October 3rd, the end was embarrassing

Dear October,

I am drinking Jasmine Green Tea right now because I just sent my teacher my sound art project. The project was due at midnight exactly, and I sent it 2 minutes late. The assignment requirements involve, among other things, a 3-5 minute .mp3 file and 3 questions that you want others to answer about your sound piece. My schedule today (estimated) in relation to my project:

9:00-ish: checked out audio recording device from Resources
1pm-2pm: tried recording a lot of things
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5:30pm: upload files onto computer after classes
5:40pm: cannot find my files. computer says all files were last edited in 2008
a few min. later: realize audio recording device settings were set to a default Jan. 1 2008. fix the date.
a few min. later: identify which files are today's. find that there is no sound on any of the files
a few min. later: realize I was supposed to press a certain input button that was half wiped out so I didn't know what it was the whole time I was recording
a few min. later: record myself laughing and ranting and crying internally about not having recorded anything
a few min. later: record myself eating chips
throughout this whole process: think about using the 45 min. sound file my class partner and I recorded while testing this device in class.
for several hours: record things randomly. overhear people's conversations accidentally in the cafeteria and think about how terribly creepy this device can be.
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10:00pm: a little worried.
10:10pm: plan to record something involving running down the hill to the store and back in 5 minutes. roommate is worried. asks if I want to wear her neon reflector vest so I don't get hit by a car.
10:13pm: leave dorm to run to test idea. running uphill is horrible as usual. I get back in 7 minutes.
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11:00pm: worried. perusing through recordings, feeling despair
11:20pm: freaking out a bit. get random idea of embarrassing myself by shouting a phrase out loud while running through the halls quietly because it's quiet hours
11:30pm: I panic and grab my recording device and shout "there's a pig on the schoolbus" randomly in the residence halls, and then run to the next floor as quickly possible if there are people nearby
11:35pm: upload file and edit. though I tried to shout, it was more like I spoke louder than usual
for a while: try to decide on editing one of three possible sound files. play around with editing. the other two are normal but one is not original enough and the other is possibly too boring. pick the insecure sounding one
11:50pm: freaking out and trying to thinfk up wuqsutions for project!
11:56pm: try to export sound file as mp3 from sound editing program and IT TELLS ME I HAVE TO DOWNLOAD ANOTHER PROGRAM to export as an mp3.
11:58pm: downloading mp3 program and thinking up less stupid questions
12:01am: export file as mp3 and attach to email. try really hard to reword questions
12:02am: send email. freak out a bit about it being late and about how embarrassing everything is. roommate asks if I want tea

Otherwise today was good. Please stay warm for a while longer because I don't want to wear long pants.

Thanks,
Indigo

song of the day: We Found Love covered by Ed Sheeran, originally by Rihanna

-------Also here's a letter to October by my roommate:

Dear October,

You were pretty warm today. You should like... cool down yo.

love,
eggs

2, 3, 4: AHHHH, :(, Beep

I know I haven't posted for the past 3 days! Ahh! Ok here we go, succession of posts, both short and medium and nonexistent! 
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2: 

Everything burns. I went to the beach with some of my friends. We made a sandcastle with strange jut-outs and a cat head and another head, and tried to boogie board but didn’t really since the waves were somewhat low. 

Clothes: burn 
Fabric: burns 
Shower: burns (apparently there is no cold water in my shower) 
Lotion, 10 seconds later: burns 
Another kind of lotion: burns 
Typing: burns

Just kidding about the last one! But
Sitting with my back touching anything: burns

Today: 153 words
(comment from the future 7/5: what a fun and sad day)
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3:

Today: 0 words
(comment from the future 7/5: .___________.)
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4:

My printer is going kzzk… kzzk… kzzk… kzzk kzzk kzzk kzzkhzkhzkhzkhzkhz 

So I’ve been reading a lot of webcomics lately, and but I only recently noticed all the different sound effects that the artists come up with for things. It’s not just ZAP! or POW! or CREAK.. click beep POOF! slurp, swish, bzzt, slam, whack, kaboom, crash, THWACK, etc. (Actually, it’s funny to note the sound effects that are verbs, like slam, crash, stomp, and slurp. Maybe one day sound effects will evolve into really ridiculous verb sounds, like WALK, drink, CLOSE DOOR!, open, UNPEEL!) Anyway, instead they’re a little more unusual. Like 

