1. Nine Inch Nails (528 Plays) – Nine Inch Nails is and has been one of my favorite bands for about 13 years now. NIN has always been the goto band for me for when I don’t feel like listening to anything else. This year I finally got around to actually listening to Year Zero. I was not enthusiastic about this CD when it first came out, but after seeing them live at the Santa Barbara Bowl this year, I finally got around to listening to it and love it! I actually found that it made for good running music! On top of that, I rediscovered what has to be one of my favorite albums: The Fragile. This CD is up there with Dark Side of the Moon in terms of replayability.
2. NOFX (431 Plays) - Another one of goto bands when I don’t feel like listening to anything else. NOFX has been another one of my favorite bands for about 11 years now and I’m still not tired of them. This year they release coaster which has been in regular rotation in my library. This summer in particular I have also been re-listening to a lot of their albums when I went on my runs.
3. The Appleseed Cast (329 Plays) - The Appleseed Cast have been one of my favorite bands of recent times. This year they released Sagarmatha which I absolutely feel in love with. The first track “As The Little Things Go” has to be my favorite track of the year. I will hopefully get to see them live for the first time in 2010.
4. Placebo (291 Plays) - Again, another one of my favorite bands that I started to around 9 years ago. This year they released “Battle for the Sun” and did it without their original drummer Steven Hewitt. Despite his absense, Placebo released this slightly popier sounding album, but still staying true to their original sound. I have yet to see this band live; this needs to change!
5. Muse (203 Plays) - This year muse released “The Resistance”, but I’ve also been rediscovering their CDs such as “Origin of Symmetry” and “Absolution”. I also recently watched the movie “Southland Tales” (which I won’t go into here), but it featured the song “Blackout” off of Absolution that I really never listened to. Holy crap what a great track!
6. Asobi Seksu (181 Plays) - This band is a Japanese/American Indie/Pop band that I admit is a guilty pleasure. This year I’ve been listening to their self-titled album and “Citrus” mostly. This year they came out with the CD “Hush,” but it hasn’t gotten as much playtime as the other two albums from me.
7. Pixies (163 Plays) - I had my pixies phase around six years ago. I think now was the time to come back and check out my old favorites. Not much to say here really.
8. Steve Aoki (148 Plays) - Introduced to me randomly by a friend in SLO in August, Steve Aoki has been a running favorite this year.  Steve Aoki kind of reminds me of Girl Talk which I probably listened to A LOT last year.
9. The Protomen (142 Plays) - The concept of a rock opera based on the Mega Man video game series just cannot fail. I was a big fan of the first act, but when act II came out, I listened to both acts back to back. Both CDs have a unique feel to them; the first act is more inspired by the videogame series (with a hint of Ennio Morricone) while the second act follows up with a sound inspired by the 80s.  Someone needs to turn these albums into an anime!
10. Pink Floyd (140 Plays) - Pink Floyd is not one of those bands where you pick and choose their greatest hits. Instead when you listen to Pink Floyd, you listen to them an entire album at a time. In particular I remember listening to The Wall, Animals, and Dark Side of the Moon this year.

Last Friday (05/16/08) I organized a get together with my fellow students to go out for a beer in celebration of completing another  school year.  To my surprise people actually showed up and brought along some of their friends!  On top of that, the people who came actually had a good time and wanted to do it again!  Some already started talking about future events they had in mind.  To me this demonstrated a need for a central source of  events in Camarillo.  For those of you still in Camarillo, let’s face it, there isn’t really much to do here.  This is why it would be nice to establish a community of like-minded people to go hang out with.

I sit in front of a computer all day at work.  The last thing I want to do when I get home is to continue to sit in front of another computer.  I’d rather go outside and get active, hack on projects with friend, or simply enjoy a movie with others.  These sort of events will give us a chance to meet new people, a chance to exchange ideas, or collaborate with peers.  Already I met someone who was interested in collaborating on a project in python and showed me some stuff on recursive queries in MS-SQL.  Neat!  In general, I think this type of interaction is more important than interacting with a computer.

The obvious answer is to think of some events and send out invites!  The key I found is to just set a date to do something and people will show up.  Ideas I had in mind were LAN Parties (formal attire required?), simply going out for a beer (it seemd to have worked in the past!), movie nights (traditional and non-traditional), dinner parties, DevHouse (day-long hack-a-thon popularized in the bay area), and of course outdoor activities (camping, climbing, hiking).  So to all of you CS/IT majors in Camarillo/Ventura County, expect some invites to some events this summer!

