Еще раз, еще раз, я для вас звезда...

I went out onto the quad with my quartet on Saturday after a small performance, and we just sang for no one in particular. Got a few people to stop and watch, but it was mostly just people applauding in the distance as they walked away. It was about 65°F out that night, at about 11PM; you could almost believe that fall was beginning instead of ending.

Sunday I went to the Concert Choir's fall concert, which was fantastic. I think I will be going to Hawaii with them over winter break, if I can afford it.

Other things that have happened recently were: French movie night at Женя's place (hadn't seen her in years!), BRAY Halloween 2005 (no costume this year), and a quartet gig at the Concert Choir's fundraiser (went well; saw people). Each of these was fun in its own way. Three almost entirely disjoint groups of friends, which should be almost impossible in C-U, right?

Logic offers no defence / Underneath this influence

Well, thethophe tagged me with this "list five songs" meme, so I guess I'd better deal with it. I don't think I have five people to pass it on to, though. I'm not really one for listening to random tracks, as opposed to full albums, so it's a bit awkward trying to pick out particular songs. Do I like the song itself, or do I like it in the context of the album? I tried to pick songs from a few different genres instead of, for example, just listing five tracks by Broadcast. (Note to disconnector: I did get an iTMS account, and I will probably be investing in some Hot Chip soon; ome new stuff from Broadcast and Boards of Canada took precedence.)

Broadcast — Pendulum

This song makes it okay to be frustrated and introspective.

Simon Frasier University Pipe Band — Slow Air and Reels

Now I know why bagpipes were used in war. Extra credit for playing notes outside the mixolydian scale they're supposed to be restricted to.

Four Voices — The One I Love

Too easy to identify with and has a great bass part, which Jayson VanHook sings flawlessly.

Arvo Pärt — Magnificat

One we did in Concert Choir. Astonishingly minimalistic and incisive. Reminds me of the people I was surrounded by at the time.

Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon — Clone

I'm sick of all this damned serious music.

The hair is growing back. I think very soon now I will need an actual haircut performed by a trained professional. Whoever gets tasked with this will have to deal with the cowlicks.

I went up to Celtic Fest a while back (thanks to thetophe) and got some photos of the festivities, as well as some generic Chicago photos. Shortly after I got back, I did a lot of work on my photo gallery, so hopefully it will be a slightly more pleasant experience now. The updates module and Google photo map in particular took a lot of effort. One of the Gallery2 developers asked if I would be interested in joining the development team, based on the work I had done on those modules; I am still trying to decide whether or not I have the time.

I am still singing with my quartet. We have yet to find a new bass, though contest is still quite a ways off. We haven't had any official performances with the new tenor yet, but we do have these hideous new shirts. There may be a performance soon, but if you want to hear us, the best place to look is outside the Music Building around 5PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. C-U clearly needs more street-corner musicians; people are clearly very appreciative when the quartet practices outside. By the way, the chorus came in a surprising sixth at district, once place better than last year. Also on the topic of music, I have been playing my bagpipes a bit, after realizing I can hook the practice chanter up to the bag. It's frustrating, but at least not demotivating.

I suppose that's about it. My life has been largely consumed by work lately. Among other things, I have done portrait photos for all of the grad students and undergrad seniors in Animal Sciences. They're a photogenic bunch, but it still takes a lot of time to go through hundreds of photos and do all the little things that need to be done to make it look professional. I suppose it's something to put on a resume, at least.

I don't anything / I don't know who to be

I spontaneously decided to shave my head last night. No, I wasn't drunk. I have tried to find some motivation for having done it, but I haven't found anything convincing. My head does radiate heat a lot more efficiently now, though, and that's a good thing this time of year. Below is a truly hideous collage of the process. It took about two hours (or however long Rushmore is, which I was watching or listening to).

To get that disturbing image out of your head, here is a photo I took of a stag beetle that I found. I will probably submit it or something similar to this week's Farktography contest.

If that is also not something you want to look at, here is a photo of the ACES Library near where I work. The colors really did come out just about that poorly since I didn't bother trying to white balance properly.

Not a lot of news to report. My quartet came in 18th out of 22 at the international competition in Salt Lake City a couple of weeks ago. Quite disappointing, but in retrospect, our hopes for a top-ten finish were rather unreasonable. It was a great experience, in any case. The venue we sang in seats 21,000, and there were around two or three thousand there for the collegiate competition. It was also webcast, which is sort of cool. These are some photos from the collegiate competition, and this page and the next have some photos of my quartet. Hilarious!

Oh, and I took some Joseph's wedding, for those of you who know him. I had a great time out in California. I spent quite a bit of time driving around the California countryside with Chris Lamb in the car we rented. It's a beautiful place...

