Grant Hutchins

Jesse, my photographer friend, has a photograph of me from a few years ago up on his site, Painting Light. Go check it out. It’s the one entitled “Breathe”. There are a couple of Jon as well.

Oklahoma in 2 days

I poked around on the Internet a lot these last few days of freshman semester I. The first oddity I came across was Splorp. I have been thinking of doing an independent study / passionate pursuit (as we call them) on typography. Essentially I’ve been considering designing my own font and getting some side credit for it. Well after casually browsing I found this Splorp site which is a blog of a certain Grant Hutchinson. Grant Hutchinson who has made fonts and is interested in several things I am also interested in. Grant Hutchinson who brags that he is number one when you search for “Grant Hutchinson” on Google. It so turns out that I am the number one result for the “Grant Hutchins” search on Google. Needless to say he will be receiving an email in his inbox shortly relating to this matter.

The scary thing is that this isn’t the first time I’ve run into this strange doppelganger phenomenon. A few years back when I was considering becoming a Japanese translator, I found a Grant Hutchins who lives in Oregon and is a Japanese translator. Needless to say I feel less unique when I find these people.

Another oddity I’ve found is this shoddy college report on medieval British literature that stole the image of Olin’s campus. Why did this person decide to steal an image from our website and reassign the Academic Center as a Beowulf museum? Since when is the Campus Center a shrine to King Lear? And the Olin Center as an archive of information on Arthurian Legend? Laughable at best!

Other than that I’ve just been sticking to pages like Sharpeworld and Coudal Partners for wasting time. The links here are marvelous. I’ve also been visiting Plep a little bit, but not as much as much of the content isn’t personally that interesting to me. One recent favorite is the Japanese park animals gallery.

Back in reality I’m finishing up my finals. All I have left is my Differential Equations exam.

Somehow I busted up my laptop. Thanks to Dell’s great service plan that I have bought into through my college, however, I have gotten, for free, a completely new plastic shell, touchpad, and motherboard for my laptop. And all just because my USB port was busted. No questions asked. I feel spoiled, but I am paying for it I guess.

Where to start?

Yesterday I went to the WBCN Xmas Rave Moby show at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, MA. He billed it as a show in which he will be playing older songs in his journal. I was quite excited to get to hear some of the earlier more electronic songs. I found that this really wasn’t the case, however. The only old songs he played that he usually wouldn’t were “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” and “Next is the E”. After playing a couple songs, he came out and said, “We have a goal for tonight. We’re going to play the longest show we ever have,” which was met by much applause. I was quite close to the stage. So close, in fact, that Moby himself stepped on my hand. I was right in front of two of the subwoofers and essentially leaning on them as Moby would jump up on it and play his guitar in such a manner that I would have to look directly up to see him. I was jumping up and down a lot, and had to watch the height so I wouldn’t bump into his… crotch. He stepped on my hand at one point and might have been pointing to me as I was jumping. Anyway Dan and I had a lot of fun. Dan was especially happy when Moby left and came back in a cheaply made shirt with iron-on letters that spell “COVER BAND”. Moby covered about ten of Dan’s favorite classic rock songs, some in different styles. Read about it on my new concerts page.

Anyway, after the show Dan and I waited around with the hope that Moby would come out and meet us or that something else interesting would happen. While waiting around I noticed that Moby’s beloved carrot juice was sitting on stage. I wondered if they would give it to us if we asked, half-jokingly. Dan pulled a roadie aside and said “Hey will you give us that carrot juice? It was his birthday,” to which the man responded, “You really want his backwashed carrot juice?!” Needless to say we received said carrot juice, which is now sitting in my room. It’s in a Dasani bottle.

This morning I checked Moby’s online journal to see if he had mentioned the idiotic jumping fan in front of him at the show or the fact that his carrot juice was missing, and instead I learned that after the show he had been attacked by three “preppy” men “with mace” who punched him in the face for no apparent reason. This comes as quite a shock, but Moby is not mad and did not fight back. Such is his style.

Just a few minutes ago I learned that the lead singer / Moog player / trombonist for Stereolab, Mary Hansen, has died in a freak bicycle accident. I am glad that Stereolab got to reason as much music as they did, something like an album a year for a full decade. I am quite impressed by their wide assortment, and have several of their limited edition vinyl singles. Every single they release comes in limited edition versions. I had the fortune to attend their recent show in Boston at the Avalon, one of the only shows that resulted in a double encore. I read a funny review of this show once, calling mine the “lamest crowd” ever for Stereolab. I thought it was quite laid back, and this reviewer thought it was rowdy. This shows the disparity between the shows the two of us are used to.

