NewSc2

Yes, yes you do. I’ve pretty much taken most of my journal entries private, so I wouldn’t have to worry about being too explicit or revealing about my life on here. Of course, even my private journal entries are still mostly filled with boring stuff like:

“What I Learned Today, 7/6:
- Finished the Electro Tutorial:
- even 3-4dB in volume automation shifts makes a big deal
- solid, big bass/lead patches have a good blend of 3-4 oscillators
- set up delays and reverbs on sends, 2 each should be good enough
- a little “bleep” or tonal sound effect at the end of an 8 bar can be paired with a dropped kick and bass very effectively”

and

“Analyzed Danny Tenaglia - Bottom Heavy 2008 (Phunk Investigation Dark Mix)
- very progressive song
- very basic song — synth parts only play 3 notes, most play 1
- 5 drum tracks (kick, snare/clap, snare/tom, off-beat CH, distant stuttering sample, 16/16 CH pattern - only plays in main after break)
- 1 bass track (2 parts, 1 Eb vamp, 1 Eb vamp + slide at the end)
- 5 synth tracks (main melody, higher bell-like duplicate melody, delayed Eb line, delayed arpeggio Bb-Eb)
- 2 vocal tracks (vocal “oom” and spoken word)
- 3 effects tracks (1 or 2 reverse swooshes, cymbal, and a sharp woman’s vocal to finish the breakdown)
- something happens in every 4-8 bars, without fail
- because of the sparse elements, it’s usually a reverse swoosh into a melody coming in or out, or a drum sound dropping in or out.
- breakdowns are done very effectively
- maybe it’s because of the good call and response with the “buum” sound effect and the sparse melody?”

and

“Did two chicks at the same time. Threesomes are awesome!” … just kidding…  …   =(

As you can tell, not much is going on in my life. Well, okay, I have actually been going out quite a bit over the past couple weeks, but it’s winding down.

Burgers, meat, and beer = few pounds gained, no matter how tough my workouts have been. In fact, I think the tough workouts + high-calorie food spazzed my body into a bulk cycle. I deadlifted 295 the other day, my max in a very long time, and clean & jerked 130 lbs. (new max), with relative ease.

Growing strength means growing muscles, which also means bloated muscles, which — isn’t a good thing during beach season. My weight’s back up to around 172 lbs. — hasn’t been that high for a year — and I have to flex to see good ab definition =(. I was holding steady at 167 lbs. for a while, with my low around 163-164. On the flip side… my upper back and shoulders have never been stronger~

Work hasn’t been doing so hot lately, and on top of that there isn’t much to do at work itself. I’ve been feeling really Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde with work transitioning between a 3-4 hour, internet-browsing lull to a 3-4 hour “omg-must-finish-report/must-figure-out-new-ideas/must-outwork-this-slow-spell.”

I wasn’t perfectly sure of it till today, but it looks like I’m going to take a week off. Went in to talk with my mom, and decided an unpaid leave would probably be the best for TACCIA and me.

I was getting frustrated with my music studies, pulling my hair out for days on things like how the i-IV chord progression could sound so good and natural — those chords aren’t in the same key — (try i-VII-VI-IV — a descending C min, Bb maj, Ab maj, F maj).

Downtime at work would see me on the internet, researching topics like “diatonic chord progressions” and “modal interchange”, without a piano in front to play with. And then I’d have to take care of a bunch of stuff from Taiwan, whose workday starts at 6pm PST. I wouldn’t leave the office till around 9pm, and that pushed studies back till 11pm-3am.

Anyway, I’m gonna dedicate myself to a good 8-10 hours of studying per day this week (which happened today… 1pm-6pm, and 9pm-1am). It’s a little frustrating because every concept I learn usually opens up 4-5 new questions, but there aren’t many ways around this.

I need to start cutting through the crap and just delving in. I already upgraded from reading forums to watching videos, and now I start needing to conceptualize stuff on my own, and not having somebody hold my hand. Produced a track today, figured out why it sucked, and then analyzed tracks like it to figure out why my track sucked so much. And I learned a couple things. Which I’ll try out tomorrow, on a new track.

Johann Sebastian Bach once said, “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” If that’s true, then I’m sorry God. Give me the knowledge so our ears won’t be in such pain for much longer. =)

It’s geeky, I know. See the post below.

I spent the weekend working at the LA Pen Show, so I decided to give myself a little gift.

I bought my first ever luxury pen purchase (a Visconti fountain pen), a bottle of purple Montblanc ink, and a few Rhodia notepads. The ink looks great, and the pen is very pretty, but the nib is (imo) not as good as our Taccia nibs — it writes too wet. Hopefully it’ll break in after a couple fills.

@ The LA Pen Show

I’ve figured my way around quantum physics, calculated the equilibria and titration points of polyprotic acids, and determined the amount of heat transfer in chemical thermodynamic processes.

But sometimes, there isn’t anything more frustrating than adding up all of a month’s purchases, taxes, receipts, money owed/money sent, and trying to justify that with what our bank account says. The worst is when my numbers tell me that we lost, say, $5k in a month, but my accountant says we actually made $3k, and the bank says we broke even. Ugh.

September, October, and November receipts, reports, invoices, QuickBooks, and Excel.

I have 11 years of experience in an industry. And I’m only 24.

I work for a fine pen company, and I’ve been working for one since I was 13.

I guess I began as sort of a technical writer (you’d never guess after reading my last post).

The first company I worked for was Taiwanese, so they started me off by proofreading important e-mails and company literature, because my English was better than everybody else’s (I’m a native speaker). I eventually got assimilated into attending trade shows, running the business, and designing pens.

But all this time I haven’t really been into pens. I liked them, but fine writing wasn’t anywhere close to being a hobby. I rarely carried pens, and at work, I’d use a disposable rollerball.

Through it all, I’ve really wanted to truly appreciate fountain pens. Work becomes more enjoyable and easier to take on when you understand and learn to look for the fine details your customers are looking for too.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago we received some new prototype nibs from our supplier. Our old nibs had been having a small amount of ink flow issues, and it was such a relief to finally see something new.

I had to thoroughly test these new nibs before approval, so I took one of our newest fountain pens (a Momenta, pictured above), put the upgraded nib on, and kept it with me everywhere I went. I filled it with a bottle of Diamine Claret ink — a pink ink that dries almost raspberry.

A nice pen and a pretty ink deserves good paper, so I went out and purchased a pad of Rhodia paper. It’s not cheap — around $5 for a medium-sized pad, but it made a huge difference. Fountain pen ink is bright and water-based, so a smooth, thick, and dense paper (like the kind your checks come printed on) feels almost… sexual… underneath a nib. Once you write with good paper, you can’t go back to using regular notebooks — the ink feathers, and writing on both sides of a sheet renders it almost unreadable (bleed-through).

Needless to say — I’ve been kind of getting hooked, so I went out and bought some bottles of Waterman ink. Wow! Again, an amazing difference — some of the colors (especially Florida Blue) make my pen feel like a brand new one. The ink consistency is perfect. It dries fast, and it flows just right — not too watery, and not too thick.

And filling a pen with a new color makes me feel like a little kid again. I can’t help but smile like I’m in preschool, mixing colors and blowing on paint, or dipping a brush in water and “painting” on those pre-stained books. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch.

So I’ve been taking a lot more notes with all this new stationery. I always learned best by re-writing my notes and summarizing my textbooks before a final. Now I have a good excuse to go through all of the books and tutorials I’ve queued up — I’m just testing my nibs.

There’s just something about hand-writing a thought to really commit it to memory.