1. Make sure the name on your ticket is the same on your passport. – Nick != Nicholas. I got hassled only once about this when going into the international section at SFO. I had to go wait in another line to get my name changed and then go back to the original line. Bleh! Just do it right the first time.
2. Try to get exit seating. – Exit seating tends to have a lot more leg room that regular seating. On my 10 hour flight from SFO to Munich, Germany, I was cramped and just uncomfortable in the small seating; especially since I have long legs. On my way back from Frankfurt, Germany to SFO, I lucked out and got exit seating, which made that long international flight slightly more tolerable. The person I sat next to said he was able to specify exit seating, so I’m going to look into making sure I get it next time I fly a long distance.
3. For those of you who also need a vacation from your cell phone… – Don’t forget to bring a watch! My cell phone is my watch, so I never wear one. Not bringing one was a mistake because I rely on it to keep myself on schedule. Let’s just say I frequently had to go out of my way to find a clock or ask for the time.
4. Yes you will experience turbulence, no you are not going to die. – This is kind of silly, but I really didn’t know what to expect since it was my first time flying. Sleeping on a plane is hard enough; sleeping on a plane when your heart is pounding is impossible! I really did think at one point that turbulence meant something was wrong with the plane and we were all going to die! Luckily logic and reason came into play and I realized that no one else was panicking, so it all must be normal. After that experience it was mostly smooth sailing.
5. Don’t be a dick. – I missed one of my return flights home (literally by minutes) because my itineray said one airline when it was really another. At the REAL line, I had to use a kiosk that didn’t work at all, so I had to wait in another line. Regardless I was MAD, but I was able to keep my cool. They end up putting me in a Doubletree hotel and even kicked down some extra food vouchers. To contrast this, the woman who was yelling and demanding her hotel voucher only got enough attention to make her shutup.

Those are just a few things that I didn’t know before that I now know. I’m sure most people already know this stuff from experience, but I thought I’d pass down the knowledge anyways. Sometimes it’s the small things that’ll kill you.

Another thing I’ve been getting into are “books on tape” (or books on mp3?) and podcasts. Everyday one thing is certain: I’m going to be driving to work. Usually during this time I’ll use it to listen to both old and new bands. Instead, what if I could use this time to do something a bit more productive? I started with the audiobook version of “Survivor” by Chuck Palahniuk and then David Allen’s seminar “Getting Things Done” (which I’m sure I’ll dedicate a few posts to).

Podcasts of lectures from UC Berkeley have now caught my attention. If you go into the iTunes store and type in “Berkeley” you will find full lectures of actual classes from UC Berkeley. To be more specific, you’re getting every single lecture of classes that decide to do webcasts. You can find lectures from subjects such as Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Economics, History, Physics, Political Science, and Psychology. So now when I’m driving to work I’m listening to the class “CS 61C – Machine Structures” and when I’m at the gym, I’m listening to “CS 162 – Operating Systems and Systems Programming” on my iPod. These podcasts are already mp3s, so they’re ready to be burned onto CD if you have an mp3-cd player in your car. MIT has a similar program called “Open CourseWare,” but I like the convenience of a podcast.

Today I also stumbled upon “TED Talks.” TED is an invite-only conference held in Monterey, CA and feature lectures on a broad range of topics. The one that piqued my interest was a talk by Ken Robinson in which he discusses overhauling our education system. This topic has been of interest to me, so I investigated further. I found out that TED Talks were a podcast featuring nearly 100 (if not more) lectures from people such as Chirs Anderson, Sergey Brin and Larry Paige, Al Gore, and Jimmy Wales. After I load them onto my AppleTV maybe we can make a day of it, similar to Jeff’s Inspirathon.

Update: Just found this story regarding apple announcing iTunes U. iTunes U is an area of the iTunes store featuring lectures from unversities such as Stanford and of course Berkeley.

However, for one of my classes I am writing on various topics of societal issues in computing.  Since most of these papers are based on opinion and research, I figured these would make for great blog posts.  In the future I would like to start posting some of these papers that I write for the sake of sharing with the community.  So get your RSS feeds ready for future posts!

This
hCalendar event brought to you by the
hCalendar Creator.