December 13, 2002

Actually, Mary Hansen was the vocalist /  guitarist. Laetitia Sadier is the lead singer / Moog player /  trombonist. Pardon my mistake.

No more teenagehood.

My twentieth birthday was yesterday. It was one of the busier days I’ve had in a while, but it was nice that a few people did something for me! First at the Math Table showing of Good Will Hunting, Prof. Sarah Spence brought some cupcakes and even some salsa and chips. Much appreciated! After that I retired to my room around 11:30 p.m. and discovered that my bed was covered with balloons. There was a jar of silly string sitting next to my bed, and no one to be found anywhere. I wandered down the hall and ran into Nicole and Kathleen realizing they had missed their chance to surprise me. They had been waiting in my room for over an hour and went to look for me. Dan had no idea and was in the other room.

I went bowling the other day at Lanes and Games. I have been improving considerably lately. The second of two games resulted in a tie of my personal record. With just 100 in the 8th frame, I hit a strike on the 9th, strike on the 10th, third strike to make perhaps my first turkey in my life, and then rounded it out with seven more to make 157. I didn’t get the Ms. Pac-Man high score, however.

My cohort project course has completed. I feel that we could have done better on our design, but we did find a good amount of success. Our crowning achievement is that we spent only 6.5% of our budget. One of our goals at the outset was to set an example for thriftiness.

Similarly, all my other classes are winding to a close. A week from Thursday I’ll be flying back to Oklahoma for a full month. Not a full-month flight, but a full-month vacation. I just realized that I used “winding down” to describe my classes in the last post. I’m not very creative lately after all!

I was perusing the Coudal Partners website the other day and wandered onto the Photoshop Tennis competitions. The idea is that two designers representing different design groups send Photoshop “volleys” back and forth (spending approx. 30 mins–2 hours per volley) and then editing what comes back. The evolution of these graphics is quite interesting and often unexpected. One of my favorites is the transition from this to this. Anyway, I’ve challenged Jesus Fernandez to a little sparring match. Watch for this sometime soon.

The other day I became very interested in abandoned subway tunnels, tracks, and stations in the Boston area. I have been learning about parts of the MBTA “T” subway system are no longer running, including an elevated train called the “El” that used to run near Washington Ave up until the 1980s. It is being replaced by the new Silver Line. Anyway it makes me want to go visit an abandoned train station, although that would probably be a very bad idea.

Today I’m feeling creative. Maybe it’s the great amount of light outside reflecting off of the snow. Maybe it’s the fact that my classes are winding down. Maybe not.

Today my Moby tickets arrived! Moby is holding a concert this Wednesday at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston. This is where I saw Fountains of Wayne a couple weekends back. This should prove to be a good show, because Moby mentioned in his online journal that he is going to play his older more electronic songs. He’ll also have been off tour for a week at home in New York City, so he should be even more energetic than ever. Moby is also not only the headliner, but the only act playing. This means he will get all sorts of time to try new things and wow the crowd. Plus, the Paradise is such a cozy venue, where it’s literally impossible to stand more than about 30 feet from the stage. The show was sold out right after I decided to go, so I perused eBay for people reselling tickets. However, I found them pricey, so I emailed a guy whose auction didn’t sell and made him an offer and now have two tickets in my possession.

I went to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. The first night ended in a controversy that lead Jon, Austin, and I to leave Rima’s birthday party. That’s all I will say for now. Later that week, I bought a Korg Electribe EM-1 Music Production Station, a type of half-drum machine half-synthesizer little sound unit, at Mars Music, which is going out of business and having a huge sale. I literally watched it get marked down from 30% to 40% off. That’s like 40 bucks less. My brothers and I are going to form a band and try to record some music over Christmas break. Jon plays bass and (increasingly) guitar, while Kyle plays drums.

I’ve been sleeping a lot lately. My naps are dominating my days now. I’ve got to learn to stay awake.

