kedvesem

my beloved

Everyday is a Winding Road

My flight to the States was safe, boring, and all-in-all uneventful. There were three small children that seemed to be competing for how much of the flight they could spend screaming, but it's amazing what you can tune out at 35000 feet (or however high up we were). I have a lot of sympathy for the parents of those children. As bothersome as they may have been for the other passengers, at least the other passengers weren't responsible for trying to calm the poor babies. My heart went out the most to the mum who had just managed to calm her child somewhat...and then we hit a patch of turbulence that upset the poor baby and got him or her started all over again.

Parents of small children are living martyrs, and I think they deserve as much respect and consideration as the richest men and most powerful world leaders.

But yes, I am in the US now and visiting my grandparents. I'll be in Greensboro soon, and then off to school go I. This will be my final post, and this blog will go be "retired" until such time as I fimd myself on another trip of significant length and content. If, for some inexplicable reason, you haven't had enough and you want to continue reading about my thoughts and experiences, please redirect your attention to my more current blog Four Religious Porpoises.

Until nex time: happy hunting, space cowboy!

PLUR!

Warp Factor 6, Engage.

The migration and updating of my blog were successful (although it took like 5-6 hours instead of the "just a few mintues" it was supposed to take). I don't think that should affect readers or comments in any way, but I just wanted to let y'all know.

PLUR!

Prescience, Postart

A few months ago, I started writing a short story (it doesn't have a name yet, but the working title is "London 2012") in which an international paradigm shift is sparked when riots break out at the 2012 London Olympics because of poor logistical planning and a general inability to meet the needs of the millions of tourists and spectators who have come to see the games.

Over the past two months, it seems like there are more and more reports in the papers of "unexpected costs" of Olympic preparations, concerns that preparations won't be finished in time, and Olympic sponsers pulling their funding (Barclay's recently announced their decision to opt out of a 200 million pound Olympic sponsorship that many expected them to follow through with). I really hope I don't end up being right. That would just be creepy.

I went to Heat UK's Evolution party this Saturday. I wasn't too happy about having to wait in line outside the club for more than a half-hour (UK December nights aren't particularly well-known for being warm), but once I got inside and through security, it was great. The music was some of the highest quality House that I've heard since I've been here, and the lights were also really well-done. I don't think I've ever seen something as surreal as dry ice fog drifting through an LED "screen." It was like a green-tinted ephemeral oil slick, swirling and trailing through the air. And then they lit the strobe. Wow.

The siren call of new technology has touched me once again. I think I'm going to switch by blog to the new "beta" version. If I don't post anything else for a while, it's because of technical difficulties. Otherwise I'll try to put something up tomorrow.

PLUR!

Generation Gap

So, I just found out a few days ago that the pop artist Hoku (born Hoku Christian Ho) is the daughter of 1960s and 70s music sensation Don Ho. She sometimes performs in her father's show at the Waikiki Beachcomber Hotel. In addition, she's had a reasonably successful career of her own, her most notable songs being "Not Another Dumb Blonde" (which was featured in the movie Snow Day) and "Perfect Day" (the Legally Blonde theme song). Plus she's seriously beautiful. I wonder what it is about mixed-race people that they can be so much more attractive than someone with "pure" ancestry?

I wish I had a copy of Tiny Bubbles on my computer. I want to listen to it now.

PLUR!

I'm the same boy I used to be

I just heard a sample of Eric Prydz's new single "Proper Education," which follows closely and does a lot of sampling from Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In the Wall (part 2)". It twists the driven, militant cynicism of the original song into an easily-accessible up-tempo club anthem, but it does a right good job of it. Besides, sometimes I like up-tempo club anthems. ( :

This is another good mark in my book for Eric Prydz, who's previous work includes the powerful "Call on Me," which samples Steve Winwood's classic hit "Valerie" (actually, the story goes that when Prydz first did this song he used a recorded sample but when Winwood heard the piece he was so impressed with the work Prydz had done that he offered to collaborate with Prydz and rerecord his vocals from "Valerie" for "Call on Me").

