Happy New (blogging) Year

With the plethora of social interaction possibilities, it seems that blogging has slipped down the priority list, or it could be that I’m just not that good at keeping up a regular repartee of semi-interesting things to say (or perhaps I’d rather talk to people than a screen?). I do have a Facebook presence, as well as a Linked-In profile, a Twitter id and so on, but thus far I have tended to use them for different purposes and have not succumbed to the temptation to link them all together in a web of cross-connections.

Is that a good idea? Does anyone have views? I’ll think on it.

Amazong, really

OK, so it’s a slightly lame play on words, but I had one of those little electronic interactions yesterday that adds a bit of cheer. You know, something small happens that has involved (possibly) two human beings, albeit via some interface that separates them but it gives you confidence about what goes on behind the interface.

In this case I submitted a couple of small updates to the titles and artist name for a couple of CDs (by the Gurzenich Fagottquintett) on Amazon’s UK website. I got the acknowledgements back within a very short period (saying they agreed with my updates), and I figured that was probably a machine talking. But to my surprise, the entries were also updated and within half a day the indexing was working as expected. So now you can easily find the three latest CDs by this esteemed bassoon ensemble with one search!

Well done, Amazon.

Blankety Blank

Well, I’ve discovered a very interesting piece of html interaction. OK, perhaps not very interesting, but at least slightly interesting.

A few weeks ago I made a small change to my amateur orchestras website which I thought would tidy up a lot of the underlying web links. The site links to a lot of sites of orchestras around the country and for the links I’ve used the target=”_blank” mantra to make sure they load in a new page. Well now I discovered a tag that was new to me, the base tag. This allows you to set the default behaviour of ALL of the links on your page. So, hey presto, just one of these tags at the beginning of the page saves dozens of target specifications and maybe even some space on the site.

But of course it’s never quite that simple. Also embedded in the web pages are a bunch of OTHER links, which themselves contain some embedded javascript to de-obfuscate some hidden email addresses and open the default mail client. Guess what – the base tag prevents them from working. Instead of generating a nice mailto: link and opening that default email client, all that happens is a new blank page is opened. Nothing else.

So it’s back to the drawing board, and back to the target attributes for the time being.

I love software!

Trying to remember

I’m trying to remember things I’ve done. Of course highlights of one’s life do live in the memory, but sometimes putting them in order or remembering which year they were in is challenging. Luckily, the electronic trail left behind gives plenty of clues. Those old credit card statements that you thought about throwing away (and that’s another story) hint at exciting times. Just HOW many times have I visited the Meson Don Felipe? What WAS I doing in Ilkley?

As you might be able to guess, a forthcoming birthday prompts such memory-hunting, along with (the other story) an ongoing paper reduction task to digitise old records and then throw them away. That’s the hard part! Not quite as extreme as these guys, but it is liberating to see mountains of paper that you were saving just in case disappear.

My favourite PC tool

Most folks have a number of favourite tools that they install on their home PC, work PC, workstation or whatever. Plenty of those love to show them off to friends and colleagues. Some even send some electronic money to the author of those tools to provide some level of appreciation for the quality/function/benefit they gain. More than likely they find that when they use someone else’s PC they feel bereft if the tool is missing. That means that the first ten minutes are spent downloading that tool to make the job “easier”. A very small number carry these tools around on a memory stick to save even that level of inconvenience (always assuming you’re allowed to stick your USB key into just any machine).

Of course I have some favourite tools too – Keepass, Process Monitor, PureText, SyncBack, PDFSAM, MailWasher, IrfanView and Notepad++ are just a few of them. But there is one application I use ALL the time, EVERY time I open up my work laptop, or use my home PC or need to serious housekeeping on my partner’s machine. It’s xplorer², a two-pane Windows Explorer replacement from which you can see a screen shot below. Since my computer interaction style is keyboard- rather than mouse-heavy I find opening lots of windows to do simple things like copy/moving/comparing files a pain in the conventional Explorer. With xplorer² on the other hand it becomes a few short keystrokes. To move a bunch of files from one folder to another is simply a question of selecting them in one pane, hit F6 and then watching them magically appear in the folder in the other pane. There are many, many functions typical in a mature multi release product so I’m sure I’ve not even scratched the surface. There are also plenty of other dual-pane file managers around, probably equally as good. Either way, try one and stop using Windows Explorer (or perhaps ask why Microsoft never put this function into Explorer). Enjoy!

The Big Bassoon

Recently I renewed acquaintance with an instrument I used to own, a Moenig low-A contra-bassoon. Why is the “low-A” important? Well for one thing it adds 18-20 inches of pipe to the conventional contra, in search of that extra semitone so that you can say “I can play the lowest note on the piano”!

