Carefully Random

Beeline festival

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:59:08 GMT

You should all go to this, or some of it. It's a bunch of weird new music concerts spread out over the next two weeks. Most of them are at the Broad Institute in Kendall Square. I'm not directly involved, but I know the curators, and I can pretty much guarantee it will be awesome.

http://www.beelinefestival.com/

Craziest-sounding part: Ensemble Robot on April 17 with live soldering. I think any artistic performance that requires safety goggles must be good.

If the festival is well-attended they'll probably do it every year.

Happy Gigasecond, Flexagon

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 03:45:04 GMT

Tonight at approximately 3:54am EST, flexagon will be one billion seconds old. She wasn't aware of this until I told her at dinner a couple hours ago. I think she was glad I decided to tell her in advance, rather than wake her up and tell her on the spot.

I didn't happen to find any spectacular jewelry for the occasion, but I did have a good idea for a nice custom-made gift a couple weeks ago, which conveniently arrived this morning. It's a custom laptop skin for her company-provided MacBook Pro, featuring a really lucky shot I took of Serabi a few years ago:

(The border is a closeup of condensation on a water glass, from around the same time.)

I also made one for myself with this too-perfect shot of Ralph:

Free concert Thursday

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:05:21 GMT

I originally signed up to play in one piece, for electric guitar and string quartet. Somehow I got sucked into playing three more. I expect it to be awesome.

More official info

Not quite as illiterate as I expected

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:59:09 GMT

But still kinda illiterate. List and instructions copied from cook_ting, who implied that the list came from The Big Read, although I couldn't find it on their site. Supposedly the average adult has read about six of these.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling - don't love it quite as much now that it's finished.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - I've read large chunks of it.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - been planning to reread it for a long time.
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - actually I'm not sure if I read this as a kid.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - only read the first two; kinda lame.
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire was awesome.
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - see #12.
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - Holy crap, I didn't get it, but it's amazing.
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple, Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - read several of these stories; quite fun.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - well, I've seen it performed. Probably not the whole thing.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I was pretty liberal in choosing the ones that I "LOVE". The only one where there was no question was the Hitchhiker's Guide (or Hitch Hiker's Guide, as they call it in the UK).

Random discoveries

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:32:15 GMT

Stuff I've been discovering lately:

1. Fluttr Effect: an awesome local band that includes an electric cello and a Marimba Lumina.

2. Häagen-Dazs açai sorbet.

3. ECMAScript 4 (aka ES4, ActionScript 3.0, or JavaScript 2.0): possibly the next big programming language.

4. Ommegang Abbey Ale: the first beer I ever really liked a lot. Actually I'm pushing the boundaries of "lately" here; I think it was about a year ago that I discovered it. Since then I've realized that I like pretty much any beer that's called a "Belgian double" or "dubbel".

Memorial concerts

Sun, 11 May 2008 04:33:26 GMT

I'm not saying this because I think I'm particularly likely to have concerts played in my memory after I'm dead. It's more in the hope that other people will agree with me, and the idea will be generally accepted and standardized.

If anyone ever performs a Heisenbug memorial concert, I would like it to feature absolutely no talking. If you happen to be present and someone starts giving a speech, please run up on stage, take the microphone by force, read this paragraph to the audience, and sit down quietly.

I was playing in one 10-minute piece at the end of the concert. The concert started at 8pm; they told us the final piece would start around 10:00 but we should be ready by 9:50 just in case. We started at 11:28.

That's awesome

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:27:14 GMT

Someday, an unsuspecting airline worker or anthropologist will stumble upon the long-lost head of Philip K. Dick's robot twin.

Yes, you can tell a lot about a person by what they think is awesome.

See also: Y

Memes mutate

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:51:21 GMT

I have one movie quote for you. Be first person to identify it (no Internet cheating, obviously) (uh, or other kinds of cheating) and you get a new song, at least 20 seconds long, custom-written and recorded just for you.

