Archive for April, 2009
Read book on neurophysiology of music (yes, another one). Realized for the first time – as in actually realized, not just idly mathematically computing it but really understanding what it meant - that I can hear less than 10% of what most people can*. This was a jolt, to make a massive understatment. I spent an entire train ride re-looking up numbers and doing addition and multiplication to make sure my arithmetic was not somehow wrong.
*frequency-wise. Thankfully, perception is on a log scale. So it’s not so bad. Somewhere between 20%-50% depending on how you count, if you go on the log scale.
The human hearing range is approximately 20-20,000 Hz. Mine is something like 20-2,000 Hz. Kinda.
I’ve looked at this picture before and never really cared. I have looked at the piano keyboard before and cared a lot that…
- around 1 octave above middle C things start getting softer
- 1.5 octaves above middle C they’re soft enough I have to concentrate to hear them
- by the time you reach 2.5 octaves above middle C, I can no longer distinguish between pitches
- around 3 octaves above middle C, I can’t hear anything except the clicking of a key being pressed down
These are things I’ve known for years while playing music. Things I’ve had to work around, things that caused terror when playing high right-hand runs in competition pieces. It never really occurred to me to connect the two before (I don’t know why), but they match up. Terrifyingly well.
- around 1 octave above middle C = around 520 Hz, which is the same point where my audiogram starts declining
- 1.5 octaves above middle C = 740 Hz, where it crosses the halfway mark (as in “most people percieve sounds at this frequency twice as loudly as I do”)
- 2.5 octaves above middle C = 1400Hz, and it’s worth noting that between 6,000-20,000 Hz is the “I hear a really high sound, but can’t distinguish pitch” range for most normal-hearing people.
- around 3 octaves above middle C = 2000 Hz, about where I start bottoming out (for all reasonable intents and purposes, if your audiogram goes down there, you’re essentially deaf in those frequencies).
I’m not sure why this makes me scared, but it does. Were I much more panicky, I might be running around screaming “Aaaah! AAAH! My ears are broken!!!” but… I’m more just stunned and shaken. Which makes no sense, because I’ve known since I was 4 (and grown-ups told me) that… well, of course I don’t hear stuff. Duh. But this seems like… the value of $stuff is far – orders of magnitude – higher than I’d thought. For 17 years.
This may explain some of the looks I’ve gotten from audiologists. And the conversation one of my teachers had with me after meeting my audiologist for the first time (in an IEP meeting the previous night I hadn’t been allowed to go to). It went something like this:
Teacher (very, very paraphrased): I met your audiologist last night and they explained your hearing loss to me and we listened to a tape of what you hear…
Me: There’s a tape of what I hear? Cool! Can I listen to it?
Teacher: …and I was amazed at how… I mean, you handle… when I first met you I couldn’t tell… How do you…
Me (confused): Well, this sounds normal for me, I don’t really… handle it, it’s…
Teacher: Anyway, I just – it’s amazing.
Me (very confused): Thank you?
Bell: *ring*
Two pieces of my world have just exploded into context with each other. I’m scared. And excited. And very, very curious. And terrified.
TRAIPSING ACROSS MINEFIELDS HERE I COME
Saturday, April 18th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
I’ve rediscovered books. And that my reading speed has slowed to a crawl compared to what I remember going through when I was 10, 12, 14. To be fair, I’m probably reading more difficult things now, but Gone With The Wind and The Lord Of The Rings and The Origin Of Speciesweren’t exactly primers – I think the difference is that I now read more things that lead me outside the edge of how I’ve trained myself to think, so I pause more to let stuff sink in.
It means I can maybe read 3-5 books a day (or 1, if that book is thicker than my fist, a math book, or not in my native language) instead of… I used to go through 2-3 times that amount every day after school. Okay, most of them were fantasy/sci-fi, not the nonfiction I’m reading now. But. Still.
Today’s selection (partial – I started a few more books but these were the ones I finished):
Read book on traditional Japanese budo as seen through eyes of American who has spent all his (long) adult life studying it (occasionally in Japan). Learning about how to write to bridge two worlds – one you come from and whose language is your native tongue, and another one you’ve mastered.
