Umm... yeah.

Mathematica comes in an almost affordable Home Edition, $295. Based on the Q&A, I gather that upgrade discounts will not be forthcoming and it is licensed strictly for personal use. I interpret "personal use" as "incredibly cool, expensive toy." Frankly, that's exactly what I'd use Mathematica for at home. (My place of employment has its own licenses for Mathematica Professional. My job doesn't really involve Mathematica though.)

Alas, it doesn't support Mac OS X (PPC), and it doesn't make much sense to get it for the increasingly finicky laptop. I will not be buying Mathematica Home Edition for now. Existing desktop still runs fine and really needs to hold me for another year or two. It's not like all OS X(PPC) software will instantly disappear off the face of the earth when Apple finally drops support for PPC.

If Wolfram allows two installs on two platforms on the same license (unlikely) and Mathematica ran decently on previously mentioned handheld computers (also unlikely), I'd be in heaven. Who doesn't want a fully functioning Mathematica in his pocket?

(I should point out that this is the same reason why I'd love to run Ableton Live decently on a handheld computer. Incredibly cool, expensive toy. At least both toys would share the same hardware. Live costs about as much as that hardware though, possibly more.)

It just occurred to me that I never blogged about Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai. (I'm pretty sure I've blogged about all the other Clarion [West] 2009 instructor books I've read this year. I certainly intended to blog about Salt Fish Girl. D'oh.)

My first impression reading it was, "OMG, this book was written just for me!" OK, that obviously isn't literally true. Still, this book struck me in a way that few other books have. (The most recent one before this was Elizabeth Bear's Carnival.)

In the case of Salt Fish Girl, it's probably due to her pitch perfect depiction of ethnically Chinese characters. There aren't enough of those in genre fiction. (I'm doing the best I can. Shut up.) By the way, if you can come up with a comprehensive list of detailed, complex, true-to-life depictions of Chinese characters in genre fiction, there aren't enough of them yet. (This is to forestall any list of so-called counterexamples. Yes, Salt Fish Girl is not the only book in the world with realistic Chinese characters. This doesn't mean that with Salt Fish Girl genre is now officially "diverse.")

The book is crammed with lovely, evocative writing. The sheer strength of text carries me through the weird in bliss. Really, she could have made anything happen and I would have eaten it up. It's a little disappointing then that in its last section that the novel loses some of its power. She ties everything up and rationalizes everything impeccably. The writing is still wonderful. Everything makes perfect sense. However, while she had the novel balanced between skiffy and magic realism throughout the novel, it didn't work for me in the final section. I suppose if I knew why, I'd be a better writer.

Part of it is, I suspect, that some things I didn't want explained, even if the explanation makes perfect sense and ties all of the novel's disparate threads together. Or maybe it's that I got a skiffy explanation when I'd wanted something less scientific-rational. (Actually, that alternative explanation, puzzlingly, is still there too at the very end.) I'm being vague to avoid spoiler, which makes this very hard to write about.

Anyway, Salt Fish Girl is a big, imaginative, ambitious work. If it didn't succeed perfectly for me, it certainly succeeded well enough that I'm glad I read it. I definitely look forward to whatever she does next.

I've "finished" a short story. (Actually, I'm letting myself get some distance from it before I read it again.) I should be working on my next one since I have some inkling of what it's about. However, I'm writing this blog entry instead. I've been meaning to blog about Spiral Hunt anyway.

OMG, is it a wonderful novel. The first chapter is a total grabber. When Maggie had read it at the Broad Universe reading at Boskone in 2008, I knew I had to read the novel.

Tight and fast-paced, just when you think it might fall prey to the tried and true, she tweaks the convention and the result is awesome. Just when you think she can't possibly ratchet up the tension any more, or pace the story any faster, it goes into overdrive. The result is exhilarating.

Yes, I know Maggie, and I can't help but imagine the main character, Evie Scanlan, looking like her and speaking with her voice. (OTOH, I also imagine one of the other main characters looking like either Vin Diesel or Taye Diggs. No, I don't know either one of them.) I've always been a fan of her work. She's really outdone herself though. The novel is filled with compelling characters with tough dilemmas. She's weaved Irish myth deftly through the story. I totally can not wait for the second book.

