Hand-Eye Impairment

I had a conversation about piano playing with one of the other guys in my house recently. I had been practicing on my keyboard and he admitted that he used to take lessons himself. As most people do, he downplayed his current ability, but I found it interesting that he did this by saying that he used to always memorize pieces so that he could look at his hands (and therefore never really picked up sight-reading).

I've always hated memorizing music and am actually quite dependent on having a piece of paper in front of me. This is frustrating when I'm near someone else's piano (or my own, without music) and someone asks me to play something. Most piano players would just start playing some song they learned when they were ten, but I really don't remember what I've played before. Perhaps more importantly, having to read the music off a page all the time means I have to spend a lot of effort concentrating on reading that could be better used on technique, or artistry, or listening to what I'm playing instead of just playing it.

So with the goal of memorizing some pieces and with the earlier conversation in mind, I tried playing some pieces while looking at my hands instead of the page. It turns out, I really can't do it. In fact, I am far less capable of playing the piano while looking at my hands then I am when I look away entirely or close my eyes. It seems that looking at my hands move prevents me from being able to use them normally, like my brain's not able to cope with the strange new visual feedback that comes from actually watching what I'm doing.

I find this interesting, as it took many long years of conditioning not to look at my hands while playing and it would appear that that conditioning goes pretty deep. Now to go and work on undoing that work...

Videos, by JoVE!

This post is nothing more than a link to the journal of visualized experiments, because there's really no reason you should be reading my ramblings when you could be watching science.

It's like a Discovery Channel show, except far more specialized, technical, and current.

Also, if you watch the first few seconds of a clip and then are frustrated when it asks for a subscription, you are probably not using the University of Waterloo's network at the moment. If that is the case but you are still a Waterloo student/faculty, do the following: go to lib.uwaterloo.ca and click the connect from home link (or just click the connect from home link in this post, that will work as well), then login and go to http://www.jove.com.proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca. If that doesn't work, then just do a search for the journal of visualized experiments after logging into the proxy. This is fully worthwhile, really.

Burning Lips and Soaking Music

The engineering jazz band (With Respect to Time) gig went totally alright tonight. How alright? This alright:

Now you might be thinking: it seems to me that could have gone a little more alright. And you would be partially right! Because, yeah, you know, it wasn't completely perfect and we will probably have to print off some new music (including a copy of that trumpet solo I lost before the set... the panicked improvised version was a more legit jazz solo anyway) but it was kind of fun in an insane Oh God There's Frosh Everywhere And Maybe This One Won't Mind If I Shove Him Out Of My Way With A Trumpet Case kind of way.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by how not outright painful this performance was. I mean that in a completely literal sense: trumpet playing is really quite physical, but it uses muscles (lip muscles) that are hardly ever used for anything else. What that means is that if you haven't practiced for a while, playing a long gig can feel an awful lot like trying to run a marathon without training. As of this Tuesday's rehearsal I was in no shape to run a metaphorical trumpet marathon, but somehow it worked out tonight (thanks are owed to the other two trumpet players who showed up today for pulling us through).

I could go on (so much craziness in one evening!) but tomorrow is still a work day, so I should probably get to the sleeping.

Parachuter

Just a doodle because I don't have much to do (aside from work-related things and, as it's a Friday late evening — or very early on Saturday, take your pick — those things can wait). This isn't a "journal doodle" or anything like that... although if anyone wants to jump out of some planes it could become one.

EDIT: After posting the first image, I realized I made some significant technical errors in my depiction of the parachutist's neurophysiological response to the fall. Here's a correction.

How Recruitment Should Work

"We're kidnapping you for your own good. Promise. Write the code and you'll get flatbread."

Yup, the fall term's about to start. It's probably about time to start working on that fancy recruitment campaign for iGEM that we keep dreaming about... but don't worry non-iGEM people who read this blog (hi family!), I'm planning on writing about something else here.

And that something else is...

Things That I'm Going to Rant About to New Students

I don't really see myself as the ranting type in general, but there's something about getting a fresh, naive, relatively uncynical, and slightly puzzled batch of new students that brings out the old curmudgeon in me. So, in list form, the things I'm going to be giving today's generation of youth an earful about are:

1. The definition of engineering. It perplexes me how many people get to third year engineering and then act surprised when they find out that engineering is the profession of applying scientific and mathematical principles to practical problems. Even in systems design, which is basically the study of distilled engineering ideology abstracted away from specific domains, there are still people who think it's all about hard hats and accounting. Yes, that's a part, but... well... if that's your image of engineering, you are a personal pet peeve of mine.
2. Time hoarding. There's time management and then there's being a wuss. I know you've heard the failure rate statistics. I'm sure you've been told it's wise to cut back on extra-curricular activities until you get used to the workload. That's garbage. The easiest way not to fail out is to keep trying to maintain your stupidly over-acheiving lifestyle that got you into university in the first place. If you lower your standards down to "just trying to pass" in first year, you'll never recover. This is a somewhat controversial point and your mileage may vary; nonetheless, you don't have much to lose in first year. Now taking on extra work halfway through second year is a different story.
3. Ability to write. I know, I know. Given the poor standards of this blog, this point's a bit hypocritical, but I stand by it. My standards are not high: just catch the blatant typos and missed articles and use apostrophes more or less where they should be used. You can throw in semicolons, commas, and colons wherever you want. Deal?
4. Stop whining. You only get to make lists like this when you're at least half done your degree and even then only once a term. Grad students are allowed unlimited whining, but they've earned it.
   

Alternate Reality Campus

I'm not sure what prompted this, but I've had this idea of a "University of Igloo" floating around in my head for a while. I think I originally thought of it as a satire of the University of Waterloo's big rebranding efforts, but I didn't get around to developing it into an actual parody. So here's some guy chilling next to an igloo in the summer.

Post-script: It pains to me admit this, but I originally accidentally capitalized igloo as 'iGloo'.

Posters!

According to some posters I saw on the wall, the end of term concert for the University of Waterloo's acappella groups is July 23rd at 8:00 PM in the Theatre of the Arts. I don't know if I'll have time to go, but it should be fun times!

EDIT: Oh, hey, also: it turns out that July 23rd is also the day of the Engineering Jazz Band Charity Gig! Yayyyyy. The jazz band will be playing sometime around 6 PM (I think, details coming) at Waterloo Town Square. As a member of the band, I will probably be there. See both the jazz band and a cappella concerts and get your fill of music for the whole year in one day!

EDIT 2: Still looking for things to do on July 23rd? You could catch a webinar about using Matlab to process large datasets around 2 PM before heading to the afternoon/evening concerts. I know I'll be watching... or, probably not actually... but someone might find it interesting.