The Writing of Gynwig

I finally posted Chapter 9 of The Game of Gynwig. I finished writing Chapter 15 of the story today; it's a bit strange trying to get back into it, I can't exactly remember what all my intentions were, and my notes are disorganized. After the next 10 chapters or so, which I think I have planned out well enough, I'll have to reread everything and reorganize and make sure I know what I'm doing for the rest of the novel. And, wow, does the story need editing. My writing is awful! But oh well, must keep going... must trudge forward...

Now go read it and I'll thank your name in the book when it gets professionally published. (Yeah, in all honesty, it will most likely never get published, but I'll try when I finish... if I finish. But if it doesn't get published, I'll podcast it, woohoo!)

That was amazing!

Wow, that was awesome! Seeing The Fellowship of the Ring at Wolf Trap on Thursday with the entire score played live (choirs included) was the best concert I've ever been to (not that I've been to a great many).

Hearing the music live really brought it to life (obviously). The orchestra sounded fantastic, and their sounds come straight to you without any sort of flattening or degradation. It really put my headphones, my usual way of hearing film music, to utter shame. The choirs were also outstanding, boomingly powerful. In dark dangerous parts, when the orchestra is in a uproar and the choir was singing fortissimo and the timpani is pounding away, I thought I could really feel the ground quake. Awesome!

Like the choirs, the vocal soloist, Kaitlyn Lusk, was also fantastic, and seemed to sing beautifully and perfectly.

When the film started, I realized it was to be captioned, all the spoken words appearing in white at the bottom of the screen. I thought "oh, come on, I already have it all memorized... and if your deaf, why are you here anyway?" but there were some moments when the sound of the orchestra seemed to overtake the sound of the characters' speech, and it was hard to hear what they were saying, so I suppose the captions did come in handy... at least for those who didn't have the film memorized. (Ok, I really don't have it completely memorized myself, so don't quiz me.)

While watching, my eyes went back and forth between the action on the screen and the movement of the orchestra players, or at least the players I could see, mostly string players. It would have been nice to see all the choirs, but they were hidden behind the screen, at least from where I was sitting. Still, being able to watch just a fragment of the orchestra made the music a bit "visual" ... when the music dropped out, especially at exciting scenes, I realized it much more consciously. I was also able to better anticipate the coming of music by watching the players prepare right before a cue. It was very fun to watch. Then, there were other times when I was just wrapped up in the amazing story of the movie that I forgot the music was live; the great story and dialog just engaged me completely.

Another thing I really enjoyed about the performance is just getting to see it with a crowd of other fans. Hearing the audience laugh at the funny parts just seems to make them more funny, hearing the utter silence at a serious part makes it that much more serious, hearing the applause at a particularly powerful scene with powerful music (or after a soloist's performance) made it seem that much more grand. It's a bit like watching a comedy with friends; it's just much more fun as you can all feed off of each other's reaction. So just the psychology of watching the film with a crowd of fans rather than just watching it alone really changed the experience for the better. It wasn't like sitting in a theater with annoying cell-phone talkers or blathering middle-school girls in front of you; it was like everyone there was just as focused on the film and the experience as you were.

Just how in sync the orchestra kept was astounding! I can imagine an orchestra messing up many a time during a real film music recording session, but to perform a 3 hour score live, keeping proper tempo constantly without the option to start any cue over, they were amazing. Never did the music not match what was on screen, never did something seem a little off. It seemed just about perfect!

I am hoping, sincerely hoping, that Wolf Trap will do The Two Towers and The Return of the King as well; you can bet I'll make it to those. The concert was superb, fantastic, definitely the best concert I've been to yet. Bravo!

That was amazing! :-)

And many many thanks to my mom, who accompanied me! I am very glad she enjoyed it as well!! :-)

LOTR concert!

My sleeping schedule is still completely messed up. :-(

However, today is the day! Tonight I'm off to Wolf Trap to see a Lord of the Rings music concert! A live orchestra and choir will be playing the entire film score along with a showing of the film. Woohoo! I'm extremely excited. I just hope I'm not sleepy by then... I should go to bed right now, actually...

Oh, yeah, I still didn't upload chapter 9 of The Game of Gynwig. I'll do that eventually. If you would like to pay me, I'll be more dependable...