"We're living in a shop. The world is one magnificent fucking shop, and if it hasn't got a price tag, it isn't worth having. The Greatest freedom of all is the freedom of choice, and that's the difference between you and me, [character name]. I was brought up to believe in that, and so should you, but you don't want freedom, do you? You don't even want roads. God, I never want to go on another train as long as I live! Roads represent the fundamental right of man to have access to the good things in life. Without roads, established family favorites would become elite as delicacies. Potter's soap would be for the few. There'd be no more tea bags, no instant potatoes, no long life cream. Chewing gum would probably disappear, so would porkpies. There'd be no aerosols, no tin spaghetti, or baked beans with six frankfurters. Foot deodorizers would climax with the hope of replacement! When the hydrolyzed monosodium glutamate reserves ran out, food would rot in its packets. Jesus Christ, there wouldn't be any more packets! Packaging would vanish from the face of the earth. But worst of all, there'd be no more cars, and more than anything, people love their cars. They have a right to them. They have to sweat all day in some stinking factory making disposable cigarette lighters or everlasting Christmas trees, by Christ, they're entitled to them! They're entitled to any innovation technology brings. Whether it's ten percent more of it or fifteen percent off of it. They're entitled to one of four important new ingredients. Why should anyone have to clean their teeth without important new ingredients? Why the hell shouldn't they have their CZT? How dare some smutty Marxist carbunkle presume to deny them it? They love their CZT! They want it, they need it, they positively adore it, and by Christ, while I've got air in my body they're going to get it! They're going to get it bigger - and brighter - and better. I'll put CZT in their margarine if necessary; shove vitamins in their toilet rolls. If happiness means the whole world standing on a double layer of foot deodorizers, I, [character name], shall see that they get it! By God I will. I shall not cease, till Jerusalem is builded here, on England's green and pleasant lands!"

Lego's 50th birthday

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:36:37 GMT

Fans of Lego should make sure they go to Google today.

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 20:53:30 GMT

So I'm riding the stationary bike at the gym, rediscovering the awesomeness of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, but also being distracted by the pretty moving pictures on the screens hanging above the cardio machines. One of the pretty pictures is an infomercial for something that looks like a flattish sort of generic MP3 player, except that it can only show photos (holds up to 50!). My first thought was that it probably cost $19.95, and wouldn't be worth any more than that. It turned out to cost $19.99, but you get two of them so maybe it's worth it after all.

Anyway, the awesome part, the real reason I'm telling you this, is that at one point they actually displayed the slogan Share and Enjoy on the screen. I think it may even have had an exclamation point.

In related news, I'm thinking of writing one of those songs that consists of just a whole bunch of cultural references, except all the references would be to "electric [something]". Possible lyrics:

Got an electric sheep and an electric monk,
An electric guitar to play electric funk

and also

Video killed the radio star,
But I don't know who killed the electric car.

Except I also want to use the "guitar / car" rhyme. Maybe later in the song I'll have all the same references, but mixed up in a different order.

In even more tangentially related news, Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote the phrase "fast thick pants". It's not quite as awesome in context.

The New Hotness

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:17:35 GMT

In case you missed it, see The briefcase saga, part 1: old and busted.

Here is the product of the last couple weekends:

Note the near-perfect joinery.

Note that I'm not showing you a closeup of the other end, which I mangled so badly I was afraid I would have to start over.

And finally, just because I had my camera out...

That's the box that our new scratching post / perch came in. Ralph prefers the box.

My First Dovetail Joint

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 23:29:01 GMT

It's been quite a while since I went through a woodworking phase. These phases usually involve spending lots of money on tools that I use to make one cool thing, then don't use again for at least a few years, if ever.

