Cumquats

Ok time to start blogging again I guess :D I will recount everything that happened in the last 2 months, just to prove how good my memory is.... lol

Piano recital

Ok so the first big thing I ignored so far is that I played a couple songs in a recital April 7th. Sorry I was bad about telling everyone, but I didn't really want you to come anyway lol. Just kidding. So I followed Positive Psych advice and left my "comfort zone." I volunteered to play a piece I wrote, Sonata in C# minor, and the D# minor etude by Scriabin.

So I was really nervous the day of, and I basically went to Harvard at noon and practiced for 6 hours straight haha. But I will say, it was really cool to play a piece that I wrote. I had to concentrate really hard to remember everything, so I couldn't even think about the fact that I was performing, so I really wasn't nervous after the first minute. Yay for not being nervous.

Hmm, well I guess I played my song decently well. The piano is pretty nice, although the keys were a bit sticky (the mechanism and the key surface itself), probably from all the humidity. I was a little disappointed right away that a C# wasn't sounding, but it un-stuck or whatever after a bit.

The Scriabin was a bit trickier. I wasn't expecting a 100% clean performance because that's impossible with this piece, but once (or twice?) my right hand got snagged and a missed a couple notes in the melody. Aww. But I think it still should've been a fun performance, it's not like I bombed it. Things could've been a lot worse with a song this treacherous lol.

I did feel sorta good about my piece because Emily's original works at the recital were highly modern. I don't want to say atonal because they weren't polyphonic, but they were still non-traditional. I think my piece was probably easier to appreciate, although maybe I jarred some people with A-C#-D#-G# :) Also I guess I will mention, at the recital on April 28th a few weeks later, I didn't particularly enjoy the undergrad original pieces, but Nick Vines' Strawberry Girl was quite good.

Afterwards, there was a little get-together with snacks. There were cumquats, and oooh boy were they sour on the inside! Yummy.

Of course no one wanted to talk to me about Scriabin (minus one exception; the girl who played piano for the Brahms in this concert mentioned she had played some Scriabin preludes, but she didn't know which :), but everyone had to say something about my piece lol. I guess it was cool to get some attention. Chief said it was very expressive, which I'll take as a compliment since I really try for expressiveness in my playing :) Catherine said she had no idea I composed. Coach said she liked it. But those are all pretty superficial compliments. Ben da Beaver said he was surprised that I wrote something that I find difficult to play (he could tell by my facial expression hahaha). The girl who played piano in the Brahms that evening said the middle section sounded like rain, which was cool because it was raining outside.

But the biggest compliment of all came from a source I had only associated with housing problems. Joann de House Salvo. I almost forgot our housing headaches with her when she said I "really had some Chopin" in me. :D Then she told me that I should record it and send it to Steven Spielberg to put it in a movie. ^^ When I came back to Boston a few weeks ago, I ran into Joann and she again suggested sending it to a movie dude. Haha. But hey, at least I know she liked it :)

Recordings?

Before I left Boston I recorded several pieces on piano. However, this was 2 weeks after I last played piano, so I was rusty, and had to re-record things several times. Editing the mistakes out is extremely annoying, so I haven't been too quick about it. But I did get one MP3 made, and will have another as soon as I get back to it. It'll be a while, though, before I get my recital piece in an MP3. Haha it would've been so much easier to just practice more first, instead of editing mistakes out...

Also I have to find a place to host them that would be somewhat permanent. My FAS space is gone. Boo. And most free webspace doesn't allow MP3. Some upload places do allow MP3 but tend to not have long-term storage. Whatever.

Writing the piece!

So I guess I should record at least part of the story of how I wrote the piece for the recital. First, I figured something sonata format-ish would be best, because this piece is only going to be heard once, so if I pack too much into it people won't remember it. So a bit of repetition would be good I thought, and would save time writing it, so sonata format would be perfect.

