In my composition class the other day, while doing a harmonic analysis of a minuet & trio:

Isn’t that just about the worst chord in the worst inversion (iii64) you could possibly use as a pivot ever?

Yeah, but when you get to real music and you’re Haydn, you can do these things.

Basically, what happens when you progress to the third class in the MIT Music department’s composition offerings, you start tearing apart the system of nice-to-haves and never-dos that you’ve spent the past two semesters building up.  Rules turn into guidelines, and eventually turn into recipes for writing boring, formulaic music.  As my professor told me: writing one parallel octave is a mistake, writing 23 in a row is exciting.

Why did you write that voice leading there?  It doesn’t quite resolve the 7th regularly.

I don’t know. It sounds beautiful to me.

Somewhere in between the 12 hours of dance per week I’m putting in, the composition class I’m taking, and the Romantic music analysis class I’m taking, I’ve found some time to discover something a little bit comforting about the nature of art.  And by art, I mean the larger sense of the word.  Music, dance, Python, whatever tickles your inner sense of pretension.

The struggle between form and freedom.

That is the only reason I have yet to write a Python script to automagically generate my composition assignments for me.  It honestly would not be terribly difficult, because there are enough rules in play for many of the assignments that one only makes a few decisions before the rest of the notes just inexorably fall into place.  Writing music is not about being correct though.  Writing music is about that moment when you accidentally play a sharp instead of a natural, and you notice that it sounds infinitely more exciting (after all, what could possibly be more exciting than a misplaced augmented chord?), or when you deliberately scatter unresolved melodic lines about a deceptively complete harmonic cadence to nag at the minds of your listeners.

Rules give these little transgressions a framework.

You can’t really break rules for fun and profit if there aren’t any rules to begin with.  Rules create expectations and tendencies, and only then can you manipulate those forces to add some pizazz to your plain ‘ole I-IV-V-I progression.  Breaking, as an improvised dance, would be incredibly difficult to pull off without a huge vocabulary of moves and sequences to draw from.  It would also be incredibly boring if that’s all anyone ever did.  There is a sense among bboys that whatever you decide to do, be it adding some Latin flair to your style, freezing completely when nobody expects it, or running around pretending to be an airplane, if you do it convincingly and with confidence, then it works.

In math, 1+1 will always equal 2.  In art, 1+1 could equal 2, but it might equal 22 if it’s more beautiful that way.

I’m too scattered right now to put together coherent paragraphs, so I shall list some thoughts that I have had recently:

• In lieu of a laundry hamper, a towel wrapped around your clothes functions quite perfectly.
• Looking well-dressed is as easy as getting well-fitting, nice basics (good jeans, some t-shirts, some dress shirts) and recombining them endlessly.  This need not (and should not) be expensive.
• When dancing hip-hop, I find it helpful to focus on two things: where you go, and how you get there.
• Teaching someone to give good massages is the gift that keeps on giving.
• Backstreet Boys.
• Happy hour sushi is made of rainbows and unicorns.
• When at a loss for content, make a list.

The worst part about writing a random list post is that I’ve never really figured out a good way to end it.  Oh well.

My colleague, Laura Nicholson, and I were discussing various topics over Skype one night, and I at one point mentioned my primitive system of classifying the myriad types of procrastination. We fleshed out some details together, made some terminology more specific, and eventually developed a fairly descriptive and useful (in my opinion) taxonomy for describing procrastination.

So, without further ado, I present the Tang-Nicholson System for Procrastination Classification.

Types of procrastination are given two attributes: class and level. Procrastination class can take on one of the following three values:

Class 1

Procrastination from a productive task by either not doing anything at all, or doing something purely recreational, e.g. playing video games, reading a book, or spending time with friends.

Class 2

Procrastination from a productive task by performing other productive tasks that are lower in priority, e.g. doing the dishes, running errands, or doing assignments due at a later date.

Class 3

Procrastination from a productive task by focusing and obsessing over details related to the task, e.g. learning LaTeX in order to typeset an essay, copying problem sets to make them neater, or obsessively refactoring code instead of finishing features.

Procrastination level is a positive integer that, in relative terms, describes how far removed from the actual productive task an activity is. Since procrastination can be composed with itself, this metric measures the level of nesting. For example, if one’s original task was writing an essay, imagine the following procrastination composition: write essay, learn LaTeX to write essay, configure Emacs for editing LaTeX, submit patch for bug in Emacs. The final step, submitting a patch for a bug in Emacs, is a class 3, level 3 form of procrastination. In fact, all of these steps are class 3, with level ranging from level 1 for learning LaTeX to level 3 for the last step.

And there you have it: a simple, concise way to precisely define how you are wasting your time.

Quick, what level of procrastination was I at when I first thought of this system instead of doing my psets?

I ran out of my shampoo last Thursday.  This was problematic, mostly because I insist on using Redken Men Mint Clean shampoo, which is fancy and expensive and makes me feel like I’m a cool person, but also is only really sold in fancy salons and hair product stores.  It also makes my scalp tingle.  Mmm…tingly… The conditioner is even better, if you’re curious.

