3MF

There's no one really at the door

Ever wonder what it's like to be an improviser? Well, this short film may give you a disturbing glimpse. (Probably only funny if you've had some improv experience.)

Thirteen

After seeing the movie Thirteen this weekend, i can't decide whether people who have kids now-a-days should be praised or arrested. The combination of adolescent peer pressure and a society inundated with sex, drugs and violence can have devastating results. This movie shows how a young girl's life is turned upside down when she befriends the most popular girl in school to increase her social status and gets caught up in a pattern of self destruction.

I think it would probably be best if i never have children. I have no idea on how to guide a child on a path to a good life. I think my lack of exposure to drugs and violence is more due to dumb luck rather than personal integrity. How can you tell someone you understand what they're faced with when you've never been in that position yourself?

I'm sure the movie is an exaggeration of what kids face today; but in a few years who knows what will be out there. It succeeded in shocking me. It just makes me more grateful that i got to where i am today with a minimum of distractions.

Thinking spring

I took the inner liner out of my coat today. By doing this, I officially acknowledge the presence of spring. It's such a nice day out. It better not get cold again.

Face

Every now and then, when i'm looking at someone, suddenly they disappear and all i see is a face looking back at me. I see two separate eyes and the creases on their lids. The iris shines with more specks of color than even Seurat could have imagined. I see the lips moving and i can almost picture the muscles maneuvering the dry, rough lips. Skin becomes living flesh supporting a rich diversity remarkable features. I see the shape of the head and the curves of the cheek. I can't believe what a small fraction of these details the mind uses to recognize someone; there's so much more there to see.

Soda popped

Inspired by one of Tracy's posts, i've decided that i should reduce my soda intake. I never drank that much pop until i started working at Rapidparts. After a year or two, taking a trip to the break room for a fifty cent can of Coke became routine. Now its a buck a bottle for Mountain Dew nearly every day. Today i got a water. I'm going to try the slowly-cutting-back method rather than cold turkey. Hopefully it will make my dentist and my pants happier. I'm looking for a sponsor.

Great looking curves

I've been playing some more with TexShop and have been loving the results. Part of the lab involves including a few graphs. I've worked so hard making sure the math looks great printed, i want the same quality with the graphs. Unfortunately Maple, the software we did most of the number crunching with, prints out some of the most inelegant pictures. They look like 16 color windows bitmaps in lovely shades of cyan, magenta, or maroon. I did some more searching and came across Curvus Pro X for my Mac. It does an amazing job of fitting right into OS X by taking advantage of the Quartz Extreme technology which give a great assortment of color and transparency options as well as exporting to PDF. I can dump by graphs right into Adobe Illustrator, scale it, and perfect it to get just the look i want. The best part is that it's cheep: only $20 for the student edition!

Looking good in LaTeX

We have this group project we have to complete in Calc class. We must come up with a proposal which documents the design of a fictional water slide. Seeing as there was a lot of math involved, i started searching the web for software that could help me produce good looking equations rather than fumbling through superscripts and lined in Word. I stumbled upon a bit of software (unfortunately) named LaTeX. (Actually i guess it's supposed to be pronounced like "lay-tech".) Anyway it's a powerful type setting tool that can whip out great looking mathematical equations like this:

In order to produce that output, i had to enter: "T_{ride}=\int_{0}^{1}\frac{1000\sqrt{1+f'(y)^2}}{140\sqrt{y}}dy". In order to enter my commands and view the resulting PDF document, i'm using a program called TeXShop for OSX. It's a GUI front end for the command line LaTeX utilities.

So far it looks promising. They have every symbol imaginable and the syntax looks easy enough to follow. Plus they have great features for automatic section numbering and easy tools to reference other parts of the document that will update as things are moved. I'm sure this will help guarantee my group gets an A.