On the same subject of something worth reading, I just found It Came From the Slush ...and Survived! by Douglas Cohen. He wrote this in 2007. The blog entry goes through the openings of 14 stories he picked out of the Realms of Fantasy slushpile . He explains why each entry grabbed him. Worked out examples of story openings that grab an editor. Cool...

http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

It's possible that whatever mechanism Amazon uses to flag objectionable content is being gamed. i.e., someone found an exploit and chose this weekend to exploit it. Certainly, this weekend is an odd time for any company to make any sort of massive change. And this change is one that is wildly at odds with their corporate behavior so far.

I'd be really surprised if Amazon made decisions on objectionable content without a flesh and blood Amazon employee getting involved though. (Of course, the exploit might be that they have a way to flag objectionable content in the first place.)

It's good to see another state extend marriage to all of its citizens. I hope that it's just a matter of time before the rest of the country follows suit, not to mention Federal recognition. (That will require an undoing of the so-called "Defense" of Marriage Act at the Federal level.)

I'd expected the composition of the Harold 3 class to be more or less the composition of the Harold 2 class. After all, Harold 2 is a prerequisite.

Nope. Most of the Harold 3 class are members of Harold teams that perform at the theater. Obviously, they easily meet the prerequisite for this class. Actually, I'm kind of wondering why they need this at all. We had our first class today and they were awesome. (I got side coached a lot...)

Three of us, count 'em three, aren't on a Harold team. Two of those three auditioned at for spots at the end of March.

The instructor is the head of the Harold department. I like him a lot. He's a great teacher, and a cool guy. (I had him for Harold 1.)

However, put together, this is all rather intimidating. The instructor has already commented that I need to work the nerves out of my system. He did do it very nicely in a pleasantly off-hand, no big deal matter though.

On the plus side, this is a great learning experience working with all of these seasoned improvisers. I had a mini-epiphany walking home from the theater. What's unfortunate is that most of my epiphanies sound really stupid. (Yes, I am Captain Obvious. And your point is?)

I do my best improv work when I'm grounded in specific, concrete situations. Otherwise, I get all flighty dart from idea to idea as lose track of each one. (I got deservedly dinged on this today.) If I'm in a specific place committing a visceral action with a detailed character, I have a structure on which I can hang everything that happens. Well, I'm in the scene. I don't have to just let it all happen to me. I can create the physical environment. I can endow characteristics on myself and on my scene partner. I can commit whatever physical action on stage I want. That is, I can set things up for myself such that I do my best work. In the process, I can make my scene partner look fabulously awesome at the same time.

Yes, I'm also watching and listening to my scene partner to accept and heighten whatever choices he has made. However, I don't have to wait and wonder if what I'm doing will be ok with him or if it will fit in with what he has in mind. (I mean, barring telepathy, how am I supposed to know what he has in mind anyway?) I can build off of whatever he has done to create the world to the level of detail that I need it and it will all fit together. That is, no matter how a scene starts off, I can always get to the place where I do my best and allow my partner to do his best.

It's only taken me two years to figure this out. Sometimes, I feel too stupid for words... *argh*
[What I really want is to have my first class of Harold 3 all over again with this insight in mind. Oh well, there's always next week.]

Every year, City Center mounts a series of 3 concerts called: Encores! They're highly staged concert performances of unlikely to be revived American musicals with great scores. (Amusingly, several of these concerts have transfered over to B'way.) I just got back from the 3rd of this season's 3 concerts, Finian's Rainbow.

The drill, as always, is that I get up early in the morning. Take the bus to NYC. Meet up with a few friends for lunch. Catch a matinee of some show. Meet up with them again for dinner. We all go catch Encores! together. I take the bus home. (In the process, I usually get a lot of reading done. In this case, I read all of the June 2009 Analog and most of the June 2009 Asimov's. The Sandra McDonald story in the latter is utterly wonderful.)

