I said that I would do a full-length blog entry today because I didn’t really have the time, energy, or mo­tivation to make a good blog post yesterday. So here it is, the longest blog post that I’ve ever written.

Quote of the Day

On the bottom of the cardboard base of a birthday cake, there was a warning:

“Do not flip cake upside-down.”

Photograph of the Day

I actually took this picture yesterday night when I was at the laundromat. About ten minutes before we closed down, my mom and I happened to walk outside and saw this odd spiraling light in the sky. I was going to take a video of it, but realized that my camera was in my bag, which was in the office, which was at the opposite end of the laundromat.

By the time I got my camera, the light had already gone extremely far away, and it didn’t seem like it was moving, so I just took a picture of it instead.

(Click on the photograph to enlargen)

When my mom told my dad about it, he guessed that it was a hot air balloon (which doesn’t explain why the light was spiraling and seemed to be revolving).

My explanation is much more logical: it was an alien riding a spinning spaceship that was landing down on Earth so it could take a sample of our dirt and bring it back to its home planet.

Don’t judge me.

Project Four-Panel Update

Believe it or not, I am done with filming and editing my first song for Project Four-Panel.

Correction: I WAS done with filming and editing my first song for Project Four-Panel, until I was dis­satisifed with the results, then was stupid and forgetful.

On a random night, I set up my recording area and recorded everything, then that very night, I finished editing it and exported the video file. This is a sample frame of what it looked like:

While I was editing the audio and video, I noticed that it didn’t really sound as good as I wanted it to sound. I thought the guitar and vocals were fine, but the bucket drum and the cello parts were the biggest problems.

It’s obvious that I didn’t have a real drum handy, so I grabbed a large aluminum bucket, covered the outside with three sheets of letter-sized paper, and put the top back on. When I used that to play the basic beat of the song, I thought it would at least sound decent, seeing as I wasn’t doing any com­plicated fillers or combos. What I didn’t realize is that when the microphone picked up the bucket drum, it interpreted it as a dying fish flailing against a wall, and recorded it that way. The final product made the bucket drum make a plopping sound instead of a thumping sound.

As for the cello, this was the first time I had even touched a cello for anywhere between three and four years. I couldn’t even get the cello tuned correctly, so everything that I played was either an eighth of a step sharp or an eighth of a step flat. When I rendered the final product of the video, I had to lower the sound of the cello as low as possible so the horrible tuning and my horrible performance wouldn’t detract from the overall playing. It did anyway.

I decided that I was going to keep the guitar and vocal parts, but rerecord the drum and guitar parts. For the drum part, I planned on either using a better container, or to use the surface of my guitar as the drum, and play a few secondary guitar parts when the drum part wasn’t significant. For the cello, I was going to actually get my cello tuned properly, practice a little bit, then actually play it right. Ends up, the drum and cello parts aren’t the only parts that I have to rerecord.

When I finished recording each part, I uploaded them to my laptop and deleted them off my camera. All the files were on my laptop, and after I finished the final product, I didn’t back it up or save it anywhere else. A few days ago, I got myself a new laptop, and decided to give my old laptop to my parents. My parents wanted the laptop in factory condition (without all my random files and software on it), so I saved everything from my My Documents folder to my new laptop, then formatted the old laptop and installed a fresh operating system onto it. After all that was done, I realized that I didn’t save my Project Four-Panel videos in my My Documents folder, but had them in a folder named Proj4P on my Desktop that I had overlooked when transferring files.

Yes, that means the old recordings are gone forever.

If I get some time tonight, I’ll try to rerecord tonight. If not, it should be done within a week or so. There are a few changes I’m going to make before recording the new version. The first one is that I’m probably not going to record in front of a plain white wall, and instead do it where there’s some background scenery. I thought the white walls would make it look cleaner, but it instead made it look more boring. Second, I’m going to wear a darker-colored shirt so my face doesn’t look so dark. And third, my earbud will not be hanging out in front of me, but will be placed inside my shirt through the back, so it doesn’t show up on film.

Finally, I decided to make a note that if I remember correctly, I never publicly announced the title of the second song I’m going to do for Project Four-Panel. If you’re truly interested in finding out what it is, here’s a hint: The title of the song, in its entirety, has already been mentioned in this blog post. It was used in context of the actual word’s meaning, not in the context of a song title.

What I’m Watching

Two days ago, I watched Jennifer’s Body, a movie starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried, written by Diablo Cody.

