derek kwan關志豪🦦🐈🍮 @mrufrufin@post.lurk.org

finally finishedmy online irb citi training last night and it's kinda interesitng how much the way things are presented makes me enthusiastic or not enthusiastic about something (not sure if that's a flaw of mine or not). like the training was all about ethics in research which I'd think is something i'd at least find interest in, but the way it was presented makes me not want to learn more about it or think about it for awhile...

kinda reminds me of when i took a C programming class in undergrad it was such a boring and unorganized class that it def didn't help steer me in the "doing things with computers" path or get me interested in computers and look at what I'm up to these days

i didn't pursue music when i first started out in undergrad half-bc the playing music in high school situation was horrible and i hated it... but then i later got a doctorate in playing music lol

anyways, this makes me consider how vs what in different contexts like how things are taught for example

i have gone through 3 of the 16 modules and i'm really dreading going through the rest of them. i fell asleep going through the second one.

i have been taking irb citi training for my hci class and i get the importance of it all but it is one heck of a slog to get through and the way it's presented just burns the heck out of my brain where i really just don't want to think anymore and i can't help but wonder if there's a more effective way of presenting the information. even the audio/video components are just a synthesized voice reading huge chunks of text on slides that don't auto-advance and it's like whyyyyyyyyy

as great as remote options are (and i wouldn't have the opp to pursue a master's in cs otherwise), it feels weird and this is coming from somebody who grew up not really being around a lot of people/growing up internet-oriented and have a default state of that

like it feels weird to watch a lecture and then not exiting a lecture hall with other people even though i might not really talk to them

going through school originally as a performer, it feels really weird doing online algoraves and not being on a stage and being at home the entire time. not many people would come to student recitals but still, the stage is this special thing and has this special aura where i can be not-me and the after-performance situations which sometimes felt kinda anticlimactic i still liked

i guess then, despite me being me, i kinda value physicality and it is irreplaceable? physical places have auras, set moods and people do as well. so much is lost that can't be captured remotely (and could they ever be captured?).

i suppose part of this ramblings is that with grad school being grad school and me being me that i have back-of-the-mind fears that i will get lost in my own little world again without the chance and non-chance situations that being physically going to school forces me into but we will see...

first day of online grad school and oh man, i totally forgot what being in school is like and how do i even student anymore lol

picked hci bc it seems the most applicable to the stuff i've been doing lately? but also apparently it is a lot of reading and writing every week and i am a very slow (and easily distracted) reader (and writer) so that makes me a bit nervous...

ai robotics bc i'm planning on going down the ai/human-related specialization (basically the most human-related specialization they have and i didn't want to go to straight up ml or robotics or software design) and mb some autonomous agent sorta thing could show up in my art stuff from it

registered for "human computer interaction" and "robotics: ai techniques" today for my first semester as an online grad student and it has been a long time since i've been in school and an even longer time since i've been a non-art-related student so we will see how this all goes...

been looking at speech synthesis again and came across this which seems preeeeeeeeetty darn comprehensive: https://www.charlesames.net/sound/speech-synthesis.html .

previously only futzed around with vowel formants in pure data and was looking into how to model consonants but it looks like there many more worms in the can i have opened 😩 😩 😩 (on a sidenote, do worms really come in cans and is the worm-in-can packaging method problematic?)

question:
what is are the kinects/leap motions of nowadays (stuff for body/limb tracking)? do people still play around with kinects/leap motions and are there better/more open solutions these days? it's been awhile since i've worked with any motion tracking stuff (5+ yrs)...

i was learning mandarin before this bc i'm ethnically chinese so it was a part of my journey of learning about my heritage and identity but i just don't consume a lot of content in chinese (which makes me wonder why that is but don't feel like exploring that right now...) and my whole fam speaks cantonese anyways (and there really aren't a lot of great online and/or free resources for learning that)

started the japanese track on duolingo the other day. i have a tendency to half/notevenhalf-learn a lot of languages (and programming languages) but i'm hoping that with the amount of anime and japanese comedy i've tended to watch over the years and all the japanese creative techy and musiciany accounts i tend to follow on the birdsite (and not understand a single word of), i might just have the motivation and context to actually follow through (a little farther) with this one (famous last words)...

we will see how i keep up with it once school starts...

tune used as the intro for my #TidalCycles #NewMoon set with #caider. since i've been thinking of the orihime and hikoboshi tale ever since finishing steins;gate 0 (thx anime!), this tune is named after the milky way and is about instances of hazy fluidity and how we can feel stuck in them or trapped by them at times.

bc: https://derekxkwan.bandcamp.com/track/silver-river

sc: https://soundcloud.com/dxkzh/silver-river

i like when i am sitting in my room in the dark in the middle of the night and i start thinking about cheese and then i go to the fridge and there is cheese. even tho i wake up the cat, it is a wonderful moment (+ she is cute when she wakes up with those groggy half-opened eyes).

bandcamp link for "desert dusk":

https://derekxkwan.bandcamp.com/track/desert-dusk

"desert dusk" is one of the #tidalcycles tunes i used for the #caider set at @NetworkMusicFestival in July and is prob one of the prettier things i've written. it is about transitions and the magical things that can happen in those in-between, gray areas. also, "desert dusk" would make a wonderful scented candle addition to any living arragement.

sc: https://soundcloud.com/dxkzh/desert-dusk

#skateboarding to buy groceries and buying beets, mb not the best idea I've had

back on my polybius square game, have to find other relatively basic encoding schemes that could be potentially visually interesting #p5js

the only navigation app I got on my phone is google earth bc you gotta see the big picture in life