WWWhat in the World Wide Web

EXIF data. Every cameraphone I’ve had has done something stupid with EXIF data. And by “something” I mean EVERYTHING. So I have to open up EXIF Pilot, and…

• Copy what it says in the “Date Time” field over to “Date Time Original” and “Date Time Digitized” (which are almost always blank). This magically makes the rest of the data appear.
• Delete anything in the “Image Description” field, because wordpress likes to make the attachment page’s url based on whatever’s in there (usually something useless like “exif_jpeg_t422″ or “SAMSUNG”).
• MAYBE SOMEDAY: change the “Camera Model” field from something cryptic (“HERO200″, “GT-I9000″) to the human-readable name of whatever phone actually took that pic.
• OH GOD, NO: try to restore all the EXIF data that Vignette strips out. (I’m shit out of luck with Retro Camera, because it doesn’t save an original/unaltered copy.)
• HAHA, YEAH RIGHT: stop being so OCD about stupid crap no one cares about.

Since that’s a whole lot of work for some crappy phone pics, I’ve been sitting on them for a while. Too bad, because I have, like, OVER SIX HUNDRED new cat pics. I am not even exaggerating.

A BUNCH OF STUFF HAPPENED AND I… (PICK ONE OR MORE)

• DID NOT FEEL LIKE WRITING ABOUT OR TAKING PICTURES OF THE STUFF
• DID NOT HAVE TIME TO WRITE ABOUT OR TAKE PICTURES OF THE STUFF
• FORGOT I HAD A CAMERA AND/OR A BLOG
• STARTED A FEW HALF-ASSED DRAFTS THAT I WILL NEVER FINISH
• DID TAKE A BUNCH OF PICS BUT THEY’RE STILL ON MY PHONE (AND ALL THE ONES FROM MY OLD PHONE HAVE MESSED UP EXIF DATA)
• NONE OF THE ABOVE
• ALL OF THE ABOVE (INCLUDING THE CONTRADICTORY “NONE OF THE ABOVE”)

It only has one item so far:

I have a list problem, but so does the entire inter-net.

I discovered my new delay/looping pedal can do continuous notes. No gaps! My old pedal (which admittedly wasn’t so hot) couldn’t do this. I didn’t think my new one could do it either, until I accidentally did the following:

1. Start a loop, but don’t actually play anything
2. Play a note with the guitar’s volume all the way down
3. Slowly fade the volume back up
4. Repeat steps 2–3 as necessary
5. ????
6. SPACE ROCK!

At some point I should really make a video of this process, so I can put it on youtube and have everyone say that it’s FAKE. Yeah, about that: see below!

Examples

1. almost three minutes of building a chord
2. about one minute of a different chord (already in progress)

Needs work

• So far my output has been really quiet for some reason
• And I have really bad line noise coming from somewhere (shitty cables?)
• Distortion makes the bad line noise even worse, so no bowel-shaking drone metal just yet

NOTE, FROM THE FUTURE: Here is a totally FAKE video I made:

ANOTHER NOTE, ALSO FROM THE FUTURE: The line noise/quiet output only seems to be a problem with headphone rockin’ (which is a problem in many other ways). I’ve been playing through an amp, really loudly, and the output’s been fine. The line noise is about what you’d expect when you also have a billion other pedals, so no complaints here.

December 21

1. Buy new “long count” calendar
2. THAT’S IT

December 22

1. Wake up
2. Keep on living in a world that has not ended

Here are totally random things that make—or have in the past made—me unspeakably sad to think about:

• A dude crying in the shower (not me)
• A single, delicious ear of corn on a plate
• Eating at Hardee’s—delicious burgers, but:
  • the starkest decor ever
  • utter chaos behind the front counter (bonus sadness if there is one employee trying to maintain politeness amid the chaos)
• This pic (from Zeta Gundam):
  
• The Smashing Pumpkins song “Spaceboy” (not related to above pic that I know of)

This list to grow exponentially as I continue to stay off my happy-pill prescription!

I keep forgetting to do this list, but this is one of those weird phenomena that I have noticed. Say there is a band you like. No, not them, that other one. Similar names are the death of me, especially when I love one band and hate the other. I spent years of my life not liking Chavez, because I saw a video by Gomez (which I hated), and the names were permanently mixed up in my mind.

SOOOOO, in no particular order (except alphabetical), and varying levels of similarity…

• The Arcade Fire / The Fiery Furnaces
• Black Dice / Black Lips / The Black Keys
• Cake / Cake-Like
• Chavez / Gomez
• Codeine / Morphine
• Deerhoof / Deerhunter
• Del Fuegos / Del Lords
• fIREHOSE / Firehouse
• Fucked Up / Holy Fuck (and they’re both from fuckin’ Toronto, fuck!)
• Garth Brooks / Brooks & Dunn
• Jawbox / Jawbreaker
• The Mars Volta / Volta Do Mar
• Mew / Muse
• Modest Mouse / Mouse on Mars
• Múm (from Iceland) / Mum (NOT from Iceland)
• OMD / OMC
• Panda Bear (from Animal Collective) / Grizzly Bear (not from Animal Collective)
• Polara / Polaris
• Stroke 9 / The Strokes
• Super Furry Animals / Animal Collective
• Supergrass / Superdrag
• Television / Telephone
• The Verve / The Verve Pipe
• The Vines / The Shins
• Whitesnake / White Lion / Great White
• Wolf Eyes / Wolf Parade / Wolfmother / Wolf Balls (ok I made that last one up, but it’s only a matter of time)
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs / Hot Hot Heat / !!!
• Honorable mention: the seven hundred or so bands during the 80s that had all one word names that started with a C.
• BONUS ROUND: XTC album “Black Sea” / X album “Under the Big Black Sun”

It seems like there were more, but my memory is terrible—which is why I am always mixing these groups up in my head to begin with.

Dear Photoshoop,

Stop showing me this dialog!

From experience and googling, I have noted the following possible actions that bring up this dialog:

1. opening a picture
2. closing a picture
3. saving a picture
4. looking at Photoshop
5. not looking at Photoshop
6. having an old version of OS X
7. having a new version of OS X
8. installing a brand new copy on a brand new computer and trying 1–5 for the first time ever
9. existing

I have not yet begun to complain! »

Tagging is:

• Handy
• A pain in the ass to do after the fact

I’m working on it. Not really, but kind of.

NOTE, FROM THE FUTURE: I’m probably about as caught up on tags as I’m going to be. That still amounts to “not very”, but that’s all you get.

Today I finally got my money’s worth from the all-day Saturday pass ($2 for unlimited bus rides).

• 20 Red South: downtown to campus, for pizza and witnessing whimsical conveyances
  
• 100 Yellow South: campus to Savoy, for the viewing of latest “talkie” film involving masked adventurers
• 100 Yellow North: Savoy to Target (this is practically the entire length of this route, from the southernmost to northernmost and took about an hour)
• 20 Red South (again): back to downtown
• 50 Green East: downtown to easternmost edge of Urbana, ostensibly for more grocery shopping but mainly I was engrossed in my reading material and kind of aimless
• 50 Green West: back home (downtown)
• NEVER DOING SOMETHING LIKE THIS AGAIN

Actually, I had an idea once, when I was driving all up and down the Olympic Peninsula. I’d be out in the middle of nowhere, and there’d be a bus stop sign there. Western Washington has a whole mess of different local, county, and community bus systems, so I wanted to see how far I could get, starting in downtown Seattle. I could get pretty far into the Peninsula, for sure, and heading north and east I could probably get close to the Cascades.