Boy Gets Girl

I saw Actor's production of Boy Gets Girl tonight. You might think from the title that it's a light-hearted romantic comedy; in actuality, it's a very dark drama. I wasn't caught off guard because i had read the play a while back when i considered auditioning. Reading the play changed my mind. I think the cast did a nice job with it. I really enjoyed Gary Mitchell as the eccentric pornographer. He was the source of most of the play's lighter moments. The set was cool. The script at some points almost seems after-school-special-ly but it's not too bad. It runs thought next weekend. Not exactly a first date show, but it's a modern thriller/drama that get's in your head.

It made me think about how the lives of many of the people i care about have been disrupted by a relationship gone bad. It's so frustrating how awful things happen to people who just don't deserve it. These victims are well educated and confident, possessing no flaw to blame for what happens to them. Why can't fate pick on fools like me. It's hard not to get frustrated by our own powerlessness.

Music (wo)man

I got out to see Jenison High School’s production of Music Man last night. It stars my friend Lara as Marian the Librarian. I think all the actors did a really good job. They even had an assortment of kids from the grade school that did a nice job as well. The biggest problem for me was the set changes which took forever. In general, you need to be able to change the set before the music betweens scenes runs out - grrr. But as an added bonus, I got to spend time before the show with Aubrey who is in town on spring break. She helped me put together Lara's opening night gift which consisted of purple tulips, a pretty book mark with music notes on it, and a copy of a book by Balzac (which, if you know the show, should make sense). I learned from watching the show that i need to get me a footbridge. Apparently good things happen to people who hang out on footbridges.

After the show we went to Lara's to hang out for a bit. (I ended up staying out quite late hence the morning-after post.) We had a lot of fun picking apart the production. Then, somehow we started talking about our favorite SNL fake commercials (highlights include Happy Fun Ball, Oops I Crapped My Pants, and Quarry.) I even spent some time shaking it like a Polaroid picture (yeah, I know you're not really supposed to do that, but it was fun).

Updated permalinks

I'm sorry if i've confused any one's aggregator. I finally got around to following Jack's suggestion about changing filenames for my Moveable Type individual entry archives. I also finally solved a problem involving my comments feed in which comments were showing up with the date of the entry rather than the date the comment was made. I found someone with a solution to my MTCommentDate problem and now it works like a charm.

Olives

I've always been a picky eater. My tastes are really simple; the fewer ingredients, the better. I'm not really proud of this so i'm trying to change. I choose to begin by buying a jar of olives this weekend. I have never liked olives, but i passed that judgment when i was pretty young so i've been avoiding them for a while now. I've been popping a few each day in order to desensitize myself. Even if i don't end up liking them, i'd still like to be able to eat one with out making a silly face.

Jolly me

Today i accepted the role of Nicholas. It's odd to think that we won't actually be starting rehearsals until July. Heritage, like Circle, casts the whole season at a time and it will be a while before our show goes up. I guess that leaves me plenty of time to start memorizing those lines.

Call back

Callbacks were today. When the stage manager called to invite me last week, she said i was being called back for Richard and Nicholas. However, i really only got to read for Nicholas again today. Maybe the director got sick of hearing me read Richard last week or more likely i'm just out of the running for that part. I was a bit bummed about that. Its not that Nicholas is a much smaller part or anything, its just that Richard looked like it would be something different for me and that sounded exciting. We also learned that the director didn't find anyone yet he thought would be appropriate for Thomas, the male lead. From what i saw at auditions, i would agree. I'm not sure how he's going to handle that. So now i just have to wait to hear back. Actually, i already saw the the director called while i was out (it was on the caller ID) but he didn't leave a message. Now i just have to wait for him to call back.

Something completely differential

This week in calculus class we learned about differential equations. While most of the topics we've covered thus far this semester have seemed familiar, this was all new to me. Basically differential equations (from what i've gathered so far) are a way of describing how the values of one variable change with respect to another. We got out graph paper to draw pretty slope fields. For the first time in a while, it feels like i'm learning something brand new; something unlike anything i've ever done before. It's quite refreshing.

