Checksum Arcanius

When I woke up an hour after noon, my ears were still ringing. I was still thirsty. I was still wearing the Linkin Park T-Shirt I bought last night. These are all signs that it was one incredible night at the Tacoma dome.

Last night, I went to the P.O.D. / Linkin Park concert with Beth. We left Bellevue just after 4:00 for Tacoma. When we got to Tacoma, we stopped at a WaMu so I could get some cash, then headed towards the Tacoma Dome, arriving about 5:30. We then got into the significant but not monstrous general admission line. The line started moving about ten to six � and we quickly made our way into the Dome. During a quick bathroom break I was impressed that all the guys seemed to flush after themselves and wash their hands. This confirms my suspicions that most Linkin Park fans are well mannered. After working our way up to about the forth row of the pit, about half way to the right of the stage, the opening band came on.

The first act was called Story of the Year, and was quite enjoyable except for the foul mouth of the lead singer between songs. The most interesting part of their performance was the synchronized roundabout kicks, and the lead guitarist�s back flips and guitar-roundabouts. The music was all right as well in their short 30 minute set. Next up was Hoobastank, a band whose name I am unfamiliar with, but a couple of their songs sounded familiar, so they must be getting radio airtime. Musically, I liked Hoobastank better than Story of the Year, but they lacked the stage presence of the first performers. After Hoobastank�s 30 minute set and another short pause, P.O.D. took the stage and the pits, which had been getting rowdier steadily throughout the night, began to get brutal. Beth and I began having trouble staying together, and she soon decided that it was going to be a little too much for her, so she took off to find more suitable territory. While we had been as far up as the third row, by the time she took off we were six or seven rows back. But without another person to worry about, I was soon working my way back towards the front. I am not terribly familiar with P.O.D.�s music, although I do like Youth of the Nation quite a bit. I enjoyed most of their other music as well, and they got the pits liquid enough that I was able to make it to about three columns off center and back to the forth row from the front. By this time I was sweating pretty well, but I was not alone by any means. P.O.D.�s set included much more stage effects than the previous two bands had. Green lasers painted the backdrop and ceiling, lighted murals came out, and the lighting effects were generally more sophisticated.

After P.O.D. finished, a huge sheet blocked our view of the stage as Linkin Park prepared itself. It took them a while, and the crowd was getting restless by the time the filler music stopped and the lights changed, signaling the beginning of what pretty much everyone had come for. The roar of the crowd began rising, and crescendoed when then the huge sheet was backlit, and the silhouette of Chester appeared. Then the sheet fell and the music began and everything that had happened in the pits before seemed like child�s play. The crowd surged in every direction; the music was intense and wonderful; I knew every word to every song performed. At times I pressed my way forward in the crowd, and at other times I just myself go with the flow. The entire time I was taking pictures � enough that a few actually turned out decently. They will be posted.

I cannot recall exactly which songs were played and in what order � my mind was really overwhelmed with the sensory input � but I do recall some things: Among the songs played were Papercut, With You, Points of Authority, Somewhere I Belong, Nobody�s Listening, Breaking the Habit (with a new down tempo intro), Lying From You, Numb, From the Inside (my favorite from Meteora), Crawling (My favorite from Hybrid Theory), and In the End. Mike said, just before performing In The End, that it was getting to be about time for them to leave. I was switching batteries when he came out into the crowd, and got no pictures of it (in fact, I don�t even remember it happening � I was concentrating too much on not losing my camera in the crowd, but Beth told me about it later).

Linkin Park left after that, but we were not about to let them leave us without a few more songs. The group certainly has a sense of timing. As determined as everyone was to get them back by chating �Encore!� then �Linkin Park! Linkin Park� while people in the stands stomped their feet and we all generally made a bunch of non-stop noise, the crowd had almost loosing hope after the minutes that the stage remained empty. A stage crewmember even came out and took down some microphones. The crowd quieted just a bit � could they really be leaving without an encore? But then, up on his stand on the left of the stage, DJ Joseph Hahn reappeared and the Tacoma Dome shook with thunderous applause as the rest of Linkin Park came back onto stage.

