Distorted Tunes Test

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According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders‘ Distorted Tunes Test…

You correctly identified 26 tunes (out of 26) on the Distorted Tunes Test. Congratulations! You have a fine sense of pitch.

I’d certainly hope so! Some of those samples were almost literally painful to listen to.

(Though I will admit that years of violin and voice training, being able to plunk melodies out on nearly any instrument I’m handed, and having a slightly musical family — we all sing, Kevin plays cello, upright bass and bass guitar; dad plays guitar, banjo, and some viola; mom plays violin, piano, and organ; at least half if not all four of my grandparents were music teachers at one time or another — might have some small thing to do with acing this test.)

(Maybe.)

(via Blankbaby)

iTunes “Dance to the Music” by Kickshaw from the album Superstar (1999, 4:04).

TypeKey broken?

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I’m not sure how I’ve managed to do this, but while disabling the OpenID Comment plugin (which was apparently causing issues with submitting comments, and wasn’t really being used anyway), I’ve managed to break the ability to log in via TypeKey for authentication. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what’s going wrong — all of my code looks like it should be doing what it’s supposed to — but for whatever reason, the link to log in to TypeKey isn’t showing up.

So no TypeKey until I figure out what I broke. Meh.

iTunes “Sweet Dreams” by Marilyn Manson from the album Smells Like Children (1995, 4:53).

Ten Years (roughly)

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I first started bouncing around the ‘net in the fall of 1991, when I made my first ill-fated attempt at being a college student (a half-semester at UAA that I pretty much just stopped going to). I had the user ID of ‘ASMDH’ — Anchorage, Student, Michael David Hanscom — and the sole remaining evidence of that first ‘net address is a comment by Royce from a few days ago, and a listing in the IRN FAQ, also courtesy of Royce. Digging through the IRN archives gives me an earliest confirmable ‘net presence of Thursday, the 17th of October, 1991 at 12:18:11 (entry #5 in IRN 1.5).

As I discovered about four years ago, the first definite evidence of my existence as a denizen of the ‘net outside of UAA comes from a Usenet post archived by Google Groups that dates to February 9th, 1994 at 5:49am. The post is to rec.music.industrial and concerns nine inch nails bootleg CDs. Heh. Sounds like me, alright. By then I had an account through Alaska.net, but there’s no web presence listed in my signature — which makes sense, as the web was still a brand new thing in 1994.

My first web page went up sometime in 1995, though I don’t know exactly when. The earliest archive I have dates back to February 27, 1996, but I’d been working with the space and teaching myself HTML for some time at that point. With a little poking around, however, you might stumble across the “these pages last updated” link at the bottom of that page. And what do you think you’ll find if you follow that link?

Time- and date-stamped entries in reverse chronological order (the most recent at the top) detailing little updates I’d made to the website and some personal bits here and there.

Sound familiar?

Going by the earliest entry on that page, I’ve been blogging in one form or another for ten years as of 3:13am (Alaska time), December 29, 2005.

That’s a long time. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed this if I hadn’t decided to put all those early, hand-coded entries into my current Movable Type installation a while ago. It was kind of fun to see my archives page list posts all the way back to that earliest archived post!

I just wish I hadn’t lost a lot of pages from back when I was hand-coding my site. While my archives jump from early 1996 up to 2001, I was keeping a blog-like website during all that time…I was just hand-coding everything, and when the page got too long, I’d delete the oldest entries at the bottom. Ah, well…as often seems to be the case, it seemed to be a good idea at the time.

In any case, this post marks ten years of archived babbling and rambling — blogging, in today’s vernacular — for me. As I write this post, those ten years have created (and this doesn’t even factor in my LiveJournal account):

  • 3,614 entries.
  • 8,548 comments.
  • 1,228 trackbacks.
  • Four different management systems:
    1. Hand-coded
    2. NewsPro
    3. Movable Type
    4. TypePad
  • One lost job and subsequent Slashdotting.
  • Countless new contacts, friends, and interactions, some of which have spilled over into the “real world”, others of which have been entirely through the electrons of the ‘net.

Those of you who stop by from time to time, be you family, friend, anonymous stranger, or any other visitor — thanks for being around, dropping by and saying hi, and generally giving me a reason to keep this thing going.

And here’s to the next ten years.

iTunes “Anniversary” by Voltaire from the album Devil’s Bris, The (1998, 4:35).

