Good to see that I'm not the only one who immediately thought of this. That was one of the words on my "to-try" list in Scribblenauts when I get a chance to pick it up.

Late summer/early fall is good for concerts in the Philadelphia area. 12 September I saw Iron & Wine live at Messiah College, and early October I'll be seeing Sufjan Stevens live in NYC. I've only seen Sufjan once before in Philadelphia, so I'm excited to see him again (in the same week as my sister's wedding, too), and this was my first Iron & Wine concert experience.

( Iron & Wine )

Scribblenauts came out yesterday; I'm really interested in playing this game. It's already earned an XKCD comic.

The basic premise is that you are trying to collect a specific type of item in a series of levels, and you do so by writing nouns on the screen. At which point, the item you write will appear and you'll be able to use it in some way. For example, if the object you need to get is over a river and up in the air, you might summon a bridge to cover the river and then a ladder to reach the object. Or, if you're feeling ambitious, you might summon a catapult to launch yourself at the target (don't know if it works but I imagine it would). Or if you're feeling particularly nihilistic, you might summon Cthulhu to devour all that lives (apparently you can call Cthulhu; I don't know if it would devour all that lives though). It shouldn't take long to realize that this is an ambitious game concept. And it sounds like the game lives up to the ambitiousness of the idea, as although apparently "pretentious asshole" is NOT in the game, "large hadron collider" IS, and results in a black hole appearing. As it turns out, a portion of that XKCD comic is actually true. I wonder if you can get the item by writing the name of it?

Apparently, you can also, for example, summon a stick, a chain, and a piece of meat, attach the meat to the stick with the chain, and then summon a RAPTOR, and RIDE THE RAPTOR using the meat on a stick as bait. I mean, seriously.

Oh, internet memes also apparently work. Stuff like All your base are belong to us, Rick Roll (yes, Rick Roll), keyboard cat...I wonder if lolcat would work?

I'd also be interested in summoning a Nintendo DS, and then a copy of Scribblenauts for a bit of meta-gaming--of course, that one might not work due to trademark issues.

Ganon

Neko performed tonight at the Kimmel Center here in Philadelphia. She was in Verizon Hall, the big concert hall that holds 2500. I don't think the show was sold out, but it was close. My seat was just left of center, about ten rows back from the front.

Neko, as always, was awesome, as was her band. Kelly Hogan is an amazing backup singer, and the banter between Neko and Kelly is wonderful. My main qualm was that the concert hall might have been too open; I think they needed to kick the volume up a bit more. She did a good job of flooding the venue with sound, but it was just really big. A minor complaint, but there you have it.

Other than that, Neko is awesome as always. They walked on stage to a short clip of Marais la Nuit (a song I wouldn't normally recommend they play at concerts; 30 minutes of chirping frogs might be too much for even the best Neko fan) and jumped right into...well, Blacklisted, oddly enough. I was impressed that the audience didn't clap halfway through Maybe Sparrow, as there's a nice long pause that usually tricks those unfamiliar with Fox Confessor.... They did, however, get tricked by Deep Red Bells later in the concert. More people need to buy Blacklisted.

People Got a Lotta Nerve went better at the Nokia Times Square Theater show in April, where I saw Neko last. Well, several of the songs went better then, but that show was so impressive that expecting better might be too much. Maybe Sparrow was better this time around, as was Hold On, Hold On, but I think that's related to the fact that her voice needed more warming up at the beginning of the concert then that it did tonight. Magpie to the Morning...not sure what it was, but it sounded brilliant this time around, one of the more unexpectedly awesome performances of the night. Middle Cyclone was wonderfully pulled off this time around too. She also managed to throw Margaret vs. Pauline and That Teenage Feeling into the mix, both of which were nice to hear although I think it's possible that both showed up in April. Still no sign of Star Witness, which was regrettably missing from the show in April as well (although she had played it by request three days earlier at a show in Pennsylvania, and one day later at a show again at Nokia Times Square Theater). She closed off the main set with This Tornado Loves You. No surprise there, although it wasn't as strong as it was in New York, where a guitarist from the opening act had come out to provide more instrumental backing and there were also more backing singers.

