Standard Deviations

Happy Father's Day!

2008-06-15T23:22:00.002-04:00

I'd like to take a minute and thank all you good dads out there for doing your jobs properly. People such as my brother and a good number of my friends.

My dad's not included because he's an asshole.

Concerning Recording Artists

2008-05-25T06:09:00.003-04:00

A thought occurred to me today as I was listening to t.A.T.u.'s "Clowns (Can You See Me Now?)" from their first English album, 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane. Pretty much everything I'd heard about Yulia's vocal fold cyst attributed it to the fact that she traditionally had the really high, yelling parts in the duo's songs. As I listened to Clowns, I realized that a huge part of the problem was also the way in which she sings -- you can actually hear the strain on her voice during her parts of the song. Presumably, though, her vocal therapy also involves some voice training to prevent her from damaging her vocal cords that way again.

While I'm on the topic of singing, and even though this blog has a total of one reader at this point (hi Kiwi!), I feel like I should note that I've made a number of my songs available on last.fm. While I'm reasonably certain that if I ever release Prelude to a Swan Song that won't be the final tracklist, I'd rather keep all my uploads in one convenient place for now. So if you happen to have stumbled upon the blog, go check my stuff out!

Odd...

2008-05-10T05:00:00.004-04:00

I've just noticed a marked similarity between the drumming in the Powerpuff Girls opening theme
and the Amen Break, but it's pretty clearly not a sample. Huh.

Music nerding

2008-05-08T10:51:00.004-04:00

Right, I think I can declare myself a well-rounded nerd now.

I read, I'm more-or-less computer savvy, I'm getting into comics, I game... and now I'm a music nerd. You know how I know?

Well, I've taken to listening to my local classical music station in the car to try to broaden my horizons, and what should come on this morning but the finale of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. When it got to the huge choral Ode to Joy bit, I cranked the volume because, let's face it, it's best enjoyed loud.

After a few minutes I realized I was lightly headbanging. So yes, much nerdity.

It occurred to me that Beethoven had a lot of balls. Most lesser composers would write that bit, think "Holy God in Heaven, this is the glorious finale to my piece!" and call it a night. Beethoven, on the other hand, wrote that, then went "Eh, I can outdo that," and wrote another bit that would make a glorious ending.

Then he looked at that and went "I can fucking outdo that, too." So he wrote yet ANOTHER bit to finish it off. That's just genius.

I'm inclined to agree with Hideaki Anno that the 9th Symphony is the pinnacle of human culture. Kind of depressing to think it's all downhill from there, but hey, what are you gonna do?

A couple of updates

2008-01-17T08:09:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry it's been forever, except for that one self-pitying post which never happened. Thought I'd do some updates on a couple of things.

City of Heroes - I've cancelled my account for now. Not because I'm not having fun with it, but I don't really have the disposable income to pay for it right now and my free trial was up. I may play again when I have more money.

Snow - I still hate it. And plows.

My health - Shitty once more. I can't use my nose most of the time and my throat tends to get really dry and painful. Also I need to lose weight.

Miscellaneous - I'll be getting a car next week, more than a month earlier than I expected, because the early withdrawal penalty on my CD is much lower than I anticipated.

Sorry

2007-12-19T13:48:00.000-05:00

Sorry I've been posting so irregularly lately. I've got a lot of homework and finals coming up and I've been tired and I've got a killer headache right now. When I have more time/feel better I'll do a sort-of review of CoH.

The Weekend

2007-12-17T13:50:00.000-05:00

Well, it took a little longer than I expected, but here's the actual update.

I started playing City of Heroes on Saturday and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I've already got four characters and now I'm going to work on leveling them up, although I may just get rid of my blaster. I like the backstory I came up with for him, but I'm just no good at playing a ranged fighter. I'll probably post their profiles sometime soon.

It snowed yesterday, which was no fun. I've lived all my life in New England and lost my affection for snow in my early teens, when my contribution to the shoveling stopped being aesthetic and started to actually matter. My uncle snowblowed the walks, which was nice, but I did end up having to do a substantial bit of the driveway and the stairs. Those weren't too bad, but then the goddamn plows came along and I had to clear out the stuff they covered over, which killed my back for the rest of the day.

This is the last time I will rant at length about snow, I promise.

The Jimmy Olsen comic I ordered a few weeks ago came today, and as expected the inside wasn't quite as batshit as the cover. I'll think about doing a writeup of it sometime.

