fimmtudagur, apríl 29, 2004
Got a whole lot done today, and yet at the same time, almost nothing.
Started out with going to the gym at 8am(!), but forgot my lock. I tied up my bike with the chains they provide, to make it look like it was locked, but I couldn't concentrate on my workout, so I just did some crunches, and some stretching and went home.
So far I hadn't decided on a project for the NLP class yet, and the deadline is looming up, so I sent a semi-desperate email to the assisant prof for the course, and he invited me to sit in on a couple of meetings with other students in the class, to hear what they were doing, and possibly join one of the groups. That took over 3 hours, mainly due to one chinese girl.
Geez, talk about stubborn, stuck in her ways, whatever you wanna call it.
She's doing a project on seperating chinese words (because chinese is written in a stream of symbols, there is no explicit separator). Two other guys (indian) were looking for a project, and Nizar (the assistant prof) figured it would be best if the two of them worked with the chinese girl (Ping(reply from 193.4.96.21...MUHAHAHA!)). The part he wanted them to work on was training a voice recognizer called Yamcha (also known as Yamcha the Worthless, The Single Most Pointless Character Ever Created, and Loser) which stands for Yet Another something CHunk Annotater. Anyway, then Nizar realizes that they should work together, because the two of them really need some chinese knowledge to do their work.
Ping: No
Nizar goes on to point out why she should actually work on the project he proposed to the other guys, based on her knowledge of chinese, and the fact that EVERY SINGLE chinese NLP researcher has done the thing she is about to do. And he points out that she should let the guys do it instead, because that part doesn't need as intimate knowledge of chinese.
Ping: No
And Nizar keeps pushing, with better and better logic, which I don't remember. And Ping keeps replying (:p), NO. On top of that she has no UNIX knowledge and wastes Nizar's (and our) time asking him stuff that she could figure out herself. Hell, this was stuff I figured out myself, and I didn't know any UNIX when I came.
Finally I spoke to Nizar, and we decided I would do a stemmer for Icelandic. Basically, write a program that should be able to take any Icelandic word and stem it to the correct root. Shouldn't be that difficult.
After this I went immediately to the Music Dpt.
I went to the main desk and got the names of the head honchos and went to their offices one by one. Just to sort of say hi, this is me, I play trumpet. Sort of let everybody know I'm around, get some exposure. Going again tomorrow to try to meet two guys who weren't there today. I got very positive responses, and left my email here and there. Now I just have to hope they weren't false positives, and threw away my email as soon as I left.
I also went to talk to a head piano honcho named Cleveland.
The thing is, after getting my piano program running, I started thinking. How cool would it be to have real(3D) hands playing the piano? And since I was using basic inverse kinematics with the balls anyway, I might as well look into it. Went and spoke to the graphics professor and he thought it was very interesting but wasn't very much help. So I talked to Cleveland, and pitched the idea to him. Basically, what I wanted from him was a contact within the piano world at UMD, someone I could talk to about the idea, flesh it out, and possibly sit down with and physically map the possible movements a player would do while playing a piano, and hopefully categorize them. This has got me all interested, and is so far just a side project. However, I could easily see this turn into a full blown dissertation topic. Who knows? Maybe I'll take a u-turn and end up with a phd in inverse kinematics and graphics. Actually, inverse kinematics isn't that far from AI, since it originated in robotics and migrated from there to graphics. And there is one student in my lab who is working on something called distal models. Not gonna explain that, suffice to say it's related to inverse kinematics.
Anyway, I envisioned having hands play a piece of piano music, using believable movements and fingering, as a possible aid to teaching. Imagine sitting at home and being able to take a piece of music you've never looked at before, feed it into your program, and be able to watch it being played, slow it down, pause it, rewind it, and then finally...emulate it. Learn by example, right?
We'll see what happens.
Oh yeah, and by the way...that extra phone line I was gonna get dsl on? Can't handle dsl. So I'm stuck with Binh the kicker and Dan the unlimited uploader.... :'(
Started out with going to the gym at 8am(!), but forgot my lock. I tied up my bike with the chains they provide, to make it look like it was locked, but I couldn't concentrate on my workout, so I just did some crunches, and some stretching and went home.
So far I hadn't decided on a project for the NLP class yet, and the deadline is looming up, so I sent a semi-desperate email to the assisant prof for the course, and he invited me to sit in on a couple of meetings with other students in the class, to hear what they were doing, and possibly join one of the groups. That took over 3 hours, mainly due to one chinese girl.
Geez, talk about stubborn, stuck in her ways, whatever you wanna call it.
She's doing a project on seperating chinese words (because chinese is written in a stream of symbols, there is no explicit separator). Two other guys (indian) were looking for a project, and Nizar (the assistant prof) figured it would be best if the two of them worked with the chinese girl (Ping(reply from 193.4.96.21...MUHAHAHA!)). The part he wanted them to work on was training a voice recognizer called Yamcha (also known as Yamcha the Worthless, The Single Most Pointless Character Ever Created, and Loser) which stands for Yet Another something CHunk Annotater. Anyway, then Nizar realizes that they should work together, because the two of them really need some chinese knowledge to do their work.
Ping: No
Nizar goes on to point out why she should actually work on the project he proposed to the other guys, based on her knowledge of chinese, and the fact that EVERY SINGLE chinese NLP researcher has done the thing she is about to do. And he points out that she should let the guys do it instead, because that part doesn't need as intimate knowledge of chinese.
Ping: No
And Nizar keeps pushing, with better and better logic, which I don't remember. And Ping keeps replying (:p), NO. On top of that she has no UNIX knowledge and wastes Nizar's (and our) time asking him stuff that she could figure out herself. Hell, this was stuff I figured out myself, and I didn't know any UNIX when I came.
Finally I spoke to Nizar, and we decided I would do a stemmer for Icelandic. Basically, write a program that should be able to take any Icelandic word and stem it to the correct root. Shouldn't be that difficult.
After this I went immediately to the Music Dpt.
I went to the main desk and got the names of the head honchos and went to their offices one by one. Just to sort of say hi, this is me, I play trumpet. Sort of let everybody know I'm around, get some exposure. Going again tomorrow to try to meet two guys who weren't there today. I got very positive responses, and left my email here and there. Now I just have to hope they weren't false positives, and threw away my email as soon as I left.
I also went to talk to a head piano honcho named Cleveland.
The thing is, after getting my piano program running, I started thinking. How cool would it be to have real(3D) hands playing the piano? And since I was using basic inverse kinematics with the balls anyway, I might as well look into it. Went and spoke to the graphics professor and he thought it was very interesting but wasn't very much help. So I talked to Cleveland, and pitched the idea to him. Basically, what I wanted from him was a contact within the piano world at UMD, someone I could talk to about the idea, flesh it out, and possibly sit down with and physically map the possible movements a player would do while playing a piano, and hopefully categorize them. This has got me all interested, and is so far just a side project. However, I could easily see this turn into a full blown dissertation topic. Who knows? Maybe I'll take a u-turn and end up with a phd in inverse kinematics and graphics. Actually, inverse kinematics isn't that far from AI, since it originated in robotics and migrated from there to graphics. And there is one student in my lab who is working on something called distal models. Not gonna explain that, suffice to say it's related to inverse kinematics.
Anyway, I envisioned having hands play a piece of piano music, using believable movements and fingering, as a possible aid to teaching. Imagine sitting at home and being able to take a piece of music you've never looked at before, feed it into your program, and be able to watch it being played, slow it down, pause it, rewind it, and then finally...emulate it. Learn by example, right?
We'll see what happens.
Oh yeah, and by the way...that extra phone line I was gonna get dsl on? Can't handle dsl. So I'm stuck with Binh the kicker and Dan the unlimited uploader.... :'(
Ok...so my last post was a little...out there. Well that's me folks...way out there. But yeah, Freyja and Tótla are of course right, I just need to get....well, out there :)
Easier said than done, of course.
I'm still battling with my sleep cycle, and am beginning to think it might be and endless war. But I'm gonna keep at it, because I think if I can get my sleep regulated, my diet regulated, and a regular exercise schedule, I can become a regular boy!
Er....
Anyway, I've gotten pretty far with my computer graphics program, far enough to feel like I can share it with all you guys. It's pretty cool, though I do say so myself :D Basically it's a 3D rendering of a piano. And then there are balls. And the balls play the piano. You kinda have to see it.
There's a link to it on my stuff page (see link here to the left). For those of you not-so-teck-savvy, the link is to a zip file. Save the zip file somewhere on your comp, preferably in a new empty directory. Then just right click on the zip file and choose "extract to here". After that, just double click on the file "piano.exe". To have the piano play its music, push 'p' (for play). You can pause at any time by pressing 'p' again, and unpause by pressing, you gessed it...'p'. Also if you want to stop and begin again from the beginning, press 's' for stop, and then 'p' for play.
