Hooray for good weather. Hooray for USFS wilderness. Hooray for self-enforced sabbath.
Obscure notes for the future (about Lowder Mountain):
Hey its Memorial Day, and John found a DELICIOUS steak marinade: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Devils-Steak-Sauce/Detail.aspx
Sometimes I forget: deconstructionism is over. Modernism was yesterday, and John Cage is dead.
Tonight I saw the Philadelphia Orchestra, directed by Christopher Eschenbach. They’re on tour, with Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (plus an encore: Dance of the Comedians from Smetana’s The Bartered Bride). Anyway, my point is that all these pieces are pre-modern! Lately, its been hard to go to the symphony without hearing Shostakovitch AGAIN. Not to be misunderstood, I love Shostakovitch. . . but modernism rejects everything that came before: classical complexity and romantic sincerity. These days, I think that complexity and sincerity are woefully absent.
Many people describe postmodernism as tongue-in-cheek, nihilistic, and “meta.” These descriptions are true, but I think postmodernism can also be about embracing the past and connecting with art on its own terms: classical, romantic, or whatever. Tonight embodies my vision of “optimistic” postmodernism: a packed auditorium reconnecting with Mozart’s flirty genius and Berlioz’s rich emmotionality. Cheers to our post-future.
When you get tired of chasing bibtex entries, go for a hike!
My midterm exam for parallel programming was VERY LONG.
For a taste of the fun, try this problem: Use the Floyd-Warshall algorithm (for finding the shortest path between all vertices) to label connected components in a binary pixelmap. Unfortunately, the F-W algorithm runs in O(n^3). Make your PARALLEL algorithm run in O(n^2).
Maybe I’ll post a solution later this week. . .
Today was the UFO festival, in McMinnville Oregon. The festival is a good opportunity to wrap yourself in aluminum foil and dye your hair green. Although the focus is UFOs, I saw plenty of Klingons, storm troopers, and golden retrievers dressed as aliens. Basically, today was an anachronistic blend of Mardi Gras beads, garish hippie hats, and left-over supplies from my sixth grade science fair.
Jon joined me, and we rendezvous-ed with Kynthia and Tiffanie. The four of us made a well-balanced group. There was much hilarity with cameras, water gun hijinx, and a little existential ennui. Earl joined us for lunch, and I much appreciated his laid-back Southern attitude.
After the festival, I have more questions than answers:
I just returned from a quick overnight trip to the Three Sisters Wilderness. The highlights are: I slept on a mountaintop; the stargazing was incredible; I had several epiphanies about my thesis project.
Obscure notes for the future:
I just spent ten hours writing C code, but I spent most of the time catching silly typographic errors in the compiler. Was that really productive?
My problem is that I keep working through the weekend. Too many times, I arrive at Monday morning exhausted from a 48-hour code marathon. I like working hard to make things excellent, but we have to draw some boundaries.
So, my resolution is to practice a self-enforced Sabbath. However, my Sabbath isn’t always on Sunday, or Saturday, or whatever-day. If the weather is nice, and I’ve been working hard for several days, then its Sabbath.
So this week? I’m going hiking on Tuesday.
During the Heian period (794-1192), a season of peace and tranquility blossomed in feudal Japan. From this time of Zen, we get the word “aware” (pronounced ah-wah-ray). Aware does not easily translate into English. In modern Japanese, aware literally means “miserable,” but the original meaning is more subtle. In the Zen tradition, aware is a sensitivity to the sadness of impermanence. This sadness feels like a longing for something far away. . .
Aware is listening to the ocean in a seashell.
Aware is watching sunshine on aspen leaves.
Aware is finding photographs of old friends.
Aware is realizing that someday all the people I love will be gone.
Aware is a call to action, and a reason to embrace this moment.
