Random Friendster Idea

I had an idea for a Friendster feature the other day. Sometimes I'll click on the link that shows all the ways I'm connected to some person who isn't a friend, and the list will be really long, with many paths of length 2 to the person. This is someone who I should in some sense already know; he or she is connected closely to a lot of my friends and is likely to be in my social circle. It'd be cool to see a list of the people who are not your friends (on the site) but who are most closely connected to you in this way. They might be people who you know and want to add as friends on the site, or if you don't know them it might be fun to wonder why. It would also be interesting to see some score representing this closeness measure on the person's profile, instead of just seeing one path to the person like the site shows now. Anyway, of course I can't work on this, and it might just be a dumb idea, but why have a blog if you can't post possibly dumb ideas and see what happens?

KCRW

I saw this article in the Times last Sunday on KCRW, a radio station from Southern California playing all kinds of cool and eclectic music. Then I remembered hearing about the station before in this Frontline documentary. Anyway, I finally took a listen online, and I really like what they've played in the last 40 minutes or so. And, they've got a reasonably high quality MP3 stream; good stuff. Incidentally, I read the Times article while flipping through an actual print version of the magazine, and I doubt I would have read it otherwise, a phenomenon discussed before.

Well, He's Left

I just found out that Robert O'Callahan, a mentor and friend while I was at IBM Research, has moved back to New Zealand and is now working full-time on Mozilla. My time working closely with Rob was really fun and an incredible learning experience, and I know others who have interned with him and feel the same way. Anyway, he's got a blog now that definitely looks like a worthy read. I'm looking forward to seeing how much better Mozilla will get now that Rob is devoting all his work-related energies to it.

Real Quick

Not much posting lately, as I've been busy moving to a new pad; it's slowly becoming habitable. Some random things: first, check out the Lichtenstein exhibit at SFMOMA while it's still there. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot about his work. Second, the Renée Fleming recital today was awesome. I think that with her voice, just about any song would sound incredible. Third, check out this crazy story about a fallen doughnut king that a friend sent me. The writing seems a bit melodramatic, but it sort of matches the guy's life. And finally, go Eagles!!!

Applause

Two interesting posts by Alex Ross on applause at classical music concerts. It drives me nuts when people are out of their seat and heading for the exit as the last notes of a piece are still echoing through the hall. It'd be cool if the applause etiquette was relaxed a bit eventually; maybe people who get turned off by the stiffness of a classical concert might start attending performances more often.

Endings

Here's a nice article on endings in films, books, symphonies, etc. Some random films with outstanding endings that come to mind: Magnolia, Decalogue 10, Manhattan, Charulata.

Watching Movies With...

There was this great series of article in the Times a couple of years back where a movie person would sit down with reporter Rick Lyman and go through one of their favorite films in detail. The articles aren't in the free part of the site anymore, but they seem to have opened them up through a link from the page with all of their Brando articles. Here are a few good ones or ones I want to read:

• Barry Levinson on On The Waterfront
• Barry Sonnenfeld on Dr. Strangelove
• Nicole Kidman on The Shining
• Wes Andersen on Small Change
• Woody Allen on Shane
• Julianne Moore on Rosemary's Baby
• Michael Bay on West Side Story
• Quentin Tarantino on The Golden Stallion

I'm too lazy to link to all of them, but from this one you can access the rest through the Related Articles box. Hopefully these links will keep working. Oh, and Sideways is awesome; go see it.

UPDATE: The direct links don't seem to work anymore, but going to the Brando page and then clicking through to the On The Waterfront article works, and gives working links to the other articles.

Disaster Relief

Check out this page if you'd like to donate to the American Red Cross to help with disaster relief for yesterday's tsunamis. It looks like they'll need all the help they can get.

Cool Directions Site

I randomly ran into Map24 yesterday. It gives you this cool scrollable and zoomable map when you look up an address. The UI is a little confusing at first, but it's really fun to play with. I hope everyone is having a good holiday (or at least those who have holidays now).

Life in the Peace Corps

Check out an insider's (ie., my brother's) view of his life's hardships. There are some jokes that I imagine only make sense to other El Salvador Peace Corps volunteers, but it's still pretty funny. Actually, I'm curious as to whether others find it funny, or whether I just laugh harder at it because my brother wrote it.

Free

My crazy travelling and semester obligations are finally past, and it feels great. I really should get back to research soon, but for now I don't want to think about it. Tannhäuser was performed really well; I had forgotten just how amazing the Metropolitan Opera was, or maybe I had just never realized it before. Too bad the opera is so damn boring after the singing contest in the second act. Oh, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is an awesome, awesome movie; see it if you haven't already. Finally, if you're looking to burn some money on CDs, Alex Ross posted some top 10 lists for 2004. I was tempted to buy the Lieberson Handel arias CD, but went for the earlier Bach cantatas disc instead; incredible stuff. I would buy the just-released SF Symphony Mahler 2 recording for her rendition of the 4th movement alone, but the price is a bit steep.

The 'Tute

This article about a high school student working in the M.I.T. Media Lab put a smile on my face this morning and took me back a bit. Check this out:

When I first came there I made the assumption -- just to set myself straight -- that everyone at M.I.T. was smarter than I was. What I realized later is that everyone makes that assumption, and it allows everyone to learn from one another, which is really cool.

That's a little naïve, but a good attitude I think. I'd love to hear from this guy again in 4 years if he ends up at M.I.T., to see if he's still so positive about the place. He still needs to learn a bit about web page design; yikes.