I had lots of choices for the matinee. I probably should have beef up my theater creds by going to Blithe Spirit, Impressionism, or Exit the King. (In fact, the last was playing opposite the theater I eventually walked into. I was definitely thinking I might have had a much better time at Ionesco's absurdist play. Having now scanned the NYT rave, I may go back to NYC just to catch a performance of this.)

Ok, now that I've whined about how I really, really am a SRIUS THEATAR GOAH, I can say that what I went to see was Rock of Ages, a jukebox musical built from the pop and metal hits of the '80s. It's clear that one of my friends thought I was participating in The Death Of Theater As We Know It. (Keep in mind that during one of these Encores! trips, I went to see Golden Child by David Henry Hwang, a lovely play about the struggle as traditional Chinese culture collides with modern values. He went to see Cats.)

Besides, the theater is always dying... and reinventing itself into something new. I don't see why I shouldn't participate in that process. And since the producers hired a PR firm to survey the audience on who they are, why they came, and what they thought of the show, I got to participate much more directly than I'd expected. (I was pretty blunt in saying that I went because I wanted to see something stupid and mindless.)

Taking for what it is, I thought it was pretty good (and said so in the survey). It doesn't take itself very seriously, and it isn't intended to be art for the next five minutes, much less for the ages. They've filled the production with references to iconic '80s images. It pokes fun at itself, using post-modern self-referential deconstructionism at one point. (This is probably more thought about it than they'd intended.)

It plays around with expectations. e.g., The female lead is named Sherrie. It's obvious why they named her Sherrie. (And if it isn't, you'll miss a joke.) Of course, they pay off, but you don't know when. (And the song is generic enough, it really could have gone anywhere. Where they put it was fine and there were a few place where they tease you into thinking they'll do it.)

On balance, it's better constructed than either of the musicals I saw on the last two Encores! trips. (That's Shrek and The Story of My Life. The latter probably aimed higher though.) The plot is paper thin and predictable, but it's coherent and well executed. Someone very clearly did well in his Structure of the American Musical class. They integrated the songs into the show surprisingly well, much better than Shrek in some cases and that had a score written for the show.

The whole thing was lots of fun, and crammed with over-qualified actors who made the most of the material. (Note: I like most of the songs they used. This is the music of my youth, after all. The fact remains, though, that they weren't written for the situations they'd been placed in. This make it hard for them to be, for example, detailed and specific to the situation.)

Having said that, the song choices were decidedly predictable in places. The musical arrangements were disappointingly unambitious. The act one finale fails to live up to its potential. The book is actually quite skillful in getting all the characters to Points of Major Decision Where Everything Goes Awry. Since it's a musical though, what they need is a big musical sequence to show us the consequences as the curtain falls. They make a stab at time, they never really get across all the stuff that's happening at the same time. Then they grind things to a halt before picking things back up again. (It's also one of the few places where the alienating, self-mocking aside hurts more than it helps.)

Also, pop and metal of the '80s weren't really known for buttoning songs very well. Songs in musicals, for the most part, need to button. Otherwise, the audience doesn't know when to applaud or if they should applaud at all. They didn't really solve that problem.

All in all, I had fun. I enjoyed it, and I got a free flashlight shaped like a lighter. (I also paid half price. I might have felt differently at full Broadway prices.) However, Urinetown mined much of the same territory with more wit and style (not to mention an original score). They even share a few jokes. Also, I wonder if what you gain by using an instantly recognizable score and playing with audience expectations is worth what you lose in specificity to situation and character.

Finian's Rainbow was awesome. Ok, Yip Harburg clearly wasn't paying attention during Structure of the American Musical class. For example, this is one of those rare musicals where the leading couple are solidly attached to each other early in the show and stay that way. However, the show works, so who cares what you're supposed to do? And it does work. The score is hit tune after hit tune. The book zips from ironic situation to ironic situation. For 1947, it has an amazingly progressive view on racial politics. Rainbow valley is integrated, and pointedly so. The racist villain is the villain because he is racist. The happy ending comes as he redresses the damage he's caused. (When he is wished black, Encores! resolves this by changing actors. In 1947, the same actor continued to play the role in blackface. That so will not fly these days, and rightly so. The cultural associations with blackface would undermine all the genuinely progressive points in the show.)

