Of circuits, cinematics, and comic books
Been a while since I’ve updated, but I’m taking 19 hours this semester so I’m obscenely busy. No cupcake classes either. Honestly, I’ll be lucky to survive it. I should be able to scratch by, but I’m never taking this kind of load again. Three engineering classes (each with a 3 hour lab) and second semesters of both calculus and Chinese. Hell, the curve on the last calc test was insane… a “C” was a 29-36! Overburdening myself seemed like a good idea since I wanted to get my associates in May, but I’m really regretting it now. At this point I should be able to get through everything, but it’s going to be a helluva a lot closer than I would have liked.
The electronics stuff I’ve been doing has been fairly interesting. I’ve been doing audio amplifiers in my power & rf class. We can literally hook an mp3 player into one end of the circuit and a large speaker into the load and hear music. I’m really not into electronics, but this stuff is damned interesting. I’ve been making a DMM in my project class. Runs off a 9V volt battery, LCD display, multi-range voltage measurement and single range current measurement. We designed the printed circuit board, calculated component values, and have been constructing the final version. I had been having some problems with it, but once I replaced the chip it worked like a charm. It’s about 99% accurate worst case right now. In this picture you can see the 44 pin SMT chip... that little bastard can be a pain if you're not careful. It won't win any beauty contests, but it does work. The wire is in there since on of the LCD pins aren't making good contact. If you'll notice, all of it except the LCD and diode are all surface mount parts.
My China trip is all official now. I’ll be flying in to Hong Kong on May 19 and be in Guangzhou until Aug 1 when I had back to the states. I don’t know how much freedom I’ll have over there. I’ll be pretty damned close to Hong Kong so I should be able to go over there a little bit. I’m *hoping* I can go up to Beijing at least once. Hopefully with the Olympics going on that will be possible. Not entirely sure what I’ll be doing, but I’ve got a week of orientation in Ohio that should set me up. All I know is the plant I’m going to makes electric motors. I know a little bit about electric motors, but honestly they can get pretty confusing. Yeah I’m not real good with electromagnetic physics, as interesting as it can be. But I do have the basic principles down (basically, current through a coil induces a magnetic field, multiple poles at different polarities cause the motor to spin). Yeah, kind of wishing I paid better attention now instead of just cramming for tests. I’ll be on skype over the summer so I’ll still be able to keep in touch with everyone I know. Not so sure about too many of the other internet locales I frequent.
When I’ve been avoiding studying, I’ve been watching some interesting movies. I think I should just make a separate blog for movie reviews.
The Jazz Singer (1927). I’ve been meaning to see this damned thing for ages and they finally released it on DVD. It’s the first successful motion picture featuring sound. It’s about 20% talkie and 80% silent, but up until this movie sound films were a disaster. The audio was horrible quality and had a habit of going out of sync. Jazz Singer managed to use sound effectively and featured Al Jolson, an incredibly popular entertainer of the 1920s (and vaudeville legend). Aside from the historical value of the film and its effect on industry, it was actually a pretty good movie. An interesting story about a young jewish man torn between his traditional jewish family and his desire to be a jazz singer in the entertainment industry. The use of blackface makes the racial aspects all the more interesting. This is a film anyone interested in film or turn of the century racial history should check out. The music is pretty good too, though certainly dated.
Sweeney Todd - I thought Sweeney Todd was mediocre at best. I suppose it was entertaining for what it was, but not anything I would call remarkable. I think films like "Corpse Bride" and "Nightmare" had a good deal of heart to them despite being dark musicals. Sweeney just seemed to be lacking in every respect except the cliche macabre. I couldn't connect or sympathize with the characters, the music was meh, and the plot far too predictable. For what little it was, it was very well done, I'll give it that. For me the highlight of the film (aside from alan rickman who is always entertaining) was the brief "house by the sea" song clip. Granted the humor was directly related to contrasting the sooty monochromatic london of the film proper, but that just struck me as a bit of novelty, creativity, and dare I say it, even *color* in such a bland world. Though I did laugh my ass off at the dialogue between Depp and Carter after she noticed Sacha Baren Cohen (sp?) had been murdered. Of course, much of my problem with the film may be the fact that I do enjoy conventional musicals and found this rather lacking. I still think it’s basically “Hot Topic: The Movie.” That and "Benny and Joon" is my favorite Depp movie...
There Will Be Blood - Absolutely fantastic. I loved it. The performances were great and the characters interesting. I loved the clash between logical ambition and religious zeal. The score was great, really heightened the tension of the movie, almost reminding me of some of the old Hitchcock scores. It was damned near flawless in my mind.
The Darjeeling Limited - Pretty much typical Wes Anderson stuff, but still great. Good performances and great dialogue. I loved his use of color throughout the film. The symbolism wasn’t subtle at all, but still very appreciated (almost as appreciated as Natalie Portman’s bare ass).
Ghost World - I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to see this movie. Pretty hard to describe, sort of an odd quirky film based off of a comic book. Basically it’s the misadventures of two small town social misfit girls through the summer after they graduate. It’s pretty damned funny and it has a surprising amount of substance to it. Steve Buscemi and Thora Birch give great performances, and a younger Scarlett Johansen is present as well. I’m really interested in reading the comic version now.
Speaking of comics, I’ve started reading “Y: The Last Man.” Really damned interesting. Basically, every male on earth dies except for one. Now in Japan, this would be the setup for a harem romance of epic proportions. In America, he is hunted down like an animal as he is viewed as a valuable commodity. Kind of reminds of “The Fugitive” at times. It’s done in a surprisingly realistic fashion. Maybe I’m just burned out on anime/manga, but I’m starting to get interested in western comics again. I can’t say I really care about spandex clad super heroes, more of stuff like what Vertigo puts out. I just downloaded comic book reader so I could read "Y", so I may start getting some other stuff. "Strangers in Paradise" looks interesting, I may read some of that after Ghost World.