In my tragic shampoo-less state, I didn’t know what to do.  Go without shampoo?  Could I substitute body wash for shampoo?  What if my hair dries out from the soap?  That would have been tragic.  I’m fairly certain that all my friends would have left me if I used anything less than amazing shampoo on my hair.

Mason, we all talked, and we’ve decided that your hair is simply not moisturized enough for us to associate with you.

The horror.

A sudden realization.  A spark of insight that grew from some dark, unexplored corner of my mind.  What could it be?  Dig deeper, Mason, follow your instincts.  Yes!  I’ve got it!  The apartment came with complimentary conditioning shampoo!  Now where did I put it?  This drawer here, yes!  Luxuriously clean hair can once again be mine!

It wasn’t much, but it tided me over until I made the trek over to the local mall and restocked on my preferred shampoo.  I can have friends again.

Does anyone else occasionally wake up from a nap and feel a little upset and angry for no particular reason?  It’s the strangest thing.  I came home from work today and was hit by a veritably tsunami of lethargy, and had no choice but to meander around my apartment in various stages of consciousness for the next few hours.  When I finally came to, I was feeling particularly grumpy and annoyed at nothing in particular.

Somehow though, I managed to inspire myself to put on some house music and start dancing.  I love house music, and I’m trying to learn to house (dance style), but it’s rather difficult to not look like an idiot unless you’re pretty good already.  Luckily, my roommate was out, so looking like an idiot was not an issue.  I don’t have dance classes for the next three weeks, so I figured that it’s probably a good thing to dance on my own to keep in shape and keep my skills nice and skillful.  For the next two hours, I switched up the music a bit (old school funk, nothing like it) and managed to practice popping, locking, and some breaking, and felt infinitely better than how I felt before I started dancing.

The joy of motion, the ecstasy of rhythm, there’s nothing like it.

So next time you’re feeling down, throw on some awesome music and just let yourself go.

A quick shower afterwards, and I feel content and happy.

I have my last final exam of sophomore year in 15 minutes, so obviously the logical thing to do is to write a quick blog post.

Executive summary:

• I’m working as a software engineering intern this summer.
• Heaps are cool.
• Django is cool.
• Sleeping enough actually does help you learn better.

Actual post to come soon, I promise…

People often complain to me that I don’t update this blog enough.  Considering I haven’t posted anything since last November, this is most likely a fair complaint.  After some long, extended soul searching, and an emotional montage with lots of grainy black-and-white closeups of my face looking “deep”, I’ve decided to just try and write more.  The average quality of my posts might go down, but allow me to simply try to alleviate this dry spell.  My insatiable obsession with perfection shall restrain me no more!

I should deliberately make a mistake to help the process.  Maybe some typo, or unforgivable grammatical sin that would have, in high school, cost me an entire letter grade on an essay.

Its as easy as this.

Would anyone believe if I told them that writing that sentence almost caused me physical pain?  It was worth it though: the bondage of grammatical perfection, relevant content, and post length shall haunt me no more!

This month was Burton-Conner’s Annual Apple Bake: a culinary competition between floors that can only really be described as Iron Chef Apple, but with college students. This year, our floor (Conner 2) submitted 43 entries and won $420 in prize money. This is perhaps slightly more interesting when considering that there were 76 total entries, and $500 in prize money to be won. We are a bit enthusiastic about Apple Bake, you see.

I wound up winning first place in entrées for my Apple Bacon Cheddar Omelets, which I finished at the absolute last minute and without recipe. I’m not really a fan of cooking from recipes. The way I see it, when you start cooking, you should probably have an idea of what you want the final product to wind up looking and tasting like. From there, you draw on your skills and ingredients (and fancy kitchen gadgetry) to get there. And so, with 10 minutes remaining before the submission deadline, I pulled out my chopped onions and apples, my smoked cheddar and gouda, and my delicious bacon, and started throwing things into a hot skillet. A few dashes of sea salt and a sprig of parsley later, they were done.

When you learn differential equations, you never learn how to solve just one particular equation. You learn methods, pattern recognition, what to do when you have a square hold and a round peg, and how to draw hundreds of little arrows with remarkable efficiency. Cooking should really be the same way, except maybe direction fields don’t make omelets taste any better at all. I’ve got a bunch of ingredients floating around, and the solution I’m looking for is the tastiest one. Hopefully it’s a stable solution, but not always (soufflé anyone?). If the problem is at all interesting though, it’s probably one you haven’t seen before. Improve, adapt, overcome. Make the best damn omelet the world has ever seen, despite the fact that you ran out of eggs and maybe you don’t have a skillet either. Just because a few recipes happen to call for eggs and a skillet doesn’t mean every omelet needs them. Throw some tofu and cheese on a piece of tinfoil placed over your stovetop.  Blam, instant omelete-esque.  Mmmm…aluminum.

So learn yourself some Laplace transforms, and maybe you’ll cook a bit better.

