Cubik Things

From the people at Buzzlife:

WASHINGTON, DC - On July 16th 2006, after a decade of Buzzlife events, Nation Nightclub will close its doors. The building will soon make way for development as the southeast waterfront is restructured in preparation for the recently approved baseball stadium.

Found that yesterday night. The Nation nightclub, one of my favorite places in the world, is closing to make way for a fucking baseball stadium.

The Nation was the first nightclub I ever went to - my sister took me to a VNV Nation concert there. Since then, it has been the club I go to, for their badass acts, wonderful atmosphere, and killer soundsystem. The friday-night techno party known as Cubik had some of my favorite DJ's ever - Pendulum, John B, Aphrodite, Dieselboy, AK1200, Hospital Records, Planet of the Drums - they really had everything there. Every friday night, some international superstar was spinning excellent music just 50 minutes from my home. The Prodigy, The Crystal Method, Paul Oakenfold (who I actually got to see!), John Digweed, and hundreds of other big-name DJ's have played here.

And now it's gone. For "redevelopment."

It wouldn't be so bad if I weren't going to miss the closing party too. Right now the lineup for the closing party is one of the most amazing I've ever seen. Micro, Craze, Charles Feelgood, DB, MC Armani, Scott Henry (who I got a picture with some time back)... it's going to be the party of the year. I'll be at Ikasucon - but even if I weren't, there would be no way to make it.

I feel like I'm losing part of myself. The amount of fun I've had there is indescribable, and to see the best club in the country go down for some crappy-ass redneck baseball project is very disheartening.

So, to the Nation, I bid you a fond farewell. And to Buzzlife, I wish good luck in finding a new venue. I'm gonna try and hit the club just one more time before it closes, and hopefully wherever Buzzlife relocates, I'll be there, too.

Technorati Tags: nightclub, DC, capitol, techno

Chicago Gay Pride

Picture167_25Jun06.jpg
Originally uploaded by agius.

Went to the Pride Parade in Chicago yesterday. Tons of gay fun, and highly fabulous! Thanks to everyone who went with - you guys made my first pride parade really special for me.

Cheers to gay pride month!

Movie Things

I just can't believe we watched Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter last night. Anyone who likes B-movies must see this film. Also, for those who have seen it and love it, you can download the theme here.

Quote of the Day Things

Me:You know, occasionally I wish I struggled with the deeper issues that affect our outlook on life...

Me:The deep-seated angsts we accrue like candy from our childhoods...

Me:But no; I'm trying to figure out how to make a tab go 'pop!' in javascript.

Where Am I?

I try not to post about my life too much, because I think it's a little boring compared to, say, "Here's a bunch of free music!" But I feel like an update is in order right now, since I'm not blogging about much else.

Right now I am staying in West Lafayette, IN for the summer, and working full-time for Purdue's IDC department. I have my own place, and finally have my car out in this direction.

I have had a few small projects at work, and have been working incredibly hard on my Rubyclassroom project so far. I have learned a new language, MySQL & server administration, a new means of development, and a new framework, and developed an application in it. I will be working on upgrading it in the next couple weeks, but right now it's backburnered.

I am working on a project for a small business client that was introduced by a friend. I am setting up a shopping cart script from scratch, which is proving to be more difficult than I had anticipated. So it's a lot of work. Simultaneously, I have also started a project for a friend to digitize some old photo albums for preservational purposes. It's SIX huge books, so it's going to be a fair amount of work to scan them all. I also hear that there is a new wave of projects incoming as of tomorrow, so work will be getting more busy as well.

In my copious free time, I have been trying to have a lot of people over, and hang out with everyone I know around here. I had a close friend of mine over yesterday, and spent last weekend with good friends that I don't get to see often enough. The previous weekend I was out near Muncie with some awesome people from the schoolyear. Tomorrow I'm having a small dinner party, Thursday I'm hosting a video gaming night, and Friday I'm hosting a huge grill-out and movie-watching night. I made ten calls to try and set those up tonight, and I hope to get everyone else tomorrow.

I took tonight off to do errands, much-needed laundry, and other homey tasks. I've been so busy I can't see straight. And to think, everyone was worried I'd be bored this summer! The weeks are just flying by, way too fast.

I've started keeping a micro-journal on my laptop's copy of Instiki, just so I know what happened when. If things cool down for a minute, I'm going to try and fill in some of the summer's previous events as well.

