December will be a busy month. From December 10-14 I’ll be in San Diego, CA giving a demonstration at the 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (ISM2006). I’ll be presenting a new interface for image retrieval. I’m looking forward to visiting San Diego for the first time. If I have time I plan to visit the San Diego Zoo. Since I was very young I wanted to go to Legoland and there is a park in Carlsbad, CA, about 30 miles north of San Diego. If I find there’s things for adults to do there I may visit as well.

Then, from December 20-25 I’ll be in Montreal to see family and friends. I’ll also get to see snow for the first time in over a decade!

Dene Bebbington has just posted a review of my new album, SHIFT, at his excellent site, Melliflua. SHIFT is now widely available online (including iTunes) and in stores if you ask them to order it (it is available in their catalog).

High pitched shimmying tones lead into a sparing piano melody and blistering yet restrained electric guitar riffs in the opening track “Panorama”. Bass, hi-hat, and later a syncopated simple melody then burst into the mix to make this a foot-tapping number. Guitar and drums (or drum effects) crop up in several of the tracks. In “Chamber” a rhythm or bass guitar delivers a lazy melody against hi-hat percussion, some drums, and electronics plus piano occasionally add simple refrains.

Most of this album is generally upbeat in tempo, sometimes getting a little funky as in “Horizon”. Beginning with lovely crystalline synth washes it then bursts into a passage one might describe as smooth jazz. Bringing everything to a close is another funky piece called “Nimbus”. Again with pacey rhythms and some squiggly melodies, and a slower interlude in the middle, it’s exciting and fun in a not out of control manner.

It’s good to see independent artists who don’t make a fortune (or even a living!) out of their music releasing new work. Shift is in my view better than Paradigm and a reasonably enjoyable album [...]

Visit Melliflua for the full review.

Georgia Southern University hosted an excellent programming contest. About seventy teams participated (some were at the University of South Alabama site). Surprisingly, the pickup team won the competition. As a result, the second-place team, from UCF, is going to the world finals in Tokyo. FAU’s most experienced team performed respectably, but will certainly improve next year. Nearly all of our team members will be able to compete again and will benefit from the experience, not to mention that their coach (me) was a rookie as well. I’ve posted some pictures from the competition as well as two other photos that were taken while I was teaching last week.

• Coaching the 2006 FAU Programming Team (October 28 2006)
• 2006 ACM ICPC Southeast USA Regional practice session (October 28 2006)
• Teaching at FAU (October 24 2006)
• More teaching at FAU (October 24 2006)