Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Jacob's LiveJournal:

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Monday, January 26th, 2009
2:50 am	302 Found Well, that previous entry promising more updates was by now a year and a half ago, so that obviously didn't happen. As most everyone who reads this is aware, new updates are happening on twittter. The 140-character limit immensely lowers the barrier to updating, so it actually sees some activity. But it would be unfair for this entry to be totally content-free. So: I've graduated, and now I'm here, working on this. I'll probably keep this account active for the foreseeable future, but, again, expect new content to be elsewhere. (fight the power)
Sunday, May 13th, 2007
10:56 am	It's that time again This post is a future of a 3-tuple -- that is, it is declaring that at some point in the future, you will see three posts from me: one saying what I've been up to this semester; one of my schedule for next semester; and one of what I will be working on this summer. If we were using a language that supported lazy evaluation, you would actually stop at the point where you read this and freeze up until I actually replaced the future with the promised content, at which point you would go on your merry way, having no memory of this post and no knowledge of having waited (unless you chanced to look at a wall clock). Instead, you will either have to periodically poll for the actual value, or you will have to call a "force" function which will try to extract the posts from me -- the analogy of this function to the real world is left as an exercise to the reader. (5 revolutions |fight the power)
Friday, March 30th, 2007
4:37 am	Photos! Here are some pictures from the first half of my trip. Photos from Kyoto will probably go up this weekend. Tokyo DisneySea Downtown (Ginza et al) ICPC; misc Giants game; Akihabara Yasukuni shrine; Ghibli museum; misc (3 revolutions |fight the power)
Thursday, March 8th, 2007
12:42 pm	test Testing tags. (fight the power)
Tuesday, March 6th, 2007
2:45 am	Hell Week has gotten off to something of an auspicious start. :-) Maybe when I'm here doing this, I'll give a more proper update. I need to describe all the crazy (cool, stressful, time-consuming) stuff going on this week. Not to mention classes and all that. Current Mood: happy Current Music: heh. a variety of atonal (or nontonal!) gibberish? and guster. (fight the power)
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006
3:12 am	Thoughts and narratives on Chicago According to the guy I sat next to on the train to Chicago, Rantoul is referred to by the natives as "Rantucket" (sounds like... well, you know. Nantucket.) Trains are awesome, by the way. There was even 120V power for my laptop. Unfortunately, it was dark out during both halves of the trip, so I couldn't see much between Champaign and Chicago (not that there would be a lot to see anyway ^_^). That being said, the Chicago skyline at night, seen from the railway approach to union station, is staggering. Michigan avenue is also really something, even if most of the shops are uninteresting to me (not to mention out of my league). The scale of the street and the adjacent buildings is such that when looking east, I got the sense that there was nothing more out there. Then I realized that to the east was, in fact, Lake Michigan. I enjoyed the sentiment, even if there ended up being a completely trivial explanation. Wednesday morning I visited the Contemporary Art museum -- their featured exhibit was on sustainable design. It had some interesting ideas, and of course, the exhibit itself was niftily designed, but it annoyed me at the same time. Technological and economic factors are *huge* in this area of design and in this aspect of environmentalism, and they were somewhat glossed over. There was simply not enough text to describe the technology well, and the text was too vague and platitudinous to grapple with the economics involved. The highlight of the art museum was definitely a whimsical chart outlining a conspiracy theory involving pirates taking over Chicago. There apparently also had been a separate performance art installation on the same theme. I also need to talk about UChicago and southside -- not to mention an interview, that being the reason I got to traipse about Chicago for the day -- but it is already way past my bedtime. Current Mood: tired (1 revolution |fight the power)
Tuesday, September 5th, 2006
2:07 am	An anecdote, in two senseless parts 1. I wanted to search for the band "Type O Negative" on Wikipedia, but I accidentally typed "Typo O Negative". There should be a word for that. 2. The article, once I did find it, contained this precious tautology: "Their newest album in 3 years will be released sometime in 2007." (You'll now have to look in the history to find it. Yay wikis.) (2 revolutions |fight the power)
Monday, September 4th, 2006
5:30 pm	Class report So here's what my classes are like this semester: CS473 Algorithms (the last of the 3-semester discrete math sequence) SCARY SCARY DOOM. But I expected that. Still, it has already been responsible for the first all-nighter of the semester -- and frankly, it's way too early for me to have started pulling all-nighters. Apparently the first homework assignment (a so-called review, but of course the problems were hard the first time around when the material was fresh in our heads) is worse than the rest will be. It's also taught by a great professor, and the material is interesting and relevant, so I'll survive. And go crazy. Or survive by virtue of already being crazy =). CS412 Data Mining Oy. The professor so far has put me to sleep by going through the slides at an agonizing rate; it remains to be seen whether the material will be interesting, since it took two (1:15 each) lectures just to get through the introductory fluff. Perhaps his slow pace will be beneficial once there actually is material to learn on the