This Day In History: 02/24
I've been listening to two CDs of Don Sebesky this weekend, Moving Lines and Giant Box. The first is a nice, inoffensive jazz CD which reminds me of Sammy Nestico's big band favourites CD, but the second is a little more meaty, with jazz fusion arrangements around the solo work of folk like Freddie Hubbard. Sebesky is an arranger who did some nice charts for Doc Severinsen in the 70s, and also wrote the saxophone concerto Bela and Bird in Bb, which is an interesting work in its own right.
Of the two MP3s posted yesterday, the first was straight MIDI and the second was the actual orchestration. All three people who guessed got it right, and I don't think it was too hard to figure out with careful listening. What was interesting was what gave it away for each person. Everyone said that the MIDI become painfully obvious based on the sound of their own personal instrument, trumpet, horn, and suspended cymbal.
I had a fairly productive weekend of composing, although not much was written last week. I'm trying to go for a feel of "spinning out" from beginning to end of my last movement, while still retaining a sense of concinnity throughout. It's hard for me to not write in a completely sectional manner, and its the transitions that are giving me the most headaches.
GameSpot: Melodies, Where Have You Gone?I did, in fact, finish up the student file creation part of MFIT this weekend, but there's really not enough interactivity to make putting an applet up worthwhile. All it does is allow you to enter a student's information and then encode it into an XML file in a folder of your choosing. My next step (which I'll be doing during the week) is to create an imaginary class full of students and pack their files with a variety of activities and results to test that the files are read properly. It'll be like I'm managing a fantasy fundamentals league but without any payoff.
This week is the final week of rec league basketball, and if the planets stay properly aligned, it looks like we just might be able to finish the season with a perfect record. Our last two games are on Tuesday and Thursday night.
Alias continues to get better. I thought it was surprisingly ballsy of ABC, the family channel, to air this episode after all the hooplah surrounding the Korean subway and the Rhode Island fire (it had dramatized depictions of a neutron bomb used in a church). Watch it already.
He said that I should cut off her breasts, but I said no woman wants that.
I can't seem to shake the idea that Swanson is trying to feed people horse scabs.
Your only black character, who is named Jesse Jackson Jones, expresses his concurrence by saying, "Right on!"
The Catania Method for Dictation (PDF 261KB)
"It was so sweet backstage. The Teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo." - Steve Martin at the '03 Oscars
It's time for the Third Annual Uri! Picks for Oscar Night! I saw even fewer movies this year than in the past two years, but I'm luckily saved by the fact that the same four movies appear in every category. Before you run off to your bookie, you should know that I got 4 of 24 correct last year and 9 of 24 the year before that. My scores should improve this year, because I'm not letting Booty have any say in the picks.
With that said, let's start with the categories that no one cares about and build up a false sense of suspense through Sunday's update where I'll make my picks for the four most important categories that no one cares about. Any movie I've seen is marked with a dot. As you can tell, I haven't seen any of today's movies.
Best documentary featureYesterday's notable search terms:
number of toll booths, melody shifted a beat, romatic era of european music
To Be Continued...
The illegitimate offspring of The New York Times and The Sun
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I sat down last night to write a Museday, but was struggling with inspiration. Instead, I decided to relisten to one of the pieces I wrote in my brief stint as a fulll-time composer: a commission I received in the spring of my 4th year of perpetual college.
On the few times I received commissions, I always tried to nail down as many rules as possible up front, because more constraints generally lead to more creativity in trying to break those constraints down. Composing is the hardest when you have a blank screen and no direction at all (which is why Museday always starts from a single word). The rules I had for this composition:
With these rules in hand, I sat down at the keyboard over the summer of 2000 (which was also my first internship at FGM) and spewed forth several high-capacity jets of crap. The very first fragment I wrote down was this, (100KB MP3), which was far too flippant for anything but a practice room duet. The second fragment I wrote was this, (100KB MP3), which was much cooler, but also felt like a feeble ripoff of the Beatles. However, each fragment helped me shape what the piece would eventually become.
The next part I wrote was the chords under the 8-bar introduction, which starts out with an F# minor 7 going to a D7 and back again. I recall being frustrated and deciding to start in F# minor because band music never starts in F# minor (this was going to be a problem when I eventually decided to get to G minor, but the Circle of Fifths is highly pleasurable).