This time I'm inspired by my need for a new briefcase. A few years ago, I got a Petersen music stand, which is really cool. Unfortunately it didn't fit in my backpack (even when folded). Plus I didn't really want to be carrying my stand and music in a backpack, because my cello case is a backpack, and I can only wear one at a time. What I really needed was a briefcase that would (a) hold the stand plus oversized sheet music and a few cello accessories, (b) stand up on its own, so that a person wearing a cello as a backpack could easily pick it up without stooping too much, and preferably (c) be really light. (You might think that, when carrying around a cello, a couple extra pounds wouldn't matter, but you would be wrong.)

This briefcase didn't exist. The main problem was the size of the music stand, which is about 20" long when folded. Normal briefcases seem to max out at around 18". There are a few specialized ones that are much too big and are also heavy.

So I made a briefcase. I made it from a single sheet of foamcore, plus tape and a handle and clasps that were actually made for briefcases. It met requirement (a) reasonably well, (b) on the majority of occasions and (c) spectacularly. I considered it a prototype, just to make sure the size was good and everything, but it worked well enough that I kept using it rather than go to the trouble of building something more permanent.

That was two years ago, or maybe three. On the day of my final concert of the season last spring, it finally failed me.

I could repair it, but I had been patching it with duct tape more and more frequently. It's time to build a better one.

Yesterday I bought 6 feet of 0.5"x3.75" mahogany (one of the lighter hardwoods, mass-wise), a 32"x24" sheet of very thin plywood, a nice leather handle, brass hinges, clasps, and a dovetail jig. The dovetail jig, a tool that exists only to make dovetail joints, was a rather silly thing to buy, since it was expensive and I don't know what else I'll use it for. But I'm sure I'll want to use it again, because it's SO FREAKING COOL. I made a dovetail joint in scrap wood today, to practice.

And it was easy. So that's how the corners of the briefcase will be made. It will look even better than this because it will be glued, sanded and finished.

I guess I have to finish it next weekend, because rehearsals start the following week. I'll post pictures when it's done (obviously).

Complete

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:19:22 GMT

Naked at work

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:31:43 GMT

No, I didn't have one of those disturbing dreams. I'm talking about the food products in Google Boston's microkitchen, which include:

Stacy's Simply Naked pita chips
Bear Naked Granola
Naked Juice

All of which are excellent (especially the last one), but seriously, WTF?

Happy birthday

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 04:20:09 GMT

In case you didn't know, flexagon is now eligible to serve as a member of the U.S. Senate.

Also, she is in Atlanta overnight, leaving me alone for the evening, and I just got a Presonus FireStudio (basically a really fancy sound card for recording) which I need to try out and learn to use.

This combination of circumstances led me to create a short piece of high art. I expect it to receive both a Grammy and a Pulitzer Prize next year.

Happy Birthday, Flexagon! (mp3, 657kb)

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 03:42:19 GMT

I don't feel like I've done very much that was creative lately (although hopefully I'll be doing some composing and/or recording when I get my new Presonus FireStudio), but today I discovered some stuff I did a long time ago. We were moving bookshelves around, which required us to take all the stuff off them, and tucked inside some sheet music was this story that I wrote in high school:

What Happens When Creativity is Forced

[Background: We had to write a "creative piece" every week; I wrote this longhand during a free period earlier the day it was due. My school had three teachers named Mr. Smith and two named Mrs. Peters, but nowhere was a Mr. Smith's classroom directly above a Mrs. Peters's classroom. The ceilings were covered in acoustic tiles, each of which had a grid of 1201 small holes. D-110 was the office where disciplinary matters were handled. I resisted the urge to edit this as I was typing it in.]

