i did a lot of my machine learning homework today. not a lot of the
assignment, but a lot of work on it. it's taking me forever and
there's an ecosystem for collaborating and a lot of my class is
having group discussions about it, but i really don't want to have
to play the citation game. the class policy is if you collaborate
with someone, you both have to write each others' names and
describe the nature of the collaboration. if there's a large group,
if any one person does that, everyone else has to pretty much write
the exact same thing or it'll be marked for plagiarism. i guess i
just don't trust the group to make a consistent enough decision to
not end horribly. that and it's also more satisfying to get to the
answers independently. hopefully i won't get too stressed time-wise
where it becomes a problem, but it's fine right now. i only had one
class today but went into my little office early to do that work.
class was really nice. our professor changes every few classes as
the subject matter changes and the new guy was really engaging. he
was also suggested as someone i should do a rotation with, i just
have to email him. he's a simpsons guy i think and it was sweet
because it reminded me of my old friend padraic. he was a simpsons
guy, especially in middle school. it's charming in a weird way
and it makes me want to rewatch it. i used to fall asleep to
futurama on netflix on the wii when i was in middle school and
maybe early high school. i also had a phase with the cleveland
show, but it was definitely more with futurama. around that time,
too, at my dad's house i would wake up around 4 a.m. to have alone
time. it's weird that there are ages you just don't get as tired.
that was also the time i started using deodorant (not because i
stank before, i just didn't need it before, being 11 and all), so i
associate those mornings with some kind of old spice. my dad was
dating someone named katie at the time and she used to make
daquiris in this tiny blender that i think i got for my birthday
some year before. i think i remember making stupid blended up shit
for breakfasts and sitting on my bed watching tv. at my mom's house
i don't think i did the same. i don't remember which
apartment/house that would have been, but if it's the one i'm
thinking of, i think i usually slept in later. i think the main
reason is that i'd wake everyone up if i was moving around at that
house in the morning and i also didn't have as much to do for fun
in my room. 
tomorrow i don't have any classes, which i'm super excited about. i
need to finish up some homework and might go into the office to do
that, but maybe not. i might ask ana if they'd prefer having the
apartment to themselves to make my decision for me. i was just
about to say that i'm surprised i'm able to work as much at home as
i do in the office, but that's just not true. right now, i should
be working on my homework. i've been playing guitar and wasting
time watching videos about teletype machines and thinking about the
TASL format. first of all, i think it would be fun to have a
teletype machine. second of all, the TASL format. does anyone
fucking know anything about it? it drives me insane that there is
no trace of anything anywhere about it. some backstory:
studiobreeze, who made STed2, also made tasl, a TASL loader. TASL
stands for text animation scenario language. across the whole wide
internet, the only example TASL file i can find comes with the code
for the tasl loader. it's pretty straightforward to make your own
TASL files because they're just plaintext files with some specific
formatting you have to do. i don't care about that though. i want
to see other peoples' TASL files from BBS days, which is seemingly
where it came from. that's a whole other thing that if i think too
hard about i'll waste all of the time on this earth i have on it.
grassroots BBS stuff in early japan. everything is erased from most
of the forums and no backups could have been made because it wasn't
even the real internet. anyway. i can't read japanese so i have a
huge difficulty getting toward any useful information about
anything in this realm. if anyone knows anything or knows anyone
who could know anything, please let me know. it's my sick
obsession.
i ran into an old professor/mentor of mine today, who ana had just
messaged me was asking how i was doing. it was really sweet and
made me want to get back into an art practice, which i say damn
near every month to myself. i think i need to read more if i
actually want to do that, but other stuff keeps pulling my
attention more. it's not even that the other stuff is more engaging
or pressing, i'm just stupid. he was telling me about a few
different plotters he wants to buy. this is actually what dug the
first dirt for my teletype rabbit hole. they're super cool machines
and i find plotter art really fun to do, i just have trouble with
concepts around it, because anything in that medium has something
to do then with deprecated technology yadda yadda. i don't know,
maybe not. anyway, now i want to find some readings to do related
to something ana's uncle was telling us about. if i read more, i'll
maybe put a `recently read` or the like on here. i have one on my
normal-person website but it has not been updated in ages. until
tomorrow.
                                                        - benny