I keep telling myself that the first time through doing some things is going to be awkward no matter what, and the sooner I get the first time over with, the better, because then I can get past the “haven’t done this before, what is going on?” stage faster and actually get good at it.
Doesn’t make it any easier, but it does motivate me more to plunge in. And whaddya know? I learn things.
I wrote this on Monday, but didn’t get online to push it up to the blog till now.
I’m feeling a disturbing lack of mojo with my computer. I still can’t type for more than 40 minutes before pain starts setting in – but even before it does, my heightened physical awareness gives me warning signs that Laptop Ergonomics Suck. Shoulders too high, monitor too small and low, keyboard wrenching my wrists inwards on two axes. This is awesome! It’s what I wanted! It’s… forcing me to change things, and that’s hard. Part of me likes my bad habits. Slumping on my bed with my laptop on my knees and hyperfocusing for hours is so easy. Physical conditioning is hard. Breaks are hard. Ergonomics are hard. Fighting myself and making a big deal out of the struggle is easy. (Yes, I know… this post is a concession of sorts.)
Making things easy is hard.
Eventually I’ll be able to go back to being subsumed in productive hyperfocus again – but with awareness and control this time. Every thing that ever came easily to me (writing, coding, hyperfocusing on math/science/tech, teaching, community-building), I’m making hard; everything I think is hard (physical conditioning, music, finances, resting) I’m making easy.
Relentlessly teaching yourself how not to be relentness is an interesting koan.
My pain tolerance is still extremely high; my pain sensitivity is dropping like a rock. My shoulders are constantly held in a dull ache. My wrists, too. My fingers don’t feel even, or strong or light; I carry tension around the sockets of my eyes, the arches of my feet, my ankles. My mind scatters too much, doesn’t prioritize, take opportunities, follow through. This is fantastic. I’m feeding the tumors so that I can see them and then excise them. Painful awareness becomes a good feeling, though no less a painful one.
You improve on what you get feedback on. I don’t need to put myself through hell to learn things; I shouldn’t wait for a beam of light to shine down from the sky. Rites of passage mark the changes you’ve already prepared yourself for; they don’t make you ready. Some growth is gradual and gentle and glorious in its mundanity. Sometimes surprises come, and they’re surprises, by definition, because I didn’t expect them, wasn’t waiting. Today the sky and an unexpected ride from Gloria. Tomorrow… who knows?
I think tomorrow will be a time to learn from people. Tomorrow I have letters to send. Tomorrow is tomorrow, though – time for today.
Just got back from giving 3 talks in 2 days at Rochester, headed to New York (update: now in New York, and it’s great to see so many friends again!)
Many thanks to RIT for sponsoring the trip, Steve Jacobs and his family for putting me up, taking me creek-wading, and totally blowing my mind on audism, Karlie Robinson and her family for stuffing us with BBQ and great company plus a tasty farmers’ market trip (also, hammocks are best used as playgrounds for 4-year-olds), and the Math4 gang for sharing their projects and learning with me and the open-source community. It was great to finally meet Fred Grose in person, too.
On my to-do list lately…
I am checking on what it would cost to make my workstation ergonomically awesome-tastic. Right now it ranges from $0 to $1500, depending on how elaborate things get (keyboard? keyboard tray? monitor mounts? piles of books propping up screens? an actual desk instead of sitting on my bed/sofa? Dumpstering for the above?) Hands improving, though – I’ve used my laptop for about 6 hours over the last 2 days, with very little discomfort (and lots of awareness of the discomfort so i stopped and checked it before it could turn into pain). Win!
In the grand tradition of not censoring myself, here’s my first response to “what do you want to be when you grow up?” in about a ~20 year timeframe. It is presented here for posterity to laugh at. I expect things will turn out just as awesome as this (if not more so), though I also expect them to be different. I’m actually working actively on making just about everything mentioned here into a reality – see how many projects you can spot…
Mel whistled as she leapt up the stairs to Maker House, unslinging the week-long travel satchel from her shoulder. The door swung open before her hand reached the doorknob, and she found her ankles partially immobilized by a blur of wriggling puppy. “Welcome back!” called James and Anchali from the living room. Dennis’s voice chimed in over the speakers; it sounded like he was in the machine shop. “Mel, we set cookies to go in when your plane landed.” They should be ready right about…” A stream of Burt Bacharach burst out over the speakers. “…now.”
The young professor reached down, picked up Erdős, and walked into the kitchen. Kora was pulling out a tray from the oven, and the entire room smelled of chocolate. “I found an old study to show Tony tomorrow,” said her CFO. “Immunized two groups for varicella, taught one group tai chi, they had higher resting levels of varicella zoster virus-specific cell-mediated immunity at the end, and it’s actually well-written.”
