I found this video today, and it made me really happy inside. For those who don't know, autotune is a cop out to make people who are not musically talented sound like they are. :) Basically it's meant to "fix" small off-key slip ups. A lot of artists overuse it, and then they don't have to sing well, because the machine does it for them. Case in point, the scientists in this video are simply speaking, yet this sounds like it could be on a hip hop or electronica station.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Med School Application Process
One day short of two months with no posts. The paucity of posts is explained by the fact that I have been busy between school, work, and applications. Here I'm going to give a basic rundown of the application process for med school.
Back in May I took the MCAT, which is the admission exam for medical school. The next step of the process was to fill out the primary application, which is a basic, centralized application for every school you want to apply to. You fill out personal information, all of the classes you have taken in college and grades from those classes, different activities you have participated in during college (service, research, etc), write a personal statement essay, and select all of the medical schools you would like to send the application to (~30 bucks a pop). You also must find several professors and supervisors to write letters of recommendation, which are associated with your application file. The application service takes about 30 days to verify your application and transcript.
Schools that are interested (either in you or just your money) send a request for you to fill out their particular secondary applications, different for every school. Some are fairly simple, but most require another handful of essays to be written. After filling out the secondary, you get to pay another 75 - 100 dollars each.
After they screen the secondaries, schools then contact you to set up a time for an interview at the school. Of course, you get to pay to fly yourself to the school and find yourself food and lodging for your time there. If you make it this far, you basically qualify for acceptance at the school--they're checking to see if you're a good fit.
Now you wait. And wait, and wait. Schools make their decision and contact you via email, letter or telephone. Their deadline for decisions is in April. Some may decide and let you know sooner. In the meantime, you put all of your plans for the future on hold, because you don't know where you'll be living for the next four years.
Next post will be about my experience thus far in the process.
Back in May I took the MCAT, which is the admission exam for medical school. The next step of the process was to fill out the primary application, which is a basic, centralized application for every school you want to apply to. You fill out personal information, all of the classes you have taken in college and grades from those classes, different activities you have participated in during college (service, research, etc), write a personal statement essay, and select all of the medical schools you would like to send the application to (~30 bucks a pop). You also must find several professors and supervisors to write letters of recommendation, which are associated with your application file. The application service takes about 30 days to verify your application and transcript.
Schools that are interested (either in you or just your money) send a request for you to fill out their particular secondary applications, different for every school. Some are fairly simple, but most require another handful of essays to be written. After filling out the secondary, you get to pay another 75 - 100 dollars each.
After they screen the secondaries, schools then contact you to set up a time for an interview at the school. Of course, you get to pay to fly yourself to the school and find yourself food and lodging for your time there. If you make it this far, you basically qualify for acceptance at the school--they're checking to see if you're a good fit.
Now you wait. And wait, and wait. Schools make their decision and contact you via email, letter or telephone. Their deadline for decisions is in April. Some may decide and let you know sooner. In the meantime, you put all of your plans for the future on hold, because you don't know where you'll be living for the next four years.
Next post will be about my experience thus far in the process.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Our square footage
Out of curiosity, I measured today the square footage of the apartment we've been living in for the past (almost) two years: 337.5. Less than I thought. I'm proud of us.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Some political thoughts
For the past few months I've had a few thoughts rattling around in my head regarding our current political situation. Short version: I'm still finding my political stance, but there seems to be too much name-calling and too little actual political discussion to work towards solutions. Biased shouting is preventing reasonable dialogue. (See Limbaugh and Hannity vs. HuffPo and DailyKos. Note: I tend to ignore all four of these sources.)
Longer version: As far as I can tell, there is an entire spectrum of political beliefs. To simplify, we'll call one end of the spectrum the "extreme liberal" end, and the other we'll call the "extreme conservative" end. It seems to me that the people on the extremes of the spectrum are shouting very loudly at each other, and this prevents meaningful discussion. Name-calling doesn't help--I believe that most of the people leading our country at any given time are doing their best not to drive it into the ground. They want to help the nation and its people. Unfortunately, the people at each end of the spectrum have their own ideas about what is the right way to make that happen and then demonize others who happen to take a different viewpoint.
A very simple example: In general, liberals subscribe to the "tax and spend" ideology, where the public is taxed and government uses the money in different programs to meet needs of individuals/groups. Conservatives generally believe that the market should be left to operate on its own, and that individuals and communities should altruistically care for the needs of individuals/groups.
Both of these ideologies are valid ways of thinking and caring for the public. Each has their pros and cons. My point in this post is not to advocate either stance, but rather that neither side is made up completely of idiots. Smart, good people have found reasons to sway one way or the other. Maybe we should find out what those reasons are before we criticize what they choose to support. In the end, we may not be able to come to a perfect consensus. That's ok. At least we know what the others think and why. And then we can vote on it. The majority vote will win. Sometimes there's a stalemate and compromise is required. That's ok, too. That's the way this country was set up to run.
But let's not call each other names. That wasn't appropriate in Kindergarten, and it's not appropriate now.
