News You Can Bruise for 1999 August 9

Inverses: the bad boy of the cosmos!

Also:

roll out the scalar, we'll have a
scalar of fun

These should go in the personal notebook so as not to clutter up NYCB, but Snoore's Law is kicking in and I am stupid enough right now to find these things hilarious.

Good thing I made that reference to today's top segv article, as a check to find the link revealed that I had neglected to publish it. You see what I mean?

Bwahahaha! My scam to get a free LWE pass worked! No, actually the LWE people are being nice and letting me pick up a badge at the event since I never got the one they allegedly mailed me.

Bleah. That midterm sucked. I did well on the proofs though.

I got an 88 on that midterm, which will be bumped up to an A due to the lousy curve. As Cap'n Crunch would say, Yeee!

Woohoo! I can make NST MP3s! The sound quality is between as good as the masters (eg. the skits) and distorted in certain registers but servicable (eg. the songs, to varying degrees).

They're going up on linux.ucla.edu (I'm near quota here) as soon as I meet some unspecified goal, such as recording the rest of the second side (I started at Aah, Ricky!, so that's most of the second side; I'm at now.)

I'm using a KDE program called krecord. I had to mess with the makefile to get it to it compile, but it works.

The word on the MP3ification is variable. Most of the skits, Arbitron, The Chickadee, Malibu, and possibly others are perfect, Asia Carrera, Relativity, and others have distorted vocals. Is is my {breath, MP3 encoder}? I'm using bladeenc. The stuff from the second side is screwed up (with the exception of Malibu) due to improper mixer settings. You have been warned. Download away!

Listening to Nowhere Standard Time again, two years after its release: a review by Leonard Richardson

Arbitron and Relativity are really the unsung heroes of this album; both pack a double-precision punch. I Screw Up Everything I Touch may no longer be my masterpiece (I have unreleased songs which I think might rival it), but it's still up there. Asia Carrera is funny in at least five different ways. Revolution in A Can kind of emberasses me; I can see what I was trying to do, but I don't think it really worked. Vertigo and Malibu are awesome. The Drool cover is a pleasure to listen to, except for the parts where I have to sing notes I can't reach.

Minnesotan People Having Sex is stupid, but it would have been less stupid if Carlos had said "You betcha!" a couple more times. All the other skits are still funny, except for the ones that weren't really supposed to be that funny; Atari, Still Dying, and (to a lesser extent) the Seinfeld bits.

The performance is fairly amateurish in parts; When I Was Young, The Chickadee, etc. I have a fundamental problem with keeping a beat; that's another thing that helped bring about the downfall of Revolution In a Can. I wish I had enunciated the lyrics more clearly in Bastille Day, but the tempo was too fast.

I don't think Literacy Rate does a good job; it's certainly not as cool as its name would indicate. Death and Destruction and Don't Leave Me Here (Over There Would Be Fine) do what Literacy Rate should do but doesn't. Choppy The Pork Chop and Posture Pal do that and more, kicking my sorry butt up and down the block while they're at it. Circus fails in the same way as Revolution In A Can, but it was never intended to be as good as Revolution In A Can, so I don't feel too bad about it. Radio Free Singapore still works very well, less so, but still okay. Confectioner's Sugar was a throwaway in the first place. The Chickadee is not as good as Jake's remix of it. And the Theme is still unmatched for hidden meaning per word. And that's all the songs, all the real songs anyway. I'm not going to discuss all the skits because I discussed them as a group further up.

That's my review. Tell me what you think.