Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
Things:
* What does it say about me as a person that I look forward to my morning bacterial lozenge the way some people look forward to their coffee?
* I'm currently putting together my June Pride mix. Contributions of awesome songs about queer people welcome.
* Worm composting is awesome. It's like gardening for lazy people who like gross things and don't wanna take out the garbage.
* Today Sam Pepys was visited by a collegue named Creed. Who's going to write the Office crossover fic?
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07:33:55 PM,Wednesday 2 June 2010
Just a note to myself to check back in on this story as it unfolds, since this is essentially the opening scene of Mold and Gammon, the NaNovel I tried and failed to write in 2007, and which I still want to come back to someday. Except in the novel it was four men in 1926, and the bunker part only lasted six months. Also, they eventually did wind up in space, on a six-year journey through the asteroid belt, after their spaceship, The Colophon hitched a ride on Comet Pons-Winnecke.
One of these days I'm gonna write that thing. Meanwhile, I'll consolidate my sources, do some more research, and think about what it must be like to be sealed in a box with other humans for more than a year.
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07:09:07 AM,Tuesday 1 June 2010
Kid Koala playing a jazz trumpet solo with a turntable:
(thanks to my Sister-in-Law for reminding me of Kid Koala via Facebook)
Tool-Assisted Speedrun of a Super Mario World Hack exploiting several bugs and glitches in the original ROM:
Summer means lots of transcription, and lots of transcription means lots of boredom unless I amuse myself by watching video game speedruns on my other monitor while transcribing on my laptop.
Oh, here, have another SMW Hack Video:
Check out the time remaining meter often to get the maximum enjoyment out of that one.
And then there's this one, which is just silly. The music is, shall we say, not to my taste. But even if you don't like J-Pop, you have to admit it's an impressive bit of level design.
A clinical trial to test a new plague vaccine is looking for healthy volunteers. Oh, man. A large part of me dearly wishes I could get in on this action, though I fear my everloving spouse would forbid it. Plus it's in Rochester, which is just too far to go for plague. Still and all, I'm wistful. I could be just like Kivrin!
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07:46:28 AM,Friday 14 May 2010
"What was that software you were using to get the words on the computer?"
"I was actually using this device here, my steno machine."
"Yes, but it heard the audio and wrote it down!"
"No, I did that, using this machine."
"YOU did that?"
"Yes."
"Well, you did a great job! I thought it was the computer."
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04:49:09 PM,Thursday 13 May 2010
My cab driver was talking on the phone and I was thinking, "What language is that? It sounds like Tibetan." Then I look over at his license and it says Goparma Pasang. Yes!
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04:25:49 PM,Thursday 13 May 2010
High cholesterol runs in my family. So does osteoporosis. But you know what? I'd way rather die of a heart attack than a broken hip, so I'm gonna eat all the string cheese and drink all the goatveltine I damn well please.
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07:20:18 PM,Sunday 9 May 2010
A lot of people still ask me, "What are you going to do when your job become obsolete in the next ten years?" This article pretty much sums up my position on the matter, which is to say I ain't too worried about it. Some of the commenters quibble with the guy's numbers, but the essential point is pretty much indisputable: Until machines actually understand language the way humans do, humans are always going to be better at transcribing it. In practical terms, that means that while machine speech recognition can be useful if a human is directly dictating to the software and is willing to stop dictating, edit, and then continue whenever it makes mistakes, machine speech recognition is not at all useful in the situations I work in, where the speaker is untrained, unwilling to stop and edit, and usually speaking to a larger audience in uncontrolled conditions, and where the recipient of the transcript does not have the ability to distinguish between correct translations and errors. There has been significant improvement in speech recognition technology over the last 20 years, and it will continue to improve, but the improvement is asymptotic; current corpus-based probability algorithms will result in increased accuracy for typical phrases, but that improvement, by definition, will inevitably drive down the accuracy of atypical phrases. I'm counting on getting work for a good long time. Check back in ten years and see if I'm right.
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03:32:03 PM,Tuesday 4 May 2010
I finally finished the mix for my mom. It was the second hardest mix I've ever made, after The Well-Tempered Cavalier. Here's the track list:
1. Yupanqui - La Pobrecita
2. Couperin - La Convalescente
3. Geminiani - Concerto Grosso in D minor op. 3 no. 4: Largo e Staccato
4. Manfredini - Concerto Grosso: Andante e Piano Sempre, Adagio
5. Villoldo/McLean - Tango: El Choclo
6. JS Bach - Lute Suite in E Minor: Sarabande
7. Vivaldi - Concerto in A Major for Violin, Three Echo Violins and Orchestra: Larghetto
8. Jadin - Nocturne No. 3 in G Minor: Allegretto, Allegro molto
9. Chopin - Nocturne In C-Sharp Minor
10. Arriaga - Symphonie A Grand Orchestre En Re: Allegro Con Moto
11. JS Bach/Grapelli/South - Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor: Vivace
12. CPE Bach - Cello Concerto in A major Wq. 172: Allegro di Molto
13. Boyce - Concerto Grosso In B Flat Major
14. Visee - La Muzette de Mr. Forqueroy
15. Manfredini - Concerto Grosso: Adagio, Presto, Adagio
16. Gluck - Symphonia in E major: Allegro
17. Telemann - Don Quixote Attacks the Windmills
18. Albrechtsberger - String Trio in F major Op.9 No.3: Presto
It starts out dark and meditative, all in the minor. (I know the Vivaldi Echo Concerto as a whole is in A Major, but the Larghetto movement is in the minor.) It's cathartic music, meant to let the mind dwell in pain for a while, then draw it gradually up to the surface. The tango is sly and dangerous. The first nocturne is a little tootling flash in the darkness. The second one, the Chopin, is quiet and profoundly sad. The Arriaga symphony is bold and full of fury. Then something lifts. It's still in the minor mode, but the Grapelli/South jazz version of the Bach Double is one giddy transport of joy. Bach's son takes over, and minor goes to major. The cello swoops and laughs, Mr. Forqueroy dances his graceful muzette, and Don Quixote readies his charge. The final six tracks are meant to revivify the heart, to wash away the pain with light and gladness. I hope it works.
