Kendall Giles

As noted in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 27, Thomas Jefferson writes, after touring through the vineyards of France:

There are four crops of them more famous than all the rest. These are Chateau-Margau, Tour de Segur, Haut-brion, and de la Fite. They cost 3 livres bottle, old: But are so engaged before hand that it is impossible to get them.

Jefferson brought back his knowledge and love of wine to America to try to "elevate the tastes" of America by instilling in them a love of fine wine.

Some of these efforts can be seen by visiting Jefferson's main estate, Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia:

Larger but very similar to his summer retreat, Poplar Forest, Monticello is where, among other pursuits, Jefferson cultivated and promoted his love of wine---trying to establish the Virginia region as a center of wine-making in the Americas.

Here is a portion of the vineyard at Monticello:

Though the Europeans have had many hundreds if not thousands of years to develop hardy and tasty grape varieties suitable for wine-making, Jefferson had to start mostly from scratch in Virginia. But while initial efforts were frustrated by a harsh climate and ruthless insects, today Virginia boasts some 108 wineries, producing great wines.

If you are in the Virginia area, you may be interested in taking a wine tour through Monticello. The "Jefferson and Wine Tour" gives information on Jefferson and his wine-making efforts, even allowing for some unique access to Monticello not available on the standard Monticello tour package. The tour ends with a wine-tasting, hosted by Barboursville Vineyards---an award-winning Virginia winery located on the grounds of the former estate house designed by Jefferson for Governor James Barbour.

Cheers.

I'll be giving a talk this Wednesday titled "Knowledge Discovery with Iterative Denoising".

Abstract:

The tasks of proper data analysis and knowledge extraction in data are beset by multiple difficulties when the datasets are large and in high dimension. From a performance perspective, it can be prohibitively expensive to search in a high dimensional space. Also, complex datasets often have local relationships of interest, findings that might be missed with global searches. While some progress has been made with addressing Curse of Dimensionality issues, traditional data mining algorithms largely take a static approach to the data mining process---simply tabulating the outputs of a particular algorithm from a given input, leaving the user to start the process over again with new inputs if another run is desired. With this static approach, the user is prevented from interacting with the data mining algorithm as well as with the data.

Towards addressing these issues, we discuss our methodology, called Iterative Denoising, which is a statistical pattern recognition framework for analyzing complex datasets. An important realization of our methodology is that users may want to interact with visualized representations of their data. We not only provide to the users lower-dimensional-space representations to highlight (possibly) desired structures in the data, but we also allow the user to interact with the data through an explicit interaction step. For example, the user may wish to change the displayed geometry relationships between objects, say to reflect some metadata intelligence the user has received that is not reflected in the original data. We highlight these contributions with examples from the analysis of text data.

Logistics:

12PM, October 8, 2008, Computer Science Department, Virginia Commonwealth University

Auric Goldfinger is one of the more memorable villains to cross paths and wits with James Bond. Ian Fleming, in Goldfinger, even makes a game of golf between Goldfinger and Bond a very suspenseful and memorable read.

But there are many more memorable scenes and characters in this James Bond novel, such as the high-stakes card game, the lethal character named Oddjob, tracking Goldfinger on a drive through scenic Europe, and watching James try his hand at being Goldfinger's secretary.

The DVD version of Goldfinger, with Sean Connery, is also considered one of the best movie versions.

But while this story was very entertaining, there were a couple of plot twists in the book that were a little hard to believe (like when James was about to be sawed in half). But what is a James Bond story without a little suspension of belief?

So, from that perspective, the story really is golden.

Snap-Apple Night, was painted by Irish artist Daniel Maclise in 1833. Supposedly he painted this after attending a Halloween party in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832. The group on the left are playing divination games, the group in the middle are playing "Snap Apple", a game where an apple is dangling from a string and people, with their arms tied behind their back, try to bite the apple. The first person who bites the coin in the apple wins. The group on the right are bobbing for apples. The caption in the first exhibit catalogue:

There Peggy was dancing with Dan
While Maureen the lead was melting,
To prove how their fortunes ran
With the Cards ould Nancy dealt in;
There was Kate, and her sweet-heart Will,
In nuts their true-love burning,
And poor Norah, though smiling still
She'd missed the snap-apple turning.
On the Festival of Hallow Eve.

Halloween is a great tradition, born in Europe and celebrated all across the world. Falling between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Halloween is significant in many ways, most notably as it marks the change in the seasons from the brightness of Summer and Fall into the darkness of Winter, and as a chance to reflect on our departed ancestors.