So I was sitting there in my reflectometry class, counting the holes in the ceiling-- the slow way, one at a time, no multiplication involved-- and I had gotten to about four million, eight hundred thousand and C (base thirty-seven). I had shoved them all into a pile at one corner of the ceiling and was moving each one as I counted it to the opposite edge. Mr. Smith was lecturing about the effects of rotational time displacement on the spleen and related body parts, and he was getting all worked up and excited about it, bobbing up and down and waving his tendrils about in his tank. Just when I was afraid his water might slop over the edge and start eating through the floor, right down into Mrs. Peters' room, a message arrived from the office, rolling in through the cubicle nearest the door. Mr. Smith grabbed it and unraveled it, and announced: "Al, they want you down in D-110." So I took the pass, grabbed my bag and my piano-- remembered to straighten out the holes-- and left without even bothering to open the door. I landed in the safety net on the first floor and hurried to the office, because I had heard rumors that they used Mongolian toothpick torture on people who weren't punctual.

"Mr. deL," the man said, his voice cracking with the stress of having to give me such horrible news, "It would appear that this morning you parked your car in the principal's fishbowl. As I'm sure you're aware, this crime carries a mandatory sentence of capital punishment."

"I didn't do it!" I protested. "My car's right here in my pocket, see?"

"You'll have to wait for your trial and tell that to St. Peter, son. Bare your upper right arm." I did and he gave me the lethal injection. Damn, I thought as I traversed the tunnel, I hate it when I die.

Pete greeted me at the gate in his usual way: "Oh, you again. Look, we'll have to put you over in Purgatory for a while; we've got a backlog of a few million trials. In the meantime, here are some forms to fill out."

He gave me the forms and a big U-Haul truck to carry them in, and sent me on my way. Look, I don't know if you've ever died before, but I can tell you this: all that waiting is nothing compared with the paperwork, and it gets worse every time. (Waiting is no problem when you've got all eternity to spare.) After I finished filling out the forms in my cheap little Purgatory apartment, I only had a few thousand years before my trial, so I sat down to count the holes in the ceiling. My room had an amazing resemblance to Mr. Smith's classrom at school. Anyway, my trial was pretty short: they had a giant six-dimensional replica of the entire space-time continuum, and I showed them where I put the car in my pocket, and someone else had parked in the fishbowl, so they immediately gave me an anti-lethal injection and let me go back to my original place-time. Mr. Smith was still talking, of course, and had barely noticed I was gone. But I had completely lost track of the holes in the ceiling.

[end of story]

And also a couple of doodles from around the same time:

And finally, some parody song lyrics from a couple years later:

After the Tone

[Sung to the tune of "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd. I actually recorded this with piano and put it on my answering machine in college. I recorded it straight into the machine, and later recorded over it, so the recording is, fortunately, lost.]

Hello...
There isn't anybody here
But if you leave a message
I'l call you back soon

There's no one home, this is a recording
Alan might be gone for days
Or he might just be taking a shower
Or talking to someone on the third floor

When I was a child
We didn't have answering machines
We had to call and call again
But thanks to Lechmere and the Panasonic Company
We don't have to suffer anymore

Lea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . eave a message
After the tone.

Ahem

Wed, 23 May 2007 01:54:28 GMT

I suddenly thought of this ode
As I sat down to start writing code.
The trouble with code is
(You probably know this)
You have to be in the right mode.

© 2007 me

Mixed drinks that ought to exist just because of their names

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:18:58 GMT

1. Hooloovoo. Needs to consist entirely of blue ingredients, and I think there should be three of them just for balance. The obvious ones would be Bombay Sapphire gin, blue Curaçao, and Pepsi Blue. I was going to try it once, but it turns out you can't get Pepsi Blue anymore.

2. Black and Blue. Guinness and and some kind of blue stuff. Actually a web search turns up several drinks with this name, some of which contain stout, and some of which contain something blue, but none of which contain both. Disappointing.

3. Mudblood. Obviously a cross between a mudslide and a Bloody Mary. Contains Kahlua, Baileys, vodka, and tomato juice. Try it, it's delicious!

Driving to Spain

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 03:57:19 GMT

Apparently many people (even outside of Google) already knew about this, but I just found out today (inside Google): Go to Google Maps and ask for driving directions from Boston, MA to Madrid, Spain. Or actually from anywhere in the US to anywhere in Europe. Go. Try it.

