A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at the death of composer Edward MacDowell.  She played the elegy for the pianist Jozef Hofmann, then asked his opinion.

“Well, it’s quite nice,” he replied, “but don’t you think it would be better if…”

“If what?” asked the composer.

“If… if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?”

I have just watched the ABBA movie “Mamma Mia” and I’m sorry to say that I agree with the above sentiment.  It is not that the acting was bad or that the singing wasn’t that great.  I can forgive the former, and learn to live with the latter.  The whole thing was just…shoddy.  Despite good production values, it seemed a lot like a high school musical.  The story was so-so and the directing was terrible.  The poor actors never had a chance.  It probably worked a little better as a stage show; the director should have stuck to that.  I didn’t think it possible, but the commentary was even worse.  It is easy to agree with someone who say that this or that actor was “incredible”, “the most wonderful voice”, etc.  To hear it about all of the actors and extras and locations when it is so patently untrue was not a fun experience.  This is probably a DVD that will stay on my shelf for a year or two. Perhaps my expectations were simply too high.  It is sad to think that the music of ABBA, which I love to much, is now lost to a whole generation because of this.

On a happier note, my Finnish collaborators have started to get excited about our partial order work.  I have finally completed a simplified version of the source code and sent it off.  I hope that it will at the very least inspire some trust in my results.  Unfortunately, at the moment there are NO results.  My implementation of partial orders was flawed in a deep way and it seems that I still do not understand the topic very well.  Hopefully my colleagues will rectify this, although at the moment the core algorithm is unclear to all of us.  At least, this is how it seems to me.

On another front, my tax forms appear to be at the office.  I can’t find them here in my house, to I really hope they’re on my desk.  Tomorrow is the deadline.