In the zip file is a file called piano.ini. There you can set some parameters which can be fun to play with.
The first number is the amount of balls per track. It is set to default 2 and the default music file (test.txt) that is in the zip file has 4 tracks (it's a Bach chorale). The second number is the tempo. This is set to default 2.0, and a smaller number means a faster tempo, so 1.0 is twice as fast as 2.0 and 4.0 is twice as slow. The third number is the transposition of the music in semitones. It's set to 0 for no transposition by default. So you could set it to 12 to transpose up an octave, or to -4 to transpose down a major third. Play around with these numbers, but watch out, they do have limits. The maximum number of balls is set to 200 but I haven't actually tested that...might not work. The tempo is effectively limitless, but setting it to 0 will make the program do nothing. The transposition will cause the program to crash if it makes the piece of music go outside the bounds of a grand piano.
I will most likely add a feature allowing the user to choose a piece of music from an 'open file' dialog, but haven't got around to it yet.
Enjoy!
Easier said than done, of course.
I'm still battling with my sleep cycle, and am beginning to think it might be and endless war. But I'm gonna keep at it, because I think if I can get my sleep regulated, my diet regulated, and a regular exercise schedule, I can become a regular boy!
Er....
Anyway, I've gotten pretty far with my computer graphics program, far enough to feel like I can share it with all you guys. It's pretty cool, though I do say so myself :D Basically it's a 3D rendering of a piano. And then there are balls. And the balls play the piano. You kinda have to see it.
There's a link to it on my stuff page (see link here to the left). For those of you not-so-teck-savvy, the link is to a zip file. Save the zip file somewhere on your comp, preferably in a new empty directory. Then just right click on the zip file and choose "extract to here". After that, just double click on the file "piano.exe". To have the piano play its music, push 'p' (for play). You can pause at any time by pressing 'p' again, and unpause by pressing, you gessed it...'p'. Also if you want to stop and begin again from the beginning, press 's' for stop, and then 'p' for play.
In the zip file is a file called piano.ini. There you can set some parameters which can be fun to play with.
The first number is the amount of balls per track. It is set to default 2 and the default music file (test.txt) that is in the zip file has 4 tracks (it's a Bach chorale). The second number is the tempo. This is set to default 2.0, and a smaller number means a faster tempo, so 1.0 is twice as fast as 2.0 and 4.0 is twice as slow. The third number is the transposition of the music in semitones. It's set to 0 for no transposition by default. So you could set it to 12 to transpose up an octave, or to -4 to transpose down a major third. Play around with these numbers, but watch out, they do have limits. The maximum number of balls is set to 200 but I haven't actually tested that...might not work. The tempo is effectively limitless, but setting it to 0 will make the program do nothing. The transposition will cause the program to crash if it makes the piece of music go outside the bounds of a grand piano.
I will most likely add a feature allowing the user to choose a piece of music from an 'open file' dialog, but haven't got around to it yet.
Enjoy!
þriðjudagur, apríl 27, 2004
Just watched Grave of the Fireflies.
A number of people have told me that I should watch out for this movie, that it is so sad, it borders on heart-rending. And I agree, it is a sad movie. It's about two children, an older brother and his little sister, during the end of WWII in Japan. 'Nuff said. For some reason or another, this movie didn't touch me the way others have. I didn't shed a tear, despite the horrible things happening. But after finishing the movie...the only thing I wanted to do was to go home.
Just go home.
All of a sudden everything here seemed so pointless and absurd. The fact that I have to think about what I'm going to eat for dinner, and make sure I eat enough during the day. And then I worry at the end of the day, "did I eat healthy enough today?". Going to school, doing some stupid projects for some profs, stuff that is easy for me, but time consuming because accessing information about certain things on the internet can be incredibly difficult. I had to track down and buy a book on MIDI for example, just to get some source code and some understanding about how MIDI works so I could program it. That information is just not available in a comprehensive format on the internet, or if it is, it is outside the grasp of sane use of google. Worrying about pesky roommates, worrying about money, worrying about my bumba, thinking about learning a new language or a new instrument, writing my stories....all I wanted to do was to go home and hug my mamma and pabbi.
So I guess that movie did leave something behind.
Heh...
But seriously, not to sound all clichéd-out and existential, but what's the point? Why am I doing what I'm doing, when almost everybody I love and care about is half a world away? Because I want an interesting job? Because I want to broaden my horizons? Because I can? I don't want a job at all, I want to be independantly wealthy. I can broaden my horizons at home. There isn't anything within the realm of humanly possible that I don't think I could do, given the time and resources. I have no need of proving to myself or others that I can. Knowing that I can is enough for me. Maybe I'm here because 'it's the thing to do', or because 'I got a free ride and it would be a sin to waste it'. Maybe I'm here because this was sort of just the next stop on the ride, and I decided to get out for a breather. Reminds me of easter weekend. Courtney asked me whether I wasn't annoyed at my aunts whisking me from place to place. In fact, I find that comfortable in a way. As long as there's no place else I have to be, I like placing my life temporarily in another person's hands. If I have a day off, and nothing planned, and somebody just shows up and says "Hey come with me, I've got some ideas, we'll have fun." I'll jump at the opportunity. And I'm easy to please. I'd be just as happy spending a whole day reading in silence with a good friend as going to a barbecue with a whole group of acquaintances. Probably happier.
But I've realized something. What it all boils down to.
Having someone who will listen to whatever you want to tell them.
When I come home, I want to be able to tell someone all the little and unimportant things that happened to me today. I need someone to listen to that and be interested, laugh with me, be shocked with me...share in my experiences, second-hand though they may be. So many times, I have seen things here, things that are unimportant, a shape of a cloud, a smell, a stupid little animal doing a stupid thing. But the more I see, and the less I get to share, the worse I feel. So what do I do? I blog. I bombard people on msn with stupid comments. Especially Svanur. And they all have my gratitude for giving me a few moments of their time to chat. But words on a screen are nothing compared to a shared laugh, or a moment of commisseration.
Hooboy! How's that for semi-coherent rambling?
And yet, I can't really explain what's going on in my head (must be just my head, although it feels like my whole body). I need to be able to upload my mind onto my blog, so you guys could download it and understand me.
Bleh...I'm getting tired, and if I continue writing I'll get even less coherent.
Night.
A number of people have told me that I should watch out for this movie, that it is so sad, it borders on heart-rending. And I agree, it is a sad movie. It's about two children, an older brother and his little sister, during the end of WWII in Japan. 'Nuff said. For some reason or another, this movie didn't touch me the way others have. I didn't shed a tear, despite the horrible things happening. But after finishing the movie...the only thing I wanted to do was to go home.
Just go home.
All of a sudden everything here seemed so pointless and absurd. The fact that I have to think about what I'm going to eat for dinner, and make sure I eat enough during the day. And then I worry at the end of the day, "did I eat healthy enough today?". Going to school, doing some stupid projects for some profs, stuff that is easy for me, but time consuming because accessing information about certain things on the internet can be incredibly difficult. I had to track down and buy a book on MIDI for example, just to get some source code and some understanding about how MIDI works so I could program it. That information is just not available in a comprehensive format on the internet, or if it is, it is outside the grasp of sane use of google. Worrying about pesky roommates, worrying about money, worrying about my bumba, thinking about learning a new language or a new instrument, writing my stories....all I wanted to do was to go home and hug my mamma and pabbi.
So I guess that movie did leave something behind.
Heh...
But seriously, not to sound all clichéd-out and existential, but what's the point? Why am I doing what I'm doing, when almost everybody I love and care about is half a world away? Because I want an interesting job? Because I want to broaden my horizons? Because I can? I don't want a job at all, I want to be independantly wealthy. I can broaden my horizons at home. There isn't anything within the realm of humanly possible that I don't think I could do, given the time and resources. I have no need of proving to myself or others that I can. Knowing that I can is enough for me. Maybe I'm here because 'it's the thing to do', or because 'I got a free ride and it would be a sin to waste it'. Maybe I'm here because this was sort of just the next stop on the ride, and I decided to get out for a breather. Reminds me of easter weekend. Courtney asked me whether I wasn't annoyed at my aunts whisking me from place to place. In fact, I find that comfortable in a way. As long as there's no place else I have to be, I like placing my life temporarily in another person's hands. If I have a day off, and nothing planned, and somebody just shows up and says "Hey come with me, I've got some ideas, we'll have fun." I'll jump at the opportunity. And I'm easy to please. I'd be just as happy spending a whole day reading in silence with a good friend as going to a barbecue with a whole group of acquaintances. Probably happier.
But I've realized something. What it all boils down to.
Having someone who will listen to whatever you want to tell them.
