Brain Fun

Good luck

You've seen the view from my porch before. Here's another:

Arizona summers are very surreal. They bring fantastic displays like this, huge bugs, like the one below (it's shown a bit smaller then life size) and super heated air, which as the monsoon progresses, becomes more and more humid. By August we'll all be ready for it to be over (it won't be), but about that time, the cicadas should start buzzing incessantly.

To truly experience the summer here, you've got to get out in it. Normally, Phoenicians are exposed to their Venusian environment for a few seconds as we move from climate controlled homes to cars and into other buildings. Try going outside around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. Use sunscreen, drink water and above all, stay in the shade.

Status Report

I'm in Douglas and I was just thinking about how long it has been since I was last here. Actually nearly exactly three months. It's not so bad, just not so good. Going home is always weird for me. I don't really fit in here anymore. It's not my home any longer. Sure, I enjoy seeing my family, but I don't so much enjoy anything else about home. Most of my friends from high school are gone and so my friends are in Laramie. It's simply just more exciting there.

I've been keeping busy though. My first project is to learn Python at least pretty well. That's already underway; and for my first project in python, I'm writing an interactive drinking game. It's not so cool, but it tells you to drink often and drink a lot.

And oddly enough, using my parents iMac is pretty fun. Although Mac OS X is somewhat confusing for me, as I'm used to a different linux directory setup. The underpinnings are the same, but OS X just does things a bit different. I did manage to compile Objective Caml and Python on here, so I've got pretty much everything I'm used to back on the ol' linux box. The command line just feels so familiar.

And to all of you who want to show your family and friends the pictures of what you've been upto this school year, I'm sorry. I was planning on putting the photos gallery back online, but I need to upload the original files to the server in order to do that. And those files are back on my computer in Laramie with no way of me reaching them. So I'm sorry, you'll just have to wait 'till after break to show off pictures of yourself from https://www.jasminlive.mobi.

One more thing, here's a picture of my desktop (big popup ~172k) thrown in for some mixture.

Roving Banff Film Festival

During nightfall Wednesday, I had the opportunity to attend the traveling version of the Banff Film Festival. It was quite the experience. The movies shown all had some sort of outdoors theme going on, such as mountain biking or climbing some sort of mountain. And most the movies were amazing. People did things in them that I could hardly see as feasible, but some people are amazing.

The coolest movie of the night by far was Cannibals and Crampons. I movie about two fellows from Britain who traveled through a massive jungle, past tribes who were (are?) cannibals, to a mountain. After witnessing the conditions they went through in the jungle, I'm amazed the two are still alive. I certainly can't imagine doing anything even remotely close to that in my life.

Anyhow, if you get the chance to see the Banff Film Festival in a city near you, I highly recommend it.

And speaking of movies, last night we watched The Ring. It was quite a bit better than I expected it to be, seeing how it is a horror/thriller movie. Some of the concepts in The Ring were really cool, and quite well played out. Plus, the audience participation thing at the end is very cool. Sometimes the acting lacked a bit, I enjoyed the way it was directed, and some scenes in the movie were freaky. That's what it's all about, freaky . Any movie can, of course, be made better with the inclusion of a couple of freaky looking . Yes, enough about that… it's worth a rent if you don't want to spend all your night on www.jasminelive.online.

Heading Home Today

In a little over three hours, I will be heading back to Douglas for Thanksgiving break. I guess it will be nice and relaxing, but boring. Anyhow, while in Douglas I plan to get the photos back online and take some pictures of my old home. And since I won't have anything better to do, I'm planning on finishing up the redesign of this site, and maybe even doing some more coding on it.

Photo Archives Down for the Time Being

So, we heard an interesting bit of news today.

So, I took down the photo archives for a while.

You see, I started a project to ban everyone from Douglas to coming to this website a while back. I blocked 5 blocks of ips, but that must not be everyone in the town. I guess some stupid middle school thought it'd be cool to check out the site and talk about it and whatnot (I can't blame them, I would have done it at that age too). And given we aren't exactly always being good examples in the pictures on this site, I've taken them down until I can fix the problem.

