Franklin Chen's grain of sand

Saying No in order to say Yes

2012-02-23T20:23:00-05:00

Lately I’ve been having to say “No” a lot to events and activities that appeal to me, in order to make room for “Yes”. Time and energy are finite for us every day and every week, and our desires are inexhaustible.

Last year, I wrote a post about how I use my time. A lot has changed since then, with various rebalancings.

Music

Listening to music

I still do not listen to music much, but I do more of it now than I did last year. I still minimize listening to recorded music (lately I listen to specific music that I am playing myself or attempting to), preferring to listen to live music where I don’t even know the program in advance. In particular, I’ve found it very stimulating to attend more Carnegie Mellon School of Music Convocations, which are targeted toward music students. One of my earliest blog posts was about going to a special convocation featuring Byron Janis. I’ve been to some others since then.

The group Flute Force was here about a month ago for a convocation and of course I had to go, given how I’d gotten serious about playing flute. They gave a nice concert of a variety of music, all of which was unfamiliar to me and stimulating.

Today I went to a rather moving and thought-provoking presentation and performance by the violinist Sangeet-Richard Downs, who was a CMU graduate. (I will write a blog post later about him and his message that completely resonates with me.)

There was a “conventional” concert last Saturday by the Carnegie Mellon Chamber Orchestra that I was planning to take Abby to, and had already obtained tickets for, but this was an example of my saying “No” in order to say “Yes”: we decided instead to do French dancing. And there is no doubt we made the right decision.

Playing instruments

Lately, I’ve said “No” to practicing any musical instrument other than the modern flute. I no longer practice the recorder, and have had to say “No” to the Friday evening gatherings that last year I was rather enjoying, and had led to my performing at Phipps Conservatory. I told the recorder gang that I was going to return to recorder after my April 15 orchestra concert. This is an example of “No” meaning not “never again” but simply “not now”.

Also, just today, Abby said the woman who lent us an accordion for me to try out in case I wanted to buy it and take accordion needed to know whether we were buying it. Since I have barely touched accordion all these months, and will not be doing so for probably another half year at least, I said “No”, I am not prepared to buy it now. In the past I have bought stuff to use “sometime”, and this has only caused clutter. (Yes, we are still incrementally decluttering, getting rid of stuff we don’t use. Just yesterday, I decided to throw away the remainder of my trophy and medal collections that no longer mean anything, except that I am still saving one trophy, from my winning the Pittsburgh Chess Club Championship some years ago; I’m thinking of giving it back to the club so that they can remove my name plate and reuse it.)

Dancing

One big change since last year is that Abby and I have gotten back into dancing again. Saying “Yes” to dancing has, of course, meant saying “No” to other things. For example, this year I have approximately halved my former blog output. I also reduced my Web reading.

Meditation

Last year, I didn’t have a daily meditation practice. Now I do. Just ten minutes a day in the morning, but it makes a difference. Saying “Yes” to meditation meant saying “No” to obsessively checking email and the like upon getting out of bed.

Computer usage and reading books

A final tradeoff to mention is that my new habit of getting off the computer earlier in the evening, well before sleeping, has led me to do more paper book reading. Saying “Yes” to reading more books has been a good thing. I plan to start writing up reviews of the books I’ve been reading.

Conclusion

“No” doesn’t just mean deprivation. It means making room for “Yes” too.

What have you happily said “No” to that you wanted to do this year but decided not to do?

Flute progress after one month in orchestra: still hanging in there

2012-02-22T20:19:00-05:00

It was exactly one month ago, January 22, when I joined the Carnegie Mellon All-University Orchestra.

Another week has gone by, and what I thought might be a day of reckoning has come and gone, and I am still playing the flute in the CMU AUO and have not dropped out!

Here is a sample of the hardest music from Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story” that I’m still struggling to play correctly, cleanly, and in tempo:

It is not very visible from my photos, but I have a huge number of pencil markings on my copy of the score.

The story as of now:

Practice in the past week

Getting down the basics

Last Wednesday, I continued with focusing purely on improving technique with the Rubank method book. I did not even look at the Gershwin or Bernstein music for orchestra. I simply recognize that I have to focus on making fundamental progress in technique and trust that this will enable me to actually play the hard music at hand.

I have not written much about this strategy, but I feel that it is effective and that many amateurs do not practice or pursue their various life activities with this discipline, and therefore fall short of reaching their potential. And then typically, we amateurs make excuses, blaming lack of talent or lack of time for our slow progress or quick plateau at a mediocre level.

There is something in the general culture that encourages immediate gratification at the expense of true craft. Yes, it is true that we cannot give our all toward our hobbies, the way we might for what we consider our jobs, but at the same time, if you add up the number of hours we spend at our hobbies, they actually do add up, and we might as well have made them count efficiently.

For me to attack the hard passages of music prematurely without building up technique would be analogous to the following:

never running before but aiming to run a marathon in four months, and jumping straight into trying to run 15 miles
being a non-programmer and wanting to create a cool Web site in a month, but trying to read a book like “Learn Web Programming in 7 Days” and not really mastering concepts such as variables and functions
never having cooked but deciding to make a really fancy and subtle French dish without mastering the basics of knife usage or the properties of butter

People like shortcuts. But they usually do not succeed, and even if they do, don’t provide a sustainable path of growth.

My real goal isn’t just to survive playing in an orchestra concert. That’s actually just an incentive for my real goal, which is to improve my overall technique, so that I can continue to play music in any genre, any ensemble, as I wish.

An off day

That said, the next day, Thursday, I was feeling tired and unmotivated for practice. This happens sometimes. In fact, typically it happens once a week. I’m human. I can’t magically improve a huge amount every single day. Sometimes I’m tired. Sometimes I backslide, and notes come out jumbled, slow, etc.

This, too, is a part of life. I’ve found the hard way that it’s never best to just push through and waste time and emotional energy. Overtraining doesn’t help. Sometimes it is best to just take a break. I generally prefer to take an active break.

For example, on Thursday I decided to put away the technique practice, which was not going well, and instead have fun sight-reading a bunch of music I had gotten out of the library earlier. I played around sight-reading transcribed opera arias from Puccini (I secretly love singing them in Italian even though I’m not a soprano or female!), transcriptions from Debussy’s piano music (I want to play the original piano pieces some day), and a World Music Cuba album. It was a lot of fun playing real, lyrical music. I especially liked playing the Cuban music, since I always dreamed about doing that back when I was dancing salsa, rumba, cha cha, and bolero (I also have a goal of seriously singing this genre of music).

Note: eventually I would like to actually practice some of these music arrangements seriously.

Continued practice

Friday and Saturday I was back doing technique, and Saturday I finally hit the CMU AUO music again. I noticed that I was playing the high notes on the flute better. Also, of course, I improved my speed and facility at many scales, but I won’t bore with listing metronome numbers to indicate my progress.

Sunday’s orchestra rehearsal

Sectional for woodwinds

I arrived at 6:30 PM on Sunday for the woodwind sectional, but only one other person was there! People were running late, apparently. I was concerned when only three flutes (plus piccolo) showed up: did we lose another flute? (Later in the full rehearsal, two others joined us.)

It turned out that in the woodwind sectional, collectively we were still struggling, and therefore I was not as out of place as I had feared I might be. It was a very useful rehearsal, in which many different instruments’ parts started falling in place. It was at this point that I realized that I was having trouble not only because of my own problems but also because other peoples’ problems were affecting me. I was having trouble coming in at the right time in many places not only because I was counting badly (although I’ve been working steadily at improving my counting) but also because so many other lines were not coming in at the right place either, so I could not rely on listening to others as a way of finding my place. Anyway, we made huge progress in some very difficult music. I actually believe, for the first time, that we might be able to get this stuff working for the concert.

Full rehearsal

Maria kept on being disappointed in the full rehearsal, asking if we had actually listened to the music, because we were still having so much trouble. (Actually, I have the music and listen to the whole thing at least once every other day.) Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that so many of us were still unprepared, because it enabled me to not be completely left behind, as we kept the tempos still on the slow side.

Even so, there were sections in which I simply was unable to keep up. I feel that I really need to master most of them by next rehearsal.

This week’s practice

My practice this week so far since the rehearsal has been good. I’m still focusing on building technique.

On Monday, I made significant improvements in my high notes with scales. I worked some with the Bernstein.

On Tuesday, I continued Rubank, and went back to some real basics, playing long tones, working on control of dynamics, and relaxation. I did not touch orchestra music at all.

Today, I did an abbreviated Rubank practice, then launched into much work on the Bernstein, to make things faster. As I do once or twice a week, I included a “test” for myself in which I played through all the problematic sections of the piece along with an actual recording. I’m doing much, much better now. There is still hope that I might be able to play most of the piece at full speed by Sunday.

A look back to three months ago

It is amusing to look back to what I was still having trouble playing, as a flute beginner, three months ago. I was just starting to work through a collection of “easy flute classics”:

Compare these simple, slow scores with the Bernstein excerpts in the photos at the beginning of this blog post!

Recorder

Needless to say, I’ve completely put away my recorders. I did go to the monthly meeting of the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Recorder Society on Sunday to play, but that is all I will do with recorder until after the April orchestra concert. I would like to get serious about recorder again for late spring and summer.

Interestingly, I felt I was automatically slightly better at playing recorder even without touching it for a month. It’s the cross-training effect. Music is music, whichever instrument you’re playing: breath control, tone awareness, flexibility of fingers, etc. Even if I did sometimes forget my fingerings.

Conclusion

I’m still enjoying improving at flute and slowly getting closer to being able to play the second flute part of the Bernstein in its entirety. I get less and less panicky about being in the orchestra as I “catch up” according to plan.

Pittsburgh Java Users Group: Get Going with Git on Java Projects

2012-02-21T20:34:00-05:00

Tonight the Pittsburgh Java Users Group (PittJUG[http://franklinchen.com/blog/categories/pittjug/]) had another meeting at the Pittsburgh Technology Council. Matthew McCullough of GitHub gave a talk “Get Going with Git on Java Projects”.