My mom enters a lot of contests (or “sweeps”, if you’re so inclined). She wins about four or five contests a month now! The most significant prize won is an MP3 player. Now she’s got me hooked on Lee Dungarees Pants of Chance. This is the best slot machine ever. Free credits, and you might win oysters or tube socks. What could be better?!

Fear the Clown named one of my songs Song of the Day a couple weeks ago. Three of my friends used to be in a band named (at times) Pivot and (at other times) Shamespiral. I wrote a little ambient song entitled (creatively) “Shamespiral Intro” that was used to introduce their final two shows. I’ll throw it up on my Grant Music page in a bit.

I’ve added some pictures to my Grant Pictures page.

I’m about to go to bed so I can take the Putnam Exam tomorrow. The snow everywhere reflects the moonlight and makes it feel like day. This will be an adventure. I prefer to sleep in total sensory deprivation myself.

Don’t worry. I’ll post up here really soon! With a lot of new material, including details of my trip back to Oklahoma. I promise. And yes, I have stories to tell!

I bet you didn’t know that JFK did cocaine.

December 10, 2002

No one pointed out to me that it said procaine and codeine, not cocaine. Man, you’d think someone would catch that when it was only one line to read and one link to click. Especially with such a controversial subject. Oh well, I’m sure JFK did cocaine as well.

11/11

I’m sitting at my desk sipping an Orange Slice. Newton’s Principia was stolen the other day. I guess they let anyone request it and put their grimy paws on it. Someone’s grimy paws were sticky this time.

I’ve had the busiest weekend imaginable! It all started Friday (as weekends usually do) when I left with Nicole, Jesus, and (note the change in roster) Kori Haymore, one of the new students. We went to the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. It was very nice. We stayed in the Innermost Cabin, which was barely enough to fit four people and a Franklin stove. We walked around a bit and then sat by the fire and kerosene lamps reading the journal entries from previous guests. Of particular interest were the horror stories by various eleven-year-old children. My favorite was “Werewolf Man” although “Pigmonkeyman” was also a favorite. I’ll post fulltext up here soon.

The next morning I got back from Ipswich with less than 15 minutes to go before once again leaving to go to the only proper bowling alley in all Boston. It turns out that New England has its own special type of bowling called Candlepin Bowling that seems inferior. The balls are smaller and the pins are simple cylinders. Hardly engaging! Anyway I got my best three game series in my life. I’m launching a new section of my page devoted to bowling scores. This may sound odd, but I’ve wanted to do this for about five years now. I got 137, 128 and 149. 149 was the best game of the night and my second best score ever, although the best average score goes to Emma Goodman, an IMSA girl from the great bowling state of Illinois. The last game was quite eventful in that I hit the first 50 pins down without a slip. Four spares and one strike.

Later that night back at Olin we held a Dead or Alive 3 tournament in the Dining Hall on the big projected screen. The scene was quite impressive, quite larger than life. I’m not a big fan of 3D fighting games or the X-Box in general so I merely spectated. Afterwards I felt nostalgic so I downloaded MAME in order to play Galaga. Well worth my trouble.

The next morning I woke up to attend a five-hour session on the traditional Japanese board game Go. I am starting to enjoy it more and perhaps I will get better at it. It is perhaps the most complicated game I know and there’s no chance for me (or any human or even a computer) to ever master the game. The best Go-playing computers can’t beat twelve-year-olds. Go was heavily featured in the movie Pi: Faith in Chaos which is coincidentally my favorite movie.

Right after that I took my take-home physics final in what would turn out to be the only three-hour patch of free time for the weekend. Keep in mind it’s already Sunday by this point. I had to hurry up and finish the exam (which I felt I did quite well on, even though there were many little details to consider).

I really wanted to go to the local Mars Music store because they are going out of business nationwide. Everything must go! Prices marked down 20-40%! That means a lot for musical equipment! That can make or break so many potential sales! My mom and I were talking about buying an electric guitar so that we can complete the newest boy band craze at home, Hutchins. Hutchins is like Hanson except instead of being from Tulsa, OK, we are from Edmond, OK. No difference. Except shorter hair. Anyway it turns out that both locations near me were in the list of four stores nationwide that have already closed, so I didn’t get to go run around crazily and pick out items like candy. Oh, bother.