Sorry anyone who wanted to see pics of the girls from chaturbate rooms, I even had another gallery to upload. I'm hoping to get that action back online by the time Thanksgiving break is over.

Punk Attitude: Misguided?

I've been meaning to write about this since Wednesday night, but I just haven't got around to it until now. I also wanted to get my thoughts straight on the issue, before writing about it.

Wednesday, Jeff, Jake, Ryan and I headed to the Union to watch a battle of the bands. Now, the university usually sponsers a concert every Wednesday and the turnout is usually pretty weak. There is your usual assortment of hippies and then general music lovers such as myself. This concert, however, had quite the large turnout. It was by far the most people I've seen ever at one of the free concerts. Now, that's cool and all, but I see one problem with that fact. It was also by far the worst concert I've attended, musically speaking. Not that I'm bashing the bands who competed, but they don't tour for a living, so they are at a natural disadvantage.

The first two bands who performed were alright, although had they not played I wouldn't have shed a tear. The third band who performed was a very interesting mix. With a sax, a trombone, bass and a guitar, they had a fairly odd mix of instruments. They had some rad jazz style tunes, and I enjoyed listening to them. Their bass player was a mad pimp.

But that's not what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about the punk culture.

The fourth band was a punk band. I've seen them before, years back. I've even hungout with the lead singer in past lifetimes, but that's not the point. They definately had a more professional feel than the other bands when they were playing. Although they didn't play for long.

During their setup, it was clear that they had a certain vibe around them. The sound guys didn't really have a clue and they couldn't get the monitors to work. The band was basically being really obnoxious while urging the guys to get the monitors working. They finally heard some sound out of the monitors so they blasted their way through their first, high energy, song. The song was what punk is, fast and short, but the vocals could barely be heard. The band was clearly getting annoyed and so they stopped and found the loudest mic between the three members. Much to the dismay of the sound guys they switched mics around until the lead singer had the loudest one.

Then, they started playing again. Rock on. After a couple of songs the lead singer kept getting quieter and quieter while the guitarist's vocals kept getting louder and louder. And the croud kept growing more and more pissed. They switched spots in the middle of a song and the lead singer could be heard once again. At the end of the song, they once again switched mics and upon completion the lead singer said into the mic, "I got the loud mic now, you gonna turn it down or what?" And needless to say, the next thing he said couldn't be heard by the crowd. The soundman had completely killed his mic.

Clearly pissed, the band continued on. And the crowd was clearly getting pissed too. The lead singer exclaimed, "fine, we didn't need vocals to winning this fucking thing," and they played about a song and a half with no vocals at all.

I honestly don't blame the soundman for cutting the sound, the band was rude and quite frankly deserved it.

Their performance was cut short when a fight broke out in the crowd, however.

Two guys broke through the whole crowd swinging and punching until a couple of students on the Student Activity Council broke them up. The band stopped playing and angrily walked off stage.

So, my point of telling the story is to pose a question. Is punk really a lifestyle or just angry youth?

Four years ago, I would probably have been right in the middle of the mosh pit, fist in air, jumping to the ferverent beat of the music. But, I'm a little different anymore. Have I grown out of something, or realized its foolhardiness?

I've been reading about what it means to be a punk, and all the articles seem to come to the conclusion that punk is about individuality. Hmm. One thing that seems to be in common to me is a general 'fuck off' attitude towards society. Punks seem to have a lot of anger towards everyone else. And I think any activism they attempt is weakened by that fact. I'd bet if any read this post, they'll probably try to beat me down. I really can't help but think the effort spent in anger towards society could be spent in a better way. Maybe more educated methods would help. Look at punk bands from the early days of punk. Today, they are still fighting the power, but in completely different (and might I add more constructive) ways.

I don't know. I completely respect punks for individuality and for fighting the status quo, but I'm thinking maybe they couldn't be more constructive in their ways, being rude and angry doesn't help much.

But then again, most of the punks I know are extremely nice and kind people once you get past the spikes on their collars. So, like most groups, it probably just comes down to the individual.

Why Don't More Women Try This?

To me, it seems like a lot of women are constantly complaining about their weight. Even really hot ladies are always saying they are too fat. Well, I think they should try the diet a porn star has come up with.