I arrived early and couldn’t help admiring the view outside before entering the building as there was still daylight. Here are the Birmingham Bridge and the Monongahela River:

I had a good time tonight.

Social time

PittJUG meetings are advertised as starting at 5:30 PM, although the talk starts at 6:00. These days I always try to get there by 5:30 in order to get a good seat, settle in, and eat pizza and socialize, and that’s what I did today.

The talk

Matthew McCullough gave an energetic and clear presentation on some fundamentals of Git. There were good questions from the audience throughout, and he answered them well.

The title of the talk was, I suppose, inaccurate, because there was not much that was Java-specific. It was more of a general introduction to Git. He is going to be doing GitHub’s Git Foundations Workshop tomorrow, covering much more of Git and details of Java environments. I am not attending this workshop, but based on his introductory presentation today, I’m sure it will be great.

I’m not sure how to summarize his talk, since I came to it already having spent quite a bit of time learning and understanding Git from various sources, including working through many tutorials, reading excellent Web references and other books, and actually using it on a daily basis for some time now.

My learning style

I am definitely not yet an “expert” at Git (I have done some interactive rebasing, but nothing more complicated than that), so I felt it would be very useful to get an integrated personal view of what is important about Git and why, and Matthew was great at telling a story with his own words and emphases and personal anecdotes, such as moving Groovy over from Subversion to Git. I did end up taking quite a few notes even though I already “knew” most of what he talked about, because I liked various tips or analogies that he made. I find it highly valuable to get different narratives whenever deepening my understanding of something; in school and outside of school, I have always read multiple books in parallel, finding myself some book other than the “official” one, in order to broaden my perspective and as a robustness/redundancy measure, in case (as always happens), one source is flawed or confusing in some section.

Conclusion

I enjoyed this PittJUG meeting and am motivated to continue to improve my understanding and use of Git. Actually, at work I am about to transition a legacy Subversion repository to Git. I expect we will get a lot of benefits from this transition, and I will report on the results after I effect the transition and observe how everyone operates under the new system.

Enjoying more French dancing in Pittsburgh

2012-02-20T01:03:00-05:00

A month ago I reported on how Abby and I had our first experience of French traditional dance. On Saturday, we went again to Skibo Gym at Carnegie Mellon University for another fun session of French dancing from 4:00 to 7:00 PM.

We had a great time again, and afterwards joined the instructors and some other people in having dinner at Gullifty’s.

Attendance

In addition to some familiar faces, there were many new people we hadn’t met before, and I got my office mate John to go too. Abby and I learned some dances that were not taught the last time, and we got to do more of the dances we had learned the last time.

The male-female ratio was not so great this time: it would be nice to have more men attend these workshops and dances! If you are male and interested in learning French dance, come next month!

3-count bourrée

Last month, we had learned the 2-count bourrée, but this month we also added the 3-count. That’s really fast and was a real workout!

Dances from last time

We went over the dances from last time also. Since they were no longer new to me, I felt freer to feel the music more and make the most of enjoying the dances.

For example, in a very simple circle dance, I felt like lifting my body up when we swung our arms upward, and letting my body bend naturally to the “1-2-3, down” movement. Otherwise, just stepping endlessly like a rigid robot was getting quite boring.

Last time, I was rather stiff and clumsy at the Schottische, waltz, and mazurka, because I was out of practice in these turning dances. This time I got more into the swing of things and remembered the fun I had doing ballroom dancing over ten years ago.

There were two other circle dances from last time that we did again. I really enjoy these partner switching dances. Again, since I knew the moves already, I felt freer to improve my technique and personal expression.

Social dancing

A familiar musician, Donna Isaac, played fiddle for us, with Gregory on his Irish flute again. I liked the different texture from last month’s piano and flute, but I have to confess that missing a bass line made the music harder to dance to. In fact, I ended up starting to hum my own bass line to fill in the harmonies to feel less of a musical omission and help my rhythm while dancing!

Again I thank everyone who was at the workshop and dance. It was a great group. I am so happy to be dancing again. I had put it aside for a couple of years after Abby and I got married, but now I envision our making it a regular part of our lives again!

(Sorry, I took no photos or videos this time. I spent the whole time immersed in dancing!)

Dinner at Gullifty’s

Since people were talking about going to dinner afterwards, and this time Abby and I did not leave the dance early before it ended, we ended up joining six others for dinner. We helped pack stuff up and drove home and walked to Gullifty’s. I hadn’t been there in at least ten years. It’s not my favorite idea of food, but I made the most of it.

I ordered a “pierogie burger” for dinner. Only in Pittsburgh, ha! It was actually pretty good. It was a burger that had pierogies on top, all encased in a bun. It came with a pickle and fries. Not the kind of food I usually eat, but “cheating” once in a while is fun.

Of course, we “had” to have dessert. Gullifty’s is “famous” for desserts. Abby and I had reservations about continuing our “cheating” to desserts, but what the heck, we shared a triple chocolate cake. Unfortunately, we got a huge chunk of cake, as the waitress explained that it was the end of the cake so we got probably twice as much as we would ordinarily have received. We ate the whole thing, but I ended up feeling quite sugared out and bloated. That’s the punishment for “cheating” way too much.

Blues and other dancing

People at dinner were talking about needing to take a nap afterwards and then going to a blues dance at midnight. That’s very late for Abby and me to be dancing! We’ve never done blues dancing before but are interested in trying it out sometime (but not if it’s too late at night).

The dinner gang was also into Lindy hop. I did a little bit of Lindy and swing a decade ago, but never got much into it. Maybe Abby and I should check that out too. I know there’s a lot of it here in Pittsburgh. In the past, I’ve gone to Swing City. There’s the Edgewood Club also.

I’m kind of interested in Chicken Swing because it meets right at Carnegie Mellon.

And there’s West Coast swing in town too, at Absolute Ballroom.

Conclusion

It was a lot of fun dancing with Abby more again, and also with other people, and hanging out at dinner. I am not a dance maniac any more, and time is limited, but I am excited about continuing with Abby to further explore dances we haven’t done much of before. It’s great exercise and great socializing!

Why I have not posted many photos or videos recently: exploitation?

2012-02-19T23:03:00-05:00

When I started blogging, I did so with the idea that I should probably include a relevant photo or video with each blog post. I never really adhered to that idea, but it was put into my head because I had read that readers really like photos. And indeed, I personally like to see relevant and original photos accompanying other people’s blog posts. (I do get annoyed by photos that are stock photos, or sensationalist irrelevant photos (of celebrities or such) that seem designed to draw traffic.)

I have not taken many photos or videos recently. Why? I am faced with a kind of moral dilemma I have not quite resolved.

Being present or distracted?

A while ago, a friend of mine (who is into photography) and I were discussing the nature of social media, and said he once had a blog on which he had put up cool photos (in fact, I remembered reading it years ago and enjoying his photos). But he observed that the desire to capture and post cool photos led to the phenomenon of no longer being fully present in his life experiences. And he didn’t like that. He would be in a restaurant or in nature and focus on getting a good photo rather than on enjoying the food or the view.

Social gamesmanship?

Even worse, he would think about how people reading his blog might praise his photos.

I suppose that all of us who deliberately choose have a public presence, through music, writing, or other means, sometimes face the question of why we do what we do. Friedrich Nietzsche famously said:

Poets treat their experiences shamelessly; they exploit them.

We all know that we “exploit” our experiences; we learn from them, we share them. There is nothing wrong with that, and in fact, it is a virtue to share our experiences.

But what if we deliberately have or report an experience just to show off? I don’t like that. I think I do this rarely, but the availability of technology seems to make it much easier to disrupt our “natural” lives, in which we simply have experiences, rather than deliberately capture them at the very moment in high fidelity (through cameras or smartphones or the like).

Go by feel

I can’t codify when I feel “comfortable” about taking a photo or not, but I’ve been going by feel and defaulting to not taking a photo if I have the slightest twinge of uncertainty.

Overall, I think the more I am an unseen observer, the more likely I am to feel OK about taking a photo. The more I am a participant (as in small social gatherings), the less I want to break the flow of my experience and possibly violate the spirit of the moment. So I just don’t take photos any more when going out to eat with other people, for example.

Recently I tried to put my finger on why I feel weird about Pinterest. I think I only realized today, while thinking about photography, that Pinterest represents in its purest form what I want to avoid. Maybe I will change my mind, but for now, I still have not put anything up on Pinterest, nor do I have an interest in doing so.

Conclusion

I’m not sure what the repercussions are, for my blog, of my relative reluctance to take a lot more photos and videos that I could. I suppose I have implicitly effected a compromise between the quality of my personal life and the entertainment value of my blog.

Do you think there is anything to my rambling thoughts? What are your own personal rules or intuitions about when it is appropriate and enjoyable to take photos and upload them to share a story?

Pinterest confuses me

2012-02-15T21:09:00-05:00

At some point some months ago I signed up for Pinterest, just because. I never used my account, but have been receiving notifications that people are following me. I presume this is happening through Facebook or Twitter contact lists. I have still never used my account. I have not yet looked at a single item on Pinterest, nor have I posted anything. So I am baffled by the Pinterest phenomenon.

I suppose this reflects my general disinterest in visual objects. I’m not particularly interested in art, for example, or photography. I do not customize my computer Desktop, and I do not put up posters or paintings or any other decorations at home or at work. I accept all the default colors of every computer program I use. I wear only a few basic colors of clothing, and am completely uninterested in clothing style. I don’t really care what color my car is or what its shape is; to me a car is just an abstract data type that has properties such as efficiency, safety, and methods such as “drive” and “park”.

When I’m outside, I like best to look at what are not discrete objects. I love looking at the sky, at clouds, at an entire line of forest. I like to see sand on a beach, and the waves, the curvature of the horizon. I like even more to close my eyes and hear the wind, hear the water, hear the birds. I like to close my eyes when listening to music intently at a concert.

I wonder how many people are like me and don’t take to Pinterest at all. Just curious.

Flute progress report: day of reckoning approaches

2012-02-14T20:47:00-05:00

Two weeks ago, I wrote about joining the Carnegie Mellon All-University Orchestra, the first orchestra I have ever been in. I wrote of my terror as I realized that as a total beginner at flute, I was basically unable to play any of the music handed out.

