This is for my own use, so it is by no means the “right” way to go about practicing. It depends on your style. But hopefully it may help some people.

1. Always keep a pencil nearby. You never know when you want to change something up.
2. Research the composer and the piece you want to play. This will give you an idea of the emotions present in the piece.
3. Never attempt to learn the entire piece in one go. Doing that only makes you glaze over the finer details of the piece. However, if you’re good at sight reading, props. I’m not…
4. Start SLOW.
5. If you’re having trouble learning a piece, play it hands separately. That is, go through a section with only the right hand. And then with the left. You can put them together later.
6. Got a section that keeps tripping up your fingers? Use a metronome. Can’t seem to get the rhythm right? Use a metronome. Having a hard time playing a certain section? Use a metronome! It keeps you on track.
7. After you’ve learned a piece, play through it at half speed with a metronome. That will tell you where all of your memory slips and mess-ups will be.
8. If there’s a really fast run that keeps messing you up, play it slower with a different rhythm, then slowly build up speed. I sometimes use jazz rhythms (long-short-long-short). Chances are, the normal rhythm will be much easier to play after this.
9. Repeat measures that screw you up. Repeat phrases that screw you up. And keep repeating them until you and everyone around you is sick of hearing the same section over and over again.
10. Record yourself! I used to have this ratty old cassette tape recorder that I’d use. Haha, looks like this method goes for many other things, too, though. The first time they told us to record ourselves in Wushu, I thought, “Hmmm, sounds familiar.”

Side note: this stuff is mainly geared toward concert playing.

I’m currently learning the accompaniment to Vivaldi’s Summer (Four Seasons). Hopefully by the end of the summer, I’ll be able to play it with my brother on violin.

By the way, electric guitar version of the third movement?! Awesome.

I’ve also decided to go for Liszt’s Liebestraume. Yeah, I know, I’ve said this before. But this time, I’m actually gonna do it! Page 1 down. 4 more to go.

We have found the fountain of youth! It is in the form of a child. Let us all pay homage to the second coming of Jesus! Take that, you anti-female-priest enforcers! You can’t use the “Jesus was a man” argument against women being ordained to priesthood now!

Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn’t Age [ABC News]

Okay, maybe not. But I must say, this is a rare phenomenon. I wonder how her body will age. Will she die of old age while still looking like a toddler? Will her organs begin to wither away, despite her seemingly youthful body? And even more interesting — will her brain stay as developed as a toddler’s? As in, will myelination occur on the neurons, or shall her brain contain primarily gray matter for the rest of her life? I’m thinking it may be the latter, but that is only my unprofessional speculation.

Interesting.

Anyway, I find it amusing how I’ve started to dislike math, but the moment we start doing word problems I get all excited again. Word problems! I could do them all day long.

Another year has flown by. Time moves too quickly. I still need to buy dry ice. I no longer have a sociology exam on Thursday, too, which means I can goof off tomorrow. Err, today.

A Robot that Navigates Like a Person [Technology Review]

A.I. is so awesome! One day I will go abroad to study robotics and such in Japan.

Speaking of stuff that is awesome, I learned a bunch of jiu jitsu chokes today. Christine is now lethal with strikes and chokes!

The pastor lady that appears in the latter half of this video frightens me.

For the last two weeks, I’ve woken up to nobody being home. I forgot how nice that was. Hooray for busy families? Hehe. I have the entire house to myself now.

Amusing comic from XKCD. This is my life’s philosophy.

Awesome people from the bay came to visit yesterday. It was much fun.

After that religion blog I posted and the discussion that followed, I started reminiscing about the Kairos retreat I went on my senior year. It made me think of this song.

Anyway, interesting quote from my sociology professor: “Society encourages individualism, yet rewards conformism.” I find this to be tragically true, and it is largely a reason why I have found myself discontent with my major and life in general. I guess the next step is to figure out how I want to deal with this.

(Side note — I started the last four paragraphs/thoughts with words that start with the letter ‘A’. Not sure why I find that significant, but it was amusing to me for some reason.)