It's true that at work, i've learned many new techniques and methods of programming to build a wide variety of applications; but ultimately the challenges i've had to deal with are all variations on a theme. Creating web pages seems to happen in a small part of the brain. Thinking about these new math problems felt like it was stimulating neurons in my brain that just returned from a sabbatical. Who says learning isn't fun?

Early to bed

This is the second day in a row i'm turning in before 9:30. How pathetic.

Holla back actor

I've been invited to callbacks for the Lady's Not for Burning. At first the director said at the auditions that he wasn't going to do callbacks which i thought was quite odd considering the cast's size and the nature of the relationships between the characters. The next round takes place this coming Saturday. I’ve been told I’ll be able to read for Richard and Nicholas, the former being the more interesting part to me. I should be pretty happy with myself because historically I’ve been cast in about 75% of the shows I’ve auditioned for which is a really good streak. I just have to keep up the illusion that I’m a real actor for one more weekend and maybe I can get into this great show as well.

Math love poem

I love you;
You are my hero.
My love for you is 1/x
as x approaches 0.

(as found in a Slashdot comment from "evelio")

Burning cold reading

I was at auditions for Lady's Not for Burning Today. I had read the play a while ago and remember enjoying it. I got a letter in the mail today about auditions and thought it sounded better than sitting at home so i went down. I didn't have time to re-read and i wish i had. The script has lots of big words, awkward punctuation, and tons of fifteenth century wit that makes it quite challenging for a cold reading. I had problems getting "amphigourious," "stultiloquential," "salubrious," and "rhapsodical" (among others) out of my mouth without looking foolish. Auditioning is scary, exciting, and fun all at the same time.

The director needed someone to a read two lines of one character mixed in a much bigger scene with the two principle character. I volunteered, but little did i realize that in the stage directions, the character is supposed to start scrubbing the floor and continue thought out the scene. I spent four pages n the floor scrubbing until i got to deliver "I beg your pardon." I wish improv hadn't taught me to not give up on things you commit to physically because i really wanted to just get off my knees and sit. When i was done with that scene that floor was spotless.

It's always wonderful to watch Jason Stamp work. He has this amazing ability to bring character parts to life with effortless humor. He had every cracking up when he read the of a drunken, foolish fellow. Unfortunately that part is really small and it would be a shame not to give him more stage time. He has to be the funniest male actor in Grand Rapids.

Round two of auditions are tomorrow. I think i'll go back to see what else will happens.

Be kind, please...

The other day i had my mother convinced you had to rewind the DVD after you were done watching it. Ah parents, they're so old. He he he.

There's a fine, fine line

There's a fine, fine line between a lover and a friend;
There's a fine, fine line between reality and pretend...
I guess if someone doesn't love you back, it isn't such a crime,
But there's a fine, fine line between love and a waste of time.

Those are lyrics from a song i heard for the first time today, track 12 on the Avenue Q CD. The musical is quite funny (and perhaps one of the more sexually explicit i've heard in a while). When i heard this particular song, "There's a fine, fine line," it really stuck out. It's got a great melody, it's well sung, and i knew exactly what it meant.

There's a fine, fine line between a genius and a fool; between thinking and believing; between hope and torture. It's not always easy to know which side you are on.

First one's free

The Pepsi machine at work has finally got the special iTunes bottles. My first one scored me a free song. Being addicted to soda has never been more fun.

Spin

Today i performed an unprovoked cartwheel in my living room for an audience of none. Spring break's already got me restless.

Matching outfits

I thought i'd take a peak at Feedster to see who else is blogging about jeans. I'm not the only one who finds them difficult to pick out. Many have a love hate relationship with demin. I'm not the only one surprising friends with news of their jeans purchase. And apparently some people can be very happy with boot cut.

Thunder

There's a nice thunderstorm outside this evening to end a wonderful spring-like day. I just love to watch the lightning.