The Encore, I actually remember quite distinctly, since the lull in music let me regain some composure as the pits calmed down for a while. They started with My December, with subdued lighting and Chester sitting center stage on a box singing. Then came P5hing me Aw*y, my favorite from Reanimation, followed by the traditional Linkin Park concert ender (if Live in Texas is anything to go by) One Step Closer. Three songs is a pretty generous encore, and so I decided it really was the last song of the night (they even said so, and I tend to trust these guys) so I decided I would surf to the front of the crowd. I let the guys near me know my intentions and they helped me up top. The crowd control guys got me down the front, and directed me to the right. It was much cooler out of the crowd � the first relief from the oppressive heat of thousands of bodies pressed together I had all night. Unfortunately, there were no good picture opportunities of the band while I was closer than even the front row, but I did get a few pictures of the crowd on my way out, and some wide angle shots of the whole stage during the last moments of One Step Closer. People dispersed pretty quickly after that. Beth and I found each other again, I drank about a gallon of water from the drinking fountains, and then we got into line so I could purchase a couple of Linkin Park shirts.

After that we headed home. Once home, I ate some salty chips (to replenish the salt lost to sweat) and made myself some chili. Then I downloaded the pictures and movies from my camera. It turns out the bass was way too much form my camera, so all of the sound is distorted during the movies except the parts where there is singing without heavy guitars. I also realized I was really tired, so I did a small post and went to sleep. I didn�t get up until 1:00 � and felt well rested, although my ears were still ringing slightly and I was thirsty again. Since then I�ve basically hung out here, since I�m so cool and Amanda is working all day. :-/

I just got back from Linkin Park’s concert at the Tacoma Dome. It was, in a word, incredible. A sensory extravaganza that can’t be captured completely by words. Don’t fret, I will try, but not tonight. I also have a gagle of pictures to upload. Also, I will try to remember to talk about my adventures with my computer today and other thoughts I’ve been having.

I decided late last night or rather, early this morning, after having Windows Movie Maker 2.0 Crash on me about three times per minute over a course of ten minutes, that I needed to try out a real video editing solution. Since that usually costs money, I thought I�d take other look at the wonderful world of peer-to-peer file sharing. I have seen people have success recently with Edonkey, so I downloaded the open-source non-spyware version called (in the great tradition of free software such as YACC�s emulator �Bison�) �E-Mule� (see SourceForge.net).

After installation of E-Mule, I quickly found Avid�s Xpress DV 3.5 and Adobe�s Premiere Pro out there. But it takes a bloody long time to get anything at all. But things slowly and surely seem to get downloaded. Unfortunately I have it installed on my laptop, and now I can�t very well take it with me without interrupting the downloading. So I�m going to add something to my to-do list once sf2 is no longer serving SilverFir.net, I will convert in into a windows box that I run programs like this on, hook up my external Hard Drive to so I don�t have to worry about demounting when I move around, hook the printer up to, so I can print from anywhere in the house over wireless networking, etc�

An aside: wow, this �Eternal� song by Evanescence is pretty awesome. I never would have heard this song without file sharing. And because of this song, I will listen to more music from this older Evanescence album. And I might buy it, because that�s what I do with CDs like I like. Dumb record companies/recording academy/RIAA who thinks that file sharing is so bad. Sure, there are people who download music for free instead of buying it, but those are the same people who would have burned the cd, or copied it onto a tape, or taped it from the radio. And villainizing people like me who use peer to peer as a sort of radio-listening service doesn�t make you any friends. I�m all for free enterprise, but copyright laws these days are far from what could be construed as the results of free enterprise. Corporations have for years twisted copyright to their advantage; now they complain when consumers, the very people who support the corporations, twist copyright themselves.

The hypocrisy is appalling; but sadly true. As is, I suppose, my hypocrisy when I download expensive software to try out, yet promise that I�ll pay for when I use it in a matter where it might actually make sense to wield that kind of power. But then I have justification there too � my using the software in a non-commercial manner (as I do) only strengthens the position in an industry of the software that I use. And I really do plan on paying for the software were I to use it for commercial uses. I just can�t afford the ten-bazillion dollars of license fees and upgrade costs when I only use the software once a month for only a few things.

The absence of these moral dilemmas is one of the most attractive traits of free software for me � And for tools where free software is on par with proprietary software, that�s what I tend to use (Mozilla FoxFire [newly installed � it�s the new version of Firebird {a new name for a new version so as to not interfere with another project called Firebird }], Thunderbird, Linux servers, Apache, etc)� Enough nested parrens for you there?