The cast was uniformly excellent. I don't have time to single out everyone so I'll just do the romantic leads: Woody and Sharon. It seems vaguely unfair, somehow, that Cheyenne Jackson has a gorgeous voice, dances up a storm, acts wonderfully and looks like that. (I was only slightly disappointed that the director didn't find an excuse to take off his shirt.) Kate Baldwin sings her songs as if they were written for her. This is a tough trick considering the original Sharon was Ella Logan, who had kind of an odd voice range. (I've never seen the entire movie so I have no idea how Petula Clark fared.) Their "Old Devil Moon" was sublime. (I'm a huge fan of the song in any case.)

Since this is Encores!, they restored the original orchestrations. The result, as usual, is the full orchestral sound that you don't hear on Broadway anymore. (Note: Even in its golden age, what we considered a full Broadway pit was only around 30 players. That's still small relative to concert orchestras.) The score has probably never sounded this good since the original production.

This is the last show of the season. It's main job is to leave you in a good mood so that you'll subscribe to the next season. This is the traditional "crowd pleaser" slot. They tend to pick a relatively new show that just plain works. Finian's Rainbow was kind of an odd choice given that it was originally produced in 1947 and has a potentially problematic book. However, they succeeded in spades.

The 12:15am bus home was extremely late. That the 10:30pm bus apparently never showed up at all heightened some reactions. Either way, it was interesting to see how people reacted as 12:15am came and went without a bus. One woman went off on this major tirade about how her bus ride ought to be free. Several women clearly felt that they were slumming by taking the bus. They were at little giddy at the perceived adventure. One college aged(?) guy was as cynical as all hell. (He did a lot of "they don't care about us. It doesn't matter what we want... blah blah blah." He continued this even as we were boarding the bus. The guy he was complaining to though was too good looking for me to look at. They'd apparently never met before the trip and they'd separated with an invitation to phone call. I was half-sleep for that last bit so I may have imagined it to satisfy my need for structural closure.) However, next to me was this guy dressed down to the socks in orange. (I suspect it was really saffron.) He read a Buddhist text I recognized about warriors, then eventually, he meditated. (Either that, or he fell asleep. It was late.)

I suspect most people just waited. I was near the front of the line so I only saw the reactions of those at the head of the line and some people behind me. (The line snaked.) They seemed to be the most vocal, probably because they'd expected to be on the 10:30pm bus.

The nice thing for me is that the bus was so late that by the time I got back, I had very little time to wait before the T opened for the day. The unfortunate thing is that I woke up some time after 4am anyway. Normally, that's not a big deal because that's about I get back. Today, I was still on the bus. Oh well... must stay awake for choir rehearsal. (We're meeting on Sunday this week. My Harold class got pushed down a week so I no longer have timing issues.)

I, not surprisingly, did not get on to a Harold team. The two amazing improvisers with whom I played most of my scenes with did get in. It's good to know that I didn't screw up their chances.

There will be another audition later in the year. I will probably audition then too even though I'm mostly auditioning to learn to deal with stressful situations rather than actually attempting to get on a Harold team. If getting on to a Harold team was hard now, it'll be harder later in the year when I'm not regularly taking Harold classes. OTOH, my problem isn't so much with the Harold as much as keeping it together to do solid scene work.

I'll probably stay involved with improv because it's fun. I'll probably audition every chance I get because I need to learn to be competent in high stress situations. (Either that, or I need to learn to be mind-blowingly stellar at everything I do so that when I'm off my game in high stress situations, I'm still competent. The former sounds so much easier.) Yes, the accidental side effect if I succeed is that I end up performing improv in front of an audience on a regular basis. I'll cross that bridge if I ever meet it. Honestly, if that's the worst thing that happens...