slides. The class was also beyond capacity, and he spent some time warning people about the significant workload, perhaps to get some students to drop the class. Ultimately, whether I like this class will depend on whether the material is rewarding. ECON101CHP Introduction to Economics My honors course for this semester. Small class & great professor, as is usual with CHP classes :-). Incidentally, the CHP administration must be extraordinarily functional to be able to weed out all those brilliant professors that do amazing research yet aren't actually capable of teaching. The bad news for this class is that I will have to write a term paper; the good news is that I probably can write it about the economics of Free Software ^_^. MUS407 Techniques of Electroacoustic Music I now can recite to you the differences between mic level, instrument level, consumer line level, professional line level, and speaker level, not to mention the difference between dBu, dBv, and dBm. Oh, and eventually I'm going to learn how to splice reel-to-reel audio tape, which is the coolest thing in the galaxy even if nobody does it anymore (as he explained to us, if we are good at analog, we'll be *really* good at digital). I also got to explain to a music student what the difference is between volts and watts. MUS180 Piano I haven't had an official lesson yet, though I have met my new teacher. It'll be hard for her to be as good of a teacher as Waejane, of course, but as long as she corrects enough and I keep learning, I'll be ok. Current Mood: weekend? Current Music: Cursive. For some reason, the theme to the Truman Show reminded me of "Sierra"... (1 revolution |fight the power)
Thursday, August 3rd, 2006
10:17 pm	This shit truly is bananas. Postmodern bananas, I should add. Current Mood: almost done with the project!!! (2 revolutions |fight the power)
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006
12:31 pm	Today's slashdot Here's a zinger from slashdot, in an article about a proposed Boston WiFi network: The Science Museum is one of those institutions that would be still standing even after the rest of Boston caves in and collapses. Thanks to the Mass. Turnpike Authority, this theory might be tested soon. Current Mood: good morning Current Music: David Bowie - Changes (fight the power)
Thursday, July 27th, 2006
8:05 pm	I'm thinking maybe I should have called my laptop "hbogart" instead of "vlaszlo". But that's all I have to say about *that*. In other news, my electronics are all working again. (1 revolution |fight the power)
Monday, July 24th, 2006
4:12 pm	Rites of Spring So, after having seen it referenced repeatedly online (mostly in the context of "Fall Down Boy is not emo. *This* is emo."), I finally bought the eponymous (and only) album by Rites of Spring. In some ways, it's a little less than I expected. I like the lyrics (ok, anyone else would say they're way too angsty, but that's kind of what I dig), and the chord structures and guitar work are sufficiently complex as to be interesting. The rest of the music, however, is wayyyy too punk for me: the vocals are typical non-melodic half-screams (think Henry Rollins), and the drums have a little bit too much of that uninteresting too-fast boom-chuck. I desperately want to take a song and rework it, though. There's so much emotion lurking in these songs, but I don't know if the style of the recording brings it out. Mm. I want to attack this album with melody and electronics. My current contract has an absolute deadline of August 7, but since I'm only producing a prototype, there's the possibility that I'll be able to get another 1-or-2-week contract to polish it and implement a couple more features. But I'm considering whether I instead want those last two weeks of summer to really work on music. Hmm. (4 revolutions |fight the power)
Friday, July 21st, 2006
5:22 pm	Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes You know that (supposed) Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times"? My past week has been plenty interesting... I lost my job on Monday. In short, the problems we were working on ended up being harder than my boss thought they were going to be, and it didn't look like we would be able to finish a prototype by the end of the summer, so my boss pulled the plug sooner rather than later. We spent the rest of the week wrapping things up and documenting them so that he can resuscitate the project later, if he chooses to do so. So I was just a tiny bit worried, given that I had to figure out what I was going to be doing the rest of the summer. That being said, as I mentioned to someone, you can hardly chuck an AOL cd in Cambridge without hitting a tech company. Let's just say that I found an ad on Craigslist that afternoon, sent out my resumé that evening, interviewed on Wednesday, wrote a proposal on Thursday, and signed a contract this morning for two weeks of work. Really, I can't quite believe my luck, given how long the summer job search took me during the school year. Things were just going my way to an eerie extent: I see an ad looking for a Google Maps expert (y0) and then find out during the interview that he's doing stuff related to air travel (y0 again). Whoa. Familiar territory, in other words. Beyond the whole employment shenanigans, this is not a good week to be a piece of electronics owned by Jacob Lee. My cell phone died Monday night (adding to the stress, I might add), and I just found out that my laptop's CD drive is dead. I lost some pictures of fireworks (and people hanging out before/below the fireworks) and, of course, an address book... though that's really my fault, since those pictures were lingering on the cell for too long. Backups 1, Jackbo 0. Stay tuned. (1 revolution |fight the power)
Friday, July 14th, 2006
