Personal

I find Google’s NotebookLM to be one of the most powerful tools for researchers these days. Its core function is to work with the material you upload. Hence, it differs from ChatGPT and other tools that invent things on their own or search the web. It also has many different types of reports, including audio and video. But how accurate is it? Testing NotebookLM To test NotebookLM on some material I know very well, I decided to provide it with a collection of public data about myself, more specifically, what I have registered in the Norwegian NVA system, which is the database we use in Norway to register all our academic activities. This includes academic publications, public lectures, artistic works, interviews, etc. In my case, that contains around 1000 entries dating back to 2000. ...

Today, I decided to leave Twitter. I have been in doubt for a while; I wanted to see how the platform would develop after Musk’s take-over. Unfortunately, things have been steadily declining, and I am now at a point where I don’t want to support the company any longer. I leave the platform with mixed feelings. I have used Twitter as my primary social media platform after I decided to say Goodbye to Facebook some years ago. I have enjoyed Twitter’s short-message format, ease of use, and ability to connect with many academics, artists, and creators worldwide. ...

Last year, I wrote about video-based motion analysis of kayaking. Those videos were recorded with a GoPro Hero 8 and I tested some of the video visualization methods of the Musical Gestures Toolbox for Python. This summer I am testing out some 360 cameras for my upcoming AMBIENT project. I thought I should take one of these, a GoPro Max, out for some kayaking in the Oslo fjord. Here are some impressions of the trip (and recording). ...

I usually travel with my laptop. There is always some e-mails to write, some documents to read and comment on, or some photos to transfer. Still, I often think about whether it was really necessary to drag along the laptop on short trips. It doesn’t weigh too much, but I usually end up carrying a backpack when I bring the laptop. That may not always be a problem, but sometimes it limits mobility and flexibility. I have, therefore, always been eager to find alternatives. ...

I am happy to say that I have already completed my first and only new year’s resolution this year: getting rid of my Facebook account. It turned out to be much easier than expected, as there is a separate, easily accessible delete account page on Facebook. I just had to type my password and a captcha and that was it. Now my Facebook account is disabled, and will be permanently deleted after 14 days. What a relief! ...

After spending a lot of time organizing NIME 2011 and building up our new lab facilities at fourMs the last academic year, I will be on vacation and paternity leave from now and through the fall semester. I will teach and supervise a little during the fall semester, but will otherwise be taking care of my daughter. I will be reading e-mails, but find that it is quite difficult to find time to reply. So if you contact me, please don’t expect a rapid reply.

I have written about Eduroam before, and will probably do it again. Just to recap: eduroam is the secure, world-wide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community. eduroam allows students, researchers and staff from participating institutions to obtain Internet connectivity across campus and when visiting other participating institutions by simply opening their laptop. Over the last few years I have noticed that more and more institutions in Europe have joined eduroam, and being in Australia at the moment, I am very happy to see that both University of Technology Sydney as well as University of Sydney are also members of the club. Brilliant.

I am sitting in a hotel with a horrible internet connection. Not only is it costly, but it is also slow and the connection seems to fall out every 2 minutes. This makes me think about how used we are to having fast and reliable connections these days. It is not that many years ago since I was connecting through a dial-up modem, which would probably have made my current connection seem like a dream. ...

Alexander Refsum Jensenius is a music researcher and research musician. His research focuses on why music makes us move, which he explores through empirical studies using different motion sensing technologies. He also uses the analytical knowledge and tools to create new music, with both traditional and very untraditional instruments. As chair of the NIME steering committee, he is a leading figure in the international computer music community. From 2017 he co-directs RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, an interdisciplinary centre of excellence at the University of Oslo. As a member of the EUA Expert Group on Science 2.0/Open Science, he is also involved in modernising the way research is conceived and conducted. ...