She washed down a mouthful of cookie with soymilk. “Too loud. Hang on a sec,” Mel said, tapping her hearing aid. She heard the Bacharach fade into the background as her device hooked up with Kora’s, streaming her colleague’s directional mics directly into her ears through a frequency-adjusted filter. Kora waited for the confirming beep before she went on. “I’ll do it before Push Hands practice since you have that gig at the Middle East – oh, don’t put the soymilk away yet, Dennis and Qing are coming up.” There was a thunderous clatter on the stairs. “GUYS! WASH YOUR HANDS FIRST!”
“We finished the swingset!” crowed Dennis as he scrubbed. “It’s up in the backyard.” “We cannibalized some of the treehouse chairs,” added Qing, “but we’re replacing them, we just waterjetted out some new seat backs.” Mel’s face lit up. “That’s awesome. I’ll go try it right now. Oh, and Bob came to my talk in Austria – he sent you some books on motor development in early childhood, they should get here tomorrow.” Qing gave an absentminded thumbs-up, occupied with simultaneously consuming 3 different cookies and 2 glasses of milk.
“Go ahead and eat them all,” Mel grinned. “I’ll make more tomorrow – it’s my nephew’s birthday, so I’ll be bringing a big box of oatmeal raisins to my cousin’s house. And by big I mean at least a gross…” “You’re going to get all those kids hopped up on sugar,” Dennis said. “That’s what aunts are for,” she replied, sweeping out of the kitchen with some cookies in her pocket.
After being mobbed by Jonas (company doing well as always, 153 new apps this week, development summit in Bangkok starts Friday, Matthias is keynoting), Sherri (don’t go in the painting room for a few hours, Tim spray-painted his truck and the aerosol smell is still airing out), Carrie (some of your old friends are dropping by for dinner before the concert tomorrow, can we erase your equations from the mat room window), Karen (did you take pictures of Flat Stanley and the Eiffel Tower for my kindergarten reading buddy, Derek packed your keyboard in the van for tomorrow so you’ll have to practice on the baby grand but remember to finish before 10 because I’ve got the GREs tomorrow and I’m sleeping early) and Mongo (woof!), Mel made it out into the Cambridge sunset and, because it seemed like fun, turned a front flip, came out into a roll, and lay on her back enjoying the cool grass under the apple tree.
She had some papers to review for the IEEE Transactions on Education and a signal processing class to prepare for tomorrow afternoon; doing both engineering and education research and teaching was exhausting, especially with her speaking schedule, but it was pretty cool. So was finally getting into push-hands tournaments. And having the open hardware auditory augmentation platform you developed for your 2nd PhD become the industry standard for personal sound-hacking (with hearing aid development as just a subset of uses to a platform as ubiquitous now as iPhones had been 20 years ago). It was still her favorite of all the companies she’d started. And the privilege of getting to fly around the world a few times every month to hear stories and learn from communities of makers and educators. At some point she should really pick up Hindi – how hard could it be as an 8th language, anyway?
When she finished her next book (a cookbook this time), she could start playing at jazz gigs every week again instead of just once a month. And her students were doing very well – her brother Jason had left a message asking if she had any EE undergrads that wanted to work at his design firm for the summer. Retirement rocked; it let her work harder on the things that really would make a difference. And anonymously fund gap year scholarships. That was one of the most fun parts. Most of her consulting work and speaking fees went to fund those scholarships and other education programs. They had insisted on putting an oil painting of her up in the library she’d built. She insisted that all her grad students be in the painting as well, with everybody wearing funny hats and assaulting the camera with foam darts. The painter was apparently having a lot of fun with this one…
Mel sat on the new swingset, rocking slowly back and forth, content to be home – at least for a while.
Proposal from Ben Fisher for aslo:
When an activity’s git repository’s “stable” branch is updated, the .xo file available for download on aslo should update too. How can this be done? Here’s his rough outline:
Thoughts? Takers?
My Catholic upbringing is showing. After writing the last post, I was reminded of a prayer that I’ve always seen as rather fuddy-duddy, but can also be filled with the urgent rhythm of youthful drumming… depending on how you read it. Goes something like this, typesetting mine; imagine a low chanting in unison on on the parenthesized words, and a pulsing bass beat, and a rough, high, almost-straining tenor. The feeling of being filled with something great that goes beyond you, and is you, and through you.