I wonder how much the single costs?...

PLUR!

Meanwhile, back in Gotham...

I remembered that I had some corned beef hash in the fridge.

Another meal eaten, another crisis averted.

PLUR!

edit: It is not one of my goals in life to learn how to play Mason Williams's "Classical Gas" before I die. And possibly Darude's "Sandstorm" (although that might just be silly).

Dear Diary

Dear diary,
A funny thing happened on the way to the forum home from work last night. I was on the tube packed into a little corner because the Piccadilly Line is almost always crowded. I wasn't paying much attention to the people around me (except for the young woman sitting down on the other side of the carriage. She reminded me of someone I knew, but I just couldn't remember who!). Then the man standing next to me was acting all fidgety and awkward and was texting something on his phone. I try not to be nosy, but I glanced down just for a moment at his mobile, and he was texting phone sex on the tube! Well, I don't know if that's actually true, but I can't think of too many other scenarios where someone would use phrases like "...been a really bad girl..." and "...with a mouth full of..." (that's all I saw. The posters on the walls of the carriage suddenly got very interesting).

I don't know how I feel about that. On the one hand, I guess people should be allowed to do what they want, as long as it's not hurting any one. On the other hand, though, I want to laugh so hard. Either way, I'm still impressed that his mobile had service so far underground!

Today I am the only research assistant at work (there are normally three of us). Things are pretty quiet right now, so I'm taking a very short break. Today for lunch I ate a Subway sandwich, and it was pretty good and filling, but it didn't have the flavor I wanted. Since I still had a half-hour left for my lunch break (!!!), I decided I would walk around and see what else was around. I stopped at a convenience store and bought a banana and walnut muffin. It was only 59p, and it really hit the spot! Now I feel quite good.

Tonight I will either do laundry or scold myself for not having the motivation to do laundry. I think supper will be pasta, and maybe a scoop of ice cream graham crackers and a chocolate bar if I feel like I've earned it (I usually have).

PLUR!

Crazy People

The McCloud family works for Comic Book Resources, and part of what they do is travel around the country interviewing comic artists. Recently, they've started a series of "Winterviews" that are conducted by their 11-year old daughter Winter and almost totally recorded and edited by their 13-year old daughter Sky.

Back in October they interviewed Jeffrey Rowland, author of my two absolute most favourite webcomics Wigu and OverCompensating, and a general all-around cool guy. You can watch his Winterview here.

Last week the McCloud's released a new interview with R. Stevens, author of the Diesel Sweeties webcomic (which, while not my favorite, is one that I still enjoy from time to time). You can watch it here.

Neither of the Winterviews are awe-inspiring, but it's fun to see grown people trying to figure out how to react to being interviewed by a 11-year old girl. Also, it's well worth the look into the secretive world of self-employed webcomic artists-slash-t-shirt entrepeneurs (it still amazes me that some people make most of their living by selling stuff on the internet).

I don't know if the problem lies with my internet connection or with the server hosting the Winterviews, but when I try to watch one it doesn't always load properly, and even when it does it loads slowly. Be warned, but don't let that stop you from enjoying them!

PLUR!

The Darkness

I think it's a caffeine addiction. I've always had a bit of a soft spot for it, but now I'm at a point where I simple can't go through a day without craving some kind of soda or at least a couple cups of tea. I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm in the States.

All is well.

PLUR!

Theiving the Sky (Stealing Someone's Thunder)

Today is Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is not technically celebrated in the UK, but there are so many Americans around most of the time, that Brits know to make a big deal about it anyway. At least, that's what I've seen.

Regardless, here's a quote from the inimitable Jeffrey Rowland about the holiday of Thanksgiving:
"Holy gosh, how did it get to be Thanksgiving already> For those who don't know, I am half-Cherokee and from rural Oklahoma and therefore consider Thanksgiving to be mostly insulting. I'm thankful for stuff everyday, I don't need a whitewashed version of The American Holocaust and a ritual sacrifice to remind me to be grateful. I'm grateful everytime I look in the mirror and realize I am basically symmetrical."

And I think that's something we should all be thankful for.

