Probably David

November into December

2010-01-07T14:50:00.000-08:00

More backlogged things I wanted to talk aboot.

There were three other performances I went to around the OBOC weekend showtunes extravaganza. First, I saw the touring production of In the Heights at the Fox Theater. I'd been dying to see the show for some time, and was quite disappointed last winter when I went to NYC and couldn't get tickets, thus ruining my chances of seeing Lin Manuel Miranda in it. However, the show was amazing. I'm not sure what I can say about it that hasn't already been said, but the show simultaneously had a classic feel to it, while still being quite revolutionary. The book wasn't fantastic, but the music and choreography did impress. I found it very easy to empathize with the characters, and found their story lines generally intriguing and unpredictable (in a good way.)

I also saw the St Louis Symphony Orchestra play John Williams. Elise couldn't go, so I bought a single ticket, that happened to be in the third row, right smack dab in the center. It was one of the most intense musical experiences in my life. I realized that I never saw John Williams played by a real orchestra before, much less from the third row. Its hard to explain how much the music moved me. The first CD I ever owned was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This was the music that hit me in the formative years from late middle school into high school. It inspired me to load up my iPod with all the John Williams I could cram in there. When the concert finished, one of the little old ladies who was sitting near me leaned over and said "You must have really enjoyed that." I guess I was grinning a bit.

Thirdly, I saw the Tin Ceiling's production of "Artemis Burn" which they adapted from a radio drama podcast they did a few years ago. The set was amazing, and the production enjoyable, but the whole thing was bittersweet since it was their last production in the physical Tin Ceiling theater. Having done two 24 hour play festivals there, plus their previous one act play set, it pained me to know that the one place I had found in St. Louis to do theatre, the place where I actually felt like I belonged, was no longer going to physically be a place. Of course, they do promise to continue the 24 hour play festival somewhere else. Let's hope that happens.

There was also stark contrast between the Tin Ceiling productions I did, and my most recent theatre excursion, a local production of A Christmas Carol. "The Tin" made me cocky, thinking that whatever theatre I found in St. Louis would be just as awesome. False. Whereas the Tin Ceiling productions were always ambitious in some way, this production really put the "community" into "community theatre." I don't want to bash it too much, but the production wasn't so much "directed" as "observed," and the direction that was given (especially in regard to makeup(!)) I generally disagreed with. There was just a general lack of organization that infuriated me. I was under the impression that this was going to be a minimal time commitment, but that turned out to be false as well. For whatever reason, I had too much "professional" integrity to quit when I realized this wasn't going to be the production I wanted it to be. Not sure why. However, the worst of it was that I kept promising myself that it would all be over on Saturday, and that if I just got to Saturday, I would be okay. Then, partway into Saturday's performance, my mood is crushed when I'm told there was a Sunday matinee that hadn't been prominently listed in the emails. Dick Wilkins begrudgingly lived another day.

I did do some performing in the end of 2009 with some groups I actually enjoyed. WU Pops continues to be a horrendously fun escape. It's the whackiness of Stingers, the scale of URSO, the student-run chaos of OBOC and the music of my CD collection. As assistant conductor this semester, I got to conduct both Return of the King and Indiana Jones, in addition to playing Jupiter, Chicago, Spiderman and Band of Brothers. Meanwhile, I formed a "chamber group" as a subset of the WUPOPS Brass section. The name for the group is "The Deciduous Brass", but at certain points we were also called the Coniferous Brass and the Arboreal Brass. Deciduous Brass just sounded right and the rest was just variations on a theme. Between the two groups, in the course of two months, we managed to have 5 different gigs.

WashU Students for Israel Concert - Brass
Thanksgiving Homeless Dinner I - Orchestra
Thanksgiving Homeless Dinner II - Brass
WU Pops Main Concert (a.k.a. ONE WUPOPS TO RULE THEM ALL) - Orchestra AND Brass
Brass Caroling - Brass

The Students for Israel concert was interesting, if for nothing else than I felt supremely uncool coming out with music stands and brass instruments to play a fanfare following a freestyle rapper. It's UR Performing all over again. Having two Thanksgiving themed concerts for homeless people on two consecutive days was interesting. The funniest part was there were only a couple dozen people watching the full 60-piece orchestra, while there were a couple hundred people watching the 9 of us play Christmas songs in the brass ensemble. The real WUPOPS concert was my debut conducting the orchestra. It went relatively well, although I should have practiced what I was going to do when I was done conducting. I was quite nervous, and so I apparently looked pissed when I turned around. The brass ensemble's interlude was interesting. We played three pieces: WUPOPS Fanfare, written by Kira's boyfriend, The Doctor Is In, arranged by me waaaay too long ago, and Viva La Vida, also arranged by me. While we were getting ready for the concert, I made sure that everyone was going to have music in front of them when we played, without having to swap stands too much, HOWEVER I failed to notice that I did not have the Bass Trombone part to Doctor in front of me until we were about to play it, forcing me to wing it. Fortunately, it wasn't too noticeable from the audience.

Finally, brass caroling was awesome. I ordered a set of books for a bunch of easy Canadian Brass christmas tunes with flexible instrumentation. That is, flexible IF you have two trumpets. Turns out there's not much music arranged for 1 trumpet, 3 horns, 3 trombones and a euphonium. We faked it pretty well though. The day we decided to play was pretty cold. We thought it was going to be physically uncomfortable to play outside, but what we did not anticipate was it being physically impossible to play outside. Fortunately, after we moved to a less windy location, our valves and slides stopped freezing up. We also managed to get politely told to shut up by an RA who informed us that we couldn't play outside of the dorms during 24 hour quiet hours.

The trombone section also managed to continue our habit of dressing up each week throughout the semester (since ourprevious escapades). Highlights included pajama day, Christmas day, and toga day.

In other awesome low brass news, while trying to find somewhere to get my trombone cleaned up, I stumbled across the website for theSt. Louis Low Brass Collective(which is almost as cool of a name as the New York Trombone Conspiracy). Unfortunately, I missed their Christmas play-in, but I'm going to look for another way into the group soon.

Other notes: I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for the first time I ever, in Columbia with Elise and her mom. I made the turkey, mashed potatoes and apple stuffing, the last of which I was most proud of. That week also marked 6 years of being together with Elise.

Professionally, a lot of stuff has been happening. I finished the architecture class here. I spent a bit of time working on writing a chip in VHDL, which was made harder because VHDL is such a cludgy language. The take-home final was also time consuming, made all the more difficult by trying to do it backstage of A Christmas Carol.

The most exciting thing going on is the fact that Bill's workshop proposal on (essentially) my research got accepted to HRI2010 (Human Robot Interaction) AND I got my first paper accepted to a workshop as a roboticist/computational dramaturg. This means in March, I'll be going to Stanford for the latter, and JAPAN for the former. Elise is kinda mad at me, because she was a double major in undergrad: East Asian history and Genetics. And by the end of the semester, I'll have gone to conferences at Cold Spring Harbor, the alleged mecca of genetics, and in Japan. Fortunately, she's coming with me. We already have plane tickets, which weren't even disgustingly expensive.

Lastly, what I've actually been doing at work: kickingLewisuntil he moves. I actually successful got him to move around back in November, which Bill and other people in the lab found amazing since he had not done so since early 2008. However, right after I finally got some demos rolling along, the power supply in the computer popped, and I've been forced to fiddle with wires ever since. It's been all sorts of fun dealing with converters, going from DB9 Serial to RJ11 Serial to USB and then having to write all the appropriate drivers after that. But I plan on purchasing one more serial converter soon and THEN maybe then I'll have Lewis rolling around the lab.

But until then...More Musical Theatre! More Tromboning! More Being a Husband! More Robots in Disguise.

Next time: The Journey into the East and back. Plus, 2009 Review!

The Long Overdue OBOC Entry

2010-01-04T23:22:00.000-08:00

And again, the months have ticked by without a blog entry, such that each time when I go to write something down, it becomes a burden to write the whole thing out. Indeed, at this point I'm not writing so much to tell you lot about my crazy months, but so that someday, when I look back and wonder what I did at the end of the decade, I'll have some proof somewhere.

We start in early November on my way to the OBOC Show, in the St. Louis Airport, which I thought I had finally gotten the hang of. Apparently, Southwest flies out of a different terminal than EVERY OTHER AIRLINE. A frenzied taxi ride and a (relatively) quick trip through security, and I walked up just in time to board my plane. AWAY TO BALTIMORE.

Turns out the OBOC show wasn't in Baltimore. So I hopped a ride with Dan Allan and Joe Bedont, who just happened to be heading for Rochester. The car ride consisted of large quantities of showtunes, old OBOC video, fast food and sharing life updates. Arriving in Rochester, we met up with Joe and Dan's ladies and bunch of other alumni. Then we eventually saw the OBOC show. It's hard to judge the quality of OBOC shows these days. Every generation of OBOC thinks that the stuff they're doing is good, but not as great as the stuff the older generation was doing when they were freshmen. And anything before that is just ancient history. I will say that I was quite entertained during many of the OBOC numbers, and some performers in particular I feel really carried the show.

After the OBOC show, there was the inevitable party at the Drama House. It was really weird to wander through D-Haus now, since I only was friends with one person living there. Time keeps moving forward I guess. The party was fun, and relatively drama free. No embarrassing pictures of me and Dan Allan have surfaced yet. Then there was the after-party in Phil and Alex's suite, which also happened to be where Dan Caylynn and I were crashing. Eventually after convincing drunk Phil to be quiet, we finally got to bed around 4.

And because I love a good challenge, at 9 I woke up to go to breakfast with Greg and Margaret. Greg is also a grad student who helps run an undergrad music ensemble. It was good to see them (and get hot cider and New York bagels), as they broke up a solid combo of OBOC people. Theatre types and computer scientists were in short supply on this visit.

Later in the day, I showed everyone the fruits of my labors involving the many hours of OBOC video I'd gone through. We grabbed the cool projection room in the Library and I showed ghosts from OBOC Past. In the process of ripping the DVD images Dan provided me with and splitting them into individual videos for each number, I saw lots of cool moments. A bunch of people's first OBOC numbers/solos. People I'd always thought of as cool upperclassmen as mere freshmen. Em-dub-but in Glee Club. Classic stuff. The video watching party was followed by a move to Wilson Commons for one regulation OBOC-style sing along. All I remember is my voice killing me since I hadn't sung much in quite awhile (other than the screeching we did on the car-ride). I still enjoyed myself thorougly; especially singing the Glee arrangement of Don't Stop Believing a capella with my friends. Note to self: sing more.

The day wound down with dinner and a trip to Evan and Jessie's for some drinks. Much fun was had, despite/because of the infectiousness of Phil's creative fast food jingle, which involved a punny hook about a burger joint called "Dicks." This led to thoughts of a "Dicks" musical, and when it came to title said musical, we ended up inserting the word "Dicks" into every single musical title we could, which everyone found hilarious. It ended up being an early night however, since you can only stay up to four so many times. And coming up with the jokes was more tiring than you'd expect.

Sounds like an awesome road trip, no? Mission accomplished? Kids, we're not even close to being done. For as far as we had traveled, for as long of day as Friday was, and for all the musical theatre packed into that weekend, we weren't done. Sunday morning we packed up and shipped off on a 6 hour journey to a magical far off place called Jersey, where we met up with none other but the Heather Good, to watch a production of Guys and Dolls, featuring none other but the Rachel MW Butler. Not only were we treated to a hilarious and talented production, but afterward we all had dinner, including the infamous Andrew Butler, Rachel's husband whom I had never met up until that fateful night.

Hanging out with all these people, one song was resounding in my head. Well, actually several. But Bui Doi has very little thematic relevance to this post. I kept thinking about "Find Your Grail" from Spamalot. "Life is really up to you, you must choose what to pursue. Set your mind on what to find, and there's nothing you can't do." And all weekend, I kept thinking about how it seemed like everyone was in varying stages of actually finding their own personal grail. I'm pretty happy with the grail I've found, in this weird combination of theatre and computer science, with more theatre and music on the side. And there were more variations on this, either in hope, plan or actuality. Medicine with theatre on the side. Teaching with theatre on the side. Experimental physics with theatre on the side. I suppose its a fact of growing up that, as we amble towardadulthood, the paths of our lives can crystalize and we find what we were meant to do.

Back in Jersey, with bittersweet photos and goodbyes, Joe Dan and I left the Applebees, hitting the trail for Baltimore. That is after a fun subplot about vomit of which the details don't need repeating. Nevertheless, we hit Baltimore late, foiling my plans to see Ace of Cakes live. With an early morning flight the next day, Dan and I decided it would be best to stay up rather than sleep for 3 hours and then try to wake up again. This also gave us a chance to talk, an opportunity that had not really presented itself since we had not been alone until we dropped Joe off. After all of the conversations we had had on the phone in the past year, it was good to be in the same place to talk, at least for a little while. Then, he drove me to the airport, dropped me off, and I started mentally filming the "David tries to sleep in the airport" montage. Several hours later, I was back at work.

Topics for next time:
In The Heights
Artemis Burn
John Williams
A Christmas Carol
WU Pops Concerts
Thanksgiving
6 years
Brass Caroling
Low Brass Collective
Architecture
Conferences
Lewis

Research

2009-11-09T10:27:00.000-08:00

FromSan Francisco Examiner in 1998

For Anthony Shafer, who is an artist as well as a computer whiz, it took more than money to lure him to his first job. After earning his bachelor's degree in computer engineering at the University of the Pacific, Shafer has signed on at a firm where the salary is a bit lower than a Silicon Valley offer, but, for him, the fascination factor is much higher - George Lucas' Industrial Light Magi in San Rafael, which for two decades has created stunning visual effects for films such as "Twister" and "The Mask."

"This is the job I've wanted for five years," said Shafer. "In school, we were directed more toward the traditional engineering role. But all along I read all the (film industry) trade journals, newsgroups on the Internet, kept abreast of the latest technology in this industry; and all my friends thought I was a little nuts."

At graduation, he said, he turned down offers from computer and consulting firms: "When it came down to it, I had to follow my heart."

So didMasayori Oka, 23, who recently earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and mathematics at Brown University and joined Industrial Light Magi, drawn by the firm's reputation for computer graphics, digital imaging and more. In college, he had squeezed in courses in acting, directing Shakespeare, stage design and musical theory.

"The idea was to combine the arts and science, the left side of the brain and the right, utilize both of them in harmony," said Oka.

"I would like to do feature films but also research and development," said Oka. "The rewards are immense."

I asked my advisor today if he knew Masi Oka. He said yes, but apparently did not know that he was an actor now. Note to self: invite Masi Oka to a robotics conference.

Some Day

2009-11-09T07:40:00.000-08:00

What do Jennifer Aniston, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, John Krasinski, Jude law, Hugh Jackman, Daniel Craig, Julia Stiles, Liev Scheiber Rosario Dawson, Sam Rockwell, Rachel Dratch, and David Cross all have in common?
The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway
I swear I will see this some day.

Baseball and Politics

2009-10-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

The Governator is a Clever Jerk. Explaining why he vetoed a particular bill, Arnold sent out the letter quoted above. But cleverly, the first letter of each line spelled out a message. Despite it being kinda dickish to do, I can appreciate the gesture because A) it's subtle B) I may have done the same thing to profess a crush in the program for one of the musicals I did in high school.

In other news, Zeke forwarded me a blog post by comedian Michael Ian Black, saying, essentially,why everyone should be Yankees fans. My response:

He makes it sound like the Orioles lose every day. They don't. They win ~40% of the time. And not against teams that they are strictly better than. They won 5 games against the Yankees in 2009. Part of the allure of baseball is following the team from spring training, where you see the team for all its disparate parts, and you don't know whether or not the team will be good or not. If they're good after spring training its a surprise. If they win against the Yankees, it's unexpected. When you get something when you expected nothing, it feels good. If they lose, then you can gripe. Meanwhile, if you're a Yankees fan, what glory do you get if they win? Self congratulatory "I was right" back pats? But if they lose, its negative karma.

Baseball ultimately is an incredibly complex game, and when you don't know what's going to happen, it's exciting. But if you expect to win all the games, and then don't, you leave disappointed.

</soapbox>

That being said, the World Series this year is a lose-lose-lose situation for Mets fans. Oh look, there's football on!

Hey Kids!

2009-10-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

Pop Quiz:
So let's say you're moving files around, and you want to replace directory X with identically named directory Y, but you accidentally make Y a subdirectory of X. In order to move all of the files in Y and the files in the subdirectories of Y from Y to X, what should you do? Note, these files are administrator access only.

Look up the appropriate documentation of the "sudo mv" command.
Repeatedly invoke "sudo mv" for each directory
Use a substitution variable to move the contents of each subdirectory with minimal retyping, a la "sudo mv $DIR/* ../$DIR/"
Use a substitution variable to move the contents of each subdirectory with minimal retyping AFTER defining the initial value of your variable.

If you chose C, congratulations, you're smart enough to screw up your entire system, because you just moved everything in your root directory to directory X. Now sit back and watch as little bits of your operating system drop off one by one. No icons. No "ls" "sudo" or "mv" (although surprisingly autocomplete still works). Eventually the terminal will crash.

Fortunately, you can undo the damage by booting from a Ubuntu Boot CD, and move everything back. Apparently root on the boot CD is good enough to move around important files on your main drives.

Hypothetically speaking of course.

When the Momentum and the Moment are in Line

2009-10-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

It's about one moment, just when you're on the verge of success. You get the part of your life, you hold the ring in your hand. It's a new world.

