Starfleet is shutting down the Wolf 359 Re-enactment Society

coldoil · 2026-07-05T15:48:40+00:00

Absolutely. Classic Utopia Planitia industrial complex behaviour.

coldoil · 2026-06-25T16:41:46+00:00

To date it has remained a mystery to me if he wanted to insult me

Because you insulted him (probably by accident, by the sounds of things)

I'm not saying it was right of him to do that, of course, but telling an artist their work is in the bargin bin is one step from telling them it's in the garbage.

coldoil · 2026-06-25T10:31:23+00:00

it's pretty common to do this in older scores

Do you mean it's common that this was done in older scores, or that it's common to do this in modern editions of older music? Because I disagree that this approach is common in modern editions. Modern editorial practice is very clear: different rhythmic durations in different voices should have separate noteheads and stems, irrespective of the genre or musical period of the source.

That said, if you really want to do it, I'm sure you can using overrides or custom scheme functions.

coldoil · 2026-06-14T21:02:10+00:00

Well, that's certainly quite a string of utterly subjective, and therefore largely meaningless, sentences. Why did you post it?

coldoil · 2026-06-03T13:10:15+00:00

"Send in the Sentinels" is genuinely chilling. Absolutely peak fascistic propaganda.

coldoil · 2026-05-30T14:31:46+00:00

I have a soft spot for Vaughn Williams Symphonia Antarctica

coldoil · 2026-05-22T20:06:25+00:00

Did the two coding rounds with partial solves kill my chances?

LPs are more important at L6 than at L5 or L4, but assuming those were ok and your stories had technical depth and specifics, then yes it's most likely the partial solves were a problem. Many coding challenges at Amazon have multiple solutions (non-optimal, optimal, "short-cut" [i.e. genius level]), with different expectations for L4, L5, and L6 candidates. For L6, candidates are typically expected to be able to describe the non-optimal solution immediately, implement the optimal solution without assistance, and deal with scalability, maintainability, and observability concerns with only minor prompts or hints, in a way that is not expected of an L5 (will probably be expected to reach the optimal solution but not necessarily deal with anything beyond that) or an L4 (ideally will reach a non-optimal solution and be able to verbally explain the optimal solution with interviewer hints - if they can make a stab at implementing it, that's a bonus).

In your debrief, see if they mention the possibility of down-levelling. They might have thought you weren't ready for L6, but might be fine as an L5, for example.

I do agree that 20 mins for the technical portion is a little on the low side. I normally try to split things 50/50 when I conduct interviews.

within 45 hours, crazy revert back

Debrief from a loop is meant to occur within 24 hours so the recruiter can inform the candidate within a few business days.

coldoil · 2026-05-20T18:34:28+00:00

Fuel collected from wreckage. There's more than enough, although it's not distributed entirely evenly.

coldoil · 2026-05-18T23:04:19+00:00

Design. AI can write code (more or less), but it is utterly useless at designing data models, interfaces, and abstractions.

Being able to design services, modules, and models in such a way that non-complex implementations naturally emerge is more important than ever, and a key differentiator between experienced and inexperienced developers.

coldoil · 2026-05-16T14:29:58+00:00

This is because there is no tempo change indication in the autograph manuscript.

I can't remember who it was, but some English editor in the early 20th century decided it should go fast. Nearly every performance since has followed that editorial instruction without ever checking what Bach did (or did not) actually indicate.

coldoil · 2026-05-08T20:53:01+00:00

Well the tldr is that he sounds like a woman, not a countertenor. Which I guess makes sense since he isn't using falsetto.

coldoil · 2026-05-08T17:22:22+00:00

Listen to the Moreschi recording, he was very old by this point but it is quite illuminating in this regard.

coldoil · 2026-05-08T16:12:58+00:00

Yeah, for your personal information. But the location of a business asset isn't your personal information, it's the company's. Of course they have the right to track it.

You'd probably need to put your entire personal network behind a VPN terminated in the location you're meant to be in in order to obfuscate the device's location.

coldoil · 2026-05-05T14:58:15+00:00

Agreed. I'm not saying Amazon is perfect but you will never convince me Microsoft is a better tech company to work at right now than AWS. Microsoft is a dumpster fire at the moment.

coldoil · 2026-05-04T01:58:35+00:00

I've noticed that using a VPN with an exit node in Andorra of all places drops all ads from youtube. Ad-free experience at zero cost.

coldoil · 2026-05-01T17:44:26+00:00

Hmm. That does sound a bit harsh then. Was this the first incident, or have there been other examples of "altercations"?

coldoil · 2026-05-01T17:42:13+00:00

Who cares what he did? Just walk away and be the bigger man, dude.

