reneena davidson’s Neighborhood

• Mac 'n cheese & diet dr. pepper: breakfast of champion (me). I do have broccoli in the mac, plus an apple & a pomegranate. So delicious. #
• I want to read: Larry's Kidney by Daniel Asa Rose - bit.ly/3Lm5TE #
• I want to read: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi - bit.ly/3BXSzo #
• I want to read: The City & The City by China Miéville - bit.ly/3LaZno #
• I want to read: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen - bit.ly/3GB5dx #
• I want to read: Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer - bit.ly/16jRhY #
• for @sethew: bit.ly/2mniBt #
• I have big plans for catching up on NaNo, biking & doing some important things, but I suspect these plans will be dashed by a nap. #
• Resisting the consumerist urge. Going to go home and be productive instead. WHAT A GROWNUP. #
• 7695. But not done for the day, still -2445. Break time--no more screen face. I need to save up my screen time for Bioshock! #nanowrimo #
• Dear Bioshock, I am so excited to press " install". #
• I know I'm a noob but wow, is it hard to make games work on a PC. #

loudtwitter.com set all this up for me.

Xkcd is usually pretty good -- but this is genius.

Happy Friday!

• I vote against opening the blinds for Ashton! Mostly because you can't vote against the sun, because it doesn't care either way. #

loudtwitter.com set all this up for me.

So, one of the things I’ve gotten to spend some more time with during my – err – sabbatical from gainful employment – is my piano.

For those who’ve been around here a while, you might recall that a couple of years ago, I was stressing about and then actually enjoying learning a little music theory in the last piano class I had before I started taking private lessons.

So, last year, after I’d settled in and developed a bit of rapport with my teacher, I’d described the things I’d liked and not-liked about the classes I had taken.  One thing I’d said I’d appreciated (and that maybe it was my analytical-science side coming out) was the introduction to music theory that I’d had – how it helped shaped the way I heard and learned new pieces.  She suggested that I start a series of workbooks on music theory for the piano.

I think this series is pretty good, and after a year or so I’m right in the middle of the set.  I’ve really enjoyed learning the hows and whys of how a musical composition is put together.  We’ve covered meter, scales, keys, intervals, chords, ornaments, motifs and have begun to analyze different compositions for melodic phrase structure.  There are also sections for ear training and sight-reading.  Altogether, I think they’ve really helped me be a better (and I use this word very generously) musician.

So, of course, reading and dissecting music naturally began to make me curious about how it gets created.  Do you start from a motif and build?  Do you start with a feeling and go?  What are the “rules” that make something sound “good”?  And so on…

And so, last month, I started another series: “The Craft of Music Composition”.  This also has several levels and naturally I’m starting at the entry level, since I’ve never written music in my life.  The first book has a sort of a lead-you-by-the-hand way that takes some of the intimidation out of the idea of putting notes to paper (or notes into Finale’ as the 21st century equivalent might be…) – while learning some of the common techniques used by composers.

I’ve never really considered myself a “creative” person.  Insightful, maybe.  Analytical, for sure.  So composition is way out of my comfort zone – and maybe that’s good.  I don’t know that there will be any critical successes coming from my brain, but it sure is fun to sit and plink-plunk-plink at the keys and decide what you think sounds good.

Wish me luck!

First thing: If you ever thought to yourself, "Gosh, I have no idea what actually happened with Enron," maybe you should consider seeing a documentary called Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.  I wasn't particularly interested, because it sounds boring and I didn't know a thing about Enron.  I still don't understand what energy trading is, but otherwise I feel pretty solid on the sleazy awfulness that is corporate America, specifically Jeff Skilling and the hundreds of other jerks behind the Enron collapse. There's also a scene with Phillip Glass music and a strip club. It's on Instant Watch if you've got Netflix, and it's better than the trailer:

Second thing:  I saw They Might Be Giants live for the first time this week and it was fucking awesome. Confetti cannons. I think it was so awesome that it was partially responsible for my plunge into total self-pity yesterday, when I felt bad about not being as great as they are, and why don't I write songs instead of novels, and then travel the world singing them to people who are really happy to hear them? And why is everything I do boring and provincial, instead of being about the cow under the sea? The same thing happens to me when I read Neal Stephenson novels. It's terrible.

