Rubin Starset

iPod Dongle

2008-07-25T04:18:39Z

Reed pointed and asked, "Wtf is that?" It's nifty. Others wanted a link, here it is.

Time Again?

2008-07-24T06:51:19Z

I need a personal photo project again. I need some rules, some sort of challenge. Should I give 365 self portraits a go again, or try something new? If so, what?

Leatherman

2008-07-23T16:50:13Z

On the second day of CONvergence, I thought it was a good idea to act like a zombie would, by falling down a flight of stairs in a fit of blood and brains. Qarly tells me that I had this grand idea well before I got rip roaring drunk, while I'm pretty sure it was more like midnight.

Any how, some point in time that night my multi-tool slipped out of my pocket. Yes, I lost my Leatherman in Minneapolis. On returning back home, I promptly rode out to REI to grab a new one (my 4th Charge Titanium) only to find that they no longer carried it. Hopping onto Amazon I found what I wanted for a fair cost and ordered it.

Today I got my smiling package, popped it open, and found this huge ass tin box. Guess the model of the Charge I like is now some sort of limited collectors item, too good for a plastic heat shrink display case. Not too sure if I want to keep the flimsy tin box or what.

Suggestions on what I could do with it?

CONvergence 2008

2008-07-23T08:12:40Z

Over 4th of July weekend, Qarly (supetoope) and I jumped ship on any Juplaya plans, got on a plane and headed to Minneapolis for CONvergence. I didn't really know what to except other then a convention filled with folks that enjoy sci-fi. No one, except for a secret contact, knew about our visit plans, so it was a bit of a surprise.

As it turned out, this Con is big, to the point where hotel rooms sold out before I had a chance to snag one. Being unfamiliar with anywhere but the Bay Area, I entrusted Google and Orbitz to find me and fine place to stay within walking distance. Once we arrived we quickly found out that freeways over run the rest of the US, and that walking from our hotel to the Con was out of the question. This photo was shot out of our hotel window. You can see the hotel CONvergence was taking place in way off in the background. Suck.

Before we left, I mailed out one of the Dance Dance Immolation proc suits to my secret agent, to be used as a costume on the first day. We were able to get said suit from said contact a few hours after we had landed. After I got it on, and we walked out of our hotel, waiting on a shuttle to take us to the event, I quickly realized how fucking hot it was. 20 minutes later we were there, going through registration. Qarly was my handler as I couldn't see shit through the mask or touch anything thanks to the gloves. Giving up on waiting for things to open, we busted into the Space Lounge so that friends could do the whole, "WHO IS THAT?!" which would eventually lead me to getting the hell out of the suit. Qarly has photos somewhere.

Fun was had, some were surprised, some were very much expecting it. Qarly was introduced to new faces. The doors opened for the masses. Con awaited us. star5 suggested we tag along with the 5p4ce C4d3t5 for some cheering, we did.

The Con was filled with folks dressed up as anything and everything. Comic book heros, wizards, Star Wars, Trekies, Hary Potter. You name it, if it's fiction, it happens here.

Photos by Chase and Jason Weberg.

Some of it reminded me of BM, a whole bunch of it didn't. At BM, from me at least, there were many times where I felt like the level of weird outside my body was much greater then on the inside, other times the other way around, sort of like pH balance being off. At CONvergence I never felt that. I was ok with the level of freak going on on the outside, and the outside was ok with the level of freak going on inside of me.

Photos by Stephen Stephens and Abra Staffin Wiebe.

Here's earlapricot, spacebug, r0ckc4ndy, Amy and Laura giving a very uplifting cheer.

At some point in time, I ended up being the space man.

The whole time there was sci-fi battle weapon jousting, which at first looked nerdy as hell, ended up being a whole lot of fun to watch.

Many of the first and second floor hotel rooms had themes, one of which was the 2008 CONvergence elections.

I totally voted for Rimmer.

Photos by Molly Cat Glover and Inter-Planetary Photo Journalists Union.

