Tom O'Malley-Finkel-Harris-Smith
Ever wonder what will happen when all the people with hyphenated last names start having grandchildren? Alaskan musician Lou Nathanson has an answer on his CD, Genetically Enhanced.
Updates on my life
Graduate school
I'm the TA for a discrete mathematics class. My responsibilities include running a Monday discussion, holding an office hour, and grading tests. I've led one discussion so far, and it wasn't as hard as I expected. One student even commented that I seemed to be prepared (hah!). In addition to TAing, I'm taking an undergrad class in cryptography and a graduate class in computability and complexity.
Overall, I'm not enjoying graduate school. I don't have many friends here, classes aren't particularly interesting, and I don't know what I'm going to research. I enjoy thinking about the computational complexity of puzzles and games, but that doesn't mean computational complexity research is for me. I'm interested in what it takes to write secure software and design secure user interfaces, but I don't know if those are real research areas.
Music
I'm no longer listening to Claremont Shades, USC Sirens, Blackmore's Night, Sting, Sixpence, Alanis, No Doubt, Vienna Teng, or Máire Brennan continuously. Instead, I'm listening to Evanescence - Fallen (mostly Bring me to Life, Whisper, and Imaginary), Joan Baez - Play Me Backwards (especially Stones in the Road and Through Your Hands), Strunz and Farah - Americas, and James Taylor - Greatest Hits continuously. I discovered Evanescence after hearing three college a cappella groups perform versions of Bring me to Life at two concerts in one weekend.
I found out that the song from Final Fantasy 6 that I feel like I've known forever is called "Terra's theme" or "Tina's theme".
Games
I'm addicted to a puzzle game by Pāvils Jurjāns called Net. I discovered it by reading Selene's game notes, which mostly covers RPGs. I think it is NP-complete, but I haven't thought about it carefully. I haven't played much Minesweeper (NP-complete) or Marble (I don't even know if it's decidable) lately.
I've also been playing RPGs. I played Wild Arms (ok) and Chrono Cross (good) over Christmas break. I tried Vagrant Story but didn't like it. Now I'm playing Xenogears. I like it so far, but it's very easy to get lost in 3D areas such as cities and forests. I will probably play Final Fantasy 9 next.
All of the RPGs are for the Playstation, so I've been them using an emulator called epsxe along with Pete Bernert's graphics plugins, some of which are open source. Playing games using an emulator has several advantages over using a console system: I can change the game's speed on the fly, save or load at any time, and play at the same time as my brother. It also has several disadvantages: I have to tweak the emulator settings for each game to keep it from freezing, and I have to choose between pirating the games and Playstation BIOS (illegal) or buying a Playstation and the games and then downloading them anyway (ridiculous).
Anime
Cal Animage Beta has been showing one episode a week of Midori no Hibi, Bleach, Samurai Champloo, Kyou Kara Maou, Phantom Memory Kurau, and Tactics. Midori no Hibi is my favorite of these series.
Movies
I loved Kinsey. My favorite scene was the one with the lesbian woman (not a sex scene). The religious right's response to the movie made it even better (more Kinsey-related links). I liked The Incredibles and Garden State. I didn't like Team America, and I found Mean Creek confusing.
Keepers of Lists
I contributed high-scoring items to Signs You Are Not Drunk Enough, Reasons To Move To Canada, and Signs You Should Stop Writing Items For Keepers. I contributed more items to Signs You May Be A Terrorist than the person who started the list. Over half of my items have been getting getting positive scores recently, which is a welcome change. I submitted five new lists, which will be accepted or rejected for publication over the next few months.
Existing personal projects
Pornzilla and Thumbs have been getting a lot of hits, even though I have not put much effort into them lately. The top five search phrases that bring people to squarefree.com are "porn" (150/day), "pornzilla", "thumbs", "best porn", and "free porn". (The next two are not porn-related: "bookmarklets" (25/day) and "burning edge".) I've only been updating The Burning Edge once a week, in part because the Firefox trunk isn't very exciting right now.
I'm way behind with incorporating feedback and submissions for bookmarklets and Thumbs.
Phonogenic
My favorite a cappella group, The Claremont Shades, released Phonogenic today. Track list with MP3 samples of 4 songs:
- Beautiful Day (u2 / bono)
- Sexual Healing (marvin gaye / brown)
- Walking on Broken Glass (annie lennox)
- Push It (garbage)
- The Way It Is (bruce hornsby)
- Techno Fusion (paul oakenfold, alice deejay, sonique)
- When There's Nothing (jake oken-berg (shades member))
- The Boy Is Mine (monica / brandy)
- What's Love Get to Do With It (tina turner / britten / lyle)
- Time After Time (cyndi lauper)
- Freedom 90 (george michael)
Pomona College Magazine gives the history of my favorite track, Techno Fusion:
"We're taking three different techno songs and basically doing what a DJ would do at a club, which is take them and mix them all together." [Jake Oken-Berg]
"Techno Fusion" was arranged by the Shades' newest member, Pomona College freshman Rob Breahrs. The piece makes liberal use of vocal percussion and combines Paul Oakenfold's "Ascension," Alice Deejay's "Better Off Alone" and Sonique's "It feels so good."
