schenker28

This is always evolving... here's what I was thinking a month or so ago.. it's my quite optimistic to-do list! Lisa said she recently crossed off everything on her list(!!) so I was inspired to make one. She has to make a new one since hers is finished...
( TO DO... )

People wonder why ST 7 is my favorite.

It's cause I'm hoping to get back here:

I would facebook-status-update about how drunk I am right now, and how often the cops came to the party due to noise complaints.

But then my mom and grandma and advisory committee members would read it.

Damn facebook!

Sondheim was looking pretty good for his age tonight! He gave an interview at the IU Auditorium, and it was awesome.

( An evening with Sondheim... )

Aha, this wins my stupid thing prize for the week: the top breaking news story on CNN's web page included a picture of the swine flu virus, and I figured it was going to be an article about some quick progress that was made in understanding the virus. Instead, however, the "news" was that some weirdo decided to make some crappy avant-garde music based on the structure of one of the proteins in the swine flu virus.

I could take the letters "swine flu" and map them to musical notes and rhythms and play them over and over with a synthesizer, but who cares?

I love the kind of data I get to use in some of my work. I'm writing a python script to parse this kind of stuff:


60    0    1    The
61    0    1    taste
62    0    1    of
63    0    1    her
64    0    1    cherry
65    0    1    chap
66    0    1    stick
67    0    1    I
68    0    1    kissed
69    0    1    a
70    0    1    girl
71    0    1    And
72    1    1    li
73    2    1    ked
74    0    1    it
...


#    Title    I Kissed a Girl
#    Source Filename    Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl.xml
1    2    4    4
2    3    4    4
3    4    4    4
4    5    4    4
5    5.5    2    4
5.5    6.5    0    4
6.5    8    7    4
8    9    5    4
10    11    5    4
12    13    5    4
13    13.5    5    4
13.5    14.5    5    4
14.5    16    4    4
17    18    4    4
18    19    4    4
...

#    Title    I Kissed a Girl
#    Source Filename    Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl.xml
0    4    9    3    0    major
4    8    7    3    0    dominant
8    12    2    3    1    minor
12    14.5    5    3    0    major
14.5    16    4    3    0    major
16    20    9    3    0    major
20    24    7    3    0    dominant
24    28    2    3    1    minor
28    30.5    5    3    0    major
...

I don't get this news story about the 747 freaking out everyone in Manhattan a few days ago. I'm frankly not too surprised that it didn't seem like a big deal to the guy in Washington to have a plane fly by. I think it's whacky to want to take a photo there -- that's another issue. But *I* wouldn't have ever worried that a plane near NYC would cause some huge panic! I don't understand why the news hasn't mentioned this:

NYC is surrounded by 3 crazy busy airports. Just a few months ago, that one famous flight was taking off, flying over your unforth 's new apartment, then it hit the birds, and had to fly left over the GW bridge and landed in the Hudson... I'm not saying that Hudson landings are common, but in my mind (and experience driving up the NJ turnpike into NYC), the area is swarming with huge planes, like no other place on earth!

Why did this one freak everyone out, when the plane that was flying by and hit the birds & landed in the river didn't freak everyone out?? I guess there must be something special about the area right around the tallest super-downtown part of Manhattan, whereas planes flying by just a little tiny bit away from there or a tiny bit higher up are normal.

In my mind, NYC has planes flying all around it 24/7. I'm sure there is something a bit wrong with this mental idea, otherwise the one a few days ago wouldn't have been noticed.

But I think that, except for native New Yorkers or something, it doesn't seem like a big deal to have a plane nearby, 9/11 notwithstanding, because it's sandwiched between these 3 huge airports! Not only that, I'm used to flying into Newark myself, looking down at the buildings, the Statue of Liberty, etc etc. Doesn't seem like an out-of-the-ordinary spot for an airplane!

People are saying that the whole thing demonstrated that some D.C. guy had "a felony lack of common-sense".... but I think to the rest of us, it's not strange to have planes zooming around near Newark, JFK, and LaGuardia.

My point is that this was an easy mistake to make, and I can imagine almost anyone doing the same thing.

I was listening to Miss Saigon OLC yesterday and today, and it's just so amazing. I was also thinking about how funny it is that my prototype of an Asian girl singing is Lea Salonga's voice in Miss Saigon... but also her voice is my prototype for an Arab girl, because she sings Jasmine's voice in Aladdin. So my mental space of female prototype voices is very weird, in that it's also Lea Salonga for the exotic girls (my prototype for European girl singing voice is probably Susan Egan, which is also weird because she's American). Lea Salonga is Fillipino, but she has an American accent, so it's weird that I associate her voice with both Southeast Asia and the Middle East!

Here is a nice little bit of Miss Saigon video cut together -- Sun and Moon plus Last Night of the World. Duets just don't get better than this. "I'd Give My Life for You" is in here too, just to prove how much she rocks (or at least how much Boublil/Schoenberg rock...)

Anyway, I rewatched the incredible Lea Salonga audition video for Miss Saigon today, so she's on my mind. That video is so incredible, with Schoenberg at the piano and her sight-reading Sun and Moon, and making an interesting little mistake at the start.

Later, I found her engagement home video, which is cute -- it's hilarious when her and her fiancee's friends start singing Whole New World (quite badly!). Apperently one of the people helping is "Eric". All of this is 7 years ago, but I hadn't run across it before.

Then, I saw the video of her wedding, which is great because her fiancee is sobbing during the whole thing -- he's so emotional! It's great. She sang during the ceremony, a sweet little song called Two Words.

Also, here's the video of the end of wedding, reception, etc.