The past month or so, I've been thinking back tothe spring of 2006. I frequently bring up that semester as the time when I was most sleep deprived and busy in my college career. Defending my senior thesis, doing tech for Todd Theatre, directing a one act, doing more OBOC, and doing my first voice jury at Eastman. I often tell the story how all of the slides for my senior thesis on music transcription were made between the hours of 1am and 5am because of hell week for "The Hour." And at the time, I got really into my voice jury, singing "This is the Moment", because for me, it really was the moment when all I'd done was coming into play.

So then speed ahead to this past month. Within the scope of a couple days, I managed to act in a play, conduct an orchestra, give a talk to the entire department, direct a rehearsal, and almost write a paper. No one ever accused me of doing too little. Coincidentally, the talk I gave was on my senior thesis work (and the work that I've managed to get done on it in the past three years). The talk went over quite well. I think some people were just glad not to hear another talk on network protocols. In fact, some people told me it was one of the best student talks they had heard in the department. Not that my ego needs to hear that.

So a few words on the play I did at the Tin Ceiling. The production was a set of three one-act plays that had won the Tin's playwriting contest. They were all very different plays. One was a very Todd-like post apocalyptic exploration of "Fear Itself." The second was an old man looking back on his life and how it could have been different. And there was my play, the most realistic of the three. It featured two seniors in high school and their girlfriends. The two guys hang out on the roof and work on their science projects together. Randy is the athletic high achiever whose project is on "Opposing Exercises to Offset Damage from Repetitive Motion and Other Physical Dangers for the Baseball Pitcher." Morris ("M") is more introverted and did his project on quantum physics. Guess which one I played. Without giving the whole plot away, the play details their whole relationship, which, suffices to say, goes beyond science. "Hyphenate" was notable for featuring my first on-stage kiss, and it just happened to be with another guy. I may also have had to strip down to boxers by the end of the play. Oh, and after weeks of not having an actress to play my character's girlfriend, we finally found one, and the first thing I did after meeting her was rehearse the scene where we make out.

Despite the fact that I had to do so many things that were outside my previous comfort zone, I had a blast doing this play. Back in the spring, when I did a 24hour play with the Tin Ceiling, I complained afterward to Elise about the fact that it's been so long since I've had a real opportunity to seriously act. This definitely was that opportunity. It was tremendously hard, but I finally got to consider my character's whole arc, and make character choices, and actually get directed. It helped that I had a tremendously talented scene parter playing the other guy. I think its one of the best things about theatre when you can get up on stage with someone else, and not only completely trust them, but lose yourself in the interactions and discover new things each night in front of the audience. So yeah. That was fun.

In other news, Once Upon a Mattress (the Med school musical) is going well. I'm feeling really confident about this year's show. I finished watching Firefly and Serenity with Elise and a bunch of the med school people. Not to give anything away, but I'm a leaf in the wind. Watch how I wear hawaiianshirts. Plus, I got the new XKCD and [title of show] books. I'm also really getting used to having a bit of gold weighing down my left hand.

Last Sunday I ran a Halloween Themed 10K race in St. Louis. I dressed up as Harry Potter. It wasn't my first choice, but didn't have time to sew a Dr. Horrible lab coat (plus Home Depot doesn't sell welding goggles), and my Wall-E costume was really hard to run in. Note to Rachel: You'd be surprised how much mileage I've gotten out of that yellow tie. Despitemy relatively good time, the 10K was a massive fail for me. I ran the first mile pretty quickly, passing lots of people and going relatively fast. After mile 2 I was getting tired and started thinking that I couldn't keep going at that pace for the whole time. So I scaled it back for awhile and let people pass me and plodded on. I figured I'd pick up the pace at mile eight. I was really shocked at how hard it ended up being in the middle. But I figured that was sensible, since I had taken a couple of weeks off from running, and only really trained for a week and a half before the 10K. Anyway, somewhere after mile five, I started thinking how much harder this was than the 5K I did in July. But I was getting a lot closer to downtown where the finish line was. Hmmm. Wait. Mile 5. 5K. Mile 5. 5 Kilometers. CRAP. So I picked up my pace for the last mile. METRIC FAIL.

Much like I had fun with Stingers, the WUPOPS trombone section is one of my new favorite outlets for crazy randomness. Backstory: trombonists need to keep their slides lubed up. Often, they put on some hyrdophillic compound which causes water to bead, thus making a smooth slide. So many trombonists carry little water sprayers to keep their slides wet. SOME trombonists, not naming any names, get huge plant sprayers for their slide care, which can very easily be used to spray other members of your section, and if you aim properly, the saxophones 4 rows up. So after a long rehearsal of spraying each other and the adjacent horn section, we realized one of the horns we had been shooting was in fact President of WUPOPS. Shooting the president seemed wrong, so we formulated a plan. The end result was this:

The best part was during rehearsal when we mentioned "El Presidente" and "the mission" in the same sentence, and Kira suddenly turned around with a giant moment of comprehension. Apparently we made her night/week and perhaps presidency. Stingers always was fun, but the WUPOPS trombones (aka the Decidious Brass) definitely go along with my crazy ideas more.

Finally, (finally), there's the small news tidbit that I've officially decided to switch labs and work on robots and theatre. I think its probably clear to anyone who's read this far that that's much more up my alley than bioinformatics was. And so I've made the transition from computational musician, to computational biologist, to, in the words of"The Darfstellar", a computational dramaturg. Part of the research entails helping train the actors by using robots, trying to get the human actors to be aware of their environment and respond naturally to it. And what, my theatrical friends, is this acting quality called?

Living in the moment, of course.

I'm going to let you finish.

2009-10-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

Hudson River School Exhibition- Good news: I love the Hudson River School, and theres this really cool exhibition of it in New Paltz. Bad news: It ends before I'll go home.
A cool article on the music geeks behind Pandora- Music Information Retrieval for fun and profit!
The Doctor Is In- A new voice weighs in on healthcare: Dr. Mario's.
Boom de yada Boom de yada...- Animated XKCD comic of "I Love the Whole World.
Elliot S! Maggin- Why did I not know about this guy earlier?
Quantum Leap- On Hulu!

Cliche

2009-09-22T23:45:00.000-07:00

There was a recent article in the AV Club about their favorite movie cliches. The first one mentioned is one of my personal favorites: the big speech.

"I love the big speech scene, when the hero takes center stage and delivers this brilliant monologue that just kills everybody else in the room. I’ve always been infatuated with the idea that if you could just get the chance to explain everything—if everybody would just shut up for long enough for you to lay it all out—then you could fix any problem, win any argument. Sometimes this works in movies; Atticus Finch’s closing statement in To Kill A Mockingbird is pretty impeccable, and has the added bonus of being futile as well as beautiful. (Maybe the futility is part of what makes it beautiful.) But I’m a sucker for it no matter how cheesy the movie around it might be. Pacino’s “coward” speech in Scent Of A Woman? I’m there. I have no idea if Sam’s talk about stories at the end of The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers is good or ridiculous, because it just gets to me in a way that renders me useless as a critic. I love the illusion that, given the chance, we could all find someplace inside ourselves that’s eloquent enough to meet the demands of any moment."

I found another good example last last weekend when I was watching Across the Universe with Elise. It's made even better by the fact that its not the big speech, its the big song. He sings out All You Need is Love and everything is right with the world.

This brings me to my all-time favorite cliche/plotline ever, at least for musicals: art in the face of adversity. It's the general "Let's put on a show"trope, but its not about raising money. It's about doing something because you love it. I realized this when someone asked me what my favorite musicals were. Topping the list is fairly obviously [title of show], where despite the fact that Hunter and Jeff haven't written a Broadway show before and only have four weeks, they end up getting to Broadway, by staying true to themselves and doing something that they're passionate about. A Chorus Line is the story of 17 dancers who put themselves through a hellish audition process just to be in a show, and even though someday they won't be able to dance anymore, they "won't regret, can't forget what they did for love." And what could I not love about Curtains (spoiler alert), the story of a man with a career he likes, but accidentally gets involved in the theatre through his work, and ends up starring in the show.

All it takes is a few stars to align to find happiness.

Star #1 is the being married. That's been going rather well. Top differences between married life and single life: more jewelry, new appliances and more pressure to write thank you cards (they're coming, I swear!).

There's also some exciting new developments in my personal research world. I've been doing a "rotation" with Bill Smart, the robotics professor. He just got a huge grant to work on some quite interesting things involving modeling human robot interaction by way of human actor interaction, with the goal being transferring some of the skill actors use to convey their motivation and internal state to robots.

Not only that, I did something last month that I haven't done since year 4 of undergrad: get cast in a play where not everyone got cast! Meaning someone actually wanted me as an actor. It's an interesting play about two high school seniors who work on science projects and talk. Well, there's actually a bit more to it than that, but I don't feel like revealing everything online. The auditions were actually over a month ago, and I just never blogged about it. It's actually Hell week right now, with the show going up this Friday, running Friday Saturday Sunday for two weekends. [details]

Last, but not least, we just finished auditions last Saturday for the med school musical. Finished deliberations in 2 hours flat. Woot.

So, summary: very busy, but happy. There's a cliche for ya.

Typical

2009-09-03T15:24:00.000-07:00

Link Dump

2009-08-20T19:48:00.000-07:00

A collection of links I've accumulated and procrastinated blogging about for going on a couple months:

Lipstick on a pig?- An incredibly, ahem, timely article about the cleaning up of St. Louis for the All Star game
St. Louis Tea Party vs. All Star Game- A fairly boring article, followed by some rabid discussion, the latter of which I actually got involved in under the pseudonym "Tom Hanks". Surprisingly, my point was met by the troll rather well.
Digital Eyes Will Chart Baseball?s Unseen Skills- A fascinating New York Times article about new sensor systems in ballparks that track the gameplay very precisely. Computational Vision wooo!
Cool Calendar- Ahhh...time lapse tilt shift photography, when aren't you entertaining?
Film Scores as an entry to geekdom- As someone whose first CD was the soundtrack to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I appreciate this article.
Mario AI- And where was this when I was looking for an AI project last year? It's even in Java!
[title of show] in St. Louis!- Why did no one tell me this? WHY! [waits patiently to buy opening night tickets in hopes that the authors will be there]

Post-modern blogging experience

2009-07-29T16:50:00.000-07:00

I always find it interesting when people tell me to blog more. I appreciate it, but usually I just see it as an indication that I need to spend more time just talking to that person. However, this time, that's clearly not the case. It was actually one of the people I talk to the most that requested an update. So here goes.

So other than the fact that I'm 25 and people comment on my blog, what has happened since June 1? (i.e. what do I need to talk about before this whole wedding thang.) Let's see...

One project that's ended up being a decently large undertaking is reformatting this whole blog. I've been slowly making the conversion toblogger. If you follow that link, you'll see a boring looking blog (for now), but I did manage to move over all of the content from the past 4 years, including comments. Now I'm just slowly going through it, tagging things, fixing grammar and whatnot. Then eventually I'll reformat the whole thing so it looks pretty and includes all the material from probablydavid.com. All in good time.

Theatre review! After I saw A Chorus Line at the Fox, I realized the awesomeness of the $25 student tickets. So I went to see RENT, with the original Mark and Roger, and, since I was alone, I got a seat 11 rows from the stage right in the center. Twas awesome. I'm a little sad I don't have someone here in St. Louis that I normally hang out with to see plays with randomly. Oh, and last weekend I also saw an original play at the Tin Ceiling, where I did my most recent 24 hour plays. Elise and I also have seen a Sinatra impersonator with the St. Louis Symphony.

I've also seen 3.5/5 of the Muny shows thus far, most of which I had never seen before. 42nd St. was fun, but definitely old school and a bit predictable. I also thought that Lullabye of Broadway was the closer of the show, but it turns out its just in the middle of Act II. I skipped Annie, but then saw Meet Me in St. Louis. Also, old school, but a little less unconventional in terms of plot development. Good concept, perhaps, but maybe could be tightened up a bit to move things along a bit. It was fun to see the final scene at the 1904 World's Fair at the site of the 1904 World's Fair. Then I watched half of Godspell. I was expecting it to start with Prologue, which Matt Hall introduced me to many years ago, but it didn't. I then spent the rest of the act trying to figure out if it was actually from this musical (it was). I don't think I inherently have a problem with religious musicals, but for me, Godspell lacked plot and character development. So, since I was sitting in the free seats anyway, I left. (I also had other stuff to do). And last week I saw the Music Man, which was great. I'd forgotten how much I love that musical. There might be a nostalgia factor there, since it was the first musical I saw New Paltz High School do, but I think it has what a lot of the other shows lacked: everything moves along a central plot line, with a slew of well developped characters, and a couple of twists at the end that make it interesting. And I'm hoping to see Camelot on Thursday with my friends and family.

In sports news, softball has been a little slow lately due to my other time commitments and the weather. But in the most recent game I played, I went a solid 3/5, with 2 runs and a good play at the plate. I also hit my first double, which could have been a triple (maybe), but its been so long that I've had to round first, I nearly ran into the first baseman. I'm going to avoid the topic of the Mets, who I believe to be punishing me for living in St. Louis and cheering for the Cards.

The other huge thing that happened in June was Elise studying for and eventually taking her boards (i.e. the big scary test that comes at the end of the first two years of med school). They can be best summed up with a quote from Harry Potter 6, which I am currently rereading.

"I know I messed up Ancient Runes," muttered Hermoine feverishly, "I definitely made at least one serious mistranslation. And the Defense Against the Dark Arts practical was no good at all. I though Transfiguration went all right at the time, but looking back...I know I've failed everything!"

And we all know what happened to her. I rather enjoyed the latest Harry Potter movie, especially when I talked through the various motivations for some of the changes that they made. I still would have liked to see a bit more of the final battle, but overall I was impressed with how often the filmmakers were able to translate subtext into nonverbal scenes.

Meanwhile, in my own non-Hogwarts academic work, I've been moved onto a grant based on improving the teaching of computer science. This is giving me an exciting opportunity to try to make some changes to courses to make them not as dry as they previously were, and increase the active learning portions of the classes. I'm currently gutting the old sequence analysis assignments of the class that Michael teaches, and putting in a more open ended competitive assignment. Gene prediction for the win, literally.

I also took my oral qualifying exam, which was a big todo. Compared to taking boards or some of the other trials that other departments put people through, my exam was quite simple (although not trivial). I had to read three semi-related papers and synthesize them into a presentation on the state of the field. Followed by a rigorous questioning by three faculty. Funtimes. I passed! Hooray. I now know more about flux balance analysis than I would have thought possible. I'm not sure if its what I'm going to do my thesis on, and most of my current work is for the teaching grant. We shall see.

Brief poker interlude. I went over to Zeke's for poker one evening. Fun times were had. Later into the night, I ran out of chips and rebought. Unfortunately, the blinds were so high that after I rebought, I was still short stacked. First hand, I was dealt a Ace Jack suited. Ended up going all in, with my five dollars in chips. It didn't work.

That hand I lost. However, I did get dealt an exceptionally sweet hand. My parents decided to sell me and Elise my mom's old car, where old means 2006 Toyota Corolla. It's pretty sweet, and nice to have air conditioning, working windows and back doors.

OK, July! Go! Fourth of July was spent on the nearby rooftop of a friend. We could barely see the fireworks that were downtown, although for a while you could see the silhouette of the Arch. However, we were able to see fireworks in nearly every other cardinal direction. It was even better than last year when Elise and were driving across Kansas watching multiple fireworks displays.

Elise and I trekked up to Madison, Wisconsin for the wedding of some old college friends. It was the first time that Twitter was almost useful for something. I ended up being DD for the bachelorette party. So, I was hanging out at a fair trade coffee shop in Madison and twittered so. Then I discovered that mookieghanawas also in Madison. So we began to make plans to see each other....only to realize we were in town for the same wedding. So it was cool to talk to him and his wife for a bit. The wedding was fun too, although fairly tame, considering Elise, her friends and I were the most active people in terms of dancing. Madison is a nice town too, and we went to an arts fair the day after. That bumped it up a couple notches on the post-grad school city list.

The All Star came and went without me attending any festivities in the stadium. I considered going to the homerun derby outside left field fence, but decided it was a little too unlikely that I'd catch anything. However, it would have been cheaper than the $400 they wanted for tickets. I did run theAll-Star Game 5K. That was a lot of fun. I did get to high fiveFredbirdand a couple other mascots. Unfortunately, my hopes of crossing the finish line and high fiving Mr. Met were not ...met. To make matters worse, on the train home, I managed to leave a ziplock bag holding my drivers license, school id, phone and house keys on the seat. FORTUNATELY, the driver managed to find them at the end of the line and responded to the text message I sent to my phone. WHEW. MAJOR RELIEF.

Finally, the lady and I went to a Coldplay concert last weekend. This was the first megaconcert I've ever been to, bringing the ratio of normal concerts to Weird Al concerts I've attended almost to one. It was definitely a unique sensation for me to be at an event with so many people, all of whom were on the same plane as I was (as opposed to baseball games, where people are on multiple levels). The concert did not disappoint.

And that's it. Nothing much exciting I guess :). The first wedding guests have already begun to arrive. Spent a few hours hanging with Evan today, which needs to happen more often. Now I have to go off and do the last little bit of planning. Wish me luck.

Who's Commenting on my Blog?