(come) holy spirit
(come) fill the hearts
(come) the hearts of your faithful
(come) kindle in them
(come) kindle the firethe fire of love
(send) forth thy spirit
(send) forth to be created
(send) forth thy spirit
(send) forth to renewto renew the earth
let us pray.o god, who did
who did instruct the hearts
the hearts of the faithful
by your light(come) grant in us
(come) by that same spiritto be truly wise
to ever rejoice(amen.)
I wonder if that’s what people feel like when they pray.
The last 24 hours have been full of good conversations, which I will be vague about now. First with my aunt, then with Melanie. Then I went to Olin for Arbitrary Hour and wound up at dinner with Yifan and Nikki, then with Hari, talking about whether universal education and healthcare are actually human rights (neither of us are entirely sure), and whether the hypothesis that you can either have control over your message or rapid proliferation of it (but not both) is actually provable or correct. Then Colin, on acoustics. Then I discovered that I’ll have to miss Sylvia’s lecture concert because of an early plane flight (but she’s taping it, so I’m ok).
When I am a professor, I will have an online presence like Matt Jadud, with reflections on the classes that my students and I co-create.
I don’t want to learn how to approach investors or apply for grants or hire people, at least not now. Money and man-hours are not magic wands; you need something to use them for, and I will figure that out first. What are the priorities and how much in the way of resources will they take? What can’t you do yourself?
There’s a difference between working on something bigger than yourself and becoming something bigger than yourself to do it. The latter way may actually be the best way to serve your cause, at times. I need to make sure I make my decisions based on what’s right, not on what I want to do. I tend to be incredibly shy and averse to any sort of publicity, so if I speak or teach something it means I really love it enough to overcome that.
The Matthew Effect. Another thing that you have to buy into to counteract. One corollary of this, as pointed out in Good Work, is that early career ascendancy gives you more of a chance to influence your primary field, and to also work outside of it – both things I enjoy doing. I’m slowly bringing myself to believe that I do deserve the ability to do great things, to try my hand at those responsibilities. That I should not stop myself, get in my own way, hold myself back. That the only way to learn how to control – and find the limits of – whatever power I might have – is to let myself use it.
It’s scary, though. I shake – I actually physically shake with fear – after doing something really well. It happens rarely. A few times a year. The times where I forget myself and lose the reins – I’m usually teaching or speaking or something – and something comes rushing through me and everything flows in a painfully acute balance and then… the muse is gone, the vessel breathless, and I’m scared to hone myself as a possible receptor for that more because it’s wonderful and what the hell is going on this scares me because I don’t understand it.
I want to open myself to being able to really serve in the way I was meant to (semi-Catholic-ish phrasing; I don’t know any other), and take whatever comes from that. I will shepherd and manage my own life and talents so that they can be used in service of Some(one/thing) Better. I’m a normal human being with a lot of flaws, and I can’t settle for anything other than the best of what I’m meant to be – and so a lifetime of Hard Things and Fears To Face awaits.
Pentecost must have been terrifying.
My cousin Melanie is on the phone with our aunt, trying to figure out the order we were born in. For future reference, here is the order and some current stats – it’s pretty neat to see how we’re growing up. I’m one of the few who can remember everyone as tiny little kids and babies crawling around huge family reunions. (“How is Megan going to college? Wasn’t I a flower girl at her mom’s wedding? Isn’t she, like, 7? Is Barby really old enough to drive?”) *
That’s just immediate cousinage on my mom’s side. There are a lot more 2nd cousins, kids of family friends, etc… and then there’s my dad’s side, which is even more complicated…
*and then I feel really old
** it is highly probable that my cousins/brother will beat me to this.
Growing up with 7 aunts and 12 cousins (and a brother) is super cool. It means I have 7 people to call and email when my parents and I have… um… “discussions.” It means 13 teenagers have someone to ask about college apps. (I went to a great high school with a wonderful academic counselor and college-bound older friends who served the same role to me, calling me from their dorm rooms to proofread my essays and suggest schools for me to look at, questions to ask.) It means we all get to be achis and ahias (big sisters and brothers – it’s a Hokkien word) to Audrey, even if we may be the little one in our immediate family. And Audrey will get to be the Big Kid for our children, probably when she’s in her late teens.
I’m lucky to have them and their crazy antics in my life.
Via DJ: why is this Haggadah different from all other Haggadahs?
If you want to hear great music this Wednesday night, go listen to Kevin’s trio. Kevin is my piano teacher, and he rocks; hearing him and Steve together is a steady stream of “stand there with jaw open… whoa, what was that sound?” moments. I didn’t know what a musical conversation sounded like until I heard those two play off each other.