By the time school was about to start again, I still only had about 16 bars of music. After playing it for Paige though, she remarked that it sounded like a bunch of psycho clowns, which immediately clarified my approach to the piece. I finished the remainder in a whirlwind of focus, and used Paige's spaghettio font on the final title, Clown Facades.
Below is a link to an MP3 recording of the piece as performed by a computer (computers are way better at maintaining a tempo than humans). Give a listen, and read some of my podcast style thoughts as the recording plays:
Clown Facades (3MB MP3)0:14 | This is the original theme that Paige equated with clowns. |
0:30 | At this point, I realized that I wanted to be in G minor. |
0:40 | Mission accomplished. |
0:47 | Listening to this now, it sounds like I was going to compose about a bull fight. |
1:00 | We're in D minor now. Why did I try so hard to get to G? This section is based on the 2nd fragment that was Beatles-like. I was very much in a "I'll insert jazz ironically in all my compositions" stage, and also wanted to see if I could put 12-bar blues in a serious piece and not have anyone notice. |
1:16 | I wanted a very clean jazz. The score actually says "like Gershwin, not Ellington". |
1:41 | I really like the juxtaposition of a 2-meter vs. a 3-meter here. Clowns would mix it up, and so should I. |
2:05 | This section was originally just long enough to allow the performers to switch instruments, but I really got into writing the piano imitation. |
2:32 | The score says "Like a hurdy-gurdy winding down..." |
2:46 | This section gives the piano a rest, but is also intentionally simple and low to give the low brass performers a few notes to warm up their cold instruments. I'm clever like a lever with a C on it. |
3:18 | Okay, they're warmed up. Let's dick around. |
3:47 | This section hearkens back to the first fragment, and I wanted it to feel like a satire of a technical study. Jay Crone nailed it when he said to "play it more like an Arban ?tude from Hell" during a rehearsal. I didn't prompt him at all. |
4:10 | It's starting to get out of control... |
4:24 | Once I get in 3/4 time, all my pieces sound the same. |
5:04 | I felt like the only way to end the piece would be to reprise the introduction, but in parody. |
5:19 | I have no idea how we ended up in Eb major, but I think this was a perfect ending -- it closed the piece emphatically, but left enough tension in the air to ring in the rest of the recital. |
What do you think about Composing Spotlight day? Boring? Fascinating? Should it return? Let me know! We can always use new ___ Days at the URI! Zone.
Roman Ruins a Haven for Cats
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It was around September of 1988 when I decided I could invent games just as cool as Infocom text-adventure games by drawing mazes on paper, and this was the first one I ever did. I now have a folder of over fifty, a mix of traditional mazes, Infocom box-style maps, and other images, and my fourth grade compatriots would crowd around the lunch table going through my mazes while I directed the action. None of us had ever heard or played Dungeons and Dragons (and to this day, I've still never played it), but I'm guessing it was roughly the same idea, without the numbers and nerd-stigma.
This was one of the score sheets from my lunch games, and the fact that I spelled "shillelagh" correctly means it was probably during the period when I was playing Beyond Zork. Apparently, the reverse of shrinking is "normaling", and tragically, getting the cakes is only worth 1 point. Since the points actually add up to 34, I was either bad at math or there was a secret point.
My scanner conked out before I could scan the rules page for my board game version of the book, Island of the Blue Dolphins, but you can probably get the idea from these excerpts:
OBJECT: Move Karana across the island to where the white men will take her to another island.
Sounds repetitive, with a slight tinge of slavery -- all the aspects of a good board game.
MOVING: Roll the dice and move that amount of spaces. You MUST do yellow squares if you pass or land in them.
SUPPLY CARD: When you take a supply card, keep it until you use it. When you use it, put it under the pile. If all cards are gone, each player must give back 5.
Cards frequently ran out because I got bored while making the deck out of construction paper. Luckily, communism solves everything.
RIVERS: There are two rivers. You can't cross unless 1) you have a canoe and 2) you land on the dock.
BONUS: In bonus rounds, you can get a whole bunch of supply cards or roll alot.
