| 9:50 pm - A momentary lapse of self-denial |
Someone dear to me just managed, without consciously trying to, to make me reflect a little more on what this week changed in me. From the sound of it, he said, I'm in love, and he's almost right there -- that's kind of what I'm feeling like, being freshly in love, just more... solid.Also, I don't know if I'm reading things into it, but I get the feeling my boss knows me better than I thought... at the beginning of this week, he said he would prefer me to get into database theory, and I was like "Meh. Yeah, guess I could do that, although it's not an area I'm madly in love with so far" (no actual quote). So, the same day, he told me we needed more topics for B.Sc. theses, and fast, and tasked me to find something within two weeks (which is when the assignment of thesis topic to students takes place). This gave me the close deadline I needed to give my all and everything... and just by the way he handed me the conference proceedings of a recent database theory conference, saying "Have a quick look at this to get an idea what's currently happening in database theory... you may even find a B.Sc. thesis topic in there."Deadline in mind, I got to work with the usual manic do-everything-and-do-it-NOW mindset I tend to get when time is tight(ish)... and by yesterday, I had seven potential topics worked out and was already busy getting ready to present and supervise my two favourites among them. That's what I was prepared to continue doing this morning when my boss sent me an email saying the B.Sc. theses were fine so far and I only needed to prepare a five-minute presentation for each of my two favourites, and everything else would come in two weeks, after the students had decided on their thesis topics. Thus, he blocked me right in the middle of a huge working streak... and since I couldn't continue doing what I was doing, I had to vent my impetus towards working my way through the conference proceedings. And sure enough, by the time I got through that, I had flagged three of the 24 papers contained therein as "somewhat interesting" for myself, six as "interesting" (and only because I had limited myself to using no more than six "interesting" flags) and two as "extremely interesting"... and by doing so I stumbled upon a topic that piqued my interest so much I looked up a seminal paper for it to take home over the weekend to work on.There's a German saying, "Appetite comes with eating", meaning that even if you don't feel like eating, you'll soon start to do so once you've had the first few bites of a yummy meal. And that's what I'm like, intellectually: Even if I don't very much fancy a topic at first glance, once I get started working on it and it proves challenging enough, my curiosity will take over. And anyone who knows me knows what happens when I get seriously curious.Somehow, I get the feeling my boss might know that.(Oh, and just in case you're wondering: There was actually an eighth potential B.Sc. thesis topic in those proceedings. Which I promptly added to the list.)current mood:  pond'rous (comment on this) |
| 7:00 pm - The Computational Complexity of Happiness |
Whow, this year's off to a brilliant start.I've been working full-time (as in nine-to-five) at university now, and it just keeps getting better and better. Well, no, not really -- in fact, I think I'm getting happier and happier with it. Every morning, I leave home for work looking forward to it more than the day before... and every day, my smile is brighter when I get home than when I left, even as the thought of returning to work the next day makes me a little giddy and bouncy inside.I won't bother you with the details of finding topics for B.Sc. theses (for other people to write and me to co-advise along with my boss) or reading dozens of theory conference papers... suffice to say I'm in my element. Fingers crossed it stays like that, even after the initial buzz wears off.current mood:  happy (2 comments | comment on this) |
| Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 |
| 11:14 pm - Consummatum est! |
Just for the records: I'm done. Officially. That's it. Final exam today at 10am, and I passed with flying colours.Next stop: PhD.current mood:  surprisingly unimpressed (11 comments | comment on this) |
| Friday, September 30th, 2011 |
| 2:41 pm - Is there anybody... out there? |
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| Sunday, September 25th, 2011 |
| 5:51 pm - =O.o=;;; |
| Was sagt es über mich, wenn ich beim Spaziergang mit meiner Mutter durch die Innenstadt plötzlich doch sehr um meine Fassung ringen muss, wenn sie sagt "Ich will ne rote Felltasche"? (5 comments | comment on this) |
| Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 |
