The Kindness of Strangers

It’s two in the morning and I have a problem set due tomorrow that I haven’t started writing up yet. Actually it was due on Tuesday but I got an extension because I had that presentation to give on Monday. Anyway, it’s gonna take me about four hours to write up, so I’m considering just going to sleep now — but my RA neighbor has decided to have another informal party so sleep is out of the question, for the time being. LJ is the next best thing :).

So why didn’t I start the PS yet? Well, it’s because as soon as I came back from classes today at 4:30 I started playing music and I’ve essentially just stopped now. I hadn’t played anything for over a week so I was itching to today. First piano and drums, and then guitar for a couple of hours. In fact, I wrote and recorded a whole song tonight. But more on that in a bit.

The last week has been great. Went to a Warriors game on Friday night. It was weird to root for people like Mike Dunleavy and Troy Murphy. They played the Blazers, who basically dominated, with several SportsCenter-worthy plays. Luckily, the final score was 120-100, which meant that we all got free chalupas! By the fourth quarter, it was pretty obvious that Golden State was going to lose, so we just started rooting for them to get 100 points so we could cash in on Taco Bell…. they came though with 35 seconds left. Money.

Also played lots of sports: soccer, tennis, volleyball. I had forgotten how much I love volleyball. Got beat up pretty badly playing soccer on Saturday so I’ve been limping around since. Almost better though. Watched Syracuse win on Monday and then UConn win on Tuesday. I’m not going to launch into my usual diatribe about how women’s basketball is really fun to follow even though no one gives it any respect. The game was a pleasure to watch, and I was thrilled that UConn won. Then straight after that I went to see Sigur Ros at the Paramount. Amazing show. It was one of those concerts where you want to go home and listen to their CDs immediately afterwards.

Okay this is getting boring. So, the song. The lyrics came to me as I was walking home from Soda Hall at 2am on Saturday night (yes). It’s completely nerdy and basically a joke, which is probably why I was able to record it so quickly — normally I’d spend a long time developing a good melody, etc. The music for this one just popped out today in the practice room in about 25 minutes. Actually the whole song is quite formulaic and predictable, but somehow because it wasn’t a “serious” song I didn’t mind, which is good. As usual, I recorded it, warts and all, on my laptop’s mic.

Listen to the song: P Equals NP.

All the CS majors will be laughing at how incredibly nerdy I am, and everyone else will probably be wondering what the hell the song is about. Some background: whether P = NP is the most famous outstanding question in computer science. There’s a million dollar prize for anyone who solves it. Knapsack, boolean satisfiability, et. al. are NP problems. CS172 is the class I’m TAing. A reduction is a method you might use to prove P=NP. Actually, just ask the nearest CS nerd about everything else, heh. Can you catch the Fermat’s Last Theorem reference too? And yes, the song is supposed to be a joke :).

Because P equals NP
or maybe I’m just wrong
But give me my million dollars
so I can stop singing this damn song
Yeah P equals NP
or maybe I’m just wrong
But give me my million dollars
or I’ll be singing all day long

Been doing a lot of learning
In CS172
Been going to every lecture
‘Cause the TA, he has no clue

DFAs and CFGs
This ain’t their finest hour
It’s all about the Turning Machines
They’ve got the power

And I’ve been searching, thinking
’bout that magical reduction
Yeah I’ve been searching, thinking, looking
for that glorious construction

Because P equals NP
I couldn’t be more right
So just give me my million dollars
or I’ll be here all night
Yeah P equals NP
I’ll be all over Wired
So just give me my million dollars
Damn, my fingers are getting tired

Vertex cover, knapsack
Independent set
Soon they’ll be owing me
A million dollar debt

Boolean formulas
Well you can “satisfy” this:
My request for a million bucks
You don’t want to see me pissed

What’ll I do with the dough?
I don’t have a clue
Oh wait — yes, I know
I’ll replace my old Pentium II

And I’ve been searching, looking,
for that magical reduction
Yeah I’ve been looking, thinking,
about that glorious construction
And I’ve been searching, looking, and I found it
found it to perfection!

Because P equals NP
or maybe I’m just wrong
But give me my million dollars
so I can stop singing this damn song
Yeah P equals NP
It was easy all along
I’d tell you my reduction
but it wouldn’t fit into this song…

I have this theory that people who prefer The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby also prefer The Bends to OK Computer with high probability, and vice versa (preferring Achtung implies preferring OK Computer). What do you think?

Saw Idlewild Tuesday night at Slim’s. The opening acts were pretty terrible (The French Kicks were marginally entertaining only because they were such obvious Strokes wannabes, right down to the scruffy pseudo-formal clothes and the half-knotted tie — as if being the Strokes is something to strive for, anyway) but we got close to the stage for Idlewild and they delivered. I haven’t been to a good, solid rock show in a couple of months, and it felt good.

