Getting Back with an Ex: The Return to RTM

Just under two months ago, I wrote about how I was switching my task manager of choice from Remember the Milk to Wunderlist. As of today -- as soon as I finish writing this post -- I'm switching back. Here's why.

Date entry

To add a task in RTM using the web interface, one enters the name of the task and any associated information (due date, priority, tags, etc.) into a one-line text box. Task details are prepended by a designated character. This is called Smart Add, and it's brilliant. For example, "Wash car ^3 weeks" will set a task due three weeks from today, and "Elgar's time capsule opened in Worcestershire ^2-23-2034" will remind me to watch BBC News in 23 years. No sweat.

To add a due date to a task in Wunderlist using the web interface, you have to flip through a pop-up calendar. Want to set a reminder for the year 2034? You best start clicking; you have 276 months to get through. The only way around this is to use the Wunderlist mobile app (on iOS, you can use the scrolling date picker) or to send your task via email.

The RTM mobile app allows you to use the scrolling date picker or choose from a list of never, tomorrow, Monday, Tuesday, etc. or enter the date in text like you would on the web version. I can't speak for email adding, because I haven't tested it thoroughly.

Interface blues

Once, I had Wunderlist open in a Chrome tab. I was going about my business and decided to switch to it and add a task. I jumped to the tab, clicked in the add-a-task box and started typing "read this article" or something. Unfortunately, I was too fast for the interface, which decided to refresh itself, which caused the focus to be stolen away from the text box. The shortcut key for deleting a list of tasks is D. I lost the focus, hit D, hit space (accidentally confirming the action), and permanently lost an entire list of twenty tasks in less than a second. Yes, I did it, and it's my fault, but I am not okay with having to wait a moment to make sure an app is ready when I switch to it.

RTM is zippy, and every action is echoed at the top of the page: "List 'Personal' deleted. Undo?" "Task completed. Undo?"

No big picture, no big sorted list

For better or worse, I need to be able to see all my tasks in one big list sorted by date. Wunderlist does not offer this. Wunderlist does not sort tasks by date -- even when viewing a single list -- unless you drag them into order yourself.

Whose fault is it, anyway?

In my previous post, I wrote that "[S]ometimes I worry that I spend more time managing my tasks than actually getting anything done." However, that's my fault, and mine alone. I shouldn't blame RTM for being a feature-rich app.

The two things I'll miss...

Wunderlist is more attractive than RTM. I love the wood-panel background and chalkboard background that you can set your task list on. Even the reminder or news emails from the team are gorgeous. RTM is simple and clean and good-looking enough, but more than once, I felt like an idiot at the Baylor Library for opening up a page with a big picture of a cow at the top.

Also, free syncing across all devices. Wunderlist, and all of their mobile apps (Android and iOS), and all syncing, is all free. Free RTM users get one manual sync every 24 hours. Pro users, for $25 a year, get free, unlimited, and automatic syncing. Note that this is only for the sleek RTM app, though -- rememberthemilk.com in mobile Safari is always free as free, and it works ~fairly well.

But, the thing is, you know... I just might love RTM enough to go pro. And I'm okay with that.

Dear RTM...

Dear RTM,

I met someone new the other day.


I can explain...

I love your interface. It's so fun to use. I trust it, and I trust you so much. Wunderlist is strange. It doesn't have a sort-by-date option. I can't tell you how much I'll miss your glorious, long list of tasks, sorted by date. With Wunderlist, I don't feel like I can get a big picture overview... since it can't even sort by date. But... maybe that's not what I need. Maybe I need a segmented list. Maybe I only need to see what's just ahead. I do tend to get scared by big pictures. I do tend to lose focus.

And you're so powerful, it's really great... but I don't always use all of your features. I never use locations, or time estimates... and tags are just another way for me to procrastinate. "Put off"... "Really put off"... and I love your rainbow of priorities, too, but sometimes I worry that I spend more time managing my tasks than actually getting anything done. Wunderlist is so simple, there's no way for me to ignore whether I'm ready for tomorrow or not. She just tells me how it is... and maybe I need that.

And... I like your iPad app, but it can only sync once a day unless I pay. I have given you so much attention these last few years, and you still ask me for more, while Wunderlist just sits there and shines: "Free for Every Device." If that ever changes, I'll come a-knocking, but until then, dear, what else can I do?

The transition might not be easy, but there's no better time to do it.

RTM, you got me through college, and I'll always have a special place for you in my heart.

Good-bye... for now...
--Anson

A Spring Break Sampler

I've got a bunch of things to share that I discovered this Spring Break! Topics include:

• Linotype
• The Princess and the Frog
• Tangled
• Niko Niko's

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Linotype

Linotype machines, invented in 1884, allowed typesetters to prepare type (to be used in a printing press) one line at a time instead of one character at a time. Despite their extreme complexity and awesomeness, these machines were smashed up like junk in the 1970s, as new technology took their place.

