11/17/05, 8:55 p.m. --
Fun fact: it's friggin' cold up here.
Now I blame Andy for the 30 or so minutes of my
life I wasted trying to dig up this information, but after some searching (no thanks
to google) I was able to locate data on which of our great states is the
coldest. If you don't count Alaska (which is by far the coldest), and go by
the previous 70 years' worth of spatially-averaged mean annual air temperatures,
then the state of Minnesota is the 2nd coldest (40.9F), topped only by a mere
0.9F by that great vacant space to the northwest known to some as North Dakota
(source: NOAA's NCDC.)
I think that makes me pretty bad-ass for living in such a cold state =|
Just for fun, I tracked down a
color map (which was more interesting than the
tables I was looking through) for your viewing pleasure. Soon it will be time to
go stand out in this great cold and wait in line to see HP4! Woo.
11/7/05, 8:45 p.m. --
*Queue Victory Music*
"You have successfully submitted your application for the 2006 NSF GRFP" ... finally.
This NSF fellowship has been the bane of my existence over the past week or more,
and as of 10 minutes ago I finally submitted the finished version -- essays and all.
That marks the last fellowship application I'll fill out this fall, having sent in
an EPA one a couple weeks ago. Now I can finally get back to work =\
In perhaps more exciting news, tonight I acquired a copy of the recording of my band concert from earlier this fall. In all I thought it was a pretty average concert selection-wise, but we performed pretty well. I have uploaded the songs for those of you wondering what I do on Monday and Thursday nights every week. I'll link my two favorite pieces here, and the rest of the concert can be found here. (Also, I have uploaded the recording of the second concert from last spring; click here -- the Reed and Rodrigo pieces are especially neat, and the Handel quartet is extremely well-played.) I thought Rikudim was the best song from the concert. It's a unique-sounding collection of Israeli dances by a composer whose pieces I always find fun to play; it features some odd time signatures (which we had a little trouble with in spots...) and has a lot of energy. I also really liked the last song from the concert. It's a short Russian march written in a minor key that was evidently quite popular in the motherland back in the day. Enjoy =)
In perhaps more exciting news, tonight I acquired a copy of the recording of my band concert from earlier this fall. In all I thought it was a pretty average concert selection-wise, but we performed pretty well. I have uploaded the songs for those of you wondering what I do on Monday and Thursday nights every week. I'll link my two favorite pieces here, and the rest of the concert can be found here. (Also, I have uploaded the recording of the second concert from last spring; click here -- the Reed and Rodrigo pieces are especially neat, and the Handel quartet is extremely well-played.) I thought Rikudim was the best song from the concert. It's a unique-sounding collection of Israeli dances by a composer whose pieces I always find fun to play; it features some odd time signatures (which we had a little trouble with in spots...) and has a lot of energy. I also really liked the last song from the concert. It's a short Russian march written in a minor key that was evidently quite popular in the motherland back in the day. Enjoy =)
11/6/05, 8:19 p.m. --
Foto!
Well after some prodding from Andy,
I have begun the process of putting together a gallery for all the pictures
I've taken over the last few years. This time, however, instead of using that
bloated mess of code known as gallery, I delved into using obscura. It's still
pretty rough, but I dig how simple obscura is, and as I have more time I will make
the 'galleries' look a bit nicer. I really hesitate to call the collected
pictures 'photography', as that would imply some sort of aesthetic value. Really
these are more just pictures taken for the sake of documenting a particular place
and time, and might be more for my own enjoyment than anything else =) If
you're curious to see the progress I'm making, click
here. Keep in
mind it's still under construction though...