I have no recollection of how you trigger a bonus round, but it probably involved paddling across the river and missing the dock. WHEE.
Twitter dating for tech-savvy singles
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There are no spoilers in this review, although you may not understand many of the words that are coming out of my mouth.
I've been an off-and-on player of World of Warcraft since it launched, way back in 2004. I stopped for a couple years in 2006 when the first expansion pack killed the PvP brackets, started again, and then stopped right before my wedding (unrelated, of course) for what I thought would be the last time. With my 2009 cancellation, I didn't think there would ever be a compelling reason for me to start playing again, and even deleted all of the game files.
So, coming into the third expansion pack, Cataclysm, the only reason I reactivated my account was a sense of nostalgia -- in tandem with its release, a huge overhaul of the "old" worlds was done as well, and it's always fun to go back to familiar places to see what has changed. I was skeptical as to whether the changes would be compelling enough to keep me playing for more than a few weeks, but was surprised to find that I was really enjoying myself again. With this expansion pack, a sense of "fun" has returned to playing, and the experience is polished and tightly focused enough to please ANYONE who might have enjoyed the game at one time but lost interest.
High Points
Low Points
The bottom line is that World of Warcraft now has over 6 years of experience in what works and what doesn't, and the game as it stands today is easily the best game I've played in quite some time. It even stopped my Minecraft addiction. Give it a shot if you've cancelled your account in the past, and take the time to enjoy the leveling up process -- the game is only lame when you're rushing to the end and then find that there's nothing there.
Final Grade: A-
Sarah Palin uses secret Facebook account to praise main accountBooty is a study aid. Look at all of that technology!
Amber turns into a shoe after midnight.
My work schedule should go back to normal after this coming week, resulting in a direct increase in words on this website!
Cops Trolled Driver?s License Database for Pic of Hot Colleague
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On Friday, we had steaks for dinner, since the grill had finally revealed itself underneath the rapidly melting snow.
On Saturday, Rebecca went hiking in the highlands of Loudoun County, while I stayed home and did homework for an online Coursera course about information security strategies. We regrouped in the afternoon and had pulled pork for dinner with my parents, to celebrate my Dad's upcoming birthday. In the evening, we watched the movie, World's End, which, though it was the ending of a trilogy, should not be confused with the unnecessary Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.
On Sunday, I did a little work to short-circuit the week a bit, and watched the movie, Elysium. We then had a whirlwind session of planning out our social calendars for the next two months before taking a nature walk in the melted bogs of Claude Moore Park. For dinner, we ate at The V again, and then returned home for an episode of House of Cards.
How was your weekend?
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Based on readers' topic suggestions
How do we tell computers what to do?
The central processing unit, or CPU, is the brain of any computer. It understands a very basic set of atomic instructions like "add this value to that value" and speaks only in binary -- a neverending series of 0s and 1s. In the early days of computer programming, programmers quickly came to the realization that communicating with the CPU at this level was error-prone and migraine-inducing, like the job of a cop reporting on the high-speed pursuit of a criminal whose license plate is a random mix of capital Is and lowercase Ls.
To remedy this situation, programmers relied on "layers of abstraction", taking chunks of machine code and assembling them together into human-readable instructions just slightly more understandable (called assembly language). Programmers then went up another level to languages like C, which are English-like and compiled into assembly language. Programming languages, then, are like ogres -- they have layers. If this layering concept is still hard to grasp, click on one of the buttons below to get an example in a context you are more familiar with.
This layering of abstractions continued over fifty years until today, where we have high-level languages that are so close to English prose that they sometimes read like poorly-written Twilight fan fiction. The benefit of these layers of abstraction is that a human programmer can write instructions in a language more closely related to the domain he or she is working in. Unfortunately, as languages becomes easier for humans to understand, they become more difficult for the binary-based computers to understand.
Every high-level language is eventually translated down to binary machine code before execution, since the CPU is essentially like a calculator with only 3 buttons. Thankfully, this translation is not a manual process, since a single line of code like System.out.println("Booty");
could end up being hundreds of lines of machine code.
Wouldn't the machine code need to be able to read itself as binary?
