well, you asked for it

hey doug, hopefully you're actually interested, and weren't just being sarcastic. [smirk] oh, and i get emailed a copy of the comments when people post them, so you can feel free to comment the relevant entry, even if it's old.

if i had known that you were interested in music theory, i probably would have told you about this a long time ago.

the actual process i'm using (after several previous iterations which were somewhat less efficient and/or successful) is relatively simple. it's even recursive, to my everlasting shame. i don't even really remember why i hate recursion so much, but it just seems dirty to me somehow. probably just my innate need to be different from all the other computer scientists.

anyway, assign each of the chromatic notes (yes, all of them, for now) a signed char numeric identifier, centered on zero = middle C. one of the great things about transposition is that you can do it after the fact, and the only rule which would really impact where you transpose it to is the one about being "easily singable by the average musician," which is fairly nebulous anyway (so we discard it for the time being). okay, that means that for our purposes, the tonic is always middle C, and rule number one says you always have to start and end on the tonic, with the penultimate note being degree two.

so we seed the recursion with middle C (0), and branch the tree into as many separate strings as there are legal next steps. which are governed by the next several rules. (i'm doing this off the top of my head, so the list here might not be complete or correct.)

2. length between 8 and 13 notes. gives us a termination condition for the recursion; if there are 6 or more notes already in the string, and you're about to add degree 2, then put it in the "good" pile, otherwise, if there are 11 or more notes in the string, and you haven't put it in the "good pile" yet, throw it out.

3. only the notes which are part of the mode are allowed, so if you try to add one that isn't, cull the string.

4. valid intra-melodic intervals are: M/m2nds, M/m3rds, P4ths, P5ths, m6ths(asc), P8ves. try adding each of those, ascending and descending (16 options), and let the modal filter from rule 3 above narrow it down from there.

5. actually, if the previous step was a leap greater than a 3rd, force a stepwise recovery in the opposite direction (two options, one of which fails the modal filter).

6. and if the previous step was a leap, but not greater than a third, we disallow successive leaps in the same direction (only 10 options passed to the filter).

i'm pretty sure that's where i ended phase one, and just let it crunch through all of those possiblities. then, i added a phase two check on the way to the good pile, to weed out even more, based on other rules:

7. unique climax, melodically constant with the tonic (M/m3rd, P4th, P5th, M/m6th, P8ve, M/m10th).

8. total range limited to never more than a 10th (a rather extreme case; many known cantus fermi restrict themselves to a 5th or 6th).

9. there should generally be "three or four judiciously employed leaps," so i throw out any strings with more than five. (i could be more strict if i wanted, but we're getting into the more subjective rules now, and the number of results seems managable, so why the hell not?)

after analyzing a fair number of these results by hand, i put a few more "subjective" constraints into the phase two check (but still fairly lenient; just trying to throw out things which are clearly wrong).

10. bound on total leap distance. i don't remember the exact number i used (the code is at home right now). avoids patently ridiculous things like having all four leaps be octaves or something similar.

11. minimum and maximum number of direction changes. again, don't have exact figures on me.

12. embargo on repetition of groups or sequences. was actually one of the first things i did, but for some reason i didn't think about it until now. in fact, i suspect this may be where the majority of the processing time is spent (though even on my crappy computer, the whole process of enumerating one of the modes only took about 20-25 minutes, the longest time i remember). currently, i'm suppressing any strings that have any substring of four consecutive notes occurring more than once anywhere in the string. there are some examples i've found in the output which lead me to believe i might eventually want to suppress repeated substrings of length three as well, but for the moment, i'm erring on the side of inclusion.

and i'm pretty sure that's where i left off. after all the aforementioned pruning, there were approximately ~500,000 entries remaining for each of the seven modes (that's where the ~3.5 million comes in). unfortunately, i've been rather busy lately, so haven't really touched it since that last entry, and like i said, the next step is getting it all fed into a database, so i can treat it further in a persistent manner, instead of re-generating or reading in and parsing multiple 300MB text files.

really the coolest thing so far, though, is the way i'm able to automatically generate real sheet music using ABC. that's where the example image came from. once i get this finished, i kinda wanna make a website, where people can (well, "could," if anyone ever looked at it) browse the resulting database, and possible give asthetic scorings to annotate the records...


ps: please don't steal my idea. it's taking me a long time since i never seem to have much if any free time, and it would make me very sad if somebody else beat me to the punch...

