So I guess I'm back for a bit. Haven't logged on for months at a time, which is kinda stupid since I'm paying... but money's not a big deal to me. I've done stupider things with my money. I'll consider it a fine for reparations for the damages I've caused here.

As a part of my now annual "withdraw from society, read a lot, write a lot, and perform life optimizations" period, I'll be withdrawing from both real and online life for the next 3-4 months to recoup from damages I knowingly did to myself. Like the phoenix that immolates itself and is reborn, I shall be reborn at the cognitive level once the purge is complete.

My goal for over a year now has been to observe the motivations and conventions of humans in many environments, both virtual and real, for an optimum set of behaviors for me to thrive in any social environment. Now that I understand the implicit and explicit rules of society far better through active observation, I will have little or no need to be so obtuse and aloof in behavior (no need to collect data much anymore)..

I was an asshole because I wanted to see the reactions, and I became more and more accurate in predicting what sort of personalities would react which way given a context and an input I made up. When I was friendly, I wanted to see your reaction as well (although those results carried vague meanings from the onset of my study). When I made some pretty obvious insults to whole groups, the resulting thread was an observation as well (in real life this was simply making statements that would result in verbal / physical arguments). Essentially, I learned how the systems work by understanding how to break them (a technique used in cognitive psychology and reverse engineering). The information from the resulting arguments and quarrels were all considered thoroughly, so your arguments were not at a loss. I thank you all for bolstering my knowledge and wisdom of our world.

Until June or July, goodbye.

This new Nargaroth album is just... wow, dramatic. I've heard excerpts of it before and I was impressed, but to achieve the full effect of Kanwulf's songwriting, you must listen to it as a whole. It's deliberately simple, but the effect is like what was achieved by a younger Varg, only more minimalist and with stronger vocal delivery. Riffs hang in the air and the guitars just become some ambient textures like in dark ambient music. It's like the metal ballads that I've always dreamed of but could never pen myself.

Fuck the haters, Nargaroth is more honest and musically relevant black metal than 90% of the so-called "scene." Nargaroth is one of the few bands out there that give me any hope that the black metal community may once again produce truly monumental feats in music history. It seems like the past 8 or so years have been empty and dry, too clinical and utterly wasteful. Where's the revolution that has been brewing? Or is the scene full of self-gratifying losers just like the funk community of the late 70s?

Unfucking believable. I have a headache... a rare occurrence happening twice in period of weeks? I also found myself with a nice and wet nosebleed while I was sitting in the undergrad lounge and talking to my geek bretheren. Took up a few sheets of paper towel easily.

Of course, all that blood made me hungry. So I went home and had myself some chicken and pasta to curb my appetite.

That's when I started getting a fucking headache once again... It's on both my temples now... not a pounding headache... a very high-pressure one. It's not to the point where it's a "throbbing" headache, but it just might get there.

And here's the beginning of yet another long night as me. What fun lies ahead...

I have a fucking headache. I rarely get headaches - about 1-2 per year. WTF does this mean? Goddammit I feel like drilling a hole in my skull... it's right along my right temple... I can't believe I can type. This isn't incapacitating, but considering that I'm about to make some really bad spelling mistakes, it's about dehabilitating for me...

And I thought I was having a good day too... oh wait, every day is hell, it's just some days are less hellish...

So ogg has problems with really shitty recordings with lots of line noise. For example:

Emperor - Wrath of the Tyrant
Profanatica - everything
Ildjarn - Forest Poetry
Sort Vokter - Folkloric Necro Metal

All of them get a sort of "swishing" phase-modulated sound the whole time. Even at a maxed-out 320 kbps ogg with different "quality" settings, I still can't get them to sound like the CD at all. I've tried tons of encoding settings and it's bugging the shit out of me. I'd call foul on the ogg developers part. I know mp3 has some issues with those too, but ogg shows off the problems particularly.

I remember hearing about how ogg does only DCTs while MP3 does both DCTs and FFTs. Perhaps that's the problem with the phasing (DCTs do have limitations). But that still doesn't make sense to me.

Those albums fucking rule and I want to listen to them goddammit.

I'd like to express my utmost dedication and love of Blood Storm. Fucking old school style everything. Sure, the drummer's ex-Absu, but this band has metal written all over it.

NP: Blood Storm - The Angel Web

Funny, snow on New Year's Eve in Seattle... making it hard for people to get to their New Year's parties. God is a humorless bastard.

I would like to affirm my adoration for Limbonic Art. Dark and depressing or just plain sinister, they still rule my playlist after all these years. And unlike some bands I won't name, they knew when to quit.

NP - Limbonic Art - Deathtrip to a Mirage Asylum