There were posters and flyers stuck up EVERYWHERE for pretty much every event and room happening. Qarly and I found this one particularly entertaining. More so later when we actually didn't hear anyone else talk about Tiwttering in passing.

We caught Spider-Man in the buff. So know who he is now.

Photos by Drayke Larson and Heather K.

This other room was The House of Toast. You could get toast with anything on it. I saw some kid run out holding toast covered in mac'n'cheese and bbq sauce.

Back at the Space Lounge, there was Nano Putt. Really fun to play, really hard when you're drunk.

During this whole trip, it was my first major outing with the lovely loaned camera from sol3. I learned a few things at Con...

Taking photos in low light is hard.
Taking photos of moving people is costumes is hard.
Taking photos drunk is hard.
CONvergence hits all of the above.

At some point in time we found transporters. I was hoping to be transported to more alcohol. Ended up walking was faster.

Photos by Inter-Planetary Photo Journalists Union and Chase.

The first night quickly got to a point where honestly, I had no idea what the fuck we were doing there.

On our second day there, I opted to only tote my smaller point and shoot, as my secondary objective after BRAINS was to get very fucking trashed.

Photo by Inter-Planetary Photo Journalists Union.

At some point we were teaching some very intimidating kids how to play Set.

Someone setup a mars lander in one of the lobbies that I found cute.

Photo by Warphammer.

NASA was doing it wrong.

Photos by Inter-Planetary Photo Journalists Union and jdharringt.

On the last day there was the Space Cabaret. Burn Unit was our grand host.

More cheering involved.

There was a black light puppet show and strip tease. Very hot, let me tell you.

Sci-fi movie charades proved to be extremely entertaining.

Last but not least, The American Astronaut.

OMG glow sticks!

By the end of it, Qarly and I agreed that, in addition to hanging out with a rag tag team of bad ass friends I don't ever get to see, CONvergence was worth it all.

You can find more of the (poor) photos I took in my Flickr stream. At some point in the next week I'll toss up photos from our day trips into downtown.

Good Bye Sennheiser

2008-07-22T07:40:09Z

While riding to Bart tonight from my mom's house, I noticed that the track I was listening to off of my iPod sounded like it was encoded at something under 64 kbps. Sort of like the sound of music if it was under cartoon water, for those of you who haven't heard anything encoded that low.

Any how, I noted the song in my head and skipped to the next shuffled track. Same thing, sounded super low quality and horrible. Next track, next track. Everything sounded wrong. Waiting for the train to come I reset my iPod, everything still was playing like shit. While riding to the city I went ahead and restored my iPod.

During the restore I plugged in my Sennheiser ear buds into my laptop to make sure something didn't happen to my music library. Boy was I spooked when I got a lot of the same garbage audio. I quickly sighed when I pulled the ear buds out and held my laptop to my ear, everything sounded fine.

So some how my ear buds are now translating great sounding audio into trash. I've had the pair for over a year and am happy to say I'm done with them. Just wish they kept up another two weeks.

A coworker showed me a pair of Motorola S9s. They fit pretty well on me, except the back sticks out about an inch away from my head. They sound great and put out a lot of sound, Bluetooth static wasn't noticeable when music was playing. They also double as a standard cell phone headset. I think I'll be picking one up along with an iPod Bluetooth adapter in the coming weeks. Kind of getting sick of my head not being able to turn because the cord to my ear bugs got stuck somewhere.

The Dark Knight

2008-07-21T09:19:48Z

The short: Extremely good.

Let me first say that Fandango is fucking garbage. While one movie listings page displays available tickets, clicking on a link directs you to another page saying all that was a load of bull, please pick another time. I wanted to see this with Qarly (supetoope) rather badly, since this weekend was time off for her, I planned on getting tickets for said time. I was also recommended to only watch this title in an IMAX theater. The combination of release weekend, IMAX only, and the trash that is Fandango, lead me to purchasing tickets for a 3:30 AM showing at the Metreon. Suck.