The opening theme was actually something I thought of after knee surgery. I was feeling really crappy so I played a bit on my keyboard. A simple whole-tone melody with some early Scriabiny harmony. The rest of the song I wrote at a grand piano, usually just in spurts. Writing at piano, in retrospect, has a significant advantage and disadvantage compared to writing on computer: the main advantage is that harmonies sound a lot better on a grand piano, but writing on computer makes it easier to do more complicated stuff (since I get to see the music on screen, instead of just imagining it). I think this dichotomy was deeply present in my piece: I tended to stay very close to C# minor (switching keys takes a lot of mental effort), but I also threw in some chords I wouldn't have discovered on computer. So I'm a little disappointed in the lack of key changes in the piece, but it has some "nice ideas" I guess.

Here's what works on a grand piano that I probably wouldn't have found on computer: A-G# at the bottom of the piano (mainly for overtones haha), then a chord of E-G#-A#-D#, then the right hand can do stuff in 4ths, particularly G#-C#-D#-G#. This idea is heavily inspired by late Scriabin.

The "rainy" middle section (I didn't want the whole piece to be dark, so I tried to make a pretty middle section) used melody and rhythms from earlier in the piece, but went to B major (I think this is BY FAR the prettiest key in music). B-F#-C# in the left hand, B-D#-A#/G# in the right, and then a melody (mostly C#-F#-G# stuff) floats on top.

Then to transition back to dark stuff, I stole the awesomest idea ever from a prelude in Bb minor I've been working on. Check this out: F#-C#-G# in the left hand, with the right voicing the A right above; then G-D-A in the left hand with the right voicing the F# in the middle; keep alternating these chords. OMG so awesome!

So anyway that is a little insight into how this piece developed. I guess I should also mention, I had no "final draft" of the piece, and the actual performance was still somewhat improvised. I have no intention of ever making a final draft of the piece, either--I don't think it's sophisticated enough to bother writing down. But I will definitely use some of its ideas in my future compositions.

FCEU

So I spent a ton of time March-April working on an NES emulator. The open-source emulator FCEU (Famicom Emulator Ultra I guess) used by Bisqwit's http://tasvideos.org had a number of requested and unfinished features, which I really wanted, so I installed make and gcc and everything and dug into the code myself! Before I knew it, I was working on the new official version of the emulator. It was really daunting working with two megabytes of uncommented, largely unorganized, very hack-y C code. C++ would have been a MUCH better choice. But anyway, I did some cool stuff with it.

I put the program up on a little webpage at 50webs.com. It was a nice little place to hold this nice little program. Then one day, I try to log in, and 50webs says I violated their terms of service so I lost my account. They shut down the website! After carefully reading their TOS, I see that copyrighted materials are not allowed (duh), including ROMs, EMUs, and MP3s. Now, that's pretty ambiguous, becasue all three of those things (assuming EMU means emulator!) can be uncopyrighted. So does uncopyrighted stuff fall under the category of objects talked about in that sentence? Techincally, that sentence is nonsense, since the "including" word is incorrect. So technically, it can't be an enforceable part of the TOS. Anyway, so they shut down my site for having an emulator. But what really pisses me off, is that this emulator has no copyrighted materials in it! It's GPLed ffs!

I would've thrown a fit if I weren't such a nice guy (haha). But actually it's just easier to upload it somewhere else. Sheesh. Silly people. And that same sentence from the TOS is preventing me from hosting MP3s of myself playing piano...

TAS

I wasn't just doing the emulator programming for fun, but I was making some Tool-Assisted Speedruns with it. Bisqwit recently added a rating feature for movies, and guess which movie is #1? (as of this writing) It's MY EXCITEBIKE VIDEO! Yay. I actually looked at the disassembly of the game to figure out its programming, which allowed me to do some unheard of stunts in the game, and go ridiculously fast. So if you remember this game, you should go there and download the movie.

TFA

Rejected me. Pooh.

Actually I wasn't too happy with the teaching offers I got, and I figured with all the programming I was doing, I should check out programming jobs. So I'm actually doing that right now, and pretty soon I should (hopefully) have some job very soon.

