Most of these are stolen from MetaFilter.
Welcome back to public blogging, Dan.
Musical instrument samples. My first UROP at MIT was at the Media Lab, where I helped record instrumentalists as part of a musical instrument identification system. Paris Smaragdis was there at the time, and now he is at UIUC where he has a lot of cool audio demos. There are also some great clips Inside the Music Library at the BBC.
Ridiculous computer interfaces from movies.
I’m blogging from Chicago, where it is a balmy 42 degrees but sunny. Whither spring, I ask! Actually, I’m not blogging so much as linking to a bunch of stuff.
For San Diegans, the SD Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase is going on. It looks like I’ll miss a lot of it but I might try to catch something at the end of the week.
Less Pretentious & More Accurate Titles For Literary Masterworks — funny but possibly NSFW.
This home-scanning program seems creepy, regardless of the constitutionality issues.
Unfortunate headlines strike again.
I really like scallion pancakes. I’ll have to try this out when I get back to San Diego.
I agree that this video is awesome. Yo-Yo Ma and Lil Buck. I think that dude is made of rubber. And steel.
Tom Waits was induced into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I just hope I get to see him live some day.
Some things to skim or read from ArXiV when I get the chance:
Sequential Analysis in High Dimensional Multiple Testing and Sparse Recovery (Matt Malloy, Robert Nowak)
Differential Privacy: on the trade-off between Utility and Information Leakage (Mário S. Alvim, Miguel E. Andrés, Konstantinos Chatzikokolakis, Pierpaolo Degano, Catuscia Palamidessi)
Capacity of Byzantine Consensus with Capacity-Limited Point-to-Point Links (Guanfeng Liang, Nitin Vaidya)
Settling the feasibility of interference alignment for the MIMO interference channel: the symmetric square case (Guy Bresler, Dustin Cartwright, David Tse)
Decentralized Online Learning Algorithms for Opportunistic Spectrum Access (Yi Gai, Bhaskar Krishnamachari)
Online and Batch Learning Algorithms for Data with Missing Features (Afshin Rostamizadeh, Alekh Agarwal, Peter Bartlett)
Nonuniform Coverage Control on the Line (Naomi Ehrich Leonard, Alex Olshevsky)
Degree Fluctuations and the Convergence Time of Consensus Algorithms (Alex Olshevsky, John Tsitsiklis)
SACRA/PROFANA (dir. Krishan Oberoi) presents…
EX/CAN/DES/CENT*
*a. [L. excandescentia .] 1. Growing hot; white or glowing with heat
Saturday, February 19 · 7:00pm – 8:30pm
St. Peter’s Church
off of 15th St., Del Mar, CA
Sunday, February 20th at 4 p.m.
Village Community Presbyterian Church
6225 Paseo Delicias, Rancho Santa Fe
San Diego’s virtuosic vocal ensemble SACRA/PROFANA returns in a
program exploring themes of light and illumination. New works by young
American composers will be highlighted, including winners of the 2010
Choral Composition Contest. Also featuring music by Poulenc, Britten
and The Smashing Pumpkins, plus György Ligeti’s enigmatic choral
masterpiece “Lux Aeterna”.
15th Street Chamber Music says:”SACRA/PROFANA features some of the
premier young voices from all around San Diego and Southern California
and has a fresh new sound with a thrilling take on the art of choral
music.”
More information at: www.sacraprofana.org.
There is a $10 suggested donation at the door. Reserve seats are
available by emailing us at:
15thstreetchambermusic@gmail.com
He was hitting the haterade pretty hard:
The vacuum tube was first used to replace previously existing components of long-distance telephone circuits and wireless telegraphy. It was not long, however, before it became clear that the radio-telephone had achieved the stature of the radio-telegraph, and that broadcasting was possible. Let not the fact that this great triumph of invention has largely been given over to the soap-opera and the hillbilly singer blind one to the excellent work that was done in developing it, and to the great civilizing possibilities which have been perverted into a national medicine-show.
It seems as good a time as any to link to this chestnut from McSweeney’s. Warning : full of highly profane language.
Did you know Krish Eswaran has a blog? Neither did I, until today. He appears to not be updating it, however. C’mon Krish, more posts!