A few machines have survived, though, and a feature-length documentary is in production!

Linotype: The Film

Be sure to check out the trailer. I'm really looking forward to it, and when I grow up and have a job, one of the first things I'll do is buy one of their posters or something.

What fascinates me most about this contraption is its ability to create justified spacing (you know, when a paragraph is square on the left and right sides). Think of it -- a mechanical device, automatically spacing out words to make everything line up via flexible spacebands. Brilliant.

---

The Princess and the Frog

IMDB 7.3/10, RT 84%

I watched this movie with a friend the other day... and I thought it was fine. I very much liked the main character, and her family, and her dreams. The story was fine, the songs were fine. The bad guy was creepy. The trumpet-playing alligator was... slightly annoying. My favorite parts were the beginning moments, during Tiana's introduction and whenever she was with her family.

Maybe this is just me, but sometimes, the animation felt strange. I remember it was heralded as a big deal -- Disney's return to classic animation!! Most of the time, everything looked fine, hand-drawn and normal. Every few moments, though, it looked like the animators had taken a drawing and used the computer to translate it across the screen in a certain way. Characters moving across the screen, or shrinking and growing, and camera pans were smooth... but too smooth. Almost unnaturally so.

It's hard to describe, but every time something like that happened, it stuck out to me. To use an extreme example, it's like when Family Guy is going along normally, and all of a sudden a plane crash-lands in the middle of the street, and you can tell that the plane is computer-animated because it doesn't match anything else.

Or, perhaps my brain was confused, because the night before, I had watched...

---

Tangled

IMDB 8.0/10, RT 90%

OH. MY. GOSH. I don't know what it is about this movie, or the universe happening to line up at a certain perfect point, but I was completely enraptured from start to finish. The trailers are alright, and I thought it might be cool to see, but I was just completely blown away. I have not gotten so into a movie while watching it in quite a while.

I could go on and on about it, but I will stop here with my enthusiastic recommendation. (Personally, I find that my best movie-watching experiences occur when I am the least informed. A trailer or two is more than welcome, but I like to give movies a chance to speak for themselves.)

Here are some must-reads and must-sees that I found during my splurge of fandom. First, this:

• "The Art of Tangled" @ Pushing Pixels

This gem of an article is a Tangled link-fest -- there are tons of links to artists' blogs, which are full of Tangled concept art and storyboards. Super-awesome!! You know what that means -- new desktop backgrounds!!!

I'll leave the link-hopping adventure to you (beware of spoilers at your own risk), but here are a couple of things I wanted to comment on:

• Once you've seen the movie, be sure to check out one, two, and three Tangled articles on a blog called Temple of the Seven Golden Camels, which I would say is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on the internet. If you've ever been curious about storytelling, or making movies, this blog is for you. Read it now. There are other Tangled articles in there, too, but you've got to do some digging!
• A Flickr account where a guy reviews "The Art of _____" books, including The Art of 'Tangled'. (possible spoiler alert!) His reviews include hi-res pictures of pages from the books, which you can see at the link above.
• You can also dig around for pictures from other "Art of" books. Just search this page for the text "artof".

Okay, great. So you've read all about it, and downloaded all the artwork... but what's next?

• How about some hazelnut soup?
• How about some Pascal / Rapunzel papercraft?!?

... (I'm done.)

---

Niko Niko's

2520 Montrose, Houston, TX

After driving past it a billion times, I finally went to Niko Niko's with a good friend last night. The place has received tons of awards and recognition, and I reckon it deserves them!

The place was full (on the inside; outside tables were empty), but we had no wait -- bustling, but cozy. You step in, and feel like the place is fun, welcoming, and serious about food all at the same time. If I was a downtown Houstonite, I'd hit it up for lunch once a week and for coffee and dessert dates as often as possible.

According to my receipt, our cashier's name was Daphne, which is awesome (friendly, check; cute, also check). I had a Greek Chicken Parmesan, which is like Italian chicken Parmesan, but Greekified and served in a pita -- delicious!! Greek salad, also good. Side of French fries, gigantic and good.

Thus, I give it my official recommendation and blessing. Be sure to check it out if you're ever in the neighborhood!