When I come home, I want to be able to tell someone all the little and unimportant things that happened to me today. I need someone to listen to that and be interested, laugh with me, be shocked with me...share in my experiences, second-hand though they may be. So many times, I have seen things here, things that are unimportant, a shape of a cloud, a smell, a stupid little animal doing a stupid thing. But the more I see, and the less I get to share, the worse I feel. So what do I do? I blog. I bombard people on msn with stupid comments. Especially Svanur. And they all have my gratitude for giving me a few moments of their time to chat. But words on a screen are nothing compared to a shared laugh, or a moment of commisseration.
Hooboy! How's that for semi-coherent rambling?
And yet, I can't really explain what's going on in my head (must be just my head, although it feels like my whole body). I need to be able to upload my mind onto my blog, so you guys could download it and understand me.
Bleh...I'm getting tired, and if I continue writing I'll get even less coherent.
Night.
laugardagur, apríl 24, 2004
Úffff!
Just spent 3 hours helping Úlla trying to get the stupid webcam set up, through no fault of our own, I might add. I tried it first here with my comp and had it set up and on the web through an http server in no time. And 90% of the setup with Úlla went smoothly, even though we were doing it through msn. Then when it came to the point of opening access to the single port needed for other people to be able to see the broadcasted webcam, all hell broke loose.
Opening a port on my router is no problem, just log onto the web interface for the router and set it. Úlla's router didn't have a web interface. We spent about an hour trying to figure out how to access the settings for the router, until I finally dug up something which said I needed to use telnet. So we telnetted into the router. Then it turns out the router uses SUA instead of NAT which I don't quite understand, anyway, we followed a couple of instructions found on the Zyxel web site for port forwarding, but it didn't work. We ended up spending 2 more hours, me reading and trying to come up with new ways of trying things out, and Úlla following orders. To begin with, we couldn't even get the port open to a port scan. After figuring that out, we still couldn't get the port forwarded to the server on her comp. At that point I gave up, it was just too tiring and my back was starting to yell at me.
Anyway, Úlla, I was impressed by your patience, fully expected you to say screw it! and give up at any moment.
So haven't done anything else today, still in my robe, lounging around...think I'll probably lie down a bit, rest my back. My sleep schedule went totally out of whack for some reason. A couple of nights ago I slept horribly, dreaming about people I haven't thought of in months, years even. I guess when things have a deep effect on you, one never forgets them, you always have your subconscious to remind you. So I was waking up in the middle of the night, like, semi-violently, but not from nightmares....I can't remember what I was dreaming, but it wasn't a nightmare...I don't think I've had a nightmare in 20 years, not since I was convinced Donkey Kong would crush me with his barrels.
I have 6 books on my nightstand, which I'm reading slowly but steadily...picked up the book an ADD mamma sent me, and skipped straight to a little test. "If you have 12 of these 20 items or more, you most likely have Adult ADD"
I had 17
Hmmm
Can't say it comes as a surprise. But I wonder whether I really need to do anything about it? I mean, I've come this far, and done some nice things, maybe I like me the way I am, absent-minded and all. We'll see, I'll finish reading both the Noonday Demon, and Driven to Distraction and then make some decision.
By the way, you guys should check out this painting by Svanur. Pretty good in my humble non-artist opinion.
Just spent 3 hours helping Úlla trying to get the stupid webcam set up, through no fault of our own, I might add. I tried it first here with my comp and had it set up and on the web through an http server in no time. And 90% of the setup with Úlla went smoothly, even though we were doing it through msn. Then when it came to the point of opening access to the single port needed for other people to be able to see the broadcasted webcam, all hell broke loose.
Opening a port on my router is no problem, just log onto the web interface for the router and set it. Úlla's router didn't have a web interface. We spent about an hour trying to figure out how to access the settings for the router, until I finally dug up something which said I needed to use telnet. So we telnetted into the router. Then it turns out the router uses SUA instead of NAT which I don't quite understand, anyway, we followed a couple of instructions found on the Zyxel web site for port forwarding, but it didn't work. We ended up spending 2 more hours, me reading and trying to come up with new ways of trying things out, and Úlla following orders. To begin with, we couldn't even get the port open to a port scan. After figuring that out, we still couldn't get the port forwarded to the server on her comp. At that point I gave up, it was just too tiring and my back was starting to yell at me.
Anyway, Úlla, I was impressed by your patience, fully expected you to say screw it! and give up at any moment.
So haven't done anything else today, still in my robe, lounging around...think I'll probably lie down a bit, rest my back. My sleep schedule went totally out of whack for some reason. A couple of nights ago I slept horribly, dreaming about people I haven't thought of in months, years even. I guess when things have a deep effect on you, one never forgets them, you always have your subconscious to remind you. So I was waking up in the middle of the night, like, semi-violently, but not from nightmares....I can't remember what I was dreaming, but it wasn't a nightmare...I don't think I've had a nightmare in 20 years, not since I was convinced Donkey Kong would crush me with his barrels.
I have 6 books on my nightstand, which I'm reading slowly but steadily...picked up the book an ADD mamma sent me, and skipped straight to a little test. "If you have 12 of these 20 items or more, you most likely have Adult ADD"
I had 17
Hmmm
Can't say it comes as a surprise. But I wonder whether I really need to do anything about it? I mean, I've come this far, and done some nice things, maybe I like me the way I am, absent-minded and all. We'll see, I'll finish reading both the Noonday Demon, and Driven to Distraction and then make some decision.
By the way, you guys should check out this painting by Svanur. Pretty good in my humble non-artist opinion.
föstudagur, apríl 23, 2004
Well, just did my presentation.
I think it went well, was pretty much prepared and people were interested. It was just a small one, for the students in Reggia's lab, about 10 people listening. Jim said I did great, and I guess I did fine. Nobody asked questions except for one guy who asks questions in all the seminars. Usually when you get no questions, that can mean a couple of things.
1. The lecture makes no sense whatsoever, and people don't want to seem stupid by asking questions
2. The lecture is crap and people don't want to embarrass me by asking questions
3. The lecture covered all topics to the satisfaction of all the listeners
I'm hoping my lecture fell into category 3.
Either way, I'm done, which doesn't really mean anything other than that I can now focus on my other projects. Doing a final project for both the Computer Graphics class and the NLP class. The CG project is pretty cool and I'm not gonna tell you about it just yet, want to get it running first. The NLP project, I really haven't decided on, but I want to try to connect it to SNePS and the research I'm doing with John, try to kill two birds....(squawk!)
Got a lot of exercise this week, went to the gym twice, played some soccer and played some basketball. I think I'm gonna try to make the soccer and basketball a regular thing, because those much better exercise (and more fun) than using a step machine. Also, I would like to try to find a tennis partner. Playing a full game of intense tennis has got to be one of the most tiring things ever. Can you imagine, 3 hours of sprinting short distances interspersed with spurts of power as you smack that ball? Quite intense.
I think it went well, was pretty much prepared and people were interested. It was just a small one, for the students in Reggia's lab, about 10 people listening. Jim said I did great, and I guess I did fine. Nobody asked questions except for one guy who asks questions in all the seminars. Usually when you get no questions, that can mean a couple of things.
1. The lecture makes no sense whatsoever, and people don't want to seem stupid by asking questions
2. The lecture is crap and people don't want to embarrass me by asking questions
3. The lecture covered all topics to the satisfaction of all the listeners
I'm hoping my lecture fell into category 3.
Either way, I'm done, which doesn't really mean anything other than that I can now focus on my other projects. Doing a final project for both the Computer Graphics class and the NLP class. The CG project is pretty cool and I'm not gonna tell you about it just yet, want to get it running first. The NLP project, I really haven't decided on, but I want to try to connect it to SNePS and the research I'm doing with John, try to kill two birds....(squawk!)
Got a lot of exercise this week, went to the gym twice, played some soccer and played some basketball. I think I'm gonna try to make the soccer and basketball a regular thing, because those much better exercise (and more fun) than using a step machine. Also, I would like to try to find a tennis partner. Playing a full game of intense tennis has got to be one of the most tiring things ever. Can you imagine, 3 hours of sprinting short distances interspersed with spurts of power as you smack that ball? Quite intense.
mánudagur, apríl 19, 2004
Welcome back to the big I.
Just when I though I'd gotten my sleep schedule under control, insomnia creeps back. Oh well, guess I'll just use the chance and ramble on a bit.
I just finished watching the first season of a show called Carnivale. This show is really something. I'm not going to tell you anything about it, that would just ruin the fun. It is a totally unique show, never seen anything like it. However, I have READ things like it. Yeah, this show has that certain feel to it, of one of Stephen King's masterpieces. Now, that doesn't mean this is necessarily about horror and gore (but it also doesn't mean it isn't, trying not to give anything away here :p ). Just the way the characters are developed, the way the plot develops, the way the story is told...it is all reminiscent of King's style of storytelling. Which might account for why I love this show. Now I just hope the following seasons are of as high quality. I know HBO signed up for a second season, but there has been some trouble with it. Probably won't air until 2005.
