Shakier than Expected

A few friends and I saw Cloverfield at the dinner-and-drinks theater last night. The movie was a great idea, had an important cultural meaning, and a very unique monster. The narrative was suspenseful and unpredictable as well as emotionally engaging. However, they could have made the camera much less shaky and have it still be believable without inducing motion sickness. Three out of the five of us, including me, were incredibly sick after watching. Perhaps it was the pizza and beer combination, but after about 50 minutes of the 85-minute feature I was struggling to keep watching. I had to look away every time the monster wasn't being shown in order to have the strength to watch it when it was on screen.

Also, the monster is really cool.

Vynil Envy

It has been announced for quite some time that the album "Who's Next" is supposed to come as downloadable content to Rock Band. In order to be ready to play what I expect to be a challenging set (Won't Get Fooled Again is one of the hardest drum parts, with only Foreplay/Long Time and Run to the Hills beating it out) I started listening to the full album. This classic rock masterpiece makes me want to get a record player and a bean bag and just lay around listening to it all day.

No drugs required.

Up Late Working on Math, Not Finishing the Maths

Last night, I forced myself to leave my office and get some sleep around 4 AM. Tonight, I'm retiring a little earlier, but still hesitantly. My advisor and I are working with some undergrads on a specific problem and I had an insight at the end of our last meeting. This led me to work really late on an algorithms to solve the problem and organize the results in a very well-formatted TeX document (or set of documents when doing a batch of test cases).

The experiment was a wild success. I even made some pretty pictures with it. However, I did not get even close to finishing my Algebra, as every time I look at it I start to fall asleep.

Instead of going home and getting sleep or something, I think of a quick feature that could be fun. My latest was a way to input coordinates for graph vertices and converting the adjacency matrix into a picture on a grid layout. It helps a lot to visualize what graphs I'm computing. Want to see a preview?

King of Glory

Sunday's closing hymn was one that I had not heard before except through this video of Stephen Colbert singing it in his Strangers with Candy character.

Rental Options

Katie and I are looking for a place to live in Lincoln. We thought we found the perfect place, got really excited about it, but then found out that waiting two days to make the decision was a bad call. In fact, not making the decision on the spot lost us the place, since someone called immediately after us and took it.

So, if you know of any good rental property in Lincoln, let us know!

Dream Within a Dreamgirl

After finally watching Dreamgirls, I realize why it gained so much critical appeal. Not only is it entertaining as a musical, it is also a remake of Citizen Kane, a critic favorite. You see, it follows a media mogul from a small start, to a huge, lonely finish. It even included a shot at him making his wife an actress.

Another big theme from the movie was that of taking under appreciated art and modifies it for the general public. This works in two ways. First, Dreamgirls is easily more entertaining than CK, but not actually better in the realm of film (with cinematography, acting, and writing in mind). Second, the actual history about the commercial failure of Citizen Kane involves a media tycoon that stifled the distribution of the film.

This really is the most marketable movie ever. It has the entertainment for the passive viewer, but also the possibility for critics to interject their own meaning where possible.

Archives of What?

This blog is over 500 posts old. Certain people may not think that is a lot, but it just dawned on me that I've been doing this for a while. In fact, the first few posts are all about how my self-written system broke and this would be a temporary place to put things. I guess I just got soft and stopped caring about my own hosting. Being my own tech support kind of stinks anyway.

Also, I clicked on a few past posts just to see what was on my mind back then. Apparently, I was thinking of worthless concepts and dreams that make no sense. This pattern continues, yet a few of you have nothing better to do and occasionally leave a comment or two.

Super Stolee Bros.

Tom came over for haircuts, see figure 1:

A Novel Update

February is a fourth complete, and I am not nearly to the point I should be. In fact, I have only completed two chapters, two days' worth of writing, 4,000 words. Normally, I would have time to sit down and write about 1,000 words a night, except I have been battling a cold this week, so I get medicated and go to bed early whenever possible. Now I am finally recovering but am balancing the homework I delayed and participating in other activities such as the conference in town. I still hope to make a sizable accomplishment here this month, but perhaps not the 50,000 word count.

In case you want to see the two-chapter draft, it is available here.

Enter the Dragon

This Bruce Lee classic film captures every part of kung fu film into a fast-paced action masterpiece. Katie and I caught it on AMC, where they were celebrating the 35 year anniversary of its release. I admit that I had not seen it before, but I surely knew a lot about it.

Katie's film class has surely taught her a bit about how to analyze film and actually noticed some bits of why I enjoy them so much. I could even swear that she was enjoying some of the fight scenes. She did cringe at every broken bone and got really nervous during the final battle. Overall, she held up pretty well. I picked a good one to marry.

Soon I will become the master

All sorts of activity is required of me this semester for degree advancement. First, I received word that I qualified my algebra exam in January. Then, I need to complete my Memorandum of Courses for the masters degree. It is an odd naming, since I need to fill it out before I complete half of it. From then on, I always "modify" the course listing as it changes.

Soon I will also put together my supervisory committee for my Ph.D. I will be working under Stephen Hartke on problems in graph theory. I'll need to find a few more people to join the committee, but I'm still debating the CS minor or the Math/CS joint degree, depending on future scheduling requirements. I need and advisor for these kinds of things.