December 30, 2003, 03:55 AM - One thing I've learned from watching the movie Contact

Primer is pronounced prim-er when it refers to a short guide on a topic; however, it's pronounced prime-er when it refers to a blasting cap.

That is all.

December 29, 2003, 09:13 PM - Public Service Announcement

Aftershave and pimple cream don't mix. Ow.

Did this song come out as a single yet? If not, it damn well should. It's easily the best song on the album; I don't know how I could have missed this the first few times around.

Go. Listen to it.

Shiny pretty icons! My site looks a lot less drab now.

December 28, 2003, 04:16 AM - Note Hysteria!

I've finally gotten around to putting my CS 248 project up. Enjoy!

Well, I've gotten to the point where I can sight-read my way through the entire set. However, I'm concentrating on the hardest variations, namely the XIth, XVth, and the XXIVth, and so I've fleshed out my notes a bit for those variations.

December 27, 2003, 08:20 AM - Liquid nitrogen burns...

as I found out today when I went to the dermatologist. But at least I'll get rid of this persistent wart on my finger, which has been bothering me for months.

It looks awful in its current state, though. The doctor said it'll take at least ten days for the blister to fall off. I would happily take a picture and show the world, but my camera has a focal length of roughly two miles and no optical zoom. The Exilim looks cool and is handy to carry around, but once the novelty wears off, its limitations quickly become annoying.

December 26, 2003, 07:22 AM - Current known issues and planned improvements

Current known issues:

• Japanese characters in any entry field get converted to &#xxxxx; form when put into a textbox or viewed in the entry list. This is more of an annoyance than an issue since I don't plan to write a lot in Japanese, and they show up fine on the webpage itself. Hopefully this will get fixed in the next version of MovableType.
• The blog administration console is still over an unencrypted connection. It's protected by Stanford's WebAuth system but that only guarantees that non-Stanford people cannot access it. It is possible that this vulnerability is exploitable. I have to bother the IT people about this; hopefully I can get them to enable HTTPS, and then I could hack the code to check against WebAuth.
• Blog text inside HTML tags are not checked for characters that should be escaped.
• That stupid extra slash that gets added when redirecting to cgi scripts. It annoys the hell out of me. Fixed!

Planned improvements:

• The MovableType icon will be displayed at the bottom of the page. Done!
• The strange black-on-blue header style will be changed to something less ugly. Done!
• More icons will be added, on the navbars as well as for topics. Done!
• Icons for individual navbar entries will be added.
• Syndication will be implemented.
• More information will be added on the blog toolbar.
• Tooltips for the links on the calendar. Done!
• The web page title will consistently show up in the title bar.
• An arrow will be added to show/hide the extended entry field of an entry, a la kuro5hin's dynamic threaded view mode.
• Comments and other nifty blog features will be enabled.
• The archive templates will get cleaned up.
• The image pages will be automated. Then I can finally get around to putting my Japan pics up.
• Make the calendar more useful.
• Make the "Recent entries" navbar more useful.
• Make the "Archives" navbar expandable.

Evanescence is. Over half of their album I gave three starts or more in iTunes, and it even managed to draw me away from my J-pop for a while.

Granted, the lyrics are a bit angsty to take seriously. (Highlights include someone screaming "I want to die!") But the vocalist's voice harmonizes very well and the heavy guitars are a change from the oft sugary accompaniments of J-pop songs.

December 25, 2003, 06:52 PM - Adventures in OS land

So I finally got a basic kernel to work in my highly irregular Cygwin environment.

December 23, 2003, 07:22 AM - Stanford Concerto Competition

Yep, I'm planning to enter that, which will take place around the beginning of April. I will be playing Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, of which the XVIIIth variation, incidentally, has been popularized by the movie Somewhere in Time, and thus you probably know it, even if the name doesn't ring a bell.

I actually thought it was the easiest of Rachmaninoff's piano concerti, but I've searched for information online and it turns out some people consider it to be the hardest. Having dabbled in both the second and third Rachmaninoff piano concerti, I'll have to stick with my opinion, though. If it is indeed the hardest, at least it gradually builds up to the technically challenging parts, instead of beating you over the head with it two pages in (the third) or scaring you off with big scary chords in the beginning (the second).

Of course, claiming it's the easiest concerto isn't saying much, since this is Rachmaninoff we're talking about here. Some of the variations, especially toward the end of the piece, make me doubt if I can get it ready in four months. Some of the highlights include:

• At least three cadenzas or cadenza-like passages that I can remember.
• The XVIIIth variation which I have to know like the back of my hand, since it's the climax of the piece, and the most well-known part, to boot.
• The last (XXIVth) variation, which is almost Scriabin-like in its chromaticism.
• The orchestra tacet near the middle of the piece (the XVth variation) which might as well be a cadenza because of its sheer virtuosic demands.

But it's a fun piece. I'm entering the competition more to spur myself to learn it rather than any real desire to win it (although that would be sweet). Also, I've jotted down some notes.

December 18, 2003, 02:48 PM - The job search co...d'oh!

Looks like I spoke too soon! I didn't move on to second round interviews for Cerner. I guess they just wanted to tell me that personally. Oh, well. The prospect of working in Kansas City was a little strange, anyway.

Also, I finally officially switched my music major to a music minor. Sad.

Oh, and my resumé got updated. It gets harder and harder every quarter to keep it under one page. Urgh.

December 16, 2003, 07:17 AM - Current mathematical interests

Infinitesimal analysis. Non-standard analysis. Category theory.

Grades. Job-hunting plans. Japanese. Car problems.

The above (romanized as 'hisashiburi') means "it's been a while" in Japanese; it's what you say when you greet someone you haven't seen for a while. It's certainly apt in this case as I've neglected my weblog for, what, over a month now?

Well, a lot has been going on, but pretty much the number one cause for that was the video game project for my graphics class (CS 248). I just got my grade for it today, and it seems I managed a lot better than I thought I did. I'll probably put a page about it soon, but for now you can download the binaries (for Windows only) and a sample song (which you put in the same directory as the executable) to try it, if you want.