2009-07-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

091 spychicr
051 fozziebear54
039 Anonymous
034 nothorian
034 hawaiianshirts
029 elidevi
026 riceyboy
024 h2g2ben
022 deep_friar
021 javagoddess
020 ultraman
019 newmaryjane
015 glenbolake
014 slavetothestage
014 flubber3m
012 erelsi183
011 mookieghana
010 lilapplecider
009 x5optimist
008 oswegogeek
008 kissyfacerobot
007 piannaf
006 maddst
006 illyrian
006 blagh
006 acb917
005 mcmar
005 e_squared23
005 durandal42
005 aliaschick457
004 factitiouslj
003 penutz
003 boyscoutb
003 bookbat1
003 angedechocolat
002 youngjamesdean
002 suepersheep
002 hplover7
002 gingertearain
002 exthelioness
001 spectralbovine
001 richardfeynman
001 orangecontainer
001 lilac_bearry
001 havefaithinlove
001 commigreensmurf
001 chai827

I'm too old for Spring Awakening, but too young to rent a car

2009-06-26T09:23:00.000-07:00

I'm 25. Whoa.

And now a list of random show tune lyrics that mention how old people are. Bonus points for guessing all of them.

After all, science has shown a person's character isn't really established until at he's at least5years old.
There was the time Avram sold him a horse that he said was6years old, when it was really 12.
You'll be 40 and I'll be9
There's a lot, I am not, certain of...Hello12, hello 13, hello love.
The best and the worst and the most and the least and the crazy and the scary and we are just about to turn13.
When you're a skinny child of15, wired with braces from ear to ear...
I am16going on 17, I know that I'm naive.
She was just17you know what I mean.
I'm19, but I'm old for my age.
I'm19and male, I play squash and raquetball.
Why can't you stay 29? Hell, you still feel like you're 22. Turn30in 1990, Bang! You're dead, what can you do?
It sucks to be broke and unemployed and turning33.
Then again, how many times do you get to be35? Eleven?

A Dancer Dances

2009-06-01T20:30:00.000-07:00

How's this for a one-two punch. Last Friday/Saturday, I participated in the 8th annual "7/24", the 24 hour play festival at the Tin Ceiling Theatre. This is my first opportunity to act in a play since the 7th annual "7/24". Then, on Sunday I catch a matinee of "A Chorus Line" at the Fox Theatre, a musical about people who spend their lives on the stage. ONE TWO.

7/24 was fun this year, although not as much fun as last year, but then again, what could possibly stack up againstvampire fights. As I did last year, I picked a monologue that had a bit of double meaning. I did the"Coathanger Sculpture" monologuefrom "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown", which is all about how hard it is to judge art. I figure its a good attitude to go into an audition with.

The play I ended up in wasTexts From Last Night: The Play. The basic idea was there is a guy in a high powered financial firm office who slept with two of his female coworkers, and they all text each other throughout the meeting, to which their boss is oblivious. I played the guy/man-hoe, but interestingly enough, the part was actually written for a woman in an office with 3 men (as opposed to 1 man and three women). So I played Lance instead of Lindsey. Reverse sexism I suppose. We actually had a fairly diverse cast, including myself, a professional actress, a girl in high school whose parents are Elise's professors and a recent immigrant from Poland. The latter had a little problem with the language, but then again, we all did. Half of the play was in "txt" form, and the other half was financial gibberish jargon, a la "We're looking at about 5 to 7 cents per $100 of second-quarter assets, plus Tier-1 capital. However, my source does indicate that we should be able to cap our premiums at 15 basis points per deposit." (My line, which I apparently still have memorized.) So a good chunk of rehearsal time was spent trying to spit out those delightful turns of phrases. In the end, it wasn't the funniest play of the night but did get a couple of good laughs.

Afterwards, Elise and I went out to dinner at Wildflower, and she and I conversed about acting at length. I asked her honestly how she thought my acting stacked up against the other actors. She confirmed what I had suspected, that they were mostly a cut above me, which is what I thought, but wanted to make sure it wasn't just my self-derisiveness. It makes me a little sad, because I honestly believe I don't know what to do about it. I came to the conclusion that no director had ever really challenged me, partly because I'm often cast in smaller roles which don't require as much attention, or because other things take precedence over working with me as an actor. The latter was the case for Texts From Last Night; we were focused on the language and the unorthodox staging more than really developing the characters.

Far be it for me to place all the blame on the director though. It's just that I feel I've reached as far as I can on my own, in terms of acting. I have a lousy inner eye, and when I'm acting, I can't really judge myself, especially when I'm concentrating so hard on acting. I put the onus on the director because I feel like I can't simultaneously be "in the moment" and evaluating the moment. The only person who ever did call me on stuff like this, and coach me second to second was never my director. It was Louima, my college voice teacher. He would stop me if I was thinking about what I was doing. He'd stop me if my attention wavered, even if I didn't realize it.

The conclusion Elise and I came to under the stars in the Central West End was that if I wanted to get better, I need to get some outside help. Otherwise, I'm stuck in a Catch-22, where I can't get better at acting without getting cast in stuff, and I can't get cast in stuff without getting better at acting. Then again, only acting once every year can't help either.

The next day, with all this weighing on my mind, I took in the matin?e of the touring version of "A Chorus Line." I was hesitant about seeing it since I had already seen it in NYC a few summers ago. However, despite this, I went and still found myself emotionally affected by the show. It made me think about singing, and acting, and my friends who do these things. I'll avoid my usual spiel about missing artsy people, but will note that I wish I had more friends in St. Louis that I could go see shows with. Friends who AREN'T studying 18 hours a day for boards.

I'm reminded of the philosophy of music class I took for my Take 5. Some definitions of what music/art is depends on its relation to other people. If I play trombone in the woods, and no one hears it, is it still music? That sort of thing. In some way, art is not something that can be experienced alone. It's why I love going to art museums with Elise. OBOC was fun because it was all-inclusive, and you were up there with 50 other people doing the same thing as you. I guess its lacking that connection that can make me feel quite lonely at times.

Hmmph. Sounds like the kind of angst that one could write a musical about...

Old School

2009-05-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

Handheld Nintendo Gaming Device

In scholarly news,my latest paper is in Google Scholar. Now you can go read officially all the wonderful things there are to know about cDNA to Genome alignment. While you're at it, you can readmy undergrad thesisandElise's undergrad thesisas well. I am working on getting my undergrad work going again, to some sort of publishable state. There's a conference that I'm hoping to submit my transcriber to. In Kobe Japan.

Went to Columbia over the weekend and sawStar Trekagain. Still good, but enough with the shaky cam already. Also had the pleasure of seeing Ben Rossetter for lunch. We only managed to see each other for about an hour, but that is par for the course for our relationship: see each other for ten minutes over food before one of us zips off to far off lands. Speaking of Bens, Ben Snikoff is now technically a law school graduate, and startinga podcast called TechnicallyLegal.I haven't listened yet, but if its anywhere near as hilarious as jury duty or as intellectually profound as Ben's improv, it should be good.

In addition to Star Trek, I also sawBottle Shock, starring Captain Kirk, Snape, the President of the United States and Echo. Plus, I also finally saw Slumdog Millionaire. I really enjoyed the movie. My biggest complaint comes after watching the deleted scenes. There's a scene in the movie where all the boys are stealing from the audience members at the opera in front of the Taj Mahal. Nothing really happens, and then later, they're back in Mumbai, looking for~~Latiku~~Latika. I thought the movie would have been much better with the deleted scene that fits in there inserted back in, with an opera patron explaining that the opera is "Orfeo ed Euridice", which tells the tale of how Orpheus goes to hell to get his true love back. This inspires Jamal to get Latika back, so they go back to Mumbai. Perhaps I just like it when people's major life decisions are made on the basis of music.

In sports news, the Mets are on a clever little losing streak. Just when you think they've got everything together...bam! Disaster. Maybe they'll rebound...let's see who they're playing next. Oh.Crap.Well, at least the Mets were good 23 years ago, and some of my favorite tv. shows mention them.

In tech news,, there's a contest to see who can encode an image in 160 characters the bestso that you can post images on Twitter without links. It's really tempting to drop everything and try to code up something.

Lastly, in arts and entertainment, with any luck, this weekend I'll be in the24 Hour Play Festivalhere in St. Louis that I did last year. To think that one year ago was the first time I'd heard of robots doing theatre...

And that about does it for me tonight. Join us tomorrow at 11. And here it is, your moment of zen.

This Just In

2009-05-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

Various news snippets...

The Mets are on a bit of a hot streak. The Cardinals, not as much, although they both are at the top of their respective divisions. I started feeling like the Mets and Cardinals could not both be good at the same time this season (a feeling helped by the Cardinals sweeping the Mets back in April, grumble grumble). However, statistics show this not to be as bad as I thought.

As you can see in Figure A, the Cardinals, while they haven't been consistently winning recently, they've been floating at about 8 games over .500. Meanwhile, the Mets dive under .500 came right when the Cards got hot.

Figure B shows when the Mets winning and the Cards winning coincide. This turns out much better than expected, since I expected both teams winning to be under-represented. It can be read optimistically or pessimistically. Pessimistically, most of the time, both teams don't win. However, optimistically, at least one team wins most of the time.

Anyway, I need to head down to Busch more often. Oh, and I forgot to post this awhile ago, but I've been readingThe Wright Stache, a whole blog about how David Wright and the Mets would be doing better if Wright had a mustache, or to use their neologism, a Metstache. Right before the season started, I was growing my own Metstache, setting a modern record for longest time without me shaving (two weeks!). Not coincidentally, this happened to coincide with the week that Elise had finals and the week that Elise was away on spring break. By the end, I had a pretty sweet goatee going. And by "pretty sweet" I mean sketchy/good if you squint. Anyway, said blog posteda link about the Mets and Cards playing back in the 2000 NLCS.I must say, I got very nostalgic reading those rosters. Piazza! Alfonzo! Ventura! Franco! Wendell!McEwing!Agbayani!
The most useful bit of code I've written in past weeks has been a Java graphing package. I always find myself trying to graph data quickly, but usually resort to some lazy swing visualizations. But on a whim/challenge by my labmates, I wrote a wrapper package to theGoogle Chartsservice, which makes quite pretty graphs with relatively low effort. (They produced the graphs seen above)
Last Monday the Tony nominations came out. Perennial blog-favorite [title of show] got nominated for Best Book, but that was it. I was very disappointed it didn't get a best musical nod, which probably means they won't be performing at the Tonys. Readingbunch of the NYTimes coverage, it seems in general, Tony nominations were doled out more heavily for plays that are still open, which could be a reflection of the hope that the nominations will increase ticket sales for those plays, and help broadway as a whole. This seems rather cynical, yet all too possible. Overall, I was a bit confused by the nominations, with a lot of things that I didn't think were deserving getting nominations. However, then I realized that I've only actually seen one show in the entire last year ("13") and it got zero (0) nominations.

I've come to realize that I have a love/hate relationship with the Tony's, in that in many cases, it's rather lopsided. In my mind, it seems like a continuation of the OBOCracy, where the most-talented get all and the slightly less talented get little. Sure you get something like [title of show] or In the Heights breaking through occasionally, but most of the time, shows like Gypsy and Billy Elliot get 40 awards and somehow that's fair? [title of show] not getting more nominations would bother me more, I suppose, if it wasn't a central part of their mantra that they'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than a 100 Tony voters ninth favorite thing.
Speaking of talented, singing underdogs: the Muppets. What is the name of the piano playing dog? Now say the name out loud. Say it again. Now readthis overthought treatise on the "correct" pronunciation.
I saw Star Trek on Friday night with Zeke, Elise and the med students. An awesome, awesome movie. I had very few complaints, namely the soundtrack not being overly awesome, J.J. Abrams desire to make monster movies, and Nimoy seeming a little tired. However, nearlyeverythingelse seemed to work. Zachary Quinto did not disappoint, and I loved Scotty, although that might just be the engineer in me showing. The script was tight, and the alternate reality plot worked really well. Overall, a very satisfying experience.
Finally, in the latest installment of my Culinary Adventures, I have now made the following dishes: Apple Pizza, Black Bean Enchilada Casserole, Stuffed Shells and a Tofu Tower.

Keep St. Louis Weird

2009-05-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

From the Riverfront Times,an article about an Austin, TX mayoral candidate warning about Austin becoming more like St. Louis,the analogy being that St. Louis was once a great city and now it's not, and Austin is a great city. I think the comments had some interesting points (for once). Someone likened the general response to criticisms of St. Louis to "Custard and baseball." But my favorite has to be, "I?m familiar with 1904 St. Louis. I?ve studied 1904 St. Louis, and Austin, you?re no 1904 St. Louis!"

Thanks a lot PERL

2009-05-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

Seriously?
@files = <*.mp3>;
That gets all the files in the directory that match that pattern? And no one told me?

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FRAKKIN TIMES I'VE WRITTEN THE FOLLOWING CODE:
opendir(DIR, $dir); my @files = readdir(DIR); close(DIR)

GRAH

The Marathon

2009-04-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

At this point in my training, I don't consider running to be a sport. That's not to say that it can't be for some people, or even for me at some point, but its not a competition in the sense that baseball is, its more of an activity. For me, it doesn't matter who wins.

However, its more than just somethingto do. There is direction to it. Goals to be reached. Progress to be made. It's not baseball, but then again its not just throwing the ball around either. There's a line you have to cross in order to be done and literally everything you do is in some way moving you toward that goal. And in that, there's a certain satisfaction that comes from every bit of measurable progress. 1 mile, already? How many more after this? I can do that. I can't see the end, but I know its there. Just keep running.

There's a similar logic behind TODO lists. Knocking stuff off of the list also gives some satisfaction, and knocking a bunch of things off the list feels even better. And I've crossed a couple finish lines myself recently. Finishing my paper was a big one. That's done now, and I can finally consider the next phase of my graduate education. That's a race I've been running since last June.

Equally satisfying is finally finishing the musical, and seeing the fruits of that labor pay off. I can't say it was the easiest production I've ever done. The drama-meter was turned way up, with people not showing up to rehearsals, creative disagreements from day 1 and so many Saturday mornings. It was a long slog, and at one point, I had to push myself to get through that one more rehearsal, blocking for one more song. And somewhere along the way, I also ended up biting off even more. Wait, wrong metaphor. Rather, as is par for the course for me, I started running a couple extra races at the same time as the others. Being set designer and builder and conductor was also fulfilling, and I enjoyed each of them. But adding more hours to those Saturdays for pit rehearsal, and toward the end, building stuff...it all seemed a little crazy.

But that's the way it always seems at mile 8: So much left undone, and the doubt of actually finishing starts to creep in. So you push through and you get tosee things pay off.When I directed Rumors, I went around afterward claiming that it wasn't so much that I was a good director, but I was one hell of a caster, deferring credit to my collaborators the cast. Similarly, I couldn't have done Forum this time without the other producers (my fiancee doubly so), Bob who helped me build the sets, and the cast and pit members. However, I am particularly proud of a couple of my ideas on this production, particularly making Everybody Ought to Have a Maid an all-guys number and creative use of molding on the flats.

Show week went particularly well I thought. I will still claim that we probably could have stumbled through the show for an audience after Sunday's rehearsal. Seeing as that's usually where you end up on Wednesday nights, I thought that was promising. It definitely gave everyone a chance to step up their game for that last week and polish things for hilarity. Especially in the big chase scene I concocted at the end. I tried to give everyone a little bit in the scene, but some of them weren't particularly inspired. However, by the time the show came around, people had transformed my random directions into funny little bits. Things just seemed to come together. The crowd really responded to it well, especially the second night when all of the cast's classmates showed up. I'm also really thankful that my parents came out to see the show. They're the only ones who have seen my long journey from awkward Asian Brigadoonian to director-in-chief. My only regret is that I didn't get to spent more time with them.

There came a moment at the end of each show, as with the whole production, where everything finally clicked, and all that was left was a big downhill to the end. Transitioning from Finale Ultimo to the Curtain Call music always felt good. The show was over, and here was everyone in the audience appreciating everyone in the show for their hard work. I was on top of the world.

[The question, of course, looms, whether or not I'll be back next year. From where I'm sitting on Cloud 9 right now, I'm of course entertaining the idea. No guarantees, but I'm not ruling it out yet.]

The feeling of convergence resonates strongly within me. I love the feeling of things coming together at some predestined point, with numerous threads all coming together at once. It's the Act I Finale. One day more. This is the time when important stuff is happening. This is is when the show comes together. This is when you run the race. This is when you take an extended lunch break to see your favorite team get swept by your second favorite team. This is the moment!

And so in that moment, you find yourself running. Moving forward at a speed that you didn't know you could do, much less keep up for the entire course. You know that this is the point you've gotten to after all those miles. All of the training, all of your support from your friends and loved ones, all of your own personal will power has brought you to this point. And, as you near the end, all of the eyes turn toward you, but you don't necessarily see them. This moment is your moment, and its not about other people seeing what you've done, but knowing that this is what you've been moving toward the entire time. You cross the finish line and know that this was the goal you were destined for. You did it. The race is over and you're ready for more.

P.S. I may have run the entire half-marathondressed as Homestar Runner. I needed some way to retain geek cred while performing clearly jock-like activities.
P.P.S. Welcome to the official blog of the new assistant conductor of WUPOPS. The head conductor's name is Ambrose Wu. I've already decided my portions of rehearsals will be called LUPOPS.
P.P.P.S. ::sigh:: Mets. Least I have the Cardinals.
P.P.P.P.S. St. Louis book fair acquisitions: Digital Fortress and a script for Rumors.

