Shabbat, 30 November 2013

I got up early this morning and got in a good walk and work-out. It was a bit chilly out, but my light wrap get me warm.

I did more work on my project for my class, Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists. The major changes had to do with the percussion. First, I increases the frequency of various drum hit to give it a bit more energy. Then I did something quite interesting but perhaps a little bizarre: I used the clap audio clip, played very rapidly (every 50 milliseconds) to create the effect of a machine gun. Then I spawned a separate programming to bring it in at randomized times and from random directions (left to right). Although there's a lot of randomness, the average time between blasts gradually trends shorter as the piece progresses, and they also tend to get slightly louder. The title of the song I'm using for the main melody is "L'Homme Armé" which is French for "the armed man". So, our armed man has moved into the 21st century and now has a machine gun (we're just lucky he hasn't yet acquired nuclear weapons, because that could have destroyed the whole piece!). Somewhere along the way, he apparently also visited India, because his melody is played on a sitar.

For lunch today, David and I went to Mike's Place. We had been there once or twice before, but it used to be difficult to get to. Now that some construction has been finished, it's shorter and easier. We got there a bit after 1:00 but found out that the kitchen wouldn't be open for at least 45 minutes. The bar WAS open, though, so we both had drinks while we waited. David had a Bloody Mary, and I had a Strawberry Mimosa. I had never had one before, and it really was rather too bitter for me, so I don't think I'll order one again. When the kitchen opened, we ordered Tex/Mex dishes: a veggie quesadilla for David and a veggie burrito for me. They were good but certainly not the type of Mexican food one gets in Southern California. I don't know if they're like you'd get in Texas or not, having never had Mexican food there, I think.

After lunch, we drove up the Arava as far as Samar, then returned home and talked for a short while with David's sister in Ohio before going over to Ice Park for frozen yogurt.