nomads are cool, but i kinda like my material possessions

hoorah! i did get the keys on friday, and i moved on saturday. good lord, i have a lot of crap.

after all, i did show up here 3 years ago this coming sunday with just two suitcases and a piano. granted the furniture i've acquired doesn't help, but i think even without it, i've far outgrown the two suitcases---as the 5 car trips we made saturday can attest. (cars are small in switzerland though.) the only thing left is the bookcase, and then i need to scrub the floors and get rid of the rug and the two armchairs if the next guy doesn't want them.

in reality, it actually went pretty smoothly, as far as movings go. of course, i had grand dreams going into it of being so obsessive-compulsive that everything would be neatly packaged and we wouldn't end up in the 'packing-while-moving' bit, but it's pretty much inevitable. i did a good job, but there's always that nasty little stuff hidden in some corner that has to be thrown into shopping bags at the last minute. eh, it's done now. mostly by pierre and i; it was really awesome of him to help out as much as he did. the first four trips were just him and i, plus fabius for one of them, then peter came and did one more run with me after he left.

so the new place is really cool, especially the new reduced 20 minute commute (oh my god, it's fantastic). although there are certain annoyances as well. most i can probably eventually take care of, with the exception of the fact that there are even fewer electrical outlets in this apartment (well, per room) than the old one, if you can believe that. for example, my bedroom has ONE. count it: ONE. what the hell, people? is this not the 21st century? electricity is the new heroin.

the lack of built in closets will necessitate the purchase of a chest of drawers, but this is just a minor temporary concern. procuring one of those should be easy enough. but naturally, the shower head holder is in the most inconvenient place possible. (they always use those silly detachable things, and then instead of mounting the holder where a normal one would be so that you could just leave it there and use it, they put it at about navel height pointed straight into the room... go figure...)

and, last but not least, the phone jack is in the middle of the hallway on the opposite side as the rooms, meaning that i'll need to buy some long-ass network cables and start tracing doorways in order to get the dsl all the way to my computer in my room.

speaking of which, though, the swisscom system has apparently become *disturbingly* effecient. i am beyond shocked. sunday afternoon, i came into the office, and used their website to enter a relocation request, with a desired effective date of monday, though i expected that to be interpreted as "as soon as possible," since i was pretty sure they wouldn't be able to do it that fast. by the time i got home, there was a dial tone (before it had just been dead), but if you tried to dial out, you got a message saying that the subsciption wasn't yet in service. monday morning at 6:50 when i got up, it was working already. even the dsl was active when i finally had time to wire it up last night after work. now this is, as i mentioned, truly impressive (all the more so, seeing as they are swiss), but clearly it means that everything was taken care of automatically by the computer. and if that's the case, why in the name of all that is good and tasty did i have to pay 100 francs for the relocation "fees?" come on, people, that's just plain bullshit. and extortion. welcome to switzerland. [throws up hands in defeat]

i am win!!!

hexes be damned. spoke to the gerante technique on the phone earlier, and she (being at least as of yet infinitely more obliging than the other bitch) told me that i can pick up the keys tomorrow afternoon. they already did an inspection with the old renters, so i can give a preliminary endorsement to that report, and write them a letter if we find any addendums.

i was literally jumping up and down in my office. it just seemed like the right thing to do.

when even the long weekend isn't long enough

the long weekend was nice. monday was the "federal fast" so we got the day off. i have no idea what it means.

anyway, like i said, it was a pleasant break, but it was definitely necessary after last week's 16h per day schedule of idiocy. the upside is, i'm alive; the downside, it only really brought me back up to normal, so i really kinda need another weekend to put my rest-o-meter back in the black.

but i did a lot of packing (probably half done now), and i got to play with my cantus firmus database a fair amount. yes, it's a database now; when i realized i was indexing somewhere around 3.5 million records, i decided, hey, this is probably a good opportunity to learn about database interfacing. there are still some kinks to work out, but it's coming along quite nicely, and i'm enjoying my toy, so the purpose is well served. somewhere along the line, the naughty thought popped into my head that if things were different, i could potentially even be doing a phd on that stuff, instead of sensor networks. i've been trying not to think about it; telling myself that i would probably be just as discontent if i was in a situation where i was being forced to do it. why is it that responsibility seems to suck all the fun out of anything? you know, the whole "if it tastes good, it must be bad for you" schtick. doesn't seem to jive very well with evolution, come to think of it. if sugar is bad and green leafy vegetables good, then why don't we appreciate them accordingly? or, then again, i'm probably just not the "fittest." shocker there, huh? well, i should have known better than to ask, i suppose.