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04:45:49 PM,Saturday 1 May 2010
I have canceled that Bach trio sonata in my area, because it is whiny.
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10:47:34 PM,Tuesday 27 April 2010
K. and I have finished watching The Wire. That is all.
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01:04:24 AM,Tuesday 27 April 2010
The cat woke us up about 20 times last night, starting at 4:00 a.m. And going 'til morning. Every time he jumped up on the bookshelf or scratched at the door or yakked on the floor (that only happened once, fortunately) or made plaintive little whiny noises, I got up and chased him or shut him out or let him back in or picked him up and administered corporal cuddling, then slunk back to bed. When the alarm went off at 6:50, my first thought was, "God, did I get any sleep at all? I spent most of the night dealing with Alcibiades, and then there were those four tiny black and white kittens I found under my computer desk, and I had to sweep up all the birdseed on the floor so they wouldn't eat it and damage their livers, and then I had to carry them around the whole rest of the night in that bag that was half full of water so they wouldn't dry out. Cats are exhausting." Then I woke up a little more, counted the actual number of cats in the apartment (one, dozing contentedly at the foot of the bed) and was relieved to realize that I'd gotten a little more sleep after all.
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(2)
08:50:13 AM,Monday 26 April 2010
K. and I went to karaoke with her coworkers last night. It was faaaaabulous.
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(2)
02:34:47 PM,Saturday 24 April 2010
V'z fbeel, ohg nal yrpgher gung obvyf qbja gb "arhgenprhgvpnyf tbbbbq, cuneznprhgvpnyf onnnnq"; gung zragvbaf gur fvqr rssrpgf, vagrenpgvbaf, naq pbagenvaqvpngvbaf bs gur ynggre ohg bayl gur orarsvgf bs gur sbezre; gung znxrf serdhrag hfr bs gur cuenfr "fghqvrf unir fubja" jvgubhg cebivqvat n fvatyr fcrpvsvp ersrerapr; gung'f tvira ol fbzrbar jvgu n fgngrq svanapvny vagrerfg va n arhgenprhgvpny pbzcnal; naq gung erpbzzraqf gevcyvat gur Angvbany Vafgvghgr bs Urnygu'f hccre vagnxr yriry bs n fhofgnapr jvgu gur cbgragvny sbe ybat-grez npphzhyngvba naq frevbhf gbkvpvgl -- gung'f abg n yrpgher. Vg'f n cvgpu, naq V svaq vg cebsbhaqyl veerfcbafvoyr.
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11:23:52 AM,Thursday 22 April 2010
There's a dead thing in our walls. Sigh. I hope it goes away soon. At least it's in our living room/kitchen rather than our bedroom. Last night we ordered Indian food and ate it carefully in the bedroom on K.'s desk. We might be spending the next week or two going out to eat or maybe taking the hour-long train ride down to my office in Brooklyn to cook in its kitchen and eat in a dead thing-free environment. I've disposed of two dead mice since we moved into this apartment, but not being able to get rid of whatever this one is (another mouse, I'm hoping) disturbs me a lot. The last time I smelled this smell for a long time was back in 2002, when the mouse I mentioned did die in the midst of my cardboard furniture and I was too depressed and miserable to do anything about it until I moved out a month later. Ugh. I didn't realize why I was feeling so used up and hopeless (except that tearing one's living room apart looking for a dead thing and then having to put it back together, not having found one, is always disheartening) until K. reminded me of the emotional resonance that tends to stick around subconsciously in olfactory memory. This morning it's a bit better; I can only smell it in the back half of the living room, rather than at the entrance like yesterday. I don't know if that's just because it's kind of cold today or because something else in the wall came and dragged it away for a lovely dead snack in the night (here's hoping). We'll see what happens, I guess. Sigh.
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02:32:41 PM,Saturday 17 April 2010
My mom's currently recovering from surgery, and it'll be about three more weeks before she's completely healed. I'm putting together a mix CD of Classical music for her, but K. suggested doing a non-classical CD as well, and I thought my mom might enjoy the variety. She likes blues, jazz, '60s pop and folk, plus occasional more recent stuff as long as it's tunefully written and not too jarring. Recommendations on mellow healing music for a lady of refined but eclectic tastes?
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(6)
11:16:18 AM,Monday 12 April 2010
Walking to the train after ASL with a classmate, in a single city block we saw signs for:
1. The Feil Corporation
2. A store named Furrrsher
3. Konvict cologne
We couldn't decide which one won the Worst Name competition. What do you think?
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(3)
08:49:18 PM,Wednesday 7 April 2010
Again, if there's anyone who reads my blog but not my Twitter feed, Plover is now more or less working (in its current dumb terminal form) with simulated steno input from a qwerty keyboard.
A keyboard with anti-ghosting technology like the Sidewinder X4 is recommended, but if you don't have one you can just press each key sequentially. You won't benefit from the nifty chording effect, but you'll get the general idea.
It's still got a long way to go, but I gotta admit I'm pretty happy about this latest development.
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(1)
11:11:29 PM,Friday 2 April 2010
Fb qb V fxvc zl NFY pynff gb znxr $220 PNEGvat sbe n pbpuyrne vzcynag fnyrfzna? Be jbhyq gung znxr zr gur jbefg uhzna orvat rire?
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(7)
10:04:24 AM,Friday 2 April 2010