Do I conform to society and be rewarded? Or do I stop listening to my parents, the industry, and everyone else and go about my life my own way, risking failure and ridicule?

People tell me to do the latter. Yet in the grand scheme of things, they still expect the former. They only want limited individualism. That is what I discovered in college — especially in my CS/engineering classes. Every time they tell you to follow your dreams, there’s a catch.

I guess there’s no better example of this paradox than the tech industry. You can be whatever you want to be as long as you follow their rules to get there.

My parents figured this out long ago, and they’ve been trying to preach it to me for a while. It never really sat well in my mind. I want to go my own way, but something still keeps me from completely ruling out conformity. I find that many students these days have this problem. What is it that keeps us conforming, and why must we hold the rules of society in such high regard? Why do people fear ridicule and ostracism? Why must we be accepted into society in order to maintain a healthy level of “sanity?”

I got a new phone. It makes me rather happy. No longer will I have to attach the charger to my phone with a rubber band!

Anyway, I was reading this article from the featured Xanga posts about why young people are leaving the church.

“The results struck Ham with surprise.  According to these interviews and surveys, children who faithfully attended Bible schools are more likely to question Scriptural authority and eventually fall away from the church.  He calls this the ‘Sunday school syndrome.’”

I am a direct product of that. And you know why we Sunday School kids question Scriptural authority? Because the more we learn about this stuff and attempt to apply it to modern-day scientific and sociological teachings, the more we realize that the Bible is grossly out of date. That being said, it is quite difficult to follow it word for word.

Think about it. This book was written by people thousands of years ago. Sure, they were “inspired” by God and whatnot, but it’s not like He was sitting next to them, dictating everything that should be in this Bible like Stephen Hawking and his scribe. Most likely their thousand-year-old biases are reflected in the Bible without reservation, and we’re trying to follow them as if the happenings in our life were still relevant.

So I suppose it is as this Ham man says. We are having difficulty putting together what we learn in school with what we learn in church. Can they blame us? We’re living in the age of technology, and we’ve made many discoveries that go completely against some church beliefs. But how can you pit mere faith against solid evidence?

You can’t. That’s the thing. As much as we may try to believe that a rock isn’t a rock, it’s still a rock. Willing it to not be one will not work as much as we wish it would.

I’m not saying that God doesn’t exist or that we should stop following religion. All I’m saying is that religion is out of date. It was a human invention that was created long before any of us, and someone needs to figure out how to make it work with today. Because the way things are going, this Sunday School syndrome won’t get any better.

Yes, I did say religion was a human invention. Maybe God wasn’t (or maybe He was), but certainly the ideas and rituals behind believing in God are.

The writers of the Bible did not know what condensation or atoms were. They did not understand that breeding within the same family augments your chances of disease. But we do now. And people are still using this book as a guide to life?

I also never understood why people always told us that God is “a mystery,” yet tried to write a full series of books on their interpretation of what God is.

Contradictions. Religion is full of them.

Or at least in a long time. Yeah, this one’s pretty high up there with robotics championships and all that.

Bay area awesomeness + US Wushu Team Trials this last weekend.

Also, it was my first time driving farther than the other side of Sacramento. The drive itself was actually quite short; but that was probably due to my awesome passenger.

Anyway, on Friday I was kidnapped. It seems to be happening quite often, haha. This time, we were dragged around SF. Makes me wish (for the umpteenth time) that Sacramento actually had a decent public transportation system.

I now have a Hero List. It consists of all the badass people that competed. And others. But basically, awesome wushu people = my heroes.

I have too many heroes. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Anyway, off to clean the game room.

I found this on a youtube comment for communitychannel, and wanted to share it because for some reason I thought it was hilarious.

A student comes to a young professor’s office hours. She glances down the hall, closes his door, and kneals pleadingly. “I would do anything to pass this exam.” She leans closer to him, flips back her hair, gazes meaningfully into his eyes.

“I mean,” she whispers, “I would do anything.”

He returns her gaze. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

His voice turns to a whisper. “Would you…study?”