My new audio recorder and microphone arrived this week. After a little experimentation I figured out how to hook it up to my computer and make a video with it and a webcam. I still need to tune my piano, but I do believe this is a vast improvement over the previous videos. The zoom microphone makes a huge difference.

The piano tuner arrives on Friday. After that I will re-record everything and repost to youtube and soundcloud.

This week I created a presentation for my research paper on Algorithmic Trading in the Iowa Electronic Markets. I shared it with researchers studying prediction markets at Microsoft Research Labs.

The people there were very smart and interested in what I had to say. They may very well have the largest collection of people studying prediction markets anywhere in the world. It's a somewhat obscure field, as most researchers are interested in either theoretical market models or more developed financial markets. It's a shame because there is a lot to learn from prediction markets, which sit right between the two.

The presentation itself is made with the reveal.js presentation framework. I made it in Jupyter, which now has the ability to output working presentations in reveal. I had a lot of fun learning about Jupyter and building a presentation in a notebook. The presentation workflow was so much better than anything I have experienced before, and I can't image ever using anything else again.

I made a lamp out of an empty olive oil bottle.

After removing the label and cleaning it out, I drilled a hole near the bottom using diamond drill bits and a press drill. The electric cord runs through the center of the bottle up to the opening on top.

The bottle is filled with fish tank gravel. It was very hard getting it in the bottle! I tried using a funnel but it kept getting clogged. Eventually I settled on dumping it in the mouth by hand with the bottle in a large bin to catch the many rock pieces that did not go inside. This took some time.

The mauve lamp shade is made of silk. I think it matches the gravel quite well.

I also made that coaster sitting on the nightstand. That was a long time ago though.

After a few months of work, I now feel like this website is in good enough shape to share with other people.

I added more projects to the Projects page and wrote up descriptions for each. Ongoing projects will be written up in this blog, but complete or elaborate projects will get their own project page.

My priority right now is to improve the youtube videos. I bought a better microphone and will tune my piano soon.

I made audio files from the previously posted videos and uploaded everything to Soundcloud. The sound quality of these recordings aren't very good but now my parents easily listen to my play piano using their Sonos speakers.

Everything is linked together in one playlist. Soon I will replace these recordings with better ones and add new songs.

I finally had time to record myself playing Erik Satie's Gnossienne No. 3. There are 6 of them, but I am just going to focus on the first 3 for now.

This isn't my best rendition of this piece but it will do. I need to record myself more often so I get more comfortable with it. I should also re-record the pieces in my previous posts because I can play those much better now.

Currently I am working on Satie's Nocturnes No. 1 and Robert Shumann's Träumerei.

I added my Ray Tracing artwork and figure drawing sketches to the galleries. All of it is art from years ago that I wanted to post and share.

My Mouse Tracings project has been added to the projects page. I collected data on keyboard and mouse activity for many months and used the data to create colorful images. Go to the gallery to see the endless beauty of data and the project page to learn how they were made.

I play my favorite song Gnossienne #1 so often that I can play it from memory. I've been able to play it from memory for a few months now, but I didn't attempt to make a video of myself without sheet music until today.

I think I play it much better here. I am more gentle with the chords, which is important for Satie's work.

And I can now play Gnossienne #2 reasonably well. This still a work in progress.

I have started on #3, and can play the first third of the piece.

I've been putting a lot of effort into learning the first three of Satie's Gymnopedies. Here's me playing the second one:

I also tried playing all three in a row. I noticeably messed up the chords in a few places but I'm posting it anyway.

When I listen to the professionals play Satie's songs the chords are played softer than the way I hit them. I tried to imitate them here, but made more mistakes as a result.