Random Reviews

Some stuff I saw in the last few weeks:

• Deadwood: I finished watching the first season a while back. It's not a great show, but it's very good. There is a lot of cursing, and in general the show is very raw and dirty, which apparently is appropriate for the setting. Ian McShane is fantastic as Al Swearengen, and I enjoy William Sanderson as E.B. Farnum (I always think of J.F. Sebastian from Blade Runner when I see him). Sometimes the show is a bit too melodramatic or full of itself, but after seeing all the episodes, I was glad I watched.
• Le Grand Macabre: This was weird. But, it wasn't completely unapproachable; I actually sort of got into the music in the second act. It was a good experience, but I doubt I'd pay to see it again.
• Carnegie International:I actually saw a writeup on this exhibit in the Times a few weeks back, and I was eager to check it out. I thought the whole thing was great. I'm pretty ignorant about modern art, but it's still fun to see new and challenging works and spend a little time trying to make sense of them. Actually, for some reason looking at modern art reminded me of this random quote from Hansel in Zoolander: "Sting. Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that. I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I'm selling? No. Do I know what I'm doing today? No. But I'm here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot." Don't ask me why. Anyway, there were some really cool video installations and neat sculptures. If you're going to be in Pittsburgh sometime before the end of March next year, check it out.

Coming up next week: Eugene Onegin at SF Opera and Tannhäuser at the Met. Life is good.

Morris on Fallujah Prisoner Shooting

Here's a nice op-ed by Errol Morris on the recent video showing a prisoner being shot in Fallujah. This paragraph in particular got me thinking:

Pictures force us to collect our thoughts. They make us think about motivation, intent - they make us think about how we interpret our experiences, how we think about the world, how we try to understand the motives of others. (Maybe it's in our DNA. We look at pictures of other people and we want to know: what were they thinking?) And when it's a photograph of a crime or of violence, we think even harder. Such images make us care because they make us part of the mystery of what happened. We are not merely spectators; we are investigators. We are involved. What do the images mean? What do they show? What led up to these events? Are there mitigating circumstances? Is it as bad as it looks?

I wrote before about reading faces in pictures, and I think Morris is making the same point about how pictures make you work to understand what's going on. And Morris's points about denying reality are good, too; as I was watching this video on television, I couldn't believe that a camera crew was actually willing to follow the soldiers into such a dangerous situation. Anyway, good stuff.

Back To Concerts

My deadline finally passed on Thursday, and I've been enjoying doing very little productive work ever since. Also, I'm finally starting to get back to concerts. I saw Michael Schade in recital on Sunday. He had quite a good voice, but it was a bit overwhelming from where I was sitting, fifth row from the stage. He did some really nice Richard Strauss songs that I hadn't heard before. On Thursday I'm finally seeing Le Grand Macabre, which should be interesting. Hopefully I'll be on track to catch the rest of the operas this fall. And...that's about it. Oh, this is one of the funniest things I've seen in quite a while.

Bravo!

Great post at The Rest Is Noise on shouts of "Bravo!" in recordings. My favorites are both on piano concerto recordings, the Argerich Rach 3 and the insane recording of Evgeny Kissin playing the Chopin piano concertos when he was 12; I used to listen to both a lot back in my virtuosity worship phase during freshman year of college. 16 hours until my deadline; I can't wait.

Election

Since everyone seems to have weighed in on the election results, I thought I'd do my part. On Monday night, I arrived at the Hyatt Newporter hotel for a 3-day conference. After a couple of drinks, I was getting ready to crash, and I went to use the toilet in my hotel room. I lifted the lid, and saw the bowl nearly filled with what looked like dried "material," as Ted so tactfully called it. There was no water at all, just incomprehensible amounts of "material." There was no smell either, which only made the situation more surreal and disturbing. The quantity of "material" clearly placed this disaster beyond the work of any one man; it was plumbing gone horribly, horribly wrong. I've seen some nasty stuff before, and I'm not easily shocked, but lifting the toilet lid to be greeted by this astounding monstrosity shook me to my core and made me question all I hold dear.

It was the second worst thing I saw this week.

Josh Rushing

For those who saw Control Room, go check out this interview that the Marine captain Josh Rushing did on Fresh Air. He was a military press contact for Al-Jazeera and one of the most interesting people in the movie. The interview has lots of interesting tidbits, including how Fox News sets up interviews (like we didn't know).

Music Criticism and Politics

I'd been reading sounds & fury occasionally, as the author had some interesting things to say about music criticism, and he seems like quite the hardcore Wagnerian. But, then he posted his "contribution" to the debate on this year's presidential election; yuck. Now I can't read his writings on other topics without cringing. I sort of wish he had kept his politics to himself.

Naïve and Sentimental

I'm yet again rethinking my opinion on words in music after listening to my new Billy Budd recording, where the diction is for some reason much clearer than it was live (maybe the hall?). But I won't ramble about it any more for now. I just got back from SF Symphony, where they performed John Adams's Naïve and Sentimental Music. It was the first piece by Adams that I've heard, and I was very impressed. The coolest part was the percussion score, which called for just about every percussion instrument I could think of and more. There were almglocken, which I hadn't seen before and can't seem to find any information on now; I guess they're basically pitched cowbells, but they almost sounded like woodblocks. The vibraphone and crotales were both bowed in the second movement, and I finally heard what it's supposed to sound like (really weird overtones), as opposed to how it sounded when I tried it. And of course there was the standard mix of cymbals, gongs, and loud drums to round things out; good stuff. Also, Adams was in attendance, and he came out and gave a 5 minute introduction to the work, with a few excerpts from the first movement played by the orchestra. It helped me a lot in figuring out what was going on with the piece. The second half of the concert was Beethoven's Violin Concerto played by Midori, which honestly was a bit of a letdown after the Adams (the orchestra was about half the size). It would have been better to program the Beethoven first, but I guess the worry is that people would leave before hearing the modern piece.

It's crunch time for research, so if you expect to hear from me but don't for the next couple of weeks, you know why.