generic update #9 (Will Smith vs. Beethoven)

I'd hope most people know to whom the title refers, but just in case:

vs.

Today has been quite a productive day. Me and Alex rearranged our room, me and Char spoke about things and I've began working on the first of three essays due over the next couple of weeks. The essay is a comparison between 3 recordings of a famous Beethoven work of our choice, and whilst doing primary research I left my iTunes library on shuffle. Will Smith's cover of "1,000 Kisses" came on quite early on, and one of the lyrics it about Beethoven:

Yo yo me and more it's like a Pichasso painted your aura
It's like Beehtoven composed your vocal tones

I know this isn't hugely interesting, but I like it when weird little consequences like this happen. I got so excited that I jumped up and flailed madly, sending a cup of precariously balanced coffee all over Alex's bed.

Actually the song and the coffee were two independent events, but it's amusing to think of them as related.

Now I'm about to resume working. I've just eating my second manwich (manly sandwich) of the day: both were filled with pasta from last night, chilli, chilli sauce, cheese and salad. Both were delicious.

chrexat202620

This post details another of my (and (slightly less so) Alex's) awesome creations.

Today, whilst listening to and discussing music with Alex, it occurred to us that we should have some record of our combined listening tastes. We each have separate last.fm profiles (Christophogo and hy07asw respectively), but after some intense deliberation, we decided to collaborate and create a joint profile.

Aforementioned joint profile was created almost immediately, under the name "Chrexat202620". Chrex is a mixture of Chris and Alex (3 letters of my name are included because it's half of each of our names, but I had to round mine up). The date between our birthdays was calculated as Chrex's date of birth (the date was 31st December 1989 - the last day of the 80s - which was pretty cool), and the music represented on the profile is a mixture of our own. 202620 is our room and house number.

The profile can be viewed here.

robot trap

Last night whilst looking at our ceiling fan, I had a flash of inspiration and realised that it could be incorporated into a booby-trap of sorts. I immediately began work on creating such a contraption:

Above our window is a shelf, on which I placed my small plastic robot. For the prototype, I connected my phone charger to my headphones with a crude knot, and connected one end to the fan and the other to the robot (this was replaced with a length of white cotton for the finished version). When the fan was turned on, the rotation pulled the string taut, causing the robot to fall from the shelf and be yanked violently about the room.

As you can probably imagine, the path of the robot is highly unpredictable. It seems to work better if the fan is turned on, then off for a couple of seconds, then back on again. This causes epicycles in the circular movement it takes on, making it less likely to smash everything on the mantelpiece.

In the (crappy) picture above you can see the window, the shelf, the robot (circled), the fan, and if you’re particularly observant, the string. I might upload a video of the contraption in action, too, so keep an eye out!

Nora's notebook

First I'll briefly introduce Nora for anyone reading this blog who doesn't know who she is: Nora is an exchange student from Germany, studying for a Masters in English Literature at York University in Toronto. She has lived at Huron since August*.

I'm not sure how it began, but people in the house were teaching slang terms in English and Canadian. She then came upstairs and inquired as to whether people in the kitchen had had any "butt sex" recently, then asked me and Alex to teach her some more words, particularly slang terms for genitalia.

Of course, we accepted. Below is a helpful diagram, labelled with all the terms we could think of.

I'm aware this is hugely immature, but it was fun and it was a good deed, so it doesn't matter.

*Sorry Nora!!!

generic update #8 (aaargh!)

I woke up this morning (first time in a while) and checked my diary schedule book thing to see what was going on. To my immediate distress I noticed that the second PSY240 midterm is this evening.

I'll be honest: I haven't done nearly enough work for it. I missed a couple of the lectures what with moving house, and haven't done all of the reading, but I've taken the appropriate actions to remedy the situation: I've dismissed all prior plans for today, drank a cup of coffee from Camille ( =] ), eaten a fried egg sandwich, and installed myself, my laptop, and my consumables in the common room in preparation for an intense study session.

So far I'm 2 hours (out of 5 and a half) and 2 lectures (out of 3) in. The plan is to finish taking notes for the third lecture, then relocate to the front porch and read and read and read and read and read aformentioned currently existing and soon to exist notes.

In case you're wondering why I'm writing my blog instead of revising by the way, it's break time.

so far at Huron

Before starting, I'd like to say that I may currently be experiencing writers' block. It seems I have lost the ability to structure and transcribe my thoughts in a coherent and readable manner.

I'm going to elect the excitement of the last few days as the reason for this affliction. I'm also going to attempt to write something anyway, so bear with me:

Since moving, I've noticed an inverse relationship between my distance from downtown Toronto and my enjoyment levels. Although I am incredibly grateful to Eva and Chelsea for their hospitality and their welcoming me into their home, I feel taking Alex’s offer of moving in was a good decision - so much fun stuff has happened here already (even despite its adverse impact on my budget).

We had the toast on Wednesday, as I mentioned in my last post. It was really nice to be welcomed and I feel like I’m pretty much settled here now. All my stuff is in and my half of the room is (currently) tidy and organised.

Last night we went to the Red Room for beers, then to a concert at El Mocambo. The headlining band were Bishop Allen, but the first support, Darwin Deez, were much better.

See the video below for a demonstration of their awesomeness!

As you're probably aware, today is Halloween, and we have some rambunctious plans to match: James accompanied me to Honest Ed's today to pick up some face paint, which I'm going to apply to myself until I look like this:

We also picked up some alcohol (I got 2 litres of 7% pomegranate cider for $11, which I'm very eager to try) to drink while we wait for trick-or-treaters to arrive, gorge, and leave again. We also spent $16 on candy to give to aforementioned scavengers.

I'm sure the evenings festivities will be duly documented by me at some point in the near future.

subjective imbecility

The title of this post holds no relevance to its content.

In today's Beethoven lecture, our teacher recited a quote about subjective imbecility. As well finding the phrase funny, I found the content interesting also: Beethoven was queried by a critic as to why he considered a recent composition as "music", and Beethoven responded "it's not for you to understand, but for future generations". I found this incredibly smug, but also interesting because he realised that he was composing music beyond the comprehension of the current era.

Anyway. The content of the post:

On Sunday, I was offered by Alex to move in to Huron. It was proposed that we'd share a room, and split it in half along with the rent. At first it seemed like a hairbrain scheme, but it began to gather momentum. Alex asked various people associated with the house whether it would be ok, all of whom said yes, and I told Eva about it and she said it was ok too.

So 4 days later, I moved in!

Pretty much. I still have some stuff at the other place, and have to take some bedding back that I've washed and leave my key, but the bulk of my stuff is here now. We bought a bed up from the basement and stuck it in the bedroom, rearranged the furniture to accommodate two people, and that was that.

It's great here. Tonight we had a toast (sparkling wine!) to my moving in, went to get some food from the NEARBY shops, then came back to watch the IT Crowd and Peep Show. I then went to sleep without the need for an hour journey home.

Good times :)