Network and Wordcount

Okay, so I'm still looking for work, have no friends and apparently other people living here think I'm some a black hat. Right.

On a lighter note I've been wasting my time with gameboy games like Pokémon, Yellow and modding.

I'm considering getting an embedded processor and programming to run my PlayStation2 controller as a U.S.B. human interface device.

In short, I want to make an PS2 controller into a U.S.B. gamepad for Macintosh.

There aren't any game pads for Macintosh and it's really a pain.

On a simpler note, I made a run to ®adio Shack to buy an eighth inch jack so I could hook up a pair of Sony Speakers I found in the basement.

Now, I have a great stereo built from a Sony subwoofer, an off-brand stereo set that I modded and a Dell 2.1 set that I modded. Unfortunately it's hooked up to my Apple router so I can use it for Music over AirPlay. So it's music only, which is nice if I'm playing a game because I can have the game sounds come from the computer and music come from the surrounding stereo.

But for video and games, the internal speakers were too tinny. SO I wired up the stereo jack to the left and right channels, decided not to solder and wired up the speakers.

Turns out they have good mid range and low rage.

Because my main novel is running really high on the word count, I've decided to shelf it as an epic and expand my novella and see if I can publish it as a novel first. I'm making point of writing everyday for an hour or for 1,000+ word count.

If I can make a name for myself, no matter how small, I figure I can try my hand at publishing the first part of my Epic.

I'm pretty proud of this story, though. It's structure and style is very different from the Epic, but takes place in the same universe and has echoes of the themes of the Epic.

Anyway, that's my brain,

Brent Matthew Lillard

@SAKUTOnoSai

High Score, Dad!

I was playing the rom from my old Tetris DX game for Gameboy. Don't ask, I had a disk packed with copies of games I've bought in the event (as like now) that I can't find the real cartridge.

When I loaded it up it had only one choice, "Entry". Entry is where you type in your player names into one or all of three slots.

On the cartridge I have two slots taken by names. One saying BRENT and the other saying DAD. I was reminded of him, even when this rom was clean. No high scores, no save files and no DAD, but Tetris was his game and it became mine as I got better at it. Eventually he had no high scores on the cartridge, because I had beaten them all in Marathon and 40 Lines after he'd died.

I've always been very quick to adapt and I don't often miss people. It is something I atone to me being a water sign and I am quick proud of.

Sometimes, however, like these times, I do miss people and then it passes.

Here was this game that had always had somewhat of a melancholy theme and it lacked the BRENT and DAD I had never put the effort in to change.

It's weird the things you remember about people though or the things that remind us of them, too.

When it comes to, say, one of the girls I particularly cared for then it's how it feels to have put my arms around their waste when standing behind them, or the first time I kissed Emma in particular, or this one memory of sitting across ways on a small staircase while my first girlfriend leaned back against my middle section. That memory in particular was during a rough time for me and I remember just how calming and centering it was for me in that moment.

Or perhaps the smell of beer. As many times since that I've drank, the smell of domestic beer always takes me back to sitting on the front porch of my Aunt Cyndi's summer home at Lake Gaston. It was vacation spot and generally at one person or another always one on hand.

The smell of nail polish reminds of my Mother's old nail specialist back in Suffolk, Virginia. No surprise.

My dad.... Well, the most vivid memory I have is how ruff the stubble on his face was against my hand or my cheek. I didn't care back then, but it's something of a precious memory now.

As many times as I've smoked and the fact that I generally hang out with smokers, you'd think this thought would have perished. the smell of good cigarettes still takes me back to sitting on the front stoop in Chesapeake where my dad was sitting in a chair watching the lightning shatter the sky. In fact, I've always loved the smell. It's like going home for the first time in years.

Cigars on the other hand, which I prefer for myself on rare occasion, by the way, remind me in scent of Rusty. He smokes cigars and I remember a rather ridiculous action he did through blowing smoke out his mouth, sniffing once then acknowledging it with a "hm."

Mod the World! Hack the Planet!

