Mandelbrot-o'-lantern

I know that I don't usually (as in never) post pictures here, but I have to show off the pumpkin that I carved this year. It's the Mandelbrot set if you're not a math nerd like me. Actually, I'm really just a general kind of nerd, but I digress.



















In case you really want to enjoy your inner nerdiness, here's a great video of a Mandelbrot set zoom which shows the self-similarity extremely deep into it. It's fractaltastic.

Computer Gremlins

So my computer has been acting up lately. It hasn't been loading totally right when I started it up, and the power cord has only been working intermittently. Sometimes it will charge my computer just fine, and other times it will be plugged in and not recognize that and then run out of batteries. It won't even turn on for a few days, then it will suddenly be at full power and work fine but still not recognize that it's plugged in. Now in the last two weeks or so it's gone back to being fine. What's up with that? Did I have a virus that just up and left? That theory seems to resemble a band of marauders who decided to pillage but not rape-unlikely when you consider that I was told in my genetics class that nearly 1% of the world's population has the same "y"chromosome as Genghis Khan. I don't thing that there's much pillaging without raping.

And jumping back from that disturbing digression, I'm wondering if maybe my computer has developed into a malevolent entity who is using brain washing tactics. It just gives me a random outcome regardless of my actions. Some days I'm punished and some days rewarded, but what I do has no bearing on the outcome. That's the kind of treatment that can break you.

As attractive as both those theories are, Occam's Razor seems to point to my current theory: gremlins. Nothing explains strange behavior in technology as well as gremlins. We've been using that one since WWII. Thusly, we can logically call my computer infested with gremlins.

Just cause you did it poorly, doesn't mean you're bad

I don't know if other professions are like this, but opera definitely is. There are some people who just don't like to take direction. I don't know what it is. Maybe they feel threatened when someone says that they should do something differently? Well, whatever it is, it's annoying. Let me give you an example: there's a guy in the opera now who looks "inside" a lot when he sings. I don't know if he's just concentrating on singing well, or what, but it looks bad on the big stage. He looks a little downward and gets these huge shadows on his eyes. If you're in the balcony it's even worse. All you see is the top of his head. Now, lots of people, including myself, have pointed this out to him in a friendly way, but any time you talk to him about his performance he's just kind of cold towards you. It's not openly hostile or anything, but you get the impression that he really doesn't appreciate being told that he's doing something incorrectly.

I just don't understand that attitude. If you do something wrong, it doesn't mean that you're bad at it, it just means that you have something to learn. There's no shame in being ignorant, only in choosing to remain that way. Also, even if you know the right way to do something, you don't always do it right. You just need some impartial eyes and ears to make sure that what you think you're doing is actually coming across to the audience. In an even worse case, one girl mentioned that any time the director wants to say something to her double (most of our roles are double cast), he says it to her because her double gets offended when she's criticized or critiqued. That's ridiculous. Anyway, if anyone is ever working with me and I do something that looks or sounds bad, I'd appreciate if you'd let me know so I can fix it. How else am I supposed to get better?

Learn to sit

If I have learned one thing in my time at BYU, it is this: Learn to sit and do nothing. Honestly, if you want to be a professional on the stage, whether it's opera, acting, dance, whatever learn how to sit and not cause problems. This was illustrated to me again on Saturday when we had lighting tech rehearsal for "Tales of Hoffman." in the five hours that I was there, I was on stage for 15 minutes. Yes, it seems like that would probably be a horrible waste of time, but for this thing to look good, it was important for me to be there for that whole long thing and to not get in the way. Someday, I hope to even be paid for sitting there, won't that be nice? Though on second thought it seems eerily similar to my current job...

So, I was poking around on Chautauqua's website the other day, and I found this nice little bit of information in their FAQ's:

How many applicants do we receive?
Below are the averages of our auditions data covering the last seven years:

• No. of applicants 545
• No. of applicants scheduled 455
• Age range 21-approximately 35
• Sopranos 226
• Mezzos 78
• Tenors 50
• Baritones 45
• Bass-Baritones 9
• Basses 6

Basically what we learn from this is that it's awesome to be a guy if you sing. Thank you. That is all.