| 2:21 pm - From a conversation recently had |
"NOW I see! This is a dream and you're all bits of my imagination. You see, I can turn you red... or yellow... or your hair green."- "Dear god, this must be hell."- "Well, if this is hell, then I am--"current mood:  weird (comment on this) |
| Monday, September 20th, 2010 |
| 9:21 pm - Yet Another Prog Rock Concert |
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| Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 |
| 10:01 pm - Aspera - Ripples (2010) |
| Since I haven't had anything deep and/or meaningful and/or even remotely interesting to write about here for... well... quite a while, I've decided to try my hand at filling my spare time with reviewing more or less recent albums I find review-worthy. There may be more to come, depending on what you, my dear readers, think and say, but for now, just enjoy my thoughts on the debut album of Norwegian Prog Metal newcomers Aspera.I'm a curious person, especially when it comes to music published by companies whose portfolio mostly matches my own taste in music. So, when I read that InsideOut Music had signed a new artist this year, I decided to give them a try. And while I wouldn't exactly give them the same credit as my personal "discovery of the year", as I did with Ephrat last year, the album was definitely worth buying to me.So, how to best describe Aspera? I'm quite afraid of copying both the promo sticker on the CD case and just about every other review out there, but their style sounds a lot like a mixture of early Dream Theater, a somewhat less pompous Symphony X and a somewhat more upbeat Evergrey with a slight sprinkle of Sonata Arctica for taste.That description may sound a lot like a big bunch of bad ripoffs, but don't get me wrong -- those five guys from Norway are good. Their instrumental technique is every bit as solid and sophisticated as that of any of the bands listed above... and I have to give some extra credit for the fact that the band averages at an age of 20. Of particular note, as far as technique is concerned, are guitar player Robin Ognedal and singer Atle Pettersen, the latter of which may even grow into a vocalist to rival Pain of Salvation's Daniel Gildenlöw.So, why is the above description so ubiquitous? That has to do with the one big flaw I find in this album: It really does sound like a mixture of various bands I like and respect, but I don't find any distinctive style element, nothing of which I could say, 'Now, THAT is uniquely Aspera.'Apart from that, however, Ripples is an excellent album. Starting off quite well with the explosive title track, it doesn't ever go downhill from there. It's well-constructed overall, quite straightforward and definitely worth re-listening. In fact, after the second or third time listening to it, the songs and chorus lines start automatically drilling into your head and occassionally blossoming into random earworms out of the blue.So, just how good is it? I'd give it four of five points, with the final one simply missing for a certain lack of originality. However, if you like technically excellent progressive metal in the vein of the aforementioned bands, you should definitely give Ripples a try.My recommendation: Go to their Myspace site, have a listen, and if you even remotely like what you are hearing, get the album. For one, what you hear on their site is exactly what you're going to get on the album, and also I really want those newcomers to be successful enough to make more music and - eventually - grow into their own style.Because whatever comes out of that is bound to be brilliant. (comment on this) |
| Monday, March 1st, 2010 |
| 7:59 pm - The X-Phile |
_Shadows of shadows passing.It is now 18:31, and as always, I am absorbed with a delicate thought.It is how poetry has indefinite sensations to which end music is an essential.Since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite sensation,music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry;music without the idea is simply music.Without music or an intriguing idea,colour becomes pallor,man becomes carcass,home becomes catacomb,and the dead, arbitrary momentmotionless._I've been called an audiophile before. I don't think it's a label that fits. Judging from what I know and have heard of (and from) auddiophiles, I'm simply not fit for the job. I don't care for gold- or chrome- or whatever-plated speaker cables, I don't give a flying frack about the Loudness War... I just take whatever's on hand equipment-wise, and as long as my speakers don't break or completely mangle sound, I'll go with them until they do.On the other hand, I see why people would call me an audiophile. I love music. My life more or less dances around good music, that is music I consider to be