yesterday we got the deposit account squared at the bank, and signed the new contracts for the 1st of october at rilsa. to my everlasting annoyance, now the other girl, the one who takes care fo the inspections, is on vacation (luckily only until tomorrow), so i wasn't yet able to make an appointment for the actual inspection. hopefully i can sweet talk this new girl into giving me the keys soon, or at the very least the key to our basement storage room, because i really need to be able to move at least some things thie weekend when some of my friends will be available to help. otherwise, i can take a day off work next week, but i can't ask anyone else to do that. and moving everything i own via public transportation sounds like pretty much the worst idea ever.

even a little bit of sleep sometimes helps

just in case anyone wants to know, i'm feeling slightly less suicidal today. i wouldn't call myself a happy camper just yet, but i've somehow managed to numb myself to the ever-present impending doom just a little, and at the moment it's been reduced to a dull throb at the edge of my consciousness. i hope to take good advantage of this fortuitous turn of events, and maybe even pull this goddamn paper out of the crapper for tomorrow.

to be fair, most of the ire spewed yesterday was prompted by the shit going down at work; the apartment frustrations are just easier to grab on to and scream about, so they end up playing the straw in the straw-and-camel routine.

clearly, i don't have a whole lot of time to be writing about this right now, but after working from 6:45am to 10:30pm yesterday, and coming in again this morning at around 6:45, things are starting (if slowly) to fit into their proper places. i'm not exactly relaxed now, per se, but i feel less like i'm on death row, so i thought that warranted a mention.

i want to kill someone, possibly myself

seriously, today, i want nothing so much as to just crawl under a rock and die. i'm tired and frustrated and nothing is working---and, of course, i'm running out of time.

first, work is a whole can of ugly that i don't even want to talk about right now. ICRA deadline on friday, and my results aren't coming out the way they should. why i continue to be surprised at my repeated failures is starting to escape even my delusional grasp.

perhaps less critical, but for somewhat rational reasons more immediately infuriating, is (you guessed it) more apartment agency hijinkx. monday, i went to the bank. they told me all i needed was a copy of maurice's identity card. this morning, i went back, with said copy, only to learn that they also need his signature, and would have been planning on doing the whole ring-around-the-rosie by snail mail again. this is clearly unacceptable, as i need this to be over by friday, so i can move this weekend. which, as it turns out, is a three day weekend. this is a fantastic thing, if i get the keys by friday. this is a catastrophe if i don't.

so i call the lady and try to figure out what our options are, and she starts trying to blame all this on me, saying, "well, if you had gotten me the attestation/contract/deposit/etc sooner, we wouldn't be in this situation." i was fuming. it's a good thing my french isn't any better than it is, because without the exorbitant delay between thinking and speaking, i would have given her a piece of my mind, and how.

excuse me? the bitch thinks she can go away for three weeks and LET OUR FILE SIT THERE TO ROT while TELLING US NOTHING, and then when we come to sign the form AT HER PROPOSED TIME, she had FORGOTTEN TO PREPARE THE CONTRACT. i ask you: which one of us isn't doing things fast enough?

yes, as a matter of fact, i am keeping score, and i'm damn proud of it. because i've had it up to here with her little circus, and if she fucks this up one more time, i may actually have to arrange for the weeping and gnashing of teeth to come pay her a little visit.

so we're on the phone, and she's blaming me. i'm able to hold my tongue for one reason, and one reason only, and that's simply that i don't know enough swear words in french to do justice to the situation. and she goes on: even if maurice can come to lausanne friday afternoon, all the appointments for inspections are full on friday, so it would wait until tuesday. no. if i'm paying for a contract on the 15th, i'm getting the fucking keys on or before the 15th, damn it. we argued some more, and eventually she said there might be a possibility of doing everything tomorrow morning, but she'll have to check with her supervisor, and i'll have to call her back in half an hour. then i'll have to ask maurice if there's any way he can come tomorrow morning. i feel bad for doing this to him, but i don't see what other choice i have.

okay, i really need to get back to my simulations now. i just had to vent this, or i would have had an even harder time concentrating than i'm going to have now.