I decided to work very hard at improving my flute skills to see whether I could get good enough in time to make it to the April 15 concert in respectable shape. I believe this is the most ambitious goal I have ever set for myself in my entire life. Not because it is the hardest goal to achieve, but because of the time pressure involved. If I were given eight months, I would say, yes, I can do it; it took me eight months to start playing the recorder and then be sufficiently skilled (at merely an intermediate level) to play easy music in a concert. But two months is another story.

Furthermore, the day of reckoning is not April 15. I feel it is next Sunday.

A day of reckoning

More precisely, next Sunday is the first day on which I might be in a lot of trouble if I can’t reach a certain level. The woodwind section will have a sectional before the main rehearsal to iron out our special problems. All of us flutes will be pretty naked at the sectional. I know where I’m still falling short.

Good news

The good news is that I have made huge progress in the past two weeks. Whereas two weeks ago I classified myself as a “beginner”, now I would classify myself as an “advanced beginner”.

There have been exciting days during which I made a lot of progress and bad days during which I felt that I made little progress or backslid, but I kept the faith and kept going. I’ve put aside various other personal projects in order to work as much on flute as possible: some days I have practiced two hours instead of one, and sometimes even three or four hours (on weekends). My left forefinger is permanently sore!

Also good news is that we were down to four flutes and one piccolo as of two weeks ago, but this week were have not lost more flutes! I expect the rest of us are in it for the long haul: two of us on first flute, two of us on second flute, and one of us on piccolo. I’m not sure if I should, but I would feel very uncertain if I were the only second flute remaining now. It’s nice to know someone else may be sharing my pain, and maybe we can help each other in the sectionals.

Practice details

The bulk of my practice has been continuing to get down basic technique by working through the Rubank intermediate method. I keep on filling in gaps, adding new exercises while continuing to improve on exercises I have begun.

High notes

Given the music that we are playing for the concert, it has been of very high priority that I manage to play the very high notes (of the third register) effectively. This has been quite, quite difficult. It takes time to learn to form the embouchure and use it; what has been helpful has been looking at Web resources and reminding myself to relax. Undirected powering through, like powering through in any other activity, from running to rowing to programming, doesn’t work. I still have difficulty producing the kinds of notes in the third register I would like (our director Maria has repeatedly told us flutes collectively to work on our intonation, and you bet that in Sunday’s sectional I will be doing what I can to get it where it needs to be), but at least I now know the fingerings for A-flat, A, B-flat, and B, and am still hard at work practicing scales and arpeggios way up there. It is only this week, actually, that I managed to be able to get B-flat and B out of my instrument at all. A-flat remains weird, but A is clean. Also, F, F-sharp, and G were shaky for me at last report, but I’m more or less getting them now. E does not speak so well, unfortunately; I think this is partially an inherent flute matter.

Dynamics

Maria also repeatedly reminded the whole orchestra that we were not very good with dynamics, and generally played at some kind of nondescript mezzo-forte. We need to be able to play pianissimo and crescendo to fortissimo, etc., for expression and effect as indicated in the score.

I’ve improved on dynamics, but it is still very hard for me to play high notes softly, for example. I know the theory, but making my mouth and breath do this is taking time.

Rhythm

Maria works with the entire group large on rhythm. The music we have to play is jazzy and swings and has all kinds of syncopations, accents that have to be felt and interpreted. It is indeed more effective to listen and copy these rhythms rather than try to play the notations in the score. She tells us not to play so square, ha!

Needless to say, I still have anxiety about coming in at the wrong times, and blasting a note where there is supposed to be a rest. So you bet I am working on getting the tricky rhythms down.

Speed

Maria has been ramping up the speeds in the rehearsals. Unfortunately, last Sunday an important section of the Bernstein was run through at a speed exceeding what I could handle at the time. So I have been working on that. I feel I am always playing catch-up.

For development of speed, there is no substitute for just plain foundational technique work with the metronome. The metronome does not lie.

Progress on old exercises

Some examples of progress:

Last week I gave a record of speed progress on an exercise:

January 24: 100
January 25: 106
January 26: 109
January 27: 130
January 28: 131
January 29: 133
January 31: 141

Add to that the following improvements, which get me to roughly where I feel I need to be:

February 2: 143
February 6: 145
February 7: 146
February 8: 147
February 11: 148
February 14: 149

By the Pareto rule, I will not seek further improvement on this exercise.

Another:

January 25: 95
January 26: 96
January 27: 102
January 28: 106
January 29: 107
February 1: 115

I’ve improved on this one to:

February 2: 118
February 3: 119
February 6: 120
February 7: 122
February 8: 123
February 10: 124

I’ve topped out there too for now.

Here’s an interesting exercise from last time that I had found rather difficult:

January 25: 100
January 26: 102
January 27: 105
January 29: 106
January 30: 107
January 31: 108

I have made radical improvements as a result of noticing the need for relaxation and for adjusting my holding of the instrument and the alignment of my right wrist (and many other things I still keep on refining):

February 2: 110
February 3: 114
February 6: 120
February 7: 136
February 8: 138
February 11: 139
February 14: 140

I will stop trying to improve on this also.

Here’s a difficult arpeggio study at which I have made a big leap:

January 27: 70
January 31: 71
February 1: 72
February 2: 73
February 3: 74
February 6: 78
February 7: 94
February 10: 95

Note that in a single day, something clicked and I was able to go much faster.

Here’s an exercise that is wicked and works the right ring finger and other stuff:

January 31: 86
February 1: 87
February 2: 110
February 3: 112
February 6: 114
February 7: 116
February 8: 118
February 10: 122
February 11: 123
February 12: 124
February 14: 126

New exercises

Obviously, I have also attacked brand new exercises since my last post.

Here’s one on thirds:

February 7: 110
February 11: 130
February 12: 132
February 14: 136

Another on thirds:

February 8: 92
February 10: 120
February 11: 130
February 12: 132
February 14: 136

The rapid improvement on these new exercises comes because, as I have admitted, I have been a total beginner with almost no technique at all, never having practiced scales or arpeggios in any key, so when I’m learning a new key, I start off all confused but then make progress quickly.

Unfortunately, the Bernstein and Gershwin music have all kinds of keys, changes of key, accidentals, the works, so there is no escaping mastering everything. I’m working particularly on A major and A-flat major now, with their four sharps and four flats, respectively. The scariest, fastest section of the Bernstein actually has a key signature with six sharps (although I have to wonder why, because the music is full of accidentals and almost atonal).

Motivation

There are times when I do not feel motivated to practice the concert music at all. I have a confession to make: playing flute in an orchestra is not my favorite musical activity by a long shot. It’s something I’m doing because it is novel to me and because I hope to enjoy being a part of a group effort in which we somehow manage to sound on April 15 a lot better than we sound now. Also, having a goal, and having the threat of social shame, has proved sometimes to be an effective motivator for me to achieve my “real” goals as a side effect.

What I really like doing, and aim to do more of, is playing music in very small groups. I like playing recorder with one or two or three or four others. So sometimes when I’m practicing I feel frustrated that I’m working on a second flute part of a large orchestral piece, rather than on a duet or something like that. Amusingly, the fact that there are only two of us second flutes left helps me feel like I am “making a difference”, however.

Conclusion

I’m still hanging in there with my crazy attempt to just jump into a new level of flute playing, with a hard deadline. It would be less stressful if I were just trying to improve at my own pace, but I have to admit that from November through December, when I was working on the flute, the fact that I did not have a concrete level of mastery as a goal definitely made my practice less effective.

Meditation is hard

2012-02-10T21:18:00-05:00

About two weeks ago Abby and I started a daily meditation practice in the morning. We’re still at it.

Recently I’ve seen some articles about meditation habits and difficulty.

The plain fact is that meditation is hard. There might be some kind of stereotype of meditation as “relaxing” or as blissing out or some such thing, but actually, meditation is quite hard.

Why is it so hard, and does putting effort into it somehow violate the point of it?

Difficulty of meditation

Physical

For me, there is always some physical difficulty in doing sitting meditation. Sitting “perfectly upright” is not easy for me when my legs are crossed and on the floor, because I’m not all that flexible where it matters (I’ve been working on that for years, with real incremental progress).

And because of asymmetry, I use a different “dominant” leg alternating days. Trying to relax is difficult because the default result is slumping.

Mental

I slip into daydreams and weird thoughts very easily during meditation. I’ll have thoughts about things I need to do for the day, things I needed to do yesterday, or events coming up in weeks, or events in the past. In a single ten-minute session of meditation I might experience sadness over something, anxiety, anger, disgust, relief, excitement, you name it! My mind will go all over the place. If there are people who are blissing out doing meditation, I don’t know if I’m the same species as them.

Way back when I first started meditation, my main problem was actually that I would get disappointed and disgusted about my thoughts during meditation, and this of course created a cycle of more unrest during meditation. I got one important insight out of this: that I had a lifelong habit of hating myself, of perfectionism that I needed to let go of. When I realized this, I was able to break the cycle, both in meditation and in my “regular” life. I still have silly thoughts during meditation, but the difference now is that I don’t let them take over. They are what they are, and I return to the breath, return to posture.

Also, a year ago when I first started sitting with people, I got very self-conscious and worried about what they thought about my posture or breathing or whatever. After a couple of months, that anxiety completely disappeared. I’m doing what I’m doing; what is the point of adding extraneous thoughts and worries?

Effort

What level of effort do I apply when meditating? I think I go by feel. Basically, if I believe that putting a certain amount of effort in will disrupt me worse than the chaos that already exists, then I pull back. If I’m perpetually adjusting my shoulders or legs, then that will dominate the whole experience and I will be unsettled. If I try too hard to control my mind and make sure it doesn’t wander too far, then that can backfire too.

So I currently do more modest things that I believe from experience will not backfire. I’ll straighten my back enough to reboot my breath and awareness, but then let go of focusing on my back, and move to something else instead.

