I'll admit: I was fooled. We had beautiful weather for so long I thought it was here for good. This happens every year. Two days ago, we had a high of mid-70s. Then all of a sudden, yesterday, we had a high of just over 40, and that will continue for the foreseeable future. We still go on walks, but less than before, and our plans to plant our leek, lettuce, and arugula seedlings out in the garden have been put off a few days until we can acclimatize them to the new normal. The beautiful daffodils out front, and the spring flowers everywhere, now seem a little out of place.
My best guess is that Mother Nature saw I scheduled my oral qualifying exam for Tuesday April 5, and didn't want me to be too distracted before then. Then, as soon as I am done and ABD, she will jack up the temperature again, and I will happily go spend time in the garden...
Actually, gardens! Yesterday we met with a representative of the local neighborhood association, and agreed to take care of 3 (!) (very small) plots at the nearby community garden! It's about 3 blocks away, which will be annoying for watering purposes but not a bad distance in general. We plan to grow some squash over there, and to put in our extra tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants (we always manage to start too many). I'm not sure that will fill 3 plots, but we will be imaginative. And we'll have our work cut out for us.
But that's good, because again, the temperature's going up after I finish the qualifying process. Right?
Friday, March 25, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Here's what I did on my Spring Break.
We went to visit Sara's family on a whim, without telling them. It was really nice to see them, although I am sad to say they had a lot of snow on the ground. (We hadn't had snow for several weeks.)
Having played a bit of crokinole with the Bakkers, we decided to get out our old carroms/crokinole board and repair it. While we haven't gotten around to the "repair" part yet, we did a bit of research on it. It turns out it was made in 1937--pretty cool!
And I wrote a program to help teach my summer students about pitch-class set labels. The program is here. It's in, let's say, public beta, which means I'm open to comments/suggestions from anyone! I recognize that I made it way too small, but if you download the swf file (right-click/control-click here and download the file) and open it from your computer, your computer will allow you to make the window bigger, which should resize all the elements within.
We went to visit Sara's family on a whim, without telling them. It was really nice to see them, although I am sad to say they had a lot of snow on the ground. (We hadn't had snow for several weeks.)
Having played a bit of crokinole with the Bakkers, we decided to get out our old carroms/crokinole board and repair it. While we haven't gotten around to the "repair" part yet, we did a bit of research on it. It turns out it was made in 1937--pretty cool!
And I wrote a program to help teach my summer students about pitch-class set labels. The program is here. It's in, let's say, public beta, which means I'm open to comments/suggestions from anyone! I recognize that I made it way too small, but if you download the swf file (right-click/control-click here and download the file) and open it from your computer, your computer will allow you to make the window bigger, which should resize all the elements within.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
It's spring break!
Things are really growing around here. As I cleared some of the fall leaves from the garden, I discovered the strange sight of newly-emerged rhubarb.
We have lots of seedlings under our little grow-light: eggplants, tomatoes, peppers; and just today we started hardening off our leek, lettuce, and arugula outside.
Furthest along, of course, are the bulbs. The daffodils Sara painstakingly redistributed last year are going to be beautiful.
We've also done some cleaning--the oven, the basement. And I've been spending some time with coding (as in for computers)--creating a website for Trillium Waterworks (an excellent Canadian company that probably doesn't know I'm making a website for them) and writing some pedagogical tools for the class I'll be teaching this summer. It's sure nice to be able to take time for some things that usually get short shrift.
And a whole week of no obligations ahead! With mid-60s projected this week, we may have to go camping....
Things are really growing around here. As I cleared some of the fall leaves from the garden, I discovered the strange sight of newly-emerged rhubarb.
We have lots of seedlings under our little grow-light: eggplants, tomatoes, peppers; and just today we started hardening off our leek, lettuce, and arugula outside.
Furthest along, of course, are the bulbs. The daffodils Sara painstakingly redistributed last year are going to be beautiful.
We've also done some cleaning--the oven, the basement. And I've been spending some time with coding (as in for computers)--creating a website for Trillium Waterworks (an excellent Canadian company that probably doesn't know I'm making a website for them) and writing some pedagogical tools for the class I'll be teaching this summer. It's sure nice to be able to take time for some things that usually get short shrift.
And a whole week of no obligations ahead! With mid-60s projected this week, we may have to go camping....
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
The following is a reasonably good representation of my mind about 24 hours ago:
These are the notes I took on one of my three copies of this score in the two weeks leading up to my exam yesterday. (Music theory-minded readers may note that this copy of the score was the one on which I worked with transformational approaches such as inversions/transpositions and Klumpenhouwer Networks, neither of which was very persuasive.) I reproduced much of this, in much cleaner form, in the version I handed in. I also made some mildly impressive-looking geometrical representations of pitch-class set relationships:
Again, this technique wasn't the most fruitful analytically, and I wouldn't blame my committee if they wonder, as they grade the test, why I used it. The answer is at least in part that it was described in an article added to my bibliography by one of the committee members, and it's a terribly written article, and I had to read it so many times, and in my determination to learn what was going on, I tried to apply it to this piece, even when it clearly wasn't going to be very helpful. I don't know if they'll be sympathetic to that, but we'll see!
In general, the test went quite well. The first half, in particular, seemed almost easy: I was given four questions on the history of music theory and asked to answer two, and honestly I could have written for a long time on all four. Then the tonal analysis question was exactly what I'd been given two weeks before, and I had (I think) some pretty good insights on the questions asked. So on my lunch break, I felt great.
The afternoon was less good, but still decent. In the first question, on the piece pictured above, as I mentioned, I used some techniques that show my understanding of the material but maybe aren't the most applicable to the piece. And for the second question, I felt my answer wasn't sufficiently in depth. But I anticipate that I will pass, and just have to pursue those matters further for my aural exam--the last stage before I become ABD! I'll hear for sure in about 3 weeks.
These are the notes I took on one of my three copies of this score in the two weeks leading up to my exam yesterday. (Music theory-minded readers may note that this copy of the score was the one on which I worked with transformational approaches such as inversions/transpositions and Klumpenhouwer Networks, neither of which was very persuasive.) I reproduced much of this, in much cleaner form, in the version I handed in. I also made some mildly impressive-looking geometrical representations of pitch-class set relationships:
Again, this technique wasn't the most fruitful analytically, and I wouldn't blame my committee if they wonder, as they grade the test, why I used it. The answer is at least in part that it was described in an article added to my bibliography by one of the committee members, and it's a terribly written article, and I had to read it so many times, and in my determination to learn what was going on, I tried to apply it to this piece, even when it clearly wasn't going to be very helpful. I don't know if they'll be sympathetic to that, but we'll see!
In general, the test went quite well. The first half, in particular, seemed almost easy: I was given four questions on the history of music theory and asked to answer two, and honestly I could have written for a long time on all four. Then the tonal analysis question was exactly what I'd been given two weeks before, and I had (I think) some pretty good insights on the questions asked. So on my lunch break, I felt great.
The afternoon was less good, but still decent. In the first question, on the piece pictured above, as I mentioned, I used some techniques that show my understanding of the material but maybe aren't the most applicable to the piece. And for the second question, I felt my answer wasn't sufficiently in depth. But I anticipate that I will pass, and just have to pursue those matters further for my aural exam--the last stage before I become ABD! I'll hear for sure in about 3 weeks.
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