Read book by Edward Deci on the psychology of motivation and the importance of autonomy and supporting it in others. Struck by passage explaining that constant happiness was not the goal, but the full range of human emotions was. The goal is experiencing emotions (including anger and sadness and other not-happy things) and being able to choose your reaction to the situation, with emotions as one of many inputs to this decision. Not being able to push down those emotions. Which I do easily and well, because I can (and have been) a minefield of fury when I’m things other than happy. That’s the flip side of me having the ability to make myself happy basically all the time – that’s why it evolved a long, long time ago.
Next, one of the books I didn’t finish, but which knocked me for a loop.
Friday, April 17th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I’ve decided to wait for my next trip to Chicago (May 1st) to try Dragon Naturally Speaking on my parents’ desktop, since I need an oracle to tell me how it’s supposed to act before I try to kludge it into working. (Or buy a Windows desktop. But I’m trying to avoid that.)
I’ve also decided that since my Dreamhost plan runs out this weekend and my “I’d like to learn to be a better sysadmin” desire has stalled for lack of Real Work To Do, I’m switching to either Slicehost or Linode and adminning my own virtual server. My skills in this department can be best described as “I can understand, learn, and carry out pre-programmed instructions in response to pre-programmed situations, but can’t write the programs myself.” Maybe an advanced beginner by Dreyfus standards.
This should be entertaining. (And a very good excuse for me to finally read through a stack of O’Reilly books I’ve been meaning to work on for… years.)
Another complication is that I’d also like to have a whonkin’ big chunk of disk space for my backup git repositories. I’m still trying to find and portion out the files I actually want to keep – they’re scattered in a bunch of redundant places, but when that’s done, I’m making plans to move my digital life to VCS. Which can’t be on Slicehost or Linode if I ever want to buy groceries again. Maybe I should keep Dreamhost for that. Or it might be cheaper to put those on NearlyFreeSpeech. I wonder what the best arrangement is – I think I’m going to need to poke some sysadmin friends and ask for help with calculations and drawing up a list of things to do and learn about.
Henry and I discovered that we both want to work through K&R. I told him that’s for when my wrists get better, but it is on the horizon. More incentive for me to exercise and understand my body so I can use the computer again without getting hurt. Less computer use isn’t the solution. Proper computer use is (…which, honestly, probably includes less computer use, at least compared to my occasional* “I just realized I have gone 20 hours without moving” marathons of hyperfocus).
*very occasional. Before things started hurting, though, I estimate I was on my laptop for an average of 12-14 hours a day.
Friday, April 17th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was run through the apartment opening windows and doors to let the smell of sunshine in. Then I washed everything laundromat-cleanable in the house except for the kitchen floormat (which I think is machine-washable, but… I’ll try that later). Then I grabbed my notebook and sat in the grass at Piers Park drinking coconut juice and noticing how translucently pale my legs have gone.
Last time I did that I was sitting in Salamanca Square in Hobart, marveling at the unfamiliar daystar, eating berries, unwinding my frazzled, work-stressed, burnt-out self with the help of many friends in Australia and New Zealand. This time it had a deeper sort of patina. Now that there isn’t a ton of immediate-event stress-tension to release, it’s more of a gradual unfolding, pulling out things I’ve ignored or pushed back or been oblivious to for years.
Such as my shoulders actually becoming slightly mobile (I think I’m going to have to go for a massage to get them to be any better at the moment). Such as discovering the section in the Boston Public Library with books on hearing loss and kids and education, and being shocked, riffling through a few of them, to find that I had to actually stick my non-book-holding hand in my pocket to keep it from further stabbing a middle finger in its direction, and that it took a few seconds to realize that I was quietly chanting “Oh, f— you” under my breath. (I know the folks who wrote them were trying to help kids, and that they probably did a lot of good for them, and that those books aren’t talking about me per se, but… but… they are. Why do I still have such violent trigger points for this?) Such as catching myself eating something when I wasn’t hungry, and realizing that some of my food choices are actually habits I dislike and wouldn’t do if I was aware of what I was eating all the time (new rule: no reading non-food-related things while eating), and looking for ways to give away my remaining Easy Mac.