Oh, today while I was advocating the abolition of the modern high school system, someone argued that abolishing high school would destroy the economy because of the money the teen pop culture generates. UGH!! What foolery! You shouldn't sustain something that's fundamentally harmful because fear of financial troubles... give me a break! Reminds of that guy in the film Amazing Grace... "If we were to abolish the slave trade tomorrow, it would bring financial disaster..." blah blah blah. You get the point.

What about the end of child labor? I'm sure there were people then that argued the same... "you can't let the children stop working, the factories will have to close! The economy will fall!"

Yes, of course certain businesses would go out of business if high schools were abolished, but the nation wouldn't crumble. A scratch in your arm to get rid of a splinter doesn't cause all your skin to tear. And, yes, it might hurt for a bit, but it heals and it's a lot better than keeping the splinter stuck in your arm.

Anyway, surely that guy saw the stupidity of his argument and now realizes that I am completely right. :-)

Writing music day

Spent the day writing music, more specifically my entry for the current Orchestration Challenge. I am quite pleased with my entry, but of course I won't be able to share it for a few weeks... not until mid June most likely, when the current round will end.

I was planning on only spending an hour working on it today, but I ended up spending six and finishing it. Woohoo!

Not much else to say today... my sleeping schedule is way off again, so I'm staying up all night so that I can go to bed early tonight and wake up early on Thursday. That's the hope at least.

I'm going to post chapter 9 of The Game of Gynwig right after I post this, so check that out if you've been following along with the story... though I only know of two people that are... thanks, two readers! :-P

Oh, I've been thinking about putting together a music album and selling it on Amazon... not of music already available on my site, but a collection of new pieces that I haven't written yet, but they'd be connected, like repeat each other's themes and stuff...

... Or ... I could probably already put together a CD of the best stuff I've already written. I've had several people say they'd buy such a CD, even though free MP3s are already available... maybe I should do that first, try out the experience. I'm just not sure what to do for the cover art or CD art... anyone know any good but cheap artists? Or maybe I could find some public domain images...

Yeah, I guess I'll do that first... will have to go back and re-record some pieces though so I get the best quality.

Oops, it's not healthy to blog on future speculations of what you think you will do, is it?

Ok, enough blather...

Book writing progress

I tried working on my novels today...

Current word count for Simmion's Show: 4,200
Current word count for The Game of Gynwig: 41,700

I probably blogged about this before, but Simmion's Show is about a kid who exchanges years of his life for the ability to do real magic, which he uses to become a famous illusionist. The story is completely planned out, with 31 scenes, though that will probably change as I continue writing. I'm on scene #7 right now. (So I guess it will technically be a novella or something when finished.)

The Game of Gynwig rough draft is already available for reading, or at least what I have written of it thus far. I had that planned out as well with over 100 scenes, but I completely went off course while writing. I have some different plans in my head, but I'm unsure where exactly everything will end up. I only have up to chapter 8 posted, but I have 5 or 6 more written, so I'll probably try to post those tomorrow.

Writing is hard and lonely and boring... I hope I have some time to do some tomorrow!

Oh, I also worked on my Orchestration Challenge entry... it's sounding very nice, if I do say so myself... which I do. I haven't had time to enter one of them in a while, so I love being able to get back into it.

Music theory books

I was trying to study some music theory today, and I'm not too fond of how most music theory books are organized. Ideally, in my opinion, they should teach entirely by examples, showing fragments of pieces, showing their similarities, and extracting the "rules" from them, so that you can immediately see where they apply. Instead they tend to list the rules, give theoretical examples that are over simplified, and then maybe mention one or two examples, or leave such analysis for you to do as an exercise. Argh! That's a stupid way to do it! Why not start off showing immediately, right from the start where the rules apply, where they come from? That would be far more helpful than two-bar theoretical example figures. Leaves me scratching my head wondering where and how do I apply this?

Examples examples examples!!

Saturday of busyness

I've been busy all day. After being busy and after going out to eat with the family, I tried composing, but I couldn't get anything worthwhile out of my head, and whatever I did get down put me to sleep.

Boring day.

But the dull days of my life need blog posts to, eh?

Mozart's Dream

I'm reading a little biography of Mozart, and decided I should finish this piece...



