been a while since I posted any music,here’s an mp3 of “Beaumont Rag”, an old Doc Watson tune. been practicing bluegrass stuff a lot lately, this is the first real crosspicking piece I’ve learned.

I haven’t really been particular about grinding my own pepper in the past, but in this month’s cook’s illustrated, they review a bunch of peppercorns and essentially say not to bother buying preground pepper. this kind of surprised me as they are a pretty pragmatic bunch. since I am kind of a CI lemming anyways, I picked up some tellicherry peppercorns from fairway today, and tried it on roasted cauliflower and eggplants, otherwise known as lunch. holy shit! really incredible flavor, definitely the strongest and best pepper I can remember having.

in other news, this week in my composition class we’re writing a trio for cello, oboe and horn, based on the golden ratio. good stuff.

this semester I’m taking a composition class at juilliard, our first assignment was to write a rondo for flute and cello that takes 2 themes through a bunch of different modes. last week we had a reading, here’s the recording. a few mistakes, but the musicians were probably the best sightreaders I’ve ever seen, there were some pretty difficult pieces and they nailed almost everything straight off.

the form of this piece is ABACABA, the C section being solo cello. the rhythm is kind of funny because the cello is essentially playing in 3/4 and the flute is in 4/4.

next up, we’re writing a trio for cello, oboe and french horn!

been super busy with work this week, so haven’t had time to do as much reading as I’ve wanted, but did check google reader enough to see a lot of advice from VCs about battening down the hatches and jim cramer about not keeping money you need anytime soon in the market. I dunno, the timing just seems wrong to me regarding most of these helpful financial meltdown tips. it’s never a good idea to invest short-term reserves in equities, even when the market is going up, and it’s not a new idea that small companies should try and save money where they can.

I have noticed that I am kind of emotionally immune to swings in the market like those in the past week,
I suspect it’s been beaten out of me after years of playing online poker, where losing 20% of my working bankroll was just another day at the office in the shorthanded NL games online. that said, I remember very well how shell-shocked I was the first time I lost a thousand bucks playing poker, at the now defunct playstation, an underground cardroom in nyc. Fortunately, I knew the games were good so I kept playing. Everything worked out just fine and poker was a great supplemental income for me for many years, but I’m pretty sure on the train ride home I told myself I should quit playing several times.

I can’t help but imagine that a lot of people are going through this same kind of “holy shit I just lost a lot of money” hangover, and from experience I know it’s not fun. however, as any gambler will tell you it’s part of the game, and I have always viewed finance as just like any other gamble. I also know that it’s only money and my strongest emotion through this whole meltdown has been to feel lucky enough to have money to lose in the markets.

one other thought. the other day, I referred to some way of thinking as being “results oriented” and the person I was talking to thought I meant it as a positive thing. completely understandable, but it was kind of a mindfuck for me since that term is kind of a putdown among poker players. if someone lays you 3:2 on a coinflip, you book it. whining about it if things don’t go your way is just being results oriented. it’s clearly the right decision to gamble getting those odds (as long as you can afford it) as your bet has a positive expected value, so you should welcome the action and not worry about the results. anyways, it’s very easy to think in a results oriented kind of way, but usually also not a very helpful way to make decisions. all the same, I often catch myself making results oriented decisions, like switching traffic lanes, and it’s easy to slip into this way of thinking.

cool article about our neighborhood in the times!

“achilles absent, was achilles still”  -homer