And finally, here she is singing the beautiful song Too Much for One Heart cut from Miss Saigon (although most of the melody is in the phenomenal duet "Please" -- which is one of the most highly emotional and gorgeous musical moments I know of on stage, even though it only lasts for about 8 measures... it feels there for a moment like someone ran Berg-style postmodern music compression on romantic emotional content!)

A few weeks ago I was minding my own business and went to NSF headquarters in D.C. to give a talk. Obama showed up and made it hard to get on the subway, but there was a big party.

Today Obama went to Indiana, but I had already come down to Ft. Myers, Florida for another talk, so he's apparently on his way down here, in time for my Tuesday talk.

Why is Freedom Train One/Air Force One following me around? Maybe he wants to steal the secret to music cognition from me! I noticed during the inaguration that Aretha Franklin's musical knowledge had been sucked away mysteriously after Obama got to her -- hope that doesn't happen to me!

I am at this pretty resort on a Florida island for a conference. However, a chunk of my tooth just broke off, so it's not as awesome here as it was a few hours ago. It hurts a tiny bit, but luckily not too bad... I was waiting for the extreme pain to hit but so far I'm ok. Scared to eat though...

Anyway, can anyone recommend a good B-town dentist? I'd appreciate a reference -- assuming I can wait until Friday, of course...

The image I picked for this post *does* have a tangential relationship to the content, in case you just think I'm crazy.

Anyway, I decided to move to Paris in January 2010! How awesome is that?

My advisor will be there on sabbatical, so it makes sense to go there and finish my dissertation in France. I'm super-excited. Now I have to make enough money this year to be able to afford Paris next year. It's expensive!! Grad student income in Bloomington isn't enough for Paris! I'd like to live somewhere awesome while I'm there -- near the center of things, if at all possible, not out in the suburbs... so it's more expensive that way.

I bought a cute map of Paris today at Borders -- it's sort of hand-drawn, with some typed road names, etc. It looks very old-fashioned. I want to put it on my wall this year as a reminder of what's coming!

My first iPhone app is in the store now! It's a rhyming dictionary, and it's awesome. There was a delay since Apple didn't like the things that rhymed with "truck". However, I cleaned it up and the censored version got in right before Apple closed for Christmas.

Check it out:
http://aimusic.net/perfectrhyme

App store/iTiunes link:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=300276177&mt=8

I'd love some positive reviews if any of you check it out :)

I went to visit Sara, Jason, et al. last night for Christmas caroling, and my car was promptly stolen by terra trace apartments -- they hire a bunch of car thieves to prowl around and tow away any cars that are parked nearby. Note that there aren't any signs visible at night regarding towing, and nothing at all near the entrance to the parking lot. Some 50 feet away is some fine print on a wooden sign that says "don't park here".

I have to wait till 11 am to get my car back, so I went to talk to a lawyer. Apparently, on private property here in Indiana, they don't have to post any signs, and can just tow and vandalize your car at their discretion without any warning -- towing companies are exempt from any liability if they accidently destroy your car during the towing process. My lawyer also said that the particular towing company used by terra trace, "bloomington parking management" is run by a bunch of scary people who don't mind threatening people with their guns if you catch them in the act of towing your car. Scary stuff!

People -- move out of this scary slum if you can! Seems like a bunch of crooks running the place to me.

The postman left me a CD of his original music in my mailbox... I guess he thinks AiMusic, LLC is a record label or something -- he's seen all my AiMusic junk mail that's been coming since I officially started my company.

It's really funny! Man, the first track was so bad, I had to turn it off after 30 seconds! Funny stuff!

My friend Alex subscribes to the random-walk hypothesis, and suggested this alternate way to write a financial news story, which I implemented here.

( Brownian Motion )

I'm signing up for my first 900-level college course! I feel so smart! :) It's Computer Science G901 -- "Advanced Research"

It just means "work on thesis until you finish" but it sounds impressive!

Go watch this movie! Le Parapluies de Cherbourg. It's awesome. It's in French, all the dialogue is sung, score by Michel Legrand, who is awesome, and yellow English subtitles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Umbrellas_of_Cherbourg
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058450/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/umbrellas_of_cherbourg/

Grab the nearest book.
* Open it to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next few sentences.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.


The lucky winner of closest book (6 inches from my left hand) says:          

A sophisticated adaptive plan will probably retain a measure of the average performance of various policies tried so that A would be further extended by a component M (see section 2.2) to A = A X N X M. A still more sophisticated plan will progressively reduce uncertainty about the environment by deliberately selecting elements of C to elicit critical information, perhaps constructing a model of f_E. Then by exploiting predictions of the model T can adjust the sequence <C(t)> to better performance as measured by the function J. At this level the illustration concerning searches, pattern recognition, and statistical inference applies in toto.

John Holland -- Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems

I'll be in D.C. tomorrow! A quick trip for a conference talk and meeting up with my Brazilian ex-roommate.

I'm really annoyed that CNN was trying to convince people it had a fancy Star Wars video hologram machine in the studio on election night. Using the word "hologram" seems really misleading and deceptive; it tricked some people I know into thinking the "hologram" was much more impressive than it is -- it was really more like the yellow line superimposed on video of a football field to show the 1st down marker.

Somehow I think that if people weren't so dumb and the media wasn't helping spread crappy, false ideas to the less-educated masses, then we'd have a chance at having more well-informed decisions made in voting, for instance. I'm happy about the presidential election, but there are still 48% of people buying into some ridiculous faulty reasoning. And in places like California, we managed to have enough people overcome racism in their vote but still make an anti-gay vote. Very weird.

( random gay marriage tangent )

Anyway, the hologram thing made me think again of Sagan's wonderful book, The Demon-Haunted World, and as usual I wonder how different the world would be if everyone were simply required to read that book one time as a teenager.