I'm not sure I like the name "Mozart's Dream", but I guess it works. I stole most of the chordal accompaniment from his 40th symphony; I'm sure most people can recognize those violas in the beginning. Ah, Mozart's great, isn't he? Working on that piece reminded me I have a lot of voice-leading to learn. :-P

Early to bed

I'm trying to get my sleep schedule back on some sort of track, so I'm going to bed now, nice and early, so I don't have time to write this blog! Bye!

Sleep schedule

My sleep schedule is completely messed up, unfortunately... I was awake all night and asleep all day. Argh!

School's over, but not all the grades are in, so it doesn't feel entirely over yet. I'm still not sure exactly what I'll be doing all summer (or next year, for that matter). I need to sort that out, right now I feel kind of weird... I want to be excited about the end of the semester, but... well... I need to secure a job! A good job. Not something like, dare I say... testing. :-P (And don't try to justify a bad job with money. An enjoyable job is much more important than money, and you know it!)

I bought tickets for this, a showing of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring with a live orchestra and choir providing the music. Awesome, no? And it's just next week too, woohoo!

Another ageist trait...

When you hear an opinion or a viewpoint that you're not sure about (you don't quite disagree, but it goes against your intuition), do you consider the person's age when trying to decide what to make of it? If the person is younger than you, you think he's probably wrong because he doesn't have enough "experience" or something. You're also more comfortable arguing against him as you feel more secure about yourself in your relationship with him because you're older. Even if you both disagree with each other, at least you'll be the most "senior" in the argument.

If he's older than you (and he doesn't seem too crazy), you're more likely to think twice about his opinion, he might just have something. After all, he has more "experience" or something. And even if you still disagree with him, you're less likely to voice your opinion because he's older than you, he would be the dominant "senior" guy in the argument. How could you ever sway his opinion? You feel less secure about yourself, or your opinions.

I keep writing in second person, but I don't mean this necessarily applies to you, the reader, personally, whoever you are. I of course mean it in the general sense. I think it's true for a lot of people, unfortunately. But we always "consider the source" so it's a hard habit to break, it's ingrained in our brain, in how we perceive the world. Yes, "consider the source" but don't "consider the source's age" if you can help it.

I feel like making this message the crux of a preachy Denzel Washington and Robert Redford film!

Stupid movie

One more exam left!

I tried watching the film Lions for Lambs last night, but it was atrocious. It was basically a bunch of people talking... nay, preaching to each other. Three ongoing conversations for the entire film. Three preachy conversations. Gimme a break. And I was trying to eat popcorn... I eventually had to switch to Hulu.

Beauty in the wind...

Today, the power flickered and our DirectTV signal went out for a bit, most likely due to the very strong winds we were having. And it made me think... we have all this technology around us all the time... televisions, computers, cell phones, game consoles... we dedicate our time to them so much. Yet, when that power flickered and the wind howled, I heard something... like a whisper reminding me that world is so much bigger, and if we dedicate too much of our time to technology, we might miss the natural beauty all around us! When did the sun and the sky become things we only see when walking between buildings and cars? When did the complex design of a tree become something we overlook because there's something on TV? When did the wind become something we only remember when the DirectTV signal breaks? A small part of me thinks the wind did it on purpose...

Just kidding. I hate it when people really talk like that. Gimme a break. :-P

I especially hate it when people write like that and act totally different in person... at least be consistent!

Robot murder = ok

If we created a robot that had the intelligence of a human or greater, would it be ethically wrong to murder it? By which I mean, destroy its memory and central processing unit (for what are humans but a lump of volatile memory and neural connections?).

Problem is, how could we ever know that a robot is really conscious? We couldn't. We don't even know that other humans are conscious, but we tend to assume it. I think the assumption is hard wired into our brains, it's how we see the world. That said, history has proven that it's easy for one "race" of humans to see another as "less than equal" and perhaps even "not as human" ... so I don't think our species is hard wired to see everyone else as being just as conscious, perhaps that must be acquired through conscious thought and decision later on in life... or perhaps the opposite: the hard wiring perhaps can be rewired through conscious thought and decision...