Upon that night, when fairies light
On Cassilis Downans dance,
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,
On sprightly coursers prance;
Or for Colean the rout is ta'en,
Beneath the moon's pale beams;
There, up the Cove, to stray an' rove,
Amang the rocks and streams
To sport that night;

Amang the bonie winding banks,
Where Doon rins , wimplin , clear;
Where Bruce ance rul'd the martial ranks,
An' shook his Carrick spear;
Some merry, friendly, countra-folks
Together did convene,
To burn their nits , an' pou their stocks ,
An' haud their Halloween
Fu' blythe that night.

Many other countries in Europe celebrate the traditional customs of Halloween under festivals of different names. For example, the Roman Catholic Church moved All Souls Day to the time of Halloween in order to put a Christian spin on a traditional Heathen festival (as the church has also tried to do with Yule/Christmas and Easter). And the traditional Halloween festival is also known as All Saints Day in England, Portugal, Spain, and Mexico. St. Martin's Day, Allerheiligen, and Martinmas are also names associated with the Halloween tradition.

In Scotland they hollow out turnips to use as lanterns, bob for apples, and make Dirge Loaves out of oat flour to keep the souls of the dead safe. In Ireland, there lived a man named "Stingy Jack" who was so mean that we couldn't get into Heaven or Hell, and so was forced to walk the earth for eternity carrying a turnip candle with an ember from Hell inside. Today, we carve Jack O'Lanterns to ward off the ghost of Stingy Jack.

From Italy, here is a recipe for Fave dei Morti, or Ossa dei Morti (bones of the dead), which is a type of cookie made with pine nuts, almonds, spices, flour, and sugar, and baked in commemoration of the dead. This tradition and cookie is thought to have originated from the Roman indigenous religious traditions, and then adopted by the Catholic church.

Even Japan has a festival, called o-bon (pronounced like "oh bone") where the spirits of their ancestors are invited back into the homes - in rural areas they even sweep a path from the gravesites to the home, where the spirits are welcomed with 'welcoming fires'. There are also dances and other festivities, as well as getting together with family.

So while it may not be called "Halloween" in Japan, the spirit of the tradition is very similar. Most countries have strong spiritual traditions that recognize that, during certain times of the year, the "veil" between our world and other worlds, between this life and the afterlife, becomes very thin, allowing for certain, um, transitions, and sometimes disturbances, to occur. During those certain times of the year we are more apt to hear the floor creak unexpectedly, or see something out of the corner of our eye. Or we might even get an unexpected chill when walking outside at night. It could be a departed ancestor trying to reach across the veil to a family member, or it could be something else entirely...

So have a Happy Halloween, eat a candy apple, drink some cider, bob for apples, wear an interesting costume, think of your ancestors, protect yourself from Stingy Jack, and prepare for the coming Winter.

Oh, and don't forget to say "BOO!".

So I've long had "learn to play the guitar" on my list of goals. However, despite several attempts at learning such, life, travel, work, and other higher-priority items have jumped ahead in the queue. I know a couple of chords, and can probably pick my way through some simple tablature, but I can in no way say I know how to play the guitar.

Of course, the ideal way to learn is probably to find a professional instructor and take classes on a regular basis. Alas, the major difficulties of frequent, weekly travel and intense work schedules remain a constant in my life, so the luxury of finding an instructor is out.

And I've tried learning from a book before---that doesn't work, for me, either (or maybe I just haven't found the right book). However, perhaps the perfect storm of software, high-tech, and computer-controlled LED goodness offered by Fretlight is the missing key.

There are a couple of things different about the Fretlight system. First, there's the FG-421 guitar:

While their first models from years ago evidently had some quality issues, their current 400 series are solid and seem very well made. In fact, I bought mine from Ebay and it is just like new.

It looks like a regular electric guitar (they have acoustic models as well). However, here's the same guitar, with the lights dimmed:

As hinted by its name, the fretlight guitar has LEDs embedded in its polymer fretboard, and the lights can be controlled to indicate chord and note finger placements.

But if that were all the Fretlight guitar promised, then this would be not much better than a digital version of the old analog system for learning guitar promoted by Roy Clark, where stickers placed on the fretboard indicated where you put your fingers.

Perhaps it is the second differentiator in the Fretlight guitar that is most significant---the guitar jacks into the computer (in addition to the normal amplifier connection in typical electric guitars), allowing for software control of the LED lights. Interactive software lights the LEDs, steps you through complicated finger patterns on lead and rhythm guitar selections, and converts tablature songs into tempo-controlled patterns so you can learn any song you like. Loops, chord progressions, lessons on music theory, lessons on different music styles, video lessons, comprehensive chord charts, improvisation lessons, song editing, and even a GarageBand plug-in round out their offerings. Downloading new lesson packs and songs is painless, and their website interface seems well done. And, they support Macs!

So we'll see if this method works, or if this is just a Guitar Hero for adults.