so i realize its been a while. sorry. ive been busy.
my life has been, since my last post, comprised of three major things: touring, working and music. i had the chance to tour with national sensations Decyfer Down (myspace.com/decyferdown) as their guitar tech and merch manager for the Days of the Reckoning Tour with Day of Fire, The Showdown and Pillar. needless to say, the tour was amazing.
as far as working, after the tour i got a job at a small coffee shop here in my hometown. its been ok, not the most exciting work and bit of a let down coming off a month-long tour. but hey, it pays the bills.
and for music, ive been writing and recording some stuff for my solo project called "Peter Christian" (see the links to the right). we played a show last night at a coffee house -- it was a little rough. all first shows are rough though. the other half the music thing is i might be heading back out on the road with Spoken as their front of house guy ('sound guy' for all of the musically dis-inclined) for a while. hopefully work will allow me to take off the time i need. if not, i think im going to be looking for another job when i get back.
well, thats all for now. new stuff soon.
-pc-
2.10.2007
9.29.2006
Work In Progress:
Hey all, i know its been a while since i've posted anything up here...sorry about that.
I am, however, working on a piece (possibly a short book) about the reality of the spiritual world in relation to world religions, espcially ancient ones.
I still have a lot of research to do, but its turning out to be really interesting.
I'll keep you all posted.
-p
I am, however, working on a piece (possibly a short book) about the reality of the spiritual world in relation to world religions, espcially ancient ones.
I still have a lot of research to do, but its turning out to be really interesting.
I'll keep you all posted.
-p
7.13.2006
Evil Dictators: A Do's and Dont's List
In order to become a truly successful Evil Dictator, there are some simple do and do not's that need to be followed:
- DO buy large castle/factory equipped with ample dungeon space for naysayers and revolutionaries. you cant please all the people, all the time; so throw the angry ones in jail until they cool down a little. a little time behind bars never killed anyone.
- DO NOT have a master "open all doors" switch in said dungeon; this makes jailbreak attempts all too easy. if you still have the urge to have a master switch, have three separate keys that must be inserted before the switch can be turned. this makes it even harder for the jailbreakers to free all of your angry subjects at once and can even distract them from just trying to open each cell individually, which in some cases can be faster and easier.
- DO hire competant bodyguards. too many an Evil Dictator has been brought down by the inadequacy of his or her bodyguards. this is one area where it is ok to splurge your national bank account.
- DO NOT give in to the urge to hire your brother, cousin, sister, mother, father or college roommate as your chief of security, head bodyguard, or other position where he/she will be alone with you. the temptation of power can turn even the best friend into a bitter enemy. instead, hire people you dont know and/or care about, and if they even have a hint of revolution on their lips, throw them in the aforementioned dungeon.
- DO make allies with your Evil Dictator bretheren. the more the merrier.
- DO NOT attempt to take on the world superpowers when you first start. you will lose and eventually end up dead. resist the urge.
- DO make yourself and your high-ranking officials comfortable in your fortress. musicians, jugglers, TiVo, DishTV, and free food are always perks that are bound to keep the best sidekicks and henchmen around.
- DO NOT skimp on your fortress decorations. you have a reputation as money-hungry, wasteful, hoarding, plundering dictator to upkeep. appearence is everything.
- DO keep reading my blog, because if you dont, my Evil Dictator friend will throw you in his Doungeon of Woes.
- DO NOT take anything i said here seriously.
cheers!
- DO buy large castle/factory equipped with ample dungeon space for naysayers and revolutionaries. you cant please all the people, all the time; so throw the angry ones in jail until they cool down a little. a little time behind bars never killed anyone.
- DO NOT have a master "open all doors" switch in said dungeon; this makes jailbreak attempts all too easy. if you still have the urge to have a master switch, have three separate keys that must be inserted before the switch can be turned. this makes it even harder for the jailbreakers to free all of your angry subjects at once and can even distract them from just trying to open each cell individually, which in some cases can be faster and easier.