Also helpful to me has been returning to an awareness of external noises (such as humming of appliances or traffic outside). This is because in the past, sometimes I would zone out and not be aware of external noises, and when the ending bell sounded, I would be startled and know instantly that I had zoned out instead of being present. Paying attention to physical sensations in my body as well as external noises outside my control has been helpful.

Conclusion

Meditation is hard work. There is no shortage of instruction on how to do it, but like everything else, I don’t really know any way to do it other than honest personal trial and error and experience.

Public shame: a great way to maintain a habit

2012-02-08T21:59:00-05:00

I’ve always had trouble keeping up an optimal exercise routine in the winter months, because it’s colder and less pleasant to be outside. Historically, unless I was very disciplined, I have had some bad winters in which I didn’t get much exercise, ate and slept poorly, and gained over five pounds of pure fat.

So I have been very happy that at Carnegie Mellon University, a “fitness challenge” has been in place in the winter since January 2011. The fitness challenge was very helpful last winter in getting me to stay active, and it is being helpful right now as well: I am starting the second of six weeks now:

Welcome to the fitness-challenge for 2012 “Strive to Thrive” - you have
taken the first step by signing up to make a commitment to yourself and
your health by working out 4 times a week for 20 min. The challenge
starts Monday Jan 30th. There is a fitness challenge bulletin board in
the UC. If your name is not on the board yet please add your name the
next time you are in the UC. Once you work out for 20 min please put up
your sticker. We are going to have different colored stars and each color
of the stars represent a different type of exercise. A RED star is for
Group X-ercise class, a SILVER star is for Walking, Jogging, Treadmill,
Exercise Bike, Octane, Rower, Elliptical or AMT, a BLUE star is for
Swimming or a Water Activity, a GREEN star is for Weightlifting or other
Machines and a YELLOW star is for playing a sport. You can get your star
stickers @ the UC equipment desk. Everyday you will be receiving an email
from our interns from Pitt that will be motivating you to continue your
“Strive to Thrive” - have fun, good luck and we’ll all be thriving by
Spring break! It takes 6 weeks to develop a habit and you have just
started yours.

Why it works

Why does the fitness challenge work (for some of us; note how many people signed up and never even put up a single sticker during the first week)?

First, they offered a “free gift” for signing up. Some people get tricked into signing up as a result. Fact is, the free gift is really crappy and I didn’t want it (a hand sanitizer dispenser full of nasty chemicals that I know I don’t need and give me an allergic reaction).

Second, they offer a special awards lunch after the fitness challenge. Judging by how many people show up for this, it’s clearly something people look forward to. For many, it’s a social experience, and we get certificates also. Not such a big deal to me, but when it comes to motivation, every little trick counts. Like, if I’ve only marked three days and only need to do a fourth, I might think, I just need to exercise one more day in order to stay “in the running” for that free lunch and certificate of completion. Silly tricks like this work.

Third, there is the element of public shame. This is the biggest factor for me. Even though I am quite sure nobody I know is scanning the bulletin board every week to see whether I am exercising, it doesn’t matter: I don’t like the idea of seeing empty spaces on the board in my row, or anyone, even random strangers, seeing them. It is not strictly rational, I admit, but the first thing I think, when I’m not all excited on a given day about exercising is, I want my stars to fill up those spaces on the board.

Conclusion

I expect to do whatever it takes to get to attend the awards lunch for the CMU fitness challenge. And it doesn’t take that much. Typically, once I go through the trouble of actually putting on my running shoes or going to the gym locker room, I have no problem putting in an intense half hour workout and getting into it.

I am grateful to Pattye Stragar of CMU and all the interns who got the CMU fitness challenge program started and send us inspiring email reminders every day to keep up interested and motivated.

On playing my first games of chess in a year

2012-02-07T22:46:00-05:00

Lately there has been a lot of attention paid to deliberate practice. I thought I’d give one example of my practice habits.

Over a week ago, at a birthday party, I ended up playing two casual games of chess, my first games of chess in an entire year since I completely quit playing the game (either in tournaments or casually) in order to focus on rebooting my passion for playing music.

The first game was against someone who opened with 1 h4, immediately marking himself as a beginner, and I won quickly.

The second game was much harder, because while my opponent was clearly not a strong player, and as White started off with an inferior opening, I had a hard time coming up with a crushing advantage. In fact, I found myself embarking on a slow, misguided plan that led to an equal middle game. It was only after a terrible blunder on his part that I immediately had a won position.

So overall, these casual games were quite one-sided.

But the next morning, the first thing I did was enter the moves of both games into my computer and briefly analyze the games with Houdini.

Why did I do this?

Self-analysis for improvement

One thing I learned when considerably improving my game of chess was that the only true way to improve is to learn from your own mistakes. These could be classified in many different ways. I was not as rigorous as I could have been (should have been) in analyzing mistakes and making sure not to repeat them, else I would have made National Master long ago.

I don’t play in chess tournaments any more, but I could not help myself when i decided to remember my casual games from the party and enter them into the computer the next morning. It’s a habit. When I was playing chess seriously, I was going to the Pittsburgh Chess Club every week and playing blitz. Some people play blitz as throwaway fun. Not me. These blitz were actually excellent material for me to learn from. I would go home after playing a dozen or so games of blitz and enter all the interesting games into my computer in order to analyze them.

What I look for when analyzing a game I played

It doesn’t matter whether I win or lose a game. I thirst to find out where I could have done better.

Losing

Obviously, when I lose a game, I try to figure out why. Sometimes it’s just one bad move. Sometimes it’s a series of bad moves that reveal a completely flawed conception of what was going on. Sometimes the errors reveal physical fatigue, psychological barriers, raw technical knowledge, or simple calculational carelessness. The causes differ, so it is important to find out what the specific causes are. Without knowing the specific cause, applying effort toward a remedy may be a futile waste of time.

Winning

I don’t get much pleasure from just winning a game, or winning a tournament. In itself, winning means nothing to me. I need to know that I deserved to win (for some definition of “deserve”). I analyze games that I won, to see whether I actually made an error during an attack that should have left me lost (if I had been playing against someone who saw through my error). Also, it is important to see whether, during a winning game, I missed a much quicker and decisive win, and instead took a long route unnecessarily.

To be sure, sometimes for practical reasons it is wise to win in a clear and easy way rather than the most brilliant, quick way. But other times, I have won the long way in which my opponent could have come back fighting (but just happened not to), and therefore I really should have looked for the killer knockout that existed.

Uncertainty

In the case of the second casual game I played at the party, I was plagued during the middle game with the thought that I knew I could have made more of my opening advantage, but squandered it. There was no loss or win straight out of the opening, but I had to go and determine how my entire opening plan was ineffective.

Conclusion

Even in a casual game of chess, I take it pretty seriously, and treat it as a learning opportunity. I feel slightly odd admitting this in public, and hope that it doesn’t result in people no longer wanting to play casual games with me, but is it wrong to want to know the truth of the situation in the game? Is it any sillier than when I know I got every answer on a final exam in a class right except for one, and therefore I have my A+ locked up, but I want to know how to solve the problem that confused me?

A strange winter hike in Frick Park

2012-02-06T22:29:00-05:00

Yesterday morning, on a sunny day, with temperatures ranging from around 35-40F, Abby and I went on a Meetup hike at Frick Park. This was actually our first Meetup hike in Frick Park, because normally we just go to our local park alone and go to Meetup hikes that are further away, but we hadn’t been hiking at all for months and so it was convenient to go to this one.

Since we live only two miles away from the meeting place in the parking lot down in Fern Hollow, we hiked straight from home there, meeting up with John, who joined us at the park entrance.

We ended up hiking probably around nine miles (including being on the road from and to home).

It was very strange doing this hike in early February, when Pittsburgh should be suffering from snow and ice and bitter cold. Normally I don’t do any running or hiking in Frick Park again till March, but I’ve been running in Frick for some time now this “winter”!

We started off following the Nine Mile Run Trail. As you can see, there was no snow to be found!

Then we meandered around, taking a bunch of other familiar trails, going uphill and downhill, and eventually ended back down in Fern Hollow. We took a pretty fast pace.

“Officially”, the hike was done, but some of us wanted to do more, so we ended up going up the steep Fire Lane Trail Extension. Abby, John, and I said goodbye to the group when we reached the Lower Riverview Trail, since that was the way to start heading home rather than going back down to Fern Hollow again. We’d already gone down to Fern Hollow twice and I figured that we didn’t need to go down it yet again.

Shoes and mud

This hike was the first time I’d worn my Vibram FiveFingers KSO Trek shoes out in sub-40 temperatures, and with the expectation of getting my feet wet. I wore Injinji toe socks to try to keep my feet warm.

Abby wore her FiveFingers Trek Sport shoes along with her modified tights.

There were not a lot of very wet spots on the trails, but there were sections that were more muddy than others, and my feet got wet going through each such section. If the temperature had been below freezing, I would have thought twice about wearing the FiveFingers, I have to confess.

Because of the shade, parts of the Riverview Trail actually still had residual snow from whenever.

Conclusion

It was nice to get in a local hike, and I was happy that my experiment of wearing FiveFingers shoes with Injinji socks in cooler conditions on the trails worked fairly well, although when I took my shoes off, I saw that the socks were quite muddy and needed to be washed!

My favorite running workout: the Billat workout

2012-02-03T21:14:00-05:00

Over a decade ago, when I got very serious about running in races, and decided to get as competitive as I possibly could (knowing that my genetic potential was very limited), I settled on the Jack Daniels “running formula” training program as something that worked quite well for me. It was scientifically based and involves training in different phases of an entire months-long process at different intensities, incorporating easy running, tempo runs, intervals, repeats, hill workouts, etc.

The beauty of Jack Daniels’ Running Formula (I had used the first edition, not the second) was that it gave pace tables to use. I would do my runs with a watch, and spent a good amount of time at the Carnegie Mellon University track on certain workouts (although I always preferred running on the trails to running on the roads or the track).

After reaching my peak racing years, I devoted less and less time to training. As I began running four days a week, or three, I had to look for more efficient ways to maintain my fitness.