Recognizing Rossini

Once upon a time, I saw this commercial in a movie theater.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiMf5cCDy1I

After a couple more chance encounters, it became my favorite commercial of all time. I love Charlie Brown, and the music was fantastic (I always love it how Coke tags on the Coke jingle at the end of a commercial in the style of the music of that commercial. "Coke is the master of advertising," Dad always said. Think about it -- how many Coke insignia do you see in a day?)... but I wasn't sure what piece it was, or whether or not it was even extant before the commercial was made. I had a hunch that it was edited to fit the commercial for a couple of reasons: (1) there are two I - vi - I6/4 - V chord patterns near the end. The first one starts at 0:40 and repeats three times, and the second starts at 0:45 and repeats five times. These numbers are a bit odd -- we expect things to repeat four, two, or maybe three times... but not three times and five times (?). With this in mind, when you watch the commercial and listen for this pattern, it kinda sounds like a deliberate vamp. Also, (2) there are other, shorter versions of the commercial with cuts in the music. Yet, I am left with an unsolved mystery.

Life goes on.

A year and change later, the Baylor Symphony 2009 audition material is announced, and I start listening to recordings. I soon happily discovered that the music in the Coke commercial was a very cleverly edited rendition of Rossini's Overture to the Barber of Seville. 8^D Awesome!!!!

I was also excited to learn recently that we (the Baylor Symphony) will indeed be playing this piece. I'll have to resist adding the Coke jingle at the end every time we play it!! (I also have to resist thinking of Bugs Bunny dancing around with a comb and a pair of scissors.) That is such a fun piece to play; I'm lovin' it.

~~~~~~~

For another interesting rendition, check out this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O-hCtPfef8

Yes, I agree, after the first five seconds, you're already thinking, "Oh my gosh, this is terrible. A travesty!" but keep listening. It gets totally cool.

~~~~~~~

For closure, watch the Coke commercial again, and look for a quick shot of a girl holding a football. Then, click the "Charlie Brown" link above and note any similarities. 8^)

Charlie succeeds at last; all's right in the world.

Music and Lectures

Hello, all,

Here's your required listening for the weekend:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuMhhIJ3T3M

(This video looks a bit funny because the video is a smidge ahead of the audio. Also, there's a brief hiccup in the video a few minutes in... pay these things no heed!)

This piece has been stuck in my head recently.

Tchaikovsky originally wrote this piece as a movement of one of his string quartets. This means that this piece was part of a group of relatively short pieces that form a collection generally called a "string quartet." Note that the word "quartet" refers to the fact that there are four musicians in the ensemble (two violins, a viola, and a cello), not to the number of movements (sub-pieces) in the larger work. By technical / dictionary definition, a "string quartet" is just a four-person ensemble (the instrumentation of which varies historically, of course), but the term has long since taken on the meaning of a suite written for such an ensemble.

Anyway, the movement turned out to be a big hit, and Tchaikovsky arranged it a few years later for solo cello and piano (or string orchestra).

The piece is known as the "Andante cantabile" movement. Musicians translate "andante" as a tempo marking indicative of a "walking" tempo -- it's not slow, but it sure ain't fast, either. "Cantabile" means in a singing style, or "singing-ly," to construct an adverb.

I discovered this piece because I randomly found a bass transcription of it in my sheet music collection. I'm not sure if I'll learn it and perform it for anything, as the arrangement isn't centered in a very soloistic register for the bass... which is almost indubitably the reason I had a hard time finding a recording. (I might try getting funky with the key, though; we'll see.) After spending a couple of hours scouring Baylor's electronic resources directory and the internet at large looking for a bass recording of the piece, I presented my quest to a friend who immediately suggested YouTubing it. I hadn't really thought of that. There was no bass recording, but we did find this (and other) recordings. For a dramatic (and awesome) string ensemble recording, check out this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEsgZ_KYPv8