Actually I was borrowing it back from the consortium of three friends who bought it so that I could play the contra part in Elgar’s 1st Symphony, with Bushey Symphony Orchestra. And splendid fun it was too, although there aren’t many places during the piece where the contra “stars”. Mind you, the contra rarely stars, but it DOES bring an added solidity to the woodwind sound, and the tall instrument I was playing gives you a certain prominence in the orchestra.

The concert itself was really good, it’s one of the best orchestras I’ve played in. It also featured Marianne Cotterill singing the gorgeously moving swan-song of Richard Strauss’ career, the Four Last Songs, and a piece from the neglected composer William Alwyn. The Elizabethan Dances, while reminiscent of the film music for which he is probably best known, were a jolly antidote to the seriousness of the rest of the concert!

Now on to Schubert’s Great C-Monster…

Anticipation…

Orchestral rehearsals start again this week! The programmes for the two orchestras I play in regularly look really good this year – perhaps they always do early in September. At Aylesbury we start with the “New World” symphony by Dvorak, with Vaughan Williams’ “London” Symphony and Sibelius’ 1st later in the season. Full details here.

At Bushey Symphony Orchestra the season includes some really interesting things such as the Saxophone Concert by Michael Torke, Elgar’s 1st Symphony, Strauss’s Four Last Songs, and the Elizabethan Suite by William Alwyn.

With by bassoon having had a late summer overhaul, I’m nearly ready. One day I’ll have practised enough

Struggling with neither software nor music

I have some of the key characteristics of a procrastinator, and indeed this blog entry is a prime example. For over a year I’ve failed to make any entries. Now just at the point when I’m under a strong time pressure to finish some legal forms I’m finding ANYTHING to do other than complete it. Even writing blog entries.

So, what can I do about it? Answers on a postcard or blog comment please.

On the (french) horns of a dilemma

As a musician there’s nothing I like better than playing with other musicians. In fact I would almost go so far as to say I HATE playing on my own (well, a plausible excuse for not practising, anyway). So it’s been an interesting experience recently playing with other musicians and really not enjoying it. I realised once again also how powerless you are as a single player in a larger ensemble to actually control what’s going on or at least influence it. Particularly when you have 37 bars rest.

So, picture the scene (and I have purposely changed the instruments to anonymise my comments and avoid any awkwardness), containing the following elements:

• A flute player who taps his feet, inevitably at a different time to the conductor.
• An aged clarinet player who can’t hear the conductor is always asking “where are we going from”
• A leader who gets lost
• A solo pianist who is young and hasn’t played with a less-than top rate orchestra (ahem) and thinks that they can change speed on a sixpence
• A conductor (bit hard to anonymise) who not only has difficulty following the pianist, but also has a habit of beating two beat bars as two down beats
• A viola section who only appeared on the evening of the concert
• A brass section light of three trombones and a horn
• An orchestra over-reaching itself with the repertoire

I could go on, but I expect you’re getting the picture. Now at this point I should probably confess myself. I’d only been to two rehearsals, after a previous experience with this orchestra.

On mature reflection of course I could ask questions such as: “Who am I to make these judgments on the orchestra?”, “Where to I get off saying that the orchestra is over-reaching itself?”, “If they only picked easier pieces to play, how would they learn anything?”. Plus many others in a similar vein. So my dilemma is this – do I cast myself adrift from this orchestra to avoid the uncomfortable times (yes I could never really be a teacher, could I?), or do I continue to add some experience (and a needed extra bassoon) to the orchestra and learn something myself from the experience. A real dilemma since neither answer is ideal. I’d love some thoughts.

Another year has slipped by – where did it go?

So what happened to 2007? Well I’m not too sure. I DID go to the Judie Tzuke concert, it was fabulous. It was the promotional tour for her new “Songs” album of more acoustically-styled tracks, but none the worse for that. And yes, she DID sing “Stay With Me ‘Til Dawn”!

So while I’ll forget 2007, 2008 has started very well on the music front. I’ve used my own cooking and sent emails to some nearby orchestras as linked from the amateurorchestras website. Luckily some wrote back and within a couple of weeks I found myself playing 1st bassoon in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” with the Aylesbury Orchestra at a Sunday afternoon children’s concert. It’s great to be playing again, and it’s already kicked off a number of other playing opportunities. I’ll talk about them here.

The other exciting musical event has been the splendid birthday gift of an AKAI EWI4000S. I’m SURE I’ll talk more about that too. It’s a midi wind synthesizer, but that really only hints at the capability and ease-of-use of this piece of technological wizardry. I’m just beginning to understand how to make it work and get the best out of it.

Footnote: I was just writing a new post and discovered this unposted-post – seems still relevant, although Judie has now released the second of her “Songs” albums.