MAN WEEK

2009-04-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

GRUNT. WOMAN OUT OF HOUSE LAST WEEK. DID MAN THINGS INSTEAD. LIKE WHAT? BUYING CONSTRUCTION SUPPLIES. MEASURING STUFF. EATING MEAT. WATCHING PROFESSIONAL SPORTS. DRIVING BIG VEHICLES.

Yeah, that's enough of that. I did manage to drop $1500 at Home Depot in one shot, buying stuff for the set of Funny Thing. That's been my biggest time sink for the past couple weeks. Eventually, I'll post a time-lapse video of building it (the parts while my laptop battery was alive). I realized that I can do a decent job of faking being Nigel, but being Gordon is a lot harder: figuring out exactly what needs to be done, making sure a crew shows up, making sure everyone has something to do, and making sure they're doing it right...it's all kinda exhausting. Who knew it would take so much time? Somewhere Evan is laughing.

I bought a couple CDs in recent weeks that I'm enjoying, includng the soundtrack to 13, The Incredibles, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Garden State. Despite the hype, I really like ESotSM better than Garden State. I'm going to have to see if I can find some more Polyphonic Spree music (I already have a Padora station for them). I also really enjoy a lot of the songs in 13. The girl who plays Patrice is amazing.

Ahhh....Mountain Dew, how I missed thee.

Other than being ridiculously busy and stressed, I'm kind of enjoying life right now. Perhaps BECAUSE I am ridiculously busy and stressed. All the stuff I'm doing right now reminds me a lot of the stuff I was doing back in my senior and Take 5 years. I saw on facebook that Seannon (a.k.a Sean and Shannon) just passed two years of being together (congrats!), which reminded me that Rumors was in fact two years ago now. And here I am back in the saddle trying to get stuff done for Funny Thing...the same stuff I was doing for Rumors, like building sets, directing, publicity, trying to get all the production elements together... In one way or another, I'm back in theatre. It's also reminding me of my sophomore year a bit, obviously, when I was IN Funny Thing.

Meanwhile, I'm finally on the brink of being a published author. Wooo!Watch this space.Then there's training for the half marathon which is this coming Sunday. That's right. Hell week starts with a 13.3 mile run. Possibly in the rain. Not so sure I'm okay with that. And I suppose I'm getting married in a little less than 4 months, which has necessitated some planning of its own. And I ran a trivia night for the comp sci grad student group. My favorite question:

Which of the following is the most appropriate name for St. Louis' most famous monument?
1. The Gateway Parabola
2. L'arch d'sigmoid function
3. Gateway to the Hyperbolic Cosine
4. The Jefferson National Expansion Sine Wave Memorial

Bottom line: I'm excite because I'm doing stuff. I think one of my biggest frustrations last year was just being a grad student. I have never been one thing. I'm a grad student and a director and a trombonist. It reminds me ofsomeof thegood timesback in undergrad. And that makes me happy.

So enough reminiscing. It's time. Time to slay my "ugly color set" vampire. Time to build some robots. Time to drink some more Mountain Dew and prepare the best musical the med school has ever seen. Time to put on make up. Time to light the lights. Time to get things started.

P.S.Go Mets!
P.P.S.This Videomakes me feel better about the random time I've spent doing all of my random programming projects.
P.P.P.S. C'mon Heroes, you were doing so well....big finale...please!?
P.P.P.P.S.

P.P.P.P.P.S. I forgot to mention I played in the WUPOPS concert today. Sad because I won't be able to play in the real concert which is next Saturday. But I love those guys.

In a VAN down by the RIVER

2009-04-03T22:38:00.000-07:00

Hmmm....its late. Don't drink and blog.

I spent $1700 today. I bought all the set for Forum. Or rather, I bought all the pieces for the set of Forum. Bob and I hit up Home Depot today after work. Well, actually, first I had to get a UHaul Van. Turns out renting a van is a heckuva lot easier than renting a car. And cheaper. And you only have to be 18+. It was really hard to drive the van, and I can't tell if it is because the van I rented is either really big or because I just haven't driven a big van since 2003. I do miss the ol' Lu-mobile. But after zipping around in Elise's sunfire for the past two years, driving a big van is very different.

Pictures to come of progress on the set.

TV Update

2009-03-31T22:35:00.000-07:00

A) I'm excited for Heroes being good again.
B) Tonight on "Chopped", the reality cooking show on Food Network (that I don't normally watch, but was on after Ace of Cakes whilst I was at the gym), one of the finalists was a woman from Poughkeepsie. For those of you keeping score at home, that's the city across the river from where I lived. That itself would be interesting enough. It's actually not surprising when you factor in the CIA. However, the kicker is where she cooks. She's the executive chef....at the IBM Poughkeepsie cafeteria. On the show she talks about how she cooks for 500-700 people, which for two summers, included me. WEIRD.
C) I'm conflicted as to whether I should keep watching Dollhouse.
D) Jon Stewart tells it like it is.
E) I think Michael L. Scott should start the Michael L. Scott Concurrency Company.

Yo Ho Yo Ho a Doctor's Life For Me

2009-03-27T16:35:00.000-07:00

How to Date a Med Student

8. Romantic date = Chinese take-out in front of the TV on their 10 minute study break.

9. A vacation together consists of a trip down the street to Walgreens for new highlighters and~~printer paper~~INDEX CARDS.

10. Their study habits will make you feel like a complete slacker. For them, hitting the books 8-to-10 hours a day is not uncommon, nor difficult. You'll wonder how you ever managed to pass school on your meager one hour of studying per night.

In other news, while donating blood on Wednesday, I also signed up to be a potential blood marrow donor. Here's why its awesome.

Double the number of things I'll donate while I'm still alive.
Low odds that I'll actually need to donate
But if I do need to, I'll feel like a winner!
Racial pride actually works well here, since odds are, my marrow would go to a half-Chinese half-white person
Got to play CSI: Home Edition by swabbing my cheeks for DNA.

Here's why it sucked.

Ate an Oreo right before I swabbed my cheeks. Ew.

Getting Hungry

2009-03-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

Food at the New Mets Park

I posted earlier how there was going to be a Shake Shack at the New Mets Ballpark. The article above goes into greater detail. Shake Shack remains one of my favorite restaurants in New York. Turns out it, and a portion of the food offerings at the new stadium, are managed byDanny Meyer, a St. Louisian native, who claims to be "a Mets fan — except when they play the Cardinals". Also pretty cool: the skyline from the old scoreboard (seen above) will be above one of the concession stands.

And now I really want a burger.

Countdown

2009-03-15T07:23:00.000-07:00

1 month since I submitted my paper to Bioinformatics.
34 days until I run a half marathon
38 days until I see the Mets in St. Louis
38 days until opening night of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, directed and conducted by me
39 days until my parents arrive in St. Louis
53 days until ISMIR conference deadline
5 months until the Big day

Random musical theatre links:
African American Musical theatre, performed by Koreans
Puerto rican Musical Theatre, performed by Puerto Ricans,featuring the epic collaboration of "Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and Lin Manuel Miranda.

Penny For Your Thoughts

2009-02-18T13:41:00.000-08:00

The first portrait to appear on U.S. money was Lincoln's portrait on the penny to honor his 100th birthday. 50 years later, they added the Lincoln memorial on the back. Now, for his 200th birthday, they're releasingnew pennies with other Lincoln-related imageson the tails side. They show the cabin where he was born, Rail-splitter Lincoln, State Senator Lincoln and Lincoln's Inauguration.

However, the capitol building looked a lot different for Lincoln's Inauguration, specifically, the dome was incomplete, making the penny look like it depicts another building entirely. Your thoughts?

Images of Power and Destruction

2009-02-02T15:41:00.000-08:00

Two websites have come to my attention in the past month, demonstrating the immense power of images.

So I developed an ImageMagick script back in October to turn any picture into the iconic Obama "Hope" style. I thought it waspretty cool, and I considered turning it into a facebook application. However, I looked into it and it just didn't seem practical to do, especially given all the other things I had to do at the time. However, around inauguration time, I discovereda website that could do that very task. But not only did they have a facebook application, but they also had the ability to vote on the images, and here's the best part: the ability to slap your Obamicon onto MERCHANDISE! Shirts! Mugs! STAMPS! Ah, if only I had thought of that, I'd actually have followed through and maybe could have made a few bucks. Because that's really what HOPE and CHANGE are for: profit. Actually, I'm thinking of spending time volunteering forbyteworkshere in St. Louis, helping city youth with computers, instead of cashing in on someone else's artwork.

Meanwhile, I foundthe single most depressing website on the intertubes(for a Mets fan). I liked Shea Stadium, and although I've seen how much better stadiums can be, I'm still sad to see it go. And man, is it going. To me, it was one of the most defining pieces of architecture in NYC, just because I would always drive past it on my way to my grandmother's apartment in Queens. The neon players on the sides are etched into my memory; a glowing symbol of pure baseball. And now, it's a pile of rubble, slowly being torn down and carted away. Ironically, Shea itself is not collapsing, as the team that played there so often did. Instead, piece by piece, the Mets move toward a new home, a new era and a new HOPE.

SuperHeroes Bowl

2009-02-01T22:28:00.000-08:00

What?! It's almost February?

2009-01-29T19:26:00.000-08:00

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?
Attend an academic conference. Plan a wedding. Play on a softball team regularly. Campaign. Direct a musical.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Still haven't written a musical, but I have gone to the gym a good deal more than I would have expected. I guess the same resolutions as always: Exercise and be healthy. Make the most of my free time. Write more in ye old blog.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
None. But I did go to Colorado and Idaho for a bit.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Rather than say "downtime" like I have for the past few years, I'll say I'd like to have some of my side projects actually get out the door. Like Broadwiki, or my music research. Oh, and I'm still waiting for that publication.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
May 8 - Biology of Genomes
May 24 - 24 Hours of Vampire Fights
July 4 - Bierstadt Lake
November 1 - Time for some campaigning
November 22 - Pretty Sweet Decade

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Giving a poster presentation at an academic conference.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not acting.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes. Long lasting or serious? No. Inconveniently timed? Yes.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A softball glove for Elise. Not nearly as romantic as last year's best thing I bought, but damn if I don't like me some softball. Oh, and Super Smash Brothers. That's pretty romantic.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Elise, as always, for being there and helping me grow. Dan, Rachel, Rob and Heather for keeping in touch. Plus, Zeke and MSTP2040.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Californians. Computer scientists who think they're biologists.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent, groceries and airline travel.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Gettin hitched. Robots. WU-Pops. Biking.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Will I? The Wii Sports Theme? Brand New Day? I got nothin.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Tough to say.
b) thinner or fatter? Thinner! Yay running.
c) richer or poorer? Slightly richer. Having a job year-round will do that.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Music. Theatre. Sleep.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Biology.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
Vomiting. No joke.

21. What was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in 2008?
You know, Dan, I've never been with a physics grad student before.

22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
Yes, and its not #21.

23. How many nights of drunken debauchery?
See #21. And the biology of genomes.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
The Daily Show, Heroes (still), the Office, Top Chef

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Sarah Palin

26. What was the best book you read?
This is Your Brain on Music and the first half of The People's History of the United States

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Curtains, Wall-E, Dr. Horrible

28. What did you want and get?
Vacation with Elise, a softball team, a visit to Shea one last time

29. What did you want and not get?
Tickets to [title of show], Mets in the playoffs, a publication

29a. What did you get and not want?
Jury Duty

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Hands down: Wall-E. See, Halloween. But I did see the Dark Knight at the very end of the year, and DAMN.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Celebrated at home with Elise, eating a cake she insisted was horrible, but I still thought was delish. Veinte y cuatro.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Knowing how to manage my time. Knowing what I want to do.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
If Eddie Izzard can be an Executive Transvestite, then I'm saying my personal fashion concept is slowly moving toward suave geek. Or maybe that's another way of saying wearing a suit jacket over long sleeved tshirts makes me look like a college professor.

34. What kept you sane?
Never being alone. The Wii. Softball. [title of show]. Talking to people from the UR days. Personal programming projects.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Kiera Knightley, Masi Oka and Barack Obama. If I weren't engaged, I'd be really worried that two of three were dudes.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Change. Hope. Gays.

37. Who did you miss?
The usual crowd of Rochestafarians. My family. Friends from the NP.

38. Who was the best new person you met in 2008?
Bill

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008:
Uneventful doesn't mean boring.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
It's about one second
And just when you're on the verge of success
The sky starts to change
And the wind starts to blow

In the news

2008-12-10T22:35:00.000-08:00

University of Rochester alumnusSteven Chuwill be named Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration. He won the Nobel prize in Physics a decade ago, and is a dorky looking Asian American. Good choice.

Also, the Mets have recently acquired three new supposedly decent relief pitchers, named K-Rod, Putz and Sean Green. Sean White could not be reached for comment.

What About Love?

2008-12-03T21:06:00.000-08:00

I have a post forthcoming about my crazy OBOC weekend (see facebook for pictures) and thanksgiving weekend, but in the meantime, two very different videos about love.

I really like FunnyOrDie videos because they are able to stack their videos with celebrities and not even call attention to it. Cast includes Jack Black, John C. Reilly, Allison Janney, Margaret Cho, Barrett Foa, Maya Rudolph, Kathy Najimy, Craig Robinson (i.e. that guy from the Office), Sarah Chalke (i.e. Elliot from Scrubs) and Neil Patrick Harris. Damn.

Also, it was composed by Marc Shaiman of Hairspary and the South Park movie, who said "If I'm going to stand on the soap box, at least let me sing and dance."

I picked up this video off ofangryasianman.com. Shot with only still photographs. It makes me happy because the title of the song is a lie.

Speaking of Collapses

2008-12-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

Mr. Wilpon, tear down this sign.

Happy T

2008-11-27T15:36:00.000-08:00

Happy thanksgiving!

Weekend Roundup

2008-11-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

After finally finishing my robot lab from heck the week before, I finally had a semi-relaxing/normal week. As it turns out, we got full credit for our lab, despite one of the group members dropping out, leaving me to cover all of his functionality.

On Friday, Elise and I went to go see the touring production of Sweeney Todd (the new revival version where they all play their own instruments). It was fun to see again, although from as high up as we were, I couldn't hear them playing their own instruments as well. Turns out the Fox Theatre is HUGE. The case was pretty good, although not as good as the broadway case I saw two years ago with Rob Rice. However, this cast did include someone who cited in their bio that they were a FRESHMAN in college, double majoring in Computer Science and Vocal Performance. The kicker?SHEplayed JOANNA. My theory is that if she and Masi Oka had a kid together, he/she would grow up to win a Tony and the Turing Prize.

On Saturday, the lady and I went to theProposition 8 Protestdowntown. I considered bringing a sign that said "STRAIGHT MUSICAL THEATRE ENTHUSIASTS FOR GAYS" but turns outthey didn't need more signs.

Now I'm counting down the days until the OBOC Alumni Show on Saturday. And what better way to connect to my old OBOC roots than with a random multimedia project! Editing video for fun and profit!

However, I realized that between that and Thanksgivin, I have very little time to get my semester-end projects done. So back to it!

Angry Straight Man

2008-11-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

First, off-topic, let me say Keith Olbermann is my favorite jock turned nerd political commentator, and I always enjoy his Special Comments. I've also been recently enjoying watching Rachel Maddow with Elise. Maddow, coincidentally, happens to be gay. The following rant is part inspired by his latestspecial comment(linked to me by [title of show]), and part inspired by Rachel's post on her new blog,Alas, I Digress.

We are in the midst of a crisis. The crisis of a small minority of people, trying to change the law in a way that hurts the rest of us. I'm talking about the crisis of people trying to redefine marriage. Marriage has always been the union of two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together. But, some people want to redefine marriage, pervading its meaning to a more contorted version of marriage, that specifies which subset of the population can marry which other subsets of the population. You see, life is complicated enough without imposing more caveats to the relatively simple notion of marriage.

I'm not a lawyer (not that there's anything wrong with that). So I'm sure legally, you could make some arguments as to why my argument doesn't make sense. Similarly, you could make arguments appealing to the Bible, as many do. But the thing that it keeps coming down to is: what does it matter to you? I could see the point, if at the end of everything you traded in your marriage for market value, and since gay marriage existed, a traditional marriage might be worth less. But that's not the case. Marriage is an intensely personal relationship between two people. More than anything else, it is a social construct. I welcome everyone to define their own marriage in a manner fitting to their own personal culture. Hence, if you don't like gay marriage, don't get one. The related legal ramifications of marriage are however, at the crux of the matter, and that is simply a matter of equal protection under the law.

The whole thing bugs me for three reasons: 1) It's profoundly unjust 2) I have lots of gay friends 3) It suddenly doesn't seem too long ago thatAnti-miscegenation lawswere all the rage. Pop quiz: what do my parents, Obama's parents and I all have in common? If you guessed interracial marriage, you win! The idea of outlawing marriage based on what people look like is as ridiculous as basing it on reproductive roles. And as my soon to be wife mentioned, what's to keep another Proposition 8 outlawing interracial marriages from getting put on the ballot? It too was legal for some period of time.

Ultimately, I feel like this is a temporary setback. A horribly unjust setback. Much like Jim Crow laws, Japanese internment and the lack of women's suffrage, bans on interracial marriage will ultimately be seen as backwards and blemishes on America's ideals. In the history of America, I cannot think of one instance where a group of disenfranchised citizens had their rights permanently curtailed. In the end, I take the optimistic outlook, hoping that some day, this injustice too will become another chapter in the history of civil rights struggles that were ultimately won.