The encore was a bit strange for a concert promoting her most recent album, as it was one Middle Cyclone song, and then three significantly older songs: two from Blacklisted and then The Train to Kansas City, which is also featured on The Tigers Have Spoken. I particularly love the Blacklisted songs; both were great choices and according to Neko, they haven't done Tightly in quite some time (a shame if you ask me). As an aside, when she said they were going to do an old song they hadn't done in a long time, someone from the audience called out for Whip the Blankets off of Furnace Room Lullaby, an album which was lacking from the concert (not entirely surprising, although it would have been nice to hear the title track), at which point Neko said she wasn't going to do it because it was too "hoary". Now, it's Kelly that stated that Neko was saying "hoary" rather than "whorey", and admittedly only the first of those two words is a real word (and would actually fit in this context as well), but I could imagine the second being the intended. The world may never know what Neko Case really thinks here.

Probably my highlight of the evening was Vengeance is Sleeping, the aforementioned Middle Cyclone song with which she start the encore. While I felt that the lower volume hurt the overall performance a bit, the sound fit Vengeance perfectly (where was I Wish I Was The Moon? That would have been perfect for the venue as well. Alas) and really provided a lovely quality to Neko's voice, when most of the band was not present.

Setlist:
(Marais la Nuit)
Things That Scare Me
Maybe Sparrow
People Got a Lotta Nerve
Fever
Hold On, Hold On
The Pharaohs
Middle Cyclone
Deep Red Bells
Magpie to the Morning
I'm an Animal
Prison Girls
The Tigers Have Spoken
Margaret Vs. Pauline
Polar Nettles
Red Tide
Don't Forget Me
That Teenage Feeling
This Tornado Loves You

Encore:
Vengeance is Sleeping
Lady Pilot
Tightly
Train to Kansas City
(Marais la Nuit)

So, we have 12 songs from Middle Cyclone (not counting Marais La Nuit; everything except for "The Next Time You Say Forever" and "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth"), 4 from Fox Confessor..., 4 from Blacklisted, and 2 from other sources (both on The Tigers Have Spoken live album).

I also got a really neat looking tour poster. It's a different one than the one she had in April, which I almost got but decided not to because I didn't want to have to hold onto it for the entire concert and then carry it back to my car. Tonight, all I had to do was set it on my lap since I was in a chair. This one is gonna be framed before I stick it on my wall.

I am working on my office Mac, which uses Spaces because I have Matlab running both through my computer and a cluster so I need to be able to easily separate the two. While editing a program I wrote in Matlab, I found that if I type in a "for" command but don't have an "end" command to close the loop, Spaces will automatically change to Spaces section 1.

I just don't get it.

I started listening to Iron & Wine sometime last spring, and in the last 6 months he's become one of my absolute favorite artists, dominating my music playlists--my last.fm profile suggests that in the past 6 months, I have listened to almost 1500 I&W tracks that have been recorded, with the second highest going to Neko at around 500. And 12 of my 15 most listened to tracks is the entirety of The Shepherd's Dog, which is an amazing album. So yeah, pretty much what I listen to.

Yesterday, he released a limited live CD to independent record stores for record store day. It's called Live at Norfolk and it's good and I recommend it. That said, it also gave me a chance to check out "The Trapeze Swinger," which I've heard of but hadn't heard before. Anyway, it's an absolutely breathtakingly amazing song, and guess what? The studio version (it was originally released on a movie soundtrack, and is going to be rereleased on a collection of b-sides that comes out mid-May) is available on Iron & Wine's website. I highly recommend it, but note that it's long--over 9 minutes--and also that it's even better live.

The Decemberists have released an album called The Hazards of Love, which is a complete story in the form of Decemberists music if I understand correctly. And it features Shara Worden as the villain.

I don't know quite what to think; I'm interested in hearing it and it's getting somewhat mixed but leaning towards positive reviews (which sounds pretty normal for The Decemberists; they lean to the odd side), so I might have to check it out.