I don't care / to give enough

I'll get this meme from jra1279 out of the way first. The topic is "books". I have this very old and out-dated reading list that I really should update.

I don't have much else to say, so I'm just going to jump around to random pieces of information. I have tickets now for both my trip to Joseph's wedding and to the International Barbershop Convention to compete with my quartet. I may also be going out to Old Forge late in the summer, if time permits. I will hopefully be having a large-ish bonfire in the next couple of weeks; details should emerge soon. I have my photo updates sort of working again, if you're interested. Even if you're not interested, I'm still going to chew up some bandwidth and post some photos below. I guess I should at least put them behind a cut, though...

That's all for now. Communication is very difficult.

Can't see what you're missing / Spinning like a top

There'll be no more sorrow, there'll be no tomorrow / when I bid farewell to my every care

The Barbershop Harmony Society's Illinois District Convention was last weekend in Peoria. The day of the collegiate competition started out poorly for me, with my car refusing to start. I hitched a ride with my quartet's lead, and eventually the whole quartet ended up in Peoria about an hour and a half before we had to sing. We warmed up a bit, time flew, and we were on stage. Our first song (poor recording, but you'll get the idea) went quite well. I got a little nervous and short of breath for a while, but it went away once I got into it. We ended very strongly, and the crowd went wild (relatively speaking). The second song (also poor quality) went rather less well, but still went over well with the audience.

Our competition from Northwestern and roosevelt, Out of the Loop, was very talented. I hear their tenor was in the quartet that got second at the international collegiate competition last year. They bounded onto the stage and began to sing, and my heart sunk. Their singing was lively, accurate, and well-blended. After they sung, I watched a few of the adult quartets, then left to take a walk around the block. I needed some time to let my hopes sink sufficiently low. I got back in time to hear Alchemy (the best of the evening) sing. Immediately afterward, all of the quartets were called back stage to get ready for the awards.

After what seemed to be an excessive amount of waiting, the two college quartets were called out on stage. "The quartet coming in first place, representing...". My heart was pounding despite my mental preparation for eventual disappointment.

Moving along, I finally got a chance to take some photos with the new lens we got at work. You can see some of them in my gallery. This one is my favorite; I'm not sure why. On the topic of "art", I am really digging Inkscape. I made this tracing of my brother's car.

I get so lost and don't know how / It hurts to care, I'm going down.

jra1279

1. Won an auto racing event in a Saturn.
2. Given an autograph after a performance.
3. Been broadcast on local television on Christmas morning.
4. Had a photograph published in a newspaper.
5. Written fractal generators in a dozen programming languages.
6. Driven a motorcycle at 126mph without a license.
7. Made out on top of a ten-foot-tall pile of gravel.
8. Spent an hour peeling an orange.
9. Written bad poetry in Russian.
10. Gotten a discount at Steak & Shake for singing.

My whole world is comin' apart and fallin' in on me / and I guess deep down I know the reason why.

Mandelbrot Generators

Lots of programs I've written, complete with many pretty pictures.

Pente / PickleMatrix

An AI for a game, which happens to be pretty good (Java applet), with some less pretty pictures.

BFG Spatial Simulator

A fire simulator for a firefighting training game, with pretty pictures and animations

Wikipedia Contributions

A limitless supply of articles that need grammatical help, which I should not be finding the time to provide. I have some pretty pictures here, too.

Del.icio.us Sidebar

My only real contribution to Open Source so far; see del.icio.us. No pretty pictures.

My New Photo Gallery

This is all about pretty pictures. It's still under development, but there's some neat stuff in the Russia Tour gallery and the Ice Storm gallery. A couple of new favorite photos.

This is an almost totally random list of quantifiable outcomes from the past year. Many are approximations, but all are pretty accurate, I believe.

Interestingly and depressingly, the numbers seem to vaguely represent where my priorities were. I should not be surprised, I suppose. There were plenty more negative things I could have quantified here (number of degrees earned (zero), concerts attended (very few), etc.), but that would be (more) boring to read. I think the negative ones I listed are representative, in any case.

Anyway, happy new year to everyone out there, and a special thanks to lmwalker for the Jamie Cullum CD I was listening to during this, which is wonderful and chock full of relevant lyrics. It's a good "end of the year" reflection and introspection CD, if you're the kind of person whose thoughts move more easily in the presence of music.