Got back to the laundromat (“laundrymat,” the doorway sign says) in time to pull a soft, warm, fuzzy yellow blanket from the dryer; it felt like being hugged by millions of chicks at once, except less ticklish than I’d imagine that sensation to be.
Happy 83rd birthday to my Guama (my grandma on my mom’s side). It sounds like everyone is having fun in Seattle (unless you’re all still in Canada). I wish I were there. Extended families rock.
Friday, April 17th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Gentle early wake-up, exercising and stretching out on a sunny wooden floor, feeling my shoulders loosen their clench, my hip muscles release; drenching off sweat in a hot shower, pulling on clean soft clothes, reading a psychology book and then one on the history of Japanese martial arts, a sunny bikeride with newly pumped-up wheels. Warm sushi rice. Stitching together 3 different mental maps of how to navigate sub-areas of Boston; totally nailing my new song’s chord progressions and finally, finally feeling fluency creep into improvising, thin thought bridges forming between the mathematical and auditory and kinesthetic islands of how I approach a keyboard. I’m starting to be able to be more than just a robot.
This week I’ve got another new song, Gillepsie’s “Groovin’ High.” Usually it takes a few lessons before I’m ready for a new song, but I’ve started to get into a regular practice groove and the learning’s coming easier; the world of jazz piano isn’t quite as undifferentiatedly baffling. I still don’t speak the language, but the syllables are no longer painfully foreign to listen to). I think I’ve learned how to learn jazz pieces now, at least enough that I can look at other things for a bit while I plateau on this. Kevin pointed out a turnaround in “For All We Know” I’d missed, got me to play a 3-against-4 rhythm (I keep thinking that piece is in 3/4 time anyway, even if I play it in 4/4) and listen to my left hand answering the right. I have a tendency to need to play more sparsely – I try to cram too many thoughts and techniques in parallel and none of them get through. I’m starting to be able to listen to myself do these things.
We played with the sound of a dominant major plus the major of its tritone; I need to practice resolving diminished chords in different keys. Eb major no longer scares me; I find myself transposing sheet music – haltingly, sure, but being able to transpose it on the fly at all is something I’d never done before. And this week I’m working on getting comfortable with nines and flat nines (a C major 9 chord is C, E, G, Bb, and then the D above the Bb; a flat 9 is the Db) in all the different keys, since I can feel out 7s now; I can hear the chord in my head and my hands just find the notes. This as opposed to several months ago, where I was “Um… that would… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7… but then a half-step down and whoa that sounds really weird did I really play that right? Math math math math math… yes, I guess that’s actually right.” I can play it without the math. There’s a tiny sprout of musical intuition finally creeping into my brain.
Making sushi. Golliwog’s Cakewalk. Garbanzo chocolate cake, banana (ripe), unsweetened soy milk. Work, dreaming.
Another day like this tomorrow. Life is good.
Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | Uncategorized, music | No Comments »
Ok, that’s it. I can’t handle having my laptop in my apartment yet. The temptation to type (o glorious productivity) is too great. Back to pika you go.
I have at least been able to hold to my MWF email moratorium…
Dragon Naturally Speaking is having some interesting issues with wine that I don’t understand. I need to use it on a Windows computer and see what it’s supposed to work like before I try again, I think. Either that or find someone with wine experience to sit down and help me.
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
I. Am. GOING. I have no idea how, or how I will afford this (my savings, they run low… yea, I doth needeth income streams sometime in the next 6 months) but… actually, this is a great catch: I can’t pay for my planefare with my savings. I have to find a way to earn my way there.
I still can’t get over the fact that people do this for a living. Oh man oh man oh man oh man.
I’d also love to go to oscon, but it’s really, really, really expensive and maybe I should… regain the ability to type first so I can get back to doing community work.
Well. Wait, hang on. Idiot. Stop falling back to thinking of yourself as a small child pretending to play grown-up and start thinking of yourself as a young professional – a self-taught journeyman still looking for someone to prentice under*, and someone who has done and can do pretty awesome things already.
