the great trans-borough race of aught six

I'm going to an absurd shopping cart race today.

something to aspire to

from the new york times via gawker... the best worst most important jewish producer in hip hop today... complete with 39 ct bling ring. he dated paris hilton *and* lil' kim. a class act.

maybe this is where my schooling will take me.

(words)*1000

found in chinatown
Originally uploaded by redherring22.

now that i have a nifty cameraphone and i figured out how to get pictures off of it without paying the verizon butt-rape sucker tax, i think i'll be taking more pictures of my random adventures throughout ny. so check out my flickr photostream for the more interesting view of how my life is going with a particular emphasis on stuff i eat.

so much to say

hi.

so it's been a little while, huh? for the 0.3 of you that may possibly still check this, here are a few things that have been happening in my world...

- the semester ended triumphantly! some pretty kick-ass grades (even if they were arbitrarily assigned by my teachers) and some kinda neat projects... for one class I used the computer's text-to-speech function combined with a vocoder effect driven by the pitch of some input to make a crude computer singing effect... in class i got my powerbook to sing 'i read the news today, oh boy... the english army had just won the war...' to much laughter. good stuff. maybe i'll make an mp3 of it so you can hear what the hell i'm talking about. and i think i wrote a sorta neat paper on upcoming wireless technologies in the computer world and how they'll impact the world of audio (i suppose i could send it to you if you ask politely or nakedly)
- i've been playing a lot of guitar in a couple of bands. i ended up leaving dead language because I realized that next semester is going to be ludicrously busy for me and Jon and I are working on another band that we've started from scratch... tentatively called Vice Stevens. Sounds something like Sublime mixed with The Police mixed with The Strokes mixed with the Chili Peppers and maybe a little Muse. i found out that i get free access to nyu's recording studios (a nice perk of giving them $30k / year to go there) so i might as well take advantage of that... so the band will probably be recording februaryish and will be gigging in the spring. i'll keep you posted. whaddya think of the name? any other suggestions?
- park slope still rocks

okay... i suppose i should finish this beer and get something to eat before band practice. and i suppose i'll be resurrecting this blog, unless you have any objections (GENITAL WARTS!). love,
bennett

don't you want to see what daddy does for a living?

blow me

what was that?

uh... show me

ok i will. here are some weird projects i made for my java class. and to think, i could have been a doctor.


homework 4 (weird noisy composition that i generated mostly with programs that my teacher sorta likes)


final project (my attempt at making a program that can take a melody and convert it into a musical score. doesn't work well but sorta neat)


you'll need the jsyn plugin to be able to tinker with either.

signature

one of our java teacher's buddies came up with the itunes signature maker, which goes through your itunes library and makes a 'signature' from your songs. here's mine.


if you've got yourself a nicely pimped out itunes music library, you should go to the itunes signature maker site and make your own. but beware, I judge people based on their music tastes.


actually, I kinda wished the itunes signature maker would have picked more a chili peppers song and had placed the beatles clip more prominently, but it's still pretty damn cool.

i found out that one of the coolest music venues around is only a few blocks from my apartment. last night daver and our neighbor jojo went to the southpaw lounge and saw apollo sunshine and sam champion play some goddamn incredible music. sam champion covered you can't do that, a great rockin' lennon tune off of a hard day's night to commemorate John Lennon. I went up to both bands after the sets and gushed like a teenage schoolgirl... they liked the praise and all, but I'm sure they would have been happier if i actually were a teenage schoolgirl. maybe one day i'll be in a cool successful hip local band too. then i can lose 50 lbs.


hoping to finish java tonight, DAP paper on wireless audio is done... all that's left is music theory and aural comp finals and my crazy MAX/MSP guitar jam tool and then a wonderfully nihilistic winter break.

the future is here...

and it is USB-powered!
behold... the fundue pot!

where have all the bennetts gone?

sorry, joey joe joe junior shabadoo, i've been scatterbrained and therefore have been unable to come up with a coherent post for a while. but then i must ask myself... are any of my posts coherent?

final projects are upon me. for one class (java) i'm writing an application that you can sing into and it'll transcribe your lovely melody into musical notation. maybe i'll even finish that up tonight. for another i'm writing a big paper on wireless audio. thrilling, eh?

i just got a new cell phone because i was the only person in ny who had t-mobile, so of course i had to get a ridiculous one that takes pictures, video, plays mp3s, and does bluetooth. it also gives great head. i may use the phone's picture ability to take pictures of all the places i eat around nyc- i do eat a lot- and write about them. yes, this blog is being taken over by my gut. and i also had a wonderful moment of absurdity in class today when our teacher was showing us java networking and music, which inevitably led to us all whipping out our powerbooks and 'jamming' on our teacher's friend's website, webdrum. unfortunately the ridiculous sounds didn't come though that well (check out the site though) but here's my bootleg video:

bennett's java class

(note: you might have to right-click / control-click it and download the file to disk then open it up with quicktime player for it to work)

and with that it's back to my final java project. i'll let you know when i'm done so you can all sing me some melodies. keep on takin'er easy.

