hmatt's blog

I finally got to see a silent film in a theatre! It was so magical!

I decided to make friends with this older couple that was seated next to us. The room was mostly white-hairs. The lady commented that she didn’t expect to see younger people. The man made some comment that when the movies came out everyone was our age. It was a pretty fun exchange.

Robin and I took in the theatre- The Orpheum had been recently restored. It has a HUGE ceiling and extravagant decor along the walls. The room was filled with excitement. A man came out and announced the special guest, the grand-daughter of Harold Lloyd. She talked about how KID BROTHER was always his favorite film. Then the organist from Bakersfield was introduced.

He began to play and the crowd began clapping. Organists are so lively! Their feet are moving around and hands are flying everywhere. The organ slowly lowered as the movie began to flicker. The title page appeared and the audience clapped again.

It was such a spectacular sight. It was everything I’ve been hoping for when watching a silent movie. There was LOTS of laughter and you got so involved!

The first film was only about 20 minutes. “One Week” with Buster Keaton. It was a cute little film where he and his wife buy a house and it is a put together kit. I don’t know how those guys did that slapstick and stunts without getting killed.

It was great to share the experience with someone too. Robin had such a huge smile on her face which made me enjoy the experience even more. I wish more of my friends were into old films. I have always enjoyed thinking about how it all looked as they filmed it back then. Some are long, but always so interesting! At least to me.

The second film, KID BROTHER, was longer than I thought, but all in a good way. The plot was so interesting and there were so many great gags throughout. Also the inventive ways he trapped or tricked the bad guys was hilarious! Also, there was a monkey wearing shoes and I nearly fell out of my chair.. You’d have to see it.

Oh man, what a great way to end an evening.

The original organ!

This doesn’t have to do with lucid dreaming, but I remembered that awesome dream.

I went to some friend’s party and this person had a NICE place.. or maybe it was at a hotel. Anyway I’d gotten there late and had fallen asleep. There was some other plot too where I was meeting up with some girl that I liked.. I think that girl was played by this swing dancer I took a fancy too on Thursday.. Christie.. who later turned into Crystal (who was with Jenny). I suppose the girl switched back and forth because they are about the same height and such.

Anyway, the next day people were still partying. The host gave me a hard time for falling asleep so fast. She also told me about the salad bar nearby (oh, and it had also turned into a camp). Apparently to this girl I was looking for was looking for me too. I started walking around outside, which by now had turned into some sort of airfield. Everyone around me started looking in the sky. I looked up and at first saw two airplanes really close together. Everyone’s comments seemed too excited for this ‘normal’ occurrence so I continued scanning the sky. A motorhome was flying around, powered by these jets from behind. Someone in the crowd said: “I can’t believe they finally did it”.

Then I must have got some binoculars or something because then I saw the vehicle closer and watched it as it flipped over, spun around a few times and skitted in the sky.. then because of the friction in the air it started falling apart. Then it blew up. It was one of those backwards blow ups that happen in space, and implosion.. and then it exploded for real.

Sometime later I started watching a news report about the event. They did one of those histories of the parties responsible. They were a couple of rich twenty-somethings that had created this website and experimented with making things go.

Their website or logo had some sort of comment that their ultimate goal was to have a motorhome fly. Then the news report displayed videos from their archives. A submarine looking object was halfway floating in dirty, black water with all sorts of garbage floating in it. The voice over said “It started out with a variety of vehicles..” The submarine looking thing was lit from behind by these rockets and it collided with all sorts of junk before stopping. Then the next video was of them atop some sort of a rickety ramp high above a cliff. They had some car with rockets attached and it rolled down and moved forward a few clicks before the weight of the object made the wood collapse and then it tumbled down the cliff.

The final video of them getting the motorhome all set began, “.. and then their dreams were realized after perfecting the process. They climbed in and began their final journey.”
There were a couple girls and a couple guys (the types you see in those teen horror movies). The video was showing them climbing in and taking off and they were so excited and full of life.

I remember thinking “oh, little do they know that they are going to die”.

Also somehow connected to this dream.. I was leaving the camp, trying to find my car and this older lady needed help because a band of ruffians (some goth punks) had taken her purse. I turned into Michael J. Fox and started running after them.. or rather watched him run down the hill. I somehow stayed to watch her yelling after those hooligans. Then Michael or me came back up the hill and we began looking for my car. It took us awhile to find, but eventually we took some really fancy sports car.. The old lady was like Maude from harold and maude and was all super spunky.

That’s all I can recall. I don’t know where the motorhome came from.. but I think I started thinking about small girls because Robin is also shorter and of a small stature. She had also asked me what my favorite movie was and I told her BTTF, which is where Fox came in I suppose.

Wow. That was an adventure.. I wonder how the car chase went..

I tried the mask again, but I think I’m giving up to easily. Somewhere in the middle of the night I took it off and decided that I wanted to at least have some sort of a dream.

I remember having some sort of a “whoa that was an awesome dream” thereafter.. which I forgot after telling myself the dream aloud. Apparently I continued on dreaming because someone commented that I was talking aloud. Odd.

The last dream had something to do with me complaining to some of my high school buddies. I was commenting that only 66 people attended the reunion.. I was giving them a hard time because they weren’t there.

I suppose that happened because Robin had asked me about best friends and I had briefly thought about HS earlier that day.

