deafness update: half way!

woooooo! 12 hours to go, which will hopefully be spent in sleep for the most part.
I watched some short films with the headphones on, so I could still somewhat hear them.
There's also a neat Firefox extension called "Ubiquity", which I'm messing around with and should be useful in the future.

deafness update 2

Well it's been about 7 hours now. I don't think there's much to report.
I tried listening to some music through my headphones but only got a little bit, which sucks, cause I really want to listen to music now.
And I read Switch Bitch by Roald Dahl in one sitting. It was a short story collection for adults, which is surprising since Dahl usually wrote a bunch of (very good) children's stories. I liked the book, though one of the stories was sorta crazy.
And then I took a nap, which I also did yeterday.

deafness update 1

So it's been 2.5 hours since I put in earplugs and it's pretty crazy.
I'm used to it now but it's funny because I can't hear the tv or anything.
I can, however, hear my thoughts very well. I guess this is good for concentration, except I like music on when I'm doing anything.
So I think I'll make some stencils today, and probably go to a concert later, to experience it. I'm thinking it will actually be better, because I can hear the lyrics instead of just overwhelming amounts of sound.

24 hour deafness

So for music class I have to put in earplugs for 24 hours to experience deafness I guess. So I'm going to have to go 24 hours without music, which will probably be harder than the same artist for a week or whatever.

Anyways I put them in at 2 and conversations basically don't work. I can still hear sorta but not really. It's pretty crazy since I can't hear the TV or any ambient noises.

I'll see what happens when I try to do various things and if hearing affects them.

iTunes

Well it seems like I've stopped using iTunes completely. I'm not sure how this is going to turn out because I've used iTunes for just about the whole time I've listened to music, even though I don't have an iPod or anything. It had a nice layout and playlists were nice, and I'll probably miss being able to listen to other people's music (not that it was usually very good), but reduced sound quality really isn't that great. And it's not just some indistinguishable difference either (Like what kinds of cables or small differences in bitrate), because I've used iTunes, then switched to the Last.fm player and thought that it sounded better, BEFORE I heard about the reduced sound quality of iTunes.

Anyways, I figured out how to organize libraries using Foobar, so now I'll just use that for all of my tasks. Window Media Player is simply terrible, because it doesn't read ID3v2.3 tags correctly, so that obviously doesn't work for me. Also, it doesn't organize very well, though it DOES have the ability to transfer music to my mp3 player, which is as shame since the tags don't work despite WMP claiming they do.

The new Stars EP is exceedingly good (especially since I've been waiting for a new album for a looooong time). I've listened to it for 259 times in the last 2 days or something, and I'm still not sick of it. Maybe I should do another experiment with just 1 album for a week.

hooray

Lots of stuff happening recently. First of all there are some really good concerts coming up. Of Montreal is coming December 5th, and that show should be completely crazy. Their new album Skeletal Lamping is coming out soon, so there will probably be a lot of new things at the concert. And they're crazy anyways, so a good show can be expected. Also Murder By Death is coming sometime near the end of October, I don't really remember when.

I heard it first in Lauren's car and thought it was pretty good. I didn't do anything about it for a few weeks, then suddenly became inspired and got some of the albums. Mainly I listen to Who Will Survive And What Will Be Left Of Them (a mouthful, anyone?), since it's pretty much epic. I really like Murder By Death because of the instrumentation. They have good keyboards and include a cellist, which is fucking awesome, since their tracks sound amazing. Just listen to Killbot 2000 and you'll be forced to agree. You can even download it for free there. The whole album is great, so I think it'll definitely be worth going to that concert.

Also I forgot to mention last post that I got my Stars shirt and poster. I didn't have anything to hang the poster with for a few days, until I went to the poster shop near the Union and got some sticky stuff. It's on the wall opposite my pillow so I can look at it as it glows at night I guess. And now I have the new EP. From what I've heard (it's currently on the first play through) it's really chill and quite good. I've always liked the chill Stars material (On Peak Hill, Don't Be Afraid To Sing, Calendar Girl, etc), so now I can listen to this EP when I'm in the mood. I'm quite happy I got the CD, because now I can make high quality rips (about 900 kbps lossless yay!) and listen to it with my good headphones.

Oh and two nights ago I went to a concert with Calvin. There were a bunch of local (meaning Florida, I guess) bands playing. They were all decent, though only the last band, The Dead Songwriters, really stood out. I got a shirt and CD for $10, cause it was pretty fucking cheap and pretty good.

shit

I don't know how long since I last updated this, I really should do it more often.