Anyway, if I seem preoccupied, tired, spacey, or just plain absent (my AIM account has gone neglected for nearing a week now, and I'm having a hard time returning non-business emails), I do apologize. I'm trying to reign in my schedule a bit, so I can be more alive to people when I do hang out with them, and more communicative in general.

But yes, so far an awesome summer - and in another week and half, I get to go home. Yay! Drop me an email if you'd like to get together, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Hang loose, everyone!

Gates Things

Holy crap - the world feels like a different place. Though I guess it really won't be.

Good luck to Bill with the Gates Foundation - it's already known as one of the most awesome charities in the world, and hopefully they will only get better with it.

Working Things

Sorry I have been mostly blog-absent of late. I have been working pretty hard on some projects that have interested me.

First off, I finally redesigned my professional page again. I finished the engine code for it about 4 months ago, and I've been trying to get around to doing a layout that doesn't suck as bad as my previous version. I think I have something that doesn't totally blow; it's now up at http://www.archmagus.us. I need to do a little blogging there, to post some of my thoughts on web design, and a little bit of my development philosophy.

Secondly, I have been learning Ruby on Rails, so I can have even spiffier and faster coding capabilities. Plus, i just like knowing languages. Anyway, if you've ever been frustrated with Blackboard, Schoolnotes, WebCT or the like, well, welcome to the club. I've been working on something along those same lines, which I call Rubyclassroom. If it works out, I think it could be a boon to educational technologists everywhere.

I also have some other independant projects I've been working on in web design / multimedia apps. Wish me luck!

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth

Aravosis:

Oooh, another sound you can test. This is the "mosquito" sound that some stores use to drive loitering kids away. Click and see if you can hear the sound, or simply the ambient noise outside the store. (Hat tip: The Sneeze blog, and good ole Dave.)

This is pretty cool. I can totally hear the "teenager repellent" noise - can you?

Technorati tags: noise, teenagers, loitering

Bush's Speech on the FMA

Interesting notes from ABC:

Despite decent weather, White House organizers moved President Bush's endorsement of the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage from the austere and unmistakably presidential Rose Garden, where invitations last week advertised it would be, into a plain room with blue curtains at an office building next door.

The president stood on the stage alone, gave a muted speech and quickly left. The way cameras were positioned, the presidential seal was not visible as he spoke to the room.

Gee, does Bush really care about stopping Mary Cheney and her vile kin in the Homosexual Conspiracy? And yet, he couldn't even properly stage one of his famous photo-ops in opposition to her?

Bringing up gay marraige is a ploy. Bush is using our lives and our relationships in a cynical bid to garner more support from his red-necked WASP base. No one really believes the amendment will pass at this point. This amendment bull is obviously Bush crying for help from the religious wackos. It makes the republicans look weak, and it might encourage the Dobson / Robertson crowd to turn on him. I can only hope this nastygram to gays everywhere backfires in such a manner.

I still support action against the amendment - asking Richard Lugar why he would legislate me and my friends into second-class citizenry helps our cause. It makes sure politicians know that not everyone in Indiana is a hateful evangelical jerk, and they will remember it next time similar legislation pops up.

But hopefully this faux-posturing hurts the republicans more than it does us.

Hat tip: UTI

Technorati Tags: politics, republicans, fma

FMA Things

Not Fullmetal Alchemist - God I wish it were that. But no, it's that time of the election cycle again, and the republicans are dragging out the Federal Marraige Amendment in the hopes of getting more gay-bashing hicks to vote for them. It was defeated in the Senate last time, but it was an awful slim majority, and Democrats don't really know where everybody stands on it (maybe because of their lack of leadership on the issue).

So, I need to ask for everyone's support. If you don't like the idea of discrimination against ME being written into our country's founding document, please email, or better yet call, your Senator and let them know that you oppose the Federal Marraige Amendment. Remember: there is no conservative or liberal case for banning gay marraige - only a theocratic and dominionist one. Even Laura Bush thinks it's mean of the republicans to use our relationships as a political weapon.

Also remember that if you write or call, you are effectively about 1000 people. Senators know that if you're engaged enough to write or call in, you're one of a staggering number of folks with your opinion. So get out there & call in!

Indiana Peeps can contact their Senators at:
Senator Evan Bayh - Email, or at (202) 224-5623
Senator Richard Lugar - Email, or at (202) 224-4814

Everyone else can look up their Senator on Project Vote Smart - it'll have their email & phone number right there.

Thanks for your help, folks - I really appreciate any effort on this, as it really affects whether I can live in this country or not.