"I realized there are a lot of parts in the background we could write, and a lot of things going on in the middle parts that make it more interesting," Breahrs said. "Then, I also realized that one song would be too boring: techno's kind of repetitive, so I decided to take three different songs that most people know and then put them all in the same key and then kind of go back and forth between them during a medley."
I am disappointed that Phonogenic doesn't include the great versions of Harder to Breathe (Maroon 5) and Don't Speak (No Doubt) that I've heard at recent Shades concerts. I wonder if those songs will be on the next Shades CD.
Full MP3s of songs from old Claremont Shades CDs:
- I Can See Clearly Now (Johnny Nash) from Prescription Only
- Isobel (Dido) from Color
Photos from the CD release party/concert: friends who were there, the Shades singing.
E-mail me if you want to know when I figure out how you can order the CD.
Dog on the Moon MP3
Garry Novikoff's amazing "Dog on the Moon" is available for free as an MP3 until the end of Wednesday: http://www.prometheus-music.com/bush/onthemoon.mp3.
"Dog on the Moon" is from the CD To Touch the Stars: A Musical Celebration of Space Exploration, produced by Kristoph Klover and Eli Goldberg. You can download 6 more MP3s from the CD from that site.
Blackmore's Night
I found Blackmore's Night by searching a P2P network for Greensleeves in order to practice recognizing minor-third intervals for my Fundamentals of Music class. I liked Blackmore's Night's version of Greensleeves enough to look for more of their music a few months later. Now they're my favorite band.
I bought their two newest (studio) CDs for my parents for Hanukkah/Christmas. My mom loves them. (I won't pretend that buying CDs as presents is a long-term excuse for downloading large amounts of music without paying for it.)
SCAMfest
I went to SCAMfest without Helen because we broke up on Wednesday. But I invited my parents, who hadn't been before, and they loved it. My parents and I bought BOCA 2002, and I plan to buy the new Shades CD, "Phonogenic", when it comes out in December.
My favorite songs from SCAMfest were Hotel California (UCLA Random Voices), I Heard it Through the Grapevine (USC SoCal VoCals), Fields of Gold (Midnight Echo), Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (Midnight Echo), and Harder to Breathe (Shades). Of these 5 songs, I knew the original versions of the first 3.
SCAMfest 2003
The 8th annual Southern California A Cappella Music Festival will be Friday Nov 7 at 8pm. Last year's SCAMfest was amazing, so if you're in the Los Angeles area, you should come.
Eleven college a cappella groups will perform this year:
- The Claremont Shades
- mp3: I Can See Clearly Now (cover of Johnny Nash)
- mp3: Isobel (cover of Dido)
- Claremont Midnight Echo
- Claremont Shower Quality
- Claremont Soul Control
- Pomona Men's Blue and White
- Pomona Momen's Blue and White
- UCSD Tritones
- USC Reverse Osmosis
- USC SoCal VoCals
- mp3:
Torn(cover of Natalie Imbruglia) [mp3 removed after SCAMfest]
- mp3:
- USC Sirens
- UCLA Random Voices
Tickets will be available starting tomorrow at the ASPC office (above Edmunds Ballroom at Smith Campus Center at Pomona College) for $5. If you live in the Los Angeles area and want to come, tell me so I can get you a ticket. Or call Lisa D'Annunzio from the Claremont Shades at [phone number removed after SCAMfest] to reserve a ticket to pick up the night of the concert. The concert will be in Bridges Auditorium aka Big Bridges on Pomona College.
Filk
Filk began as the music of the fantasy and science fiction fan community. It has expanded to cover other geeky topics such as space exploration and computer programming.
Some of my favorite filk songs:- Eternal Flame (God Wrote in Lisp) by Bob Kanefsky and Julia Ecklar (download, lyrics)
- I want my music on napster by Tom Smith (download, lyrics)
- The Word of God by Cat Faber and Kathy Mar (download and lyrics)
- Asteroid Named Rest Stop by Leslie Fish and Julia Ecklar
- God Lives on Terra by Julia Ecklar (lyrics)
- The Phoenix by Julia Ecklar
- The Virtual Filksing
- Samples from an upcoming space-filk CD, "To Touch the Stars"
- mp3.com: Bob Kanefsky (songs from Roundworm)
- mp3.com: Kathy Mar
I was introduced to filk music at a small concert the night before the 2001 Mars Society convention. After the concert, which I enjoyed, Eli Goldberg gave me one of the copies Roundworm with defective cases he was trying to get rid of. Since Roundworm is all parodies of other filk songs, it was a great starting place for finding out about other filk writers and singers.