And There Was Much Rejoicing

2008-11-04T21:12:00.000-08:00

At roughly 10:30 CST, I called Evan. The first two words out of his mouth: Hell yes.

Yes we can. Yes we did.

It's hard not to be trite in a blog post like this, with emotions running high, and sleep running low. But as I was just quoting to Elise, the feeling that best sums up where I am right now is the Discovery Channel slogan "The World Is Just Awesome." Eight hours ago I was freaking out about my robotics lab, running on little sleep, and worrying about the results of the election. And I had a choice as to what I should do about each problem. I heavily considered a nap until the results were in, which would have allieviated two problems, but that would have been too easy. So instead, Elise and I were canvassing in South City. I had previously been out on Saturday evening, canvassing, and on Wednesday I phone banked. Even now, as I look at the final results, I worry that I should have done more, and perhaps then the Big O could have won Missouri. But on the other hand, I can rest tonight, knowing that for me, only the state was lost, with the Big O winning the country and the country.

So while my hopes of living in a blue state are now diminished, I can at least have the comfort of living in the bluest of the blue parts of this red state. In fact, looking at it, all of the places I've lived, I always seem to end up somewhere kind of blue.

County	Obama Support
Manhattan	85.1%
St. Louis City	83.7%
Travis (Austin)	64.1%
Ulster (New Paltz)	60.6%
Monroe (Rochester)	58.0%

It's odd to think about how different my life was eight years ago. The Mets had just lost the World Series. I was a junior in high school with no knowledge of Rochester, and was still nearly three years away from meeting a certain "hot liberal girl from a red state". More importantly, I was pretty a-political. In my lunchtime conversations, it was always me in between Losee on the Right and Mischa on the Left. And I remember flipping on the TV in the kitchen a few times before I went to bed on election night, only to watch it the next morning in shock at what was happening.

Four years later: The Mets sucked, and I was a junior at UR. I rejoined OBOC and started thinking I might want to actually do computer science research for the rest of my life. My room in ICMC had a Kerry/Edwards poster in the window, having finally found some political opinions of my own. I recall sitting in Wilson Commons, trying to get some reading done for my American Intellectual History class done, and stopping off at the computers near the arcade. And subsequently cursing loudly.

And now, the Mets are almost good, I'm in my second year at WashU and engaged. In midst of trying to program a robot to recognize walls, I keep an eye on the New York Times website. When the Obama speaks, I'm on the couch, watching intently, wearing my "Show Me Change" tshirt, lucky hawaiian shirt and "I Voted" sticker. I felt better about the world. Gone was the anxiety that had plagued me earlier in the day and for the past weeks. As the orchestra presidential music played*, I was able to finally relax. It was going to be alright.

* I want to find out who wrote that music, and if I can get a copy.
** See, I told you it was hard not be trite.

Showtime!

2008-11-02T08:31:00.000-08:00

Soooooooooo tempting...

2008-10-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

Most Sensational, Celebrational

2008-10-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

Tame nonpartisan political humor:

Another random link I've been holding onto since mid-August:When You Wish Upon a ... Frog?!: A long retrospective on the history of the Muppets and their relation to Disney.

I had heard rumors about possible attractions at Walt Disney World involving "The Great Muppet Ride", where the muppets reenacted famous scenes from movies. But it wasn't until I readPart 5of the series that I realized how epic it was going to be. The most interesting part was this quote from Henson himself:

"This is a form of technology I've never been into before, and it's as if these characters were designed to be audio-animatronics. When we try to do a live person or a cartoon character as an Audio-Animatronic figure, we're changing medium. We're trying to turn a person or a cartoon character into something plastic or fabric. But when we take puppets into Audio-Animatronics, we're staying in the same medium. These characters were created in these three-dimensional forms, so we should be able to use them in park attractions in a way that will still look very authentic."

Jim Henson: 525,600 people's favorite thing.

2008-10-27T07:45:00.000-07:00

Entry tags:

potterpotterpotter

A Potter Potter Potter Potter Potter Potter Potter WEASLY WEASLY

But I am the chosen one!

Location Location Location

2008-10-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

I'm David Lu and I approve this message.

On a similar note, I really want one of those shirts that say "Washington University" on the front and "in St. Louis dammit" on the back.

2008-10-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

Entry tags:

barack to the future,exercise,wifey

MIZZ ER UH
In other news, some exciting things happened in Missouri this weekend.

First, the big B.H.O. himself gave a speech under the arch in St. Louis, to an adoring crowd of 100,000 people. Statistically, I was probably there. But as it turns out, I was on the other side of the state, watching someone I admire more.

My dear fiance, who usually keeps pretty busy with showing everyone in the WashU med school how awesome she is, decided that that was not enough and figured she should run a half marathon too. Apparently, Elise can run 13.3 miles in 2:05:05. The whole experience ended up being quite fun for both of us. I kept myself busy running around from Mile 2, to Mile 11, to Mile 13.3 and chatting with other significant others of runners. Plus, I got to see a lot of Kansas City for the first time too. However, now Elise has this crazy idea thatIshould run the half marathon in St. Louis, an idea which I have not actually rejected as of yet...

2008-10-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

Entry tags:

tos,youtube

I'm Not Giving Up On You Guys
Recently, I posted abouthow awesome it is when my fandoms collide. So when the [title of show] [blog] postedthis link, including links to Homestar Runner, I thought it was pretty awesome. But then they topped it with their most recent post...

A few weeks ago,the aforementioned blog posted a link asking people to submit their names, and then be assigned a word from the song Nine People's Favorite Thing. And then everyone was supposed to take a picture of themselves holding a sign with that word on it. This is similar to an idea I was trying for the OBOC reunion, where everyone was to go take a video of themselvesdancing with a sparkly hatin scenic locales. My idea is failing because its A) harder to take video B) harder to obtain a hat than a sign and C) was marketed at a much smaller group. Anyway, I thought it was cool that they had a similar idea that was so....[title of show]-y. The result was this:

This video is awesome for a number of reasons, including but not limited to

(Pictures fromhere)

That almost runs the gamut of my interests. All that was missing was

Daniel Radcliffe
A Googler
A Storm Trooper
Gonzo the Great
Natalie Portman
Rochesterians
Barack Obama (wouldn't THAT have been crazy?)
Weird Al
Jon Stewart
Hot Blonde Med Students
Me.

I mean, seriously, wtf? Unfortunately, they happened to announce this project the day I was in jury duty selection, and I didn't respond until that evening, which was apparently too slow, seeing as 600 people seem to check the [tos] blog more compulsively than I do. That video needed me dancing in front of the Arch!

While the fact that I missed out on this video does vaguely depress me, it's not like I haven't made my contribution to [title of show]-dom. Before all of this, they did posteda few photomosaicsmade from stills of their YouTube videos. This, by the way, adds to the number of photomosaics I've made (for fun and profit) over the years, including ones for OBOC, IBM, Google Local Business Center and all the OBOC Graduating Seniors 2007. Science!

Anyway, all this is a pleasant distraction from the fact that [title of show] closed last weekend. Aas, all my crazy plans to make it back to NYC somehow before it closed turned out to be too time consuming or too costly. Hopefully, there will be some other incarnation of the show that I'll be able to see one day. But for now, I'll just continue to extol the virtues of being nine people's favorite thing.

The Times They Are A-Changin

2008-10-14T22:42:00.000-07:00

Its often tough to separate causation from correlation. I often attribute certain relationships to causation for fun (e.g.attributing the Mets winning percentage to my location). Maybe its just a way of rationalizing the way the world works. If there's a reason behind the Mets losing, maybe there's a reason why I never seem to get the parts I want in plays.

So what is the reasoning behind this: it seems politics and world affairs are on the forefront of all conversation these days. And I'm talking about my personal conversations, not just in the media. At work, discussions of economic bailouts are now more frequent than our Java vs. C++ debates. I've gone to watching parties for 2 of the debates so far. My mom and I even talk politics these days (something I don't ever recall happening much when I lived at home ). So what's the cause? I have a number of theories.

1) It's an adult thing. Part of me just wants to attribute it to being an adult. Over the last 8 years, I've gotten more and more political (for whatever cause). But that's just because I'm an adult, and that's what adults do...they stop worrying about just themselves (ha!) and concern themselves with world issues. However, the freshmen I hang out with in from WUPops also talk about the election more than I did (gasp) 6 years ago. BUSTED

2) It's a St. Louis thang. I mean, we did have a debate here on campus. Having the debate here was ...interesting to say the least. I knew a few people who actually made it inside. I was stuck outside to look at the backs of Chris Matthew and Claire McCaskill's heads through a sea of CHANGE and McPalin posters. And we are a swing state. It is nice to have my vote actually courted for once. For the first time, I'm seeing lots and lots of political advertisements on TV. Plus, I saw Obama back in January, and McCain was photographed in Newsweek, eating at Ted Drewes, the local custard place that everyone worships. But anyway, I think that does contribute, but I don't believe its the primary cause. No, the actual reason I feel is something much different.

3) We live in extraordinary times. And not the good kind. There is hope, but there's also fear.

But the hour is late, and that's a story I'll have to pick up another time.

Somehow I always knew

2008-10-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

So after robotics class today, I did a quick ride around campus to see all the craziness that is hosting a debate. I ended up hanging around the MSNBC booth for awhile (I MIGHT have been in the background of a few of the shots). There were a surprising number of McPalin supporters there, I thought.

And now I findthis linkand it all makes sense.

And according tothese picturesJon Oliver of the Daily Show was right near where I was at some point. (Note the annoyingly yellow large McPalin signs. They were all being held by older men who were clearly not students...So much for security)

Ah well. My thoughts on the train wreck later.

Speaking of Civic Duties...

2008-10-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

Citizen of the World

2008-10-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

David's First Annual September Awards

Winner of the Simultaneously Most Boring and Most Stressful Activity Award; Jury DutySo I got summoned for jury duty last week. Monday morning, 8am, show up in the court house in downtown St. Louis. Two hours later they start calling people in batches of 50 to sit in the panels. Judging by the range of numbers called, there must have been over 1000 people there. I wait. My number's not called. We get dismissed for lunch. I come back, wait, read more Michael Crichton (whose name I can't spell after a decade of reading his books). Eventually, I get dismissed....only to have to report back at 9am the next morning. On Tuesday my number is eventually called. We get into the court room ... just in time to take a lunch break. After that, the prosecutor asks a bunch of questions of the jury panel as a whole. "Has anyone had experiences with restraining orders" etc. None of them applied to me, so I didn't say anything. Toward the end, she called on people who hadn't said anything yet. Here is the transcript of everything I said.

"Yes?"
"I'm a grad student in the computer science department."
"No."

That apparently qualified me to be selected to be on the jury. The next morning I returned at 9:30am (at least it wasn't getting earlier). The 13 jurors sat and waited in the jury deliberation room for two hours, eating donuts and trying to figure out the ancient coffee machine. I resisted the urge to bang my fist on the table and yell "Doubt, Doubt, DOUBT!" Eventually we go down to the court room and are told we are dismissed due to a plea bargain. Having fulfilled my civic duty, I rejoice in my newfound freedom....to go back to work early.

Most Unexpected Musical Discovery Award: First Place - John Adams- The SLSO (St. Lu's Symphony Orchestra) had a special sneak preview last Thursday for students. I really wanted to go because I wanted to see a John Adams piece called "Guide to Strange Places." I initially became interested in him when we played some of his music as the score for "The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other." I was pleasantly surprised when I got to see John Adams. Himself. He introduced the piece (which I loved). Hooray modern American classical music!

Most Unexpected Musical Discover Award: Second Place: [title of show]- So I'm still pretty bummed that I won't be able to see [title of show] on Broadway before it closes in two weeks. However, another pleasant surprise is when I went grocery shopping the other day and the cast was onNPR, singing a live version of Nine People's Favorite Thing. (Those of you expecting me to have run into the cast in Schnucks are sadly mistaken)

Best Forgotten Joy: Directing- Last Saturday was the first real rehearsal for Funny Thing. I (oddly) had forgotten how fun directing can be. I'm having an acting workshop this Saturday. Improv games here I come.

Worst Instance of Not Answer Questions Directly Asked to You: First Presidential Debate- That's a very interesting award title, but it doesn't take into account that Elise and I also went to Taste of St. Louis this past weekend. The food was good, but I didn't have anything that knocked my socks off. There were some artists as well, including some who did some fun "pop art", i.e. paintings of Super Smash Brothers characters. Really, it all comes down to job creation.

Biggest "Collapse" that has been coming for a long time, but recently just became horribly apparent: Wall Street

Second Biggest "Collapse" that has been coming for a long time, but recently just became horribly apparent: The Mets

Best Replacement for Stingers, as if something could ever replace Stingers: WU Pops- It's a student organization that lets everyone in, doesn't have auditions, is organized by students, democratically picks music and encourages trombones to player louder. What's not to love? Seriously, the only direction I've gotten in this orchestra is to play louder, prompting me to turn to my section mates and say, "God I love this orchestra." We rotate parts, so I get to play the melody in some pieces and the blaring bass lines in others. There is one drawback however.

Number One Reason For Feeling Old: Playing Trombone with Two Freshman in CollegeHowever, they're really cool freshmen. Daniel, who I've been playing with for a few weeks is really enthusiastic and wants to start a trombone ensemble, which I happily told him I could provide music for.

Also, in the area of tCAoDL (the Culinary Adventures of David Lu), I cooked Bronzed Alaskan Salmon in a Wine/Butter sauce today. And an apple pie, which was a good substitute from being home and having my mother bake one, although that doesn't mean it was as good as hers.

So I guess the take home message is, some things never change. You can take me out of UR but you can't take the UR out of me.

Deja Vu

2008-09-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

[explicatives deleted]

2008-09-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

Well crap.

Scallywags!

2008-09-18T21:03:00.000-07:00

I Be Feelin' Lucky!

Reminder: Tomorrow (Friday) is Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Tomorrow is the Judgement Day

2008-09-13T17:31:00.000-07:00

I love it when my interests randomly combine. It's like if the cast of [title of show] threw out the opening pitch at a Mets game, and there's a Strong Bad email with Muppets, and one of the actors in Heroes turns out to be a computer scientist OH WAIT.

Link from Mischa's blogDinosaurs When You Least Expect Them

The September Song

2008-09-09T21:32:00.000-07:00

September is upon us once again. It's a time of year that I usually look forward to. As the precious little child that I was, I could never wait to go to school at the end of the summer. That slowly changed as the years went on. September meant that I had to actually finish reading about the French Revolution for AP Euro. But then in undergrad, I started to get excited about it again. September meant the 24 Hour Play Festival, seeing old friends and moving into a new dorm room.

Now, we're back to not looking forward to September. Having been back in classes for almost two weeks, I'm realizing how much less time I have during the school year to do research. I calculated it on the way home the other day...assuming I was at work for 40 hours, during the summer I had 38 hours to do my research. Now, I had to go to the other campus once a day for classes and such, so subtracting the class time and travel time, I'm down to 20 hours, broken up into random sized chunks. So, in order to get anything done, I sometimes have to stay late like I did last night, trying to get the new parameter sets to work until 11pm.

My classes do show some promise. First, I'm taking Artificial Intelligence, which may just be a rehash of CS242 but this time I might actually understand what's going on since I've now had more than 2 years programming experience. I'm also TAing my advisor's class in CompBio, and trying to make the experience better than it was last year. However, the class that I'm actually excited for is MOBILE ROBOTICS, which involves programming real robots. It's an area of CS that I haven't really played around much in, and I'm looking forward to doing just that, playing around.

In other news, my parents were here two weekends ago. For whatever reason, I felt the need to really clean up the apartment and impress them because A) they drove 1000 miles to get here and B) I felt the need to show to them I was an actual functioning adult. Not that they had any doubt. I ended up cooking General Tso's chicken and tofu for them, taking them around St. Louis to see where I'm getting married and such, and ultimately, buying new furniture. Then we had a fun adventure trying to get the couch up to 4th floor and then into our apartment. Ultimately, I think everyone enjoyed the weekend because we (the four of us) hadn't had that much time to just spend time with each other. My parents visited Rochester often enough, but always when something was happening which made things busy. Even when Elise and I went back to New Paltz last winter, we were in such a rush. Instead, we just got to hang out, cook together, play Wii and talk. (I must admit, it was very nice to have such talented sous chefs to help me, and it was always nice when the dirty dishes disappeared magically after dinner).

Having my parents here for Labor day was wonderful, but it did mark the end of the summer. And I guess the reason I haven't been looking forward to September is that I feel like my summer hasn't been super productive. When friends ask what I'm up to at work, I say the same thing I said at the beginning of the summer: trying to get a paper published. In terms of personal projects, I didn't get a chance to do much with my senior project of years past (a fact I'm reminded of even more since its been a year since I discovered the plagiarism). I did a lot of work on my broadway musical database, but nothing's actually been produced. I only finished one whole book in the course of the summer. There were accomplishments, but nothing that I'd consider productive: almost beating Mario Galaxy, achieving Pro level in Wii Bowling/Tennis/Softball and actually playing softball. Also got a bit of the wedding planned.

I guess this is the point in the blog where I look forward and say "this is where I start to be productive again." That doesn't usually last very long. Perhaps some day I will realize that I don't need to be "productive" to be happy. Some day. But with the start of another school year, entering 19th grade, I maintain that hope once again.