The fire alarm went off a few days ago, and the firemen didn’t manage to turn off the flashing lights for quite some time. We were allowed to go back into the dorm after a few minutes, but the lights kept flashing. And all of the alarms were emitting a low, crackling noise. Like a wire had been severed somewhere. Not many people had returned yet, since we had just all been let back into the building. As I walked down the almost deserted hallways of my dorm, I thought to myself, “Wow, this would be a pretty good beginning to a zombie movie.”

As a side note, it seems like all of my blog posts are set in “a few days ago.” This is really just code-speak for “some time in the past which is not so far gone that I have forgotten to write about it.”

Imagine if our humble floor in Burton-Conner were the only remaining bastion of humanity, with the rest of campus, nay, the rest of the world overrun by hordes of flesh-craving zombies. Slow-moving, dimwitted zombies, of course, but zombies nonetheless. This being a movie, of course, means that the residents of Conner 2 would all fall into clearly predefined zombie movie stereotypes:

Leader

Someone would clearly have to be the battle-hardened leader of our ragtag band of zombie killers. This person seems a bit cold at first, and might even argue fiercely with the other characters, but ultimately this all stems from a deep desire to fend for the group’s best interests. If this person does end up dying, it is always near the end of the movie at an emotional low.

Big Brother

In any group of friends, there tends to emerge a big brother figure. The Big Brother is, in many ways, similar to the Leader in that he/she feels personally responsible for everyone else in the group. Instead of appearing cold and distant, though, the Big Brother is immediately likable and generally funny. Unfortunately, the Big Brother will almost always die saving one or more of the others in his group, inevitably due to a mistake on their part.

Smart Ass

The Smart Ass functions as the comic relief of the zombie movie, and may or may not actually kill zombies himself (this character is also almost always male, for whatever reason). He has seemingly limitless supply of one-liners and smarmy comebacks, and never hesitates to throw in a healthy dose of sarcasm at inopportune moments either. The Smart Ass is inevitably killed off in an amusing and somehow not tragic death as the movie progresses, since he also gets exponentially more annoying (and less funny) as time goes on.

Eye Candy

An unfortunate reality of most zombie movies is a small host of clueless teenagers, generally of the aesthetically pleasing variety, whose only purpose is to provide for pretty things to look at and a number of special effects laden deaths with satisfying little character development.

Love Interest

An even more unfortunate exception to the Eye Candy character, this person (almost always female, not necessarily true for plain Eye Candy) functions as a girlfriend of sorts for one of the main male characters in the movie.  Because of this, the Love Interest is practically immune to death, as long as the male character remains alive.

Traitor

Whenever someone gets bitten by a zombie in any zombie movie, they will always hide the wound and infection from the rest of the group until it’s too late.  Barring that, someone will end up betraying the group to some evil external group (faceless corporation, Nazis, etc.).  Karma usually operates here, and dictates that the Traitor die a messy and crowd-pleasing death as a result.

After my 6.034 (Artificial Intelligence) class let out a bit early today, I had to make a trip over to the bathroom. Now, in the building (Stata Center) where I have that class, that bathroom (and indeed, the entire building) is very particularly designed, and the stalls in the bathroom are very particularly arranged. It just so happens that the stall that I went to was occupied by another person. I started thinking: what exactly are the considerations that a guy makes when he’s picking out a bathroom stall? Do these conditions change when choosing a urinal? These questions, inevitably, led to myriad other equally nonsensical formulations and conjectures about how people go about walking and sitting the way they do.

As with any imperfect solution to a complex problem, our path finding algorithms occasionally fail us. On my way to 7.012 (Biology) lecture, I noticed a person stop dead on his tracks, and after a brief pause, let out a long, frustrated “ffffffffff-”, the beginnings of a drawn out expletive seemingly expressed through the deflation of his hopes of getting to class on time. Often, the problem isn’t finding an optimal (or any) path to a destination, but finding an optimal seating position in a class, or the least awkward urinal in the bathroom. Surely, I can’t sit too close to the front, and risk looking overly enthusiastic about learning, nor can I sit too far back and look like a deadbeat who’s only there to catch up on the sleep he missed because he was playing Super Smash Bros. And surely, sitting immediately adjacent to someone I don’t know is right out, unless, of course, that someone is an attractive individual whom I might want to introduce myself to. If I arrive late to class, I certainly cannot walk all the way across the room to sit; I take the nearest available seat instead.

It’s an interesting question for me, sitting here between classes and watching people pass by: finding destinations, empty seats, power outlets for their exhausted laptop batteries, the best tastiness/(time*cost) ratio for a late breakfast, the most amusing company for an evening’s debauchery.

When you boil everything down, people, in all of their irrationalities and idiosyncrasies, do actually operate based on real motivations and principles. I make no guarantees as to the quality or consistency of said motivations and principles, but behavior is generated by something. Even “random” behavior in people isn’t truly random. Tell a room full of people to arrange themselves randomly, and they wind up spacing themselves out, instead of truly randomly. +10 points to the first person who points out that reference. Note: points cannot be redeemed for cash, food, favors, or just about anything except self-empowerment.

Or maybe I’m just thinking too hard.