Jamglue!

Ok, so I've got some "tidying up" to do, so I'll dive right in to today's T3A.

#3 - Jamglue

I got an email this morning from Gautam. Yes, the guy from the Toons who made all the women swoon and whose grandmother was riding a bike down the street the other day. It turns out he's working for a startup now, which has developed a pretty cool online service.

They're called "Jamglue" (http://www.jamglue.com) and their app allows you to do audio mixing online! The software seems like a simple version of ProTools or Sony Acid Pro, except that you do everything inside your browser, and it seems to be integrated into an online community.

This is actually something that might be really good for Osakapella, now that I think of it... former members are scattered around the world, and there are still a few old songs I'd love to record!

Anyway, Jamglue has a project going on this week where they're trying to amass the "world's biggest Valentine's Day choir" and get lots of random people to volunteer to sing along with one of two songs - one for V-Day lovers, and one for V-Day haters. Or you can do both, if you're either chronically indecisive or just really excited to add your voice to the mix.

They say all you need is a microphone, so I recommend you all try it out! I've always believed in supporting talented street musicians and innovative tech startups. :)

#2 - Kern Passed 2-Kyuu!

This afternoon I found out that my friend Kern passed the Level 2 Japanese Language Proficiency Test. The implications of this are far-reaching. I passed Level 2 four years ago (can you believe it? FOUR YEARS?!?! Dang time flies...) and I've been kind of slacking lately in my studies of Japanese. Now there's gonna be some healthy cutthroat competition in the ol' a cappella group! I just started Japanese classes again yesterday after about a month of vacation, and if I crank away at memorizing kanji this year, Level One may be a possibility...

Haha, I've been such a slacker since Linda left.

#1 - A beautiful analogy

I'll spare you the details, but I've been working on implementing a state estimation filter at work, and at one point tonight I asked my coworker Jaume a few questions about some equations. He was able to explain the stuff pretty clearly... "this term is the blah blah blah transformation matrix, this term is the blah blah covariance," and so on. But for one of the terms he just said, (be sure to read this one with a Spanish accent!) "this one... this is like the oil in the frying pan."

It was perfect... I knew exactly what he meant, and suddenly the equations all made sense to me. Well mostly. We'll see if it works when I code it up tomorrow. :)