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(türkçe)
Twitter Year in Review
A few years ago, when I used livejournal regularly, it was a popular practice to write the first sentence of the first post of each month and use it to reflect on the past year. Since Twitter is the service I’ve been using the most frequently lately, I am bringing the tradition back with the first tweet of each day in 2011:
January: Birds perform disgusting acts occasionally, like feeding each other their own vomit.
February: Check it out! My newest piece: Viola Trio by queenmelike via #soundcloud
March: Hmmmm… Feeling demoralized today.
April: I hate clicking on a link and finding out it’s a video instead of text. I hate videos! I want to skim! I don’t want to pause my music!
May: Sipping on Jim Beams, waiting for Miller Puckette to perform live!! Ahhhhhhh!!!! http://twitpic.com/4s758e
June: I set my alarm to 5:10am, but then I changed my mind and set it to 5:18am. It makes a difference, okay?!
July: I need a secretary.
August: My jewelry is making my violin sound like a prepared violin.
September: I think teachers say, “there are no stupid questions” in math classes to lower the blood pressure of those students that see the stupidity.
October: Happy birthday, @SteveReich! It’s my birthday today, too!
November: I listened to all Radiohead albums in my possession tonight, Amnesiac to present, in order.
December: Him: Ask and ye shall receive…. a kick in the face. Me: Then you look like a very inquisitive person.
On a more serious note, 2011 was a very busy year at work, and also a year of great milestones, such as applying to, getting accepted to, and starting graduate school. I was able to continue with choir, violin, and my other little side projects almost the entire time and went to plenty of cool concerts. I also made and broke some important friendships, but we will keep that discussion outside the scope of this blog.
You can follow me on Twitter at @melike. Happy new year!
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Self-Restraint
Sometimes, it is best to avoid acting on a strong urge that you know you will regret later. Over the years, I’ve developed these few methods to fight the internal struggle when it becomes especially difficult:
1. Chant, “Self! Re! Straint! Self! Re! Straint!” over and over again (in privacy). It is three beats and a beat of rest. Embellish with rhythmical ornamentations in a beatbox fashion and tribal dance, if desired.
2. Tell a few select friends about the predicament, and encourage them to talk me out of it.
3. Ridicule myself in writing, in a private journal, then laugh at it.
4. Visualize the concept in a drawing, such as the one below:
Before drawing out the concept in my mind, I did a Google Image Search for “self-restraint” to make sure that it wasn’t a blatant copy of someone else’s work. After all, the idea seems so cliché. I liked some of the search results, and was relieved not to find 10 different versions of my drawing. Below are my favorites (linked to their sources):
And my favorite,
The combination of the above “self-therapy” methods allowed me to contain my tumults inside the neatly packaged confines of my SELF. I feel less like an adolescent and more like a grownup now.
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Snippets
Henry: Do you listen to old music?
me: How old?
Henry: Like Motown, oldies…
me: I listen to 14th century music.
Ken: You know, when I was young, a good friend and I would go to a diner at 2am, and order a large order of onion rings…
John and me: Yummm..
Ken: …fried zucchini…
John and me: Mmmm!
Ken: …and hot chocolate.
John and me: Wait… WHAT? All at once?
Ken: Of course! Why not?
John and me: Ugh.
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Sandwich Rant
What the heck is this? I thought I ordered a sandwich, not an overstuffed baguette taco. How am I supposed to eat this? Does the assembler not know the function the bread serves in a sandwich? What is the point of lining up tomatoes and sprinkling lettuce on TOP (i.e. theoretically, THE SIDE) of the sandwich? Wouldn’t it simply fall off as soon as I align the sandwich the proper way by rotating it 90 degrees? Gravity, HELLO. If I ate the sandwich the way it is pictured, the bread would open up and the entire sandwich would roll open as soon as I bit down on it, making it an extremely wide open-faced sandwich. Do they expect me to rotate my head 90 degrees to the side to be able to eat the sandwich and keep it folded? In addition, the bread only covers 2/3 of the circumference of the cross section. Once I bite, it’s all going to burst out the top. Do they expect me to restrain the filling by pressing it down with my hand? What’s the point of having bread, then? Just make it a burrito! I would have liked to go back, give the sandwich back to whoever made it, and make him eat it in front of me. But alas, I ate it all already.