Intensity

What I found, for my circumstance and for my body, was that higher-intensity training with rest days actually worked pretty way, compared to running more days and more mileage. There is, of course, perpetual controversy in the elite circles over whether high mileage or high intensity is the way to go for optimal results (including, of course, avoidance of injury). But I was never an elite runner, so in a sense, the controversy is not very important to me.

Nevertheless, eventually I came to believe that more is not better. In addition, I came to believe that changing things up is more important than following a fixed, supposedly “scientific” plan. This is not only because of the practical fact that often plans need to be changed anyway (because of illness, injury, work and travel commitments, etc.), but also because the body adapts to routine. I have to shake things up periodically in order to progress, whether it’s changing how I eat or how I write a computer program.

It turns out that the past decade has seen the focus on intermittent intensity become mainstream, for everyone, not just would-be competitive athletes. I think this has been a very good development. Along with this change has been, of course, the focus on proper warmups, dynamic stretching, pre-hab. It is folly to do intense work without having the stability to withstand forces that could cause injury.

Billat workouts

One intense running workout I like to do is based on research by Véronique Billat

If you read that article, and aren’t familiar with VO2max and similar measures of fitness, don’t worry. Here’s a more accessible exposition and recommendations.

Personally, as I begin running again early in the season, I enjoy doing the 30-30 workout. I don’t know my exact vVO2max (and don’t care what it is), but years of experience have led me to know from my body what is approximately mile pace, and use that as an approximation of vVO2max.

So I’ll go and warm up jogging slowly for a mile, then beginning the cycle of running hard for 30 seconds and a recovery jog for 30 seconds, and repeat the cycle for about two miles (or however long before I can no longer keep up the pace reasonably) and cool down and be done for the day.

I don’t actually wear a watch to tick down 30 seconds. Instead, I count steps. Assuming a stride rate of approximately 180 per minute (I realize this varies for me depending on my pace), that’s 3 steps per second, and therefore 30 seconds is 90 steps, or 45 steps for each leg.

I like to do this about once a week.

2 new daily habits of mine in a distracting world

2012-02-02T09:02:00-05:00

As of a week ago, I have developed two daily habits to reclaim my life from a distracting digital world:

meditation in the morning, before breakfast
shutting down my computer at home in the evening two hours before going to bed

Meditation

The meditation habit is one I have wanted to develop for years now, but had not. Before around 2007, I was meditating every day for a year or two, but then I fell off the practice, and eventually stopped for long periods of time, and then just a year ago, thanks to a weekly meditation practice set up at Carnegie Mellon University, I began attending that (and Abby started meditating for the first time then).

I always felt guilty during the entire past year when noting that I wasn’t regularly meditating at home. I knew that “I’m too tired” or “I don’t have time” are never valid excuses to avoid doing something one feels one “should” do. Those excuses almost always mean that something has gone wrong with priorities.

The fact is, I was caught up with a huge number of projects, and became more and more unbalanced, especially when I lost the CMU practice for two months since it was no longer happening (thanks to the CMU academic calendar).

Last week, Abby and I decided that we would meditate in the morning before breakfast, and keep it at ten minutes. Who doesn’t have ten minutes in a day, especially for something that, for me, gives me benefits that last the entire day? So we’ve established this new routine.

More on the morning routine

In conjunction with the new meditation routine, I also decided that I would not check email or the Web generally until after meditation, and unless there was an emergency, I would not deal with email until after breakfast.

Also, I have decided to significantly reduce reading the Web (through my blog subscriptions or Twitter feed) in the morning, so that I keep my morning focused. Now I’ll check the Web mostly at lunch time.

Evening information diet

Furthermore, I have cut out a good bit of computer time from my evening also, in order to promote better sleep as well as doing other things, such as reading paper (gasp!) books.

This has been a difficult cut, but I have managed so far, and yes, there have been repercussions. I have been doing less blog writing (because that happens on the computer), less Web reading, less tweeting. I have a large backlog of interesting Web articles that I’ve simply bookmarked without reading, and I have to confess that I’m not happy about this situation.

Conclusion

I have yet to figure out the best balance to achieve in this digital age given my thirst for fresh ideas and information that are so easy to come by online, but I know for sure that I do not want to sacrifice essential calmness, exercise, sleep, and social time for the sake of addictive information overload that in the long run is not as beneficial as one might hope. What do I really need to know about? And how much of it can I apply? And even given that I have received much of value online, what is the opportunity cost of not using the time spent online on pursuits off-line? These are very hard questions for me to answer, so I’m taking my information diet one step at a time.

Joining an orchestra: learning in the face of terror

2012-02-01T19:29:00-05:00

I have not written about my flute activities since a month ago, but that’s not for lack of action: in fact, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the flute, at the expense of other personal projects, including writing.

Two months ago, I mentioned that I was considering joining the Carnegie Mellon All-University Orchestra, which I claimed was “not very good” and that “I don’t have to be super good to be a part of it.” I take back those comments.

I joined the CMU AUO two Sundays ago, attending the first rehearsal then, and it was one of the most frightening experiences in my entire life. I almost left before even entering the rehearsal room. But I went in, stayed for the two and a half hours, and last Sunday, I went to the second rehearsal.

Let me put it this way: at the first rehearsal, there were about ten flutes and one piccolo in the flute section. At the second rehearsal, we are down to four flutes and one piccolo. I hope that we don’t lose any more flutes at the next rehearsal. OK, maybe some students happened to be busy and will be returning. Or maybe some of them had the same reaction that I had: absolute terror.

Let me explain.

The music we are to play for the April 15 concert

At the door of the rehearsal room, we got to pick up the music for the concert scheduled for April 15. There are four works, but one is for brass and percussion only, and the other for strings only, so there are only two I would play in on flute:

George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue
Leonard Bernstein, Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

On inspection at the door, I immediately realized that I could not play any of this music. Both the Gershwin and Bernstein were totally out of my current abilities. Worse, the Bernstein piece looked particularly insanely hard to me, even though I picked up the “flute 2” part, not the “flute 1” part. There were a lot syncopations, accents, extreme dynamics, very high notes (some of which I had not yet even learned the fingerings for yet), and the music was very fast.

I was filled with terror. I almost left without entering the room and signing in.

Why I stayed

I went in anyway. I decided that I needed to see what this orchestra was about, since I have never been in an orchestra in my life (I stopped my feeble playing of the flute at age 13 and never played again after that).

I had a “fail fast” plan: if I really felt I couldn’t make a decent contribution in this orchestra, I would walk out as soon as I felt I was a hopeless burden to the team. Forget ego: what I do or do not do must be based entirely on objective considerations. I wasn’t going to walk away already just because I believed (and still believe!) that I must be the worst musician in the entire orchestra, nor would I be afraid to walk away in the future if I found that I was harming the team.

The first rehearsal

I ended up surviving the first rehearsal, in that we did a sight-reading session in which although I could barely play any of the music, I sat there trying to learn and did what I could, playing a few notes here and there when I could, and sitting out when there was just no way I could get anything right at all.

Also, I sat next to a guy who was playing piccolo, and he seemed to nail everything, although I had asked him earlier how long he’d been playing flute and he said twelve years. Note: I have been playing flute seriously for only three months, and on the membership form for the orchestra, it asked for a self-rating of experience level, ranging from Beginner to Advanced Beginner to Intermediate to Advanced, and with all honesty I checked off Beginner (not even Advanced Beginner).

However, it gave me some hope when I realized that everyone was having a hard time with the music. I’m sure nobody was having as hard a time as me, but we were struggling while sight reading at a very slow tempo. It also gave me hope that the director, Maria Sensi Sellner, happened to mention that we were tackling probably the hardest work the orchestra had attempted in its history, because she is leaving after this season and wanted to do something ambitious. OK, so it wasn’t just me thinking this music was hard.

Also, she seemed to me very effective in helping us get started with the music. She worked out the tricky rhythms with us, and the music began to make more sense to me during the rehearsal. She told us that we should listen to recordings and check out the West Side Story musical so that we would understand the music in the context of the action.

I left the rehearsal still shell-shocked, but I reasoned to myself that it would be stupid to quit this early on, before having had a chance to study the score more, continue to improve my technique, etc. I had grave doubts that I would return for the second rehearsal, but I had one week to decide whether I should even come back. (Note that the orchestra has an attendance policy, so that anyone missing too many rehearsals may not play in the concert.)

A sample AUO performance

For fun, here is the CMU AUO performing last fall Bernstein’s Overture to Candide. They weren’t bad. That gives me hope, because we sounded pretty bad sight reading the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, so I actually have faith that Sellner can get us into reasonable shape in two months.

My practice strategy for a week after the first rehearsal

All January I had been working really hard for three weeks on flute practice, in anticipation of the first CMU AUO rehearsal that occurred on January 22. I was making a huge amount of progress working through “easy” stuff. Flute is much, much harder to play than recorder.

After the first rehearsal, I decided that there was no way I could ever play the Gershwin or Bernstein without focusing really hard on pure technique. So the bulk of my practice was beginning to systematically work through the Rubank Intermediate Method: Flute or Piccolo that I mentioned finding in early January and never having used.

I spent a little bit of time trying to play excerpts from the Gershwin and Bernstein at a very slow tempo, but frankly, these attempts were very frustrating because I was still having problems just playing the high notes at all, for example. I had to learn the fingerings for some notes I had never played in my life. I also had to improve my embouchure in order to produce those notes.

(By the way, I have almost completely stopped playing recorder for a month. I am still attending the monthly meetings of the local recorder group, and practicing a little before attending, but I cannot devote any more time to improving on recorder while trying to get successfully to the April 15 CMU AUO concert.)

The second rehearsal

As the second rehearsal approached, I wondered what we were supposed to be preparing for it. I sent email to the guy I had contacted last year about joining the orchestra, asking him if I had been put on the announcement mailing list yet, and he apologized, saying that he hadn’t, and he put me on. So it was only hours before the second rehearsal that I learned we were supposed to have been for days watching some YouTube videos and working on the two very hardest sections of the Bernstein!!!

