Coming up: spring

Had a really nice late breakfast with Ana last Thursday, reminded me of a time when we both had less mundane stuff to deal with, or at least so it seemed. The sun was out, the food took only an hour to arrive (I was the one who placed the order, so obviously the waitress immediately wiped her memory clean), for some reason it felt like summertime.

I'm grudgingly coming around on the subject of summer, I have to admit. And the Mediterranean climate in general. Meeting people out on town is so much more pleasant when the sun is out, and what else am I gonna do with my life but try to keep meeting people out on town as often as possible?

Also bought Crusader Kings 2 and it might become my favorite game of all time (dethroning Europa Universalis 2, also from Paradox Entertainment). The scope and complexity are absolutely mindblowing, so it seems almost infinitely replayable. And the developers are already opening the code up for user-made modifications in the patches, so it can only get better (the AGC-EEP mods for EU2 kept me playing that game for 2 years, I think).

The downside is I already spent 36 hours playing it, and I only got it on Tuesday. I actually need to set myself strict deadlines, like "you're only playing this thing until 3 p.m." - and I haven't yet met any of them. It is so good.

Core element

And then all of a sudden you really miss someone. It just pops up out of the blue, and there it is.

Thankfully, it's bedtime, and nowadays it rarely sticks around for breakfast.

Rooftops

My trip to Krakow ended up being a little weird, with the birthday girl packing her stuff and leaving abruptly mid-weekend. Also, I'm out of cash, so I had to get the cheap tickets, and ended up standing in the hallway for 3 hours on my way there and barely managing to squeeze myself into a compartment with 7 other people on the way back. All in all, a less than smooth transition, and I rarely handle displacement well in the first place, so I shut down for a moment there.

Also, my tooth is acting up again, so off I go to the dentist tomorrow, and everything seems to spell root canal. (It's Valentine's Day, and I imagine some of the couples in the streets are a bit annoyed at having been roped into spelling "root canal" just for the sake of this metaphor, but such is life.)

And so the shutdown continues. I have decreed that I will not work at all today and instead just stuff my gob with food - WHILE I STILL CAN - and play computer games, to prepare myself for the dental massacre ahead, but then I remembered that I'm also broke, so that's probably not a good idea.

What else... Lana Del Rey's album is good. (I'd say I like 10 out of 15 of the songs, which is a very impressive ratio). Chelsea Handler's talk show is still horrible, but I watch it religiously nonetheless.

Oh, and I already have plans for 2013! We'll see how that pans out.

Johnny Belinda

Not much new to report, but I found a band with a lead harpist, and I've been listening to this song for 5 days now, so it probably at least warrants an embed:

I'm not a huge fan of this type of vocals, but the rooftop/shoulders/letter parts, where he delivers more of a punch, are pretty nifty. Plus the harp. Plus the ambient transitions. Plus the hotness.

As I've said: warrants at least an embed.

What's left

I had a bunch of funny stuff to link to, but it was way easier (and sounder) to just dump it all into my Facebook feed, so... let's try to take a look back at 2011 instead.

I've done some logistical readjustments and they seem to be working out great. Took some work though.

I'm in a teeny tiny professional rut, but I think I know how to remedy that. We'll see.

I'm still single and I don't really have any prospects in that regard atm.

I remain on good terms with quite a lot of people, or at least that's the impression I'm getting.

I'm financially stable (though I've had some rocky months in autumn).

Family's doing really good - the best they've been in years, I think.

For once I'm actually looking forward to the New Year's Eve party I'm going to.

In other words: something of a mixed bag.

I'll top it off with a surprisingly dashing Dawson. I left him out of the Facebook feed dump, I don't need the abuse.

2012, here I stumble.

Joseph says

I got a bit drunk tonight while playing boardgames, and then watched too good and too touching a movie (50/50) to go to sleep straight away. So let's take stock, shall we?

Christmas is coming. I've absolutely nothing more to say about that.

I had a major health scare which turned out to be nothing at all. I want all my future health scares to follow this pattern.