PLUR!

Drat!

Well, it turns out the District line is closed between Whitecastle and Earl's Court...and I needed to get to Earl's Court so I could transfer to the right train to get to Hammersmith and the Quaker meeting! I'm going to have to miss today...although I feel bad about it 'cause I missed last week, too (last week I stayed up 'til 4 in the morning talking with Aoife, and simply failed to wake up before noon). If I can find my mp3 player, though, I'm going to put a bunch of "sacred" music on it and go for a walk in the park. It's not quite the same, but maybe it'll still count, eh?

I've been thinking a lot about music recently. What it is, how it's ought to be, the themes and messages it should portray, and other things that go along with it. And frankly, the more I think about it the more I begin to think that nonlyrical music may be the best kind of music. You can create a full range of expression without being limited by the construction of spoken language. Of course, there are a lot of lyrical songs that are also really good, but they just seem to be so few and far between. Too often it just seems like the music of a song is just a vehicle to carry the lyrics, which more often than not simply seem to be little more than mediocre poetry.

Sorry, that's all. I promise. ( :

PLUR!

Through the Week

It is Sunday! That means only one thing: that last week is over!

Actually, that's untrue. It really means lots of things. What I said is just the most relevant at the moment.

This past week was most certainly interesting. I had a presentation for my BLC class that basically ended up with me standing in front of the class scribbling facts about the Redwall books on the whiteboard. In spite of that, my presentation was probably one of the better ones (although I think "fish and chips" wins the grand prize). I also had my first house visits this week. Since the group I'm working with for my internship focuses on childhood stammering, they do a lot of recording of kids talking - both kids who stammer and kids who don't. Since it's not always convenient for the kids and their parents to come into the lab and record, house visit arrangements are made for some of the kids, and I was assigned six to do. Last week I finished three of them. I would have taken out the remaining three this coming week, but I had to reschedule one of them because of a conflict that came up. So instead I'll have finished 5 of the 6 by the end of the week, and have one that's just going to chill 'til early in December. Word.

I was REALLY nervous about my first visit, but it went exceptionally well so I'm really glad for that. I got off at the wrong tube stop and got really lost for my second one, but with the child's mom directing me on the phone (business call?) I managed to find the right address. The third one was an interesting case. The child's mom had completely forgotten that I was coming, and so the whole thing was kind of rushed and cobbled together as though at the last minute. I had a good time at that one, though. The boy I was recording mentioned all sorts of fun stuff like how much he liked magnets, and I couldn't help but think of myself at that age. Man, I wonder what it would be like to be eight again?

This week I've got two more house visits, plus whatever else it is I'm supposed to be doing. Oh, it will probably be more annotating. Fortunately, not the same stuff I've been doing. I finished those, basically, and now Kelsey and I are doing orthographic transcriptions of the monologues. It turns out that when the original recordings were annotated, no one thought to do a "real" transcription along with the phonetic syllable and phonological word annotations! It's been a lot of fun so far. The last one I finished was all about this one kid's holiday to Disney World Paris. It sounded pretty cool.

That's all for now. Breakfast time, then I'm going to try to make it to meeting.

PLUR!

Phase II

Blogger just announced the release of their new version and is looking for beta testers. I may jump on that bandwagon, but I'm not planning to change just yet.

It's always fun to find out that just when you assumed you know where everyone's at, you find out someone you never would have expected is right out there with you. ( : Even in the midst of community there are strangers, and even in the midst of strangers there is community.

Meeting and LAUNDRY tomorrow. Presentation on Monday, and money on Tuesday. Gosh it'll be nice to have money for food again.

PLUR!

here it is (a red balloon)

Well, here ends another day where I've been right in the middle of everything, but gotten nex tto nothing accomplished. I have to say, before I met the internet I thought real-time was on the cutting edge of communications. Now there are times when I'm almost convinced it's not fast enough.

That's probably a bad thing, but I digress.

I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to live next semester when I get back to Guilford College. That's the $64,000 question for the day...

PLUR!