*I know that’s backwards. I’m at the point where I don’t need school for this… I need to watch the masters so that I’ll gradually get a sense of what questions to ask of them and myself. I need more exposure, more data from this world.**
**I need to go and take care of my body now so I have the physical capacity to participate in it. Hello, painful hands. I’ll stop now.
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
…yeah, I never thought I’d say that either. And yes, when I pull this off it’ll be a great example of improbable mastery… my family has long joked that my brother will have to support my starry-eyed idealism when we’re both grown up.
But I never want to be financially dependent on anyone else. I want to live simply – hey, having my own room and a bed (not a dorm loft or a futon) and a keyboard is an incredible luxury – and I want to always have the great sense of abundance I’ve enjoyed for the last 2 years (thank you, gap year savings! thank you, scholarships that made gap year savings possible!) and to be able to make decisions about my life based on critera other than “AAAH I need money now.” And if I figure this out, I’ll be able to help other people do it too.
I’m not in a bad position. I’m young (22) and trained well enough to be an apprentice in a skilled trade I enjoy (engineering… and associated fields like community facilitation); I have non-negative assets (no debt, some savings), the ability to write (which I am looking to work on more seriously) and manage (learning!) and the whole darn world and my life ahead of me. I’ve also already started. I just have to remind myself to keep on going every so often.
This is another spiral learning thing for me; I’ve been trying to work this thread into Mel-as-a-person for years and years, and I think it may have finally gotten a scratch through the wax coating that has made anything money related roll off me like the proverbial duck’s back relationship to H2O. (It still does. When I make progress on things that are unnatural to me, I do it verrrry slowly, with tons of backsliding along the way.)
How do you find a good financial coach?
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
My laptop is back in my apartment and I’m doing email 3 times a week (MWF). I can type for 45 minutes on my laptop keyboard without pain!
I have now been typing for an hour… that’s all the computer I’m getting for the night.
Monday, April 13th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I have health insurance, and my taxes will be totally filed tomorrow after I pay BoA $6 to make me out a bank check. Yeah, I ordered checks too… I’ve just never needed paper ones enough before, but it’s becoming a more frequent occurrence now. Somehow I feel like a more competent adult now that those two are taken care of.
Next project is a clean apartment. Chris is pretty much done moving out, and now the apartment has no furniture except my bed, folding chairs, and a couch (yep… tables, not so much) and an empty bedroom with a hardwood floor and an actual paint job, as my room looks like someone rubbed white-out on the walls and carpet with newsprint for about 10 minutes before giving up.
I’m continuing to steadily read through my piles of books since I’m determined to reduce them by 50% before I move. Or fit them in one bookshelf, anyway. There will be some tough partings coming up… I’ll be much freer afterwards.
Oh, yes. And the job thing. Working on that one too. ;) The laptop-at-pika experiment has worked out quite well; I think I should be able to trust myself after this weekend to take it home a day or two a week as needed. Possibly. My fingers don’t hurt sooner or more, I think – but I am more conscious of them hurting sooner (lower threshold of pain awareness… but not tolerance, mind you!) and more conscious of my posture and the way I use my muscles to type, so… awesome.
Things I may get, if budgeting allows (though I’m trying like heck not to spend money, basically): a scanner/printer/copier, speakers, a microsoft natural keyboard, a cheap big folding table. Tables are… kind of important, I’ve learned after several days of eating off chairs while squatting on the ground.
My OSS community work has mostly slowed to a standstill due to lack of ability to go on IRC and respond to emails. This blog is most of what I type on, by way of trying to let people know why I’m not typing other things (and also for me to sort my mind out a bit). I miss it, and can’t wait to get back to it – though I also think this sabbatical of sorts is great for my growth, since I have to constantly explain “what I do*” to people who aren’t already in the OSS world.
*when not injured
Message backlog is piling up. That’s okay. I’m also learning to deal with my perfectionism effectively. ;) And this makes me appreciate the ability to get in touch with people so much more – I did take it for granted.
Cool.
Ok. The distal side of my right hand, wrist, and forearm disagree with me today. Signing off.
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