A walk could cure most all my blues / bare feet or in my two shoes

One last thing about my life as a barbershopper for the time being. The Illinois District newsletter had this to say, regarding the Spring Convention I mentioned a while ago: "Surprise of the afternoon was Champaign-Urbana, directed by Lee Reifsteck. Though the chorus was the smallest in the field, with only 14 men on stage, they sang with power, precision, and presence to earn second place." Despite such positive feedback, people actually wanting to stay after rehearsal to sing, and better rehearsal attendence, some naysayers in our chapter believe that the formation of the audition-only Performing Chorus was a bad move. I will be going to the board meeting this week to make sure my feelings are known. Oh yeah, and I have the chorus photo from the Spring Contest.

Anyway, I went home for Easter today. I ended up with sort of a photographic journal of it. I took a bunch of pictures of nice vernal things, then my family took the dogs to the lake. My brother and I drove home on roads that appeared to be totally impassable: foot-deep ruts, huge pits of mud, several inches of water, "no tresspassing" signs. There was a "you had to be there" moment as we pulled out of this treacherous area, when a minivan started down the road we'd been on, looked at the mud caked on our car, turned around, and headed back the way it had come. After we got home, we had dinner and played with the juicer, which I have devoted an entire page to for some reason.

One last random note: the Concert Choir is singing for Beckman Institute's Thursdays at Twelve Twenty concert series. What exactly we're singing, I don't know. It turns out we're not singing the Stravinsky again for our Spring concert. I am disappointed, though I knew it was not likely to happen.

But on a motorbike, when all the city lights blind your eyes tonight / are you feeling better now?

The Percussion Ensemble concert was Friday night. The choir members got performer passes, so we got to see Ballet Mechanique and the two Frank Zappa pieces. The Antheil was interesting, but I could only really enjoy it at an intellectual level. There was too much going on in it for me to feel any particular way about it as it went by. The Zappa pieces had a similar level of complexity but had the identifiable motifs that seem to be the key to making a piece of music captivating to me. It took me a long time to see all the patterns and repetitions in Les Noces, and once I recognized them, the music suddenly became very natural and enjoyable. No small feat for a piece with no tonal center and no consistent downbeats! Our performance of the piece probably had a little bit less tonality and a little more inconsistent beats than intended, but I think we did a decent job. I'm very curious what the recording will sound like. There's talk of doing the piece again for the Concert Choir's spring concert (April 25th), since we're going to have trouble getting a full program worth of music prepared in what time is left. I think I may be the only person in the choir who's really interested in doing it again, though.

The "No More Stravinsky" choir party afterward was a blast. Not that I really did much. I did manage to talk to a few people to whom I had not talked before — a rare experience. I got some compliments on my solo, but they were no match for my super-power of immunity to compliments. I tried to accept them gracefully, nonetheless. Anyway, I drank an awful lot and watched people interact, which is pretty much all I'm capable of doing at parties.

On a totally different topic, I got to ride my brother's bike again today. (I know I took pictures at some point, but now I can't find them. Something like this.) Sweet Jesus, that thing is fast. The first time I rode it, a month or so ago, it was limited to 6,000 RPM, since it was still in its break-in period, and I never got it out of first gear. It goes up to 12,000 RPM and has six gears. This time I found out what a difference those numbers made. This bike produces 160 horsepower (60% more than my car) and weighs 370 pounds (16% of my car's weight). It was nowhere near its top speed when I let off the throttle at 126 MPH. You can feel the wind pushing your helmet back against your face. It doesn't bother you, though, because you have better things to worry about when you're in that situation.

Back to reality, I have gotten the network code working for the sound engine that Pedro and I have been developing for the BFG project. That's all I had hoped to get done tonight, so I'm going to call it quits. I have so much to get done tomorrow for work.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I saw the video of our performance at the barbershop contest. It wasn't completely terrible; we sounded better at Krannert but had much more stage presence at contest. I'll try to put it up on my website somewhere, if I can get it down to a reasonable size.

[	Output	|	pessimistic	]
[	Input	|	Choir of King's College — Rachmaninov Vespers	]

распятие бо претерпев / смертию смерть разруши

The Illinois District barbershop contest last weekend was fun. This is quite a departure from previous years. Several months ago, in light of some pretty dismal performances, we decided to form a "performing chorus" in addition to the regular chapter chorus. It would be by audition only, and would presumably operate at a higher level musically than the whole group would be capable of. It seems to have worked out well. We managed to come in second out of around eleven choruses that competed. (Mind you, this is just a qualifier for the Fall contest, and the top ten choruses in the district don't compete in this qualifying round. So we're basically twelfth out of some 36 choruses in Illinois.)

