilities (like once you get past the first part of the game it tells you to go to some town, but you can just do anything you want, so I went in the other direction. The game is excellent at creating these little puzzles and stories from the way you choose to play it. I spent two hours trying to climb up the side of some cliff face, finding the little polygons where I could just glitch it enough to regain my stamina, and when I got to the top I froze to death right away. It was awesome). Coincidentally, the last PC game I played was "Just Cause 3", which is kind of the same idea except with God Mode enabled by default and guns. Anyway, sorry for another lamez post!

I've continued the running project that I remarked on in #1147, making something like 90 days of consecutive runs now; no exceptions. (I don't actually know when it started because I don't have records of days that I used the treadmill or elliptical, so I'm not sure if some of the old gaps were filled or not, I mean before I decided that I was doing this.) I've definitely gotten in better shape, although I think I'm feeling signs of plateauing at this point. Goal is at least to make it to the marathon that I'm running in Lausanne at the end of October. Similar to something that happens every September—but with a new, larger number—I turned 38 and ran the Great Race 10k. I'm definitely nowhere near as fast as I was nine years ago, but I had a basically reasonable finish of 47m07s, for an average pace of 7m35s/mile. I also even did some Pac Tom runs this month; you can see some updated maps on the Pac Tom ultimate website.

Since there are a few hills and laps that I run every day, but Garmin's site is kind of garbage for keeping track of my times, I've been developing some software for parsing the GPS trails and doing Tom 7-approved careful maths to calculate the times and various other statistics. Mostly it gives me something to think about when I'm running, but I should also be able to share some interesting graphs and conclusions (e.g. is it better to rest thoroughly before running up a big hill) as I accumulate more data.

Category: races

(8 comments — 7 years ago) [ comment ]

Entries from August 2017

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Tom 7 Entertainment System - Persistent Blister (31 Aug 2017 at 23:44)

It's right down to the wire, but I managed to actually finish one of my several concurrent projects, another T7ES EP:

Tom 7 Entertainment System - Persistent Blister

I like the four-song format, since I tend to collect songs throughout the year and it's a pretty efficient way to discharge some #1 club hits while forcing myself to finish some stinkers to pad the discography. The songs:

1. ceors' - This is the only one I'm sure I like. I came home after having a discussion or argument with my friend William about jazz, feeling nonspecifically mad about his formalist approach, and hate-wrote this "jazz" song which is weird and which I quite like.

for #1 club hit.

2. theme from california - I can't remember the difference between this and theme from chiptopia

3. theme from limerence - This one has a track labeled ANNOYING. Can you figure out which one it is?

4. theme from chiptopia - This is whichever one theme from california isn't

I did do a pretty slapdash job on the mastering (not to mention the cover art, though do you see my typographic joke? this album is twice foreshadowing an upcoming project, in fact), so I reserve the right to upload new versions of these if I listen to them tomorrow and can't stand some mistake. When I link them up from the t7es homepage or new bandcamp page, you'll know that they're certified fresh on the tom7atom7eter.

Categories: mp3 t7es

(2 comments — 7 years ago) [ comment ]

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