I could go on about what I don't like about TFA--but I think it's ok. I do really like what they do and wish I got a position. So instead, I will go on about Fate. Now you'd think if some higher power or fate were out there, working to better humanity, it would help me get a good service job like TFA, and let me help make the world a better place over these next years between college and family when I'm in no hurry to make money. But no. Instead I turn to computer programming, or even (gasp!) financial stuff. Just something to think about.

Italiano

So one of the last things I did in April was take Jelly (Zheng I'm supposed to call her in public :D) out to a nice restaurant. There's this Italian place, I forget its name but I'm asking Jelly right now. It was SO GOOD! Ok so first, the bring out the bread. Not being a sophisticate, we didn't know that the olive oil was in the green-booger-looking bottle. But we see another guy pour the stuff on his plate, and oh!, the green stuff is spices and whatever. So once we got that down, the bread was super good. Haha.

Ordering was an interesting trick. So the menu lists two prices after the salads, small and large. After some entrees, there are also two prices. So you'd think those were for large and small variants. But no, it's for the different meat choices. Haha. The waitress set us straight, though, after explaining that we're not the only ones confused by it :D

Anyway, we both get veal--I get it on spaghetti, she gets it on rice. Mmmm I love veal (and pretty much any really expensive meat lol). The spaghetti noodles were super thick and super yummy. And we got a refill of our bread (I LOVE BREAD) so I totally stuffed myself and it was SO GOOD.

Now, you can't do a fancy restaurant without a fancy dessert. So after asking the waitress to recite the dessert menu 5 times, we eventually picked out this lemon cream pie stuff? Anyway it was really good, too.

I was so full!

Booyah.

Home again

End of April, it was time to go back home. I was busy packing and stuffs so didn't have time to do a proper going-away party. But I went to Harvard and did some par-taying with Marion and all, and there was even some Absinth drunk. Yay.

My brother got home just before I did (his school ends really early!) so we got to play a bunch of games together when I wasn't job hunting or mathing. When I was doing other stuff, he still played games :P I even played a few games of DotA this month with the old crew haha.

Haha, and then funnily enough, shortly after I got back home, I get an interview near Boston for programming. Yay. So I had a quick 1 day 2 nights visit, said hi to Marion while everyone else was busy with finals, and chilled with Jelly. Interview went well, I thought; the programming/math/logic stuff I all knew except for a question the boss said I probably wouldn't get: what are the 4 things that distinguish OOP from 3PL? I got encapsulation, data abstraction, and inheritance, but missed polymorphism. Which wasn't bad, considering I had no clue. But they haven't made me an offer yet, so I'm assuming they asked someone else.

My sister was home for a little bit, and the three of us kids played a bunch of Quake 2 CTF together. Ah, good times. That is a really fun game.

Also being home is cool cuz my Grandma lives nearby, and she's really cool. Ooh, and we went out to some expensive restaurants: first, Hubble House, a super old building. It had steak, burgers, and shrimp type entrees (good luck finding anything ethnic in this part of the country!). For being so expensive, the food wasn't that great. I thought it was too salty. (But I don't like salt, compared to most people.) Anyway, in sharp contrast, we also went a couple times to a restaurant called Daniel's. Same sort of menu--steak, burgers, shrimp, chicken, salads--but a million times better. Yippie. Everything is homemade apparently. I got the appetizer of buffalo wings (my favorite food IN THE WHOLE WORLD, as ya'll probably know), and fearing that 12 wings isn't enough, also a chicken salad. Both were really good. I was told that the wings were super duper hot, but that was a lie. They were pretty normal buffalo spicey--hot but still edible. What surprised me was that they were huge--these aren't the mini buffalo wings from the midget chickens that you normally get, these were thick and delicious hunks of meat. So I could only eat 9! And half my salad. But that was really good, and I hope we go back. My dad likes to go because they have really good ribs.