- DO hire competant bodyguards. too many an Evil Dictator has been brought down by the inadequacy of his or her bodyguards. this is one area where it is ok to splurge your national bank account.
- DO NOT give in to the urge to hire your brother, cousin, sister, mother, father or college roommate as your chief of security, head bodyguard, or other position where he/she will be alone with you. the temptation of power can turn even the best friend into a bitter enemy. instead, hire people you dont know and/or care about, and if they even have a hint of revolution on their lips, throw them in the aforementioned dungeon.
- DO make allies with your Evil Dictator bretheren. the more the merrier.
- DO NOT attempt to take on the world superpowers when you first start. you will lose and eventually end up dead. resist the urge.
- DO make yourself and your high-ranking officials comfortable in your fortress. musicians, jugglers, TiVo, DishTV, and free food are always perks that are bound to keep the best sidekicks and henchmen around.
- DO NOT skimp on your fortress decorations. you have a reputation as money-hungry, wasteful, hoarding, plundering dictator to upkeep. appearence is everything.
- DO keep reading my blog, because if you dont, my Evil Dictator friend will throw you in his Doungeon of Woes.
- DO NOT take anything i said here seriously.
cheers!
7.12.2006
Space.
Ok, i admit it. I'm kind of a space freak. I've always wanted to go up into space. I love a good science ficiton movie that has lots of ships and stuff like that. I actually liked the movie "Space Camp" because of the space shuttle. "Apollo 13" is one of my most favorite movies. "The Right Stuff" was an amazing movie recounting the feldgeling US Space program, and I loved all 3.5 hours and 2 DVD's of it. Me and a buddy in middle school designed a ship that used antimatter propulsion (people wonder why I didnt have many friends in middle school...lol) to travel close to the speed of light.
So whats the point of all this nerdular nerdance?
The fact that one day in my lifetime, i might get the chance to actually go into space, thank you to Virign Galactic. Wierd, huh? To think that in yours and my lifetimes, people will be travelling to space on a regular basis. Well, its true. You might have heard of the SpaceShipOne, you might not. SpaceShipOne was the first civilian spacecraft to reach technical space. Not once, not twice, but three times so far (actually, it might be up to four now); thus claiming the $10 million X-Prize. The people that designed and built the ship have signed an agreement with Virgin Galactic to start a space-tourism business within the next 2 YEARS. That, my friend, is wierd to think about. The tickets are going to cost no more than $200,000 with a $20,000 refunadable deposit. Costly, yes...but just like everything else that starts out big. Oh, and get this: theyre naming the first Virgin Galactic ship the VSS Enterprise. Cool.
Now all we need to do is find a means of propulsion that works better than a rocket. There are a few promising items, such as an ion engine or a nuclear powered ship--heck, even an antimatter engine; but what we need is like what you see in the movies: an engine that is fast, small, and allows you to descend through the atmosphere at a reasonable, controllable rate; thus ending the hazard of current re-entry. If you can slow re-entry down enough to where the friction of the atmosphere on the hull of the ship doenst create an enourmous amount of heat, then you can use lighter, better materials for your ship. You wouldnt have to worry about foam knocking off your heat tiles making your ship explode (foam? i kinda wonder why they use faom on a rocket anyway...all that high tech materials they come up with at Dupont and NASA, and the best they can find is foam?). Anti-grav technology wouldnt hurt either; but that would first require scientists to figure out what gravity really is.
Thats right. We don't actually know what gravity IS. We can see its effects on everything around us, but we dont know what makes it work. You would think that after all these hundreds of years that someone, somewhere would figure it out. Nope. Hasn't happened yet. Amazing, huh? Once we figure out what gravity is, then we can go about finding a way to counter-act it, kind of like putting two positive magnets next to each other, and a way to create it artificially. If we can do that, we can start building ships that resemble more the NCC-1701-D Enterprise and less like a flying washing-machine on steroids. I would go crazy if i was on the shuttle. Everythings either white or blue. And NASA doenst exactly organize things like you would normally on Earth. Doors in the floor, cabinets on the ceiling, sleeping on the walls. At least they could make a conscious effort to make thinks look normal. Put the door in the wall, put the beds facing the ceiling, put the cabinets on the wall. Have a designated up/down/left/right. Make things in shades of normal colors--not grey, blue and white. Something tells me NASA's never heard of green before.