In other news...I took a break from school this weekend, and instead did a whole lot of reading on financial issues (!). Yup, me, learning how to handle money. Whodathot? Thinking about possibly doing some investing in the next coupla years, maybe some real estate. We'll see. I just started reading, so I really don't know anything yet, except that my interest is piqued, and that OCD part of my brain is revved and ready to go. As I mentioned before, Andy is thinking about business stuff, and Þóra mentioned something about real-estate in passing recently, so I have people around me possibly thinking along similar paths. Also, I figured why not talk to my landlord? Maybe he'll have some insight for me.
Ahhh! Finally my eyelids are showing signs of droopiness. So, back to bed, take 2.
Just when I though I'd gotten my sleep schedule under control, insomnia creeps back. Oh well, guess I'll just use the chance and ramble on a bit.
I just finished watching the first season of a show called Carnivale. This show is really something. I'm not going to tell you anything about it, that would just ruin the fun. It is a totally unique show, never seen anything like it. However, I have READ things like it. Yeah, this show has that certain feel to it, of one of Stephen King's masterpieces. Now, that doesn't mean this is necessarily about horror and gore (but it also doesn't mean it isn't, trying not to give anything away here :p ). Just the way the characters are developed, the way the plot develops, the way the story is told...it is all reminiscent of King's style of storytelling. Which might account for why I love this show. Now I just hope the following seasons are of as high quality. I know HBO signed up for a second season, but there has been some trouble with it. Probably won't air until 2005.
In other news...I took a break from school this weekend, and instead did a whole lot of reading on financial issues (!). Yup, me, learning how to handle money. Whodathot? Thinking about possibly doing some investing in the next coupla years, maybe some real estate. We'll see. I just started reading, so I really don't know anything yet, except that my interest is piqued, and that OCD part of my brain is revved and ready to go. As I mentioned before, Andy is thinking about business stuff, and Þóra mentioned something about real-estate in passing recently, so I have people around me possibly thinking along similar paths. Also, I figured why not talk to my landlord? Maybe he'll have some insight for me.
Ahhh! Finally my eyelids are showing signs of droopiness. So, back to bed, take 2.
fimmtudagur, apríl 15, 2004
Just had one of my many arguments with the Swan over stuff, usually about our (very) differing world views. It's funny how you can have very much in common with people on some level, and then on some other level, you just totally disagree. I guess that's what makes strong friendships, being able to disagree and still stay friends. Anyway, like always, it was definitely an interesting argument...Started like this:
Freysi: "Firefly rocks! I can't believe they cancelled it. Couldn't they see how amazing this show is? If they just give it a chance I'm sure it'll make money"
Svanur: "Yeah, dumb management types. But it wouldn't necessarily make money, just because it's good. I mean, look at Predator. It only recently went over the 'cutting it even' mark."
Freysi: "Predator sucks."
At this point the argument went into a discussion about what is quality. The thing is...I loved Predator. I think it's a great movie. But I also think it sucks. This confuse anyone yet?
Ok, so every time I see Predator, I love it, I have loads of testosterone-filled fun. But if I were to dissect the plotline, the character generation, the whole premise of the movie, it would just be blindingly obvious that it's a piece of crap. This didn't lessen my enjoyment of it though.
Now this is an argument I've had with many people, including my parents(then about music). And pabbi and I have basically decided to agree to disagree.
I say that enjoyment is something completely unrelated to the actual quality of the item (whatever it may be).
This being said, I realize that 'quality' is a generic term. You could measure the quality of a film in how much enjoyment it creates for you when you watch it, or in the emotions it brings forth. This is a highly personal experience, and in my book I call it 'enjoyment'. So let's all for now agree on that basic terminology. So my argument is that a film (or any other work of art) has an inherent quality that has absolutly nothing to do with anybody's personal judgement of the artwork that could be (and is likely) clouded by many things, including emotion, hearsay, social taboo, and other people's judgement. The basic argument in relation to music is (set forth by Leonard B. Meyer) as follows:
Music which is what the ear expects to hear is of no value. Surprising the listener is what matters.
What this basically means is that, using this definition of quality (as an abstract measurement), everything that we know as popular music, is of low quality. Now remember, this has nothing to do with whether you "like that song" or whether "those lyrics touch a chord in your soul". The huge majority of music created today is incredibly simple, in that they reuse forms which have been around for many centuries. This sort of touches on the whole issue of "the government wants us to be complacent" (which is a whole story in and of itself). The market seems to be pushing this kind of stuff on us, generic things that are designed to work well with our ears. For example (Music theory warning). There is a certain chord progression known as a church cadenza, namely the chords IV-V-I. This is one used extensively in early european music. The V chord creates a tension which our ears, because of the way they are physically built, attempt to resolve. It's actually a type of antialiasing, like what our eyes do, we fill in the gaps. So with a chord we don't like, we actually "fill in the gap" by "hearing" what sound should come next. The sound that should follow is the I chord, and when it does, we experience a sense of resolution. During the early ages of european music, composers quickly realised this and used it to their advantage, creating the chord progression IV-V-VI thereby tricking the ear of the listener into thinking it would resolve it one way (the strongest way), but instead resolving it another way. This would give the piece of music, in Meyer's book, a higher value. (This is analogous to a sudden, yet in hindsight, expected, twist of events in a movie) However, you should make sure not to have too many unexpected things, as the listener should not lose sight of the original goal/theme. Too many trick endings, and the listener will have lost sight of the original key, and when you return to it, that key will sound wrong. This decreases the value in Meyer's book (not the sounding wrong, just the affluence of surprises). (A good movie example of this is the nevernding twists and turns in Wild Things).
So what I am basically saying is that the experts in a field are the most qualified to tell the rest of us what is quality within the field. So listen to the art critics. Most people dismiss this out of hand, calling it "arty-farty" or "snobbery", but if you truly look at the logic behind it, this makes sense. If your measure of quality is to find what it is that works best for the human body and mind, and keep everybody complacent, then you should be happy with boy bands and hollywood. If your measure of quality is something that surprises you, and not necessarily in a good way, then one goes for the unlabeled music, and the independent movies.
An example that I always use in this argument is the movie 2001:A space Odessy.
I hate this movie.
I hate this movie.
I hate it so much I had to repeat myself. And yet, I think it is a masterpiece. I can totally appreciate the things that were amazing about this movie, even though it bores me to tears every time I force myself to watch it.
Another example I use is Beethoven. I don't particularly like Beethoven. In fact, I usually feel agitated when I listen to him. (Except for that one movement of his second.) However, after having extensively analysed a number of his works, I must admit that he is a master, and his music is incredible.
A lot of people have difficulty grasping or accepting this fundamental step of separating experience from analysis. Now, granted, when I say quality is a measure of value, value must in some way be based on the societal experience of an art field as a whole. For instance, at some time in the past, a cliché was an inspired and witty comment. However, this connection to society is at the same level as the measure of quality I am discussing, in that it is in effect based on the measure of quality at a previous moment in time. For example, when a cliché was new, it had value because it was different from what was being said at that moment. Now, when we hear the cliché, we compare it to the state of events, and see that the cliché is in fact...a cliché. This is only true because it is no longer surprising, not because it brings about negative emotions or anything like that. It simply does not hold the value it held before. Ergo, we attempt to create some new witty comment.
In any case, I'm not saying that I have the expertise to be someone who can define quality in movies (I do believe that I can do so with music however), I can only base it on my own experience, however,(becuase I hear voices saying "but we all do that") I do so by thinking about things that give the movie value. For example when I watch a movie I look at as many things as I can, the lighting, the makeup, the clothing, the casting, the camera shots, the music, the colors, and I compare it to things I have seen in other movies. And when I see something different I note it, and reflect on it. A certain incident comes to mind, in Psycho, where the "mother" finally attacks. The camera abruptly changes from a side view to a top down view, and you see this creature moving incredibly quickly. It is quite a striking switch. And I immediately thought "what great use of the camera". This surprised me and caused the movie to increase in value. The next time I see something like this, I will think, "oh yeah, saw that in psycho, pretty cool effect." The 100th time I see it I'll say "seenit, yawn".
IMPORTANT FINAL NOTE
I'm not saying that the "This thing rocks/sucks" view is not totally valid. We need to be able to talk about both these points of view equally. The layperson has to be willing to defer to the expert, and the expert has to be willing to accept the fact that, although the layperson may accept the expert's analysis, he will always have his own personal view not based on knowledge but on feeling.
So to sum up:
Loved Predator, but it's a terrible movie
Hated 2001, but it's a masterpiece
and Beethoven's a jackass.