I just picked up the “She and Him” CD. Really good, kind of 50’s country meets late 60s/early 70s folk. The album has a very genuine honest feel to it. I’m enjoying it a lot.
The electronics stuff I’ve been doing has been fairly interesting. I’ve been doing audio amplifiers in my power & rf class. We can literally hook an mp3 player into one end of the circuit and a large speaker into the load and hear music. I’m really not into electronics, but this stuff is damned interesting. I’ve been making a DMM in my project class. Runs off a 9V volt battery, LCD display, multi-range voltage measurement and single range current measurement. We designed the printed circuit board, calculated component values, and have been constructing the final version. I had been having some problems with it, but once I replaced the chip it worked like a charm. It’s about 99% accurate worst case right now. In this picture you can see the 44 pin SMT chip... that little bastard can be a pain if you're not careful. It won't win any beauty contests, but it does work. The wire is in there since on of the LCD pins aren't making good contact. If you'll notice, all of it except the LCD and diode are all surface mount parts.
My China trip is all official now. I’ll be flying in to Hong Kong on May 19 and be in Guangzhou until Aug 1 when I had back to the states. I don’t know how much freedom I’ll have over there. I’ll be pretty damned close to Hong Kong so I should be able to go over there a little bit. I’m *hoping* I can go up to Beijing at least once. Hopefully with the Olympics going on that will be possible. Not entirely sure what I’ll be doing, but I’ve got a week of orientation in Ohio that should set me up. All I know is the plant I’m going to makes electric motors. I know a little bit about electric motors, but honestly they can get pretty confusing. Yeah I’m not real good with electromagnetic physics, as interesting as it can be. But I do have the basic principles down (basically, current through a coil induces a magnetic field, multiple poles at different polarities cause the motor to spin). Yeah, kind of wishing I paid better attention now instead of just cramming for tests. I’ll be on skype over the summer so I’ll still be able to keep in touch with everyone I know. Not so sure about too many of the other internet locales I frequent.
When I’ve been avoiding studying, I’ve been watching some interesting movies. I think I should just make a separate blog for movie reviews.
The Jazz Singer (1927). I’ve been meaning to see this damned thing for ages and they finally released it on DVD. It’s the first successful motion picture featuring sound. It’s about 20% talkie and 80% silent, but up until this movie sound films were a disaster. The audio was horrible quality and had a habit of going out of sync. Jazz Singer managed to use sound effectively and featured Al Jolson, an incredibly popular entertainer of the 1920s (and vaudeville legend). Aside from the historical value of the film and its effect on industry, it was actually a pretty good movie. An interesting story about a young jewish man torn between his traditional jewish family and his desire to be a jazz singer in the entertainment industry. The use of blackface makes the racial aspects all the more interesting. This is a film anyone interested in film or turn of the century racial history should check out. The music is pretty good too, though certainly dated.
Sweeney Todd - I thought Sweeney Todd was mediocre at best. I suppose it was entertaining for what it was, but not anything I would call remarkable. I think films like "Corpse Bride" and "Nightmare" had a good deal of heart to them despite being dark musicals. Sweeney just seemed to be lacking in every respect except the cliche macabre. I couldn't connect or sympathize with the characters, the music was meh, and the plot far too predictable. For what little it was, it was very well done, I'll give it that. For me the highlight of the film (aside from alan rickman who is always entertaining) was the brief "house by the sea" song clip. Granted the humor was directly related to contrasting the sooty monochromatic london of the film proper, but that just struck me as a bit of novelty, creativity, and dare I say it, even *color* in such a bland world. Though I did laugh my ass off at the dialogue between Depp and Carter after she noticed Sacha Baren Cohen (sp?) had been murdered. Of course, much of my problem with the film may be the fact that I do enjoy conventional musicals and found this rather lacking. I still think it’s basically “Hot Topic: The Movie.” That and "Benny and Joon" is my favorite Depp movie...
There Will Be Blood - Absolutely fantastic. I loved it. The performances were great and the characters interesting. I loved the clash between logical ambition and religious zeal. The score was great, really heightened the tension of the movie, almost reminding me of some of the old Hitchcock scores. It was damned near flawless in my mind.
The Darjeeling Limited - Pretty much typical Wes Anderson stuff, but still great. Good performances and great dialogue. I loved his use of color throughout the film. The symbolism wasn’t subtle at all, but still very appreciated (almost as appreciated as Natalie Portman’s bare ass).
Click to viewGhost World - I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to see this movie. Pretty hard to describe, sort of an odd quirky film based off of a comic book. Basically it’s the misadventures of two small town social misfit girls through the summer after they graduate. It’s pretty damned funny and it has a surprising amount of substance to it. Steve Buscemi and Thora Birch give great performances, and a younger Scarlett Johansen is present as well. I’m really interested in reading the comic version now.
Speaking of comics, I’ve started reading “Y: The Last Man.” Really damned interesting. Basically, every male on earth dies except for one. Now in Japan, this would be the setup for a harem romance of epic proportions. In America, he is hunted down like an animal as he is viewed as a valuable commodity. Kind of reminds of “The Fugitive” at times. It’s done in a surprisingly realistic fashion. Maybe I’m just burned out on anime/manga, but I’m starting to get interested in western comics again. I can’t say I really care about spandex clad super heroes, more of stuff like what Vertigo puts out. I just downloaded comic book reader so I could read "Y", so I may start getting some other stuff. "Strangers in Paradise" looks interesting, I may read some of that after Ghost World.
I just picked up the “She and Him” CD. Really good, kind of 50’s country meets late 60s/early 70s folk. The album has a very genuine honest feel to it. I’m enjoying it a lot.