This year's going to be awesome.

Post script: I'm also very excited that I now have two creative outlets to focus my idle attention on. First, last Saturday I had auditions for Funny Thing: 7 hours in an over-airconditioned room. Brr. THEN came call backs. Overall, I'm getting excited for the show, but I'm realizing I should actually start working on it. Also, tonight I attended my first rehearsal for the WU Pops, an all student orchestra that plays "pop" orchestra music. On the slate for this semester: Star Wars/Gladiator/Pachabel's Canon/Sound of Music/Fiddler on the Roof. Iguessthat music is up my alley. If only I could find the sheet music for the orchestral version of Pork and Beans....

Something Funny's Going On

2008-08-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

So for the past year, I've been a little bit sad because I haven't had that many theatre-related activities. All of that should be changing this year. You are now reading the livejournal of the director of the Washington University Med School Student Musical! WUMSSM.

We had a few meetings over the past couple of weeks to decide which musical we were going to do. We were given an initial list of choices. I considered a musical theatre nerd failure that I'd only seen 2.5 of the 9 listed, and it's not like they were obscure...stuff like Kiss Me Kate and Hello Dolly.

Fortunately, someone else suggested a musical that I would feel more comfortable directing. A musical that I was in 4 and a half years ago...and then reprised in OBOC 2 years ago... A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM!!

I didn't initially think I was going to direct this year. I played in the pit this past year for Bye Bye Birdie and very much enjoyed that experience, other than the lip fatigue. I mentioned to Elise that I thought I might audition this year, and then perhaps sometime down the road once I've gotten some more familiarity with the actual workings, I might try to direct. Then the rumor began to spread that I wanted to direct this year, and without any better alternatives, I got slipped into the role.

So look out St. Louis, April 23-25, 2009, something funny is going to happen!

The Most Important Question Ever

2008-08-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

CAKE OR DEATH

Tuesday!

2008-08-12T21:36:00.000-07:00

Unintentional Bad Pun of the Weekend:
Ryan: What are you doing?
Me!!: Laundry.
Ryan: Sounds like fun.
Me!!: Loads. [pause] Groan.

Delicious Thing that I Cooked Over the Weekend:
Apple Burgers

Thing I Just Proudly Bought/Proof of my Coolness:
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People

Things I Enjoy:
Running in Forest Park
Grocery shopping, weirdly enough
Weird Al concerts

The HawaiianShirts Review!

2008-08-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've finished a couple books, movies, etc. My thoughts:

Catcher in the Rye - I had high expectations here. It inspired one of my favorite books, Shoeless Joe (i.e. Field of Dreams the book). Going into the book, though, I actually had very little context. I knew the title, and that's about it. This is another case of hype letting me down. It might be a product of generational differences. In the 1950s, it may have been more shocking to have a teenager using that kind of language, and thinking that kind of thoughts. But, as it stands, I'm past my teenage years, and live in a much different society. So it wasn't that shocking to me, nor did it resonate with me, and as the anti-English major that I am, the larger symbolic context was lost on me. Really, for me, it was like reading a book about some of the most annoying kids I knew in college and reading all their annoying thoughts. Definitely disappointing as far as classic books go. I liked Of Mice and Men better, and Time Machine blew me away.
My One And Only - I saw this at the Muny (the outdoor theatre in St. Louis). It was definitely a good fit for the Muny. Good tunes, good dancing.
Fiddler on the Roof - Also at the Muny. It was a good production, but I enjoyed it most of all for the memories it brought back from my high school production. I hadn't done anything more than hear the songs since then, so hearing some of the lines again was hilarious. Especially Fyedka saying "Goodbye Sasha. I said goodbye!", which brought back memories of Losee yelling at Dorian.
Pineapple Express - Don't see this movie.
The Great Escape - My Netflix pick for the week...recommended by Eddie Izzard. I was sitting on the edge of the couch at the end. I thoroughly enjoyed this classic film.

I feel like I've finished some other books this summer, but I can't remember which. I'm still working on "This is Your Brain on Music" and "Programming the Universe." I've been chipping away at Your Brain, but its slow going because there's only so much science reading I can do in one sitting. Elise also gave me "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" which has been interesting so far.

Elise is out of town for the weekend. I always have big aspirations when Elise goes out of town, because I look at the big uninterrupted periods of time, and tell myself that I'll use all of that time to work. But, as usual, I end up playing Wii and missing Elise.

I Love John Daily

2008-08-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

This segment made me laugh out loud more than anything in recent memory.

Back to this ol' gag

2008-07-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

Great Moments in Computer Science...Part XIV

[My advisor's notes on our paper, and how to make it more dramatic]
[Pairagon is the name of the program that the paper is primarily about]

Create a "mystery" to motivate the reader by curiousity. Will Bob marry Jen? Will Natasha have Bob's baby? Find out next time on "Pairagon"!

coLUmbia

2008-07-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

Just got back last night from a very nice weekend in Columbia, MO, helping Elise's mom get settled in. Fortunately, it wasn't nearly as much unpacking as I expected, more getting all of her electronics to work. Her computer wouldn't work since the memory was jarred out of its slots in the move. After I fixed that, it was back running, but running painfully slow. Like, try to open the Control Panel, walk away, watch a bit of a movie, come back, and the window's still not open. I ended up going out and buying a new stick of memory, upgrading her from 256K to 768K which made a tremendous difference. Then, with phone support from my dad, I was able to get her stereo working. Yay for being technical adept.

Today was a slow day of work, doing some tedious checking that I've been putting off. For those of you who are really interested in what my research consists of, I'm comparing 11 different programs that do something called "cDNA to Genome alignments". They don't always get the right answer, so I need some way of finding out where they go wrong. So I wrote a program that figures out where the problems were. However, that program itself has some bugs/features that I needed to sort through a couple hundred alignments looking for errors in the error classifications. I suppose I could have written a program to do it for me, but there are bound to be bugs in THAT program...

If you couldn't tell, I've been trying to blog more these days. One things I've been meaning to write about istrip to Coloradoat the beginning of the month. (Follow the link for a few select pictures, including some blurry softball team pictures). A few highlights, in unordered list form:

Driving to Colorado in one night in order to catch a plane from Denver. I drove 7 straight hours from midnight to 6am on nothing but 3 Diet Mountain Dews and a can of Pringles.
Winning 25 cents in the Las Vegas Airport Slot Machines
Meeting a bunch of Elise's family at the wedding in Boise, ID
Seeing Bill Buchner's house in Boise
Flying over the Rockies and appreciating the differences in landscape compared to flying over the east
Seeing Ben Rossetter in Golden, CO
Marveling at every second of driving into the Rockies
Marveling at the view from our campsite
Hiking/Camping with my fianc?
Hiking/Camping with my brother
Building a fire in the rain with nothing but matches and a hatchet
Seeing Bierstadt lake, named for a famous Hudson River School painter.
Going to the Tattered Cover, an old bookstore that Elise went to as a kid.
Driving through the middle of Kansas at night on the Fourth of July, and seeing at least a dozen separate fireworks displays
Stopping driving in the middle of the night to ogle the stars from the side of the interstate
Seriously, you could see the Milky Way from horizon to horizon.

Alright, I'm quite behind on the books that I said I would finish reading this summer. I have ten pages left in "Catcher in the Rye" and then its on to "A Brief History of Time". G'night all.

2008-07-24T15:02:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why I never really thought about this before, but wow, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Facebook is 24 years old. I'm 24 years old...

I've spent a lot of time configuring network devices recently, mainly using information grokked from Google, rather than CS257. Johann and I have been working on migrating my website to a new server. I also made my home computer more accessible from work, which involved a lot of mucking around in Router configurations. The benefit is that I can now listen to my whole music collection from work!

Alright, off to the gym!

X Marks the Spot

2008-07-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

1100000100010011001100110101101111110101110000101000111101011100
0100000001000011010100010101000100100110011000110100000100011000
1100000001010110100100011111000101010110000110010001000101001001

A prize (TBD) will be awarded to whoever figures out the significance of these numbers.

Bork Bork Bork Bork Bork

2008-07-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

THIS JUST IN

2008-07-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

New Mets Stadium to have Shake Shack!

Matt and I had a rule last summer, since NYC has so many repeat restaurants: NO REPEATS! We broke the rule for Shake Shack. A lot.

Grammar Terrorist? Grammar Islamic radical? Grammar Republican?

2008-07-08T14:39:00.000-07:00

In the shower this morning, here's what I was thinking of: I don't know what the grammar police are waiting for. It's Obama they should be throwing the book at! Change we can believe in? I have no idea why he used that preposition to end a sentence with. Forget a new kind of politics, perhaps this is a new kind of grammar that he's trying to get us to. I mean, come on!

Make Loving Not War

2008-06-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

Oh. I forgot one other thing I did last weekend. I went to aLoving v. Virginiaparty*. It was hosted by an Indian-born post-doc in my lab and his white MD-PhD wife. The court case struck down the laws that made interracial marriage illegal. So this party was a celebration of that, something that I thought was quite cool.

Today I also reada surprisingly thoughtful and thorough treatment of Asian interracial relationships.I'd heard of Twinkies, Eggs, Oreos and Zebras, but this was the first time I'd heard the term "Honeybee love." (i.e. black and yellow).

* Man, look at me...citing court cases in blog entries. You'd think this wasEsoteric Appealor something.

Pork And Beans

2008-06-19T21:46:00.000-07:00

There have been like 20 times in the past few weeks where I stop and think "I should totally blog that" and then never do. Alas.

First,High School Tony Awards Honor Nation's Biggest Drama Club Nerds

I watched the Tony's sunday night, and I really want to see In the Heights now. There were some wicked awesome videos on youtube a few weeks ago of the Easter Bonnet competition, but they got pulled. It had the cast of In the Heights singing "Un Dia Mas" i.e. One Day More.

Today was pretty exciting because I worked on a paper all day at work! No! That's a lie! Today was exciting because I had a softball game. The game had a lot of ups and downs for me. I got a hit, struck out while simultaneously hurting my shoulder, struck out looking :( and then walked and then scored the winning run in extra innings. I also made some decent plays in the outfield. I would have made my Metsies proud.

Speaking of, how can Willie Randolph get fired at 3am in the morning, and have everyone make a big deal about it, and NO ONE makes a Hillary Clinton 3am joke? It baffles the mind.

I also finally got my computer working and running Linux! Woot. That means that I finally have some time to work on all the other projects I intend to do this summer.

In other random linkage,HEADLINE: ASIANS DEFY STEROTYPES

I saw Shakespeare in the Park last Saturday. Richard III. It made me start thinking about the humongous impact that the guy actually had on the course of modern day theatre.

Finally, Elise's birthday was last Wednesday, for which I may have secretly baked a cake and secretly invited some of our friends over. It was a rocking party. We ate cake. Then we watched Top Chef. There was no death involved.

PUNNED

2008-05-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

I recently started listening toPlaybill Radioas a change of pace from the showtunes stations on Live365, whose playlists have gotten a little old. I'm decently pleased in the variety in songs, and every now and then I hear songs that I haven't heard before.

This includes the song "Paula (An Improvised Love Song)" from The Goodbye Girl, which has without a doubt, the punniest lyric I've heard in recent memory.

She makes my tail begin to wag
and nothing on earth could improve her,
and if my lyrics make you gag
I'll apply the Sond-heim-lich maneuver

Somewhere, Ben Snitkoff is groaning.

In other news, someone has appliedthe Six Degrees of Separation/Kevin Bacon Theory to Wikipedia.It's something I'd thought about doing a couple of times, but never tackled. Apparently, the most central real articles (excluding lists etc.) areUnited Kingdom,Billie Jean KingandUnited States(in that order). You can get from these entries to any other entry on 'kipedia in an average of 3.7 clicks.

Some interesting links:
David ==> Moses ==> Washington National Cathedral ==> Darth Vader
Homestar Runner ==> Animation ==> Robot Chicken ==> Masi Oka
University of Rochester ==> Science ==> Scientific skepticism ==> Alien Abduction
Wii ==> Asia ==> Orhan Pamuk ==> Washington University in St. Louis
Sondheim ==> Bavaria ==> Hannibal (film) ==> Hanging ==> Choking/Heimlich Maneuver

Identity Crisis

2008-05-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

So I've registered two domain names in the past week, one for a new wiki idea I've been toying with, and the other for a wedding website, because such things are necessary to be a geeky couple. I'll reveal the websites when they actually have content.

However, finding a good domain name is hard. The internet is a double edged sword in terms of identity, in that you can always find people who have the same niche interest as you, but on the other hand, whatever unique characteristics you have also turn out to be shared by 30 other people. Case and point: there's over 18 David Lu's on facebook alone (although before FB changed their policies, only one had extraneous punctuation!!), and there's also alawyer,artist,poker player,gangster-turned-preacher, anddoctor.

As it turns out, David and Elise is not a unique combination.DavidAndElise.comis a wedding website for David Miles Clark and Elise Judith Person.EliseAndDavid.comis for a couple that got engaged on March 8th, 2008, which is annoying, because if I had registered a domain name in the first three months of the engagement, I wouldn't have had a problem, unless David registered it before he got engaged, in which case, kudos to him.DaveAndElise.comis registered to Dave Warren, but it is currently empty.

The site that really worries me isEliseAndDave.com, i.e. Elise Stegherr and David Newell. Not only do they proclaim to be geeks on their home page and have pictures of them in outdoorsy locales, but check out theirmusic page: WEIRD AL.

At least I'm the only David Lu who likes Masi Oka. I wonder if I should send him a wedding invitation.

On Birdie, Baseball, Biology, Broadway, Brothers and Beatdowns

2008-05-25T15:53:00.000-07:00

Hang on folks, it's a doozy.

So it's been quite awhile since I last posted. What's happened since then? I've flown to New York on two separate occasions, finished up classes, played in my first pit since high school, and got involved in a vampire fight.

I guess this is the story of things I've waited too long for, but finally realized. For instance, I played in the pit for the WashU Med School production of Bye Bye Birdie, featuring Elise as Deborah Sue. This gave me many flashbacks to the production of Bye Bye Birdie that I was in, gasp...in the year 2000. I also thought about the last pit I played in back in my senior year for the 90 Miles production of Nine. I remember thinking how fun it was to play in pits then (because trombones generally get decent parts), but hadn't had the opportunity to do so again until this last production. It was quite a bit of fun, and I was definitely glad to be playing trombone again. Hell-week was interesting (as they always are), mainly because it was just so much playing. I played something in practically every song and scene change. By the time the show started, having played so much actually made it easier to play, with the high notes coming easier than they ever had before. However, by the end up the run, it was actually harder to play because I'd played so much.

The one thing that UR didn't have that I wanted when I was applying to undergrad was an intramural softball league. I tried a couple times during internships, but each time had their own problems (being too late, bringing down the team, being a soccer team). However, I'm now the proud right-center fielder for the WashU First Year Med Student Team WITH my beloved fiancee. As it turns out, she's really enjoying playing softball, despite never having played much before. One of the nicest things about the past month has been going to Forest Park with her and throwing the ball around. In the first game, I went 1-2, and in the second game I was 1-3 (with a beautiful bloop right behind third base). Although the team hasn't been winning much, its exactly what I wanted in a league, because its fun, and I don't feel like the worst person on the team!

The month of May also brought my first academic conference ever. It was hosted by the Cold Spring Harbor Genetics Laboratory on Long Island. It was called the Biology of Genomes. I was secretly hoping that it was really the Computer Science of Genomes, but that turned out not to be the case. It was an interesting experience. I'm sure with whatever conference I went to, I would have been in over my head as far as knowing what was going on. However, with such a large biological emphasis, it seemed near unsurmountable in this case. However, I was able to absorb a fair amount of material, and I even was able to latch onto a few interesting algorithms. I even presented a poster with my research from the past semester, which a lot people took interest in, but made my voice hurt tremendously afterwards. The whole week (Tuesday night to Saturday morning) was incredibly exhausting, if for no other reason than talks went from 9am to 11pm (if they were on time) and then afterwards, we were advised to stick around a socialize in the Cold Spring Harbor pub to make important business connections.

So at the end of the conference, Zeke, my lab mate and travel companion for the week, hit New York City for the weekend. I had been out of New York City for far too long ("when it comes down to reality, it's fine with me because I let it slide"). Zeke had never been further east than Pittsburgh, so it was fun to show him the sites (Grand Central, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, The Village, my old apartment, Washington Square Park, and Shake Shack). Saturday night we split up, and I went to go see Curtains, on Broadway. I was glad that it still had a bunch of the original cast, including David Hyde Pierce. Although it was not the best show ever, it was a pretty enjoyable show. I think I liked it so much for the same reason I liked A Chorus Line, in that it was a show about show people. People who enjoy being on the stage more than anything else. I was a little sad during one number "Coffee Shop Nights" which is the song DHP sings about how he has a good job/life, but is only truly happy on the few occasions when he gets to do theatre. The most touching song however was "I Miss the Music" which John Kander wrote after Fred Ebb had passed away. In the play, the composer is writing a song without his estranged wife, the lyricist. So he sings of how much he misses writing with his partner.