all my bags are[n't] packed

got the contract from rilsa in the mail on friday. signed them and sent them off to maurice this morning. also tried to open the special locked account for the deposit at the bank, but they (surprise) need both of us present in order to do that. but, all the hassle notwithstanding, with a little luck, i should have keys on friday.

this weekend, i started trying to organize and pack some things for the upcoming move. it's always an interesting experience, because it forces you to acknowledge the amount of sheer worthless crap that you have for absolutely no reason whatsoever. luckily, i'm making some progress with my neuroses, so i was actually able to pitch a significant amount of stuff (mostly paper, but even that's a step in the right direction for me). anyway, all the books are in boxes, and the non-perishables from the kitchen have been sorted and put in shopping bags for transport. my clothes, sheets, towels, etc. should probably go into the two big suitcases, and the furniture is just going to be unwieldy no matter what. i guess that leaves the dishes and small kitchen appliances, which will probably be a pain, and i'll need to find another box or two for the stuff out of the bathroom and hall closet. of course, i know i still have more junk than that, and it will probably be a nightmare of knicknacks and whatnots thrown into bags at the last minute, but here's hoping anyway, right?

if you thought of it, it's probably already been done

here we go again. i finally thought i was making some progress in my research, and then, naturally, as i go looking for a couple more resources to round out the paper i'm working on, i actually find resources that matter, and that may require me to change a huge portion of what i've written already. there really is nothing new under the sun, it seems.

this is what really sucks about scientific research. there's no way to know what's been done and what hasn't, and odds are, whatever you happen to want to do probably already has. and if you don't think so because you can't find any information about it, wait until you're almost ready to publish something, and i guarantee that out of the blue will drop an article from someone who did basically the same thing, probably better, about two years ago.

yes, i'm pissed, and i'm frustrated, and of course i'm still manic-depressive, which doesn't really help. all i want is to get my phd out of this. it doesn't have to be spectacular, it just has to be good enough for me to graduate. that's all i want.

but right now, it seems more likely that i'll get an ulcer instead...

dabney is the awesome

really cool thing happened today. aparently a current member of the house (rising sophomore) is in town today, and asked to meet me based on the fact that i still post on the mailing list from time to time, and he knew i was here. what's even more amusing is that it turns out that he (josh skrzypek, i think i got all the consonants in there right) is actually deborah estrin's son, and she was here for henri's thesis defense.

but we had lunch together, and it was a lot of fun to talk about things, the house past and present, random stuff about schools and grad school, and such. i guess that's pretty much all there is to say, except just that i'm again amazed at how cool it is to have a community like this, where even though certain members haven't even met each other, you've already got friends all over the place (sometimes in very unlikely places). pretty sweet.

i know i shouldn't be suprised, but...

how naive of me to think that a gerance, of all people, would actually keep their word about something.

so friday we faxed in the form, and asked about coming in to sign the contract. she said it couldn't be done then, but we'd have to come in on tuesday morning (yep, that's today). remember that this is all after *she* was gone on vacation for **three weeks** and noone even touched the file; and now suddenly, since she's ready, everything has to be done instantaneously. except her parts, of course, which always take several days. but anyway. so we went in this morning at 8:45, and she looks at me like she has no idea who i am, so i try to jog her memory by saying "good morning, we're here to sign the contract for bois de la fontaine 11?" she still looks clueless, but shuffles through her papers, and finds the file, which she miraculously forgot to prepare. and what's worse, she's not even the one that needs to do it, it's her supervisor, who won't be in until 10:00 or 10:30. and she wants us to come back. this is ridiculous, and we tell her so. finally she decides that she can send it to us, but stresses repeatedly that we have to send it back "the same day," at which point i explain to her that we live in different cities, so who is she going to send it to? then she wants to mail it in a circle, so i offer to come in tomorrow morning, if she can swear to me that she'll have it ready by then, and then we can mail it to maurice. but she thinks she can do it this morning, so she's going to call me before lunch, and there's a possibility that we'll be able to go back in before they close this evening (and maurice will study at the school for today). hopefully this will work out without any more stupidity. you'd better believe i'm going to call her and give her a piece of my mind if my phone hasn't rung by noon...