X3

While at home, we tend to watch quite a few movies because my dad gets Netflix. I'm not a big movie guy, usually 1-2 a week is good for me. I saw Chronicles of Narnia, thought it was ok but not great. Way too overtly Christian I thought. But it was funny how much I totally forgot the books (I read all 7 when I was a kid).

Also we saw King Kong by Peter Jackson. Very intense movie. I never saw the original (shouldn't be too surprising haha), so I dunno how this story compares. But I thought the plot was ok, if not compelling. I would give this movie two thumbs up, however, just because it's very edge-of-your-seat all the way through. So if you like lots of life-or-death action, it's a good movie.

X-Men 3 came out Memorial weekend, so we went and saw it. We = me, dad, brother. I was worried that the critics were saying it lacked character development that made the other movies so good, and that the director is different. Well, I still enjoyed the movie quite a bit. True, the character development and story weren't as compelling. They could've done SO much more with Angel, Beast, and Jean Grey, it hurts to think how frickin awesome it'd be. Instead, there was a lot of action, and a lot of good guys died. I was very disheartened to have my favorite X-men destroyed (no spoiler), but apparently after the credits there is a hint that he/she returns. At least they OBVIOUSLY will have to make a sequel, no matter how much my brother claims this was the last.

Splitting infinitives

Ok so a while ago I remember having a short conversation with a certain person about non-rules such as don't split an infinitive and don't end a sentence with a preposition. Wondering whether I was right about these being non-rules (my mom often told me that, and she's pretty smart at this stuff so I generally believe her), I checked out wikipedia. I encourage ya'll to read it yourself. Splitting infinitives is DEFINITELY not an error. In fact, some sentences require it. However if you have a lot of adverbs, you shouldn't. Anyway, the whole thing is just that some tard who thinks English is based on Latin made up some rules about it.

Ending sentences with prepositions is more interesting. It's not really a rule, but you could make a decent grammar argument for not doing it. But sometimes I guess prepositions actually should be considered adverbs, and then it's ok. Like, you can end a sentence with "put up" since "up" changes the meaning of "put". So that was interesting.

Anyway, just so ya'll know, I really hate these anal rules, which wikipedia informs me are known as "hypercorrections."

Chinese

I've been trying to learn Chinese sounds. It was really interesting, since I basically had to look stuff up in the linguists sounds tables or whatever. I had no idea there were so many different ways to make a "sh" sound. Haha. However, even trickier than non-English sounds, is learning tones. Well, it's easy enough to remember them, but it takes some practice to pronounce them! Haha I must sound so silly in Chinese.

Hot hot HOT

Memorial weekend, the Minnesotan weather bursts the thermometers with 90 degree temps. (We have hot summers, not just cold winters!) And we find out, our AC is broken! Aww! Sweaty days... At least it cooled off the last couple days. Soon it will be replaced.

Go

Ok, I think I might have blogged about this before. This game is sweet. I have done a bunch of reading about computer Go and started some projects on it. I think I will have some interesting discoveries. Already I have figured out the Graph History Interaction problem for Super Ko rules. I haven't read anything about this in the literature, which is surprising, since this general solution is so similar to a solution I read for the pn-search algorithm. Anyway, who knows, maybe I will get something published :) The GHI solution should make me able to use the Super Ko rules without the (often 1000x) slowdown it normally causes. I am hoping to also develop local search techniques that would enable me to solve 6x6 Go with a computer (5x5 is the biggest solved, 4x4 is the biggest solved with Super Ko). Currently I am doing 1xN Go, which although it's a strange board shape, is a very very very interesting and difficult problem!

Also I joined an internet Go server. I have finally been grasping the basics of the game, and I no longer play like a beginner. Now I can beat beginners easily lol. However I am still a bit below the best computers. So I will guess I am around 20 kyu right now; comptuers play around 13 kyu. Soon I should get a rating on the server, and I will see how accurate my guess is haha. I won my first game against a human, but it was unrated. (Kyu is a measurement how many stones behind you are from an opponent. So if 20 kyu played a 15 kyu, the 20 kyu would get 5 free moves to begin. 10k-1k is an intermediate, better than 1k is advanced and then the rating system changes.)