None the less, we got up and made it to the theater on time (riding down hill on a bike at 3 in the morning with someone you love is rather nice), sadly we missed the Watchmen trailer, I'll need to grab that for Q. As it turns out, 3:30 AM is a popular fucking time for folks to see a movie, theater was packed except for the first two rows. We took our seats right as the movie got started.

It's time for a quick review of the old Batman movies...

Tim Burton:
Batman - Great, realistic for the late 80s. Gave out a good tone of grunge to the whole thing.
Batman Returns - Holy crap awesome dark. True light of why you throw the word "evil" into evil villain.

So, this is the part where a bunch of piss ant parents go and cry to Warner Brothers, demanding that their movie adaptation of an extremely dark and sinister comic book series was too violent and scary for kids. WB tossed Tim Burton out of the director's chair and opted to go with a more comically entertaining script for the next two movies.

Joel Schumacher:
Batman Forever - Villains start to upstage the super hero. Emphases on the novelty that is a superhero.
Batman & Robin - What the fuck, welcome to Batman the goofy ass cartoon.

As it turns out, families aren't the main demographic when it comes down to Batman, WB lost big with the last movie. It took them about seven years to turn around and push for a more realistic, harsher, intense script.

Christopher Nolan:
Batman Begins - Batman, the way he should be, in the present. The sort of thing where if you sat down and thought about it, the events that took place (with the except of Ra's al Ghul) could actually be something happening today.

Any how, pretty sure most of you know all this. Begins really stepped up to the plate, right next to the Tim Burton movies. It wasn't as dark as the old ones, but really pushed towards a vision of how messed up Bruce Wayne's predicament is. The Dark Knight drived that point into the ground with an iron fist. The movie isn't about Batman being a total bad ass, punching dudes in the face then taking names. It's about how twisted villains can be, and how Bruce Wayne's life is completely fucked. As far as any past superhero/comic adaptation movie I've seen, nothing compares to the Joker's role in this movie.

The only thing I disliked about the movie was the new helmet, makes him look like a bug. I'm sure others will agree.

Watching it in IMAX was well worth it. Many shots were done in full frame, and the switches between the two formats for the most part was unnoticeable. Audio was grand, I really enjoyed the track with the single cord whenever something bad was afoot.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend going out of your way to watch it in an IMAX theater. And even if not, this is very much a movie worth more then the admission cost.

You Suck At Driving

2008-07-16T08:09:45Z

For a while last year I wanted to do this project where I documented every time I observed someone sucking at driving. After I had enough photos I would have either posted them some where, or hosted some impromptu bull shit art gallery showing. Ultimately the idea was this would all be ironic and hypocritical in the eyes of many of my friends, due to the gossip meme that I myself am a bad drive, which would have been the point of showing off the photos.

Any how here's the lot of what I shot with my Hiptop's shitty camera while I still had a car.

Aged Wallet

2008-07-16T06:36:59Z

Around 5 or 6 years old now. On its last legs, or flaps. Any suggestions on wallets that aren't made out of leather?

Social Constrains For Growing And Learning

2008-07-15T10:00:44Z

I've been struggling with the social world that is around me for the past few months. It's been the source of much stress and so on. This weekend and today ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. The ways I interact with my friends and how they interact with me, I'm now finding, to be very unhealthy.

Our lives are all buzzing by faster then we ever could have imagined and only rarely do we want it to slow down. Is there a way around this? What steps can one take to still enjoy the thrill of leading an intense life without regretting later on that they left their friends in the dust?

Saturday eve, (drunkenly) stumbling up my stairs into my flat, I composed an outline of limitation I want to impose on myself that involve my social interactions with others. The goal here is to see if this style of functioning will make me (and my friends) feel better about their relations to each other, possibly make them be more fuller and present.

The simple items...