1:05 am	Part II.5 of III I don't think you can express "2.5" in roman numerals. Anyhow, I forgot to mention a random tidbit: Fenway park lies halfway inbetween the art museum and the bus stop at Kenmore Square. Apparently a Red Sox game was about to begin, since there was a giant throng of red-and-white-clad people moving in the opposite direction to me, towards the park. I was wearing black and yellow, so I'm just glad they weren't playing the Pirates. (2 revolutions |fight the power)
12:27 am	Part II of III I am afraid that Part II may not live up to the hype, since at this moment, I should either be working or sleeping, not updating LJ. But in sum, here's what I've been up to in the past couple of weeks: I did in fact go see the fireworks due to a last-minute change of plans that invoked aureliacuiurbs and her gaggle of friends from BLS and elsewhere. The Pops were pretty good... Candide is always entertaining; Rockapella did sing, among other pieces, about 30 seconds of Where In the World is Carmen Sandiego (w00t!); those two guys from Aerosmith were ok, but the Pops didn't do a whole lot to back them up. I think someone hired a low-budget arranger... it could have just been a side-effect of the loudspeakers we were hearing them through, but you really could hear just the trumpets, which often were doing nothing more than (eww) doubling the melody. Cheryl, when you graduate, you need to work for the Pops and write arrangements that don't suck :-), or at least hold your interest a little more. Jeff and Abby came in town this past weekend. We saw the freedom trail, hung out, visited our uncle in New Hampshire, etc. I was happy to see them, and we had a good time, but it didn't help my getting-hours-in-at-work situation any. I came home Sunday from New Hampshire feeling stressed over the amount of work I hadn't done, and it didn't help that my eyes were sore from the hour-long drive each way and from being in the sun all day (which sometimes gives me headaches, dunno why). Yes, I realize that I just described a nice, relaxing day, which shouldn't have stressed me out, but it did. There's a good ending, though: I decided that my eyes would not be able to cope with staring at a screen, so I instead played Scrabble against Abby. I got 360-some points, including a bingo (RANKEST, admittedly using a blank), and felt a lot better afterwards. Even got some work done. Then, after finally starting to catch up on work, I shot it all to hell again by spending today at the art museum :-). After some lengthy negotiations via email, we decided on the art museum rather than Six Flags because I felt that the former would take less time (not to mention traffic, price, and so forth) -- well, that assumption was somewhat misguided, since we spent pretty much the whole day at the museum. I ended up with a serious case of museum feet and a dire case of not-starting-work-until-after-dinner. It was worth it, though. :-) Current Mood: tired - I woke up at 8:15 this morning!!! Current Music: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Storm (fight the power)
Tuesday, July 11th, 2006
9:30 pm	Part I of III I may have mentioned a while back (probably in an away message) that my new favorite nonexistent band is Tool, but with electronics, so that the ambient tracks don't suck. (And yes, I realize that it would take a certain degree of hairsplitting to distinguish that band from, erm, Nine Inch Nails). Anyhow, in that same vein, my new favorite nonexistent song is Dream Theater's live recording of Bach's prelude in C Minor (from book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier). The keyboard takes the lower voice and the guitar takes the upper, by the way. And perhaps there's a guitar solo to replace the cadenza-ish bits at the end of the piece. This is part I of III. Part II will actually talk about what I've been up to in the past few weeks; part III will be f-locked. For now, it's back to work... Current Music: See above :-). But also, Jethro Tull - Thick As a Brick (1 revolution |fight the power)
Tuesday, July 4th, 2006
1:47 pm	misc. 1. I'm not going to see the Pops play, since if I wanted to get a seat, I would've had to be there, uh, this morning. For an 8:30 concert. Instead, I'm going to listen on the radio while I walk down to the river to see the fireworks. 2. I have to decide, probably today, between Turbogears, django, and webpy. Too bad that last web site is down. Gaah. Current Mood: it's 88 degrees in Boston. Total false advertising. Current Music: "Berlioz - Track 3"? maybe not. Sad Roses by Idan Raichel is in my head, at any rate. (2 revolutions |fight the power)
Monday, July 3rd, 2006
2:24 pm	Since nobody figured out what ♥✈➹✒ stands for (and apparently some weaksauce fonts wouldn't know Unicode if it hit them in the face from right to left, with kerning), I'll go ahead and link to the origin, which is the superposition of those symbols. It's the cover of the new Dresden Dolls album, which besides being totally rocking in its own right, has the single most amazing album cover ever. Now, on a completely unrelated note... Does it count as schadenfreude if I enjoy making computers perform really long compute operations? I just legitimately exhausted the memory of a computer with 1 gig of ram and 1 gig of swap. It seems that PostgreSQL doesn't want to load a 40-million-row table all at once... what a wimp. I had to break it into bite-sized, 10-million-row chunks. While doing so, I was definitely invoking the old Klingon programmer's maxim: our software does not coddle the weak! Current Music: The Dresden Dolls, of course :-) (14 revolutions |fight the power)
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006
10:42 am	Massive points to the first person who figures out what ♥✈➹✒ stands for. Current Mood: good morning (11 revolutions |fight the power)
Monday, June 19th, 2006
1:17 am	The Starbucks Index ranks Cincinnati as #10. This could be our biggest triumph since getting that Most Livable City designation who-knows-when ago by some organization or another. I don't feel like actually updating, so this link will have to do. Sorrie :-) (3 revolutions |fight the power)