my weekend...

all weekend -including friday, i finally ran my more-or-less-bug-free programme and segmented over 10,000 shapes that the monkey (whom i never got to know, and is now sacrificed... sob) drew --- yes i am such a sad person working all weekend... the more annoying bit is that it has taken me more than half a year to get my programme scripts to run such that it will segment the shapes drawn across different experimental sessions, and use these segments to retrieve the corresponding bits of neural data from which i make some estimations... and actually, the segmenting and related tralalala processes really only took like a day or two at most without the additional bugs. the difference in duration between programming and execution is so stark -- it's horrifyingly depressing. the only consolation is, i don't have to do all of that manually -- it will literally take years... and curious Dasha was flabbergasted by the amount of work i had to do to get to were i am now. i don't mean to make other phd students think that their work isn't that hard or whatever, it's not the case... it's just sometimes they have no idea why i had/have so much silly work to do or why my pc screen keeps flashing out new plots automatically when i am away to get some tea... at least some of them are beginning to realise why now... there's still more programming to do (oh joy! read sarcasm)... need to pick/select cells... cells that seem to show some preferential firing to direction.... anyways... i won't try to explain today... i think i must have already succeeded too well in losing some of you.

anyways, what i wanted to say was... because of all this crazy work and the looming report dateline.... i thought i had missed all the festival-ly events... in fact i did miss quite a few that i had wanted to catch. i am such a stupid fool. for months before the Festivals (Edinburgh Fringe / International Festival / Book Festival etc.) actually began, i had collected the events listings and circled quite a few things i'd like to catch... and i have thus far only succeeded in attending one -- The Antonio Forcione Quartet -- whose performance thoroughly enthralled me last year and to which i brought Sabine to experience the magic.

there was "Alastair Reid on Pablo Neruda" i wanted to catch yesterday, but all the tickets were gone -- obviously... along with others. the Book Fest is great... there are so many events on a great variety of issues and topics -- sociology, history, science, literature etc. and this year they have also included writing workshops! i'd say i did far better in the Festival when i was a visitor than a 'resident'... i saw 2 plays and 2 concerts over a weekend last summer when i did a brief visit before finally returning in fall!

well, i then realised after Dasha mentioned that some other events are still going on that there are still a few things in the next few days i could catch. sure enough there are still some when i looked up my dogeared festival magazine... and without further hesitations i booked meself a ticket to the late evening concert tomorrow at the Usher Hall -- Music for Cello and Violin by Bach ... (FYI: this event had a double circle scrawled over it). and i would probably try to catch the Traditional Japanese Flute Music too on thursday.... hmm and perhaps even the double piano Stravinsky...hmmm :C)

posted by ~overacuppa~ on Monday, 30 August, 2004 at 12:50 hrs