Third thing: I am addicted to cleaning. I have strong urges to go through my possessions and get rid of juuuuust...a....littttttle....bitttt....more.  It would be great but this is the month to do other things than clean. But my brain just doesn't want to think about other stuff. It wants to get rid of old shoes and shirts and things.  

• 3920. #nanowrimo #rackedwithdespair #whywouldanyoneeverwrite #ihatemycharactersanditsonlydayfour #ishouldgointopoetry #
• 5253. I have recovered somewhat from my temper tantrum/fit of unending despair earlier. God, cloudy days are hard. #nanowrimo #
• Oh, there is going to be abundant sunshine today! Hooray! #

loudtwitter.com set all this up for me.

I’m still bummed, so I’ll keep this short.  Great season.  Good playoff run and lost to a very good team that got more clutch pitching and better clutch pitching in this Series.

Hideki Matsui (who had SIX RBIs tonight – holy crap -- and who hit the cover off the ball all Series) and Andy Pettitte were great examples of both of those tonight as the Yankees closed out the World Series at home, winning 7-3.  Pedro Martinez was fair but really it was the Durbin-Happ tagteam that couldn’t stop the bloodletting.

Anyway – good job from the Yankees, they got it done when they had to.  And at least as a silver lining, Noelle still owes me lunch for the NLCS…

• Submitted the shark story a 3rd time instead of NaNo'ing. Maybe after TMBG show? It seemed like a better use of my time. Now, a disco nap. #
• Holy crap, They Might Be Giants are awesome. I want to be them. That's probably a little too creepy, but hey, I'm on the internet. #

loudtwitter.com set all this up for me.

Today, the NIH announced that they are spending $27MM of your Recovery money on creating a social network for scientists in the biomedical research community.  You can read about it here.

The goal is summed up as follows:

These Web-based initiatives will bring the power of Internet-based tools, as exemplified by social networking, to biomedical research. Modern technologies for communication and collaboration have the potential to enhance interdisciplinary research, enabling individuals to connect with each other and with resources — irrespective of location — to address challenges in new ways.

That’s very nice – but I wonder if this is really necessary?  Frankly, most of the social networks among scientists that I know involve a couple of pints.  And though I don’t want to be a Luddite, I wonder if it can be successful.   Do I really need a social network to help me solve scientific problems of a common sort (Hey peeps, I’m out of ammonium sulfate, anyone in 92121 got any in da house?)?   

Because I’ll tell you, the first thing that popped into my mind when I heard about this was two little letters: “I” and “P” as in Intellectual Property.  The who “owns” what question is always a contentious issue that plagues researchers from the --- whose name gets to go on a paper, or whose name gets to go first on the paper questions on the academic side – to the industry ones of who had an intellectual contribution worthy to be on a patent to which organization owns the rights to this new discovery and can license it out to the highest bidder(s)?  Can you imagine “Hey peeps, I’m looking to cure Parkinson’s Disease with this new compound I made, anyone got a validated preclinical animal model in da house?”  Somehow I don’t think so.

I think this also raises the question of how many social networking sites do you really need?  I have three that I can think of – Facebook, Vox and LinkedIn – which seem to adequately cover the personal and professional sides of life.  I’ve eschewed Twitter because I think it only enforces America’s short-attention span problem.  Though I did just get a GoogleWave test-account (thanks, DeWitte!) – and I’m not really sure how to classify that.  So – is this new endeavor supposed to be a less “career networking” and more a "work networking" site than LinkedIn?  Perhaps.

I’m sure being supported by the government, they’ll come up with some terrible name out of committee – NerdNet, Science Communication And Networking Tool (SCANT), Fritter?   Maybe the social network itself should organize and name itself.  

What do you guys think?  Good idea, bad idea, I'm not a scientist so who the heck cares and I want my $27 mil back?

• I want to read: The Bizarro Starter Kit by Carlton Mellick III - bit.ly/1ccrS4 #
• I want to read: The Bizarro Starter Kit by Steve Aylett - bit.ly/3gx5kQ #
• 3452 words tonight. #nanowrimo #fiction #writing #timeforbed #

loudtwitter.com set all this up for me.