Soundscapes, College Info, and More Palm Software
Thursday, Apr. 24, 2003

Well, It looks like my current afternoon thing is to get home and start typing into my Palm sitting at the new kitchen table. I've also started listening to channel 431, "Soundscapes", in the afternoon.

I've always been fond of that kind of NPR Echoes and Music from the Hearts of Space type stuff, but usually Aisai isn't too keen on it. I first got interested in instrumental music when in college.

I always had to study. Well, not the first four years of college when I goofed off, taking art classes, crazy no-one-takes-them 300 level symbolic logic philosophy courses (both of 'em), and generally frittered away my father's money. But after marrying Aisai, and I do recommend getting married whenever you want to and not waiting until you're out of college, I had to get some degree that would actually get some money into the house, or, since I was majoring in Communications, one that would get me a job, so I was in Chemical Engineering.

To tell a person in chemical engineering that they should treat college like a full time job and do at least 8hrs of work a day, most, or at least those who pass, would gladly wish to only spend 8 hrs a day. I was one of those people.

When I studied, I liked to listen to music, but any words would distract me from my reading, and sometimes even my working problems. I still have some of the CDs that I bought then. Jurrassic Park soundtrack. Ali Akbar Khan's Journey (actually I had it on tape, only recently getting it on CD. We almost played the first song on the second side at our wedding, but the Spanish guitar guy was hippie enough for all involved.)

Recently, my instrumental musicness has even ventured into the realm of dronology and artificial environments. A few months ago, I made a 24 minute long track which I titled "Postwood Towers". I was going to put it on mp3.com since there is nothing on there which was what I was looking for.

If you have read this for any length of time, you know one of the websites t hat I pine for is the old microphone in the Tokyo subway. I have no idea what terminal it was in. But around 3 p.m. my time, central time, the crows would be very loud nearby. I suppose it was the Tokyo subway...I always assumed it was [here, postwood is shaken to his foundations, realizing that maybe it wasn't in a subway after all.] Maybe they were elevated trains?

Well, in any case, that kind of thing just puts me to sleep. Good, slightly structured white noise.

I started off the Postwood Towers track by making it sound like morning at a beachside resort area. There is the sound of waves, seagulls, and a garbage truck picking up garbage. You only hear the garbage truck pick up two dumpsters and then it is gone. I planned that the track would be 24 minutes long and each minute would represent one hour of the day in my fictional area. It loops well that way.

Traffic starts next. Then heavier traffic and then voices. The traffic dies down, but the people walking and talking stays, then, around lunchtime, traffic gets really heavy, as does pedestrian traffic. Other birds besides seagulls are heard. Oh, and in the morning, I just remembered this, there is a little traffic jam when a train goes by. Ah, it was fun making that. I recently found the CD I burned it to.

If anyone asks for this, I can put it in an MP3, probably making it a low quality one to save space, and put it on my Geocities site.

I desperately need to change my layout. I mentioned to Aisai that I felt the new one was cold and sterile. She agreed. Crap, I've got a sterile layout. At least it can't reproduce. (ba dump ching)

I'm not messing around with the Palm today really. I've settled on the old default Memopad. Though I'm about to start using LapTopHack. It really bugs me that I can't call up menus using just the keyboard. Also, tabbing doesn't move from button to button. That's just some crap there. LapTopHack changes all that. It's by the maker of Pedit, which I'm tempted by. However, I've decided to keep with the normal, and I already have it, thing of memopad.

In fact, Memopad just cut me off on that last sentence. I think that's a good way for me to know the approximate correct length of a Stuffo entry.

And new people, or people who stumble in here on a google hit, may not know what I'm talking about by Stuffo. I used to call this site that. But then, one day, someone asked me why. I explained the whole story, but it occurred to me, why do I call it that?

So now, I don't.

BTW: Memopad didn't slow down at all when I typed this up.

Time to synch up.