Krrrnch - breaking a metal floor 
Zrrrrrt – laser beam through tent 
Woooom - explosion
Shooooop – opening a chest
Crrrr – wagon piece dragging 
Fweeeee – light fleeting away 
Fwshhhhhhh – power zapping out 
Zzzzhooooom – laser beam 
Ffssssss – electricity doing its thing 
Krsh! – power zap, electric 
Shhf –leather boot sliding into saddle, gun into pocket 
Fzz, crik, crak – campfire 

I'll tell you about the webcomics another time. So I was thinking of how you would come up with sound effects for just things you do/things that happen every day. I guess the steps would be something like this: 

1. Listen 
2. Imitate by voice 
3. Try to spell it out 
4. Figure out the pattern (long and extended like shhhhhhhhhhhhhhk, short blips like beep beep beepbeepbeep, dramatic like SLAM!, soft and lowercase, etc.) 
5. Figure out what it looks like (slinky and oozing around in waves, etc.) 

So... I did some stuff and listened to the sounds that happened (appeared, resulted?) and tried to translate them as accurately as possible. Here they are: 

drinking water – glgflkgdlgfglg
fireworks (happy 4th of July, belated!) – poooosh! Buh buh bububububububu crkkk… pook 
flicking light switch up – blun
ceiling fan - whuwuuwWWWwhwhwhwhwhWwwWWWWWWww 
laptop having trouble breathing- vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrn vrrn vrn vrrn vrrrrrrRRRrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN 
crinkling receipt slowly – blllk mllk blLLK… Kr k MLk blKrr.. 
peeling a post-it - fffzzzzzzzzzzzzzsssssuh 

Wait. Is it peeling or unpeeling? I am peeling an apple. I am unpeeling an apple. Unpeeling a banana. Is there a difference? Ok. Peeling is to remove the skin. So unpeeling would be like putting the skin back on, except it’s not. Also it doesn’t seem to show up in dictionaries as a verb. What a mystery. 

It’s really difficult, when you’re listening to a sound, to figure out whether it is an “n” sound or a “d” sound or something else. I was poking my laptop with my nail just now and couldn’t decide whether it was more like a “d d d d d d d d” or “dn dn dn dn” sound. The only reason the “n” is being tacked on to the “d” is because the tapping sound is slightly muted, probably largely by my finger and then by everything else, so there needs to be something that stops the d sound from being too duh duh duh when you read it. 

Anyway that was fun. You should try it. It was surprisingly difficult. I guess there’s a difference between the sound effects used in comics and how you would actually spell out a sound effect if you wanted it to be as accurate as possible. I’m pretty sure if someone drew a character scrunching up some paper, they wouldn’t write “blllk mllk blLLK” next to it. They’d probably just go with “crinkle crinkle”. 

Aah this is so complicated, typing and continuing the same blog post on different days. Let me tell you how I am organizing my NaNoWriMo writing right now. I’ve got MS Word open, and I just type type for the day. At the end of the day, I write the word count for the day, type a looooooooong line of dashes under that and write the date, in bold, at the end of the dash train. I highlight the dash train a hideous cyan because it’s either that or another terribly blinding color, or yellow, which is boring (only highlighter yellow though. Normal yellow is awesome! And only highlighter yellow on the computer. Real-life highlighter yellow is so practical it’s ok if it’s a bit boring. At least I can see the words underneath). Then I type type for the next day and repeat. 

 Ooh I want to try something. 

“At my end of my day, I write my word count for my day and I type my looooooooong line of dashes and I write my date, in my bold, at my end of my dash train.” 