So whats the point of all this nerdular nerdance?
The fact that one day in my lifetime, i might get the chance to actually go into space, thank you to Virign Galactic. Wierd, huh? To think that in yours and my lifetimes, people will be travelling to space on a regular basis. Well, its true. You might have heard of the SpaceShipOne, you might not. SpaceShipOne was the first civilian spacecraft to reach technical space. Not once, not twice, but three times so far (actually, it might be up to four now); thus claiming the $10 million X-Prize. The people that designed and built the ship have signed an agreement with Virgin Galactic to start a space-tourism business within the next 2 YEARS. That, my friend, is wierd to think about. The tickets are going to cost no more than $200,000 with a $20,000 refunadable deposit. Costly, yes...but just like everything else that starts out big. Oh, and get this: theyre naming the first Virgin Galactic ship the VSS Enterprise. Cool.
Now all we need to do is find a means of propulsion that works better than a rocket. There are a few promising items, such as an ion engine or a nuclear powered ship--heck, even an antimatter engine; but what we need is like what you see in the movies: an engine that is fast, small, and allows you to descend through the atmosphere at a reasonable, controllable rate; thus ending the hazard of current re-entry. If you can slow re-entry down enough to where the friction of the atmosphere on the hull of the ship doenst create an enourmous amount of heat, then you can use lighter, better materials for your ship. You wouldnt have to worry about foam knocking off your heat tiles making your ship explode (foam? i kinda wonder why they use faom on a rocket anyway...all that high tech materials they come up with at Dupont and NASA, and the best they can find is foam?). Anti-grav technology wouldnt hurt either; but that would first require scientists to figure out what gravity really is.
Thats right. We don't actually know what gravity IS. We can see its effects on everything around us, but we dont know what makes it work. You would think that after all these hundreds of years that someone, somewhere would figure it out. Nope. Hasn't happened yet. Amazing, huh? Once we figure out what gravity is, then we can go about finding a way to counter-act it, kind of like putting two positive magnets next to each other, and a way to create it artificially. If we can do that, we can start building ships that resemble more the NCC-1701-D Enterprise and less like a flying washing-machine on steroids. I would go crazy if i was on the shuttle. Everythings either white or blue. And NASA doenst exactly organize things like you would normally on Earth. Doors in the floor, cabinets on the ceiling, sleeping on the walls. At least they could make a conscious effort to make thinks look normal. Put the door in the wall, put the beds facing the ceiling, put the cabinets on the wall. Have a designated up/down/left/right. Make things in shades of normal colors--not grey, blue and white. Something tells me NASA's never heard of green before.
6.27.2006
Laws of Attraction
Its funny, the things that pop in your head at random times. Like when making a butter and grape jam bagel. I starting thinking about fashion, and why people dress like they do and what drives the fashion industry.
I've come to the conclusion that there are one of two reasons that people put thought, time and energy into how they dress; the first and major one being people want to feel attractive and look attractive to the opposite sex. It can also be because people want to stand out and be different from the rest of the 'crowd' so to speak.
Nothing too profoud there, just whats on my mind right now.
I've come to the conclusion that there are one of two reasons that people put thought, time and energy into how they dress; the first and major one being people want to feel attractive and look attractive to the opposite sex. It can also be because people want to stand out and be different from the rest of the 'crowd' so to speak.
Nothing too profoud there, just whats on my mind right now.
6.21.2006
Raise Your Hand if You Don't Want Superpowers
No one's hands raised? Thats what i thought.