All paid up

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Around $1000 poorer and after approximately 4.34 miles of walking:

  • Tuition is paid.
  • NSCC Student ID is in my wallet.
  • ‘Go Pass’ (bus pass good for unlimited rides on Metro and Sound Transit through the winter quarter) is also in my wallet.
  • The one textbook I needed (for ENG101, apparently my MAT097 class doesn’t use a textbook) is purchased.

I’m pretty sure that’s everything I needed to remember.

iTunes “Bob Dylan’s Dream” by Dylan, Bob from the album Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The (1963, 5:03).

Mad Max

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Prairie and I spent three nights last week watching the entire Mad Max trilogy: Mad Max, The Road Warrior, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

The first two, I have to admit, we kept alternating between laughing at and being fairly horrified by. Sure, they’re considered classics of sci-fi/action/post-apocalyptic movies…but wow. Two things kept striking us over and over:

  1. No woman goes unpunished. Almost without fail, every woman who appears on screen is either raped, dead, or abused into catatonia by the end of the films. In Mad Max, the only female character who escapes such a fate is the 60-something lady who owns the house that Max and his wife stay at…so apparently the only way to survive as a woman in this world is to be too old to be concerned with.

    Women fare a little bit better in The Road Warrior, though that may only be because there are more women in the film as background characters in the refinery compound. There’s really only three women that are given any memorable screen time: one who is raped and killed in the distance as Max watches through a telescope; one older woman in the compound who rants, raves, and is generally little more than a Voice of Doom; and one younger woman who serves as little more than a vapid but pretty face for the minicopter pilot to hit on — though at least those two do survive the movie.

  2. The homoerotic imagery, especially when coupled with the fate of the various characters. From the butch leather man costuming of the police force in Mad Max (especially Chief ‘Fifi’, who parades around in naught but tight leather pants and scarf while watering plants) to the range of stereotypes represented by the various bad guys (pastels, prancing, eyeshadow, androgynous appearances, BDSM gear, etc.)…all we could think was that the movies had been made by someone who was extremely unhappy with their homosexuality.

    Max himself as the hero (or, more accurately, anti-hero) is the sole obviously heterosexual “man’s man”, out on a mission to wipe clean the light-in-the-loafers renegade bikers (even when the bikers attack a young couple, when found later by Max and his partner, it’s only the guy that has lost his pants — the girl, while catatonic, is still dressed). The “homosexuality is bad and evil and should get you killed” subtext is so blatant that it hardly even counts as subtext anymore. I kept remarking that I’d be surprised if entire treatises hadn’t been written exploring this, and from the looks of a quick Google search for ‘“Mad Max” homoerotic‘, it looks like I was right.

Thankfully, Beyond Thunderdome was a far better movie than either of the first two. The costuming was an obvious evolution of the post-apocalyptic fashions of the first two (managing to carry the visual theme while decreasing, if not quite completely removing, the homoerotic overtones), the world was no longer divided into “straight = good, gay = bad” camps, and there were not just one, but two decent female characters — and they even managed to find a plot that was more engrossing than simply “drive around and kill things.”

By the time we’d sat through the first two films, both Prairie and I were approaching the third with no small degree of trepidation…but as the credits rolled, we were both rather pleasantly surprised to find that we’d both actually liked the last film. Not only was the story far more interesting (actually two separate but overlapping stories: the battle between Auntie and Master Blaster for control of Bartertown; and the lost tribe of children waiting for Captain Walker), but the characters were developed beyond the one-dimensional portraits they’d been in the first two films (Max himself gains some humanity, and Master goes from bad guy in the first half of the film to good guy and fellow escapee in the latter half).

I found the second half of Thunderdome to be more interesting than the first — the battle for control of Bartertown was fun and all, but the lost tribe of children were far more interesting to me, especially linguistically. The writers had come up with a very believable pigdin English for the children to use, and the two storytelling sequences that bookend the last half of the film were beautifully done.

So when all’s said and done, I’m not a big fan of Mad Max as a trilogy — but you can definitely count me as a fan of Beyond Thunderdome.

iTunes “Professional Widow (Armand’s Star Trunk Funkin’)” by Amos, Tori from the album Professional Widow (1996, 8:06).

High School

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A meme, courtesy of ctakahara…

  1. Where did you graduate from and what year?

    My High School DiplomaE. L. “Bob” Bartlett High School, 1991.