Here is what I so far have achieved in 1xN Go. This was solved using an alpha-beta search on my computer. These aren't guaranteed to be correct (well I'm 99% sure they're right, but it's not a proof), since on 1x8 I couldn't search too deep. Once I program a transposition table (using my GHI solution!) I should be able to solve these exactly, and even go on to 1x16 and larger. Then I will test local search techniques, and I should be able to do 1xN for any N. Then I will move on to NxM boards I hope :)

      Beginning move
     Pass  1  2  3  4
1x1   -1  +1
1x2    0  -2
1x3   -3  -3 +3
1x4   -4  -4 +4
1x5    0  -5  0  0
1x6   -1  -6 +1 -1
1x7   -2  -7 +2 -2 +2
1x8   -3  -3 +3 -1 +1

David is so silly!

David went back to Breckenridge on Tuesday. His plan is to stay at his girlfriend's while he does graduation and lifeguard stuff. Then we find out, he actually doesn't even have permission to stay there for the summer. So he actually lied about his housing. So he's looking for it right now. Why he lied is a huge mystery. Maybe he will have to come back home after graduation. Weird. Hrmf. My sister actually heard from her barber (hey in small towns, everyone knows everyone else) that David's girlfriend's parents weren't offering him summer housing, but then he lied that they were. Why?? Man what a weird thing to happen. So naturally Dad's mad now. And I'm confused.

My Personality

Oh, almost forgot about this. The job I interviewed in Boston for gave me an online personality test. Here's the results, which I think are RIDICULOUSLY ACCURATE:

Luke is a thoughtful, disciplined person who is particularly attentive to, careful of, and accurate with the details involved in his job. He identifies problems, and enjoys solving them, particularly within his area of expertise. He works at a steady, even pace, leveraging his background for the betterment of the team, company, or customer.

With experience or training, Luke will develop a high level of specialized expertise. He is serious and dedicated to his job and the company. His work pace is steady and even-keeled, and he is motivated by a real concern for getting work done thoroughly and correctly. His discipline and circumspect thinking will lend to caution to his decision-making; he plans ahead, double checks, and follows up carefully on his decisions and actions.

A modest and unassuming person, Luke works autonomously in his area of expertise. When working outside of his expertise, his drive is to seek specialized knowledge by finding definitive answers from written resources, authortative management, or established subject-matter experts. He is most effective and productive when he works within or close to his own specialty and experience, and he prefers to stick to the proven way. If it becomes necessary for him to inititiate or adopt change, he will need to see cold, hard, evidence to prove that the new way is proven, complete, and yields high-quality results. In addition, Luke will carefully plan the implementation to minimize problems and maximize results.

Directions

Here's a little anecdote that I thought was cool. One day while I was in Cambridge, walking to dinner, some truck driver dude asks me how to get to Auburn Street. Now, there are like 20 streets between me and Mass Ave, but I knew Auburn Street was one of them. So I told him, you should go a few blocks north and you'll see it eventually.

I'm walking to dinner, going up Pearl Street, and just before Mass Ave gets into view, I see Auburn street and then feel good that I gave more or less correct directions (haha). Haha, then when I get up to the street--the truck driver dude pulls up to the intersection I'm crossing! So I wave and he waves. For some reason I thought that was cool.

Actually later that same night, as I was walking to Harvard along Memorial Drive, some guy had a flate tire or something and was working on his car. So I asked if I could help with anything. He says it's cool, he has a cell phone and called his friend or whatever. Anyway, this has no point to it, but it did make me think, how important it is to help people out. Not just doing programs like TFA, but everyday stuff like, can I help you out with your physics homework, or can I help you move your stuff out before Harvard fines you (thanks Marion), and all the everyday stuff that makes the world a happy place! Haha.

Thanks for reading this LONG blog entry.