Finally got around to hanging up michelle’s artwork.

I got a new desk that sits flush with the wall. It’s much, much better than the awkward huge desk I had prior. I’ve moved the studio monitors to the corners once I admitted to myself that Ableton is just not on my radar right now. Everything works nicely with the vinyl deck as well; my LPs are much more accessible and the stereo sound is noticeably improved.

Mr. Taemoo came over and we hit the slopes with Helen, Mich, and Jason. Excellent evening.

Lastly, it’s been stirfriday quite a bit lately… the dankattack of steamed veggies and marinated chicken is too easy of a dinner.

Jason taught me a thing or two about the 3 priority settings on my GF1. I’m still not comfortable with using them but it is so much easier to learn when someone explains it to you rather than reading some tutorial. Life’s good here at 924 Treat.

Been really digging CFCF‘s 2nd full length album, Continent. So glad I jumped the gun and pre-ordered this guy’s new record on vinyl despite that his first effort felt a bit empty. To my surprise, Continent is consistent, much more rich, but still retains the CFCF minimal/downtempo style that I’ve grown to love more and more. The attention to detail with the album artwork also threw me off a bit in a good way, as he has adorned the cover and inner sleeve with warm and worn whites accompanied by photos of, well, motherfuckin’ plants. The whole execution of it leaves you very content staring at it in your hands. Here’s a sampling of some of the best tracks:

I make a prediction… because last year, my good friend Dave did for ’09 and it all became true. I predict that 2010 will be a year of reflection, rewind, and most importantly relaxation. OK so these may just be hopeful wishes, but nonetheless I am feeling rather psychic tonight.

This notion came to me after my family and I visited my great Aunt Clara. She can drive a car, and still does weekly. She can carry on a conversation for hours. She is 4 foot, 11 inches. She is 95 and oh god do I love her. She’s the last of my Dad’s parent’s generation and probably the only relative I have that I can truly look at her and speak with her and suddenly want to be more Italian. Her house is in Monterey Park, before it became near entirely Chinese. We went to her place to visit and she was complaining to us how telemarketers call her up and immediately start speaking Chinese because her last name is Young (hah). Did I mention she incinerates trash in her back yard (yes, burning garbage) even though it has been illegal since the 1950′s? Anyhow, I just wanted to post up a photo of us two for context. I’m clearly on my knees and still clear her height by a good inch or two. It’s so cool.

Over the break was filled with family, work (bleh), and friends, as usual. I went to Bear Mountain twice thanks to the ping from Will ass Chang with J.Chorng in tandem with Michelle and the dance machine himself, Brian Han. I ended up snowboarding for 2 days, staying in Michelle’s relative’s cabin for two nights. Even though none of us four saw you Will, many fasho’s and thanks for the heads up because getting a good start on the season boarding has got me confident hitting jumps and boxes now. I bought my season pass to Heavenly in Tahoe and am going to go boarding again this weekend. New years was an absolute blast at the Chorng house, needless to say. Everyone who was there knows the real deal, aNYway.

Hope you all have a legit 2010, I’m damned excited about it. If you’re up in SF early next week, try to come out to an art show Michelle is going to be in called Intergalactic Space Travels. I just got back 2 pieces of hers I had framed even prior to knowing she was going to be in this show and I must say the work is getting more and more chalk full of dank-awesome.

Black Friday is now a hoax. You can get better deals online on nearly every single thing a brick and mortar electronics store can offer. The only thing that may be worthwhile is a game console “bundle” of sorts where you get a game system and an extra controller + 2 b-list games or some shit for the same price as the console alone. I no longer find any excitement in camping out for shits and giggles at Fry’s. So, Black Friday, I declare that you’re officially an absolute waste of time.

Instead, I held out for Cyber Monday… which, apparently, is an even bigger hoax where internet retailers try to lure buyers into some false promise of better deals than they normally offer during the holiday season after Black Friday. Again, this is true that it is bullshit most of the time but there are gems & loopholes here and there. I only say this because I ordered an HDTV for my room for what I think is a pretty good deal. Nothing super fancy, just a 37″ Vizio LCD that does 1080p and only cost me 4 bills. Not bad, right?

However, Black Friday wasn’t absent of all joy… killer party located at the standard J.Chorng/j.Chorng household was in full effect, and included so many faces that I haven’t seen in so long (some of them 4 fucking years) that it couldn’t be anything less than legit. Seeing the likes of nearly the entire Troy High 2004 ASB crew was awesome, to say the least. We even somehow managed to coax Tamby and Hata to come out, making the entire situation feel like Irvine House circa 2005 all over again… and even Michelle didn’t pass out in 30-60 minutes like she usually does! I’m sure you can head over to Jesse or Will ass Chang‘s respective blogs to cop some photos of the action in DSLR goodness… irresponsible goodness at that just because Jesse and Jimmy just procured an absurdly badass camera. Expect some 1080p @ 60FPS porn of Jimmy in the near future to show up on Vimeo.

In other somewhat personal news, many of you probably aren’t aware but in the past 3 months my Grandmother (Mom’s Mother) has been struggling in the hospital and then in a rehabilitation center. Many of us family members prayed for a miracle as things just kept getting worse, but out of nowhere she made a huge recovery over the course of 2 weeks! She’s now back at home… chillin’ as she should be now with some extra nursing help but otherwise doing great. I love my Grandma. Period… and am so happy she’s OK.

One thing I’ve learned is that when extremely tired, one is more prone to impulsively buying tons of shit online. In my case, I found myself knee deep in a vinyl order from both Insound and Amazon in a single night, nearly browsing their entire catalogs. The first round of goodies have come, and I’m pleased with all of them. I thought for a bit of time again that I need to cool it on procuring records so quickly. In my mind, a strange preconceived notion exists that vinyl is something that one is supposed to collect slowly over many years and do so via browsing a record store meticulously. I admitted to myself that while I’m down for that, I just don’t have the time usually to head out to Amoeba or some of the smaller record shops around SF to browse for an album only to be let down that they don’t carry it. Also, purchasing vinyl online avoids tax which is another win and hell, everyone loves opening packages. So, clockwise albums I now add to my collection are Boys Noize – Power, N.A.S.A. – Spirit of the Apollo, Elliott Smith – From a Basement on the Hill, Simian Mobile Disco – Attack Decay Sustain Release, Bibio – The Apple & the Tooth (apparently limited to only 1,000 prints!), Minus the Bear – Menos el Oso and (not pictured) RJD2 – Deadringer… and more are on the way.

Big things are happening at the ngmoco:) camp too, but I’ll save that for another post. For now, here’s Hot Chip’s title track off their new upcoming album “One Life Stand” coming out early next year.

And lastly, Mich… so what do you all think? Should I submit this shit to Look at this Fucking Hipster?

I haven’t done Flash for about 2 years and since got back into it the past 2 weeks in order to throw together a battle view for Epic Pet Wars on Facebook + epicpetwars.com… The difference is pretty intense compared to what was there before. Now the battle sequences on the web outpace the phone (in my opinion) just slightly provided you have a top-of-the-line computer. Only issue with it is performance, so I’ll be working on a video settings pane for turning down graphical effects in order to make FPS go up on slower machines. The entire app was programmed in Actionscript 3… there is no timeline code. Many thanks to the tweener and rotator classes I took advantage of to simplify programming animations.

Anyhow, the experience has been pretty fun since a lot of it was just visual effects and transitions work.

Epic Pet Wars on Facebook • EpicPetWars.com

Kelpe released his new album which I promptly ordered a 12″ LP of because I’m lame like that. Anyhow, this is a really cool song off of it… kind of IDM/downtempo + 8-bit.