Freysi: "Firefly rocks! I can't believe they cancelled it. Couldn't they see how amazing this show is? If they just give it a chance I'm sure it'll make money"
Svanur: "Yeah, dumb management types. But it wouldn't necessarily make money, just because it's good. I mean, look at Predator. It only recently went over the 'cutting it even' mark."
Freysi: "Predator sucks."
At this point the argument went into a discussion about what is quality. The thing is...I loved Predator. I think it's a great movie. But I also think it sucks. This confuse anyone yet?
Ok, so every time I see Predator, I love it, I have loads of testosterone-filled fun. But if I were to dissect the plotline, the character generation, the whole premise of the movie, it would just be blindingly obvious that it's a piece of crap. This didn't lessen my enjoyment of it though.
Now this is an argument I've had with many people, including my parents(then about music). And pabbi and I have basically decided to agree to disagree.
I say that enjoyment is something completely unrelated to the actual quality of the item (whatever it may be).
This being said, I realize that 'quality' is a generic term. You could measure the quality of a film in how much enjoyment it creates for you when you watch it, or in the emotions it brings forth. This is a highly personal experience, and in my book I call it 'enjoyment'. So let's all for now agree on that basic terminology. So my argument is that a film (or any other work of art) has an inherent quality that has absolutly nothing to do with anybody's personal judgement of the artwork that could be (and is likely) clouded by many things, including emotion, hearsay, social taboo, and other people's judgement. The basic argument in relation to music is (set forth by Leonard B. Meyer) as follows:
Music which is what the ear expects to hear is of no value. Surprising the listener is what matters.
What this basically means is that, using this definition of quality (as an abstract measurement), everything that we know as popular music, is of low quality. Now remember, this has nothing to do with whether you "like that song" or whether "those lyrics touch a chord in your soul". The huge majority of music created today is incredibly simple, in that they reuse forms which have been around for many centuries. This sort of touches on the whole issue of "the government wants us to be complacent" (which is a whole story in and of itself). The market seems to be pushing this kind of stuff on us, generic things that are designed to work well with our ears. For example (Music theory warning). There is a certain chord progression known as a church cadenza, namely the chords IV-V-I. This is one used extensively in early european music. The V chord creates a tension which our ears, because of the way they are physically built, attempt to resolve. It's actually a type of antialiasing, like what our eyes do, we fill in the gaps. So with a chord we don't like, we actually "fill in the gap" by "hearing" what sound should come next. The sound that should follow is the I chord, and when it does, we experience a sense of resolution. During the early ages of european music, composers quickly realised this and used it to their advantage, creating the chord progression IV-V-VI thereby tricking the ear of the listener into thinking it would resolve it one way (the strongest way), but instead resolving it another way. This would give the piece of music, in Meyer's book, a higher value. (This is analogous to a sudden, yet in hindsight, expected, twist of events in a movie) However, you should make sure not to have too many unexpected things, as the listener should not lose sight of the original goal/theme. Too many trick endings, and the listener will have lost sight of the original key, and when you return to it, that key will sound wrong. This decreases the value in Meyer's book (not the sounding wrong, just the affluence of surprises). (A good movie example of this is the nevernding twists and turns in Wild Things).
So what I am basically saying is that the experts in a field are the most qualified to tell the rest of us what is quality within the field. So listen to the art critics. Most people dismiss this out of hand, calling it "arty-farty" or "snobbery", but if you truly look at the logic behind it, this makes sense. If your measure of quality is to find what it is that works best for the human body and mind, and keep everybody complacent, then you should be happy with boy bands and hollywood. If your measure of quality is something that surprises you, and not necessarily in a good way, then one goes for the unlabeled music, and the independent movies.
An example that I always use in this argument is the movie 2001:A space Odessy.
I hate this movie.
I hate this movie.
I hate it so much I had to repeat myself. And yet, I think it is a masterpiece. I can totally appreciate the things that were amazing about this movie, even though it bores me to tears every time I force myself to watch it.
Another example I use is Beethoven. I don't particularly like Beethoven. In fact, I usually feel agitated when I listen to him. (Except for that one movement of his second.) However, after having extensively analysed a number of his works, I must admit that he is a master, and his music is incredible.
A lot of people have difficulty grasping or accepting this fundamental step of separating experience from analysis. Now, granted, when I say quality is a measure of value, value must in some way be based on the societal experience of an art field as a whole. For instance, at some time in the past, a cliché was an inspired and witty comment. However, this connection to society is at the same level as the measure of quality I am discussing, in that it is in effect based on the measure of quality at a previous moment in time. For example, when a cliché was new, it had value because it was different from what was being said at that moment. Now, when we hear the cliché, we compare it to the state of events, and see that the cliché is in fact...a cliché. This is only true because it is no longer surprising, not because it brings about negative emotions or anything like that. It simply does not hold the value it held before. Ergo, we attempt to create some new witty comment.
In any case, I'm not saying that I have the expertise to be someone who can define quality in movies (I do believe that I can do so with music however), I can only base it on my own experience, however,(becuase I hear voices saying "but we all do that") I do so by thinking about things that give the movie value. For example when I watch a movie I look at as many things as I can, the lighting, the makeup, the clothing, the casting, the camera shots, the music, the colors, and I compare it to things I have seen in other movies. And when I see something different I note it, and reflect on it. A certain incident comes to mind, in Psycho, where the "mother" finally attacks. The camera abruptly changes from a side view to a top down view, and you see this creature moving incredibly quickly. It is quite a striking switch. And I immediately thought "what great use of the camera". This surprised me and caused the movie to increase in value. The next time I see something like this, I will think, "oh yeah, saw that in psycho, pretty cool effect." The 100th time I see it I'll say "seenit, yawn".
IMPORTANT FINAL NOTE
I'm not saying that the "This thing rocks/sucks" view is not totally valid. We need to be able to talk about both these points of view equally. The layperson has to be willing to defer to the expert, and the expert has to be willing to accept the fact that, although the layperson may accept the expert's analysis, he will always have his own personal view not based on knowledge but on feeling.
So to sum up:
Loved Predator, but it's a terrible movie
Hated 2001, but it's a masterpiece
and Beethoven's a jackass.
mánudagur, apríl 12, 2004
Had a very nice weekend with ma family.
First stop was at Þóra's place on saturday. So I was going to just catch the subway right after rehearsal saturday morning, and be there around 3pm or so. I got a little tied up, washing some dishes, throwing out garbage (so my room wouldn't stink when I came back) so I left a little later than I should. Thought about taking my bike, but didn't. Apparently you can bring your bike onto the subway if you just use the last car. I just didn't feel up to the hassle that day. Anyway, so I walk out and I've gone halfway to the busstop (like 100 feet) when I realized, "hey I should bring a book, just in case". So I figured, what are the odds I'll miss the bus within the next 2 minutes. So I go back. When I get back to the halfway point, the bus rounds the corner and speeds away.
Crap.
So I decided to just walk. Takes about an hour, but the weather was nice and I figured I'd make a trip out of it. (And I knew there would be a Smoothie King on the way ;)). Read a few pages of "The Noonday Demon" on the subway, and had a girl stare at me, probably thinking "why would somebody read a book about depression in public?" Oh well, did't care.
So when I get to Clarendon station I meander around for a while, looking for a pay phone. I did notice some guy standing behind this huge map of the metro for some reason. Was kind of weird, I could only see his feet, and he was just standing still. I figured if he wanted to mug somebody, he wasn't really doing a good job of it. So I kept looking, asked some people, and they pointed me back the way I came. Turns out that the mugger was in fact an innocent person using a payphone. And yes, above the map it said in large letters "PHONE".
Duhhhh....
So I got to Þóra's around 4:30, just caught the tail end of the egg decorating thing. Which was ok, because when it comes to egg decorating I always get completely devoid of ideas. Then I just start to color and dye pseudorandomly and the outcome is usually quite horrid. Christine and Andrew and Millie were there. It took Millie 2 seconds to yell "Snam!" at me (I refer you to older posts for the reason for this), and Andrew kept stating that he was a genius and that his egg (which he glued to an egg tray cover was also a genius). Fun kids :) Oh yeah, and I met Courtney for the first time in, like, four years.
After that, we went to a birthday party at one of Þóra's friends' house. A artist named Claudia. Nice food, nice people, funny little kids, and a bunch of nice artwork on the walls. Courtney kept asking me if I was alright, (because I had basically placed myself at the mercy of my aunts for the weekend :)), and yeah, I was feeling alright (apart from a headache...more on that later). It's reassuring to place one's scheduling in the hands of others for a short period of time. Towards the end of that party my head was pounding for some reason, although it didn't feel like my classic migraine. I was starting to regret leaving my Maxalt back at Branchville Rd. I figured though, that if I just got a bunch of water to drink, it'd go away, since it didn't feel like a migraine.