I'm trying to figure out whether I should get in touch with my childhood friend via Facebook. I've been trying to figure out whether to get in touch with him since... late high school, I think. I barely remember what he looks like. I just looked him up and he doesn't seem to be an active user (doesn't even have a profile picture), so I guess I'll pass. Could be too weird.

There was a thing, and it went as well as could be expected, so that's cool.

This is turning out to be a very uninspiring blog entry, but I'm in no mood to write about the fluff, and the stuff I actually want to get off my chest I won't, because cmon that's private. Oh human condition, why you so convoluted.

50/50 is really good. Yellow Ledbetter on repeat good.

Not cool, Orphy

It seems sometimes the good dreams are worse than the bad ones.

It was so weirdly intense that after I woke up, I went into a whole new-agey "maybe dreams matter" thing, because otherwise coping could become an issue.

So weird. Hope it never happens again.

Collapse

So today that comic thing happened. Hopefully it remains comic. Hopefully I'll learn tomorrow.

Edit: Whew.

The Horse

Nosze to zdjecie w komorce od 2 lat. Sciana pokoju matki:


Detal:


Pointy nie bedzie.

Overflow

I had a bunch of stuff to write about, but it's more and more difficult for me to actually post here. Or rather: it's more and more out of the way. I dump all the trivia into my Facebook feed, and the other stuff just dissolves after a day or two anyway, so why bother.

I'd like to have some kind of record* though, especially about the good stuff.

My birthday was last week. I threw a huge party for way too many people (It got freaky, I figured at least half of them wouldn't be able to make it, so I overshot with the invites, but then most of them actually showed up.) I don't remember any single conversation I had, which is weird, since I'm told I wouldn't shut up for the entire evening, and my throat was sore the next day, but that always seems to be the case for the host. Anyway, people claim to have had fun, and I got some awesome gifts, including the first volume of Absolute Sandman (incidentally, it took my mother about 6 minutes today before she spilled wine all over it, so that was fun) and a very cool boardgame, and a new toilet seat (that's right, you heard me), and a Polish, personalized rendition of this song. Because my friends are awesome.

As I was cleaning up on the next day, I kept remembering funny stuff from the evening before. I had it listed in my head for that entry that never materialized, but now I just remember Waste doing a short presentation of nerdcore, completely out of the blue.

It felt really nice to know that people came. As base as that sounds.

Then I went to lunch with a friend who came over from Krakow. It was a very long ride, and the tram broke down two stops before my destination, so I had to leg it. The sun was shining, I had this playing...


Life felt very good.

On the next day I got a full-blown sinus infection.

Took me a week to get better, but I finally did (sort of), so today my parents came over, and took me out to lunch at a bar mleczny in Praga, and a coffee (also in Praga, at a surprisingly hip cafe that they claim is their favorite - apparently they really get around). Life was really, really good again. I hope it keeps doing that, as often as possible.

* and now Famous Blue Raincoat is playing in my head. Brains are silly.

Perspective

Either I am developing some sort of mild social anxiety disorder, or I am only now becoming aware of having had one all along.

A week ago I was invited to a birthday party. Every single thing screamed: go there. I liked the host, but felt I didn't have enough opportunities or platforms to socialize with them. I didn't know any of the other guests, so it constituted "putting yourself out there". And the guest list consisted almost exclusively of gay menfolk.

My reaction? A bout of anxiety. At some point (at around 3 days to D-Day) I had to tell myself I'm not going *wink wink*, so that I would stop stressing about it. And I didn't make up my mind literally until I had to go out this very second to buy a birthday cake, because they were closing the bakery in 25 minutes. And I only did that after calling a friend on a complete whim (safety blanket response) and learning that I couldn't come over to them instead and whine about being fucked up, because... they had a legitimate reason for me not to do that.

Eventually I did go, even though when I put on my "I am a viable sex object" shirt, one of the buttons fell off, which I took for a bad omen. And of course everything was OK, if a bit awkward at first. And of course the coolest people there (or rather: the people I clicked with most) were a straight couple, since I was built to die alone. No prospects materialized, but, you know, the sky didn't exactly come crashing down either, and I actually had fun and a few good laughs - particularly when I sat down to eat some cake and saw this to my left:


And yet I haven't had this much anxiety about anything in at least the last year or so. Shit really freaked me out. I hope it's a phase.

