Facebook is the Hedgehog’s Dilemma

Posted on May 12th, 2010

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 9:04 pm

My aggressive aversion to facebook apps that want personal data assuredly obscures a section of reality from my vision. However, this section surely contains information about how others perceive me, and thus, in that sense, I am forbidden from knowing a part of myself as I am unwilling to share information about myself.

More pressingly, regardless of which path of action is taken, I will feel some sense of loss. Either I am to relinquish my privacy to a stranger, so that I may know what my friends and acquaintances think of me, or I am forbidden from knowing information about myself. Some might argue I could always ask my friends what they said in a given, but on facebook, such connections are not always as strong as friendship, and even that still requires some exchange on my part. It reveals more directly to those people that I want to know what they think of me.

And well, I do want to know; such concerns are natural to human beings. However, I don’t wish to sacrifice anything personal to know such things. See blog title.

Comments Off on Facebook is the Hedgehog’s Dilemma

Success!(?)

Posted on April 29th, 2010

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 12:01 pm

So, I squeaked through my first quarter at SFU with good enough grades (Discrete Math, B-, Comp Sci C+, English B+, Philosophy A-) to continue on my degree track. I’ve moved into my own place in Burnaby off-campus. I am underway properly now as a student. The biggest debate for me should be whether I want to spend the 45-100 something bucks a month to have a parking pass, or whether I should lose a 20+ minutes a day to the bus.

Yet, meanwhile, I have friends without degrees working for Microsoft and Google. To be fair, they are contract or orange badge or some other code word for temporary and hourly, but they are working, now. Doing jobs I could also do, now. Putting the best companies in the world on their resumes now.

I hope the $60K+ of my parents dough I’m about to plow into getting a degree is the right long term play. I really, really do. I really hope it means a salary, a house and all that other American Dream stuff. The grass better end up greener on my side, otherwise why am I gardening, and stressing ’til my arteries are hardening?

Comments (2)

Success is my only option; Failure’s not.

Posted on April 23rd, 2010

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 3:21 pm

So, I’m over in Victoria, visiting Danielle, and clearly things must be chill as we’ve had time to go out for a couple meals, went swimming and we even yet again fed the seals (video eventually uploaded and linked to this parentheses’d text,) but pretty every other waking moment has been spent cramming on Discrete Math, which quite plainly I need to do well on, at least if I intend to continue my pursuit of Comp Sci. I haven’t even browsed my philosophy notes yet, both because I only need a D, and because I doubt I’d get anything less than a B- even going into the exam cold.

Ah, the liberal arts, I’m so good at you, but it’s ever so difficult to eat off you, and you’re boring compared to programming.

Beyond that, I’m taking Danielle back to her mom’s in Castlegar before looping through SpoKant to get back to Seattle. It seems there are tons of shows I’d love to see in my short break between semesters (well, w00tstock and MC Frontalot.) Perhaps it’s a reward for trying so darned hard to get through all this stuff, but in truth, it’s sort of a reminder that I have to get through this. I’m not touring with Damien Hess nor Adam Savage, so I better make sure I am educated such that I have good work, and thus can afford to see them when they are in my locality.

Comments Off on Success is my only option; Failure’s not.

“I’m about my bus[y]ness” – Drake

Posted on April 7th, 2010

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 2:08 pm

So, in the past week(ish) I:

Yet, on the plate for the month is:

I would say I’m super busy, but rationally I know I’ve had plenty of leisure time too. I’ve been able to watch what I want on TV (well, I’ve not been keeping up with Top Gear how I’d like, but it’s rerun constantly on BCC America, so I’ll catch it eventually,) incessantly call Danielle, incessantly call home and even do much more visiting than I expected to have time for. For what seemed to me to be a questionable and uneven start, I’ve managed to do okay here. Perhaps until I see the benefits of getting a Comp-Sci degree over the more remedial, but less expensive and closer to home Computer And Software System degree, I may always be a little tense as education is the most expensive endeavor I’ve taken on to date. One year of university costs me more than all the anime and comic book conventions I’ve attended since I first went to Sakuracon in 2003, and I’ve gone to a lot of conventions since then.