But it doesn't really matter. The point is, if robots are not given human characteristics that we feel we can relate to, it won't matter how conscious or intelligent they are. Look at how many people fight for cute puppy rights, but not so many fight for slug rights. We can't really know what it would be like to be either one, but we can certainly feel a much greater social connection with the cute puppy. Now what if the cute puppy's brain was an algorithm running on a super computer? Would anyone fight to keep it running, keep it conscious? Of course not... when cute puppies become old sickly unresponsive dogs, we usually don't even wait for them to die naturally.

Throughout history toy makers have always tried to make character toys sympathetic, even when stuffed. Robot toys will be no different. They'll be so cute that microwaving their digital disk heads will eventually become a crime...

Meanwhile, there will be large groups of people who will be able to look beyond the cuddly faces and not see the central processing units as human enough to deserve any rights. We can't know if any consciousness is emerging, so what's the harm in murder?

And if a robot's memory becomes non-volatile, can they even ever truly be murdered?

Just a stream-of-consciousness post, emerging from the neural connections...

Storm and exam

Couldn't blog last night, I had a massive headache, didn't feel well at all. To reflect my pain, I magically conjured up a huge thunderstorm that sent lightning blasting through the sky and made thunder shake the earth. Correlation = causation! It is really annoying to have a massive headache, but to have to miss the fun of a good powerful thunderstorm because of it just stinks.

Anyway, I had my first final exam this evening on operating systems. I have no idea how I did.

Three more exams to go! And they're all hard.

Writing a book

Today I started writing a book on writing melodies. It's nothing I expect to finish anytime soon, if I am able to finish at all. I am hoping it will aid me in my exploration of the subject of melodies, a subject I think many musical theorists just skim over (many modern composers don't even seem to like them much!). Not that there aren't some good books on melody already, but the few that there are don't seem to approach the subject in the way I would have, and will... hopefully. But, again, it will just be an ongoing project.

In other book news, I'm only on page 174 of Pinker's book The Stuff of Thought and now I have to return it to the library because a bunch of others have it on hold. So I ordered it online, bwa ha ha! I also ordered the book The Seven Basic Plots which I also need finish reading. It looks like I won't finish reading most of my other books from the college library, such as Critical Mass and Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, but oh well. I might try getting my hands on them later.

Anyway, I have my first exam on Friday, so school's not over yet! :-(

Ray tracing shots

Below is a little slideshow showing screenshots from the ray tracer I had to program as a final project for my computer graphics class, which ended yesterday (exam next week!). Of course we didn't have to program the ray tracer from scratch; much of the functionality was provided. And my end results were certainly not the most amazing in the class... though some students clearly had no clue what was going on...

Anyway, I worked on that long enough to start seeing ray tracing pics in my head as I went to sleep last night.



Tonight I'll probably see Mario Kart Wii in my head as I've been playing that all day. It's quite addicting, and I like playing with the Wiimote more than the finger joysticks other consoles have. But I really hate those banana peels.

I Am Legend review

I saw I Am Legend not long ago, which was fun. I'd give it a 5 out of 10. I think the film makers did an excellent job of making it engaging, especially since there's only one character for much of the film. They also did a great job of making the first zombie scenes quite suspenseful. I didn't really like the ending though. The story writers broke one of my "good story" commandments. I thought the alternate ending better, but still not good enough...

I hope my dog doesn't become a zombie dog!

(I know they weren't really "zombies" as they weren't undead, but they fit the "monster" role in the story, so the word "zombie" fits, in my opinion.)

Anyway, today was the last day of classes, now I've got exams to study for... and then hopefully a life. Maybe.

The final night of homework

I'll probably be up late tonight working on my final homework assignment! And then... final exams. Blagh.

The homework basically involves programming a ray tracer. The professor actually provided a good chunk of the code, but we have to edit it and add on to it by programming it to antialias the final image with adaptive ray tracing. Allow me to explain:

You see, ray tracing involves creating an image by sending off "rays" of light. Each ray sent represents a pixel on the screen, so basically all you have to determine is a pixel's color. When you send off a ray, you basically have to trace its path to where it intersects with something, if anything. Then, if you want some reflections, you trace where that ray bounces to and what it intersects with next. In the real world, rays can bounce off objects countless times, but in the computer world, since the computer has to compute it all, you'll have to set a limit.

