akrish

Lots of short random things here.

1. Changed the layout a bit. Please tell me what you think. The header image is some fractal from wikimedia commons (I don’t think I’m supposed to use it without giving rights so… Thank you Jonathan Zander.) I personally think it’s a decent layout but will probably be updating it after finals are over.

2. Firebug is really awesome. If you ever do web design it’s almost a must have. It made changing my layout a lot easier.

3.  You can base a company off of almost anything. Mod My Life has a really strange idea that’s pretty entertaining but I don’t really see how they’re going to make money. The video clip on Tech Crunch was pretty amusing. Also made me feel a lot more comfortable about our company idea, which we think has a much more solid business plan.

4. Finals really suck. It’s not that I really mind taking exams, it’s just that productivity goes way down. I had 2 finals today (only 2 more to go!) and in between the two, I didn’t really spend time studying for the 2nd one but rather, I puttered around on the internet. I didn’t really want to study (obviously), but I also wasn’t ready to focus my energy on anything else and so I ended up killing a couple of hours. Not that that’s entirely a bad thing, it was good to have some free time to do nothing.

5. My mom used to say to me and my friends, “As if playing video games isn’t bad enough, you all sit around and watch each other play video games.” yeah… definitely did that for several hours today.

6. I really want to play soccer soon. It’s been awhile.

7.  It’s funny. This week, the house that I live in has become harmlessly divided. Half of us have been sleeping “normal” hours (i.e. going to bed between 12-2am and waking up between 8am-noon) while the other half have been sleeping at really odd hours (i.e. going to bed between 8am and noon and waking up whenever they so desire). I woke up early today (7am) to go to a final and found that 5 people were still awake. This has kinda gotten me thinking about human nature a bit and how different people are. Like I have to get a decent amount of sleep to be productive (or even function at all) the next day and even still I do the best work in the morning. On the other hand, some of my friends work the best between 2 and 6 in the morning. This was true even earlier in the semester, but it’s seemed to be exaggerated by finals week. I’m not really going anywhere with this, I just think it’s funny and interesting.

8. Random question: Is it bad to eat raw pasta?

Another month has come and gone. Wow time really flies when you’re at school and have tons of work to do every day. I spent a decent amount of time listening to music, but not much of it was really new.

I’ve been listening to a lot of “plain-old” rock the likes of Dead Poetic, Lorene Drive, Chasing Victory, along with some other stuff like Muse, The Mars Volta.
I also found out that a lot of the bands I used to listen to have been coming out with new albums so I’ve been listening to some of that too. In list form we have:

• Thrice – The Alchemy Index: Volume 1 & 2: Fire & Water – this is actually very different from older Thrice stuff (which I’ve been enjoying for a couple of years now, but also very good. I really like the “water” part of the album which is really nice and mellow)
• Thursday – Kill the House Lights – This albums all right, I really liked their older work, but recently they’ve been starting to slip in my eyes. I’ve been listening to it a bit mostly because I hoped this album would be like the old albums.
• Jimmy Eat World – Chase This Light – I’m starting to like Jimmy Eat World a lot more, I’ve only listened to this album a couple of times since I got it, but it sounds pretty good. I should probably listen to it a bit more.
• Coheed and Cambria – Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV: Volume 2: No World For Tomorrow – Coheed and Cambria continue to amaze me with creative and new work. I really enjoy all of the albums that I have of theirs and in particular like almost all of the songs on this one.
• Brand New – I have a couple of their albums and like all of them. These guys are probably my favorite band right now.
•   The Mars Volta – Amputechture – I’ve had this for awhile but never really listened to it. One of my friends played some Mars Volta in his car recently and I decided I’d give them another shot. I actually really like the songs on this album, even though they are a little out there.

Despite not having a lot of free time, I’ve been trying to play as much guitar as possible (which unfortunately hasn’t been much). I’ve shifted even more into the world of acoustic guitar and barely played my electric this month. Here’s what I’ve been working on:

• Acoustic Alchemy – The Wind of Change – a short little song that sounds really good when they play it. It sounds ok when I play it but it wasn’t too hard to learn. It’s also really fun to play.
• Acoustic Alchemy – The Alchemist – this is a fun, kinda fast song that I’ve started to learn. It’s harder that songs I’m typically ready for but I’m working on it.
• Andy McKee – Rylynn – If you haven’t seen/heard of Andy McKee please check this out. He’s absolutely amazing and Rylynn is a really awesome song. It’s ridiculously hard, but I’ve been making some steady progress and have the beginning parts of it down.

I’ve also been freestyling/jamming with one of my friends a lot. He ends up playing the electric and I’ll play some stuff on the acoustic. I find this a lot more fun than just playing by myself so hopefully we’ll keep doing that.

On a really random music note, I started listening to mainstream rap a bit this month. Yes it’s very uncharacteristic for me and recently I haven’t been listening as much, but I found a couple of songs to be pretty catchy.

Anyway, that’s the November Music Recap

I’ve added a new page to the blog with some sample technical interview questions. I don’t think it’ll be pertinent to most people but some of my friends have been asking for some of these questions and it’ll also serve as a good place for me to look in preparation for interviews. I’ll update it whenever I hear more questions from my peers or from my own interviews.

I said I would be moving akrish over to wordpress, and here it is. I’ve imported all of my old articles and have categories that represent the feeds I used to have. Naturally I’m going to have to mess around with settings and configurations a bit, but ultimately there won’t be many other changes to this blog. Please let me know if anything doesn’t seem to be working as you’d expect and I’ll take a look at it.

I didn’t do this for September but my music hasn’t been changing that frequently (mostly due to school). Here’s the recap:

Albums Chiodos – Bone Palace Ballet

Daphne Loves Derby – Good Night, Witness Light

Brand New – The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me

Brand New – Deja Entendu

Brand New – Your Favorite Weapon

Scary Kids Scaring Kids – Scary Kids Scaring Kids

Nural – Weight of the World

What I’m playing

Coheed and Cambria – Always and Never

Dashboard Confessional – The Good Fight

And some other songs that I can’t think of off the top of my head. I’ve also been spending a lot more time just free-styling rather than playing songs. It’s a good way for me to be creative and it’s also moving me in the right direction toward writing my own songs.

Unfortunately I haven’t had too much time to play guitar, but I’ve started using music as a way for me to relax which I’m really happy about.