1:45PM UPDATE:

i just called her. apparently the "supervisor" didn't come in at all today, but she "thinks" he'll be in tomorrow to prepare the document. riiiight. deja vu, anyone?

well, okay, i guess we're doing the round-robin snail mail solution now. good lord, when is this ever going to end?

i want to be him when i grow up

(and no, not just for the women, dumbass; i just "borrowed" the picture from his website.)



wow. it was expensive, but i can now say that it may well have been one of the best 150 bucks (180 francs) i've ever spent. and let me tell you, even if i hadn't heard of him before, this hamilton guy is awesome. seriously, i really think i do want to be him when or if i grow up.

as much as i had been kinda holding on to the idea of going to mysore for a while after i finish here in switzerland, several people had made comments to me which gave me a little bit of doubt as to whether it would be a good decision or if it was just yet another manifestation of my stubbornness, where i decide to do something, and then pig-headedly stick with it even though it's probably not what i really expected or wanted. (okay, that sounds harsher than i meant it to, especially since i'm basically talking about my phd, but suffice it to say that i often find myself asking why i'm doing something---only to realize that it's simply because i decided i wanted the end result a long time ago, even though the process of getting there is frequently just barely short of miserable.) anyway, several people had told me stories of how, for example, steve jobs went to india at one point, and hated it, because the guru he wanted to meet ended up being too strict or something. or even just last week when alex was telling us about his two months at mysore; how the conditions are pretty harse and regimented, and how sharath and guruji can even be downright arrogant at times. but after interacting with this michael hamilton guy, i'm somehow re-convinced that it really would be worth it.

in just a few simple adjustments and explanations, i honestly think i learned more from him this weekend (in terms of making progress in my practice) than i have in the past 3-4 years combined. of course, the answers to some of my questions were rather humbling as well... in retrospect, i should have realized this as obvious a long time ago, but i asked if there was anything we could or should do to suplement the primary series in order to help open the hips, since i honestly don't feel like my hips are any more open than they were, say, 5 years ago. he responded by asking me how many times per week i practice, to which i replied "one to four," even though it's been a lot closer to one than four for quite a while now. and his answer made perfect sense; in his opinion, 4-5 days per week is really the minimum one can do and see significant results. it's just like my old trombone teacher, mike oft, used to say over and over again---it may only be for a few minutes, but you have to practice every day. if you miss or skip a day, the muscular progress you've made (in that case, your lips) starts to fall backwards. so naturally, i should have been able to figure this out for myself, and i was slightly embarrassed. but i guess sometimes it really is the most obvious things that we need other people to point out to us; this is how we learn.

so, with renewed motivation, i'm going to give the whole "getting up ungodly early and doing it every day" thing a shot, and see how it goes. this morning was kinda rough, as first days inevitabely are, and was only exacerbated by the fact that i was pretty much completely destroyed after the two classes yesterday (easily the roughest day of any kind of training i've ever been through). and despite my plans to get up at 6:20 and go from 6:30-7:00, i did finally get to it from about 7:00-7:30. i only went as far as "ardha baddha padmottanasana" (the standing hip opener), but i figure we'll start slow so we don't burn out. trust me, it was enough of a workout (my open challenge is still out there for anyone who doesn't think yoga is exercise to try doing even just the fundamental asanas correctly without breaking a sweat).

he also just seemed very calm and balanced in his speech, actions, and mannerisms. not so much "happy" as just simply "satisfied." this is something i definitely aspire towards.

day #9556 of my life

i got a message from jon this morning pointing out the curiosity of considering one's age in days. i found a nifty little calculation script for this here --- http://www.peterussell.com/age.html, if you want to try it yourself.

trying desperately to bring some closure to the never-ending story that you all wish i would just stop talking about, (or at least, if there were any people reading this besides me, they would probably wish as much, but who am i kidding?), maurice got the paper from troistorrents this morning, and we faxed it in. but no, we can't go sign this afternoon, we have to wait until tuesday morning... well, that will be day #9560, i guess... it's a round number, sort of...

tomorrow and sunday i signed up for a three-part yoga seminar at the studio; they're bringing in some medium-name guy. (i say that since i hadn't heard of him before, but he was certified by k. patabhi jois himself, which was enough to impress me. his name is "michael hamilton.") so that should be interesting. there will probably be plenty more to write about that after the fact, i imagine.

and enno's public defense is tonight. i must be getting old, because time really is "flying," as it were... anyway, good for him. i'm jealous. hopefully i'll feel better about the whole deal after i pass this exam in october... hopefully i'll pass this exam in october...