Miscellany

My campus only seems to flush its DNS cache once every two, maybe three years. Seriously, the rest of the net saw the new host by Thursday, and I’m still seeing the old one on campus. Bizarre. And I can’t seem to get a straight answer out of their OIT staff. But anyway, I’m having to go through alternate routes to post to this site and get my email, and I’m getting sick of it.

Happy belated Valentine’s Day. To anyone in love, my best wishes to you and yours. To anyone nursing a broken heart, my sympathy and solidarity. And to anyone who’s ever taken advantage of another, male or female, physically or emotionally: fuck you. You’ll get yours. But mostly, best to those in love. Make the most of it.

I spent the Friday evening before Valentine’s at a show on campus billed as “The Heartbreak Before Valentine’s” due to its all indie/emo lineup. All the bands were quite good, particularly My Winter Nerve, who despite their somewhat generic emo-band name played an enthralling and mature set that closed in a superb feedback experiment. For all the lonelyhearts billing, I was the only person there alone. The campus was dead quiet when I left the Commons building around 10PM.

Valentine’s Day itself was idled away with work and study and some music fiddling until the evening, when I went out (as is becoming seemingly routine for my Saturday nights) to Sonar, alone. I wandered between some pretty respectable breaks in the main room and somewhat lacking 2-step in the lounge until Dieselboy took the decks shortly after midnight. Bangin’ set, good MC, crowd was amped. I’m starting to love the routine of the end of a night at Sonar: lights go up, slip outside past the kids with fliers to the kiss of the Baltimore night air, twist and turn a few blocks and it’s ten minutes of open freeway before I’m home. It’s nice, and I’m comfortable doing it alone. But I may have found some fellow electronic dance music lovers at UMBC to go out with, a welcome change.

I think the woman for me is Nigella Lawson, or a reasonable facsimile. Hell, I’ll do the cooking if she’ll look that good and occasionally say something with that accent. I’ve got a shot, right?

As per this thread on the Ableton forums, I’m trying to figure out how to DJ with Live. It requires a lot of prep, and I’m still getting the hang of laying warp markers, but it’s got a lot of potential. Throw in one of these and its a reasonably affordable and portable means for some next-level DJing. Keen.