Oh my God my lower back

2007-12-16T14:19:00.000-05:00

I'll actually post an update later (I promise this time), but here's a summary of what's to come:

City of Heroes is awesome.

FUCK snowplows. Seriously.

Short Update...

2007-12-13T19:38:00.000-05:00

Well, because of the snow (which is still coming down) my concert was canceled, which makes me unhappy. I’m not gonna make a huge update because of the end-of-semester crunch. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a full post tomorrow.

Wow

2007-12-13T12:02:00.000-05:00

Heilige Gott im Himmel, that snow came on quick.

Will make a real post later, but damn.

Std Dev: Origin

2007-12-12T15:07:00.001-05:00

Before I start today’s entry, I’d like to ask for a moment of silence for the world of satire. Though he won’t be gone for quite a while, knowing that the end will come sooner than it otherwise would have makes life just that much more depressing. I would, however, like to thank Pterry for making me laugh about it, because he’s awesome like that.

Now, as promised, I will relate the story nobody cares about: The long, arduous journey of Standard Deviations.

The first seed for Standard Deviations was planted about four years ago, when I was a sophomore in high school. I had recently gotten into webcomics and started reading sprite comics like 8 Bit Theater and Bob and George (which, I am amazed to see, has ended, which means I’ll have to pick it up again sometime and read through to the end). I thought sprite comics were a really interesting concept, and since I can’t draw to save my life, I thought I’d try my hand. I had no ideas and no titles, so at the time it went nowhere.

Fast forward to junior year. I was looking at the grade sheet in my physics class and happened to notice something down the bottom where the class statistics were labeled “Standard deviation.” My immediate thought was that that was the most brilliant oxymoron I’d ever seen in my life, and filed it away for future use.

A little later in the year I returned to my sprite comic idea. I began a Final Fantasy V sprite comic called Standard Deviations, which got about four issues in before I had a hard drive crash. By the time I got my computer running again, the site it was hosted on had had a server crash, and I gave up on it for the time being.

A little later I thought I’d return to the sprite comic, but with the first issues lost to time, I set it aside for good. My next attempt to use the title came shortly after I got this Macbook last summer and realized it had comic-making software. I thought I’d try out an XKCD-style stick figure comic.

Oh god don't click on this it's massive and I forgot how big it was

And then I realized that I couldn’t even draw stick figures to save my life.

So then, a couple months ago, after reading Concerned, one of the most brilliant comics I’ve ever read in my life, I thought I’d try a Garry’s Mod comic.

While that came out somewhat okay, it’s a real pain in the ass to pose everything in Garry’s Mod without completely fucking everything up, so I gave up on that.

And then, after reading a feature on Cracked written by Chris Sims, I started reading the archives of his blog, The Invincible Super-Blog, and decided that I’d like to start my own blog. One Blogspot account setup process and twenty minutes in the Seashore image editing program later, I ended up with what you see before you. Unfortunately, the url I wanted, standarddeviations.blogspot.com, was already taken by someone who hasn’t updated since last year. So, because I’m paranoid about sniggering immature people making jokes about STDs, I ended up with stdeviations.

And here I am.

I'm a dirty rotten liar

2007-12-11T20:42:00.000-05:00

So, I lied, and my first update is today. Sue me.

I’m currently listening to the Black Mages, and I think they may be the greatest video game cover band ever. Not only do they have the original composer as their arranger (and kickass organist), they sound utterly fantastic on every piece they do.

My school choir had its preview concert tonight. We sounded really good, so I think we’ll probably be awesome for the actual concert on Thursday. My legs were all sore afterwards, though, I haven’t stood that long in ages. Oh, and I did nearly get a facefull of ass when we bowed, so that wasn't that bad.

Yes, it was a girl.

I’d pad this out with the aforementioned tale of the genesis of Standard Deviations, but I already gave you a sort-of update earlier so that can wait until later.

Whoops, almost forgot. I discovered I look extremely dashing in all black.

FIRST POST!!!1one

2007-12-11T15:02:00.000-05:00

Well, I've got this nice new blog, I might as well make a first post for it. All zero of my readers can expect the first real post sometime later this week, possibly Saturday.

Maybe in the interim I'll outline the torturous journey of the blog from class grade sheet to blog, even though nobody really cares. I care, and I'm writing, so that's that.

And I swear this won't be like the last three (abandoned) blogs, I swear. I'm going to require myself to write daily and have a word requirement and everything.