  2. Who was your significant other?

    Didn’t have one until my senior year, during which I had two girlfriends (no, not at the same time). I was still far too shy and introverted to actually develop much of a relationship with either of them beyond holding hands. The first was Karyn, I can’t even remember the name of the second (sad, I know…). I think I got brave enough to kiss Karyn once.

  3. Was your Prom a night to remember?

    In a vague sort of way. My date was my friend Jill, and we went with a group of friends. I don’t really remember the Prom itself all that much, though. The part of the night I do remember was walking into a ritzy restaurant (that doesn’t exist anymore, I think…it used to be right across the street from Covenant House, where my mom was working at the time) and being welcomed by the host by name. “Your table is right here, Mr. Hanscom….” Sure, Dad set it up while making reservations, but it was a nice touch.

  4. What was your favorite song you danced to the night of Prom?

    Heh…not the foggiest. That was a long, long time ago.

  5. Do you own all 4 yearbooks?

    My High School YearbooksYup. They’re fun to drag out from time to time when I need a good scare.

  6. What was your favorite movie in high school?

    Again, haven’t got a clue. Good possibilities: Real Genius, Legend, Labyrinth, Ladyhawke, Star Trek II…many other possibilities, too.

  7. What was your number 1 choice of college in high school?

    Probably UAA due to the simple fact that it was the only likely possibility.

  8. What radio station did you jam out to in high school?

    There were two main pop stations in Anchorage at that point: 101.3 KGOT and “Power” 102.1. While even back then I was starting to develop my tastes away from the standard ‘pop’ tunes, I’d usually turn into Power 102 — while it was mostly the same music as KGOT, when George Michael‘s “I Want Your Sex” came out, Power 102 played the normal version, while KGOT wimped out and played the edited “I Want Your Love” version. That was enough to sour me on KGOT!

  9. Were you involved in any organizations or clubs?

    Oliver!Freshman through Senior year I was part of the drama department’s tech crew, with one jaunt onstage during my Junior year as an orphan boy in “Oliver!”.

    Orchestra and choir, also freshman through senior years.

    Apathy ClubMy junior year, I was part of the infamous Apathy Club. While initially formed by Royce and a couple others as an excuse to hang out after school and watch movies (Monty Python’s Holy Grail, Strange Brew, and other such classic fare), in a feat that called question to our name, we actually managed to collect more cans in the annual canned food drive than the German Club, who had never been beat before.

    Senior year brought me onto the Yearbook staff as layout editor.

  10. What was your favorite class in high school?

    Yearbook and photography my senior year. Academically, I’m not sure that any classes stand out as favorites…I kind of slogged my way through.

  11. Who was your big crush in high school?

    This could be a really long list…

  12. Would you say you’ve changed a lot since highschool?

    Heh. Oh, lord yes. Drastically.

  13. What do you miss the most about it?

    Very little — some of my friends, but not much about school itself.

  14. Your worst memory of HS?

    The fear leading up to graduation that I wasn’t going to be walking the stage. While I’m generally a fairly sharp cookie, I had a bad tendency to slack off, and ended up graduating with something like a low D average, simply because I blew off so many classes (not physically skipping school, but not doing — or doing, but not turning in — the homework). I always tested well, but my homework scores were low enough to drag my grades down.

  15. Did you have a car ?

    Nope. Feet and the bus — I didn’t learn to drive ’til I moved out of my parents house.

  16. What were your school colors?

    Blue and gold.

  17. Who was your favorite teacher?

    Yearbook advisor Mr. Lyke.

  18. Did you own a cell phone in high school?

    Here’s where I show my age — I don’t believe any students owned cell phones when I was in high school. At least, I don’t remember anyone in school carting around a wheelbarrow….

  19. Did you leave campus for lunch?

    Rarely — part of the no-car bit. Occasionally I’d head out with friends who had their own wheels, though.

  20. If so, where was your favorite place to go eat?

    Any of the fast-food places within easy driving distance of campus.

  21. Were you always late to class?

    Nope…rarely, actually.

  22. Did you ever have to stay for Sat. School?

    Nope. One day of after-school detention, and I don’t even remember why I landed that. I think it was for repeated instances of not turning in homework, actually.

  23. Did you ever ditch?

    Nope…I was pretty boring back then.

  24. When it comes time for the reunion will you be there?

    I’ve already skipped my ten-year. The jury’s out on the 20-year…I’ll worry about that when the time comes.