Seriously, who wouldnt love to have superpowers? Or to walk through an alien device that allows us to travel to other planets? Or to fight an evil intergalactic Empire from the cockpit of our X-Wing? Or be the underdog starship captian with his merry band of rebels fighting for justice? Or wake up one day to find that your world is being taken over by giant machines driven by slimy aliens, and fight back for all humanity? Who doesnt want to fight, sword in hand, against an all powerful wizard bent on evil? Who doesnt want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and bigger than all humanity?
I know i do. I think it first really started for me when i read JRR Tolkien's Lord Of the Rings trilogy back before the Fellowship of the Ring came out. Sorry, actually it started before that when i read C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Something hit me about halfway through the Chronicles (Lewis himself called it 'northerness' after his own encounter with Norse mythology when he was a kid) that just made me want to believe with all my heart that the stories i was reading were real and that somehow, somewhere i could be a part of them. If you know what im talking about, you understand the wonder and the excitement that is yours for those brief moments in time. The thrill of just the thought of being a part of some fantastic adventure is enough to make your heart beat faster and send a chill up your spine. Every little kid grows up of being a dark knight fighting the terrible dragon, or a princess waiting to be rescued by Prince Charming, or that Army hero that sneaks into the enemy camp and does the secret mission.
But who says those little kid kind of dreams ever die? I bet that if any adult was offered a chance to go fight the evil wizard or save the fair maiden, they would do it without a second thought. Why? Because the little kid never dies, we only suppress the dreams and the fantasies we had as kids. Something deep down inside us longs to so something fantastic, amazing, and wonderful.
Sometimes i wonder what i would have done had i been born earlier in time, maybe somewhere around the Middle Ages. Kings still ruled countries, and had knights and maidens and fought wars that had heroes and villians and swords. Would i have been content with being a lowly serf in his majesty's kingdom, or would i have been an emissary for justice--a Robin Hood of sorts? I don't know. What i do know is today's modern world doesn't lend itself to magical adventures like it used to. Science says that alchemy was a fake. But what if you lived in a time when alchemy was the athourity on things like magic and cures for diseases and science? Those would have been the most interesting of times.
And sometimes i wonder what it would be like to see the future. Will we have colonized another planet in 1000 years? What will people be like? What kind of music and art and pop culture will be around? Will we still be driving cars, or will we be flying from place to place? Will we have mastered interplanetary space travel? Will we have been to other stars and solar systems? Will we have answered the elusive question of life outside the Earth? Those too will be the most interesting of times.
What would it be like if magic were real? Not the dark sorcery kind of magic that has demons and devils and stuff, but the book kind of magic where there are good and bad wizards and people that create armies of evil bats and people that make things appear with a puff of smoke.
What would it be like to do something bigger than ourselves? To be stranded on a deserted island with your family and have to survive for a few years? What would it be like to be a spy for the CIA working in the USSR during the height of the Cold War? I dont know, but i bet i would feel more alive than i ever have.
In this modern society of numbers and statistics and routine, its hard to feel like your life makes much of a difference. We as people are told that we must fit a kind of mold in order to work with soceity; but i say society works better when it doenst try to force people into a box. Some of the greatest creativity and invention and art and music came from a time when people made and worked and talked and did everything as they saw fit to do. The late 1800's and early 1900's saw the golden age of humanity so far. Just the names of the people that were alive in that time create a sense of awe and admiration: Douglas McArthur, George Patton, Tesla, Alexander Graham Bell, Edison, Westinghouse, Ford, Benz, Roosevelt, Mancini, Rudolph Diesel, Babe Ruth, Hiram Maxim, Samuel Colt, Alfred Nobel, Albert Einstien, the Wright Brothers, George Washington Carver, and the list goes on and on. Who are we know for today and who are the famous people? We're known for people like: Michael Jordan, Mother Theresa, Pope John Paul the something, Richard Nixon, Ronald Regan, Marilyn Monroe, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Hillary Duff, and more shallow, plastic, fake people who are a product of the Machine.
