October 4, 2009
Music in the Works
I've been working on some new (original) songs for the past month or two. During this time I've decided that I would keep everything in WIP status until I've created a decent number of songs that I can put together as a cohesive piece of work. This will definitely take a couple of months, especially when I have school and job hunting to take care of, as well as parties to attend. I'll eventually release a demo or stand alone song when I think it's appropriate.August 7, 2009
Old site
I was digging through some files from an old computer that I found sitting in a closet, looking to see if there was anything still useful or nostalgic that I could salvage. There was a copy of this website from early 2005, back when I was still a senior in high school. Looking through it, I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I wrote some of those blog posts. I'm making it viewable for a little while, because as bad as my writing was, and as ugly as it is, it was online at one point, and looking at it again now should help to exemplify all the changes and additions I've made over these short four years.Yeah, I know I've been asked to update my site, and I know this post is a pretty lame way to do it. I'm trying to create some new content (music with Renoise), and I'm not really planning to post anything until I make some quality stuff.
May 25, 2009
Renoise
I've been playing around with Renoise lately, and I must say I like it a lot more than Madtracker. The problem with Madtracker is that it hasn't been updated in over three years. Meanwhile, Renoise is updated constantly, and has many more features and capabilities, and is a contemporary digital audio workstation. I'm not sure how it compares to more expensive DAWs such as FL Studio and Reason, but for what I want to do with it, it seems more than worth the money. I'll be starting fresh as far as music making goes and will be switching over to Renoise.I've already put together a couple of songs with Renoise for the game my friend and I are planning to make. Feedback please!
May 10, 2009
Paintings
I took a painting class this semester, and I've finally been able to post photos of my paintings.May 7, 2009
End of Semester Anecdotes
This semester is over, and I only have one left before I get to leave Cleveland and never look back. I'm going to write a couple of short anecdotes from this semester. You may or may not find them as amusing as I did, but I don't really care.Senior Project
For about the first month and a half during my co-op, I was tasked with creating and testing a couple of proof-of-concept heat exchangers. This turned out to be the perfect project to use for my senior project capstone. Due to the nature of the methodology, I wasn't required to do any heavy theoretical calculations. If you've ever taken a Thermo and Fluids class, you'd understand how messy the equations associated with heat exchangers can get. During my final presentation, I presented the efficiencies that I got out of the heat exchangers based on the data. My professor/advisor then asked me if I had done the 1/1-NTU calculations that he taught to us in Thermo II a few years ago. I immediately thought to myself, "oh shit, I have no fucking idea what that even means," but replied, "No, but I'll definitely include that in the paper".I didn't really get a chance to start on the final report until the day before it was due, since I had two very important finals that I desperately needed to study for. I sat down in front of my computer and pretty much wrote the entire twenty page monster in one day. As I approached the end of the Discussions section, I decided it was time to include the NTU equation that my professor had requested. I checked Wikipedia and other sources for more information as to how to do it, and what exactly it meant, and only managed to find out that NTU stood for "Number of Transfer Units" as well as a few convoluted equations that eventually lead up to NTU = UA/Cmin. I plugged and chugged my numbers and came up with a small decimal that I had no idea know what to do with. I was running short on time to turn this sucker in, so I just left it there without any real explanation for its meaning. I finished up the Conclusions section, and emailed the report to my professor, hoping he wouldn't read it too carefully, as he had many of these to grade in just a few short days.
So I got a reply e-mail from my advisor today. He told me that I did an overall good job, and then went on to address only ONE part of my paper. Guess what it was?
"The part that I requested on effectiveness for a counter flow heat exchanger with cmin/cmax = 1, is e = NTU/(1 + NTU), not = 1/(1 – NTU). I changed that part and followed through with the numbers in your report..."So I used the wrong equation. That's all he had to say. I'm just relieved that he didn't call me out for half-assing and leaving that part of the paper up to the reader's imagination. The rest of the report was decent, so perhaps he decided to give me a break.
Painting
I finally decided to take a Painting class this semester, which though I thoroughly enjoyed, I barely managed to ever get there on time since it was a three hour long class that started at 9:30 AM on Monday and Wednesday. On the Monday after Spring Break, I stumbled into class half awake, having had less than five hours of sleep. The professor handed out a short pamphlet about Andy Warhol as a background prep for our pop art project. I read through it, brushed it aside, and laid my head down on the desk while waiting for further instructions. Unexpectedly, the professor asked us to pull out a sheet of paper, meaning he was giving us a pop quiz. Needless to mention, I did fairly poorly. A few days passed by when my professor addressed me one day out of the blue:Professor: Kevin, where were you born?
Me: China
Professor: When did you move to the US?
Me: When I was four, why?
Professor: Well you did rather poorly on this quiz, I was wondering if I've been reading you wrong all this time.
Me: Ohh... hah, yeah. I was half-awake when I took that quiz. The truth is actually more embarrassing.
The best part about the class was the absence and late policy. Although the professor reminded us many times that class starts at 9:30 sharp, and the syllabus stated that more than three absences would result in a letter grade reduction of our final grade, I ended up sleeping in a good five times, and was usually 10-20 minutes late to class. I wasn't the only one, as other students were often late and absent a good number of times as well. Although I started to worry about my grade after my third skip, I had a feeling that he was too lively and good natured to really punish us for being tardy or absent, especially if we did well on our paintings. I must've been right, because I ended up with an A.