It was the first time in a long time that I've really had fun on stage with the group. Our director decided — inexplicably — to put me in the front row, just left of center. So I was very noticeable, even apart from the fact that I'm younger than most of the members by some 20 or 30 years. I'd been there long enough that I was pretty comfortable with it. It just seemed odd, since I don't have a lot of stage presence these days. It had an interesting and surely unintentional side effect: lots of people from the audience came up to me afterward to tell me what a great job our chorus had done. I think we really amazed some people with how much sound our tiny little chorus could put out. (A good chorus will have somewhere from three to ten times as many people on stage as we did!) Thursday I'll get to see the video tape of the performance and wince at how bad I look on stage.

Next up: Stravinsky!

[	Output	|	confused	]
[	Input	|	Meat Puppets — Evil Love	]

Who'll tend the trees and what's in between / The sky above is aglow with evil love

I just got back from Barbershop rehearsal. Contest is this Saturday. We will have a mere thirteen people on stage — one more than the absolute minimum the rules require. That said, we're sounding quite good. I have hope we'll score in the top five (of about eleven), which is the cut-off for not having to compete in the fall.

Also on the topic of music, the Stravinsky performance is coming up. That will be Friday, April 2nd. The UIUC Concert Choir will be performing Les Noces with the Percussion Ensemble. I have a short solo as the basso profundo Groom. (Actually, it's a duet with another bass, but close enough.) Also on the program that night is Ballet Mechanique, which I missed a few years ago and which I am very curious to hear.

Further in the future is the Concert Choir's spring concert on April 25th or something like that. We've been working so much on the Stravinsky that I'm worried we won't have our act together for our own concert. We've pulled off some surprising feats thought, like singing Mozart's Vesperae solennes de Confessore after having not a single complete run-through.

Also on the topic of music, I've been working pretty hard on the music software for this BFG project. It's the kind of thing I could do for a living, only I'd prefer to not be doing it in the context of a game. Basically, we have a musical score that has to respond to events in the game. I'm not going to write more about it because I've been thinking to much about it the last week or so.

Lastly, and also on the topic of music, I had a chance to play Karaoke Revolution last weekend. This is not something I would ordinarily do. But these were not ordinary circumstances. More specifically, I had had a lot to drink. Anyway, it was a blast. I wasn't too terrible. You have to imagine me singing "Broken Wings", "When a Man Loves a Woman", and "Power of Love". Truly bizarre.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'm going to go ride home. Oh, that reminds me: pictures from the work camera and from New Haven. I've taken practically no photos in the last two months. Depressing.</a>

Looking backwards through the glass / I think I missed the point

Yesterday (Saturday) was another interesting incursion into jra1279's social life here in New Haven. I don't remember what happened during the day. We just bummed around the apartment; me getting work done, and Julia doing those graduate student things she does. Not that I am intentionally distinguishing that from "work", of course. I mean only to imply that I have been able to accomplish specific tasks for which I will be paid through the job I hold. We went out at some point into the blistering cold to visit a library. The breathtaking architecture was marred only by the vast expanses of card catalogs. Come on, now. Buy some computers for the poor library already. It was too bitingly cold for me to feel like dragging my camera out and photographing, so I didn't. It was the kind of cold that immediately informs you of which bits of naked flesh are exposed to the air, and then painfully penetrates your skin to sap every last calorie of heat out of your body.

After recovering from the cold, people gathered at Julia's place to watch the truly captivating Spice World. I won't detail the manifold failings of this movie, but two things made it worthwhile. Three, if you count the good company. The first was watching George Wendt ("Norm" from Cheers) rock out like a bowl of hairy pudding on a foot massager. The second you would probably have to see for yourself. You know the clichéd spinning newspaper with astonishing headline bit? Well, they did that as a segue to some guy hitting his TV to make the newspaper stop spinning. It was brilliant and exemplified perfect comic timing, undoubtedly by complete accident.

The next stop on my tour of Julia's social scene was a party that same night hosted by some biologists. I'm sure these biologists are great people, but I don't know any of them well enough to refer to them as anything other than "some biologists". One reason I suspect that they're good people is that they throw a good party. I must say, I was reluctant to put myself in a situation where I know absolutely no one. I could see this turning into an evening of me hanging onto Julia's elbow the whole night while she's trying to have fun. Somehow it didn't turn out that way. I did spend most of my time there close to her, but I was miraculously capable of participating in the conversations around me. I also had quite a bit to drink; I'm sure that helped.

Today (Sunday) has been tame and relaxed. I've gotten quite a bit of work done, which is a necessary condition for me feeling at all relaxed. We drove around randomly for a while. Up to East Rock Park. Around campus. Out to Hamden. Nothing very remarkable, really, but it gave me a better feel for the demography and topography of the area. If you never left downtown New Haven, you would have a profoundly inaccurate impression of what the area is like. Anyway, the Simpsons is starting, so I need to go. I'll try to get photos onto my computer soon.