My sickeningly good mood continues. I think my friends are perplexed by this :). I had office hours today, and I was in too good a mood to discuss the latest problem set, so I kept interrupting the students while they tried to figure out the problems: “What other classes are you taking?” “Are you guys going to go to grad school or become code monkeys?” “Where are you from?” “I like Radiohead.” I think they were annoyed but I was too happy to care :).

This despite the oppressive amount of work I have this weekend: a big problem set, section next week, and, oh yeah, a 90 minute presentation on Monday on papers I haven’t even read yet. Oops. That’s gonna kill me. But who cares? heh.

One problem with IHouse is that you never see any children or animals. Dude, since I’m in such a good mood, I’m going to tell you how much I love kids, even if it dispels the last shred of manliness from my already epicene image. Hmm, maybe just two memories instead. A couple of weeks ago I was waiting at the Durant Food Court for a friend, chilling on a bench, and this little kid, maybe two years old, came up to me. Ridiculously cute. He was holding this big piece of bread in one hand, and with his other hand he took mine. I just sat there grinning like an idiot, as I always do when there are children around. We looked at each other, me smiling from ear to ear, he probably fascinated by my lunacy, his perfect hand against my rough, ungainly one, for maybe half a minute. Finally his mom called to him from the sidewalk; he let go and started to walk towards her. After a couple of steps, though, he slowed down in contemplation. Arriving at some kind of decision, he turned around and walked back towards me, proffering a piece of his bread. Jeez, my heart just melted right there. I took the morsel and thanked him profusely and he, mission accomplished, walked off to his mom and they left together. I sat there for a moment, struck by my immense good fortune — that single gift went further than a thousand loaded adult “thank you”s towards changing my views about human nature — before putting the bread in my mouth. It was, of course, delicious.

The other story is pretty similar. I was taking the shuttle up to the Quad one night in college, and this father and his little baby girl got on. He sat two seats over and placed her between us. She was tiny — so tiny that her feet barely reached over the seat. Again, my lunatic grin manifested itself, and I must have looked like the Cheshire Cat when her miniature hand reached out to me. Actually, her hand was so small that she couldn’t grasp mine; instead she wrapped her fingers around my pinky. We rode the rest of the way to the Quad just like that, and I think for the first time in my life since I learned what “cynicism” meant I felt none at all.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Southwest/04/01/sprj.irq.suspended.ap/index.html

I’m listening to the new Radiohead album, months before its release, courtesy of my friend Tom and his wizardly Kazaa skills. Do I feel somewhat guilty? Yes. Am I totally excited? Yes. (More yes than the first one.)

This past week was, in a word, ridiculous. James and Grant flew in, and we had a terrific time driving around California, playing sports, and acting like five year olds. I haven’t laughed that much in a long time. I think last year I took the fantastic company I had for granted, but now getting to spend a whole week with two of my best friends reminded me how great they are. I’ve been spoiled :). Also got to spend time with jcliao, wingerz, and yayu — all wonderful people. Every day felt warm and fuzzy.

One of the happier aspects of my life is that my friends tend to get along with each other really well, even if they only met through me. For instance, last year 21r put Grant and Matt (friends from high school) with James (roommate in college) and Wing (friend from college) and John (friend from work) — and everyone got along famously, electing to stay together even after I left. That made me happy. And last week Alex came along with James, Grant and me when we drove down the coast. Alex is my next-door neighbor at IHouse, and my British twin when it comes to music, beliefs, outlook, you name it. Anyway, he fit in perfectly with our peculiar brand of extremely referential, punny, and just plain vulgar sense of humor — even contributing a few terms to the lexicon himself :).

So all that was good. Academically, too, things did a total 180, all in one 24-hour span. I’m not so intimidated by grad school anymore!

I’ve yet again avoided talking about these so-called “interesting” topics I keep mentioning. Maybe next time, as usual.

From So Long and Thanks for all The Fish by Douglas Adams:

They looked at each other for a moment.

The moment became a longer moment, and suddenly it was a very long moment, so long one could hardly tell where all the time was coming from.

For Arthur, who could usually contrive to feel self-conscious if left alone for long enough with a Swiss cheese plant, the moment was one of sustained revelation. He felt on the sudden like a cramped and zoo-born animal who wakes one morning to find the door to his cage hanging quietly open and the savanna stretching gray and pink to the distant rising sun, while all around new sounds are waking.

He wondered what the new sounds were as he gazed at her openly wondering face and her eyes that smiled with a shared surprise.

He hadn’t realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones until it now said something it had never said before, which was “yes”.

—-

Oh man, sometimes my laptop makes me feel that way =).

My bracket is 18 for 20 so far. 99.4% ranking on ESPN.com :).