I almost didn’t go to the second rehearsal, as a result. I had not even looked at the hardest sections of the Bernstein yet: during the entire week, I had worked on the sections just up till those hardest sections!! I spent half an hour before the Sunday evening rehearsal trying to do a little work on the hardest sections, but failing pretty miserably. Oh well.

I went to the second rehearsal anyway. I half expected that I would be asked to leave after being found out to be completely incompetent (as well as not doing my homework).

It turned out that many of us had not done our homework, or had done it but were still having a lot of problems. The director was patient and slowed things down a lot and again focused on our getting the rhythms and syncopation right, and all the instruments just staying together at all. Because we were so unprepared, we ran out of time to work on the Gershwin, which she had originally planned to cover as well as the Bernstein.

Also, we lost most of our flutists!! In fact, with only four flutes and a piccolo left, during a flute-dominated passage of the Bernstein, we found out that only one of us was playing “flute 1”. The director asked for someone else to join her, and so I guess now we have two on “flute 1”, and me and the other person on “flute 2”.

My practice strategy for this week after the second rehearsal

If we were having a rehearsal again next Sunday, I would be seriously worried and contemplate probably having to drop out of the orchestra then. Luckily, we are skipping Super Bowl Sunday. This gives me two weeks, rather than one, to improve drastically.

The director had said it was up to us individually and in the upcoming sections to get our act together on the Bernstein sections in question. So I have at least one concrete goal for the next rehearsal: being prepared to play reasonably accurately the difficult Bernstein sections, and at tempo.

For three days now so far this week, I have continued with working through the Rubank intermediate method. I have made so much progress that I think that in another couple of days I may consider myself an Advanced Beginner at flute rather than just a Beginner, ha!

Deliberate practice

I am putting in the focused, deliberate practice to improve as rapidly and efficiently as I can.

By the way, I have to put in a plug for Gerald Klickstein, author of the wonderful book “The Musician’s Way”, and his blog as well as his Twitter feed @klickstein, which have been profoundly inspirational and useful in not only my music practice but also all of my other serious pursuits. He even replies to questions and comments promptly.

Regarding learning, I will be writing blog posts in the future about my various strategies for learning that I find effective. A recent article talks about interleaving, which I have used to great effect to “parallelize” my learning, and I definitely use it in my music practice. I work on many things in one session, not just one thing, because there is no way to just get massively better at one thing during one session, and then do the same for something else at the next session. I have to parallelize, to make small bits of progress every day on something. For example, every day I work on

breath
intonation
tone
high notes
dynamics
articulation
rhythm: meters, syncopation
tonguing
speed
passage work in keys (scales, arpeggios, thirds)
tricky fingerings
style, expression
actual music

I squeeze as much as I can out of an hour of practice at home. I’ve found that there are diminishing returns of all kinds after an hour. Obviously, if I were a music student or professional, I’d use multiple sessions to get more hours, but for much of my life these days I use the 80/20 rule to maximize the returns on my practice.

Speed

I use the metronome extensively in my practice to gauge my progress, by making note each day of the fastest speed at which I can execute an exercise with the best musical qualities I am capable of currently, and then trying to do it faster the next day. This method worked very well for me when I was learning the recorder from scratch, and it is working for me well now.

For example, here is the record for one of the twenty or so exercises I have worked on in the Rubank book for the past week and a half:

January 24: 100
January 25: 106
January 26: 109
January 27: 130
January 28: 131
January 29: 133
January 31: 141

Another:

January 24: 120
January 25: 135
January 26: 137
January 27: 139
January 28: 144
January 29: 146
January 30: 148
January 31: 152
February 1: 154

Another:

January 25: 95
January 26: 96
January 27: 102
January 28: 106
January 29: 107
February 1: 115

Another (in which I have been finding the series of arpeggios rather difficult):

January 25: 100
January 26: 102
January 27: 105
January 29: 106
January 30: 107
January 31: 108

(Where there is a gap in the record, I either did not play that exercise that day, because I chose to work on another, or I did but could not go faster without error.)

Note that the progress is not always linear. Sometimes there are “trouble spots” that hold me back for a while before I overcome them. Sometimes I am stagnant for a day or even a couple of days before I suddenly get better.

Keeping detailed records is vital to an objective assessment of where one is in one’s practice. I kept detailed records when losing thirty pounds over a decade ago, and when transforming myself from a non-runner into a marathoner.

Progress on the Bernstein

As mentioned, I have not practiced the Bernstein music that much, because I devote around 80 or 90 percent of my time to just improving my technique. The fundamentals matter (I will talk about this in future blog posts) when trying to get good at something. One cannot just rush in without mastering fundamentals.

Here are some metronome improvement numbers for sections of the Bernstein music:

January 28: 40
January 29: 70
January 30: 128 (full speed)
January 28: 100
January 31: 110 (I still need to get up to 128)
January 30: 100 (I still need to get up to 160!!)

Obviously, my goal for the next rehearsal is to get as much up to full speed as possible in the sections that I need the most work on. If I fail miserably to measure up, I will feel justified in quitting the orchestra. But given my improvement in the Rubank method, I think I have a fighting chance in the next ten days to get much better in the Bernstein music.

Conclusion

By deciding to take on the challenge of joining the CMU All-University Orchestra while being pathetically incompetent at flute, I am trying to push the limits of my learning and practice abilities. I will drop out if I only manage to hold back rehearsals or feel that I will play badly at the scheduled concert. But so far, I am still hanging in there.

Liebster Blog Award: 5 blogs you should check out

2012-01-29T13:04:00-05:00

Recently, my neighbor gave me a Liebster Blog Award. This is actually my second one, but I had not yet claimed the first one, under the rules of acceptance of the award. I’ve had difficulty finding the origin of this award and the official documentation of the award, but from what I can tell, the rules are that I must give the award to five other bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers:

Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
Reveal your top five picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
Copy and paste the award on your blog.
Have faith that your followers will spread the love too!

So here goes, starting with identifying the two people who gave me the award:

The two who gave me an award

Dana: Dana is a Geek

The first person to give me the Liebster award is a Pittsburgh local, Dana, who is actually inadvertently responsible for my getting into social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, through her talk on HootSuite at PodCamp Pittsburgh 5, in 2010. I still use HootSuite to this day. I also stopped by her talk yet again last year at PodCamp Pittsburgh 6 for a refresher, and it was actually after that when I finally decided to get serious about Twitter.

Dana gave me the award back in November, but I was crazy busy then and decided to put off the hard work of properly accepting the award; that task went deep into my stack of to-do items, but has finally been taken out of the stack!

Dana, like me, started blogging in earnest after PodCamp Pittsburgh 6. She writes on a variety of topics, including the cool activities she does with her kids, comments on current events she feels strongly about, and reflections on learning and living.

Becca: The Earthling’s Handbook

Becca is my next-door neighbor. She gave me the award just over a week ago, not knowing that I already had been given the award (but not yet accepted it!). After that, there was no way I could postpone indefinitely my acceptance of the award.

Becca writes about all kinds of things she cares about, including her journey as she raises her son, her family’s experiments in healthy and tasty cooking, and her commitment to an environmentally sound way of living.

Criteria for choosing five blogs to give the Liebster award to

I’ve postponed choosing five blogs to give the Liebster award to because of the constraints. I follow a good number of blogs, but most of them are quite popular and probably have a lot more than 200 followers. Nobody knows exactly how many followers a blog has, but I understand that the spirit of the award is to give it to people whose blogs are not so widely followed. I don’t necessarily know whether a particular blog is widely followed, but I’ll go by my gut feel of how popular a blog might be (based on number of comments, whether the site also has mailing lists, etc.).

I also have in mind that ideally I should pick blogs that my readers are likely to find useful and read. However, my readers have diverse interests, so I should pick blogs that give at least some representation of the different interests, e.g., I shouldn’t pick blogs just dedicated to Pittsburgh or software development.

Also I’ve chosen blogs that are pretty active or hope to encourage to become more active.

Five blogs for you to check out

Outside My Window

This local blog is very active, and written by Kate St. John, who apparently works at WQED in Pittsburgh. I have never met her, but enjoy her blog because she posts photos all the time of nature, especially birds and trees, along with interesting information and musings of hers. Following her blog is like following the local seasons. If you live in our part of the country, you should definitely subscribe to her blog and get a daily treat!

Andrew Cox

This is a local personal blog by Andrew Cox, a software developer whom I must have first encountered probably no more than a year or so ago, at a Pittsburgh Ruby meeting. Amusingly, I got to know him better largely through his blog and Twitter, although nowadays I run into him often in the Pittsburgh software developer user group scene.

It turns out we have various interests in common beyond being practicing software developers. Andrew is passionate about both learning and teaching in the most general sense. We also pursue health and fitness experiments to improve ourselves. He writes about all these subjects.

Andrew tends not to post on his blog very often, but usually when he does, he writes long, substantial articles that deserve close reading. So subscribe to his blog, and when he isn’t posting, check out his archives too.

Well, I’m Back

This personal blog is written by Rob O’Callahan, an old computer science classmate of mine. He is from New Zealand and loves it so much that he moved back sometime after coming to the United States for grad school and work. He has strong opinions about everything and writes about many things, including his working for Mozilla as a practicing advocate of open Web standards and browsers, technical tidbits, comments on culture, and his outings at home, complete with the breathtaking photos that are why I enjoy following his blog.

Even before meeting Rob long ago, I’d always wanted to visit New Zealand, but seeing his photos regularly keeps reminding me that Abby and I must go some day.

Software Carpentry

This blog is very active, and written by Greg Wilson (whom I do not know), the project lead for the Software Carpentry project, whose goal is to help scientists (and others who are not professional software developers) learn and improve their software development skills.

What makes Software Carpentry special is the strong emphasis on actually making use of empirical educational research, trying out ideas to see if they work, and maintaining an open source philosophy of sharing and building community.

I follow this blog because I have a long-term interest in helping non-specialists learn computer science and programming. Especially given the very recent craze over Codecademy and other “learn to code” initiatives, I think it is very important to be informed on what insights people who have been teaching programming for many years now have to offer.