Andrew Gelman pins down one of the things that annoys me about arguments based on personal finance — it’s not true that we do things for money or for fun, unless “fun” is really broadly construed. Plus there’s this zinger at the end: “as a statistician, I’m not impressed with an argument when it doesn’t work on the example it’s been applied to.”
A pretty cool video on hand-pulled noodles.
More chaconne than you can handle.
Via CT, an amazing cartoon in which Donald Duck meets Glenn Beck.
How to write about Pakistan, inspired by the classic How to write about Africa.
I know I don’t blog so much these days (lots of traveling), but I wanted to advertise a bit for album on which I sang.
J.S. Bach: The Six Motets BWV 225-230
Bach Collegium San Diego is proud to announce its first recording available for commercial release. Artistic director Ruben Valenzuela leads a nimble yet expressive ensemble of 19 musicians: 16 singers with continuo.
Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied BWV 225
Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf BWV 226
Jesu, meine Freude BWV 227
Fürchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir BWV 228
Komm, Jesu, komm!, BWV 229
Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden BWV 230
Order it
As a bit of a break from ISIT blogging, I am singing in this concert at the end of the week — the repertoire is a bit different than my normal fare of “high classical,” so if you’re in the area and like Bono more than Bach, this might be more up your alley.
WHITE HORSES: Heroes & Hope
Saturday June 26th, 2010
8 p.m.
Copley Auditorium, San Diego Museum of Art
$20 General Admission ($15 in advance) / $12 Students & Museum Members / $10 Seniors & Military
Following the success of their sold-out concert in November of 2009, SACRA/PROFANA returns to the San Diego Museum of Art with a program exploring the unique synergy of poetry, art and music. In conjunction with the Museum’s exhibition Heroes: Mortals and Myths, this genre-bending vocal ensemble will perform modern musical settings of timeless verse by such beloved poets as e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson and John Keats. The poignant words of the great poets are given new life by the dynamic voices of modern composers- including Minnesota composer Joshua Shank, winner of the 2009 SACRA/PROFANA Choral Composition Contest.
I will be singing with a chorus in the Mainly Mozart Festival here in San Diego on opening night. We’re doing the Beethoven Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, which is like a piano concerto that ends with a mini-sketch of the 9th Symphony’s last movement: universal brotherhood of man, the ennobling power of art, blah blah blah. It will be a rollicking good time. The piano soloist will be John Lill CBE, and we’ll be conducted by David Atherton. Our chorus was ably prepared by Krishan Oberoi.
It’s a good chance to dust off the old tuxedo; all the other concerts I’ve been singing in San Diego seem to go for the “all black” dress code.
Last weekend I had a chance to see Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company‘s production (they also have a blog) of Robert Farid Karimi’s self (the remix) featuring Karimi and DJ D Double:
Storyteller/performance artist, def poetry jam performer, national poetry slam champion robert farid karimi — supported by an amazing soundscape spun live by Chicago DJ and Violator All-Star DJ D Double — mixes together stories, movement, and music to tell the tale of a first generation child of Iranian and Guatemalan immigrants learning how to survive the cultural imperialism of the United States on his quest to find wholeness in the fractured atmosphere of the 70s and 80s.
It’s a coming-of-age story that seems to have a new relevance given the current tensions between the US and Iran and the heated rhetoric around immigration. I usually enjoy solo performance, and although this is technically a dual performance, the “style” is similar to other narrative solo performances (c.f. Josh Kornbluth). What was particularly effective is the way in which DJ D Double weaves the soundtrack and effects into the narrative. It’s rapid-changing and pulls samples, beats, and songs from every direction, providing an structure to support Karimi’s performance while commenting and in an effect becoming its own character. In terms of “solo performance,” it’s some of the best use of sound I’ve seen.
The show only has a few more performances, starting tonight and going through this weekend. If you’re in San Diego and reading this (probably 5 people total), then go check it out!
Several people have sent this video to me:
I have to admit, I was baffled by it, but assumed that it was some sort of Soviet television entertainment for which I lacked the context. However, I learned a lot more from this fascinating blog post by Justin Smith.
An Ergodic Walk 