My buddy is letting me borrow the first season of Battlestar Galactica. It’s one of those shows I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time (like Lost, which I still need to do) but never quite got around to.
Now I’m getting caught up. So far I’m only through the first few discs but I can say I’m really enjoying it. It’s just what I need to be honest. With as busy as I’ve been the past few weeks a little relaxing downtime after work with a good sci-fi show suits me just fine.
Edit: I finished Season 1 last night and yeah, I am hooked. Great show!
Now that hockey is over with and I’ve fully absorbed the championship I can move on to other things. Namely the fact that my perception of time seems to be speeding up. Case in point, I can’t believe it was nearly a week ago that I wrote my last post about the Wings winning the cup. That said I’m going to keep this short so that it gets done.
It’ll also be short because I think what I have to say is fairly common sense, namely that the more you think about and have to do, the less time you have for other things. Unfortunately (fortunately?) it feels like it’s doing nothing but speed up lately. Gone are the days when it felt like Friday was an eternity away. Now it’s more like I start worrying about the following Monday on Thursday morning. That’s messed up.
Perhaps a lot of people don’t explicitly think about what all this business about time implies in the more general sense. In many ways I feel it points to just how little we really understand about time as it correlates to consciousness. Not only does the passive experience of time flowing by seem to change pace based on your state of mind, we also actively deal with many different scales of time at once. Or at least people who are any good at planning do.
Music seems to change the way I perceive time quite a bit. If I’m working hard and listening to something I really enjoy it seems to keep my brain occupied in a way that keeps me from getting bored. More information to process perhaps… Time moves along very quickly when I drop into a groove like that. Music can have the reverse effect as well though, causing time to slow down if I’m lost in my own thoughts for a while.
On the other hand I’ve found that I can be very busy buy if my mind isn’t occupied in a constructive way time seems to just crawl. Consider the statement “busy work.” For me it means some set of mundane and time consuming tasks that make it feel like time is effectively at a standstill. Just because I’m doing a lot of stuff doesn’t mean you’re really thinking all that much. In these situations it just drags on and on… The opposite seems to be true for plenty of people though, so take from that what you will.
I guess this wasn’t that short, and I’m not really done so I’ll split it into two parts. More later!
After an extremely painful Game 5 loss and a close ending just now, I can very happily say that my beloved Detroit Red Wings have won the Stanley Cup yet again. I can’t wait for the parade.
Check out some of the songs from Nina Deli on her MySpace, especially the song Flow. I happened across it yesterday checking out some audio software (I’ll have to go into it later) and really dig it.
I have a lot to catch up on! The Wings are (despite last night’s tough loss) still leading in the Stanley Cup Finals, the Red Bull Air Race came to Detroit this past weekend and played to the biggest crowd it ever has and the Pistons managed to blow it against Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals.
But this all too brief post is going to try and give you a little taste of what DEMF was like this year. Some have accused it of straying from its roots and going too “mainstream.” While it’s true that some more mainstream artists performed this year to say it sold out would be kind of an exaggeration. The fact of the matter is they needed to make the festival sustainable into the future, and Movement 2008 proved that Paxahau can do that and do it well.
First of all, the event was well organized. The last couple years have definitely shown improvement and this time it really showed that they knew what was going on. Beyond all stuff that festival-goers would see you could tell they had their act together by virtue of the fact that they were attracting more sponsors who were eager to jump in and take on a big role.
Second, I think the lineup speaks for itself. Despite the “mainstream” influence there were plenty of people representing the original sound. Pulling down names like Moby and Girl Talk is icing on the cake I think, not a reformulation of the festival itself. Richie Hawtin’s set was probably one of my favorite that he’s done at DEMF in the last few years. Deadmau5 was exceptional, as were Kenneth Thomas, James Zabiela, Magda, Mark Farina, Kevin Saunderson, Josh Wink and so many others that I haven’t mentioned. Beyond that there were plenty of acts I didn’t even get to see.
Third, the crowd was great. I met people from around the area and all over Michigan but from at least twelve other states, Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, Australia, Brazil, Germany (lots of Germans actually), the UK and Russia. Seriously. It wasn’t like I was even going out of my way to try and find people from out of town, it’s just cemented itself as an international event.
All in all it was an amazing weekend. The weather was perfect, the sound was fantastic and plenty of good friends were around to enjoy it with. As in years past, I can’t wait till the next one.
I’ll have to do a follow up DEMF post, but here’s just a little video I recorded with my phone of Moby’s performance, which was mindblowing. Honestly I wasn’t expecting much, but he may have been one of my favorite acts of the entire festival. If only my stupid phone had recorded longer. It cuts out right as he dropped the beat and everyone lost their mind.
In poking around a bit more on YouTube the other night I found this video of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland getting remixed. I have to say, the music by itself is really good but the very well done video adds a lot.
From 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., boxers from Detroit’s famed Kronk gym duke it out and Mexican masked wrestlers, Revolucha, hit the mat in a ring taking center stage in Prentis Court. Ann Arbor’s The Bang! provides the backdrop with a dance party adventure mixing everything from rock’n’roll to ‘60s soul, from BritPop to HipHop.
I’m thinking of getting a plug-in or hacking up some OpenID integration for comment posting on this site. On the surface it seems to really do what I want. I am so anti the idea of having a unique registration here, or even the idea of a unique “blog-centric” identity management solution. Something like OpenID sits with me really well since it’s very generic.
My sister Niku had her commencement ceremonies recently and in between feeling very proud of my sister for getting her degree in Microbiology I found myself reflecting a bit on my own accomplishments as well as the areas that I could do more. Objective self-evaluation can be a tough thing to do right and it’s something that I always strive to be better at. While thinking about this I started to try and come up with some of the core qualities that help successful people reach their goals.
There are a lot of different qualities that a person needs to embody to attain their goals. Of course, a big part of it is what the goals are. But I think that there are also some common traits that are perhaps the foundation of success. I was able to come up with the following: knowing how to plan properly, being persistent and being patient. (Note that they all start with the letter P, which is just a lucky coincidence.) My list probably isn’t exhaustive, but these seem like some of the most critical general traits.
To begin with, planning seems like an obvious one. If someone is not able to actually figure out what his or her goals are, how can that person possible accomplish anything? Past that she need to be able to reason out what the steps are to reaching a specific goal and then to be able to map out the steps for each of those subgoals. Being able to plan for a variety of circumstances is pretty critical too.
Persistence doesn’t really require much explanation. Simply put once the plan is laid out a certain level of drive is required to stick with it. Depending on how difficult the goal is a little more persistence might be required.
The last one is the most important one I think. Patience might seem a little odd coming after a trait that might seem at odds with it, but I actually feel they go together quite well. First, a person needs to be patient with themselves. Not complacent or making excuses; that’s quite a bit different. Patience is the trait that lets someone persistently execute his or her plan in an effective manner. Without patience emotion can take over and in my experience an over-emotional response won’t help at all.
On that note, if I had to throw in a runner up I’d say passion. Funny… That starts with the letter P as well.
I can’t wait for the parade.
