Smart Surroundings

A few days ago, I attended the final event for the EU project, Smart Surroundings. Some people from Studiolab were also there with their prototypes. The event was in this typical ministerial building that one finds in the Hague (glass and triple story indoor atrium), there was a jazz band, free food and drinks. I am not sure what I expected, but I did see some nice and interesting projects. I was really interested in one in particular which was this flexible interface developed by engineering students from Lancaster University. The prototype consisted of elements (buttons, sliders, etc) that could be inserted into this foam board material that was overlaid with a sheet of graph-like paper. You could insert these elements anywhere and name them with a felt pen on the graph-paper. The pen was special because it had a camera that could read the written text and interpret it for use in, i.e. Photoshop. Instead of using these physical elements, you could also draw a slider on the paper and use the pen drawing movements as changing the state of the slider. It was really cool, but it looked like it still had a long way to go as a technology.

IFFR

Last year I volunteered for the IFFR, International Film Festival Rotterdam as a member of the bouwplug. Under the dreads supervision of Waheed, I became one of the little minions who run around building things up before the festival i.e. stringing fiber optic cables across buildings and painting insides of warehouses). Unfortunately, I was so busy at that moment with school (damn you PAP), I didn't even go see one movie even though I had free tickets. I still haven't seen I don't want to sleep alone or various other movies that were on my "list" for last year, though the aforementioned has been rotting away in C:\ for ages now.

This is my one and only chance almost this year to see a foreign film (not English or Mandarin) on the big screen and subtitled in English. I regularly call the Filmhuis Lumen in Delft to ask if their sneak preview is in English or Mandarin. This is how I came to see the Marriage of Tuya in Delft. My other gripe is that films come so slowly to the filmhuizen here. Any independent English film takes half a year after its release before making it to theaters here (i.e. Scoop)

This year, I have bought some tickets though many movies I would like to see were sold out. To remind myself what I will watch at the festival or must download later, I am listing the ones that sounded interesting here:

1. De Stille vor Bach - Feb 1st
2. Le voyage du ballon rouge
3. Secret Sunshine
4. Flower in the Pocket - Feb 2nd
5. Naissance des pieuvres
6. Shanghai Trance
7. Hotel Chevalier
8. REC
9. This world of ours
10. Tout est pardonné

Also watched recently: Flodder - 4.0, Flodder in Amerika - 3.5, There will be Blood - 8.5, Bender's Big Score - 6.5

Musical Things

1. Krashna Musika
It has been a busy, busy January. Last weekend was rehearsal weekend. I practiced from 10am - 10pm on Saturday, 10am-4pm Sunday, and 7-10pm Monday for my upcoming concert with Krashna Musika. I fell asleep a couple of times on Sunday while the soloist was singing only to wake up shortly when I had made a glaring mistake. I realized how much more I have to practice so I don't embarrass myself on stage. Thankfully, my new roommate Nikki (violinist and alum of Krashna Musika) lent me her music stand, and now I only need to find some opportunities to play when she won't be home to hear me practicing. You can hear me play next Thursday and Friday at 20:30 in the Maria van Jessekerk in Delft or Dr Anton Philipszaal in Den Haag. We are playing:

Brahms, Ein Deutches Requiem
Webern, Passacaglia, Opus 1
Schoenberg, Thema und Variationen, Opus 43B

I am pretty excited. I think the program is pretty good, and the Brahms sounds awesome with a choir, minus not really in tune winds and brass (they spent all their time practicing the other two pieces sadly, but who am I to talk?). You can book your tickets at: krashna@tudelft.nl, if you are interested in coming. I can't wait until the end of this concert season, because we will start playing Rachmaninoff's Symphony no. 2 and Mozart's Requiem. Eventually we will be going on tour in April traveling to Hamburg and Copenhagen.

2. Nodame Cantabile
Furthermore, during the last two days I was hooked on Nodame Cantabile, a Japanese drama. I can definitely blame it all on Ellen, who wrote a review of the show in her blog. I know it is pretty ridiculous to enjoy (only some, I swear) watching dramas (especially Asian ones), but I tend to be drawn to either high art or really low, low non-art. I justify my ridiculousness by saying it makes me a well rounded person (how do you think I got into college?). Anyways, this was definitely one of the better dramas in the spectrum because of several factors that are lacking in other dramas. I'll summarize shortly:

a. The girl wasn't totally retarded, her redeeming factor was that she was as much as a genius as the main dude. They both pushed each other to become better.
b. The drama was about an aspiring conductor and talented but unmotivated pianist, thus music!
c. The school scenes were convincing, people actually went to school and it was convincing that the were in fact studying to some end.
d. Good music, lots of engrossing performance snippets, though very known (Themes: Prokofiev, Romeo & Juliet; Brahms; Beethoven, 7th, Adagio for Strings, etc etc.
e. Convincing orchestra and piano playing (I usually hate how unconvincing music playing is in even blockbuster movies..i.e. most everything)
f. Consistent characters, interesting side characters who are also more than 2D. Instead of hating their side stories, I actually wanted to know more in some cases.
g. Like Ellen already said, convincing love story.

I also managed to infect my sister, Athena with the Nodame Cantabile fever. She took even shorter time to complete the drama (1 day).

3. Spelwarenmesse
Finally, I complete my musical post by saying that I will be visiting the Spielwarenmesse, Nuremberg Toy Fair for a week in February (6th-12th?) as a volunteer to demonstrate the AirGuitar and AirDrum for 1Up Toys. In the next week I will have to learn to play some songs, and in exchange I get 200E and an expenses paid trip to Nuremberg to the biggest toy fair in the world. What this also means is I will also have to print a ton of resumes, finish my portfolio, and maybe website before I go. Hopefully, I can get some leads on possible jobs or graduation projects!