So, I’ll try my mask yet again tonight, but this time I’ll be committed! I’ll also keep my phone nearby so I can record my thoughts.

Oh, and sometime recently I had a dream where I bought this big old recorder and thought it could connect to my computer but the connecter piece that I thought was a usb turned out to be something else and then everything else was rusted and the power cord turned out to be spliced because it was originally from another country. Writing about recording made me think of that.

Darn, I didn’t dream at all last night. I woke up a couple of times and then after sitting there for a while the lights would flash.

Oh well, I’ll try again tomorrow night.

BTW The slip of paper I got with the mask said:
————————–
Thanks for buying a Lucid Dreaming Mask kit! You can find full instructions at:

http://cre.ations.net/creation/assembling-your-face-mounted-lucid-dreaming-mask

Thanks, Nate
————————–

The page shows how to finish constructing it, but I don’t have a a soldering iron and pliers and stuff so I just bought the finished product. It cost twice as much, but at least now I don’t have a bunch of tools around that I’ll rarely use.

It finally arrived! I ordered it a while ago and it is finally here.

I’m going to pick it up from Eric’s place later tonight, and then I’m going to LindyGroove.. but man oh man am I excited to try it tonight!

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, Lucid Dreaming is when you know you are dreaming and you can then do whatever you want– better than Virtual Reality! Most times though while you are dreaming you are CONVINCED that it is real life. This mask has a timer and flashes a red led light after it supposes you’ve fallen asleep. Then everything in your dream would be superimposed with red and you’d know you are dreaming.

I already have started a list of things I want to experience..

-flying
-visiting a 1920s/30s party (like Great Gatsby) or city
-having all the things that money could afford (a really nice apartment & projects)

Also I plan on getting some type of work done.. I could practice performing in front of ‘people’. I could experience some cool story I just read. I can also see how my projects will end up. I think that will inspire me to accomplish them in real life.

I’m very excited about this. I’ll update more about this tomorrow.

I used to be such a textedit user. I changed its preferences so it so it would always deal with plain text (so it could go to any device or website). But then I got sick of having to save it all the time. Even though I could use TextExpander to put in the date, I didn’t like having to constantly put the files away someplace.

Stickies don’t allow me to scroll as there are no sidebars. I have to use my arrow keys all the time. Also, as far as I know it can’t auto show a date (the information is somewhere though because I can hover over the windows and they’ll list creation date etc.

Textclips can’t be seen with quicklook, but I used to use them to drag the text out of a textedit document to avoid the trouble of saving it.

I’ve really come to like stickies though. I do wish they would sync with mobileme though.

“Breakthroughs happen in direct proportion to the size of the risks we take. Stimulating those risks is a task inseparable from living.”
-The Landmark Forum, a pamphlet Sam gave me back in 2004 (or 05)

Page
-static, easier to direct people where to go
-easier to update afterward, have a full record of something
-doesn’t appear on my rss feed
– Needs to be updated separately

Post
-able to easily add and flow with thoughts
-can connect to others
-autoupdates facebook
-..but then if I mispell or need to update a page I have two places where I’m supposed to go unless I added the post to the don’t post into FB category (UN? or Twitter)
-I end up writing the same things over and over because I tagged them and tossed them out into the abyss before.

SEE http://hmatt.com/blog/post-versus-a-page/

PROS
– being around people who are up on tech news.
– I get paid to be trained on software and time to study up on new stuff
– Plus there are people like Nathaniel there. He is one of those people I can talk to about productivity/organizing files. We are both passionate about workflow & ease of use of certain programs and exploring new options to use tech to make our lives easier.

CONS
– whenever I’m at parties people always ask me about mac stuff. I don’t mind it most of the time because they are my friends and I want to help them out. However, it limits the types of conversations I have with people. It always leads back to tech and they are either for or against apple. ‘For apple’ and we align or I have to explain why probably the developers did what they did. Against apple and I have to defend the entire time. … Fortunately I’m not an apple genius so I don’t have all the super tech knowledge why things stop working so I can deflect those questions.
– I noticed earlier this year I had stopped trying to research computer stuff on my own and I’d wait to do it while at work instead… it kind of took the fun out of it. I was getting paid, but the passion went out of looking at those forums and reading about tips and tricks. That happens to every profession though. I can imagine acting being like that.
– most important CON is that I am too busy full-time to pursue acting. WHAT! Crazy talk right!? But I’m always so exhausted from thinking at work and especially having to wake up early to ride the metro. Sure I could try to transfer to another store.. but I need to address my other passions in life aside from tech. Even then there is no way I can remain full time and try to get auditions.

I do like working there, but man.. you know how some days at work get. Plus I’ve been down because I feel so stuck. I want to make this year different- major positive change.

I still am having a bit of trouble trying to wrap my head around the difference between tags and categories. I guess categories like folders I suppose. Hmm, I used to remember this.

It’s like that last analogy- a t-shirt could be categorized as a top or an undergarment. Hmm.

Anyway, I was thinking about how I process information and I came up with some typical types of things I’m writing about. Those will be categories for now (although they are probably supposed to be tags… whatever).

Pros and Cons will be me trying to suss stuff out. And they are all ways of me organizing information in my head so they’ll go under organizing too..

yeah.