I don’t know how many followers this blog has, and therefore whether it qualifies under the terms of the Liebster Award, but I’m going to assume that it should be read more than it is, by anyone who cares about the hard task of bringing computational fluency to everyone who can benefit from it, not just those studying for a computer science degree.

mathbabe

This is a very active blog by Cathy O’Neil, who is a mathematician (formerly in academia and formerly in a hedge fund), a mother, an activist. She writes about whatever is on her mind. She has strong opinions and sometimes uses strong language. Much of what she writes about has a quantitative bent, e.g., her explorations of economics, finance (including her involvement with Occupy Wall Street), programming with Python and R; but she has also written about being a female geek and math education.

If you like real-time exploration of serious issues, and don’t mind seeing strong opinions (especially political) you may or may not agree with, check out her blog!

Conclusion

Upon deciding on five blogs to bestow the Liebster award on, I hereby finally accept the Liebster award for myself, and I thank all of you who read my blog and hope you check out the blogs I have recommended! (I also hope the recipients come up with their own lists for us all to check out.)

Learning about gardening from Grow Pittsburgh

2012-01-27T06:57:00-05:00

Yesterday, Abby and I finished the third and final session of “A Garden Primer”, a basic course on organic gardening offered by Grow Pittsburgh. We took this course because we would like to start our own little urban garden.

As an utter beginner with no experience, I thought the course was a very useful and friendly introduction to organic gardening.

Our goal

Abby and I have a small front yard which we would like to use to grow vegetables to eat. Although we are subscribers to a CSA, Kretschmann Farm, we could always use more vegetables to eat, especially since we have increased their proportion in our diet relative to the proportion of grains we formerly consumed.

Attendance

There were about 25-30 of us in this three-week course, which met for two hours each Thursday evening at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church. There was a mix of people who participated: mostly young people in their twenties, but also older folks as well; most of us are from the city, but there were also those from further out with more space. Some already had serious gardening experience, while some were total novices.

Dinner was included, a nice touch given everyone’s busy schedules: burritos provided by Chipotle.

Format

The format of the course was that there were lectures with slide presentations, during which we were free to ask questions, and we received a 90-page reference manual at the beginning of the course that goes into much more detail about topics and is designed for reference when we actually start getting our hands dirty (I took some notes in my copy during lectures).

For the second two weeks, we had homework in which we each came up with a preliminary design for our garden and discussed it in class, and homework in which we decided what to grow and discussed that.

We also received a seed catalog so that we could learn what criteria to look for when selecting seeds.

Syllabus

A fundamental goal of the course, emphasized repeatedly, was to learn to grow in a way that is constructive to the land in the long run, rather than stripping resources from it in a short-term way.

Therefore, the first thing we learned about was how to compost, and use compost as the basis of a healthy soil.

Then we learned about how to choose a location for a garden, and discussed different ways of constructing one. Many useful suggestions were provided for materials.

We learned about the seasons and life cycles of seeding, transplanting, harvesting.

Finally, we learned about thinking of the whole ecosystem: how to deal with the real issues of pests, disease, and weeds without just getting out the machine gun and using nasty chemicals. We discussed mulching, crop rotation, taking advantage of beneficial insects (which will eat up the pests that actually harm leaves and fruit and roots).

Advice on garden maintenance and winding down the season ended the course.

Our plan

Abby and I have yet to test the soil in the front yard, but in any case, we may go for a raised bed instead of an in-ground garden. We are thinking of a 12-by-3 foot area to use in the front yard. We will do more study and preparation before the spring comes.

Conclusion

Doing some serious gardening will be a new adventure for Abby and me. I am grateful that Grow Pittsburgh has promoted urban gardening for local food production, and spread the word so that more of us in the city can comfortably start getting involved ourselves. I highly recommend the “Garden Primer” course to anyone who is a novice at organic gardening (whether urban or suburban or rural).

Note: the course is being offered again this winter two more times, so there is still time to jump in for this year:

Tuesdays: February 7, 14, 21
Mondays: March 12, 19, 26

Improving my breakfast and other meals: a paleo progress report

2012-01-26T09:40:00-05:00

In the past couple of months, I’ve made some large changes in my diet. Fundamentally, I’ve moved in a paleo direction. The largest change was breakfast, where I completely gave up my old breakfast and replaced it. After some experimentation, I’ve finally arrived at a breakfast template that seems optimal for me (as gauged by my morning energy level and other criteria I discuss below).

As an example, here is what I ate this morning:

The ingredients, and what has changed, and why:

Recipe

1/2 tsp coconut oil
2 eggs, fried
1/2 clove of garlic
some shakes of seasoning mix (salt, pepper, etc.)
a dash of turmeric
some red pepper flakes
butternut squash
spinach
uncooked extra virgin olive oil on top of the veggies
about 7 walnuts
1 tsp flax seeds, sprinkled on top of everything at the end
1 prune on the side

Changes and rationale

Carbs

I stopped my short experiment of eating potatoes or rice with breakfast because I found that my morning energy level was simply better without those high-glycemic carbs. I think there is a legitimate place for such carbs, but not in my current schedule, which does not (yet) include intensive exercise before breakfast.

Additions

I now always eat two eggs, instead of one. One wasn’t really enough to make me feel satisfied.

I recently added coconut oil, which I had not been using because some past experiments did not work out well. I think that was because of using too much. So I’m not using much now. Amusingly, my main use of coconut oil up till now has been to rub onto my skin during this dry winter season.

I’ve added more spices such as turmeric and hot red pepper to my breakfast because I like them and because they seem to give me a little wake-up boost and stimulate alertness.

The flax seeds are new, as well as the prune. The prune is probably not “paleo”, according to someone or other, but as I’ve mentioned before, I get confused by the different paleo schools of thought, and I don’t follow any of them, but just use them as practical sources of ideas for self-experimentation. I have a very specific rationale for the use of flax seeds and prunes: I have to confess that I dealt with constipation issues when initially moving away from my big oatmeal breakfast to my paleo-style breakfast. I tried various solutions, but one that seems to have worked is the addition of flax seeds (which I typically only add for breakfast, but sometimes will also do for another meal too) and the prune. I have had no constipation issues since adding these to my breakfast.

Other meals

I have been trying to kick my “addiction” to rice. I have gradually decreased my consumption of rice (white or brown). Almost imperceptibly, my craving for it has decreased continually. It’s now been a couple of days since I have been doing without rice for lunch, but I am still eating it for dinner.

I still love pizza, and have not yet eliminated it. It’s very hard to avoid both convenience and temptation when it’s provided at talks and meetings. However, on days when I plan to eat pizza, I have tried to get my metabolism up before eating it. That seems to help. I’ll still keep in my mind the idea of giving up pizza.

Conclusion

My experimentation with diet have continued over the months, and will continue.

I hope my report may be of use to you if you are considering changing up your breakfast patterns away from the “standard” American sugary breakfasts.

What do you eat for breakfast that works for you? What do you similarly or differently from me?

Discovering French traditional social dance in Pittsburgh

2012-01-23T21:53:00-05:00

On Saturday, Abby and I went for the first time to the latest meeting of a local French traditional social dance workshop and dance here in Pittsburgh.

It was a lot of fun!

Attendance

Despite the recently fallen snow at the time (now all but melted!), around twelve of us eventually showed up, and the male-female ratio happened to be very good. For most of us, it was our first time trying out French dancing, but some of us just happened to have had prior some experience with other dancing, such as ballroom and swing and Cajun. The workshop was very friendly to beginners.

Dances we learned

We spent an hour or so learning various dances, taught by Gregory Dyke and Lisa Tamres.

We warmed up by learning a simple circle dance to a waltz rhythm, and Gregory made it more challenging by having us sing along in French (which not all of us knew, but that was OK; I know some French but half the time I just hummed rather than try to sing French while doing dance steps).

Then we went to the partnered waltz, which we did at various tempos, but all pretty fast. There was discussion of toning down the long gliding and lifting actions that some of us reflexively use from having experience with the slow waltz from ballroom dancing, because there is not enough time to use those actions for every step. (I immediately remembered being constantly reminded not to perform these actions when I was dancing Viennese waltz in my ballroom dance days. The tempo range for French waltz seems basically the same.)

Then we learned the Schottische, in a variant that had a triple step, followed by a triple step, and then four single steps.

Then we changed things up to a variant of the bourrée, in double time, in which there are two lines formed, and the partners facing each other alternate dancing toward each other and past each other, leaving room for personal expression as they do so.

We returned to the mazurka, which was very tricky for many of us because of the asymmetric step pattern: 1-2-hold, 1-2-3, followed by the same starting with the other foot. I still don’t completely have the hang of it, but I could feel how it could be pretty exciting because of the holding and building momentum for the second half of the pattern, on which I like to turn.

Finally, we learned a really fun circle dance, the Circassian Circle.

Social dancing

After the workshop instruction, the pianist, Ellen Gozian, had arrived, and the social dance began to live music performed by her and also by Gregory on his wooden flute.

About another hour of dancing followed, till it was time for Ellen to leave. Abby and I decided to leave shortly afterwards, but social dancing was going to continue with recorded music.

I had a lot of fun exploring new dances, and would like to attend future workshops and social dances. It’s great that so many different dance and music groups exist here in Pittsburgh!

I am grateful to Gregory and Lisa for the instruction, Ellen for the piano playing, and every person who was on the dance floor. I think I can safely claim that everyone was smiling and laughing and having a great time at this event!

Invitation

If you’re in the Pittsburgh area and interested in French traditional social dance, check out the Facebook group for announcements.

How to respond if a child asks you a science question you don't know the answer to

2012-01-19T22:28:00-05:00

Today, I was very sad to see a news article Children’s science questions “stump many parents”. I was not sad for any of the following reasons:

Oh no, kids these days are receiving a poor science education!
Oh no, the parents received a poor science education when they were young!

I was sad because of many of the parents’ reactions to their children’s questions:

…16% told their children to ask their partner and a fifth made up a response or pretended that no one knew the answer.

What are some better alternative responses?

