Hung Truong: The Blog!

Ingrid Michaelson in Ann Arbor! (12/12/07)

So my friend Krystle made it clear on Monday that she wanted to see someone named Ingrid Michaelson in concert on Wednesday. I had no idea who this person was, so I checked out her website and listened to a few songs. Apparently she’s had quite a few songs appear in Grey’s Anatomy and in TV commercials like Old Navy.

I thought she sounded pretty good, but what about live!? Now, a lot of times, an artist will sound good on a CD merely by virtue of having a good sound guy to tweak the pitches to perfection. But after seeing a clip of her sing the Old Navy commercial song live, I was convinced. She sounded even better live!

So three of us went to the concert on Wednesday, almost freezing to death in line due to a sloth-like ticket ripper dude at The Blind Pig. This guy was seriously doing like, one ticket a minute. It’s a good thing Krystle got the tickets early, because they apparently sold out while we were in line.

The set started out with some stuff by Allie Moss, who also serves as Ingrid’s backup guitar and vocals. It’s a very economic setup. Allie was actually quite good. But everyone was kind of ready to hear Ingrid after a few songs. And once Ingrid started singing, it was apparent why Allie is the sideman and Ingrid is the headliner. Her voice is freakin’ awesome! Basically, Ingrid can do pretty much whatever she wants vocally as far as range and other weird things that people learn in voice training.

While some of her songs are a bit simplistic and “funky” in terms of arrangement, I think her voice really makes up for her lack of anything else. Ooh, strange cognitive dissonance: Right before she came on, the DJ dude or whoever asked everyone to stop smoking because she’s sensitive. But the lyric in her song says “If you need a light, I’ll find a match!” I know it’s just a lyric, but hey, come on!

Ummm what else? The Old Navy song (The Way I Am) and the Breakable song were really good. I mean, mostly everything was good. Also, it felt like VH1 storytellers because we’d get the story behind a bunch of songs, which works well when you don’t have a bunch of songs to fill up a set. Ingrid had a good stage presence, seeming very humble. Though perhaps it was well rehearsed humbleness!!! I don’t really doubt her humbleness though, she seemed really nice. Like she’d get happy when people knew what song she was playing. Also, she told a story about how she was doing a promo event at Borders and said “Thanks to Barnes and Noble for having me!” Oh, and she pointed out that there’s a live version of a song on her Myspace page where, at the end, she says “thanksss~~~” and it sounds really funny.

There were also a bunch of covers thrown in for good measure. She played Mele Kalikimaka, a naughty Christmas song called “Trim Your Tree,” (in fact, here it is!) and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” I probably sound like I’m enamored now, but seriously, anything her voice touches turns to GOLD!

So yeah, it was a good show, and it was cool to see her before she eventually becomes stinkin’ famous. Hopefully she’ll come around the Ann Arbor area again some time soon.

SOCHI Google Android Design Challenge

So the SOCHI group at Michigan had a fun Google Android Design Challenge thingy last week. SOCHI is the student organization for computer-human interaction. I guess I should’ve capitalized all those words… Oh, and Android is the OHA’s new mobile development platform.

Basically, we all had a brainstorming session with ideas for fun new mobile apps. There were a lot of cool ideas thrown out. Afterwards, we all got into smaller groups and developed some app ideas. Our group came up with this sensor that tells you if you’re in close proximity to someone really often. I believe there was some study done where people wore these RFID things and it turned out that they were in close proximity to complete strangers very often (like at the bus stop or grocery store or something). So the app could say, “hey, you’re together often, maybe you should be friends” or something.

The coolest part of the meetup was that it was partly sponsored by Google, which means there was free pizza, drinks, and most importantly, Google cups. They were the same as that one red Google cup I got as my consolation prize (the grand prize being a job at Google). I picked up one of each color (blue, green, yellow and red) since I didn’t know if they’d go to waste afterwards. I guess SOCHI just sorta stows them away until another Google sponsored event. Oops!