Going to bed as soon as this chapter of iWoz is finished.

What I'm holding is the twisted wire and eighth inch jack I put together tonight to hook up a pair of Sony's into my MacBook since my big stereo is plugged into my AirPort router. It was easy. Two leads of twisted wires and I hooked the grounds together and to the negative and the left and right leads on the jack to the left and right positive wires. Then I took the two twisted wires and twisted them all together So, it's a great thick cord... or bundle.

I've been "reading" an audiobook called iWoz, the autobiography of Steve Wozniak. Really entertaining, oddly enough. The reader (Patrick Lawler) sounds just like Woz, it's a great experience. Sometimes I forget it's not Woz.

I'm still looking for work and I put in a bunch of applications. I'm really wanting to get a job at one of the nearby Apple retail stores. I put in an application for (and all did a bunch of reading on) a specialist at the Apple store.

That is all.

GIGO

So any good audiophile knows the proverb "garbage in, garbage out."

This applies to music fidelity in that no matter how frakking awesome your stereo or Sennheiser headphones are, if you're listening to an Mp3 from 2003 (your 2002 music taste aside) it's going to sound like an Mp3 from 2003. The only way you zillion dollar stereo is going to even have the potential of sounding like an orchestra if the source is high fidelity and not garbage. Like a vinyl record, for example.

But it hit occurred to me that this computer science proverb hails true in our bodies and how we take care of ourselves.

Now, hold on! I'm not going to get into the mechanism of human waste, no one wants to read about that. No, no, no! There will always by-product, nothing wrong about that.

I'm talking about our health.

Now this occurred to me while chewing on a candy bar, like you do.

I mean, if you eat a ton of junk. Like greasy foods, lots of preservatives, fatty foods, nothing fresh and lots of sugar then your body is going to produce those very products on the outside.

Like, your face will break out, your hair will be greasier, you'll have less energy, burn more heat from doing nothing and generally be miserable in the mind as well.

But if you eat lots of fresh foods, vegetables (produce or frozen), light sauces, the proper oils and seasonings then you'll just generally have more energy and your body will produce less toxins.

I know this was a weird rant, but it was on my mind and I thought it was a funny parallel between Computer Science and our biological design.

Until next time, may God bless you.

Brent Matthew Lillard

@SAKUTOnoSai

I'm in New York.

Hey guys, I know it's been a while but a lots been going on.

In short I'm happily living in New York now, about an hour out of the city on Long Island.

My aunt came down to Missouri and help me pack and by last Saturday I was here and unpacking.

I have a nice room with a large desk and I'm staying with my aunt and looking for a job.

My mother is planning to move into a retirement area probably near a beach on the east coast on some tropical island.

I swear, as much as I rag on her about her views and as defiant as I may be around her, I do respect her. She's been raising kids since 1960 and hasn't stopped until this year. The mother finally retires.

Anyway, she just called me and told me about this Android Tablet she bought and I'm going to ask one of my friends (probably Shane or Arthur) to set her up a wireless network in house.

I'm enjoying my new home.

It's chilly, but I like cold and gloomy. It cheers me up. But I think I'm going to miss the thunderstorms of the flatlands and mid-coast.

Before I left, I hung a lot with my hacker friend Arthur and we rebuilt my old PC to run Ubuntu (Linux) and I was able to save my old files from the PC.

I also hung with Shane as much as possible before I vanished. We went out for Sushi and hung out the night before I had to go pick up my Aunt from the St. Louis Airport.

As far as my writing goes for my novel, I'm writing everyday. I try to meet a quota of 1,000 or 2,000 words every session and I think I may have it finished by August.

Anyway, more details and stuff to come. I just wanted to inform you all of my business.

THe drive here, by the way, was incredible. A lot of fun. I drove the whole way, too. It was quite an experience. I expected New York traffic to be worse, considering the way my Aunt talks about it.

Then again, I've come here for how many years? I should recognize patterns better than that.

As always, much love and may God bless.

Sincerely,

Brent Matthew Lillard