The first step to acting like a scientist: not knowing

One obvious response that is already by itself profoundly adequate would be to say “I don’t know”. So easy, so honest, yet many parents refused to use this response. But a parent who replied even in only this minimalist way would be teaching some very important lessons about science:

Science begins with not knowing.
Science is about being honest about reality and about oneself; it is about deliberately restricting one’s ego, recognizing one’s limitations, and acknowledging ignorance.
Science proceeds with asking. The child by asking should be commended for asking, rather than implicitly punished or evaded for possibly embarrassing the parent.
Science proceeds with trying to find out.

The second step to acting like a scientist: looking for an answer

Regarding trying to find out, here is another quote from the article:

About a third of parents said they actively researched answers to their children’s inquiries.

It would be possible to stop here and praise these parents.

But as phrased, this response is not satisfactory either:

Science is not about looking up an answer somewhere, as one might look up a baseball statistic.
How involved were the children in obtaining the “answer”? Did the parents fetch the “answer” and hand it over? Or did the children get actively involved in looking for the answer?
Science is not about sitting back and getting an answer from someone.
Science is not really about answers at all. It is a mindset, a process of looking for an answer, and looking for ways to evaluate possible answers for adequacy and some measure of confidence. It is above all a way of life.

The third step to acting like a scientist: being wrong

Sometimes one settles on an answer, and then later decides it is unsatisfactory. What then?

Science is not about being right.
Science is often about saying “I was wrong”.

The third step to acting like a scientist: uncertainty

Eventually even the notion of “answer” must be considered flawed. We are never certain about our theories. Our theories are based on models that we invent. The models can have explanatory or predictive power or practical applications, but they themselves are transient. The scientific models from two centuries ago are very different from the scientific models of thirty years ago, and the scientific models of today are very different from the scientific models of thirty years ago. What we believed to be the “answer” thirty years ago looks today to have been an error.

And unless we believe that we are near the “end of science” (I do not believe this for a moment), we must also take into consideration the plausibility that thirty years from now, we will laugh at the currently favored scientific models of today the way we laugh at the hair and clothing styles of the 1980s.

Science is about saying “I am not sure”.

Conclusion

The best thing that everyone could learn about science, whether one is young or old, child or parent, is what its true nature is: a way of thinking, a way of acting, a way of living. It is not about “facts” to accumulate, or jargon to memorize.

How school made me hate computer science and programming

2012-01-16T19:57:00-05:00

Some months ago, when the legendary computer scientist John McCarthy died, I wrote a blog post in which I briefly reminisced about the way I hated computer programming before I came to love it. Today I am filling in some more details about how school (elementary school through college) made me fear, misunderstand, and hate computer science and programming. I am inspired to do this because

Just a few weeks ago, I came across an old article from 1992 by someone who had a similar experience, and I wanted to complete my story. Although my story also goes back more than two decades, I feel that the same fundamental stumbling blocks exist to the universal computational competence that I now advocate.
The topic of learning “coding” has exploded into the popular media, with hundreds of thousands of people having signed up for Code Year and even New York Mayor Bloomberg stating that he has signed up for the free Codecademy online tutorial courses.

My goals in telling my story:

I want to raise awareness among those who might this year be jumping into “coding” that they might encounter the same kinds of stumbling blocks that discouraged me at first, so that they don’t prematurely jump to such conclusions as “programming is boring and confusing” or “programming requires special talent I don’t have”.
I want for educators to take note of the barriers facing students who may not be “naturals” to understanding computation or writing computer programs in the context of currently common programming environments.

In a forthcoming article, I will engage in a severe critique of the Codeacademy lessons I have so far examined and gone through, while helping my wife learn programming from scratch.

6th grade and BASIC in the early 1980s

When I was in middle school in the 6th grade, my math teacher was crazy about computers. He was convinced that his best math students, including me, should learn computer programming. I was basically coerced into staying after school for sessions in which he taught us to program in BASIC for the TRS-80 microcomputer. The BASIC language was very primitive. We used line numbers and GOTO. Some boys got totally into programming, and tried writing video games. I was not one of them. I was not a natural at programming. I will admit it: I never really understood GOSUB or PEEK or POKE at the time. In fact, one beautiful spring day, since it was nice outside, I decided to simply walk home from school instead of staying around for his class. After missing a couple of sessions, I was shocked that he contacted my parents and basically made me continue on. I finished out the year, then never wrote a BASIC program again (until college).

I did like playing computer games, however. I just had no interest in making them.

7th grade and Pac-Man

In the 7th grade, I was crazy about video games and my sister and I managed to save enough allowance money to buy an Atari 2600 video game console. I had encountered an IBM PC by then, but had no interest in it.

9th grade and my first programming class

When I started high school in the 9th grade, there was a requirement that all students take a semester of “computer literacy”. After several meetings of that class, I wanted out. We were shown slides of tape drives, told about bits and bytes, and I had no interest whatsoever in any of that. I heard that there was a way out of the requirement, which was to take an actual computer programming class. Since my father was working as a mainframe programmer (his degree in information sciences being from the 1970s), he suggested I take COBOL, which were offered by my high school (in addition to Fortran and RPG and probably others I don’t remember).

I switched to the COBOL class. Here we learned about pseudocode, used flowchart templates to draw symbols on paper, wrote our programs out in pencil, and used the big keypunch machine to punch out our programs. Every day we had the opportunity to submit a punch card deck to the teacher (with the appropriate job control and compiler cards) to drop off for overnight processing at some mainframe somewhere.

I hated the class. The whole rigid process we were supposed to go through, the verbosity of the COBOL language, and the nature of the programs we wrote, made computing seem very boring. I started not doing any homework, and after several weeks, I was failing the class, and the teacher called my parents.

I dutifully caught up on all the missing programming projects, got my A in the class, and then never touched COBOL again, and forgot any COBOL I pretended to learn while basically copying and pasting from example programs in the textbook and modifying stuff until it “worked”. I have a confession to make: despite my A in the class, I never really understood COBOL or programming. I was just going through the motions. It was truly cargo-cult programming. This is a warning to all educators to actually verify whether someone has learned something, as opposed to cleverly faked it! (I will come to this subject again.)

10th grade and Pascal

In the 10th grade (in a new high school), my math teacher made it mandatory to write some rudimentary programs in Pascal to illustrate the trigonometry and other stuff we were learning. We used the MacPascal interpreter on the Macintosh for this purpose: there was a computer lab where we did our work and printed out our programs and results. I have almost no memory of any of this except that I was intrigued by the automatic formatting and the proportional fonts in MacPascal.

I should note that at this time in my life, I had no interest in computers. We still did not have one at home, and I had long since outgrown the Atari video game console.

11th grade and Advanced Placement computer science

In the 11th grade, I had the opportunity to take an Advanced Placement course in computer science, taught using the Pascal programming language. (I mentioned this in my previous article.)

I signed up for the class. You might wonder why, given that I had no interest in computers or programming (in Pascal or any other language). I had a perverse incentive. Advanced Placement courses were advertised as a way to get out of equivalent courses in college. I figured that if I ended up in college with a computing course requirement, I wanted to place out of it! So I signed up for Advanced Placement computer science because I hated computers and wanted to get the pain over with earlier rather than later.

The course was taught by a math teacher who made us use as a textbook a book that I found totally over my head, “How to Solve It by Computer”. I’m betting that if I had a copy of this book now to look at, I might actually enjoy it, but at the time, it was forbidding. It was all about loop invariants, proving your algorithms to be correct, etc.

One side effect of the course was that pretty soon it became clear that it was the most time-consuming course. I simply did not have enough time in the computer lab to get my programs running correctly. I had my father buy me an Apple IIe computer so that I could do my coding and debugging at home into the wee hours of the night as necessary.

I found it annoyingly difficult to get out of the BASIC and COBOL mindset into the “structured programming” enforced by Pascal. As a result, I am sensitive to the idea that “learning” inferior programming languages can genuinely get in the way of further progress as a programmer.

I did not enjoy the class at all, but did enjoy the side effect of having a computer at home, which I used for playing some games as well as for word processing, so that I no longer needed to use a typewriter and scissors to work on drafts of papers.

Again, I will admit that for much of the class, I was proceeding with no real understanding of what I was doing. I was copying and pasting and cargo-culting my way through the class, and through my receiving a 5 on the Advanced Placement exam. After this class, I thought I was done with programming for the rest of my life.

The problem was that we never wrote any programs to do anything I found interesting, and was never exposed to the general possibilities of what we could do through programming. Writing a recursive program to generate fractals was not very interesting to me. My biggest project in the class was writing a program to maintain a library of books and be able to sort and search it and write it out to floppy disk and read it back in. That was also not very interesting to me.

Motivations

My hobbies at the time included playing chess, learning languages (I was enthusiastic about French and had taught myself Latin), reading lots of books. If the world had been different then, and someone had told me what I could do by knowing how to program, I could have been very interested. For example, suppose that the Web existed then. Suppose someone told me that by knowing how to program, I could write code to create my own flashcard system for learning languages. Then there would be a question of whether an application already exists for purchase that can do that. (It turns out that I have never been satisfied with any flashcard program I have used.)

I think that to attract interest in computer programming, it is vital to give people reasons that they can relate to. And it is not helpful to discourage potential programmers by telling them that they should be doing something else, like, just focusing on being a doctor or salesman, giving the argument that the “good” programmers are already doing their job creating applications ready to use, and that therefore comparative advantage says that only professional programmers should learn how to program. This is like telling someone centuries ago that it is no use learning to read or write because others can already do it and probably do it much better. I think the proliferation of information means that more and more people need to be able to analyze it. Whether you call it “scripting” or “macros” or “customization”, the truth is that at some point, real programming is necessary in order to truly understand and control one’s data.

After 11th grade

The rest of the story, I already told earlier.

Conclusion

My K-12 schooling did nothing to encourage me to actually understand and apply computer science and programming. I wonder to what extent the kind of experience I had still applies today in K-12.

Postscript

Upcoming topics I will write about:

My eye-opening experience as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate computer science course.
My current monitoring of Codecademy’s offerings and my ongoing efforts to teach my wife computer programming.