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Tamara & Giovanni
This past weekend I inherited Bryan’s two finches when he left for Afghanistan.
They are a white zebra finch named Tamara
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Sirens
I went down to the ocean one day back in January, stood knee-deep in the water, and pointed my new recorder at the vast expanse of horizon. The sun set and the colors of twilight tinged the waves with warm, dark hues as I contemplated eternity. The waves gave this piece its shape and brought out different shades of sound when I convolved my voice with their recordings, carrying with them mysterious ocean songs from far away.
Above is uncompressed version uploaded into Soundcloud. Below, mp3 for download:
siren (Classical Mythology) One of several sea nymphs, part woman and part bird, who lure mariners to destruction by their seductive singing.
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Tutorial: Adding a custom background to WPTouch
If you aren’t satisfied with the background options WPTouch offers for the mobile version of your WordPress blog, all you need to do is follow this tutorial to dig into the code and customize to your heart’s content! Here’s a before/after comparison of mine:
Spiffy, no?
Note: You will need FTP access to your WordPress files to access/edit some of the content. I am not sure if this will work if your blog is hosted on wordpress.com. The alternative is to get WPTouch Pro, which has a lot more customization features and eliminates the need to hack into code (but it’s oh so fun!).
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One Pet Peeve Eliminated
My blog’s appearance on mobile phones had been bugging me the past few months. It looked just the way I designed it for a computer monitor, which is definitely not suited for reading on a mobile phone.
Well, I had a free Saturday night (which was not exactly free, as I had deliberately stayed at home to work on some creative endeavor), so I rolled up my sleeves and added a mobile version. It’s not as complicated as it sounds; I just enabled the appropriate WordPress plugin and figured out how it works. I’ll save the hardcore coding for a time when I’ll be brave enough to create a mobile version of Matchingfreak.
So here is how it looks now. Much better! I’m more likely to read blog posts that show up in this format on my phone. I have many pet peeves, so I might as well eliminate the ones I can control.
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Twin Seagulls
The oddest thing I saw on Catalina Island was a pair of seagulls that always stood next to each other and vocalized in sync with each other. When they opened their mouths, it was such a perfect unison that you could only tell they were both doing it when they occasionally slipped out of phase. The result was a long, continuous seagull call. I saw them on several occasions throughout the day. One time, they were both walking down the pier side by side, with their heads bowed down, wings slightly open, emitting the SAME whining noise and making the SAME moves. How were they so perfectly coordinated?! I am still baffled by it.
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USC, here I come!
I am starting my master’s education in chemical engineering this fall at USC. The catch? I’ll be working full-time at the same time!
The thought about whether or not I was going to pursue higher education had been stressing me out since before I even graduated from MIT. The “advice” I’d heard from most people was that the longer you wait, the less inclined you are to leave your cozy job. I felt myself falling into the same trap. The longer I wait, the more difficult it will be to find the initiative. I like my current job, and it keeps better and better as I am given more responsibility and complicated plants. I’ve already learned so much that I couldn’t have learned in school, and the master’s classes I’ll be taking will help supplement that knowledge, now that I have a better idea of why the heck they taught us all that stuff in undergrad. It will also put me in a better position should I consider obtaining a PhD in the future. For now it’s all up in the air.
The thought of working and going to school scares me a bit. I barely find time outside of work now; how will I do with grad-level classes added on top of it? Do I continue the weekly choir rehearsals and violin lessons? Do I put off hanging out with friends even more than I do now? Whenever I am faced with these questions, I tell myself, “I had one semester where I took seven MIT classes and had a colorful social/romantic life. If I got through that, I could get through anything!” Seriously, my MIT experience is a reminder that I’m capable of a lot more than I think I can handle.
What does this all mean for you, the reader? I will have even less time to blog! I find, though, that the more I have on my plate, the better I am at managing my time (also, procrastinating). It’s not like I blog often now anyway, so this will probably have a minimal impact on your lives. Phew!
The one thing I can’t wait for is the student discounts for concert tickets again! As a frequent concert-goer, that was the most discouraging thing about being out of school.
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