The movie centralizes around two “sandbox” friends – friends that have been together since they have played in a sandbox. In the beginning, we learn that one of these friends, Needy, is currently in prison serving a sentence. The rest of the movie illustrates how it all happened.

When the flashback begins, the other one of the friends, Jennifer, gets involved with a mysterious band, and since that day, has had a dual personality – the first being her normal self, and the second being a vicious monster ruthlessly but secretively killing and eating other humans. Needy quickly finds out that there is something wrong with Jennifer, and tries to find out what is going on.

The movie is moderately good in the sense of comedy, but resembles a failing attempt at horror. There are some surprise and shock scenes throughout the movie, but none of them are that frightening. As for the plot development, the events seem a little redundant and repetitive; nothing significantly new or influential is introduced with every individual portion of the movie.

I watched this movie based off recommendations by friends and random strangers; I was also told that it was necessary for every male to watch every movie starring Megan Fox to be culturally literate. I would recommend it to anyone who is obsessed with Megan Fox, and to anyone else that is undisturbed by bloody and cannibalistic scenes.

And as a final note, I decided to share my favorite part of the movie, which, unexpectedly, wasn’t a part of the movie, but a song featured in it. I’ve liked Panic! at the Disco since they released their first album in 2005, and I was glad to find out that they also had a song in Jennifer’s Body called New Perspective. If you check out the music video, you can also see a handful of scenes from the movie integrated into it. I have also added that song to my list of songs that I may end up doing a cover of after I finish up my first song from Project Four-Panel.

What I’m Reading

I’m not actually done with this book yet, but I feel like I read enough of it to get a solid opinion on it. I originally decided to read this book because of all the controversy about it – being featured on Oprah Winfrey‘s show, then being criticized for not being a 100% truthful memoir. Also, during a class con­versation, my senior year high school literature teacher told us that he refuses to read this book; I thought it would be a small accomplishment to have read a book that my book-loving teacher had not. The book I’m referring to is A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.

Although I heard a lot about how this book was deceiving, and that the publisher even offered refunds to everyone who felt tricked by this book, I didn’t do any in-depth research about this book before starting to read it so I could get as neutral and unbiased of an experience from the book. However, even if this book was 100% truthful, I still probably would not have liked it, and do not know how this book became so popular that it was feautred by Oprah.

The main story of the book revolves around the author, James Frey, in his quest to become drug-free. Supposedly, Frey had been a drug user and addict since he was ten years old, and has been arrested multiple times for various reasons. Frey is placed in one of the best rehabilitation centers in the country, and is put on a schedule to help him remove his dependancy on substances.

Throughout his time there, he states that the drugs he used have induced severe memory loss, and he does not remember many specific details about things that happen in his daily life. On the contrary, the book is written in extreme detail and covers events that seem like ordinary happenings.

Apart from the questionable and insignificant plot, the style of the book’s writing makes it seem like the author was in elementary school when he wrote it. There is no indentation or quotation marks, and sentences are short and choppy. I realize that this was most likely done for effect, but it was done so excessively that it detracts from the overall reading experience. I’m not sure if James Frey did this for this novel only, or if he did this for all his other published works too; I’m afraid to even find out how the other books turned out.

Another noticeable thing about the writing is that particular phrases are randomly and unnecessarily repeated. I know it is a writing technique (called parallel structure or anaphora) to repeat particular statements for emphasis and effect. However, there is no scheme and no apparent reason for the things Frey repeats; sometimes, entire sentences are repeated in places so odd that I have to read back a few lines and wonder why that sentence was important enough to be repeated.

I probably wouldn’t really recommend this book to anybody, unless they are a third-grade teacher and are used to reading this kind of writing, or just want to read the story that incited so much arguing.

The Daily Shoot Assignment of the Day

Pavement comes in many flavors. Asphalt. Concrete. Bricks. Stones. Make a photo of some pavement you see today.

This is actually part of my neighbor’s property, but I had a clearer and less obstructed view from my office of their driveway and sidewalk area than I did of my own.

Question of the Day

“Is this really the longest blog post that you’ve ever written? If so, how long is it?”

Believe it or not, this is, in fact, the longest blog post that I have ever written. When I measure the length of the blog post, I take the source code of the blog content (whatever is inside the main white content box) and see how many bytes it is. As of yesterday, the longest blog post I had was from April 01, 2010, and it was 10301 bytes in length. Today, I wrote a blog post that is 13126 bytes in length, beating the old record by 2825 bytes (27.4%).