Longer version: As far as I can tell, there is an entire spectrum of political beliefs. To simplify, we'll call one end of the spectrum the "extreme liberal" end, and the other we'll call the "extreme conservative" end. It seems to me that the people on the extremes of the spectrum are shouting very loudly at each other, and this prevents meaningful discussion. Name-calling doesn't help--I believe that most of the people leading our country at any given time are doing their best not to drive it into the ground. They want to help the nation and its people. Unfortunately, the people at each end of the spectrum have their own ideas about what is the right way to make that happen and then demonize others who happen to take a different viewpoint.
A very simple example: In general, liberals subscribe to the "tax and spend" ideology, where the public is taxed and government uses the money in different programs to meet needs of individuals/groups. Conservatives generally believe that the market should be left to operate on its own, and that individuals and communities should altruistically care for the needs of individuals/groups.
Both of these ideologies are valid ways of thinking and caring for the public. Each has their pros and cons. My point in this post is not to advocate either stance, but rather that neither side is made up completely of idiots. Smart, good people have found reasons to sway one way or the other. Maybe we should find out what those reasons are before we criticize what they choose to support. In the end, we may not be able to come to a perfect consensus. That's ok. At least we know what the others think and why. And then we can vote on it. The majority vote will win. Sometimes there's a stalemate and compromise is required. That's ok, too. That's the way this country was set up to run.
But let's not call each other names. That wasn't appropriate in Kindergarten, and it's not appropriate now.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Hi, my name is Brad, and I'm a bookaholic.
So I have to let you in on a couple of secrets. First: I have a reading queue in my blog side bar... but it's not super accurate. Yes, I plan to read all of the books in it, but my to-read queue is a bit longer than what you can see there. There are 18 books listed on my blog, but the true queue actually contains 797.
Second: reading pays. I've received 5 free books in the past 6 months or so, plus a $10 gift certificate to a local restaurant. All for reading... woohoo!
The summer reading program at the local library is pretty great--they were the source of the gift certificate. The books came from a website called Goodreads, which just so happens to be one of my favorite websites ever. Basically it's a giant database of books with social network functionality. So you create a profile and start telling the website books you've read, and marking other books that you want to read. You can rate books and leave reviews on them. You can be friends with other people who use the site and see what they are reading and what they think about it, etc. So anytime I hear about a book that sounds interesting to me, I'll go to the website, find it, and mark it as "to read". Then it doesn't have to sit in my brain anymore. I also haven't lacked for new books to read since I started using it--I know exactly what books I'm wanting to read rather than trying to remember what that cool book my buddy told me about is called. I've outsourced a nice little non-essential portion of my brain.
Now, I can't possibly read all of these books in my queue in any reasonable amount of time (at best it will be over 10 years...), but it'll keep track of them for me nonetheless. I've also figured out how to choose what to read next: I go to a random number generator and give it the number of books in the list, and the number it gives me is the next book. Sweet.
There's a section on the site called "Firstreads" where you can enter free drawings for books that are coming out soon. Publishers and authors put them up, and if you see one that strikes your fancy, you can enter for it. If you win, they send you the book for free, end of obligation. They hope you will read it and give a review, but you don't even have to do that. If you do, though, it makes it more likely that you will win more drawings in the future (as it plays into their algorithm for choosing). Out of the 5 books I've received, only one was a real stinker, so after I read it I sent it off to the DI.
Anywho, I really like Goodreads. Feel free to add me as a friend on it if you wish. Goodreads + libraries = reading bliss. Also, I've linked to my profile if anyone cares to see what it looks like.
Second: reading pays. I've received 5 free books in the past 6 months or so, plus a $10 gift certificate to a local restaurant. All for reading... woohoo!
The summer reading program at the local library is pretty great--they were the source of the gift certificate. The books came from a website called Goodreads, which just so happens to be one of my favorite websites ever. Basically it's a giant database of books with social network functionality. So you create a profile and start telling the website books you've read, and marking other books that you want to read. You can rate books and leave reviews on them. You can be friends with other people who use the site and see what they are reading and what they think about it, etc. So anytime I hear about a book that sounds interesting to me, I'll go to the website, find it, and mark it as "to read". Then it doesn't have to sit in my brain anymore. I also haven't lacked for new books to read since I started using it--I know exactly what books I'm wanting to read rather than trying to remember what that cool book my buddy told me about is called. I've outsourced a nice little non-essential portion of my brain.
Now, I can't possibly read all of these books in my queue in any reasonable amount of time (at best it will be over 10 years...), but it'll keep track of them for me nonetheless. I've also figured out how to choose what to read next: I go to a random number generator and give it the number of books in the list, and the number it gives me is the next book. Sweet.
There's a section on the site called "Firstreads" where you can enter free drawings for books that are coming out soon. Publishers and authors put them up, and if you see one that strikes your fancy, you can enter for it. If you win, they send you the book for free, end of obligation. They hope you will read it and give a review, but you don't even have to do that. If you do, though, it makes it more likely that you will win more drawings in the future (as it plays into their algorithm for choosing). Out of the 5 books I've received, only one was a real stinker, so after I read it I sent it off to the DI.
Anywho, I really like Goodreads. Feel free to add me as a friend on it if you wish. Goodreads + libraries = reading bliss. Also, I've linked to my profile if anyone cares to see what it looks like.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Pain and puns
These are the two elements of great summer television. Case in point: I Survived a Japanese Game Show! and even more so, Wipeout.
These two shows bring me waaaaay too much joy. Seriously.
These two shows bring me waaaaay too much joy. Seriously.