Writing this post is also a way for me to procrastinate on my business plan which is due tomorrow for my entrepreneur class. The business? A software development company specializing in mobile applications on the Android platform. Which it wasn’t at the beginning of the semester, but that’s a whole other story…

Yahoo Guest Speaker: Bradley Horowitz

Today there was a guest talk by one Bradley Horowitz over at the Computer Science building on North Campus. The title, “Innovation and Evolution -How Search, Social Media, and New Ideas can Shape the Next Web,” intrigued me enough to compel me to check it out.

Much of the talk was devoted to Flickr, and how lots of useful information can be extracted from the inherent metadata of tags, traffic, and geodata of the photos on the site. For example, Flickr can make a list of “interesting” photos, figure out correlations between tags and photos (it can semi-distinguish between photos of love between two people, love as a symbol, and love as puppies), and figure out the location of Route 66.

I was vehemently unimpressed by an earlier Yahoo talk this year, but today’s was neat. Probably because the speaker knew what he was talking about. Fun fact: the speaker is VP of the Advanced Development Division at Yahoo. Or ADD. Apparently the name was not an accident. He mentioned quite a few interesting things like their “Brick House” incubator, and a few products of it like Pipes and something called Kickstart.

Kickstart seems to be something of a mix between Facebook and LinkedIn. Or something. I had to sign up for a Yahoo account to use it. Minor tangent: I hate Yahoo because I can’t get the login info for all of my old usernames (because I don’t use them anymore) so whenever I want to use something Yahoo, I have to sign up for a new account. And since Yahoo has so many users, no sane usernames exist anymore. It took me like 30 minutes to come up with escargoal (like a cross between escargot and goal)!

I’m not sure how many social networks Yahoo wants… They’ve got that Yahoo 360, Mash, Kickstart… I guess an alternate strategy to buying Facebook could be diluting the social network market…

But anyway, the talk was pretty cool, though somewhat high level for a crowd of CS kids (and SI kids, I suppose). Where was the talk of computational complexity and algorithms in Flickr!? The talk has at least rewarmed my interest in looking for a Summer internship at Yahoo, possibly in the ADD…

Jazz Song Currently Stuck In My Head: Stella By Starlight

So currently, I’ve got Stella By Starlight stuck in my head. It’s mostly the Chet Baker version that appears on “The Best of Chet Baker Plays.” I’ve got a few other versions that are pretty good, like the Bill Evans one.

My friend David always likes to point out how bad the words for this song are. They really are probably the worst lyrics to a jazz standard ever:

The song a robin sings,

Through years of endless springs,

The murmur of a brook at evening tides.

That ripples through a nook where two lovers hide.

That great symphonic theme,

That’s Stella by starlight,

And not a dream,

My heart and I agree,

She’s everything on this earth to me.

Does anyone know what a song that a robin sings through years of endless springs sounds like? Or a murmur of a brook rippling though a nook? And Stella by starlight is a vision, not a sound, right? Couldn’t we say something about Stella herself, rather than babble endlessly about stupid rhymes (brook and nook make me stabby)?

If you can look past the shitty lyrics, the melody is really nice. Plus this song has the distinction of having some unique changes that I can’t really say sound like any other song. Off the top of my head, at least. The tune works well uptempo or as a ballad, too.

If only I had my Real Book with me and some kind of trumpet practice mute so I don’t bug (and by bug, I mean serenade) the neighbors…

$10 Holiday Sale at Threadless!

There’s another $10 sale going on at Threadless. I think the quality of Threadless shirts has kinda been waning in recent months. There’s a few fun shirts, but I’ll wait on ordering since this sale lasts until December 16th. Especially funny is this “November Was a Good Month” shirt. Going to a (sort of) library school, I think I’m starting to think more and more like a librarian. So I kind of find this shirt more interesting than I really should. But yeah, maybe I’ll hit the jackpot with a round of good shirts sometime between now and December.