[laura marling]

June 26th, 2008

 

laura marling

“Hi.  I’m Laura, and I’m here to entertain you.”  

Elle and I saw Laura Marling last week at the Mercury Lounge.  The cherubic 18 year old stoically sang her impassioned lyrics, but the supporting Marcus Mumford of Mumford and Sons (playing countless instruments) may have stolen the show.

[africa]

June 24th, 2008

I recently got back from Rwanda and Kenya. I’ll try to post some stories soon, but here are some of the pictures in the meantime.

lion elephants sleeping lion

screaming gorilla gorilla hippos

acacia rwandans lion, vultures, elephants graham

See also my flickr page.

[animals]

May 23rd, 2008

squirrelIn preparation for my upcoming trip, I’ve been practicing taking pictures of animals.  Unfortunately, they (or I) won’t hold still long enough to make super crisp pictures at long zooms.  Hopefully I’ll get better soon with practice.

[graduation]

May 21st, 2008

graduation1 graduation2

Graduation with mom, dad, caitlin, elle, marios, and dan.

[camera]

May 21st, 2008

The new camera seems to generate nice images independent of the quality of the photographer or the attractiveness of the subject.

[done]

May 11th, 2008

img_0997.jpg

[drink windex]

May 11th, 2008

Apparently a natural diet doesn’t extend to electrolytes:

windex.jpg

[european vacation]

May 11th, 2008

It’s been three weeks already so all the motivation’s gone, but the least I could do is post some pictures.

Elle likes seesaws:

seesaw

Bellagio:
bellagio2 bellagio4 bellagio1

Prague:

prague1 prague2 prague3

(Flat Stanley came along for the ride.)

[musical lineage]

April 13th, 2008

My advisor’s advisor was trained as a musician.  As such, I can’t trace my academic genealogy back to early mathematicians or scientists like some of my friends.  My lineage can, however, be traced back to some very famous musicians.  Paris Smaragdis, my academic uncle, traced his musical lineage back to the 1600s (see [here]).  According to Paris, I’m 9 steps removed from Beethoven, 7 steps from Liszt, 10 steps from Haydn, and 13 steps from Bach!

Although if you consider that Thomas Quatieri supervised my advisor’s masters thesis, my genealogy becomes a who’s who of signal processing, and my lineage can be traced to Kant in 9 steps.

Pride is a very funny thing, and the whole exercise reminds me of the Sesame Street song “One of these things is not like the other.”

 

[writing]

March 30th, 2008

The evolution of my most recent paper in the form of outlines, ideas, and to-do lists: 

paper writingThe dinosaurs didn’t make the final draft.