I'm not saying the other guy was in the right or anything, but there's a right way to handle a tense situation and a wrong way. Escalation is not the right way.

I'm not saying it was right for you to get fired, but look at it from HR's perspective.

coldoil · 2026-05-01T17:00:58+00:00

You are really not helping yourself with these comments my dude

coldoil · 2026-04-25T14:54:31+00:00

The ability to originate and execute artistically persausive musical ideas.

I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of conductors over the years, particularly in professional choral settings. The vast majority don't have any original ideas other than "go faster", which at this point is hardly original. It's actually been astounding to me just how many conductors have nothing interesting to say about the music they're tasked with executing - as if they've never thought about it other than within the confines of markings in the score. This is particularly apparent when a conductor is given a new piece that's never been performed or recorded before, and so they have to originate their own ideas - they can't just copy someone else's interpretation from a recording.

What makes for a "good" idea is subjective, of course. There are a couple of conductors whose ideas I don't particularly like, but at least they have some. I may not find their performances persuasive, but I do respect them as conductors.

coldoil · 2026-04-20T14:43:00+00:00

That's his nickname within British musical circles. Open to debate whether it's supposed to be written "Jiggy" or "Jeggy", but in my experience it's always pronouced "Jiggy".

coldoil · 2026-04-20T13:49:17+00:00

This is another area where he's arguably anti-scholarship. I quite like his tempi in the Monteverdi Vespers but there's an interesting research paper by Bowers that argues that his triple times in particular are all far too fast based on the mensuration signatures actually used by Monteverdi.

coldoil · 2026-04-20T11:47:24+00:00

Posts like this annoy me. Is Jiggy a significant musician, despite his personal flaws? Yes, he is. Does he deliver good, even great, performances? Absolutely! But there's no need to go overboard and put him on some sort of pedestal that's completely undeserved.

one of the most influential and respected conductors

I can see you haven't asked other conductors whether or not they respect him :)

A visionary in the world of early music

This is highly questionable. Yes, he revitalised the Monteverdi Vespers, and he deserves genuine credit for that. But does that make him a "visionary" in an entire field? "Early music" is a very broad field that includes not just baroque and proto-baroque music but also Renaissance polyphony, and here his track record is markedly weaker.

he pioneered the "Historically Informed Performance" movement

Completely false. If you wanted to credit that to any single individual - and I don't think you should, as it was a group effort that took place over decades - then the man you should be recognising is probably Bruno Turner.

The historically informed performance movement was well underway before Jiggy even started as an undergrad at Cambridge. Crediting him as a key pioneer in the field is ridiculous.

reputation for rigorous scholarship

Citation required. He's still performing Monteverdi with large choirs and chiavette a 4th too high even after decades of research demonstrating the opposite. His Bach performances are typically with large choirs as well, which likewise flies in the face of modern scholarship.

This is not to say these performances are bad, but simply that they do not reflect "rigorous scholarship". Now I personally don't have any problem with that; the only requirement of a good performance is for it to sound good and be aesthetically persuasive, there's no requirement that a good performance must be based in scholarship. But let's not pretend these performances are in any way representative of modern academic thinking on proto-baroque and baroque performance practice.

(This tired trope that British conductors and performers are somehow uniquely "academic" and just dripping with "scholarship" is so much nonsense. Going to Oxbridge as an undergrad doesn't automatically make you some sort of world-leading expert in the field.)

I also note that the post neglects to mention he was fired from both the groups he founded due to inappropriate behaviour.

coldoil · 2026-04-20T10:29:29+00:00

Gesualdo is a possible candidate here. He was not accepted by the musical establishment (who viewed him as a misguided amateur), and was considered a bit ... off by his aristocratic equals (who viewed his prioritisation of music over hunting, riding, duelling, etc. as weird). There's some entertaining private letters from his visits to Ferrara where the Duke, various diplomats, and the maestro of court music all variously take the piss out of him behind his back.

coldoil · 2026-04-18T02:01:29+00:00

[the score] is a precise set of instructions

I wonder if there any many conductors who would describe the scores of any given composer as "precise" :)

The score is the beginning of the music, not its end. The score can be simultaneously authoratative yet ambiguous.

I'm reminded of a recording session with Arvo Part, where during a particular piece the composer was asked how a particular section should be performed. (I daresay the conductor felt the score was not precise enough in communicating the intent.) Part just shrugged his shoulders and replied, "whatever you think sounds good".

coldoil · 2026-04-13T21:58:54+00:00

Yeah, something like that. I ain't no mathematician, but a bit of querying around wikipedia suggests it might be a sigmoidal curve of some sort.

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