Archive for May, 2008

Ministry Crisis Diverted

Friday, May 9th, 2008

So I had my interview with Sin Quirin (formerly and presently of Revolting Cocks) and Burton C. Bell (formerly of Fear Factory) before the first big last (that makes sense) Ministry show last night. The interview went quite well. They were both very friendly gentlemen. Everything, aside from the jazz combo in the bar making recording difficult, went off without a hitch. I got the whole session recorded on my trusty Olympus MP3 recorder, played it back briefly to make sure it took, and headed across the street to the venue (House of Blues) to pay $10 for three chicken fingers and a coke. Anyway, everything was all good, but somewhere in the process of being scanned twice with a metal detector, my trusty Olympus recorder must’ve gotten wiped clean, for when I got on the bus to head home after a long night, and just because I am that paranoid of a guy, I decided to try and listen to a bit of the interview again to hear how good the audio came out, but to my shock and quickening horror, there was no interview to be found. No audio to be found. Nothing to be found. None of the 8 other tracks I had previously recorded on the device were around either. Panic set in “What the fucking hell!?”, then resignation, “Well I hate transcribing anyway.” I figured out later, and after a series of tests in which I left the device on for a long time, left it playing, left it recording, taking the battery out in the middle of it playing back, I deduced that it must have been that magnetic metal detector that was passed all over my bag. Luckily for everyone involved, I was able to find the file once I plugged my recorder into my computer, but I think the moral of the story is clear: don’t interview Ministry.

So keep peeled for that article + interview that’ll be hitting next month’s Thirsty Media. Also, if you’re into digging music, check out the unused Boredoms write up I posted the other day.

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Al Jourgensen’s Youth Ministry

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

So it’s official. I got my press package in the mail today, and will spend tomorrow interviewing and seeing industrial superstars Ministry on one of their “last” (they’re playing 4 nights here and then going to Europe to play Summer Festivals) performances ever in their native Chicago. Eventually there will be a corresponding article for next month’s Thirsty Media. The tour, appropriately for what has to be one of the most pun heavy bands in history, is called the C-U-La-Tour. This is following up their last tour, of course called, the Masturba-Tour. Anyway, I’m damn excited. Their last/ latest album “The Last Sucker” is actually really fucking brutal. I’ve dug these fellas for a long time, and I’m tickled pink to be getting a chance to meet them on their supposed last go-round. Be on the lookout for the impending article. Until La-Tour.

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Free of Context

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

Here are a few images I made a while ago using a snappy program called Context Free. It’s a simple but versatile app for coding (as opposed to designing) graphics. There are some more powerful programs out there, but this is a very easy and fun way to play around with procedural graphics and fractal math. Here are a few of my attempts.

Another attempt.
And my collection.

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Problems Involving Syracuse

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

Let it be known that I am no mathematician. I know little to nothing about math, my arithmetic is sloppy, I never cared much for math in school and, it is only recently that I am discovering that this stuff has any sort of value outside of aggregating your bowling averages, and doing your taxes. In fact I am rather annoyed that no one bothered to explain to me when I was more impressionable that this stuff is real. That is accurately describes the interaction of all activity in the universe. There are also some really beautiful, and deeply mysterious things at play here. An example that I have recently applied my rudimentary programming knowledge to is the so called Syracuse Problem, or Collatz Conjecture, the Hailstone Sequence, and the Ulam Conjecture to name but a few. The problem remains unsolved to this day. The conjecture is that regardless of the starting point, all sequences put into this wormhole will finish the same; specifically 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. The formula is such:

for (n):
if even: n/2
if odd: 3n + 1

This process is repeated until ultimately reaching 1. The reason it is unsolved is because it is still unknown weather all positive integers will eventually trail off the same. It is however presumed they will. I wanted to see what some of these sequences might look like, so I fired out some code and got the following in return. In the first, red circles indicate odd values, while outlined circles indicate odd in the second example which tracks multiple integers. The Y position simply adds 1 to itself until the sequence terminates.

Posted in Code | 2 Comments »

Big Money + Big Prizes!

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

I have created a stupid but functional 3 Door Monty game. I hope to expand it to be a full-fledged Monty Hall problem. It aint much to look at for now, but the prospect of big money and big prizes is too much for even the most stringent ascetic to resist. Gamble your lives away. I’ll just be here rotting in front of my computer.

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