good. I can go on for hours on end talking about music (from early Peter Gabriel-era Genesis to the latest Transatlantic album) and get absorbed in tons of tiny details and style comparisons, probably boring everyone around me halfway to death.But then again, what gets me off seems to be something different from what audiophiles focus on. Trying to compare the matter to written words, I'd say your steretypical audiophile is someone who has very high expectations in terms of typography, page layout and layout consistency. I, on the other hand, simply enjoy a gripping well-written story, no matter if it's printed in flawless design on glossy paper or scribbled in ball-point pen on recycling paper.That is to say, I can get completely raptured in Ed Warby's mechanically precise drumming or Daniel Gildenlöw's incredibly versatile voice; I shudder in ecstasy at Neal Morse's songwriting and Roine Stolt's ability to pour "good vibes" into musical arrangements... but I don't care about the details of recording and post-production as long as they don't interfere with the melody, the composition, the songwriting or the possibility of recognising musician's technical perfection with their instruments.So... what could you call someone like me? Melodiophile? Musiophile? Suggestions are welcome.Also, bonus credit to whoever recognises the quote at the start of this post, and double extra credit to whoever gives the right one of (at least) two correct answers.current mood:  blah (7 comments | comment on this) |
| Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 |
| 2:05 am - Notes from the... er... present. |
Just a couple of notes before I'm off to bed, hopefully to be elaborated on later: - Irish Pubs are fun - Drunk Mathematicians are fun - Drunk Philosophers are fun - It is so pleasant to meet someone with similar tastes in music - The German railway system sucks - Riding a taxi is among the most pleasant and relaxing experiences one may go through late in the evening - You never know when, how or where you might meet a pagan - You don't know your way around your home city even nearly as well as you think you do.current mood:  drunk (comment on this) |
| Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 |
| 8:00 pm - Parable |
| Here's something I've just written up on the spur of a moment. The basic idea behind it was already in my head for a while, but I never even considered writing it down in this concise reduced form.As I started writing on it, my heart was pounding.( The Parable of the Two PhysicistsCollapse ) current mood: kinda weirded out (7 comments | comment on this) |
| Monday, November 30th, 2009 |
| 8:29 pm - Der Misere zweiter Teil. |
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| 8:22 pm - Dagegen -- und alle so "Yeaah". |
Dieser Eintrag hätte eigentlich unter dem Titel "Ratten zum Bildungsstreik" stehen sollen... aber dann konnte ich es mir doch nicht nehmen lassen, gleich zwei der Art nach einander eher entgegengestellte Meme in einen Titel zu verbalfleischwolfen.Ja, es ist so weit, der erste Hörsaal ist besetzt, die erste Vorlesung aus- und somit der erste Schuss gefallen, und bald werden wir alle feststellen, dass man Widerspruchsgeist nicht saufen kann. Oder so ähnlich.Schon seit letzter Woche gehe ich geradezu mentalgebläht (respektive -geblaht) mit diesem Eintrag schwanger, aber heute ist es nun geschehen: Dank einer ausgefallenen (um nicht zu sagen ausgefallen wordenen) Vorlesung durfte ich mir in meinen Übungen spontan ein Konzept aus den Fingern saugen, wie meine Kleinen trotz fehlendem Stoff dann doch noch ihre wöchentliche mentale Schwerstarbeit leisten können. Letzten Endes ließ sich auch da eine Lösung finden (heiliger Sankt Improvisatius, geheiligt werde dein Name, etc.pp.), aber jetzt ist es soweit. Ab 20 Uhr wird zurückgerantet!(Tatsächlich sogar in zwei Teilen... erstmals erlebe ich, dass ich größentechnisch an meine Grenzen stoße. Textuell, versteht sich. Ähem.)( Teil 1: Mann, Ratte, watt sind se heut wieder reaktionär...Collapse ) current mood:  ranty (6 comments | comment on this) |
| Friday, October 23rd, 2009 |
| 3:41 pm - Strange dreams... |
For some reason, my dreams in the last couple of nights have been very vivid and memorable. Just the night before last, I had quite an interesting conversation with a bruiser-like representative of my dream who strongly advised me against trying to push the scenery once I'm lucid. Last night, I had a pretty scary dream. Well, scary in retrospect... while I was still dreaming, it all was... well, a little scary, sure, but more in the was that a really gripping movie can be scary. I never actually felt scared while I was still dreaming... that came only when I woke up in the middle of the night because I had to pee.Last night's dreams also left me with an idea for a story seed: A drug that doesn't affect the conscious, waking mind at all, but rather grants its user extremely good, vivid and memorable dreams once he's asleep. That would be the perfect thing for some kind of tyrannic society... seeing as it doesn't affect working capabilities at all and tends to keep drug users docile. Then again, what might happen if there are side effects...?And now: Off to 80 minutes' musical enjoyment.current mood:  bouncy (2 comments | comment on this) |