So we went back to Þóra's place and watched Hellboy, which Tos had just downloaded and copied for me, and I brought along. After like 5 minutes of that my headache was becoming unbearable and I had become nauseous. No idea why, but figured it had to be a migraine, however different it felt. And I knew I had to get to sleep, so sleep I did. And boy, did I have strange dreams. Forgotten most of them, but they were weird.
Woke up the next day, completely fine, with just a slight twinge of "migraine hangover". I can use that as an excuse for totally ignoring and stepping over the amazing easter basket Þóra made for me and put in front of my bedroom door.
Imagine a basket, all wrapped up, with that fake green grass in the bottom, a couple real, decorated eggs, a couple plastic eggs with goodies inside, and a shitload of assorted candy. And some intersting stuff, like a scented candle, and some cute clips for documents :)
So we sat around for a while, munched a little on some candy, tried to do a crossword puzzle, and then headed out to Freyja's for some easter chow. (There were also a bunch of complimentary easter jokes, like "eastertastic, eggstatic, eggsistential, and so forth.)
Whole lot of people at Freyja's, the usual gang plus some friends of Freyja's I hadn't met (although a lot of people I meet seem to have taken a vacation or two in Iceland...interesting), and Jóhann og Veiga (I hadn't seen them since I was tiny, so I couldn't remember what they looked like. But I recognized the immediately...they exude "Icelandicness" :)) Andy loaned me a book which I promptly forgot at Freyja's (too many things happening at once!). Anyway, the food was great, the cakes very tasty, and people generally in a good mood. Millie was very funny, she was the only one who got to do the easter egg hunt (Peter and I hid the eggs, but miscalculated, so we had her looking for one too many eggs for a while, whoops!). I actually got interrogated by her as to what I wrote about her last time we met (at thanksgiving). So anyway Millie,
Here's a line just for you!
:)
Left there around 5:30, full stomach and all, and got a ride back from peter and Þóra (dropped Courtney off on the way), and got back here, back to real life. Oh well, so I got ready for tomorrow (research wise), and watched Hellboy.
NOTE EVERYBODY! Very important. I promised Svanur I wouldn't tell him what I thought of the movie. We are alike in that, if we constantly hear what other people think about movies that we are excited about, it devalues our own experience. A lot of people don't understand this, the say "Chill man! I'm not going to tell you what happens or anything, just that the movie sucks!" This means that you're going to go to the movie and there's going to be a tiny thing in your brain that tells you that X though the movie sucked. We'd much rather go to movies with totally clean slates. That way we can be sure that it's completely our own judgement when we say "This movie rocks/sucks" Ok? So you guys who've seen it, don't comment about it here :)
However, I would like to tell you about an awesome tv-show called "Freaks and Geeks". On the surface it seems to be another show about teens and their problems with some funny scenes in between. But as soon as you watch one full episode, you realize that there is something more. The only way I've thought of to explain it is to say that all the characters are "real" and not contrived like the characters in shows on par with Smallville. It is such a shame this show was cancelled after only 18 episodes. But that seems to be the way TV works in the states. Here's a list of shows that I consider quality TV (with believable, lovable characters, and plotlines that span many episodes if not seasons), that have been cancelled at one point or another:
Angel
Babylon 5 (was cancelled after season 4 but picked up again by another network and completed)
Farscape
Freaks and Geeks
Firefly
Dark Angel (I never really got into this one, but like-minded people have told me I should)
There are probably a number of other episodes I'd put in this list, but because they were cancelled, it's more difficult to locate. A couple I remember watching with Pabbi, that weren't great but were still better than Smallville:
The Visitor
Nowhere Man
Dark Skies
Enough for now, gotta get up early and do some runnin :)
Nightynight
First stop was at Þóra's place on saturday. So I was going to just catch the subway right after rehearsal saturday morning, and be there around 3pm or so. I got a little tied up, washing some dishes, throwing out garbage (so my room wouldn't stink when I came back) so I left a little later than I should. Thought about taking my bike, but didn't. Apparently you can bring your bike onto the subway if you just use the last car. I just didn't feel up to the hassle that day. Anyway, so I walk out and I've gone halfway to the busstop (like 100 feet) when I realized, "hey I should bring a book, just in case". So I figured, what are the odds I'll miss the bus within the next 2 minutes. So I go back. When I get back to the halfway point, the bus rounds the corner and speeds away.
Crap.
So I decided to just walk. Takes about an hour, but the weather was nice and I figured I'd make a trip out of it. (And I knew there would be a Smoothie King on the way ;)). Read a few pages of "The Noonday Demon" on the subway, and had a girl stare at me, probably thinking "why would somebody read a book about depression in public?" Oh well, did't care.
So when I get to Clarendon station I meander around for a while, looking for a pay phone. I did notice some guy standing behind this huge map of the metro for some reason. Was kind of weird, I could only see his feet, and he was just standing still. I figured if he wanted to mug somebody, he wasn't really doing a good job of it. So I kept looking, asked some people, and they pointed me back the way I came. Turns out that the mugger was in fact an innocent person using a payphone. And yes, above the map it said in large letters "PHONE".
Duhhhh....
So I got to Þóra's around 4:30, just caught the tail end of the egg decorating thing. Which was ok, because when it comes to egg decorating I always get completely devoid of ideas. Then I just start to color and dye pseudorandomly and the outcome is usually quite horrid. Christine and Andrew and Millie were there. It took Millie 2 seconds to yell "Snam!" at me (I refer you to older posts for the reason for this), and Andrew kept stating that he was a genius and that his egg (which he glued to an egg tray cover was also a genius). Fun kids :) Oh yeah, and I met Courtney for the first time in, like, four years.
After that, we went to a birthday party at one of Þóra's friends' house. A artist named Claudia. Nice food, nice people, funny little kids, and a bunch of nice artwork on the walls. Courtney kept asking me if I was alright, (because I had basically placed myself at the mercy of my aunts for the weekend :)), and yeah, I was feeling alright (apart from a headache...more on that later). It's reassuring to place one's scheduling in the hands of others for a short period of time. Towards the end of that party my head was pounding for some reason, although it didn't feel like my classic migraine. I was starting to regret leaving my Maxalt back at Branchville Rd. I figured though, that if I just got a bunch of water to drink, it'd go away, since it didn't feel like a migraine.
So we went back to Þóra's place and watched Hellboy, which Tos had just downloaded and copied for me, and I brought along. After like 5 minutes of that my headache was becoming unbearable and I had become nauseous. No idea why, but figured it had to be a migraine, however different it felt. And I knew I had to get to sleep, so sleep I did. And boy, did I have strange dreams. Forgotten most of them, but they were weird.
Woke up the next day, completely fine, with just a slight twinge of "migraine hangover". I can use that as an excuse for totally ignoring and stepping over the amazing easter basket Þóra made for me and put in front of my bedroom door.
Imagine a basket, all wrapped up, with that fake green grass in the bottom, a couple real, decorated eggs, a couple plastic eggs with goodies inside, and a shitload of assorted candy. And some intersting stuff, like a scented candle, and some cute clips for documents :)
So we sat around for a while, munched a little on some candy, tried to do a crossword puzzle, and then headed out to Freyja's for some easter chow. (There were also a bunch of complimentary easter jokes, like "eastertastic, eggstatic, eggsistential, and so forth.)
Whole lot of people at Freyja's, the usual gang plus some friends of Freyja's I hadn't met (although a lot of people I meet seem to have taken a vacation or two in Iceland...interesting), and Jóhann og Veiga (I hadn't seen them since I was tiny, so I couldn't remember what they looked like. But I recognized the immediately...they exude "Icelandicness" :)) Andy loaned me a book which I promptly forgot at Freyja's (too many things happening at once!). Anyway, the food was great, the cakes very tasty, and people generally in a good mood. Millie was very funny, she was the only one who got to do the easter egg hunt (Peter and I hid the eggs, but miscalculated, so we had her looking for one too many eggs for a while, whoops!). I actually got interrogated by her as to what I wrote about her last time we met (at thanksgiving). So anyway Millie,
Here's a line just for you!
:)
Left there around 5:30, full stomach and all, and got a ride back from peter and Þóra (dropped Courtney off on the way), and got back here, back to real life. Oh well, so I got ready for tomorrow (research wise), and watched Hellboy.