Zeke and I also took in a game at Shea where my Mets played his Reds. The Mets won, in a rare feat. We also hung out for an evening with the one and only Emily Pye. And then it was back to Missouri. I went to work for 3.5 days, and then it was back to New York. This time, I was going back for my brother's graduation. It was very nice to get the family back together for the event, although Elise was stuck back at Med School. (Stupid med school). Anyway, I got to have some quite nice conversations with my Rob over some packing boxes. He's like me, in that he's sticking around Binghamton for an extra year to get his Masters. Rob is one of a growing number of people in my life who are getting to do what they've always wanted to do. He went into mechanical engineering with the expressed goal of designing bikes or snowboards. Now, he's getting paid to go to grad school for a year to write his thesis on snowboard design, with prototypes built at Burton. My brother is awesome.

After another crazy 6am flight, I found myself back in Missouri. The summer is looking awesome. As far as work goes, it's quite nice because I don't have any classes, so most of my day is spent programming stuff for my research, which is a welcome change. I had kinda made the decision to limit my commitments other than work/softball, so I could have more free time to do what I wanted. This meant no acting, but I was okay with that, since I wanted to have a bit more relaxation time.

...but....

I've subscribed to this blog I found calledSt. Louis Auditionsfor several months now. There hadn't been anything for awhile that appealed to me so much that I actually auditioned, although there were auditions for both Rumors and Harvey. But recently there was a post advertising a 24 Hour Play Festival, whichI've been knownto beinvolvedinbefore.I was pretty intimidated, since I had no idea how "professional" this company was, but it turned out to be a pretty cool lax group of people. I auditioned with a monologue I worked on from Frost/Nixon. I really liked it because it's a speech Nixon gave (in the play, not in real life) about always feeling like the little guy and needing to fight for everything, which is coincidentally, how I feel about acting. So I auditioned Friday night for this 24 hour play festival, and after a fitful night of sleep, I woke up and found out I was cast in a play. It turned out to not be the best play ever written. It involved vampires in a shitty diner and a goth waitress. We added some funny lines to the play, and ultimately got it to be something we thought was funny. Oh, and we added a choreographed vampire fight between myself and the other vampire, which ended up being tremendously fun and exciting.

The whole company seemed to be filled with nice people, but the most random thing was the identity of the guy cast as the other vampire. As it turned out, he was also a grad student. At Wash U. In the computer science department. Since I spend most my time on the Med School campus, I don't know everyone in the department as well as I would like, which is why it was so funny when I realized who he was. His Masters thesis is actually on "Robots on the Stage", and he actually used a robot from the lab in a 24 Hour Play Festival that he had started at WashU as an undergrad. It's a small world after all.

The other plays were interesting as well. They included

A murder mystery, that ended not with revealing the killer's name, but with aRick Roll
A montage of different break-up scenes at different points in a relationship
Two Star Wars obsessed brothers seeking revenge on the dead brother's behalf
Life in a pet store fish bowl (personal and crowd favorite)
Dead hookers and Gambling in Vegas
and finally, two space mechanics get a creepy repair job

So yeah, that was the month of May.

Other B-Things:
Books - I went to the Midwest's largest book fair and bought (among other things) a copy of Catcher in the Rye and A Brief History of Time, which I intend to read this summer.
Bums - I hereby proclaim the Mets to be inconsistent bums.
Babes - I've been with Elise for 4.5 years now.
Bread - I like bread! I've got knees! I'm seeing Eddie Izzard on Friday!

The Only Time I'll Ever Get Away With Saying That

2008-04-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

[Elise gets back from complaining about the song "One Boy" to the directors]
Elise: It's official. I'm the "One Boy" bitch.
Me: You'd better be a One Boy Bitch!

The Discovery Channel Presents

2008-04-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

Mythbusters! Hawaiianshirts edition

Myth:Pasta with meatless balls tastes the same, if you close your eyes
Result:BUSTED! I cooked up some ground beef substitute with some spaghetti and it does not taste the same (even if you close your eyes). However, it doesn't necessarily taste worse. I actually rather liked them. Score one for the nameless soy engineers who wrote their masters thesis on making rough approximations of any food out of soy.

I was supposed to fly to Rochester last week. And in fact, I did. However, that didn't not cause me an unneeded amount of stress. I was flying American on a MD-80, which is the kind of plane for which they canceled thousands of flights last week. However, by divine providence, the flight before mine was canceled, the flight after mine was canceled, but my flight was not canceled. On both directions of the trip, my flights went smoothly, without me missing my connecting flights, and with very short layover times. I even got in EARLY. But I guess that's what happens when you cancel all of your other flights...

Things that I've done in the past week that I've never done before

Attended a Stingers performance
Formed a 3-person mosh-pit at a Stingers concert
Slept through an earthquake

Grad school has been going well recently. Nothing too different, but I have been working on a couple problems in the past weeks that allow me to be a bit more creative. Formulating and testing hypotheses and stuff like that. CLasses wrap up in about a week, which will be a nice change of pace. I'm also preparing for my first conference appearance atCold Spring Harborat which I'm presenting a poster. Elise has been quite jealous of this trip: she's been in genetics for ~5 years, me for less than a year, yet I get to go to CSH, which is apparently Mecca for geneticists.

Anyways, more about my quick reappearance in Rochester. It was nice to be back for a bit, although this time I felt even more disconnect than last time. Perhaps it was the absence of Heather and Rachel that made me feel more isolated. Or maybe it was the lack of large get-together's of my old social groups. No DramaHousegiving, no MIFgiving. Also, the number of alumni who showed up for the OBOC show was surprisingly small, leaving me and Theresa (who lives in Rochester) to form the All-Asian OBOC Alumni section. However, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy my trip back. It's just that perhaps now it doesn't feel quite as much like home.

The OBOC show was fantastic. They keep raising the bar in terms of what OBOC can do, which makes me very happy. A lot of different people gave very impressive performances. There were several numbers/skits that I want to go back and rewatch. They also did "Find Your Grail" as the senior song, which I had proposed two years ago for my senior song. I think it probably worked much better now than it would have then since they allowed themselves to goof around quite a bit with it. In any case, I was indubitably glad that I went back, and now I look forward to helping plan the alumni show (if they let me).

Although this didn't apply to everyone, one thing I ended up talking about a lot this weekend was how a lot of people I know are getting exactly what they want out of life. This applies to a lot of people, but most noticiably my brother, who is going to grad school. For free. To write a thesis on designing snowboards. It was definitely nice to hang out with all these people who are of job-getting age, going out and staking their claims in the world.

Other highlights from the trip: I went to the Computer Science department, got to talk to Ted, Marty, CB, Sandhya and Michael. Best thing ever? Chris Brown's mustache. I wanted to take a picture, it was that awesome. I also ended up meeting with Ted to do this video project he's doing. Basically it was just recording some admissions testimonials and things of that nature. He was also recording "Things to show to CS Majors on their first day of 171", which allowed me to spout my various CS oneliners, like "If you don't understand 90% of XKCD by the time you graduate, you've failed" and "Although he may introduce himself as Professor Pawlicki, call him by his real name: Thaddeus".

I also had a bit of time to hang out with some of my favorite campus couples, i.e. Danlyn Allott, Seanon McWhite and Evryn Timberger. Plus I got to hear Ben David's senior recital, the Midnight Rambler's Tenthennial Extravaganza, and the Juggling Show featuring the Stingers. Good times were had.

Meanwhile, back in the midwest, between the start of me writing this and now, we had another earthquake. 4.5 apparently. In less earth-shattering news, I'm really excited because Elise and I are playing on a softball team! You know, the ONE thing that UR didn't have that I wanted. Also the ONE thing I was never able to successfully find at my internships. Yesterday, Elise and I enjoyed the weather and went out to Forest Park to jog and toss a ball around. It's giving me a chance to review the fundamentals of baseball that I never really understood as a kid. Elise, who doesn't have a lot of base/softball experience is getting a lot better. I'm trying to coach her a little bit. It's not so much that she throws like a girl, but she throws like someone who has played lacrosse.

Anyway, back to the old LaTeX salt mine. Next week is the last week of classes, plus Hell week for Bye Bye Birdie, so I've got a lot of~~livin~~homework to get done before then.

Cheers!

iMusic

2008-04-08T21:30:00.000-07:00

I bought three CDs on Amazon (Mr. Holland's Opus, Juno and Once). I haven't listened to them much yet, but opening the stupid packaging on all of them makes me remember why I buy music online.

[things i enjoy]

2008-04-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

[title of show], theoff-broadway musical I fell in love with way back in 2006, is coming to Broadway. They've documented the entire process inthe [title of show] showon YouTube. The videos are well produced, hilarious and poignant. And even more self-referential references!

I've got to say, I'm very excited to see this happen. Since I first heard the soundtrack, I've listened to it quite a bit, and shared it with "nine people" including a bunch of my closest friends. Thus, its been ingrained in the lexicon of my every day speech. When I moved into my apartment at the beginning of last summer, I was aNobody in New York. I put an ad to apply to live in Drama House on the back of the Rumors with the tag line "Part of It All". Rachel and I greet each other with the never-gets-old "Hi Naked!" When I get worried about the direction my life is taking, or all of my work seems overwhelming, I quell my fears with "Die, Vampire, Die!". And when I get nostalgic for the days of OBOC and Drama House, I think about trying to find "A Way Back to Then."

And of course, the ultimate mantra from the show, "I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing, than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing." This one song instilled in me more about art, and following your dreams, and being different than anything else in recent memory. It's a song about doing what you want to do in life, and realizing that what you have is enough, as long as its yours. It's about being creative with your friends.

Therein lies the beauty of [title of show], because in being a musical about writing a musical about writing a musical, that message clearly translated to real life. Enough people made [title of show] their favorite thing that they were able to get their show on Broadway simply by having something original.

Congratulations, [tos]! Keep living the dream. Now if only I can get tickets for when I go back to NY.

Mets Mets Mets

2008-04-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one that noticed that two of the Mets outfielders are named Pagan and Church?

You, You, and Nothing But You

2008-03-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

I've apparently decided to start updating again. March was a bad month for hawaiianshirts apparently. Last March was taken over by post-Rumors blues and last month of OBOC craziness. For whatever reason, I've been thinking about Rumors a lot. Nostalgic for my theatre days I guess.

So I'm living the bachelor life this week. Elise is up in Rochester for a week (her spring break). I'll be up there the weekend after she gets back for the 'BOC show and the Ramblers Tenthennial extravaganza. But it the meantime, I've got manly bachelor things to occupy me. Baseball! Video Games! Meat! Computers! Fixing cars!

Baseball season started today! Hooray! Mets start out with a bang. However, I'm dreadfully ashamed of myself because I didn't do the whole wear Mets clothing to the 9s today. I just forgot this morning when I was getting dressed. However, there were several people in Cardinals gear at work today. I shall rectify the situation tomorrow.

I've also been playing what experts are calling a "fair" amount of Wii, namely Smash Brothers Brawl. My main character is MetaKnight, but I also play Link, Bowser and even R.O.B. from time to time. I'm set to test out its online features with Rob in Japan tomorrow night.

I also just finished eating some meatloaf I cooked tonight, as part of my "Things I Won't Cook with a Vegetarian in the House" series. It was delicious and tender. I mixed in a bunch of things to make it sweeter and juicier, including ketchup, mustard, honey and soy sauce. It also became apparent I've been watching too much Top Chef when I made a ketchup/honey reduction to put on top. (Side note: I just looked up what a reduction actually is, and mine wasn't one because it didn't involve evaporation. I always thought that when fancy chefs said reduction, they just meant sauce.)

I'm also working on installing Linux on my desktop and I might try to change the oil in the car later in the week.

For your pseudo-intellectual reading for the week, I present you witha NY Times article on growing up mixed race. Yay for nonrestrictive categories.

I should probably get back to real work now. Happy April!

Addendum:
IM from Sarah Seider: I saw an asian looking guy in a mets shirt tonight. And it made me sad cause it wasn't you.

Excel Chart

2008-03-31T08:25:00.000-07:00

I have made many charts in the past months for my research. This is probably the most informative.

Source:First 30 hits on Google

YouTube x3

2008-03-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

User Participation

2008-03-02T21:44:00.000-08:00

Say it all in Six Words

Write your biography for my amusement. Just six words should probably suffice.

If I wrote one, it'd be
Music and computers with my friends!!

EDIT:
Elise suggests one for her self:
Marrying Asian, but am so pale!

Remember to Let Her Into Your Heart

2008-02-27T18:27:00.000-08:00

Your blog is stupid and I hate it.

Looking and Seeing

2008-02-21T17:49:00.000-08:00

I saw some things very clearly last night, so to speak.

My dad called me at 8:30 CST to remind me that the Lunar Eclipse was happening. I somehow convinced myself it was Tuesday night and that I had missed it. But my parents called me in time so that Elise and I could run outside our apartment and go watch for a little while. Besides my long lasting appreciation for all things astronomy (see Take 5), I really enjoyed seeing the eclipse last night, because it turns out that my parents, sister and brother were all watching it at the same time. While we're still very close personally, geographically we're spread out over three states and two time zones. But last night we were all watching the sky.

After the requisite celestial event viewing, I convinced Elise to watch Company on PBS with me instead of Project Runway (which is a feat in itself). Company is an interesting musical to watch with your future spouse because the plot is essentially, "Marriage: what's going on there, eh?" Should people get married? Are single people happier? What if I sang a song about marriage? And I gotta say, this was a little unnerving. As much as I love Elise, you can't listen to people with beautiful voices sing lyrics like "Are you sorry you got married?//You're always sorry..." without feeling a little unsure about marriage. And that moment comes when I wondered if I had done the right thing proposing, if I was ready for marriage, if I was going down the right path in life as a whole. But, I wasn't alone in this. By my side, there was the woman I love thinking the same thoughts as I was. It was a beautiful shared moment. And at the end, when Bobby sings "Somebody, crowd me with love // Somebody, force me to care // Somebody, make me come through // I'll always be there // As frightened as you, To help us survive // Being alive" ...I don't think I could have loved her more.

ohhhh...people with too much time on their hands!

2008-02-11T19:54:00.000-08:00

If there's one thing I love, it's Elise Peterson. But if there's two things I love, the second one isreplacingthelyricstosongsfor comedic effect.

[note: if you don't have a flaming passion for musical theatre, you can probably turn back now]

So it was with great pleasure that I discovered a treasure chest of youtube videos today. Awhile back I discovered the Easter Bonnet competitions that Broadway Cares puts on every year. Basically, its an excuse for the casts of all the broadway musicals to poke fun at themselves, and then wear a silly hat. That led me toAvenue Jew(Avenue Q + Fiddler on the Roof = pure hilarity...quite possibly the best of these videos). Then there was a country version of Wicked and a hip hop Fiddler, but those have both apparently disappeared of Youtube.

There's apparently another competition they have called "Gypsy of the Year" which is the same thing at Christmas, but without the hats.

So here's the best of those competitions on youtube. Watch them before they disappear like Brigadoon.

But the winner is

Spelling Bee + Spring Awakening = Bitch of Aging

Also, the owner of the Spelling Bee video turns out to have the usernameMusical Mad Libs. Apparently, there's some club where they fill in the lyrics to famous musical songs and have famous people try to sing them. It took the utmost restraint not to laugh too loud at this at work. My favorites

Also, this guy hasthe most random musical medley ever.

I love it all!
</musical theatre dorkiness>

More CAoDL

2008-02-10T12:05:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. After a pleasant pit rehearsal that forced "Put on a Happy Face" into my head for the rest of the day, Elise and I decided it would be a shame to spend the entire day inside working. That's much better suited for 28 degree days like today. After getting drinks on Euclid, we walked around Forest Park for awhile.

When we were getting drinks I faced a common dilemma in my life: Economics or Fitness. Living on my own (so to speak), I've found myself needing to get into routines that are productive for my larger life goals. One of them is to save money. I am for fewer random indulgences and trying to stick to a budget and the like. However, the other instinct is often contrary to this, which is to do things that are healthy, which usually means eating less and healthier.

So yesterday, I was looking at the menu at Coffee Cartel. I had already decided I wanted a milkshake. (I can be a little unhealthy, I decided). But do I want a small or large. The small is 16 oz for $4.15. The large is 24 ounces for $4.95. It's 26 cents/oz vs. 20. I ended up going with the small. Which immediately is I guess the healthier AND more econimical option since I spent less money.

Anyway, this weekend was good for cooking. On Friday, for a Chinese New Year potluck, I made General Tso's Chicken for the first time. It came out really well. The sauce came from a packet, but I did everything else. Next time I'm going to attempt the sauce too. Elise also made some vegetarian dumplings that were scrumptious. Then yesterday morning I made crepes, and Elise made a delicious noodle soup from scratch without a recipe.

Yum.

Big Fat Super Tuesday

2008-02-05T08:14:00.000-08:00

So, the Giants won. The underdog team from NY stood up to their spotlight hogging rival and said no. Take note Mets.

Meanwhile, in other underdog news, on Saturday, I went to an Obama rally in St. Louis proper (where the RAMS play!) It was my first real political rally, and it was pretty amazing.

I was pulling for Edwards for the longest time, up until early last week, when I wondered whether voting for Edwards was like voting for a third party candidate. See, while Edwards brought the strongest platform into the race, he just wasn't going to win. Fortunately, as I began to consider such questions, he dropped out. Sad, but he did elevate the discourse of the other campaigns, so his legacy lives on.

First, I should note that the rally was called "Stand Up for Change" and not without good reason. Elise and I showed up at 6:00, stood in line for awhile, then stood inside for awhile. We were standing for 4 straight hours, three of which without having even seen Obama. It was quite painful in this regard.