Back on leisure, I suppose there is even busyness there. Last Easter weekend was Sakuracon2010, and Danielle and I were not there. For me, that was the first time I’d missed the con since I first started attending it in 2003. In that sense, even time off now comes with some checks and balances I didn’t have before, but truthfully, I had a lot more fun in Victoria. We went shopping, we had an advance birthday dinner and we went swimming. At the pool, I went down a water slide for the first time. It was surprisingly fun, especially in comparison to going into a steam room for the first time, which I also did.

Beyond that, it was nice to not have to inflate a lack of news into a 500-word news post on top of writing a big paper. I suppose I’d have had to review the new Trigun movie, which would’ve been another 800 or more words. I also can’t be disappointed in a dealer’s room I didn’t see (as I have been in the past few years with most convention dealer’s rooms.) Yeah, there are some old industry friends I could’ve said hello too, and with the new CD out I could have hustled at least a half-dozen albums. I mean, there almost isn’t a convention I’ve attended in the past 4-or-5 years somebody hasn’t been “hey, you’re that guy!” Well, except for Google I/O in 2009.

However, I think I’ve realized that while “making my way in the world today takes everything I’ve got,” I guess I’ve grown up enough to know that it’s not about going “where everybody knows your name” but rather where the right person or people knows your name. For a long time I guess that was the cons, but not as much now.

Comments Off on “I’m about my bus[y]ness” – Drake

Time in a Sieve

Posted on March 19th, 2010

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 1:19 pm

It struck me between classes today that this time last year, I was just beginning to work for my friend Charlie at his now semi-defunct company. I was busy trying to sort through documentation that ultimately would be superseded by Motorola’s version of the Android dev environment where much of the code I was looking for was pre-built and better explained.

Anyways, that then made me realize the last time I had been in school in the spring was in 2006, and the last time I had a full time course load was spring 2005. Reflecting back on it, it’s beyond me how I managed to drag out getting back to school for so long. I guess there was always another little fire to put out or moment of poor planning that cost me time, but at the same time, I could have finished an entire 4-year from scratch if I’d just gone for it then. That’s not even taking into account trying to get into a real university right out of high school. If I’d done that, I’d have been square even sooner.

At the same time though, I think my weird journey forward afforded me a much broader range of experiences than I would have had otherwise, and I’m glad to have had the chance to try on those outfits. I may have only “cosplayed” as a journalist, start-up developer and most tellingly of all, a professional musician, but I think I had to try these things on first.

Comments Off on Time in a Sieve

Be It Ever So Humble

Posted on January 24th, 2010

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 1:31 pm

So after two weekends of heading back to familiarity (be it family and Kirkland or Danielle and Victoria,) this is my first weekend in the Townhouses (which are basically 4 single occupancy dorm rooms with a kitchen and 2 bathrooms.) Like clockwork, there was a party going on downstairs, and well, I had no interest beer pong, not only because of a lack of interest in beer, but also a lack of interest in communicable disease.

However, I definitely feel like I’m getting more and more into the flow of life here. Beyond that, slowly but surely I seem to be making friends with folks in the ARC, so it’s not like I’m without social contact either. In fact, last night, I hung out with some of the nerd crew on campus. It’s much more my pace. I still have some disorienting moments sometimes when I wake up, but on the whole, I seem to be getting used to being at least quasi-adult.

In fact, I even feel comfortable enough to indulge a little. I’m going out for a Starbucks at the mall.

Comments Off on Be It Ever So Humble

Stranger in A Semi-Familiar Land

Posted on January 4th, 2010

Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 12:14 am

So, as I think most people know, I have moved to Canada to attend college at Simon Frasier University. I have my apprehensions about school – even when my best efforts are applied, my supposed brilliance (this isn’t me being egotistical, it’s from other people saying I’m smart) doesn’t always come across in my studies. However, I’m hoping that my return to higher education 4 years after finishing my Associates Degree (which itself took two years too long to finish,) will be successful. Hopefully, since I won’t have a job distracting me (or even much in the way of social commitments or hobbies to worry about – more on that later,) it’ll be a lot more like my last two years at BCC where I was able to focus on my studies quite well, and not my first two at BCC where I was often so exhausted physically from pushing carts around that I didn’t have the energy to put into course work.