No. The machine code is just a dumb set of instructions with no processing smarts of its own. And, the CPU has a small set of instructions hardwired into it, such that there is a one-to-one mapping of every incoming machine code instruction to a CPU instruction. No interpretation or translation is happening when the machine code arrives at the CPU -- it just gets stored and run as-is. The CPU is like the bureaucrat with fifty years experience who knows exactly where to file your paperwork just by the identifying number on the form, not the summer intern who has to look up the form number in a process manual every time he sorts the mail.
Have any more ideas for future BUriversity courses? Suggest them in the comments section!
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BU at multiple data points
I drew this picture thirty years ago at the age of 7.
Excited about a planned trip to San Diego to visit relatives and go to Disneyland but not really knowing what California was actually like, I created this true-to-life representation of the life that Mike and Annie live on a daily basis. Also, there is only one beach stretching the entire length of the coast, called CALIFORNIA BEACH, and all of the houses have push bars on their doors like my elementary school did.
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We now transport you from the little warren under the stairs to the backyard, where a screen porch is emerging from the Loudoun County clay like a triumphant groundhog.
And the conclusion!
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There are no major spoilers in these reviews.
Azul:
We purchased this two player game based on our enjoyment of Patchwork. You compete to get tiles and gain points for deploying those tiles in different patterns. It's fun and easy to pick up in spite of the length of the rulebook, but it never really feels like you're in control of your fate. It feels impossible to plan more than a couple moves ahead, and some portions of the gameboard feel useless other than as a holding pen for discarded tiles. We'll try it a few more times to see if it clicks, but it's not our favourite. (edit: I re-reviewed this game)
Final Grade: C+
The Expanse, Season Five:
The Expanse continues to be a good show, with a good ending and great individual scenes. There are still way too may CGI space shots slowing down the momentum. Season Five splits the main characters into individual stories (possibly related to COVID filming restrictions?) and the strength of each story is uneven. One particular episode featuring one of the actors all alone in space really wore down my patience. Free on Amazon Prime.
Final Grade: B
Animal Crossing: New Horizons:
I was bored by Harvest Moon on N64 and Stardew Valley, so the only reason I bought this game was to have another activity to share with Maia during the cold winter months. This time around though, the problem isn't that I'm bored, the problem is that the game itself is boring. We've played it maybe 5 or 6 times so far and there's so little to do that we eventually just turn it off and do something else. Apparently, everything interesting in the game is behind a real-world time gate, meaning that time has to go by between gaming sessions or you never get to the good stuff. While Maia likes the sound that the NPCs make in the game, this is never a game she wants to watch more of on her own volition. Now, we just play Zelda.
Final Grade: Not Graded
Truth Seekers, Season One:
This is a fun new series from the minds behind the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. Nick Frost stars as a broadband installer by day who runs a paranormal Youtube channel at night. Though it has a little unsettling horror imagery, it stays squarely on the comedy side of the equation with great guest appearances by Simon Pegg and Malcolm MacDowell. Free on Amazon Prime.
Final Grade: A
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There are no major spoilers in these reviews.
The Sandman: A Dream of A Thousand Cats / Calliope:
Marked as "Episode 11" in Season One of The Sandman (which I graded with an A), this is a set of two anthology stories that take place in the same universe as the main plot line. Both are fresh and fun, even if they don't push the main story forward. On Netflix.
Final Grade: B+
Banshees of Inisherin (R):
This movie tells of two friends on a remote Irish island and the fallout that occurs when one wakes up and decides he doesn't want to be friends anymore. The muted premise is buoyed by dry (sometimes black) humour, interesting characters, and nice cinematography of the Irish countryside. I normally think that period movies like this tend to drag, but this one held my interest all the way through.
Final Grade: B
Cunk on Earth:
This five-episode mockumentary about the history of the world is a perfect blend of British, deadpan, and absurd humor. Diane Morgan as Philomena Cunk is a perfect narrator and there are plenty of memorable laughs, like her thoughts on Galileo. On Netflix.
Final Grade: B+
Hustlers (R):
"Strippers reacting to the drying up of business during the 2008 financial crisis" seems more like a Whose Line Is It Anyways? prompt than a movie synopsis but this movie actually pulls it off. It's engaging to watch until the final act, where it seems to peter out without knowing what it's trying to say.
Final Grade: B-
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