2018

Wed, Jan 23, 2019 4-minute read

Goodbye 2018, hello 2019. Some delay in writing this, only justifiable by the bliss I am nowadays feeling. And also by too much traveling. Here I go once again, with the list of items that made my life more or less meaningful during this past 2018.

  • Crazy start of the year in snowy NYC with my buddy Eduard.
  • My dearest friend Dani comes to visit me in the Bay Area and we go to Vegas + Zion.
  • Rocking with Arkaen, opening for the titans of Dio Disciples.
  • The break-up from 2017 still keeps me awake at night. Never imagined this could be this bad.
  • Beautiful hikes around the Bay Area with some new and old friends.
  • I play two shows with Jordan Rudess: one in Pandora, and another at Yoshi’s. This not only includes playing one of my favorite Dream Theater tunes (which he co-composed) with him, but also playing one of the tunes from La Bossa d’Urina that I composed with him. I can die happy now.
  • My love for Tahoe keeps growing.
  • Cover of The Nurse Who Loved Me, by A Perfect Circle.
  • The shows with Rumbahía become more epic.
  • I visit Barcelona in April and my friends and I have a wonderful catàrsi.
  • AI4ALL is an organization that aims to help diversify the field of AI. I become one of the mentors, and for 3 months I mentor a 15 year old female student to build a music recommender system with deep learning in Python. Such a great experience.
  • Weird heart problems that turn out to be non life-threatening and that eventually go away.
  • I run the legendary Bay to Breakers 12k race in SF.
  • I visit my sister in Boulder and we run Bolder Boulder, a 10km race. It’s her first race!
  • Cover of Song of The Unborn, by Steven Wilson.
  • Cover of Crosses, by José González.
  • Watching The Room in SF with two massive titans: Tim Wiseau and Pau Guinart.
  • On tour with Los Pandejos in Atlanta!
  • Best man at my titanest friend Eric Humphrey’s wedding, in Brooklyn.
  • Sister visits Oakland for my 35th birthday.
  • Several Arkaen shows around the Bay Area and the sierras. So much fun.
  • My dearest friend Eduard and his partner Erika spend some days in California.
  • Our work on Multimodal Deep Learning for Music Recommendation is published at the TISMIR journal.
  • My friend Erik gets married and I play a few tunes at his beautiful wedding in Tahoe
  • I go to Burning Man and it’s fantastic and I write about it.
  • I fall in love with someone from the interwebs called Anita that makes my life absurdly and disgustingly happy.
  • Merda Fina, our second album of La Bossa d’Urina, is finally published.
  • I go to Paris for ISMIR and we win best student paper award for our work on Music Autotagging with Deep Architectures.
  • Night at the opera in Barcelona with my dearest Ferran.
  • After 5 or 6 years, I’m back into rock climbing and it feels great.
  • Los Pandejos rocking hard at the UC Theatre.
  • Several weekend trips to beautiful California locations. My love deepens, both for Anita and California.
  • Yes, I go to Blizzcon to watch the Global Finals of Starcraft 2 for two consecutive days. Yes, it is amazing. (Yes, Serral wins).
  • Thanksgiving in LA (in the former mansion of Humphrey Bogart –life is ridiculous), and then Eastern Sierras explorations. By far, best days in California.
  • Cover of the jazz standard, There Will Never Be Another You.
  • NeurIPS in Montreal.
  • First music video of Merda Fina, of the song Esa Clase de Persona. Made by Venga Monjas.
  • I give a talk at the Deep Learning Barcelona Symposium.
  • Merda Gira World Tour takes place in Barcelona and its surroundings. 5 shows in ~1 week. Best tour so far. I love Bolsa and Marc, so much. One of my favorite parts is this absolute piece of shit.
  • Sad Christmas with dad.
  • Fantastic New Year’s with loved ones in Granollers.