First we'll talk about the new music. I got quite a bit of post-punk stuff like Joy Division, She Wants Revenge, and the rest of the Interpol album. I've also hung out with Allan often, and he's always got the same mix on, but it's so fucking good and chill, so I basically got the CD and listened to it, especially Santeria by Sublime. I've also listened to some really nice shoegaze in the form of Asobi Seksu, which is pretty different from My Bloody Valentine because the vocals are warmer and more emotional, while there isn't a sonic atmosphere surrounding you.


I've also been putting together lots of playlists and smart playlists on itunes. One of the reasons I like itunes is the ability to put together smart playlists and normal playlists, and being able to "stack" playlists by including them in other playlists which update automatically. Anyways I've put together some mood playlists, which can come in handy in different situations, such as chill music when you're studying.


Which leads me to the next topic: software. itunes recently revamped itself in a fresh new format and included a feature called "Genius". I haven't used it that much but it's supposed to get better over time and put together playlists for you to listen to. I tried it out and it seems to work pretty well, though a few strange songs were included. itunes also has superior auto-organization abilities, which other players seem to lack for some reason. However, I read today that using itunes in Windows will decrease the audio quality you hear because itunes is meant primarily for Macs, and hardware differences cause the problems. Also, itunes doesn't support my mp3 player, which is annoying, so I decided to try out some new players.

First I used WMP, but it didn't recognize a lot of my tags and even turned a lot of them into foreign languages, which was pretty fucked up, so I asked Drew what he recommended. He told me about Winamp and Foobar, which he said was highly customizable, which intrigued me so I decided to try it. It was a bit hard to use at first (as are most things), but the key to avoid being old is the ability to adapt, so I kept at it and learned how the things worked. It turns out that it is indeed very versatile, and I'm looking forward to using it more, and I do particularly enjoy higher sound quality.

Also if you really want good quality get a pair of hi-fi headphones, the bulky ones that look slightly ridiculous, but the quality and bass is so much better that I am all for it, and I sometimes stuff them in my backpack and walk around campus with giant headphones in my pack.

her name is Yoshimi

She has a blackbelt in karate. Okay, Wilson was talking about how he wanted to mix this old-school rap song and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt 1 by The Flaming Lips, which I had heard many years ago (when pluto was still a planet). I didn't really like the song then, since I had about 0 musical taste and I thought it was weird, but when Wilson played it I basically fell in love with it. I haven't really listened to the rest of the album, since Yoshimi is the 3rd song and I can't get past it, so I've listened to this song about 30 times already and it hasn't been a day.

Sooo yeah I like this song. So I drew it on the mirror, which is our room's way of leaving notes to each other. It's a very happy sounding song, though it's supposed to be about cancer or something. Isn't that odd?

ohshit

I just thought of a great band name.
Catching .22s

okay

So I haven't posted anything for a while, while I've listened to a goodish bit of music. In terms of new stuff I've basically listened to a lot of Belle & Sebastian, which I got from Wilson, my roommate. I'd listened to them before, but for some reason never did really become that interested, but that happens with bands now and then. Belle & Sebastian is basically twee pop at its best, it's very mellow, quite happy at occasions, and songs like 'for the price of a cup of tea' just make me want to dance.

Belle & Sebastian is probably one of the best bands from Scotland ever, but have about zero visibility in mainstream music even though, as my roommate mentioned, they would be perfect for radio.

I've also been listening to a playlist I put together, composed of generally unhappy music. It's definitely not "emo" though, and I titled it "wistful" just cause that's all I could think of, so I don't really know what it is. I'm pretty good at putting together these sorts of playlists, and I like listening to them, so whatever. It's not like I'm unhappy, I just like it. I can also listen to Calendar Girl just over and over too, which I did yesterday for a bit.

Wilson also gave me a bunch of different things. There seems to be a goodish bit of post rock, some gypsy/Eastern European music, and other things like Belle. I still don't understand how we listen to like mutually exclusive material, but there it is.

Also there is a new Stars EP available! It contains about 20 minutes of material and 6 tracks, one of which is a live version of 'Going, Going, Gone' from Nightsongs. I've been waiting for one ever since In Our Bedroom but didn't expect any new material so early. It's available here, in either digital or physical format. I bought an actual CD, but it's not shipping til the 16th. I also got a $5 shirt and a glow in the dark poster, so that should be exciting. Stars is definitely my favorite band, so I'll gladly buy CDs and merch to support them. I actually haven't heard the new material aside from some 30 sec previews, but it sounds like it should be good. BUY IT.

kay I think that's about it for now. I'm sure I forgot something.