Here I am again

Okie-doke. I know it's been a while since I've posted anything, but I've been quite busy the past couple weeks. It was a big transition getting into my internship, but I'm finally settled and establishing my new routine. I'm working three days a week (Wed-Fri) for the Speech Development group at UCL, a research group that does a lot of research work on causes and other things related to stuttering, especially in children. So far I haven't done anything terribly exciting at work (I've spent most of my time proofreading transcripts of interviews to make sure the syllabic and phonological word annotations are both accurate, although this past Friday I spent most of the day taking notes on published articles for a talk Pete will be giving this week), but I'm getting to know the local Subway pretty well. A sandwich with jalapeño peppers on it is a poor substitute for Mexican food, but at least it's got a bit of a kick to it. I miss proper chips and salsa, though. There's one other FIE intern working for the same group, but our schedules are different and we only work together about twice a week. Still, it's nice to have company my own age at work sometimes. The only other time I see much of college-aged kids is when I sit lectures (I've got about 12 pages of notes from speech science lectures, and that's just from the past two weeks!), and you can't exactly talk during class!
Last week I went to Parliament and had a verynice tourguide lead me around. I had to go throuugh all sorts of security before they'd even let me into the building (and apparently you can't even get in if you haven't made a prior appointment to do so. Thank goodness for field trips!), but our tour guide was a very nice man named Keith Cameron.

And that drove me absolutely mad. I know there's some politician or small-time celebrity out there named Keith Cameron, but I can't for the life of me remember who it is! It's someone current, I'm about 95% positive about that. The 5% of me that's not certain thinks that it's possible I've mixed up his name with Kirk Cameron, actor and internet evangelist. But if anyone knows anything about a Keith Cameron, please let me know.

Anyway, Keith Cameron was our tour guide, and he took us around Parliament and told us all sorts of neat things about it. All in all it was a pretty cool trip, but I would have preferred to be able to walk around on my own. In addition to the building's "functionality," there was a lot of interesting architecture and statues all over the place that I would have liked to have spent more time looking at.

This weekend (actually today, but since today is Sunday, celebrations started yesterdaay) is the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Bonfire Night. It's supposed to be a huge festival with lots of celebrating and fireworks and bonfires (hence the name ^_^), and I'm going to see if I can't sniff some out tonight. Some of us tried to last night, but a bunch of stuff came up, and the the mission was not a success. It's okay, though, 'cause I'm still pretty amazed that I'm even in London. I won't be too disappointed if I don't get a chance to experience every single little thing.

Apparently Guilford College budgeted for us to have a Thanksgiving meal, which was really thoughtful of them since the British don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Not celebrating Thanksgiving has some other implications, too, since it means there's no major holiday between Hallowe'en and Christmas! Literally the day after Hallowe'en, I started seeing Christmas ads up all over the place. The "holiday season" is kickin' it into high gear already over here...
I haven't listened to the radio much, but now I'm a little afraid to, because I'm afraid all I might hear will be non-stop Christmas music! I talked to mom last night, and she said that the Magic station is already doing that.
Seriously, how absurd is that? What possible point can there be to starting Christmas music almost two full months before Christmas actually happens? Sheesh...

Well, that's all for now. Now that I've got something resembling a schedule again, I'll try to update more regularly.

PLUR!

Back To Form

I am back from Budapest, and in preparation for my internship (which starts tomorrow).

I really enjoyed my trip to Hungary, even the weather. The sun was bright, and there was a crisp breeze blowing the whole time so it was fairly cool (I wish I'd packed my gloves to go with me!). The city was beautiful. Seeing the city from above and from a distance reminded me a lot of the time I visited San Francisco which, for all it's faults, is an incredibly beautiful city.

So those are a few shots of Budapest, both of them taken in the late morning/early afternoon. ( :
I spent most of the two and a half days I was there exploring the area around where I was staying, so I got pretty familiar with those few public transit routes (Budapest has busses, trams, trains, a metro, "omnibusses," and trolleys. It's a very comprehensive system, even moreso than London!) and some of the sites.