Brian forward this to me today. It’s hilarious (but wince-inducing):

>I thought you’d enjoy a little video from channel 7’s website from
> today. Click the broadband movie link:
>
> http://www.whdh.com/news/articles/local/A10282/
>
>The local news filmed what they thought was a protest but was actually
> freshmen going to Annenberg having just found out what houses they’re
> in. The actual protest was going on in the Yard!
>
>(I particularly enjoyed the “protest”‘s “Phuck the River” posters and
> the Leverett bunny.)

I’m not going to talk about the war. If I started, I’d probably not stop for about 1500 words. And I’m not in the mood to do that.

I did something today that was good for me.

I’m kind of a perfectionist, and it really gets on my nerves. This is especially true when it comes to writing/recording music: I’m just not satisfied with anything I play unless it’s perfect, and since I’m never good enough to play anything perfectly, I end up never recording anything. So right now I have about 10 songs in my head, none of which are finished because I’m not happy with any of them. The lyrics are bad, or the melodies are cheap, or I just can’t sing and play them well enough.

I guess the root of it all is the potential embarrassment of playing a song of mine that sucks to someone else. So I keep trying to make them better, but I don’t get anywhere because I’m not that good.

Today I was fooling around on guitar, and on the spur of the moment I decided to record an entire song. Not one I wrote — I’m not ready for that — but instead Beck’s wonderful, poignant “Golden Age”. This way the embarrassment would be only in the performance, not in the songwriting, and I figured that’s a big enough step for now :).

Furthermore, I knew that if I really tried to record it for some serious purpose, I’d take forever, fiddling with each track, making sure the performance was perfect — which would never happen — and I’d end up abandoning the project halfway through.

So I imposed a bunch of restrictions to keep my perfectionist tendencies from leaking through, and I also resolved to post whatever I ended up with, no matter how bad, on LJ.

1. I played the song from memory, without having listened to it for over a month. All I could remember were the basic chords and the lyrics, so I had to make everything else up.

2. Nearly all the tracks were single takes.

3. I sang the main vocal part and played the main guitar part together, and recorded the first take as the basis of the song. Otherwise I’m sure I would have had a field day trying to get the vocals just right. This way there was no question of fiddling: I had to use whatever came out on the first go. Also having to do both at the same time gave me an excuse for singing poorly :).

4. Every time I added a new track (harmony vocals, lead guitar), I saved the file so that I couldn’t go back and edit anything.

5. I recorded everything through my laptop’s crappy mono built-in mic… so I wouldn’t have to worry about fidelity: no matter what, it was going to sound bad. If you listen carefully, especially at the end of the song, you can heard the mic picking up my hard drive spinning as it recorded.

Listening to all the screwups in the main vocal track caused me the most agony, but I sucked it up and just finished the whole thing. Man, it’s not pretty, but at least it’s done. Maybe next time I’ll try to get a real mic :). It’s such a relief, though… I actually had fun making up the various parts, and knowing I didn’t have to subject each little bit to some strict evaluation of my own doing. I think this is what music-making is supposed to be about, heh. Now if only I could get the result to sound good.

Listen at your own risk… http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~aj/music/goldenage-aj.mp3. The original song is gorgeous, if you’re interested.

The song I’m listening to now, “Trouble”, just seems perfect for an optimistic Sunday morning.

My mood has improved immeasurably since my last post. Things haven’t gotten better, technically, by my outlook has. A while ago I decided that I’d start doing a lot of work. At first, the plan backfired, as it seemed like the more time I put into studies, the worse things got. But my new work ethic has finally started to pay dividends, at least psychologically: I finally feel like I’m here for something.

Events of the last few days: St. Patrick’s party, soccer, watching UConn’s run to the Big East Championship with Umesh (which included a trip to the famed Cheese Board; the pizza was delicious, as advertised), and a great conversation with Meg and Leland last night. I was planning on finishing my taxes (I was serious when I said I’m focusing on work!), but they gave me a call and we ended up talking forever at Mondo Gelato. They’re awesome friends.

Speaking of taxes, so I did finish them, and it turns out that the government owes me like $900. This would have been great, except that I kind of got carried away buying CDs last night, offsetting much of this gain. I have this weird CD-buying technique by which I resist buying CDs for as long as possible (keeping a list of albums I want) and then finally break down and buy them all.
The sordid details

Shortly after I wrote that last entry, I tried to go to sleep. Shortly after that, at 3:30am, my next door neighbor’s alarm went off. This was a problem because a) my next door neighbor (who happens to be an RA) was not in his room and b) the IHouse front desk, which is supposedly open 24 hours a day to handle incidents like this, was unmanned. And unwomanned. So I had to lie there in my bed, trying to block out the siren wail emanating from my wall.

I think it went on for about 20 minutes.

At the time, of course, it seemed all too fitting. Now, it just seems funny… :)