Tomorrow starts today

"Absynth features three main synthesis modules which can be customized to a particular synthesis type, such as Subtractive, Frequency Modulation, Amplitude Modulation, or Granular, as well as direct sampling of raw audio data. It has a single filter (12/24 dB LP, HP, BP, Notch, and Comb), as well as a distortion algorithm, and effects including three resonant filters, "pipe" reverb, and multi-tap Delay. A modulation matrix allows the user three LFOs.

Graphically-edited assignable envelopes may be assigned up to 68 breakpoints each. In newer versions, breakpoint times and amplitudes may be manipulated further via MIDI controllers, as well as by curvature of the envelope line between breakpoints.

Absynth relies on user-based waveforms; either drawn directly, by manipulation of a sound spectrum, or else extracted from a WAV or AIFF file. Each can be used as an LFO, or an oscillator."

Was looking up this one band on wikipedia. "Absynth" was listed in their instruments. Sounded like a funny name, so I clicked the hyperlink - and that's the definition of what it does. Substractive or granular synthesis and a modulation matrix. Cyberpunk arrived a while ago, except nobody was paying attention. Ok: I wasn't.

Other Women

Far from flawless, and hardly revelatory, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. If "enjoyed" is the proper term here.

Reference point #1 - this is how you do a jawline:

The illusion of effortlessness requires a great effort indeed

Reference point #2 - this is how you pronounce "Sarah the Dancer":

Harness

I have a confession: I believe in petty magic. Or rather - I believe that once it has produced some sort of effect, the nature of a cause is irrelevant. And that the entire human experience is completely dependent upon one's brain/consciousness - which is very fickle. You can have all the reasons to be happy, and still feel miserable if your head doesn't buy it. Therefore the subjective always trumps the objective. And the subjective isn't always rational.

Of course this doesn't mean that I sacrifice goats or try to make sparks fly out of my fingertips, but I do allow myself some leeway when it comes to various trifles. For example, I've always really liked the Moon, for no particular reason. Whenever there's a full moon, I feel a little bit better - and happier. And so, I have made a conscious decision to avoid rationalizing it. To suspend my disbelief just enough so that something as random and easy to come by as the sight of a chunk of spaceborne rock continues to improve my well-being. It's a small price to pay, and I see no harm in it.

Which brings me to The Song of Ice and Fire. I've realized that I respond very favorably to stories that walk that fine line between my brand of "magic" and full-blown fantasy. I really like it when the choice is left up to you - when you're given enough loopholes and backdoors to reality to be able to stitch together a "it's all in their heads" explanation. It's why I loved The Prestige as much as I did (even if my very convoluted alternative reading of the film eventually collapsed under its own weight). And I think it's why I had such a negative response to the appearance of actual dragons at the end of the first book. There's no grey area here, it doesn't get any more high fantasy.

Well, I've almost finished reading book 2, and it only gets worse (or better, depending on your perspective), up to the point where my favorite background player got offed by supernatural means, and the Daenerys sections read like the 1001 Nights. And I have to say it spoils things a bit for me. I feel like this isn't exactly what I signed up for. Granted, Martin worked up a very nifty explanation for this shift, which I totally bought, so the book still gives me a lot of pleasure, but I can't help feeling that the political aspect suffered due to the slew of new dei ex machinae.

Downpour

We had a hardcore storm today. The sky just tore right open, and in through the hole poured a load of water. I barely made it to the tram stop before the first wave, and was safely in the tram by the time the main force arrived. The guy who got in several stops later was not as fortunate, as the deluge caught him on his way back from gym. Now, I know this because a) he was carrying a gym bag and b) he was wearing one of those thin white t-shirts, or as they're known in the context of freak rainstorms: nothing at all.

He was a good sport about it though. Almost as if sensing that it's the only sensible thing to do, he took a spot at the front of the tram, leaning back against the driver's booth, so that everyone could get a good look. You could almost hear the smattering of polite applause. "Well done, sir!"