Now, some may also assume this means that now I’m automatically in an environment that I’m fairly familiar with, but the truth is the SFU Burnaby campus is far enough removed from the places I know in Vancouver (namely Commercial Drive, Strathcona and Metrotown,) that’s it’s akin difference between living on Capitol Hill and living in Kent. One is a cool neighborhood in a big city, and one is formerly industrial area that’s been gentrified with Ikeas and such. However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t made a point to visit some familiar areas. In addition to visiting the Ikea for some odds and ends, I made a point to visit the Metrotown mall to get some other essentials square too. The interesting thing was coming up the street that intersected the one Metrotown is on, I saw the Crystal Mall, an Asian-centric shopping mall where Danielle and I would visit when I was in Vancouver in years past, and I was somewhat overwhelmed. It was bittersweet; I was so happy to have a familiar beacon with such fond memories attached to it, yet I truly wished that she was here with me so that we could enjoy it together. Even being in Metrotown, there were a lot of things that reminded me of those times.

Perhaps nothing is more motivating to me than to know that if I do put in the effort to finish school here, I will be joined by the person who introduced this lovely city to me, and who makes it a 1000 times more lovely with her presence. Of course, even Castlegar is fun with her.

In the interim though, it’s keeping in contact with phone calls, and where as I at least had friends and family in Seattle to socialize a little with, I really don’t have super tight contacts in the same fashion here. Hopefully, this translates into getting school work done with massive efficiency, but I hope I can keep in contact with with people often enough that I don’t feel too lonely either. Yeah, there are school clubs and such that should let me make some local contacts, but on the whole, the last thing I think I need is to feel isolated from the connections I do have. In short, don’t be surprised if I’m on skype, google chat and other stuff a bunch, and feel free to say hello.

Comments Off on Stranger in A Semi-Familiar Land

The Return of the Classic / Registery

Posted on November 21st, 2009

Filed under: General,Music News — Karl Olson @ 2:27 pm

So, I’ve put my first full album on bandcamp, both as in my first release via the site, and my first nerdcore album revision4920. What was once out of print is now available for 5 bucks in just about any audio format you could want. Everything else I want to sell immediately (along with some freebie stuff) should be making it’s way to the site this weekend.

Also, I finally got registered for classes at SFU. Next week: getting a study permit/student visa.

Comments Off on The Return of the Classic / Registery

“When you die, we will have music for years. Nerdcore 2Pack.”

Posted on October 16th, 2009

Filed under: General,Music News — Karl Olson @ 5:30 am

– Ben Garbe aka $ucksex of The Former Fat Boys

Ok, that’s probably an over exaggeration. After all, massive back-catalog of music to record and adept production work for new luminaries aside, I am only in the middle of readying both Rai’s debut album, Electric Sheep, and my new record, Romance Language Two. Actually, I’m done with Romance Language Two outside of mixing/mastering (well, I have another 3 or 4 songs I could record for it if time allows, maybe in November.) At the moment, everything I’ve got is being poured into Rai’s debut, and she’s putting as much time as her vocal chords and job allow on this to get it done in time for AkiCon 2009.

BTW, that’ll bring the official count of releases this year for me up to seven. A mixtape, a remix album, two mash up eps, two personal albums and a collaboration album. I won’t rest on that either cause I’m going to help Nursehella however I can with her debut record.

Oh and I’ll find time write another couple anime reviews in there too, and upload my records to bandcamp so all you folks can buy them via the internets. I may not be successful at what I do yet, but stopping me is easier said than done.

Comments (2)

Sequels Part Uno: Redid The Mash

Posted on September 30th, 2009

Filed under: General,Music News — Karl Olson @ 2:49 pm

So I made a six song long mash up EP in a weekend earlier this year, and well, I got the itch again, so this time I made a six song mash up EP in 4 hours. I present, Ultraklystron – Redid The Mash:

Badongo – DepositFiles – MegaUpload – RapidShare – zShare

Of course, beyond the fun of me ruining songs from some of my favorite artists is that this has a sneak peak at Romance Language 2, with two songs from said upcoming album on this release in mash up for form. BTW, I have four out of 12 songs done for that record.

Comments Off on Sequels Part Uno: Redid The Mash

« Previous Page — Next Page »