Third time though the Evanescence song� now on to Pearl Jam�

I think I�m going to try getting some actual sleep tonight, although I�m still itching to do a movie in windows movie maker with an updated XviD driver. And a million other things. Oh, I might as well tell you about today. After staying up till� 4, I woke up at 8:20 only to remember I had forgotten my math homework and there was ice over my windshield. So I skipped Tennis, went to Math, did a bunch of photography, ate lunch with Amanda, did more prints and darkroom activities, and then went off to robotics, where the design for the arm changed again, but it looks like it’ll come together this time. Then I can work on the winch to lift the robot at the end of the match. Meanwhile, Bob is working on a mechanism to positively control the goal. Once those things are done, the robot will be able to do everything in the game except for knocking the bonus ball. And I think the bonus ball is useless, so I�m ok ignoring that.

They kind of sucked I thought. I mean, Linkin Park didn’t win anything, I somehow missed the record of the year, Evanesence won something but then I learned that they disavowed their spiritual roots — even Jennifer Lopez knows better than to deny her roots (”I still remember where I came from� — that’s her, right”). I didn’t even get any calc homework done while watching. Oh, and the costumes were mostly atrocious, with some fun exceptions.

Read the Blog and learn!

Here is the difference between speaker out and line out (credit goes to the original author here):

“Its all a question of impedance, speaker out is expecting a low impedance, 4-32 Ohm object to be stuck on it. Line-out is expecting a high impedance (I think 1kOhm) object to be stuck on it. If you dont put the correct matched object on each output you get a loss of signal quality.

With highly strung amps you can actually do damage but the cheap stuff on a soundcard is pretty immune. Also a PC soundcard generates so much noise that the increase by the impedance mismatch is hardly noticeably. Normally all I really see is a drop in frequency response.”
–Graeme

“Impedence” is the ratio of voltage to current - similar to, but not exactly resistance. Read more about it here if you are interested.

Music:
I have found that even high quality MP3’s reconstituted through a high quality player on my laptop into my stereo system simply cannot compete with the original CD. The weakest link here is, I believe, my laptop. I have tried similar tests using my desktop (with the audigy II platinum) and haven’t been able to detect reasonable differences. My laptop, on the other hand, even with the volume turned all the way up, doesn’t seem to output enough voltage to simulate a line out. Its plenty loud in headphones. I wonder how much line out is supposed to be?

Money:
I asked the CEO of T-Mobile for $4,000 today. Actually, he’s going to give the information I gave him to his marketing department. I hope I did a good enough job on it to get something. Also, I gave similar information to Mr. Chaplin of Chaplin’s Automotive Group, a contact that happened because of my mom, bless her. We’ll see how that goes.

Thanks:
I finally got around to start writing thank you letters to the very nice people who hosted Scott and I while on our roadtrip. I am now awaiting more addresses to write more letters. People are good, life is great, and I am indeed blessed.

Radio stations here in Seattle have gotten much better recently. First, 107.7 The End switched to a new format where music was emphasized, especially the alternative music that defined The End in its earlier years; DJ’s were deemphasized (a move I wholeheartedly agree with), and in general, there was more music to talk. Then I found out that 96.5, formerly The Point, an 80’s station, is now KRock, “Alternative Seattle,” an alternative rock radio station who’s musical selection seems to be even better than The End’s new format. Between the two I have found radio bliss, something I haven’t experienced in Seattle since 1997.

Today, I woke up at a sleep-defying 7:00 am in order to pick up Bobby and Jacob at the UW and get them to Larry’s around 8:00. We ended up pulling in at 8:40, but the three of us were able to turn the tide and convince the group that our idea for a strategy was feasible - basically, we’re building a huge arm that happens to not preclude any other strategy; it should make everyone happy. With another top-notch drivetrain coming from Larry and Dave, we should once again have the best combination of power and speed out on the field, and if we do the arm right, we should be nigh unstoppable. Hanging and small balls then become icing on the cake known as winning the Pacific Northwest Regional, and if we are able to raise $4000, the National Championship as well.

We broke for lunch, having crunched numbers and checked feasibility to determine that our arm could concievably lift 200 pounds at 5 feet - a figure which made us all giddy with excitement. After lunch and some small work on Inventor, we headed back to the UW with Chris and Tim. There, I soon fell asleep and got nothing accomplished before returning home, where I got my Dad’s new WET11v2 working for him before coming up here, writing this, enjoying 107.7 and 96.5, and feeling hungry for the fourth time today.