Frosh Soph Junior Senior
Freshman Year Picture Sophomore Year picture Junior Year picture Senior Year picture

The stuff of nightmares

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Oh my lord. It’d bad enough reading about an airplane accident — thankfully, one that didn’t end in tragedy — in the steady, calm voice of newspaper reporting.

An Alaska Airlines jet with a foot-long hole in its fuselage was forced to make an emergency descent from 26,000 feet and return to Sea-Tac Airport Monday after the plane lost cabin pressure.

The MD-80 jet, which had been en route to Burbank, Calif., landed safely and none of the 140 passengers was hurt. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating, as is Alaska Airlines.

An aviation expert close to the investigation said the jet was probably struck by a baggage cart while at Sea-Tac and the incident was not reported before the plane took off for Burbank.The damaged area of the plane would have been weakened by the ramp incident and the aluminum skin then likely ruptured once the jet neared its cruising altitude, according to this person, who did not want to be identified.

But then comes the report of the incident from passenger Jeremy Hermanns.

Nothing can describe the helpless feeling you go through during a time like this, when you are absent any control, you cannot breathe, and everyone around is stunned into fear. It all started with a loud bang — the cabin air began to swirl and the engine sound became deafening. As a GA-VFR pilot, I knew something was terribly wrong. As the smell of acrid AV-gas and burning plastic filled the cabin, it created more fear in the eyes of the holiday passengers around me. We were all gripped in silence, surrounded by the white noise from the engines that eerily engulfed the plane into a surreal atmosphere. And as the oxygen masks deployed from the ceiling in a familiar, video-esque manner, we all grasped them in fear — trying to figure out how to breathe through the flimsy pieces of plastic. Parents were the most confused -– as the masks were too large for their babies’ faces and were not easy to put on in such a panicked situation. The next few minutes passed like seconds -– the plane started diving down to a lower level…and fast.

The first moment of some release was the pilot’s voice over the speaker. It had been more than 20 minutes since he last spoke, when he told us we had reached altitude. Now, he told us that we had leveled off at 10K feet and we were heading back to Sea-Tac airport. Again, since I am a pilot -– I had many ideas on how and why this happened. This morning I found out that one of my assumptions was correct -– there was a hole in the plane that caused the decompression. A hole that could have cost many lives, including my own. The enraging fact is that a non-union baggage handler ran into the side of the plane moments prior to take-off…and that it was never reported.

Thank god for the help of an amazing cabin crew and pilot. Without them, who knows what could have happened.

So. Incredibly. Frightening.

(via Royce)

Update: More from the Seattle Times:

Alaska saw an increase in ground-damage incidents at Sea-Tac after it replaced 472 unionized workers in May with workers from Menzies Aviation, based near London, the airline said. The switch contributed to a sharp increase in delayed departures from Sea-Tac.

But none of the incidents presented a flight-safety concern, Boren said Tuesday, and the number of incidents has returned to a more normal level.

[…] Monday’s incident came as the Seattle-based carrier faces renewed questions about its quality-assurance procedures, almost six years after the crash of Alaska Flight 261.

In January 2000, the MD-83 plunged into the ocean off Southern California, killing all 88 passengers and crew.

Federal investigators concluded that the crash resulted from maintenance shortcomings — specifically the failure to lubricate a key part in the plane’s tail section called the jackscrew.

Now the FAA is examining Alaska’s repair practices after three incidents in the past year raised new questions about its procedures for lubricating the part, including Alaska’s oversight of work by outside contractors.

iTunes “Drama (Junior Vasquez’ Drama Starts Here)” by Club 69 from the album Much Better/Drama (1997, 10:02).

Best TV of 2005

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Of Time’s list of the best TV shows of 2005, I’ve only seen one — but I’m not going to argue at all with their assessment. Number one on the list…

Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi)

Most of you probably think this entry has got to be a joke. The rest of you have actually watched the show. Adapted from a cheesy ’70s Star Wars clone of the same name, Galactica (returning in January) is a ripping sci-fi allegory of the war on terror, complete with religious fundamentalists (here, genocidal robots called Cylons), sleeper cells, civil-liberties crackdowns and even a prisoner-torture scandal. The basic-cable budget sometimes shows in the production, but the writing and performances are first-class, especially Edward James Olmos as the noble but authoritarian commander in charge of saving the last remnants of humanity. Laugh if you want, but this story of enemies within is dead serious, and seriously good.

(via /.)

iTunes “Panzermensch” by And One from the album Virgin Superstar (2000, 5:04).