| Monday, October 12th, 2009 |
| 1:44 pm - One, two, three, PANIC!! |
Goodness. Appears I only ever get to post here around the start of each semester.... and yes, that would be today. As far as winter semester first days go, this one was pretty bad. The whole place chock-full with clueless first semester pylons, clogging up the hallways and the stairwells, using the elevator to get from the ground floor to the first floor of a ten-storey building, filling up the cafeteria and the canteen, blabbering incessantly on mobile phones... I thought tuition fees were supposed to scare them off, not encourage them!But all right, rat. Take a deep breath. Think of the secretary. Ahhhh, the secretary.But I should start at the beginning. I've got a new job at university this semester. Yet again, that is, because yet another prof realised what a brilliant person I am and wanted me in his service. This time, though, I have even more responsibility than ever before. I won't just be tutoring students, I'm to organise all the tutorial groups as well, organising rooms, managing the distribution of students to their tutorials and generally doing all that other management stuff which I so hate and yet appear to excel at.Unfortunately, I only found out about that less than a week ago. So, I've been spending a lot of my time since then chasing various bureaucrats, sweating bullets and trying to get the train(ing)s to run on time.Now, imagine my horror when I had to find out in today's lecture that all the tutorials are almost booked out and there's still a huge lot of people who haven't registered yet.So, back to scurrying all over the place and trying to scrounge another time slot and room for another tutorial group...Still, the job does have its good sides. My boss is a really nice person; my colleague is... well... actually quite cute, in a slightly geekish sort of way; I've got my own room at university now, that is, I've got a room (which I share with three other student assistants); and then, there's our chair's secretary.Said secretary is an absolutely lovely woman. There's nothing just like a big smile, a few nice words and a shared joke to save one's start into a new semester after a night of entirely unrestful monday sleep and a morning of chasing bureaucrats. She also appears to be the kind of person who immediately gets everybody on a first-name basis without making it feel obtrusive or brash.All right. Had a cup of coffee, feel better. Back to scrounging for rooms.current mood:  OMGOMGwaaaahhh... (2 comments | comment on this) |
| Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 |
| 6:47 pm - Adamant Notebook Acquisition Kata |
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| Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 |
| 4:49 pm - Eurofurence 15: The Personal Musical |
| All right, I guess I've successfully dropped back into everyday life... a place where people would start giving you strange looks if you were to ask them if they'd seen the green kangaroo anywhere.Still not feeling quite in the mood for a full review, I'll do something else: Give my more musically inclined readers a brief insight into my development during the con. As you may know, I love music, and at any given time when there's no other music around, there'll inevitably be a song playing in my head... or at least a short phrase and a few lines of text repeating over and over.So, here's the short summary of the snippets that were my soundtrack of the con. Some of them appeared way more than once, but I'll still only repeat what appears to me to be important to repeat.Oh, and... just out of curiosity (and as a little challenge to my readers): Try to post into a comment all the songs you recognize. Let's see who finds the most. :)Take your crosses off my graveAll the tokens of your faithDon't you let them pray for me-- The sky was Bible black in LyonWhen I met the MagdaleneShe was paralyzed in streetlightShe refused to give her nameAnd a ring of violet bruisesThey were pinned up on her armTwo hundred francs for sanctuary and she led me by the handTo a room of dancing shadows where all the heartache disappearedAnd from glowing tongues of candles, I heard her whisper in my ear:J'entend ton coeurJ'entend ton coeurI can hear your heart, I can hear your heart, I can hear your heartHear your heart!