Awkward email to incoming Penn faculty who I haven't met yet asking if he'll be on my committee is awkward.

Dear students:

You are in college at an Ivy League school. How is it that you do not know how to write complete, coherent sentences? Subject, verb, object. It's really not that hard.

P.S. You don't need to use the phrase "In the dark" four times in a paragraph as well as another time underneath the question itself, and you certainly don't need to both begin and end a sentence with it, or end one sentence with it and begin the next sentence with it.

P.P.S. The worst part is that whenever I read the phrase "in the dark," I read it in my head in the voice of Will Arnett as G.O.B. talking in the video for George Michael's election campaign in season 2 of Arrested Development.

Why does research take so long?

The answer, as far as I can tell, may be related to the fact that these stimuli took up to an hour each to make.

So here I am in my office, while there's really nasty weather outside and most public schools (including my girlfriend's school, so jealous) are canceled. This, of course, reminds me of this comic, although Penn just didn't cancel anything at all. Because they're like that. I remind you of this post from just over two years ago; at least today the roads appear to have been plowed, but it's still nasty outside.

I saw Jorge Cham last Tuesday at Penn. He made a comment at the beginning about how his talk would be almost the same as the one he gave three and a half years ago, and then made a joke about how surely everyone who was around then had graduated by now (to which I sarcastically shouted "No"). It pretty much was exactly the same, but I actually understood so much more of it now that I'm not in my first semester of grad school, like last time. I also got the opportunity to have him sign my copy of the third book, and he drew a picture of Mike Slackenerny after I told him I saw him last time when I was in my first semester. Looking back, I didn't get a drawing last time but he wrote something along the lines of:

"Run while you can
It gets better
Good luck!"

So there's some nice evolution going on in the signings I've received so far. If, at some point in the future, I have a PhD and am some lowly assistant professor or something like that and I see him again with another PHD book for him to sign, I'd totally try and get a picture of Professor Smith.

Oh, and one more, just because.

NEW NEKO FREE STREAMING ONLINE HERE

A plane crash happened last night in Clarence Center, NY, which is part of Clarence, which is where I used to live before moving to Phoenix (it's a bit outside of Buffalo). We're talking about 2 miles away.

That article also mentions my first high school and reactions from people I know. Yeah, that's a little scary.

New Neko Case album (Middle Cyclone) comes out THREE WEEKS from today. What do I do until then? Perhaps read a book, or write a novella.

This is very exciting news. What is perhaps less exciting is that Neko is then going on tour, and stopping just outside of Philadelphia--on Good Friday. She's playing in D.C. earlier that week and playing in NYC the following week, but I will be in D.C. the weekend after Easter so the NYC shows might be pushing it (especially since I won't be getting much sleep while in D.C.--weekend long dancing event), and any weekday concert that involves a 3 hour drive is also pushing it. I'm going to see her live. I just don't know when.

EDIT: I've figured that the best bet is to go to NYC for one of her shows, so I'll be going there the day after Easter and should be able to pull that off.

I *officially* passed my major areas, with my revisions which were due last week being accepted and approved as of this evening! This is expected but still fun and happy news.

Oh yeah, and I'm in my office at 1:30am, damn.

dsjgkndfgnldf THIS IS AMAZING IN EVERY SINGLE WAY

I want this T-shirt.

So, while doing my laundry yesterday, a shirt released some static electricity through my headphones and then into my ears. This does not feel good, I discovered.

That aside, this past week I went to plug my iPod into my computer so I could update it and charge it and, when I plugged it in, there was a spark at the USB port which scared the crap out of me and messed up communication to all the USB devices on my computer (including mouse and keyboard), which scared the crap out of me even more. A restart got everything working right again, but I'm curious as to why that would have happened. I did plug the cable into the iPod and then plug the cable into the USB port, which isn't the way I normally do it, but it was the first time I had charged it since being back in town. This also means that I had pulled the cable out of my bag--where it had been since I packed it up in Phoenix before coming back--prior to plugging it into my computer. Anyway, anything here I should be concerned about not doing in the future?