NOTE EVERYBODY! Very important. I promised Svanur I wouldn't tell him what I thought of the movie. We are alike in that, if we constantly hear what other people think about movies that we are excited about, it devalues our own experience. A lot of people don't understand this, the say "Chill man! I'm not going to tell you what happens or anything, just that the movie sucks!" This means that you're going to go to the movie and there's going to be a tiny thing in your brain that tells you that X though the movie sucked. We'd much rather go to movies with totally clean slates. That way we can be sure that it's completely our own judgement when we say "This movie rocks/sucks" Ok? So you guys who've seen it, don't comment about it here :)
However, I would like to tell you about an awesome tv-show called "Freaks and Geeks". On the surface it seems to be another show about teens and their problems with some funny scenes in between. But as soon as you watch one full episode, you realize that there is something more. The only way I've thought of to explain it is to say that all the characters are "real" and not contrived like the characters in shows on par with Smallville. It is such a shame this show was cancelled after only 18 episodes. But that seems to be the way TV works in the states. Here's a list of shows that I consider quality TV (with believable, lovable characters, and plotlines that span many episodes if not seasons), that have been cancelled at one point or another:
Angel
Babylon 5 (was cancelled after season 4 but picked up again by another network and completed)
Farscape
Freaks and Geeks
Firefly
Dark Angel (I never really got into this one, but like-minded people have told me I should)
There are probably a number of other episodes I'd put in this list, but because they were cancelled, it's more difficult to locate. A couple I remember watching with Pabbi, that weren't great but were still better than Smallville:
The Visitor
Nowhere Man
Dark Skies
Enough for now, gotta get up early and do some runnin :)
Nightynight
miðvikudagur, apríl 07, 2004
Okokok, so I haven't managed to get to working out yet, BUT, I have managed to wake up at 8 every day for three days now. And I've been spending more time at school, which means more bike riding which means more exercise, which can be viewed as preparation for working out NEXT week.
Right?
But geez, monday was horrible for me. It's typical, right after I decide to change things around, stuff goes wrong. First of all, I managed to pull my back, have NO idea how. So I didn't go work out on tuesday or today, gonna let it heal. Secondly, my sleep schedule on monday was just laughable. Woke up at 8, but fell asleep again around 9, slept til noon. Fell asleep again around 4pm, woke up at 2am on tuesday, and stayed up til 6, fell asleep again and woke up at 8. Phew! Maybe my mind was working on something in the background, something which was eating up all my resources. At least, for some reason, these past few days I've actually begun to feel a little better, I even caught a glimpse of that thing called motivation. I think my chat with Andy must have had something to do with that.
Andy dropped by on Sunday and we went for lunch and did some other stuff. I had called Andy, wanting to pick his brain about the whole "working in the industry" thing people tend to do. Managed to get him to tell me about his school work and how and where he started working and such. The intersting thing was that Andy is sort of on the same line of thinking I am these days, the thought of working for someone else, making THEM rich, is not too appealing. I don't much care about the rich part, just want to do my own thing, and own it myself. So anyway, he described to me the lay of the land, pointed out some resources, we drove around, got some great sandwiches at some place called Booeys(sp?). It was definitely something I needed. Thanks Andy.
I also had two nice experiences with my research. John has been playing around with this program called SNePS, and called me in to have a look at his code, it wasn't working. So I came in, borrowed the code, went away somewhere to be alone (I think best when I don't have somebody else interrupting my thoughts :)), and figured out his problem within an hour. Always nice when that happens.
The other thing had to do with the quarterly report we had to write for the grant. I had written most of it, and sent John a draft where I noted that I had some stuff I wanted to fix up. He sent a note back which said, "nono, this is great, we'll use this." I was so surprised that I went and asked Jim, and he totally agreed. I guess my level of perfectionism is higher than theirs....oh well, that's not necessarily a good thing, right :)?
Anyway, Jim wanted to talk to me about my future thoughts, where I wanted this research to go with respect to my PhD. When I told him that I didn't even want to decide WHETHER to get a PhD until the end of this summer, he seemed a bit surprised and disappointed. But even so, he said that any help I needed he'd be more than willing to give, and if I decided to go for the MS, he'd be more than happy to help me out with that too. However, he did warn me that he'd do everything possible to convince me to stay for the PhD. (He said he thought I was "good", and that I'd have no trouble finishing a PhD. Always a nice thing to hear:D)
Alrighty, enough patting myself on the back.
Got my router/WAP yesterday, now I only have to wait for those slowpokes to drop by and hook up my connection. They have to come by the area to flip some switch in some box to turn on the phone line, and then the phone line has to be on for a full week until they activate the adsl line. I have absolutely no idea why that has to be that way. Makes no sense, whatsoever. So that means my phone line gets activated next friday, and my adsl the friday after that. Until then, Binh and I just have to put up with each other. Although it does mean an extra $60 a month to my expenses, getting a full 1.5Mbs connection to myself is totally worth it. (The one we have now is 768Kbs)
Because of that extra sink on my expenses, I decided to wait with other things. I was going to get myself a water cooler/dispenser and have monthly water deliveries. And I was going to get a cell phone. The water cooler would have cost me $160 (or $13 a month in rent) and $8 for 5 gallons of water. I probably would have needed 2-3 of those, so that means an extra $24-25 a month. The cell phone would cost me around $100 with maybe $15 a month(I'm guessing) So that would bring me up to an even $100 a month extra, with a start cost of $260. Not quite sure I can handle that. On the other hand, if I got a cell phone I would stop paying for the old phone line here, which would be like $8 less a month. And with the water, I'd stop drinking anything else (juice, soda) so that would cut the costs. ($1.20 per 2 liters of soda x 10 = $12 a month) so I could bring that figure down to $80 a month. Hmm, maybe it's worth it. Boy, spending money is easy. And thinking up the next thing one needs is even easier. Apart from what I mentioned, I "need" a whiteboard, a bulletinboard, a mirror, and better speakers for music.
Oh yeah, and I also bought the DVD full series of Freaks & Geeks, and Firefly. Oh and some books.
This is what happens when I don't have a girl to spend my money on.
Right?
But geez, monday was horrible for me. It's typical, right after I decide to change things around, stuff goes wrong. First of all, I managed to pull my back, have NO idea how. So I didn't go work out on tuesday or today, gonna let it heal. Secondly, my sleep schedule on monday was just laughable. Woke up at 8, but fell asleep again around 9, slept til noon. Fell asleep again around 4pm, woke up at 2am on tuesday, and stayed up til 6, fell asleep again and woke up at 8. Phew! Maybe my mind was working on something in the background, something which was eating up all my resources. At least, for some reason, these past few days I've actually begun to feel a little better, I even caught a glimpse of that thing called motivation. I think my chat with Andy must have had something to do with that.
Andy dropped by on Sunday and we went for lunch and did some other stuff. I had called Andy, wanting to pick his brain about the whole "working in the industry" thing people tend to do. Managed to get him to tell me about his school work and how and where he started working and such. The intersting thing was that Andy is sort of on the same line of thinking I am these days, the thought of working for someone else, making THEM rich, is not too appealing. I don't much care about the rich part, just want to do my own thing, and own it myself. So anyway, he described to me the lay of the land, pointed out some resources, we drove around, got some great sandwiches at some place called Booeys(sp?). It was definitely something I needed. Thanks Andy.
I also had two nice experiences with my research. John has been playing around with this program called SNePS, and called me in to have a look at his code, it wasn't working. So I came in, borrowed the code, went away somewhere to be alone (I think best when I don't have somebody else interrupting my thoughts :)), and figured out his problem within an hour. Always nice when that happens.
The other thing had to do with the quarterly report we had to write for the grant. I had written most of it, and sent John a draft where I noted that I had some stuff I wanted to fix up. He sent a note back which said, "nono, this is great, we'll use this." I was so surprised that I went and asked Jim, and he totally agreed. I guess my level of perfectionism is higher than theirs....oh well, that's not necessarily a good thing, right :)?
Anyway, Jim wanted to talk to me about my future thoughts, where I wanted this research to go with respect to my PhD. When I told him that I didn't even want to decide WHETHER to get a PhD until the end of this summer, he seemed a bit surprised and disappointed. But even so, he said that any help I needed he'd be more than willing to give, and if I decided to go for the MS, he'd be more than happy to help me out with that too. However, he did warn me that he'd do everything possible to convince me to stay for the PhD. (He said he thought I was "good", and that I'd have no trouble finishing a PhD. Always a nice thing to hear:D)
Alrighty, enough patting myself on the back.