Carbon offsets are not enough

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 02:03:55 GMT

Just in case your conscience still isn't clear: now you can offset other harmful activities.

What else does this leave?

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 13:58:32 GMT

1. The Police are going to play together at the Grammys and then (probably) go on tour.

2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released on July 21.

Well, I guess I'm still waiting for A Method For Madness and a real Pink Floyd reunion...

My second-best Christmas present

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 02:32:32 GMT

Knight Rider: Season 1 -- I'd had this in my Wish List for quite a while, with low priority, but I had a feeling that my best childhood friend, the same guy I used to watch Knight Rider with back in the actual 1980s, would know that deep down I really wanted it. He finally got it for me this year, and it's even more awesome than I remembered.

Some odd things from early in the first season: the first couple episodes didn't have the opening narration, and the first half of the season was missing a couple other standard features: K.I.T.T.'s symmetric red VU-meter "mouth" and the big black truck with the chess knight painted on the side that K.I.T.T. would pull into while it was still moving (instead there was a single pulsing red light and a white truck that was stationary whenever K.I.T.T. went in or out). Of all those things, the only one I remembered in its earlier version was the mouth thing; I think I may not have seen most of the really early episodes.

Probably the best episode so far is the (first) one with K.I.T.T.'s evil twin, K.A.R.R. (Knight Automated Roving Robot). Apparently brilliant inventor and philanthropist Wilton Knight, who managed to create strong AI in complete secrecy in the early 1980s, was unaware of the first two Laws of Robotics and not clever enough to figure them out for himself. The first intelligent Trans Am he made was actually programmed to protect itself at all costs. Not that it's all that intelligent-- Michael defeats it by playing chicken with it; it bails out at the last minute to save itself, and instead plunges over a cliff, destroying itself (until early in Season 3, that is).

I'm only up to episode 14 of 22, but I think I might need to get Season 2. For one thing, Season 2 is the one with April instead of Bonnie, and I'm curious whether I still prefer April. I suspect I probably won't. Oddly enough, I think the reason for my preference was not that April wore cutoffs instead of a baggy coverall; it was that she wore glasses.

But the second and more important reason I want to see Season 2 is that, based on this episode guide , it contains what I think must be the 2-part story that I only saw the first part of. All I remember is it had this mysterious guy who was some type of renegade crime-fighter kind of like Michael Knight, except that he didn't need a special car because he was such a great athlete; he used sort of parkour-like techniques to get out of bad situations. It was implied that he worked directly for the US President. And that's about all I remember, except that I really wanted to see the second part and I missed it. I think it was most likely "Mouth of the Snake", although it's possible it was the season premiere for Season 3 or 4 instead.

Oh, and Season 2 also includes two 2-part stories featuring Garthe Knight and Goliath. What else could you possibly need?

Happy Christmahannukwanzaka

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 21:20:39 GMT

I hope everyone's day was as good as ours.

Playing the cello takes some serious concentration.

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 17:52:45 GMT

As part of my regular daily timewasting, I was looking at the web site of Rose Cousins, with whom I've played a few gigs, and discovered some pictures of me that I hadn't seen before:

I also discovered that Rose played at Toad a few weeks ago. It would have been easy and cool to go, if I had known. I really need to start paying more attention to local live music.

I just signed up for the Toad and Lizard Lounge mailing lists for the second time. Hopefully this time they'll actually start sending me stuff.

and really wild things

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 20:00:15 GMT

Some of you, especially those who work in Kendall Square (which is an awful lot of you, these days) might have heard that the building I work in had a slight problem with being on fire today. I just wanted to mention that I and all my coworkers got out, and will be paying a lot more attention to evacuation routes in the future. My coat and sweatshirt got a bit saturated with foul-smelling smoke, but I didn't breathe enough of it to need treatment. I'll be working at home for the rest of today.

EDIT:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2006/12/one_dead_after.html