-- Left the countryside for the cityShe resides now on second floorNo more gardening in the backyardBusy keeping the wolves from the door--For the weak and wounded heartsFor the nameless fallen starsFor the ones who built this landFor the ones with gun in hand--Hey you,Surprised?More than surprisedTo find the answers to the questionsWere always in your own eyes....'cause the only thing misplaced was directionAnd I've found directionThere is no Childhood's End--As you duel with the devil living in your mind--All the love we leave behindAll the work we leave undoneAll the words we leave unspokenAll the things we won't becomeBut there's little I would changeIn the life that I recallIf I could paint a pictureOf the Beauty of it All--[Several sickeningly almost-remembered shreds of music and speech] (comment on this) |
| Monday, August 31st, 2009 |
| 8:22 pm - I'm drifting on the water... |
| So. Back from EF. So much to tell, so much that happened... maybe I'll give you a more detailed account later on, but for now the short version: EF was great.To be a bit more detailed, EF was a very powerful con. It was a con of endings... and new beginnings. Wounds were healed, changes were made and I'm feeling the world changing around me already, which is a good sign that I'm changing.The weirdest thing that happened, though, started last evening and lasted until the early afternoon today -- I've been getting extremely strong deja vu experiences, so intense they might even be called flashbacks... to dreams, things from my past, maybe things that are yet to happen. An interesting experience, but in the same way a kind of unpleasant one -- in a way, the feeling of such an experience is a lot like having had at least two more drinks than you can take: The world seems somehow shifted out of focus, blurry, not physically spinning but... wobbling in a way that immediately sends powerful waves of nausea to one's stomach. And after these deja vus had started, they became more and more frequent... until they just stopped shortly before I began my trip back home and just changed into one whole big experience, like I had experienced the whole day once before.Phew. And now, back to real life. (comment on this) |
| Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 |
| 8:01 am - Life is... |
...a series of mixed tastes. Whenever you think you've got sweet food, the chili comes through. You think you've got bitter vegetables, then you hit a zesty peace of meat. You've got a sour apple... and find it's filled with nougat.I woke up an hour ago, even despite having slept only six hours, and couldn't fall asleep again for all the thoughts racing around in my mind. And just when I've settled in for a somewhat bitter day strewn with occasional fits of mourning......I find this in my mailbox. (SFW, but contains supercritical dosage of Awesome.)current mood:  ...yet to be determined (4 comments | comment on this) |
| Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 |
| 9:48 pm - How quickly... |
I just spent a pleasant five days at  akeela's place and returned today, expecting to settle right back into a few more days of semester holidays' routine of Not Doing Much At All.And then I got news that someone I consider an acquaintance, maybe even a friend, died four days ago of a fatal heart attack.We'd talked not even three days before it happened, a rather intimate conversation... and I'd been planning to visit him once again next month. For the last few days, I wondered why he wasn't online...Maybe he's better off this way... he'd been having great personal and financial problems... then again, I like to believe that fate is sufficiently cyclic that no bad spot is ever final... except for that one terminal bad spot. I'm hoping it went fast and he didn't have to suffer.It feels weird right after someone you knew has died... and I wonder how long it's going to take me to realize on an emotional level that he's really gone. I didn't know him all that well... but I knew him well enough that I would've liked to get to know him better... and that, in a way, I'm going to miss him.He was only a couple years older than me... and there's something else about his death weighing on my heart, which I'm not going to post here, because... it wouldn't quite fit the mood.I think I should get drunk now.Edit, 22:37: The tears finally came... when I thought about that story I've been meaning to write for quite some time now... he would have liked it, I often told him so, and he often nagged me about finally getting to writing it... and now, all I'll be able to do is to dedicate it to him. So pathetic...current mood:  blank (comment on this) |