The weekend ended on a wonderful note when I went with Sheeva to the Fountains of Wayne concert. It was at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston on Comm Ave. This venue is great! I highly recommend it! The place is so small and cozy and right when I walked into the auditorium I found myself right in the center only 6 or 7 people back. I stayed there and danced with Sheeva the whole time, often to an extent much greater than that of the considerably older populace about us. While there I bumped into Que Anh and Erin McCusker, both of whom had accompanied Alex Valdivia. This means that 7.5% of our school was there. I got there an hour after doors opened and I completely missed the first act, OKGo. I should have known Que Anh would come since she is obsessed with them. The show ended relatively early but started relatively early as well. I knew every song except for the ones that are on the new album. The verdict on the new material? Fountains of Wayne are coming back for more in their third release due out this spring, moving in a more experimental direction while continuing to capture the familiar catchiness and heart of their earlier work. By the way, nothing beats the final piano of “Leave the Biker”. It sent shivers down my spine. After the second (!) encore I grabbed a nice brown shirt that says simply “FoW” and got back home with a good amount of time to goof around and then get a good night of sleep.

Keep in mind that I am also sick and this last weekend was met with much coughing. I’ve vowed to slow down my plans this week and let this finally subside.

Pretty much everything is done!

Not really, but I don’t have much to do anymore. I got my EC lab written up.

In other news, our Project class is wrapping up with the ASME ramp project and moving on to new projects because we feel that we should be covering more material than we are. I am currently brainstorming some project ideas, including one that might involve developing a product with Jay Gantz to possibly try to get to market. Depends on how ambitious I’m feeling. We have a good idea that might be profitable, or might not even be possible. We’re through with calculus in my Mathematical Foundations in Engineering I course, so now we’re starting Differential Equations. I am quite happy for that, as I haven’t really had any new math for three years now.

Dan Frey, the Professor for our Project class, recently decided to leave Olin and go to MIT to head a high-profile design class that involves robots and some sort of competitive edge. It often makes it onto television shows like Scientific American Frontiers. The MIT course has previously been run by Woodie Flowers, who used to host Scientific American Frontiers and is currently shared by both Olin and MIT. We’ll all miss Dan but it sounds like a wonderful opportunity that he definitely deserves.

Sheeva and I are going to the Fountains of Wayne concert on Sunday! Fountains of Wayne are great. Every song I’ve ever heard from them sticks in my head and I know all the lyrics even though I don’t try.

Also, today Nicole invited me to go with Jesus and Kathleen to a cabin in Ipswich for Friday night. I think it should be fun. I’ve never been to Ipswich and frankly I’m not sure where it is. It’s an hour away.

November 11, 2002

But Kathleen was busy so Kori ended up coming instead. Why is this important? I have this strange obsession with who is with me and where they are situated in relation to me. I often have dreams where I can only remember sitting with a group of people at a table. I remember where each person sat and somehow it seems quite important to me. Just one of those things.

In other words, I am quite busy this weekend and I’ll get a Physics test tomorrow that’s due Monday. I hopefully will get it done tomorrow night. Then there’s the Calculus test I get tomorrow as well, but isn’t due until Wednesday. It all compounds.

Will everything ever be done?

I have shown up approximately 2 minutes late to each and every class this week, which is quite embarrassing. I also haven't been getting much sleep. Oh well. I'm getting all my work done, even if it means spending four evenings out of my week trying to get data for my silly lab.

Nicole and I are currently trying to measure the temperature of a hot plate and a cup of water being heated by the hot plate. We wrote a program in MATLAB that measures the temperature and then controls the hot plate so that the water ends up at exactly 50 degrees Celsius.

Other than that, I'm leaving for the Big Apple late tomorrow night. I'm excited because Tucker and I are going to a really nice Mexican restaurant. Dan, Tucker, and I went to Taco Bell after the Area 2 show and it was like manna sent from heaven. Other than that we don't get much Mexican food up here. When I say that, however, I am lying through my teeth. Our dining hall makes some really good tacos and nachos and whatnot, as per our request. We have the freaking best dining hall on the planet.

Jam Master Jay was killed today. He was influential in early 80s hip-hop and as the DJ for Run-DMC helped pioneer much of what music is like today. He was not a gangster/thug/idiot. He leaves behind a wife and three children. It comes as a shock to see him go, as there seems to be no reason for anyone to have a grudge against him. He was shot while in the recording studio. News stories compare it to Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. but there really is no comparison, as those two had lifestyles that put their lives at risk anyway.