One of my favorite places to visit was the Citadella. It's on top of a small mountain called Gellért Hill, and it's the Hungarian statue of liberty. It was erected by the Russians when they came in in the 50's and liberated Hungary from Nazi occupation. It was built to face Moscow, because it was Russia that had given them their "freedom." Then, when the Berlin Wall fell in '89, the Hungarians got rid of a lot of Soviet monuments, but they liked the idea of the liberty statue so much they decided not to destroy it. Instead, they turned it around 180 degrees so that it faced directly away from Moscow, and that's how it stands today.


On the last day there, I visited a market in an old warehouse. it was kinda cool there. The ground floor and the basement were full of food (ground floor mostly produce and some meat, more meat downstairs, including several fishmongers. Lots of live fish in a basement stink the place up!). The upper level had a little pub-like restaurant in it, and the rest was devoted to tourist-y types of stuff. Little curios and puzzles and souvenirs and T-shirts and stuff like that. I did find something there that was just about perfect for Grandpa Abeyta, but he'll just have to wait 'til Christmas to find out what it is!

The Vaughans also took me out to get an authentic Hungarian goulash one evening. It was absolutely delicious. It's the kind of meal that beef stew wishes it could be. I'm not a huge fan of soup, but I think I could eat goulash for a week (not counting breakfasts, preferably) and not get tired of it.

And that's about all. I'm off to do some gracery shopping in just a bit, and I fully intend to get to bed at a decent hour tonight since I have to get up in the morning for work.

PLUR!

Wishful Thinking

It seems like every website I visit is merchadising these days! What's up with that? However, it's revealed a whole new world of stuff that it would be fun to have. Please pardon the selfish interlude, but....

First Church of Banjo: Cult of Banjulhu t-shirt
Elan and Roy on Teamwork t-shirt
A roleplaying game? That makes fun of roleplaying games? Count me in!
We all like our stuff to be better, don't we?
Gamers are silly
Rock you like a Hadoken
The movie was awful, but the legacy is legendary
I'm a sucker for mythical beasts. ^_^
Perfect for making a political statement when you don't know what to say
The ultimate refreshment
Pretty much anything here, but especially the lime shirt, the vinyl stickers, and the temporary tattoos
And lets not forget Firefly and Serenity themed stuff.


That should be all. Sometimes window-shopping can be fun. ^_^

PLUR!

Well....

I decided to get a digital camera today. I went down to Argos and spent a good long time looking at prices and everything else, and finally settled on a Vivitor ViviCam 4345. It's a 4 mPix camera with the video capture ability. Not top of the line by any means, but it should be more than adequate for my needs.

Fall break is now, and tomorrow is when I leave. I don't really expect to be able to post again 'til Saturday or Sunday, but when I get around to it, I'll let y'all know how my travels were.

PLUR!

Modular

Wow, it's going to be so weird getting used to computing with 2 hands again. I've gotten so used to using the "touchpad" mouse on my laptop that I'm going to have to retrain myself how to use a manual. It's a shame that it's so hard to modify keyboards, otherwise I'd consider switching from Qwerty to Dvorak (which is supposed to be more ergonomic and, once you're proficient at it, faster).

Also, having a USB optical mouse will be useful for the eventual day when I switch to a new system. I like my laptop (we've become very familiar with each other, and in as much as a human and an inanimate object can be, I like to think of us as friends), but I'm certain that I'll be operating on a new computer sometime within the next few years (that's my hope at least!). I'd love to get a Mac because of the good video and music suite they've got, but you just can't beat a PC as a computer "workhorse." Maybe when I do get a new system I'll turn the laptop into a "toy" and play around with it. I've been curious about Linux for a little while.

In more humanitarian news, a few of you probably know this, but others may not. The Hunger Site has been my homepage for 6-8 months, and it's a really cool site. You can click on the link once per day, and they'll register it through a Mercy Corp and America's Second Harvest sponsorship as a donation of 1.1 cups of staple food to a charity working in a third world country. Help feed hungry people through just a few clicks of the mouse. It doesn't get much easier to help out, does it?

I think that's all for now.

PLUR!