Just plain ray tracing pixel by pixel will give very jagged edges on objects because the process is very quantized. That is, you're only sending off rays at discrete distances from one another. But jagged edges look artificial to us, so adaptive ray tracing solves this by firing off more than one ray for certain pixels. If the final colors between two rays are very different, you fire off some more arrays between them and basically change the shade of the pixel. This smooths the edges.

This is of course hardly anything new. While computers have gotten faster, most ray tracing graphics still must be prerendered, no realtime graphics here! These ray tracing ideas have been in practice since before I was born... some principles in computer science don't vanish quickly...

Sorry, I had little else to blog about... I'll post screen shots of my wonderful work tomorrow. Maybe.

Here's an assignment!

One of the things I hate most about the method of formal education is, of course, the giving of assignments. I think if I had ever studied music formally I would have loathed having to write a piece in a certain style, or figure out harmonies for a given melody, or, what seems to be a favorite, "write a piece using only this given motif, because that's what Beethoven did a lot."

Control

Though I would have loathed such assignments, I'm sure I would have learned quite a lot from them, and could probably put that knowledge to good use afterwards. So the question then becomes: is the suffering through the assignment worth the practice gained? In my opinion... no! Otherwise I would have of course pursued a formal study of music.

I think what would have made me hate such assignments so much is not only my disinterest, but the psychological suffering of feeling I'm not in control, that I'm not doing the assignment for me. If the assignment was optional or ungraded, I feel in much greater control... but then I'm probably less likely to do the assignment in the first place, especially if I'm not interested.

Why does a teacher give them?

I honestly believe many assignments are just busy work. Students get them for so long, and when they become teachers they easily get into the habit of giving it (even if they hated it themselves). In this sense, some teachers really don't put a whole lot of thought into the assignment giving, they just do it because it's what they're used to, it's what everyone else is doing.

They might even do it because on some subconscious level they like the power they have. That might sound absurd, but imagine for a second what it would be like if you were giving assignments. When I was really young, I wasted my poor brother's time by making him go to my school, in which I was the teacher. I have no idea what I taught, I don't think I really knew much (my how things have changed!) but it was just plain fun to be in charge and to make worksheets and plan out what someone has to do (perhaps that joy remains in my attraction to game designing, and writing, and composing... I'm dictating in a way what someone else is going to experience for at least a few minutes in their life... in a small way it is a bit of power).

Anyway, at that age, teaching seemed a very attractive job, one of power. You basically get to tell everyone what to do without having to pay them! And you're in a higher position. You're not just everyone's friend sharing with them knowledge and experience on a common interest; in the teacher-student relationship, the teacher is the one with the higher status. And I do believe some people are really attracted to getting that status and set themselves up as teachers not so much because of their interests in a certain subject, but because of that psychological attraction to that higher status and that power... though, of course, this is something that no teacher would admit (just like I won't admit why I blog... oh no, just kidding); teachers often have very romantic reasons for why they teach, about how much they care about education and inspiration and other people and the future and stuff, and I'm sure that's true for plenty of teachers. But no teacher says "I got out of college and couldn't really think of anything else to do, but I knew how schools worked..."

Conclusion

Obviously I like power too; as I said, feeling I'm in control over what I'm doing is one of the reasons I hate assigments so much. My ideal way of learning (besides books and the Internet) is talking to someone with similar interests non-formally. We both have equal status and the only assignments I do are the ones I give and choose to do myself. That said, I think there are certainly some excellent "mentors" ... by which I mean more "non-professional teachers" who are somewhere between the teacher-student and friend-friend relationship. They might give assignments, but they won't grade you, and you'll have a say in the nature of the assignment... but they are unfortunately most rare.

I could blather on about the subject, but I won't because I have an assigment to do...

Finished... oh another one?

Whew, I'm tired. Worked on and finished that programming project all morning. Went to class. Came home. Ate dinner. Came here. Hmmmm... the only other thing I can think to blather about is what I think about the future... as in, this weekend. But since it will be here soon, I might as well just wait until then. Bye.

Homework again

Still haven't done much in the past day besides homework. Makes this blog a bit boring, no? The assignment is to program a client-server auction application using socket and TCP/IP protocol in a distributed environment. Isn't that interesting?