Concert date: Friday, May 9 @ 8:30 pm

I'll be giving a short concert of Irish fiddle music at Marlboro College on Friday, May 9, beginning at 8:30 pm and probably running just over an hour in length. It's open to the public, so please come. The repertoire will include traditional fiddle tunes, and some computer-generated tunes thrown into the mix -- see if can you guess which ones they are.

Tune generator up and mostly running

I've been working on a "celtic" tune generator for the past several months as a project withing Marlboro's Computer science department. It's a lot of fun, though is has consumed quite a bit of time in the making. This is only a preliminary version of the web site, and showcases just a few of the features my Common Lisp program supports. I'll post links to the code at some point as well. An updated version of the web page should appear by the beginning of May.

http://cs.marlboro.edu/~astimson/tune-generator.

Now it's back to paper-writing.....

-Abe

Crickets

Oooh. . . I'm full of spicy Thai food and feeling rather fine. It was a nice evening out and about with friends, and now I'm getting ready to relax for a while with some reading, music homework, math, and a little chocolate before going to be. But first, our trip into town was worth recounting, mainly because our first errand was to the "One Stop" pet store in Brattleboro, where a kindly fellow sold us one dozen crickets.

"Small, medium or large?" asked the man behind the counter, as if we were ordering coffee. We told him that we had a leopard gecko; a hungry one. "How old?" One year. "Then medium should do it. A dozen, you said? OK, I'll go catch them now." We also bought a little plastic "critter carrier" to improve their quality of life -- as well as social possibilities -- for we still had to pick up another friend, go out to eat, and then do some grocery shopping. In the car, we took turns holding the crickets under our coats to keep them warm. "How is it being pregnant with all those babies?" asked Lisa when it was my turn.

We picked up Lucy at her house and then continued on with our stomaches to guide us. "What if they start chirping in the restaurant?" somebody asked as we pulled up to the parking lot.

"I think they only do that when they're mating," was the reply. Since we didn't want them to get shivery in the car, the crickets spent the duration of the meal perched on an empty chair at the table, neatly concealed in a brown paper bag. After we ate and paid the bill, the crickets moved from inside one jacket to another until we reached the co-op. They became a large lump, with an edge of brown bag poking out, in the front-left portion of my down vest. At the checkout counter, I explained I was not shoplifting but instead carrying something I'd already purchased, conveniently, under my clothes.

Our gecko -- who still doesn't have a name -- was very pleased with us when we came home with crickets. It was quite entertaining to watch him go after them with quick yet calculatingly lazy hunger.

I don't think I've had such a fine evening in quite a while!

Amaryllis

Here's the flower I've been talking about! Each of the three blossoms is about eight inches wide. Check out this Wikipedia article on Amaryllis.

Whistling Tea Kettles

It's too bad that our tea Kettle didn't whistle. It always boiled water fine, very readily in fact, but never a single note did it produce in its tea-making experience. This one flaw, combined with spaciness and tiredness on my part, brought its life to an abrupt and unfortunate end Wednesday night.

At about 12:00 am I noticed that my programming homework made less and less sense, so I it therefor was time to make a cup of tea to perk me up a little. I trundled into the kitchen, turned the kettle on "hi", and resumed my glazed staring at the computer screen. The next thing I knew, awful cracking and popping sounds were coming from the kitchen and I knew something was terribly wrong. There being no water left to boil, the stove was now trying to boil the metal bottom of the kettle -- and doing a fair job of it!

"Poop!" I said aloud.

Picking up what remained of tea kettle from the orange burner, I rushed it outside to try and keep from setting off the fire alarm -- not what you need at 12:30 am in a weekday! Of the tea kettle, whatever hadn't dripped into the bowels of the stove stayed on the burner in a flat metallic patty that shined up at me. It took about twenty minutes of open windows and frantic door-fanning (for there was almost no wind) to drive out most of the smoke. And boy did it stink! Burning metal and plastic is rather desensitizing, and the reek of it is staying on my clothes for a while. Ew!

I bought a new kettle for Lily the following evening, and it turns out to be exactly like the old one; it's even the same, exact model. It doesn't whistle, either! Ah, the price we pay for the pleasurable habit of drinking tea. But to keep this element of my life, though, I think I would happily burn tea kettles on a regular basis.

In just a few minutes, I'll have some fine tea-sipping folk arriving at my door, possibly carrying instruments, so I must end this post here. We are going to drink tea and sit around admiring the fabulous Amaryllis flower that has utterly exploded into bloom with blossoms the size of a large hand. (I'm glad that Valerie left it behind for us to enjoy, but I hope it doesn't miss her too much).

I'm now going to put the new kettle so as to be ready for my visitors. Don't worry: this time I will watch it like a hawk!