 I always feel bad about using “I” too much in sentences. Are you ever worried people will try to psychoanalyze you? Anyway, I thought I'd see what it would look like if I replaced all articles with “my”. It’d be funny to have a day where everyone does that when they speak. It might become a habit though. o_o 

So that’s how I’m organizing everything, I can’t keep blog posts in one piece on MS Word. They must be separated by dashes. It’s just weird, especially when I decide, the next day, that I want to type something BEFORE the stuff I typed yesterday for my blog post. Actually, I’m not supposed to really run into this problem since the goal was to post every day, and the assumption was that I would only write blog posts on the day I post them. Gah confusing. Alright see you tomorrow!

Today: 1133 words
(actually I'm kind of warming up to that horrible highlighter cyan. It may look cute here, by the way, but it doesn't so much on MS Word)

Thumbnails

Wow, it's been so long since I last posted a post. Every time I felt like posting these past few months, I would get distracted by something and then I wouldn't feel like posting anymore. Because of this, I have collected a lot of links and a lot of things I feel like talking about. So let me get the links out first, and then I'll go on with everything else I was going to say.

There are a lot of links. I really don't feel like describing each one, so I've decided to just write a few words related to the link as the description. Then you can go click on whatever sounds interesting. I also put a small thumbnail of each site under its link because for some sites, I think the pictures explain better than any description I'd write. Ok, here's the list:

phras.in

grammar type search hits match this or that

isleoftune.com

music sound make island small bump objects

evernote

notes find save ideas remember

sliderocket
powerpoint online slides presentations nice animation

bomomo
drag moving paint canvas cool unique

muro
deviantart mural graffiti paint tools

writespace

blank writing clear space simple dark

harmony
draw shading sketch instant awesome

heavy mural

post-it sticky note mural huge print upload image

like.fm

music like recommend list track summary

stayfocusd

google chrome set time no distractions

otomata

tune music bump click simple repeat change

alterego

game choose click path grow up text

Oh, I also have a list of books and anime and maybe music that I feel like recommending. I'll do that later. This is already longer than I expected, so I think I'll just post what I was going to post originally later.

Now for the end song! Sometimes I feel like adding two songs at the end of my posts because I can't decide between them, but it just doesn't work because I always feel like the song at the end is the theme of the post or something, even if its not. Usually its a song that's either my current favorite, or one I was listening to while making the post. Right now I don't really have a current favorite, just songs that haven't gotten too old for me yet. So here's a song that fits into that category.

Never Gonna Leave This Bed by Maroon 5 - This is pretty popular right now. Or maybe it was a few weeks ago that it was? Anyway, I especially like this song because as soon as I hear it begin, I want to listen to the rest of it. Sometimes I hear a song beginning and I go, "too depressing", or "ugh, not right now", but this song is so versatile for many moments, and that's why I like it.

Auditorium

I found this a while ago, just forgot to post it. (Actually, I did post it. I just didn't so into detail.)
http://www.playauditorium.com/

Auditorium is a game with light and sound combined. You try to lead the streams of light towards the bars, and then it starts filling up the bar with the light, which makes a sound. There are multiple bars, so you try to bend and use the light to hit all the bars, which makes a symphony of sounds. As you get further into the game, there are more sounds, and the sounds make more complex music. They arent just straight, yellow beams of light. Oh, no. They're glowing, flowing, and multicolored. It's pleasing to the eye and sounds nice. At the moment, it's down for maintenance. When it's up again, play!

Pixel Pop

New Nitrome game, again. o_o

Pixel Pop - Its a mini-game with a bunch of different levels. Turn up the volume, because rhythm is a big part of this game. (My sound isn't working at the moment though, so I'm not sure how much you'll depend on it) Anyway, Its got a lot of random things. Like karate-chopping apples and fruit(while dancing), zapping farmers, or smashing little flying planes(also while dancing). This game is very retro-looking, and its even more pixelized than usual. Very colorful, although frustrating. :)

Ice Breaker Level 39 :D

Toxic II and Stuff

http://www.nitrome.com/games/toxic2 - Toxic II is out!
http://playauditorium.com/ - A game with sound, where you bounce streams of light onto bars that light up and make a tune. Very pretty. @_@
http://jayisgames.com/games/ifiction/game/violet - Violet, a new interactive fiction game.