Seriously, who wouldnt love to have superpowers? Or to walk through an alien device that allows us to travel to other planets? Or to fight an evil intergalactic Empire from the cockpit of our X-Wing? Or be the underdog starship captian with his merry band of rebels fighting for justice? Or wake up one day to find that your world is being taken over by giant machines driven by slimy aliens, and fight back for all humanity? Who doesnt want to fight, sword in hand, against an all powerful wizard bent on evil? Who doesnt want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and bigger than all humanity?
I know i do. I think it first really started for me when i read JRR Tolkien's Lord Of the Rings trilogy back before the Fellowship of the Ring came out. Sorry, actually it started before that when i read C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Something hit me about halfway through the Chronicles (Lewis himself called it 'northerness' after his own encounter with Norse mythology when he was a kid) that just made me want to believe with all my heart that the stories i was reading were real and that somehow, somewhere i could be a part of them. If you know what im talking about, you understand the wonder and the excitement that is yours for those brief moments in time. The thrill of just the thought of being a part of some fantastic adventure is enough to make your heart beat faster and send a chill up your spine. Every little kid grows up of being a dark knight fighting the terrible dragon, or a princess waiting to be rescued by Prince Charming, or that Army hero that sneaks into the enemy camp and does the secret mission.
But who says those little kid kind of dreams ever die? I bet that if any adult was offered a chance to go fight the evil wizard or save the fair maiden, they would do it without a second thought. Why? Because the little kid never dies, we only suppress the dreams and the fantasies we had as kids. Something deep down inside us longs to so something fantastic, amazing, and wonderful.
Sometimes i wonder what i would have done had i been born earlier in time, maybe somewhere around the Middle Ages. Kings still ruled countries, and had knights and maidens and fought wars that had heroes and villians and swords. Would i have been content with being a lowly serf in his majesty's kingdom, or would i have been an emissary for justice--a Robin Hood of sorts? I don't know. What i do know is today's modern world doesn't lend itself to magical adventures like it used to. Science says that alchemy was a fake. But what if you lived in a time when alchemy was the athourity on things like magic and cures for diseases and science? Those would have been the most interesting of times.
And sometimes i wonder what it would be like to see the future. Will we have colonized another planet in 1000 years? What will people be like? What kind of music and art and pop culture will be around? Will we still be driving cars, or will we be flying from place to place? Will we have mastered interplanetary space travel? Will we have been to other stars and solar systems? Will we have answered the elusive question of life outside the Earth? Those too will be the most interesting of times.
What would it be like if magic were real? Not the dark sorcery kind of magic that has demons and devils and stuff, but the book kind of magic where there are good and bad wizards and people that create armies of evil bats and people that make things appear with a puff of smoke.
What would it be like to do something bigger than ourselves? To be stranded on a deserted island with your family and have to survive for a few years? What would it be like to be a spy for the CIA working in the USSR during the height of the Cold War? I dont know, but i bet i would feel more alive than i ever have.
In this modern society of numbers and statistics and routine, its hard to feel like your life makes much of a difference. We as people are told that we must fit a kind of mold in order to work with soceity; but i say society works better when it doenst try to force people into a box. Some of the greatest creativity and invention and art and music came from a time when people made and worked and talked and did everything as they saw fit to do. The late 1800's and early 1900's saw the golden age of humanity so far. Just the names of the people that were alive in that time create a sense of awe and admiration: Douglas McArthur, George Patton, Tesla, Alexander Graham Bell, Edison, Westinghouse, Ford, Benz, Roosevelt, Mancini, Rudolph Diesel, Babe Ruth, Hiram Maxim, Samuel Colt, Alfred Nobel, Albert Einstien, the Wright Brothers, George Washington Carver, and the list goes on and on. Who are we know for today and who are the famous people? We're known for people like: Michael Jordan, Mother Theresa, Pope John Paul the something, Richard Nixon, Ronald Regan, Marilyn Monroe, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Hillary Duff, and more shallow, plastic, fake people who are a product of the Machine.
