Hi. Just came across an interesting band called the Portable Folk Band. Banjo + indie rock = unpredictable goodness. I followed the link to their mothership (their label, Copyright Records) and found some other good music there too. I think you might like it so here are some links:

http://copyrightrecords.org/
http://portablefolkband.com/
http://www.myspace.com/miniband

MP3:
http://tinyurl.com/lm86l

Blogger, social organizer, and web developer was arrested in Egypt.

He was arrested this week for his involvement in a protest supporting
independent judges. He is now blogging from prison so you can follow
along. Protest this injustice by linking to articles, participating in google bombing, blogging about it, and contacting the egyptian embassy to voice your concerns!

Links for further reading below.

My sister Fereshteh has a new art project you should be a part of! Read below:

"I'm writing to announce that I have given up all former resistance to
the blogosphere and I need your help for my latest project to succeed.
Blog art is like mail art, doomed to failure if people don't
participate. Please send your dreams and stories to me here or at the
address below.

Hi, just wanted to say thanks to those that sent me emails about the latest track I put in the player. "Big Dinner" is a little over a year old, a track I did for a final project of my ECE 402 (Music DSP) class. We had to use this really interesting program called Kyma to write an algorithm or song. I didn't really want to just do either, so I did both. The vinyl noise you hear at the beginning and end is a vinyl simulator algorithm I made that basically consisted of repeating (~33.333) pitch warbling, fuzzy distortion, compressor, noise, filtering, and a random pop/crackle thing. I think I did a bunch of other stuff but I can't remember. Then I wrote a little song featuring Brendan on cello and arranged it in the weird timeline thing they had in Kyma and used the vinyl simulator on the beginning and end to emphasize the middle, by having it "shine through".

My friend Aaron released his album, Echoes of the Past, a while ago. It's pretty damn amazing. If you don't believe me, here is a song off the album, called Boldly Timid. When I first heard the songs off this album, my jaw actually dropped because I couldn't believe my friend, someone who I have now known about 10 years, who I had played music with all throughout high school, had been hiding these songs inside of him all that time. Damn... If you like it, which you probably will, please buy it.

Thanks aaron.

My buddy Sasha just put out an album, entitled "Live the Contradiction". Instead of putting out a physical album, he's decided to do an online release, or "website release". It makes a lot of sense actually. For 25 bucks/year, you can buy a domain name with 100 megabytes of storage, just enough for an album. For such a low fee, you get your work out to a large amount of people, in a format they probably prefer, and it costs you a fraction of what physical CDs would (if you buy $1000 worth of CDs, it's a 97.5% markdown), and you get a unique identity with the domain name. Not bad.

All you need is someone who can write HTML, such as myself. Sasha wanted to keep it real simple, like as if you were sitting at your computer looking at the desktop. And look at what sort of hilarious results we got. STAAAAART ME UP!

Man, the bums in chicago are picky. Griselda and I were hanging out at the train station the other day, eating some mexican pastries and bread when a homeless man came up to us asking for some change. We shook our head, that we didn't have anything to spare. Griselda offered him some of the bread, only to be scowled at by the bum.

Bum: You fellas have anything you could spare?
Griselda: Sorry man, we got no change. You want some of this bread? It's good.

I live in a garage. I make no bones about it. I pay practically nothing, with utilities included. The space is basically a converted garage (technically only half of a garage), with very good insulation, tile floors, bed, stove, and refrigerator. You may notice I didn't mention a kitchen. There isn't any - I have to wash my vegetables in the bathroom sink or *shudder*....the shower. The shower is the only part of the place I'm embarrassed to show people because it has a concrete floor like you'd find at the community pool shower. I wear flip-flops in the shower because psychologically I don't consider it part of my place. There just happens to be this thing where water spouts out above my head so I figure I can stick some shampoo in my hair and have a go at it.

Living alone after you've graduated has it's ups and downs. On the upside, you pretty much get to plan and scheme whatever projects you want to do. On the downside, you are left feeling overly confident about your independence at times.

Exhibit A: The haircut.
Now it's not that I haven't tried to cut my hair before. Those that know me realize there are a couple of things that just terrify me, such as:

After a week in Brooklyn, I headed down to Maryland to brainstorm with Fereshteh about our upcoming artist residency at the Experimental Television Center (E.T.C.). Tucked away in the heart of Owego, NY, the E.T.C. is a spacious loft located above an antique store and cafe. There was vintage analog video editing equipment like you wouldn't believe. These guys are in the stone age and are proud of it...old monitors, old video mixers galore. But the craziest stuff was unique to the place, such as the Image Processor (I.P.), Wobulator, Jones Colorizer, and Jones Sequencer. Not to mention tons of oscillators (waveform generators).