Got my router/WAP yesterday, now I only have to wait for those slowpokes to drop by and hook up my connection. They have to come by the area to flip some switch in some box to turn on the phone line, and then the phone line has to be on for a full week until they activate the adsl line. I have absolutely no idea why that has to be that way. Makes no sense, whatsoever. So that means my phone line gets activated next friday, and my adsl the friday after that. Until then, Binh and I just have to put up with each other. Although it does mean an extra $60 a month to my expenses, getting a full 1.5Mbs connection to myself is totally worth it. (The one we have now is 768Kbs)
Because of that extra sink on my expenses, I decided to wait with other things. I was going to get myself a water cooler/dispenser and have monthly water deliveries. And I was going to get a cell phone. The water cooler would have cost me $160 (or $13 a month in rent) and $8 for 5 gallons of water. I probably would have needed 2-3 of those, so that means an extra $24-25 a month. The cell phone would cost me around $100 with maybe $15 a month(I'm guessing) So that would bring me up to an even $100 a month extra, with a start cost of $260. Not quite sure I can handle that. On the other hand, if I got a cell phone I would stop paying for the old phone line here, which would be like $8 less a month. And with the water, I'd stop drinking anything else (juice, soda) so that would cut the costs. ($1.20 per 2 liters of soda x 10 = $12 a month) so I could bring that figure down to $80 a month. Hmm, maybe it's worth it. Boy, spending money is easy. And thinking up the next thing one needs is even easier. Apart from what I mentioned, I "need" a whiteboard, a bulletinboard, a mirror, and better speakers for music.
Oh yeah, and I also bought the DVD full series of Freaks & Geeks, and Firefly. Oh and some books.
This is what happens when I don't have a girl to spend my money on.
laugardagur, apríl 03, 2004
Ok, time to change the feel of this blog (which, hopefully, will change the feel of my life)
No more complaining about people around me, no more complaining about my studies. Now I'm just gonna DO STUFF.
So I've figured out pretty much what I have to do first to be able to do stuff
1. Define a practice schedule for my trumpet. I really want to get back into shape and actually continue my training and get better. I was (and still am) at the point where I really don't need an instructor, just some discipline.
2. Define a workout schedule. I had a personal trainer for a year (when I did manage to get into pretty good shape) so I know what has to be done. Now it's just a matter of doing it.
3. Set up a cooking schedule. Was thinking about making like a monthly or bi-monthly thing where I'd cook something different every day of the week and repeat each week. Then change the schedule every 2 months or so. Since I'm shopping online, I could do this totally at home, find recipes and order exactly what I need and stick to it.
4. Force myself to stick to a strict sleeping schedule. Doesn't matter what it's like, as long as I always sleep my 8 hours at the same time. I guess it makes sense for it to be 11-7 or something like that, since things aren't open around here during the night, and anyway, walking around at night time definitely isn't a good idea.
5. Try to get all/most of my schoolwork done over the week so I can feel better about just doing whatever I want during the weekend. Basically, instead of spreading things out like I've done, maybe try to clump my free time together so I could possibly go into DC and do some fun stuff :)
How's that all sound?
It sounds pretty ambitious to me. Maybe too much to do all at once. However, I do have an OCD/stubborn streak in me, if I could just tap into that long enough for this stuff to become rote, it might just work. We'll see. I think I'll at least begin with the sleep cycle. I guess at the same time I could get my workout going. I need to get slowly into shape before I can start a workout regiment anyway, just get to the gym, do some running/cycling, then come back. Actually, if I do manage to start to wake up around 7-8, the best thing I could do in the morning would be to work out. Ok, that's decided, next monday I'm getting up at 7-8 and working out.
To all those people saying "piff!, yeah right, je ræt, or hah!", I fart in your general direction.
No more complaining about people around me, no more complaining about my studies. Now I'm just gonna DO STUFF.
So I've figured out pretty much what I have to do first to be able to do stuff
1. Define a practice schedule for my trumpet. I really want to get back into shape and actually continue my training and get better. I was (and still am) at the point where I really don't need an instructor, just some discipline.
2. Define a workout schedule. I had a personal trainer for a year (when I did manage to get into pretty good shape) so I know what has to be done. Now it's just a matter of doing it.
3. Set up a cooking schedule. Was thinking about making like a monthly or bi-monthly thing where I'd cook something different every day of the week and repeat each week. Then change the schedule every 2 months or so. Since I'm shopping online, I could do this totally at home, find recipes and order exactly what I need and stick to it.
4. Force myself to stick to a strict sleeping schedule. Doesn't matter what it's like, as long as I always sleep my 8 hours at the same time. I guess it makes sense for it to be 11-7 or something like that, since things aren't open around here during the night, and anyway, walking around at night time definitely isn't a good idea.
5. Try to get all/most of my schoolwork done over the week so I can feel better about just doing whatever I want during the weekend. Basically, instead of spreading things out like I've done, maybe try to clump my free time together so I could possibly go into DC and do some fun stuff :)
How's that all sound?
It sounds pretty ambitious to me. Maybe too much to do all at once. However, I do have an OCD/stubborn streak in me, if I could just tap into that long enough for this stuff to become rote, it might just work. We'll see. I think I'll at least begin with the sleep cycle. I guess at the same time I could get my workout going. I need to get slowly into shape before I can start a workout regiment anyway, just get to the gym, do some running/cycling, then come back. Actually, if I do manage to start to wake up around 7-8, the best thing I could do in the morning would be to work out. Ok, that's decided, next monday I'm getting up at 7-8 and working out.
To all those people saying "piff!, yeah right, je ræt, or hah!", I fart in your general direction.
fimmtudagur, apríl 01, 2004
After having almost 3 weeks of peace, Binh is at it again.
He starts out all nice and polite and everything but ends up being an asshole. He came up to me and asked whether we could talk about the internet connection. Here's my rationale:
1. We pay a set fee for our internet connection. So in effect, we're paying for bandwith, not amount downloaded. If we download 0MB then too bad for us, we didn't use up our limit.
2. There's three of us here, and our download limit is between 80 and 90 KB/s while our upload is between 20 and 25KB/s. So I used Netlimiter to limit my numbers to 30 download (gave myself a little leeway there since Dan is usually never around) and 5 upload (made sure to be low there so nobody could complain.
3. Since we're paying for bandwith only, and we split it evenly, it's not my problem that somebody else doesn't use his bandwidth.
4. If the net is slow for one of the other people using it, that's because you only pay for 1/3 of it so you can only expect it to be 1/3 as fast as a full connection.
This is Binh's rationale
1. I download a lot more than he does.
2. This slows down his net connection so he can't do his work.
3. The network in the house should be used primarily for schoolwork.
So basically, he wants me to pay like 95% of the cost because I download 95% of all that we download. However, since I'm still only using 33% of our bandwith, Binh could easily download just as much as I do, only he doesn't, which in my mind is just his loss. Also, (although this is being really hardball) I don't agree that schoolwork should take precedence on our network. I pay for my third, so I should be allowed to use it the way I want to, right?
So tell me guys, does it sound like I'm being unreasonable? I don't think so, but then again, I'm biased because I agree with myself (usually :p)
So I'm going to get myself a new line. Dan has expressed an interest in getting onto a new line with me, but I think I'm gonna keep it completely to myself. No hassles, no trouble.
URG!
Anyway, took that test today, and wow! was it easy. But that always makes me a bit UNeasy. When you're expecting a test to be difficult (and when it's open notes), and seems easy, the first thing one always thinks is, "boy I hope I'm not missing something". We'll see in about a week.
He starts out all nice and polite and everything but ends up being an asshole. He came up to me and asked whether we could talk about the internet connection. Here's my rationale:
1. We pay a set fee for our internet connection. So in effect, we're paying for bandwith, not amount downloaded. If we download 0MB then too bad for us, we didn't use up our limit.
2. There's three of us here, and our download limit is between 80 and 90 KB/s while our upload is between 20 and 25KB/s. So I used Netlimiter to limit my numbers to 30 download (gave myself a little leeway there since Dan is usually never around) and 5 upload (made sure to be low there so nobody could complain.
3. Since we're paying for bandwith only, and we split it evenly, it's not my problem that somebody else doesn't use his bandwidth.
4. If the net is slow for one of the other people using it, that's because you only pay for 1/3 of it so you can only expect it to be 1/3 as fast as a full connection.
This is Binh's rationale
1. I download a lot more than he does.
2. This slows down his net connection so he can't do his work.
3. The network in the house should be used primarily for schoolwork.
So basically, he wants me to pay like 95% of the cost because I download 95% of all that we download. However, since I'm still only using 33% of our bandwith, Binh could easily download just as much as I do, only he doesn't, which in my mind is just his loss. Also, (although this is being really hardball) I don't agree that schoolwork should take precedence on our network. I pay for my third, so I should be allowed to use it the way I want to, right?
So tell me guys, does it sound like I'm being unreasonable? I don't think so, but then again, I'm biased because I agree with myself (usually :p)
So I'm going to get myself a new line. Dan has expressed an interest in getting onto a new line with me, but I think I'm gonna keep it completely to myself. No hassles, no trouble.
URG!
Anyway, took that test today, and wow! was it easy. But that always makes me a bit UNeasy. When you're expecting a test to be difficult (and when it's open notes), and seems easy, the first thing one always thinks is, "boy I hope I'm not missing something". We'll see in about a week.