Vibrations
I took arguably the hardest tech elective I could have chosen: Vibrations. One of my friends was signed up for this class, and told me how it was important to understand this material as a mechanical engineer. At the last minute, I decided to sign up. The class is listed as two different classes: 387 and 487, 387 being the undergraduate version of 487, a graduate level class. The thing is, there is only one Vibrations class. That is, 387 and 487 are the same class, taught by the same professor, assigned the same homework, and given the same exams. I figured it wouldn't be too bad, but after the first set of homeworks and exam 1, I realized what a mistake it was.After Spring Break, everything went to hell. I got caught up with other classes, and was extremely frustrated with the seemingly impossible Vibrations homework that kept piling up. I kept telling myself that I would finish the homework, even as each due date passed by. Eventually, I had four homeworks that I hadn't turned in, the last of which was already two weeks late. At that point in time, we had had eight homeworks total. I panicked over having four zeros and ruining my grade, so I e-mailed my professor and asked if, despite the solutions having already been posted, I could turn in something and get some credit as opposed to nothing at all. He allowed me to turn in all four for half credit. Unfortunately, my lack of understanding of the material really showed on the second exam. At this point, a C looked like a desirable grade.
In preparation for the final, the professor gave us a previous final for homework. After posting the solutions to that homework, my friend and I learned how to do every single one of the problems. On final exam day, I was delighted to find that six out of the eight problems on the exam were more or less exactly like the practice exam. I managed to score a 62/80 on the final, which was a bit lower than I had hoped for, and figured that a solid C would be easily obtained.
I received a B in that class. No one could have seen that coming. I bet even the professor was thinking to himself as he was turning in grades, "what the fuck, I'm giving this guy a B? I must be out of my mind."
April 19, 2009
PNR Studios
Okay, so Matt and I got busy last summer (school, work, etc) and never finished our jet shoot-em-up. We were also planning to make it a little too ambitious for a first project. Once we're done with this semester, however, we'll get back to work on a simpler shoot-em-up as a first game. I've updated this site with a Games section to anticipate the release of one soon. You can also hit up the PNR Studios website for more details and updates.April 13, 2009
Dingoo A-320
I discovered this cool little Chinese knock-off device, the Dingoo A-320, about two weeks ago. Essentially it's a portal media player (PMP) that has the ability to emulate older consoles, such as the NES and SNES. It's a complete rip off of the Nintendo DS design, and has a GUI that rips off the PSP. Here are a few key specs and features:
- 2.8 inch screen with a 320 x 240 resolution- 400 mhz ARM processor
- 32 megs of RAM
- 4 gigs of built-in flash memory, miniSD slot
- pre-installed NES, SNES, Genesis, GBA, Neo Geo,
CPS1, and CPS2 emulators
- Plays music (MP3, FLAC, etc) and videos (MP4, AVI, etc)
- AV out for connecting it to a TV
- The firmware and emulators can be updated
- The SDK is available (homebrew software!)
From everything I've read, the NES and GBA emulation are more or less flawless, but the SNES emulation is a little bit slow, albeit playable. Overall it's supposed to be worth the money. There are several community sites up and running already, so you can rest assured that you'll have somewhere to go to in case you run into problems or want new software. I'll post up a review when I get mine later this week or so. If you're interested at all, you can find them at DealExtreme for about 83 bucks. FYI, a black version is available as of yesterday.
April 8, 2009
For lack of better things to mention, if you haven't seen Watchmen yet, go see it.I just found this little gem from 2000. It's the very first iteration of this website that I made back when I was in 7th grade. I would just delete the whole thing, but I forgot the account password, so it's going to be there forever, or at least until 50megs decides to deletes it or goes down. There's a lot of crap, very little artwork, and the music are just midis that other people made (I didn't even imagine I'd ever get into music creation back then).
Also, I've added two new things to the music section. The first is a super short little remix of Star Stealing Girl from Chrono Cross / Radical Dreamers. The second is an updated version of Glow, a cover of a Blackfield song.
February 1, 2009
I've been a bum about updating this site for the past few months. Classes have started again, and I've actually got a bit more free time now than I did when I was working full time, so I'm planning to make some new music soon. Stay tuned.July 20, 2008
Holy Updates, Batman!
Three years ago when I discovered that Christian Bale was going to be playing Batman in a darker, more realistically imagined Batman movie, it was immediately placed on the top of my list of movies to see. Since the conclusion of Batman Begins, I've been greatly anticipating the sequel and had set my expectations moderately high. Upon discovering both the new title and the cast, my expectations only continued to climb.I saw The Dark Knight yesterday, and despite all the hype and anticipation I had created for myself, the movie was so good that it took my gargantuan monster of an expectation and made it seem like a harmless little furry animal in comparison. To keep things short, if you haven't seen it yet, please do so whether or not you're a Batman fan. It will change your entire perception of the character.
June 15, 2008
Back
I started my co-op a little over three weeks ago, and since I moved into a new apartment, I haven't had internet until today. For my return, I've added a new song to the music section. It's a little arrangement that I started over a year ago of a lovely song from Final Fantasy III as a way to teach myself how to make sequenced synth piano and drums sound more realistic. You be the judge of how successful I was.Winds of Change
May 7, 2008
Done, Done, and Done.
On the morning of our final presentations, our Computer-aided Machining instructor had this to say to us:Instructor: "So, everyone knows they have their guaranteed B at this point."
April 30, 2008
Instructor: Our first mid term will be next MondayMe: Oh shit!
Instructor: Yeah, shit is right.