6.14.2006
the TechHigh
so recently, my computer has been on the fritz because of a freak spyware/adware/virus/torjan/whatever attack. i had to backup all of my crap and reformat my 80GB drive in my laptop because of it. in the downtime from when i started the XP installation to when it finished formatting the drive (somewhere between 40 minutes to an hour and 15) i browsed the Dell support forums...and all of this got me thinking:
we have all of this high-tech knowledge of hardware, software, firmware and floppyware (i made that up...lol); yet someone has so far failed to make a marketable computer that doesnt crash, doesnt get effected by spyware and crap, doesnt need to be upgraded every 6 months, doenst eat up your RAM, doesnt take 2GB off your hard drive just to run (actually, i wouldnt really care how big it is, as long as i have room on my compy to do what i need to...), and doesnt cost $120 a box.
why?
because of people like Microsoft. they insist on making inferior software and forcing the masses to use it just because they own or have contracts on all of the software developer's souls. Windows is not an operating system. it is a virus that people pay to get. remeber the days of MS-DOS or windows 3.1? do you ever remember your computer having problems? and if it did, there wasnt anything that a simple reboot couldnt fix. what happened? well, nothing really. and thats the problem. Microsoft doenst put out software that works well with the latest hardware, when they write their own software that is.
Microsoft was founded on stolen ideas and software. i dont say stolen as in theif/legal/jail/dont drop the soap kind of stolen; but stolen as in unoriginal or copied. Bill Gates used to work at IBM back in the day, and when IBM acquired the DOS operating system from Xerox, Gates was tasked with porting it from the Xerox platform to the IBM platform. when IBM decided to can the project, Gates left with 'his' DOS code and started.....you guessed it....Microsoft. under the name MS-DOS, he sold the OS on brand new PC's, thus starting America's slavery to the TechHigh that it caused. Windows is the drug and Microsoft is the dealer. someone needs to drive by and cap the dealer. Microsoft, aka the Evil Empire, needs to be stopped.
they purposely sell buggy and unsecure software. a good example would be Windows XP. the day it was released, they released several security updates for it...THE SAME DAY. that tells me that someone at MS is looking the other way when it comes to security, and that its all about the money (big suprise...).
anyway...enough ranting...its bed time for me.
we have all of this high-tech knowledge of hardware, software, firmware and floppyware (i made that up...lol); yet someone has so far failed to make a marketable computer that doesnt crash, doesnt get effected by spyware and crap, doesnt need to be upgraded every 6 months, doenst eat up your RAM, doesnt take 2GB off your hard drive just to run (actually, i wouldnt really care how big it is, as long as i have room on my compy to do what i need to...), and doesnt cost $120 a box.
why?
because of people like Microsoft. they insist on making inferior software and forcing the masses to use it just because they own or have contracts on all of the software developer's souls. Windows is not an operating system. it is a virus that people pay to get. remeber the days of MS-DOS or windows 3.1? do you ever remember your computer having problems? and if it did, there wasnt anything that a simple reboot couldnt fix. what happened? well, nothing really. and thats the problem. Microsoft doenst put out software that works well with the latest hardware, when they write their own software that is.
Microsoft was founded on stolen ideas and software. i dont say stolen as in theif/legal/jail/dont drop the soap kind of stolen; but stolen as in unoriginal or copied. Bill Gates used to work at IBM back in the day, and when IBM acquired the DOS operating system from Xerox, Gates was tasked with porting it from the Xerox platform to the IBM platform. when IBM decided to can the project, Gates left with 'his' DOS code and started.....you guessed it....Microsoft. under the name MS-DOS, he sold the OS on brand new PC's, thus starting America's slavery to the TechHigh that it caused. Windows is the drug and Microsoft is the dealer. someone needs to drive by and cap the dealer. Microsoft, aka the Evil Empire, needs to be stopped.
they purposely sell buggy and unsecure software. a good example would be Windows XP. the day it was released, they released several security updates for it...THE SAME DAY. that tells me that someone at MS is looking the other way when it comes to security, and that its all about the money (big suprise...).
anyway...enough ranting...its bed time for me.
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