What a melody! I hope it gets stuck in your head a little bit, too, so that you may carry it around and enjoy it throughout your day.

~~~~~~~

(This segment of this post was written a few days ago in a state of extreme tiredness. Please excuse any odd linguistic choices.)

So, I attended a lecture earlier this evening. The event was held in a spacious room inside the Honors College. I, however, am not in any of the Honors programs here, and I do not live in the Honors College building, so my campus ID card does not grant me access to said building. I was a typical nerd in junior high and high school, and I did all that that implies -- good ol' academic competitions, calculator programming, computer science / programming, over-extensive AP testing... Been there, done that, still wear the t-shirts. (My TICalc.org profile still exists, too. Should you have a need for a Hearts scorekeeper for TI-83+, fret no more.) As high school ended, though, I knew I had to make a choice between music and math/science. Reasoning that I would miss music more than I'd miss math and science, I chose the music path. I do believe that this was the correct choice to make... but believe me, I do miss math and science. As a non-Honors student, lacking the unique flavor of academic rigor that those Honors kiddos taste every day, I tailgated my way into the building with a faint, faint worry of being a fish in a foreign pond. I don't know too many people in the Honors College / programs, but I've seen a lot of them around. Upon entering the lecture room, I grabbed some seats to help establish a Brooks College (that's my home!!) base near the front. The room filled shortly afterwards, and the lecture began.

An hour and change later, my legs were feelin' it from the harsh limitations that the chair in front of me placed on their degrees of freedom. I was also past the point of tiredness, somewhat hungry, and almost cranky. I stood up to stretch my legs and look at the crowd in motion around me.

Generally, I'd say that I tend to be fond of crowds. Blessed with the bird's-eye view that I have, navigation is never a problem, and I like the feeling of being part of something big. It's like going to a midnight movie or book release, when you're able to tune into and sync with the energy of everyone else there. Having said that, though, you should know not to expect me, upon being released into a crowd, to go around and try to learn everyone's name or extract the life story of whatever hapless bystander I run into first.

So, after briefly contemplating the scene, I drifted towards the refreshments table at the back. That's when... it happened. Dun-dun-duuunnnn!!!!!! (Mind ye not my midnight melodrama.)

I started running into people I had seen before. I saw a girl whose name I had forgotten, but I knew she was in the School of Music with me. I chatted briefly with her and her friend (I didn't know his name either), until I finally gave in and asked if she could remind me of her name. She kindly did, and asked if I knew her friend. "No," I replied, and in perfect unison with the Mystery Man, I added, "But I've seen you around a lot." Mystery Man immediately called jinx, and all traces or hints of potential grumpiness gone, I laughed with them. Moments later, I joked with strangers about where the line for the refreshments table was (or wasn't) and who was cutting in said line, and soon after that, I was spontaneously aiding a group effort to determine what exactly the mysterious, carbonated, non-water punch-like beverage was.

In these brief moments, I experienced something that I do not often feel nowadays -- something from an earlier time in my life. I have my dear friends, of course, who I love very much, but this was something different... a unique flavor of camaraderie, but more than just a feeling of general chumminess -- it was like an instant identity. It was like meeting an old friend, or a whole bunch of old friends all at once.

At times like those, I miss math, I miss science, and I miss being around people who feel the same way.

~~~~~~~

I love, value, appreciate, enjoy, and am thankful for my training as a musician. I am proud of the choice that I made.

Just for fun...

While going through some old papers (and I mean old papers), I found this cool "Instrument Scramble" puzzle. The premise is simple -- unscramble the names of the instruments -- but I think this one has a twist!

It looks like all these "words" might have been hand-scrambled. Whereas a computer could scramble a list of words and spit it back out in a millisecond, I think the letters of these words were intentionally scrambled to create "words" that look like they could actually be real words. This makes unscrambling them extra-tricky, since one's brain will try to accept a real-looking word more fervently than it would a "word" that is obviously a randomized jumble of letters. Capitalizing the first letter in each scrambled word makes it even more challenging!

(Arguably, it is not at all farfetched to say that an algorithm could be instructed to similarly create scrambles that look like words... but, given the apparent age of this paper, I'm not sure that's the case.)

Enjoy!!

~~~~~~~

Sanctanbosoro

Hoxopaens

Rochefrhnn

Bromunaite

Eboo

Copolci

Prah

Momtot

Grano

Nivoli

Lenoxpoyh

Batu

Sabdoulebs

Osabons

Chamorina

Aponi

Bylascm

Remtupt

Ovial

Shicem

Litacern

Cadicrona

Lolce

Utriga

Riculdem

Numsadrer

Teful

Glinater

Mascraa

Ipimtan

Orphichards

Shilognenhr

Marsudbs

Slebl

Nobomret

Public Domain Music Resources

In search of sheet music? Check out these sites!!

IMSLP.org

The International Music Score Library Project is a treasure trove of freely-downloadable public domain scores and sheet music. Copyright laws vary from country to country, so what's public domain in Europe might not be okay here in the States. IMSLP takes no responsibility for monitoring who's downloading what from what country, so check the warnings on each file's page before downloading. If it's anything before 1923-ish, you'll probably be okay in the US. Search away!

They do have a ton of music, though -- looking for a four-hands piano transcription of your favorite Brahms symphony? Got it! How about a solo piano reduction of my favorite piece ever, the Enigma Variations by Sir Edward Elgar? Yes!!

CPDL.org

The Choral Public Domain Library, aka "ChoralWiki", does the same with choral music.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Bogoroditse Devo - Sergei Rachmaninoff

Hodie Christus natus est - Jan Pieters Sweelinck

O Magnum Mysterium - Tomás Luis de Victoria

I looked these up a while ago because I thought they had the potential to make great string arrangements someday. 8^)

The first two pieces on the above list were performed a few years ago, in December 2006, at the Baylor Symphony and Choral Union's Combined Christmas Concert... a concert I remember as the best Christmas concert ever. There were so many wonderful pieces; I'll never forget it! The cd that I ordered of that concert contains several of my iTunes' "Most Played" songs.

Enjoy the music resources!!!