As a side note, I realize no one is ever going to write a form rejection along the lines of "We're blind now because we needed to stick rusty forks in our eyes to rid ourselves of the taint of those whom we didn't pick. The ricochet of dropped improv offers has made us deaf. We don't know what caused the rash located on that spot in the back that we can't quite reach, but we're sure it too had to do with their sucktastic performances. They should just stop performing improv now. For the good of the country. Please. We're on what is left of our knees begging." For one, I doubt they saw anyone who actually deserved those words. For another, that's just plain unhelpful.

The traditional words of praise to the rejected they write instead is just customary courtesy. (e.g. when someone asks "How are you?", the proper answer is "Fine. And you?" It's a ritualized greeting, not an actual inquiry of state.) This would be easier to remember if it didn't read so much like encouragement.

Just got back from the choir concert. (No, I did not forget to blog about Clarion. They haven't gotten back to me yet. Given that yesterday was supposed to be the last day they notify applicants about acceptances, I'm not optimistic. However, I've eaten a ripe mango, much more satisfying but harder to find than ice cream. I'm in my happy place. I'm absolutely prepared for whatever response I eventually get from them. If they don't get back to me during the next week, I'll send them email.)

The concert probably went well. I can never really tell. There were a couple scary moments in the first piece of the evening. They were the type of scary moment where I think the only people who noticed were the people involved. Most of us kept our heads and we got through. What I think was our most difficult piece, Finzi's Requiem da Camera (local premiere!) we actually did about as well as could be expected. No, I didn't think we were ever going to pull off a professional calibre performance of the work, but I think we were credible. (Now that the concert is over, I'm off to buy a recording of the piece. AFAIK, there is only one.)

As usual, we had a terrific orchestra and wonderful soloists. They all did impressive work.

Anyway, we sang. The audience applauded. Most of the choir is at a bar right now celebrating the choir's 35th anniversary. I decided that I really wanted to cut 500 words out of a short story that I'm currently revising instead. (As it is, it's about 1000 words shorter than the version I sent out for beta, but another 500 would get me under 6000 words.)

Tomorrow is the Harold audition. I currently feel absolutely no pressure. It would take a minor miracle for them to choose me. This is merely me getting more audition experience, and more experience performing a Harold. (This means, of course, tomorrow just before the audition, I will be a nervous wreck. This is why I need more audition experience.)

As it turns out, next weekend is a busy one too. Again, everything decided to happen at the same time. Saturday, I'll be in NYC watching Rock of Ages a jukebox musical using rock music of the '80s. (I decided I wanted to see something stupid and frivolous. This sounded like it fit the bill.) I'll also be watching the Encores! concert of Finian's Rainbow (This is why I'm going to NYC in the first place.) Sunday is the first class of Harold Level III. (I hadn't realized there was a Level III until a few weeks ago. I'd long planned the NYC trip.) It turns out that I also have a choir rehearsal on Sunday. Last minute schedule change. Unfortunately, the class and the rehearsal are just close enough in time that by the time I got home from class, I'd have to leave immediately for rehearsal, but far enough apart in time that if I go straight from class to rehearsal, I'd need to find some place to hang around for a while. At least they don't conflict.

What do you do when you realize your story is full of unmitigated stupid? Why you check out two tools for learning Chinese on the Web that you haven't tried before, of course. (Yes, I now also have some ideas for making my story full of merely mitigated stupid instead. Baby steps.)

For lots of people my opinion will not be useful. I didn't bother registering for Chinese 101 in college because they obviously would not have let me take it. I would have been at near parity with everyone else when it came to reading and writing and way beyond them in speech and listening comprehension. What I really needed in college was "Chinese for the Functionally Illiterate" that would mainstream me into the 2nd year classes. Some colleges actually have this now, but they call the students "Advanced Beginners." (And to be fair, not all advanced beginners are functionally illiterate.)

I've worked on shoring up my weaknesses and becoming more generally fluent with ChinesePod for over a year now. Funnily enough, having a Chinese dialogue and a transcript show up in my pod feed every weekday means that I will study, whereas my attempts to make it through textbooks have not been nearly so successful. (Well, for a while, I was oddly capable of discussing China's rapidly changing economic situation and oppressive government, but little else.) However, I don't think ChinesePod is intended to make people better readers, and probably not better writers.