The shadows fall and once again you're in my arms

I'm sitting in jra1279's dining room. We made a random stir-fry with rice noodles that was very good. By "we made", I mean "Julia made and I washed dishes", which is pretty much all I'm good for. I've found enough time here to actually organize the pictures I took last weekend, instead of just throwing them in a random directory. Not much there, though, really. I took some photos on the flight out here but didn't bring cables to get them off of my camera. I don't really need to be absorbed in that while I'm here, anyway. If anything, I should be getting actual work done, now that I've established my VPN to the UIUC network. So far, all I've used it for is downloading music from my work computer. Another formidable task ahead of me is completing my revision of the transliteration of Stravinsky's Les Noces that my choir director did.

Anyway, I'm enjoying New Haven so far. It's a beautiful place. Reminds me a lot of the brief time I spent in Boston visiting a friend. We haven't done too much yet, but it's nice to just lounge around for a bit, especially when it's so bitterly cold outside. We went to the Grad Bar (there's some acronym that I will not get right if I try to reproduce it), and I got to meet some of the wonderful people that Julia has told me so much about. I had a great time, and it gave me some hope that I might fit in here, even if it's a bit intimidating being surrounded by all these graduate students. I guess we're heading out soon to hang out with some of Julia's departmental friends...

The cracks and lines from where you gave up / They make an easy man to read

I have more or less adapted the job search site that I've been working on to host multiple job searches simultaneously. There were quite a few people who were very happy with it, and a couple of them contacted us about using the same system for their job searches. Anyway, that was the big thing I needed to get done before I head out east to visit jra1279. I have also managed to clean my apartment to some extent, so that I have something decent to come home to. And I put some delicious 5W-30 oil into my car, so hopefully I will be able to get home from the airport when I get back.

I visited relatives up in Chicago last weekend. It was fun, but I was pretty burnt out from my work schedule in the days leading up to it. I have four cousins attending UIUC now, and more probably on the way. Anyway, I drove up with my brother in his WRX after his plans to ride his motorcycle up fell through. It was nice having that car, since his all-wheel drive and snow tires handled the four inches of snow we got while up there better than the one-wheel drive and race tires of my car. We went around and did doughnuts in the snow on our way down to visit lmwalker. The drive home was uneventful, though I did take a lot of pictures of cars that had gone off the road. I don't have time to get photos up tonight, so all the pictures I took last weekend will have to wait.

Anyway, I'm excited about getting to see Julia. I need to go home and sleep so that I won't be completely wiped-out tomorrow.

Random observation: 2003 is a prime number.

For the first time in two or three years I actually went out and did something for New Year's. Previously, I would sit on my doorstep, listening to music, drinking a large glass of nicely chilled vodka, and get destructively depressed. So really, anything would have been an improvement. This time, I went to a small party with a group of friends that I don't spend nearly as much time with as I should. The party itself was enjoyable but rather unremarkable.

We decided to go out carousing just as the bars were closing in hopes of having some people to mingle with. As it turned out, practically the only people on campus were the Intervarsity Jesus-people who have invaded the town. So there were enough people around that it was fun, but it died down pretty quickly. I'm sure I could describe the whole event in more detail, but it's not clear to me that there is much demand for that. I'm sure some of the people I was with have journals here, but I don't know their usernames.

Moving along, I'm heading up to Chicago on Saturday to visit relatives. My brother is going to try to ride his motorcycle out here from Springfield before we head north, having never ridden it before. Assuming he makes it into town alive, we'll be driving up together (not on the bike, rather in my car. He bought this Suzuki GSXR 1000, having never ridden a motorcycle before in his life. My parents were so worried about this that my dad bought my mom a motorcycle for Christmas, partly so that my brother could have something reasonable to start out on. It's like putting somebody who's never ridden in a car before into the driver's seat of a Lamborghini. Not a good beginner's vehicle, really.

Lastly, I learned a new word today: hellbox. That's going on the list.

I wanted to know you / Before you started to fade

I've finished getting photos from last week up onto my website. My favorite, and a good candidate for my collection of decent raw photos is of the sunset on the 25^th. Now I should get back to work, since playing with my website is not actually going to generate any income.

Two interesting issues have come up in the news. First, Ohio is giving people convicted of drunk driving special license plates until their normal driving privileges are restored. Sounds like being punished twice for the same crime. Second, a bar in New York has received a waiver exempting them from complying with no-smoking laws, as it has hurt their business. Perhaps this is a first step toward getting such laws struck down. I'd provide links to the news items, but I'm lazy and Google News is your friend.