Slowly quitting Twitter, going to only read/post from my Hiptop (i.e. when I'm mobile). Taking Twitterific off my machine and possibly blocking twitter.com on my laptop. Why? Because Twitter makes me too connected, I accept this sort of 140 character connection as being a replacement to something more. All and all, knowing about everything my friends do all the time, in very short and non desrcript ways is making me feel like I know them less.
Start posting in my journal more. Lay out my thoughts, create a log of what I'm doing, using that to reflect on when figuring out what I want to do in the upcoming future. As I've told some very very close friends over dinner and through the air waves tonight, "Our lives are boats floating in a vast ocean, and journals are our sails that cary us through."
Take more photos. I might start a new 365 project, I don't know, but it fucking needs to happen.

Rather harder rules...

Actively push to hang out with my friends. Be weary of those who find it an annoyance when I push for a set time and date. Being friends means making time for those around you.
Be present for my friends, give them my full attention, try to make a solid connection each time interaction happens. Seek these interactions out, they mean so much more then just simply running into someone.
Social interactions are 3 friends max at any one point in time. Any more and I politely leave. Why? Parties are a garbage way of interacting with your friends. You cannot be present with them when you're thrown into a barrel of alcohol, music and random people you may or may not find interesting. It's getting to a point where some of my friends see these interactions as being a suitable fill in to actually hanging out one on one, eventually seeing parties as an easy way to hang out with others over setting time aside for one on one interactions. I.e. killing two birds with one stone doesn't work here.
Limit interaction and dialog over AIM. Simple but very oh so fucking hard.

If I even care about this list tomorrow is a rather big question. As many know, I'm very much a social bug. Regardless, I need to get ahold of my head before I actually do lose it. If you're still reading this, please take note of the 5th bullet point. If I end up leaving because you show up, do not take is personally. Very much a "it's me, not you" sort of deal.

Extremely lovely photo by Mooflyfoof.

Art Post Adhoc

2008-07-14T08:03:56Z

Someone in my neighborhood did a wonderful thing by mounting a bunch of really neat looking old metal like objects to a few telephone/power posts. I was so intrigued and moved by it all, I thought it would be neat to add/change the art. sofauxboho provided keys and supetoope showed up with a drill. Overall it was a fun experience.

On a side note, I think this photo is by far the best I've taken in a while. Thanks to sol3 for allowing me to use one of his lovely cameras.

Day Trip

2008-07-11T06:02:13Z

Q and I went for a day trip in the middle of April. Just got around now to uploading them.

Eli's Shades

2008-07-11T05:57:58Z

Public Marching Band

2008-07-10T08:50:50Z

Garden Court

2008-06-30T20:32:13Z

Palace Hotel, Market and New Montgomery.

None today

2008-06-26T00:57:12Z

Gone yesterday.

Future Site of

2008-06-25T20:34:15Z

Low-Intensity Conflict.

Cake of hearts

2008-06-19T18:15:17Z

Another one part of my sister's final.

Fruit Artist

2008-06-19T18:13:37Z

Part of Auzeen's final.

Twitter Is Down - A more helpful place holder

2008-06-06T22:43:57Z

I modified the Twitter placer holder page that gets displayed whenever Twitter is in its normal sate of not functional/broken. This one addresses the real problem with Twitter.

Everything Is OK Activist Action Kit

2008-06-04T18:40:50Z

Just got this in the mail today. Don't have a good can opener at work, guess I'll just have to wait till I get home to pop it open.

Hair today

2008-06-04T17:47:46Z

I'm starting to think it's time for a hair cut, that or I could just let it go.

3-2-1 Contact

2008-05-14T03:46:24Z

Searching for some shows for a friend's child, I came across this list of the top 100 children shows of all time. 3-2-1 Contact is at spot #76. What the fuck is up with that?

Normally I don't post embedded videos since I find them mildly annoying (you can filter out flash videos from running by enabling video placeholders), but everyone needs to remember the theme.

Torch

2008-04-09T20:52:59Z

Torch

2008-04-09T20:44:31Z

Torch

2008-04-09T20:44:27Z