(One of the interesting quirks of Chinese is that your listening vocabulary, your speaking vocabulary, your reading vocabulary, and your writing vocabulary may not match. Just because you can recognize a character on the page, doesn't necessarily mean you know how to write it when you're not looking at it. Just because you understand it when you hear it doesn't mean you'll recognize it on the page.)

One tool I tried out yesterday helps with the writing, Skritter, and it is made of awesome. (Ok, it's made of Flash, which is not awesome. You know what I mean.) In concept, it's pretty simple. The website gives you a word written in pinyin along with a definition, you write the word in Chinese inside a box. However, it corrects your stroke order and stroke style. It keeps track of your progress. (i.e., if you fail, the word will come back later.) It has vocabulary lists already built for the most common textbooks. Yes, this is flash cards for the 21st century.

If you have a graphics tablet, a tablet PC or some other internet capable device that runs Flash and has a touch screen, it is even more awesome. You can write the character as you actually would with a pen (rather than mousing it). It may even be pressure sensitive (not that it really matter here since this isn't calligraphy). Moreover, their user interface is set up such that you never need to use a keyboard.

I naturally draw some strokes backwards because I'm left handed. This really confuses certain handwriting recognition engines, like the iPhone one. Skritter recognizes that I've drawn the stroke backwards and calls me on it. This is good.

They're free for now because they're in beta, but I would totally pay for this. OK, within reason. They're not doing anything I can't do by myself. However, the immediate feedback and the bookkeeping are worth money.

The second tool I tried was merely fine, Popup Chinese. On first listen, they sound like a ChinesePod clone. However, ChinesePod, based in Shanghai, is determined to make you sound like a neutral accented newsreader and Popup Chinese, based in Beijing, is content to do everything in a Beijing accent. (There's probably a North vs. South thing going on there.) ChinesePod takes an immersive approach to language acquisition. Popup Chinese takes a textbook approach. ChinesePod intends to push you towards conversational fluency. Popup Chinese prepares you for standardized texts of Chinese language skill.

(Keep in mind that I'm not convinced that either website, by itself, can actually make you fluent. If you pay ChinesePod a lot of money, their teachers will call you up for personalized tutoring. That, I'm sure would do it. However, a lot of money, and conversational fluency is not my biggest worry.)

I'm not really comparing fairly because I've been a basic member of ChinesePod for over a year whereas I spent yesterday listening to a month of Popup Chinese podcasts. I've tried the premium features of ChinesePod via their free trial and decided that I only wanted the glossed PDF transcripts. I haven't started my Popup Chinese free trial yet. (It's a one week trial and this coming week is not the week for free trials of anything.)

I didn't actually learn anything in the month of podcasts I listened to yesterday. The non-advanced podcasts were too easy for me (except possibly for some vocabulary). The advanced podcasts are a crap shoot. Either I understand them just fine, or I'm just not going to get it without access to the for pay section. I love that they podcast short stories, but I'm never going to understand them fully without seeing them written out. (I believe they provide annotation via popups. Hence their name.) Also, some of the podcasts explicitly depend on access to the for pay section. (e.g., there is an audio portion and a written portion to the lesson.)

(Note: In fairness, ChinesePod no longer makes all of their lessons available for free, only the Newbie ones. I think this is in part because none of their lessons assumed access to their website. They don't make money if no one uses their website. I understand the business decision, but in a way, it's too bad. I would have never become a member if all I could have accessed for free were the Newbie lessons.)

In any case, I will activate the Popup Chinese free trial some time to see what's inside. In my situation, there's no point to listening to their podcast without access to the for pay section. (I don't know if that holds true for everyone.) However, the premium features may be worth the money, especially if they can help my reading fluency.

Either way, I will continue to be a paying member of ChinesePod. In the past weeks, the words "cyborg", "zombie", and "vampire" have been on their vocabulary list. How can you not love that?