However, I think the pain was well worth it. Not only did I agree with everything that was said, I was inspired.

Ultimately, I think that's what we need. Someone who can inspire this nation. George W. Bush has dragged this nation into the depths of shame, bringing scandal upon scandal to the stage. And while a strong record of experience might help alleviate that, I think the key to bringing back dignity to our nation lies in a believable integrity.

I believe that Obama not only has the qualities and policies that will help undo the wrongs of our nation, but also to enrich our nation. There are many parts of our national identity that have been overshadowed. Obama is committed to ensuring that our nation is keeping a "Do No Evil" policy, but fostering programs to ensure that the nation has reasons beyond economic and military might to be proud of itself.

Bill Maher said the other night, "I think it's just time that America heard the words 'and now for something completely different.'" and I believe that that's what we'll get with Obama, in the best possible way.

As a side note, while standing around at the rally, Elise and I realized that you can replace the words to Manah Manah with Obama Now.

Also, as a byproduct of looking around for an mp3 of the song, I found this great website for converting files and YouTube videos into other formats. Now I have an mp3 of "That Mysterious Ticking Noise"!

GO VOTE!

Foosball as a Productive Software Engineering Practice

2008-02-04T13:32:00.000-08:00

After careful research, I have determined that foosball is an effective means to productivity in a programming workplace. Consider: Programming quite often involves long stretches of time at a computer. Taking a break from said activities can fall into two categories: using the computer for less productive things (reading slashdot, checking email, writing self-referential blog posts) or getting away from the computer and doing something.

Activities away from the computer are healthier, considering working at a computer involves keeping your eyes focused at one particular distance for extended periods of times, while making repetitive movements with your fingers. So, moving away for a period of time is often recommended by doctors.

Such activities are limited by the availability of resources around you. Given no resources, one could stretch, walk around and look out a window, in order to get freshened up. This however does not stimulate the mind suitably, and thus is not effective as a stress reliever.

Another option is to discuss matters of vital importance with coworkers. This will stimulate your mind suitably, as well as your coworkers. However, the down side is distracting your coworkers without a visible end in sight. Workplace chatting has the deleterious effect of causing long winded rambling, which can continue for an unknown amount of time, thus turning a short break into a long period of productivity.

Another option involves the obtaining of delicious snacks. However, this often leads to an increase in body fat and keyboard stickiness, and, unless your employer is Google, a decrease in monetary resources.

Ultimately, we require an activity that

Does not involve a computer
Is physically active
Requires lots of eye movement
Stimulates the mind
Satisfies social interaction requirements
Costs nothing
Requires only a short, well defined period of time

Clearly, the solution is a game of foosball. Furthermore, it keeps programmers competitive, which in turn fosters innovation, while at the same time emphasizes teamwork, nurturing the bonds between you and your coworkers.

Playing foosball should therefore become an integral part of the software engineering practices, much like debugging and drinking caffeine. At the close of each match, the programmer can return to his desk, exhilarated and fresh-minded, ready to be productive.

2008-02-01T13:26:00.000-08:00

I miss NY.

We're Okay

2008-01-31T21:34:00.000-08:00

Snow blanketed the Midwest today. This brought me much amusement, for several reasons.
1) I love snow.
2) People in the Midwest don't know how to react to snow. I actually laughed out loud on campus today because people were walking around under umbrellas.
3) People in the Midwest aren't used to snow. I laughed out loud again when I came out of my class and saw four maintenance guys starting to shovel the sidewalk. With Shovels! Mind you, there wasn't enough snow for Rochester to even think about putting salt out.

This week has been a mixed bag thus far. In the plus column, snow, donating blood and giving an awesome presentation to my lab on the many uses of genetic algorithms. In the minus column, lots of work and the number one most complained about thing in my blog...a failed audition!

But you know, I'm actually okay with it this time. Now, while I had been relatively excited about this show (Urinetown, produced by WashU All Student Theatre), and been looking forward to getting involved with theatre people again ever since Sarah Seider introduced me to the group some months ago, I'm actually not devastated. I mean, I haven't exactly been beaming sunshine all week, but I didn't resort to my usual week of beating myself up and cursing the directors for being so foolish.

When it comes down to it, I botched the audition. My song was okay, but the monologue was just plain bad. I had tried to memorize it earlier in the day, and when I showed up 10 minutes early to the audition, they ushered me in right away, robbing me of those crucial minutes of rememorizing. So, of course, I got flustered, and showed them what was clearly not my best acting skills.

I've been away from acting for quite some time now. Excluding OBOC, the last actual acting gig I had was Harvey in late 2005! Since then, I've done a lot more behind and beyond the stage, and I guess that's given me a bit of perspective. Having cast a multitude of things, I realize how the process sometimes works, and I can fairly confidently say, that I would not have cast me. My song was meh and my acting was not promising. And as a director, I might have wanted to give me another chance and be optimistic, I'd also have realized that the number of people auditioning was fairly large, and I couldn't give that kind of attention to everyone. And so I'd move down on the list.

I miss Drama House. Not particularly because I miss acting, which I do. I think what I miss most of all is hanging around tehatre people. There's no people like show people. While I do enjoy the company of med students and computer scientists, there is no substitute for hanging out with a gang of crazy outgoing showtunes-lovin misfits.

Perhaps I'll find some good summer stock theatre.

Evil Ways

2008-01-29T13:40:00.000-08:00

The Mets got Santana!Time to change their evil (losing) ways!

Ironic Post Title

2008-01-26T12:28:00.000-08:00

You know, it seems these days, its harder and harder NOT to be a Mac Fan.

[a dramatization]

Act I: INTERIOR- APARTMENT
Me [as played by Masi Oka]: La la la...another day, another genome alignment. Ooh, let me check the interwebs with my laptop. (presses the power button). Oh noes! No power! Battery = very dead. Whatever shall I do?

[intermission]

Act II: INTERIOR- APPLE STORE
Me: My battery = very dead. Rez plz?
Apple Genius [played by, oh, let's say, Justin Long]: Ok. Here's a new battery.
Me: Yatta! (leaves without paying)

The End.

I smell a Pulitzer. Or at least a customer service award for Apple for
1) Giving me a new battery for free
2) Not making me prove that my laptop is under warranty
3) Not making me explain how my battery died
4) Instant gratification

Also, I'm not sure why, but I findthis series of informative baby care tipsinsanely funny.

Back to my plumbing adventures...

A Child of Pop Culture

2008-01-25T08:05:00.000-08:00

So apparently, my professor, my class mate and I all readthe same slashdot comment. My professor, the delightfully tangential Jeremy Buhler, mentioned in class how Deterministic Finite Automata were not quite as cool as Karnaugh maps, and then mentioned how he saw a comment how someone accidentally called them "carnal" maps. I had read the same comment that morning and so had my friend Justin. Good to know I'm not the only one reading slashdot at WashU.

I was also listening to some good ol' showtunes radio earlier this week and heard someone say "My name is Hiro." And suddenly I'm like "Whoa! Heroes the musical!" But alas, it turns out that he actually said "My name is Hero" followed by "My name is Philia" and then they burst out into singing "Lovely." Which I should have known, because that's from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a show I was in not too long ago.

Then I got this crazy idea where I'd put on a production of Funny Thing with all songs from different musicals. This came from the idea of singing "Holding out for a Hero" somewhere. Replace "Love I Hear" (Hero's song about how he is naive and in love) with something from Spring Awakening. "House of Marcus Lycus" becomes "The Heat is On (in Saigon)". "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" = "A Secretary is Not a Toy". Isn't musical theatre geekery fun?

However, the biggest lolz of the week have been a link my office mate Zeke sent me:

Proof from their website:

Google is the closest thing to an Omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence, which can be scientifically verified
Google is everywhere at once (Omnipresent)
Google answers prayers.
Google is potentially immortal
Google is infinite.
Google remembers all.
Google can "do no evil" (Omnibenevolent).
According to Google trends, the term "Google" is searched for more than the terms "God", "Jesus", "Allah", "Buddha", "Christianity", "Islam", "Buddhism" and "Judaism" combined.
Evidence of Google's existence is abundant.

Netflix Movie Marathon

2008-01-20T11:48:00.000-08:00

Last night and today, I finished watching the two Netflix movies that I've had FOREVER. Seriously, I started watching the first, An Inconvenient Truth on my flight to Rochester the week before Thanksgiving.

An Inconvenient Truth was pretty good. Informative, but didn't quite have the cinematic quality I was expecting it to. Al Gore makes fun of the movie at times because its just "a slide show"...which is actually true. There are other scenes, all of which involve Al Gore working on his laptop (making the slide show) or going places (to present his slide show).

I much more enjoyed the other flick I've been holding onto, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I'd heard the original Broadway soundtrack, and been quite amused. Unfortunately, that meant I knew what the ending was going to be. Now I really wish I had seen the original musical.

However, besides being a delightful movie, the casting was the best part. Imagine a movie with a wild and crazy guy (Steve Martin), Alfred from Batman (Michael Caine) (or Scrooge), and Mrs. Holland (Glenne Headly). Plus, THE EMPEROR (Ian McDiarmid) as Scrooge's manservant. Hilarity ensues.

Also, for no apparent reason, Steve Martin's character reminded me a lot of Ben Rossetter, not necessarily because of his, um, moral character, but just the way he mugged around in scenes.

Anyway, Elise and I went and scouted some possible wedding locations today. Hilarity ensued.

Bizzaro Livejournal Entry

2008-01-19T11:37:00.000-08:00

In a strange twist of events, earlier today, I was working out at the gym while Elise was at rehearsal for a musical.

Because If Rachel Jumped Off a Cliff

2008-01-09T18:15:00.000-08:00

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?
Got into and attended grad schools. Got rejected by a college. Sang a solo in OBOC. Edited two DVDs. Directed a full length play. Built a set for a play. Lived in New York City. Harnessed the power of 200 computers at once. Bought jewelry that cost more than $75. Walked around UR as an alumni.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Yet again, I had to check my old posts, but I don't think I really fulfilled any to the fullest. I exercised some, and hopefully more in the future because now I have a gym membership, but it wasn't enough to say I kept my new years resolution. I did accomplish a lot that I had set out to do, but I never wrote that musical.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yes.

5. What countries did you visit?
Canada for the CS Games. But not for any awesome weddings, sadly.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
Downtime.... hahaha...no seriously. Well, actually thats what I wrote last year. And I actually found some, but more would be nice. Ooh, and a publication.

7. What date from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
March 1-3 - Rumors!
March 31st - End of OBOC
April 21 - Sister = Hitched!
May 20 - Graduating as Covaledictorian, saying goodbye
July 20 - HP7 with Rachel
November - Visiting UR/OBOC/DHouse and secretly ring shopping
December 1-2 - A Trip to Chicago

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Her saying Yes. Followed closely by Rumors.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Though I'm decently happy now with my choice, but getting rejected by grad schools.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing serious.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A ring.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Elise, Rachel, Heather, Jessie, Ben R, Matt.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Certain people in OBOC, admissions committees, the New York Mets, med school professors.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent (the payment, not the musical), musicals, jewelry.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Google! Chicago! Ham Sandwich!

16. What song(s) will always remind you of 2007?
Nine People's Favorite Thing
That Mysterious Ticking Noise
City of Strangers
Code Together

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder? Happier about some things.
ii. Thinner or fatter? Fatter.
iii. Richer or poorer? Poorer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Theatre. Foosball.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Cocaine.

20. How did you spend Christmas/Hannukah/etc.?
With Elise and her mother.

21. What was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in 2007?
No idea.

22. Did you fall in love in 2007?
Yes. It's amazing how many times you can fall for one person.

23. How many one-night stands?
None.

24. What was your favorite TV program(s)?
Heroes, Daily Show, SCRUBS, Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Yes, surprisingly someone who was on my list last year for positive behavior.

26. What was the best book you read?
Its easy to say HP7, but that's all I can think of.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Scrubs Musical. Cover versions of Crazy Train. The collection.

28. What did you want and get?
A fiance. A laptop.

29. What did you want and not get?
More hawaiianshirts.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
I didn't see many movies, so i'd say a tossup between Ratatouille and the Simpsons Movie, with Superbad following shortly after.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
23 - Went to work and saw a Mets game. Went to the Daily Show the day before.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More time with friends.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?
Google swag.

34. What kept you sane?
Hot blonde MD-PhDs. Diet Mountain Dew. Livejournal?

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
It's still Masi Oka. And movie/tv characters who remind me of Elise.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
How many scandals?

37. Who did you miss?
Practically all of UR. People in Japan. My family.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Matt, Stephen and other Goog-terns. WashU MD-PhD class of 2027.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.
It's possible.

40. If you could sum up 2007 in three words, what would they be?
All too quickly...

The Long and Winding Road

2008-01-06T15:10:00.000-08:00

I'm back from my trip around the Midwest/Northeast.

States Visited:
Missouri
Illinois
Indiana
Ohio
West Virginia
Virginia
North Carolina
Maryland
Delaware
New Jersey
New York
Pennsylvania

More on the trip later...

Random Meme: (fromSnitty)

Step 1: For your band name,click here. (If you get an actual album, try again.)
Step 2: For your album name,click here, and take the last four words of the last quote on the page.
Step 3: Visitthis siteand the the third image to be your album cover art.

Yeah....that's what I expected....

2007-12-30T17:55:00.000-08:00

Harry Potter Character Combatibility Test
You scored asHermione Granger

You are Hermione. You are academic, intelligent, and reasonable. On top of this, you are highly concerned with justice, scorn the small-minded prejudices of others and work hard to defend the under dog. Many times you may find that your heart and mind are constantly at war with each other.

Hermione Granger

81%

Severus Snape

72%

Percy Weasley

72%

Oliver Wood

72%

Albus Dumbledore

66%

Harry Potter

59%

Sirius Black

59%

Neville Longbottom

56%

Remus Lupin

56%

Lord Voldemort

53%

Bellatrix Lestrange

50%

Draco Malfoy

50%

Luna Lovegood

47%

Ron Weasley

44%

Although, Snape? Really?

What You Don't Know Is, I'm Not Left-Handed

2007-12-23T20:37:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, I had the foresight to start a day early so that I could easily skip a day.

On the tenth day of Christmas, '07 gave to me,
Ten Rumors flying,
Nine people's fave thing,
Eight CS injokes
Seven years at Hogwarts
Six Mets collapsing,
a Five diamond ring,
Four broadway shows,
Three genomes,
Two CS Cups,
and a lunch at Google for free.

I'm in Virginia with Elise and her mom and family for Christmas...back in New Paltz by week's end.

Cheers.

The missing word is "orite"

2007-12-21T15:46:00.000-08:00

On the ninth day of Christmas, '07 gave to me,
Nine people's fave thing,
Eight CS injokes
Seven years at Hogwarts
Six Mets collapsing,
a Five diamond ring,
Four broadway shows,
Three genomes,
Two CS Cups,
and a lunch at Google for free.

There are 100 types of people...

2007-12-20T14:36:00.000-08:00

On the 100th day of Christmas, 11111010111 gave to me,
1000 CS injokes,
0111 years at Hogwarts,
0110 Mets collapsing,
a 0101 diamond ring,
0100 broadway shows,
0011 genomes,
0010 CS Cups,
and a lunch at Google for free.

So it occurred to me that I never posted the text of the speech that fellow Valedictorian Dan and I gave at CS Graduation. But now I've posted it and the links actually go back to something. I've now been a college graduate for exactly 7 months. It was a good speech, and a good way to end my college career.

For those of you who might find that funny, I also highly recommendxkcd creator Randall Monroe's talk at Google, where he actually explains where xkcd came from.

On a completely different note, apparently I theoretically could have run into Rudy Guliani today, whowas apparently at the same hospital where I work. IthoughtI heard someone mention 9/11...

Yesterday, over some excellent mexican food for lunch, some coworkers and I were discussing the best way to characterize decades, rising over the fact that this decade is almost over, yet we still don't have a good name for it. I have two conflicting theories on the easiest ways to oversimplify the decade.

The Now Decade- To quote Spaceballs, everything that's happening now, is happening now. Want to hang out with your friends? Don't make plans, just call their cell phones! And no one waits around to find out what's happening in the world, turn on a 24 hour news network and find out what's happening now! Want to know what I'm doing right now? Check my blog. etc.
Evil and Don't Be Evil- the2000-2010 decadecan be characterized by two negative events (9/11 and the Dot Com Bubble burst) (its really hard to find an adjective that adequately describes the two of those) and the rises in power that followed (Bush and Google).

Or we could just call it the Googappltendo decade. Penny for your thoughts.

Maybe I should write a Hannukah song

2007-12-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

On the seventh day of Christmas, '07 gave to me,
seven yearsatHogwarts,
six Mets collapsing,
a five diamond ring,
four broadway shows,
three genomes,
two CS Cups,
and lunch at Google for free.

I replaced my ink cartridge for my printer a couple days ago, which is not particularly notable, except I had been delaying doing so because I consider printer ink to be too expensive, so I was hesitant to throw out the old one. It wasn't until I sawthis graphon slashdot that I realized HOW expensive it all was.

No, ma'am, I don't want MORE GEESE

2007-12-18T08:42:00.000-08:00

On the fifth day of Christmas, '07 gave to me, a
six Mets collapsing,
five diamond ring,
four broadway shows,
three genomes,
two CS Cups,
and lunch at Google for free.

Current mood:

But I am le tired