...our teacher was so excited by our 'performance' yesterday that he videotaped it w/ his palm zire... here are the videos he shot, maybe with better sound than my cellyphone...

behold

could this be the most brilliant absurdist hoax ever? i have no idea what it's for, but the great pointed archer people are counter-protesting the striking NYU grad students in washington square park. they have a large inflatable rat next a large inflatable person to protest rats being vilified in union strikes, and they want to change the name of the rat to the 'great pointed archer'. they give out free t-shirts and stuff too. so either there is some deep-pocketed absurdist philanthropist out there or there's going to be something coming from this soon.


great pointed archer website

homework 3

i wrote a program that does this to sounds for one of my classes. i figured i'd let y'all in on the freaky shit that goes on around here. real freaky-like.


homework 3


i think i'm going to get tenured around here. especially when i write my flatulence simulator for my final thesis.

things you can do when you're a student

daydrinking. if only i had the time...

mmmm.... new york

yet another reason why new york is wonderful... the delicious, mysterious maple syrup smell that wofted across the city the other day. sure, we're all gonna die of mapleborne illness shortly... but it was worth it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/29/nyregion/29smell.html

5 minutes of iFame

my brother (who also happens to be in the same program as I am at NYU) wrote an article that was posted on createdigitalmusic.com, one of those music nerd sites I so love to frequent. rock on.

link

3 things that rocked my world today in the span of 15 minutes

1) the dosa man at washington square park south. apparently he's a very important fixture in the food scene of this area-- there is always a line at his little food stand for his fresh-made dosas. this (search for 'dosa') is an article about him. Delicious.

2) while eating my dosa in washington square park on this lovely frigid afternoon, some guy started playing the flute. normally I'm not so into that sort of thing, he did this sort of beatboxing thing as he was playing and i quickly realized he was playing an incredibly funked-up version of the super mario brothers song. as i polished off the dosa and complimentary lentil soup, he launched into the sesame street song. if only i had more sheckels on me.

3) i had a bit of time to kill before class, so i took a detour and noticed the John Lennon educational tour bus parked outside the NYU bookstore. I had wanted to see this bus before up in Boston, so I stopped by and met the nicest people ever (since the dosa man, at least) who basically drive this amazingly pimped-out recording studio packed into a tour bus around the country for 10 months out of the year. They go to schools, colleges, and festivals, and somehow get a group of people to come in- no matter whether they're seasoned guitarists or have never played a musical note in their lives-- and over the course of a day, write, record, and mix an original song and give everyone that participated a DVD. These guys seriously rock for turning on so many people to music and recording. If the bus ever makes it to your town, take a tour and shake these guys' hands.

okay, but really, I'm writing this because I'm trying to avoid doing my Java homework.

love
b

what have I gotten myself into?!

mech2001

The woman in the video is the professor for one of my classes and she's using the software that we're learning in class to make those... interesting... cow-in-labor sounds. Enjoy!

you know what really grinds my gears?

a) shitty weather + not having a car. I was (and still am) very happy not to have a car, but getting around on days like today
2) the MTA on the weekends. at least in brooklyn. at least in october on shitty rainy days. track construction, terrorist threats, and a pervasive urine smell all contribute to this.
d) time-warner and 'supervisors' there that take themselves too seriously but still don't call you back as promised (yeah, that's you, supervisor ms. shaniqua). long story short, we're finally going to get internet probably next tuesday after maybe 6 or so hours on the phone and a dozen or so phone calls to time warner. but we'll see.

but on to better news... I got (another) part-time job, this time programming for a startup company that's going to be making some high-end audio software stuff. i can say no more, but it's a pretty damn cool opportunity (somehow they were impressed that i worked on missiles... how little they know) so i went out and treated myself to a new powerbook yesterday. it's gonna suck when apple announces new powerbooks next week because i've waited maybe 6 months to buy one but... i'll shut up now.

okay time to hand in my java homework... more posts when i get internets at home next week. i'll be in boston this weekend if anyone wants to have a playdate.

b