As the co-creator of robotfindssharon (set in my high school dorm room, hunting for my roommate), I was happily surprised to learn that Leonard was the creator of the original robotfindskitten that inspired it. The world, she is small.
Good posture is awesome-tastic, and my hands have been dramatically improving. Many thanks to Nagle for introducing me to Esther Gokhale’s work and lending me his Feldenkrais book, and Sondy for insisting that I talk with Abi, who worked on my back for the first time today and oh man I can move my right shoulder this is so cool. Also, how did my collarbone get tight? Yeesh. And my neck feels longer now… and I’m aware of more individual muscles that need work instead of having everything buried in a morass of “well, I’m carrying tension around just about everywhere.” My shoulders were so wound up that they clickety-clacked in tight bunches. There’s plenty more to do; I’m going back.
Discovering my body and my hearing – in the same way I discovered math, physics, writing… things to explore, to play with – is a wonderful thing.
I started to reply to Bonnie’s questions about my audiogram in a comment, then realized it was stretching out to novel-length, so here goes.
The axis labels are frequency in hertz (horizontal) and hearing level in decibels (vertical) – so the horizontal axis is how high or low the sound is, and the vertical one is how loud it has to be for me to be able to hear it when I know it’s coming, and am straining to perceive it in a sound-insulated testing room. Mileage varies for less ideal conditions.
I gave some comparisons for scale on the pitchwise axis (where frequencies fall on the piano keyboard), but for the db axis, here are some back-of-the-envelopes: 0 db is the threshold of normal-people hearing, 60db is normal conversational speech, 90db is standing in front of a blender, 130db is a jet engine. That means you’d have to be playing the note 3 octaves above middle C at the volume of a jet engine for me to begin to know it’s there at all. This happens pretty often, actually; a small electronic device will let out a piercing squeal, making everyone else in the room cringe. I look up. “There’s some high-pitched noise in here, isn’t there?” Someone will hand me the offending device, and everyone in the room will flinch in (phantom?) empathy as I press it to my ear and hear a faint, faint whine (if anything at all).
Keep in mind that decibels are logarithmic too, so increasing something by 3db means doubling the loudness (so a jet engine is 130-90 = 40, 40/3 = 13.3, 2^13.3 over 8,000 times as loud in the absolute amplitude sense). They describe the amount we perceive volume increases in. It’s the mathematical version of saying “when something’s really soft, making it a tiny bit louder is a really obvious change in volume, but if it’s ridiculously loud already, a tiny volume increase will usually be imperceptible to people who are already hitting the ceiling with a broomstick trying to get you to turn it down.” Other senses (sight, etc.) work the same way.
Hearing aids make certain frequencies louder, boosting them to the decibel levels where I can perceive them (or perceive them better, anyway). For instance, flutes sound pretty faint to me, and disappear against any orchestra they’re playing in, but my hearing aids pick up their (very high) notes and make them louder in comparison to everything else, and I’ll perk up and go “…wait, there’s a melody in this part? Wicked!” Imagine playing with the equalizer on your stereo, but really fine-grained. Not just bass and treble, but a couple dozen sliders, maybe more; I’m not sure how many there actually are in a hearing aid, and may be off by orders of magnitude. Now imagine your equalizer could make frequencies really loud or soft instead of just making low notes a tiny bit more emphasized.
I’m not exactly sure what the frequency curve of mine is (but it would be fun to find out – maybe I should visit Olin for a “let’s play with equipment” visit. ;) It usually looks vaguely like the inverse of your hearing curve. Anyway. Now pack that processing, in real-time, into a package the size of your pinky finger that runs on a battery the size of a pencil eraser and has to survive being thrown, covered with sweat, across the room by an exasperated 9-year-old whose ears are getting itchy after running a mile with little hard plastic plugs filling them. This is why hearing aids are so expensive.
It does not work perfectly. Imagine that all the sounds you ever heard were played to you as a lossily compressed mp3. It’s why I always said no to the idea of a cochlear implant (so far, anyway) and usually don’t wear my hearing aids. I’d rather have a few things sound good than a lot of things sound crappy. Also, I’m used to what things sound like without them at this point, and struggle to interpret the morass of high sounds when I put my hearing aids on – it’s like adding more noise. I’ll usually put them on when I specifically want to be aware of something in that frequency range – most often listening to music.
One of the things I have been musing about is taking some classes on audio engineering – as in music recording, mixing, mastering, that kind of thing, and learning how to listen to sounds and a vocabulary (and a world to talk with in non-clinical terms) to describe them to others. Not sure if this would be setting myself up for a lot of undue pain. But then again, that’s what masochists are good at.
