Saturday, June 09, 2007
Summer is here
Ok, so it is only 95 right now and the humidity is only 35% but it is hotter than it has been lately. And my dog smells because of it.
Ack, I forgot to get the Roundup for the yard... Oh well. I was out getting shorts because I have not worn shorts in years but since I'm outside doing yardwork in this heat I need them. My legs could blind a man, though. :D I hadn't even thought about there being Father's Day sales going on this week, it was a good time to buy men's clothes.
Got my copy of Tan Dun's Water Passion after St. Matthew today (CD), one of the works I am doing a report on at the end of the month. I really, really am enjoying it so far. Really. Really.
It is scored for mixed chorus, Soprano and Bass soloists who both do overtone singing and play the Xun, solo violin and cello, electronic sampler and 3 percussionists. The percussionists each have a large, lit bowl of water (there are 17 of these on stage in a cross formation and the percussionists are at either side of the cross and at the top of the cross each playing one), a soda bottle, "water drums" which he describes as wooden salad bowls floating upside down in the basin, sieve, water tube drums, water gong, water tube with foam paddle, water shaker (described as a long tube with water and many plastic balls), water gong, large tibetan double cymbals, smooth contoured stones from the sea or river, water phone, bass drum, tubular chimes, and timpani. I'm not sure what all of the water instruments are, if they are actual instruments or things that were created by Tan Dun for playing in the bowls of water. Also marked in the score are towels for hand drying.
Anyway, it all leads to some nifty sounding stuff. Oh, and the chorus also gets to play with Tibetan finger bells, thunder sheets, river stones, and water.
I seem to remember river stones being used in The First Emperor but I don't remember for sure.
This piece was composed in 2001 and premiered in 2002 so it is very new.
Friday, June 08, 2007
cleaning spree of boredom
So I was bored and falling asleep around 12:30 and started cleaning. it helped wake me up and pass the time. 3 is almost upon me and I will start closing. Yay!
Whoa, blogger from the VA??
Yeah, so I was able to log into Google today at the VA, oddness. So I'm making a post.
The last week has been so much fun for me, let me tell you! My computer broke a week ago on Thursday and I then had to deal with the long broken usb ports on my tower (the MB in that is from 5 or 6 years ago now, maybe 7...). I hadn't had any trouble with them until now because I just didn't use them.
On Monday I was an hour and half late to my first day of class--there was some sort of vehicle burned out on I-20 and traffic was backed up about 6 miles--getting to class moments before it let out. At least I was there in time to get the syllabus and my assignment.
Tuesday we didn't have class and thankfully I knew this fact so I enjoyed another day of nothing much. Tuesday night I headed to Columbia for summer chorus. Tim offered to let me stay at his place on Tuesday nights if I'd sing with them, which saves me a tank of gas each week this month so I happily agreed to it.
Wednesday after we got lunch we found out that there was no class that day (a fact I would have known in advance if my laptop was functional.
When I got home my package of computer parts have arrived (adapter to let me plug the laptop's drive into the tower so I could at least get at my data, usb card to remedy the issue that has been long-known and ignored by me until now, and a stick of ram to test in the laptop). The RAM did not fix the laptop so I was looking at possibly replacing the CPU to test it, a part that runs $100. Other than that it is possibly the whole motherboard or at the very least the video adapter which is onboard, either option requiring the repair (replacement was not to be found) of the MB. A task that one place was going to charge $500 for the diagnosis and repair job.
So rather than spend $100 that might end up being for naught or spending $500+ on a repair of an old laptop when I know they can be found in the $500 range NEW I looked for a new laptop. I found a new laptop. At Circuit City. On sale with a mail-in rebate for under $500. It was in stock here in town and the specs are twice what the specs on the old one are. It is another Acer, which I was happy with my Acer until it gave up the ghost.
AMD 64bit 2GHz chip with a gig of RAM and 120 gig HD, DVD-RW, wifi and all that jazz. And they have fixed a couple of design flaws from three years ago. And this has a wide-screen display that is bright(!!!) and crystal clear.
The downside? Well, the same downside ANY new system has these days -- it comes preloaded with a nice big wad of SATAN. (That is, Windows Vista.)
I knew I wouldn't like Vista. I didn't realize I would hate it with every ounce of my being. But I do. I hate it with every ounce of my being.
Now to figure out some way to use the restore partition on my old laptop's harddrive to be able to install XP on this system, and also to install some flavour of Linux to dual-boot into. (Something 64 bit? I don't really have much use for it but I've got a 64 bit processor so why not?) (I'd swap over to Linux all the way if I wasn't scared that Sibelius won't work well with it. Most everything else that I use is either ALREADY opensource with a Linux counterpart or there are Linux apps that do the same thing.)
Windows Vista... Ughh.... Things are hidden, things are dumbed down... They spent so much time and money making it PRETTY (options which I turned off soon as I got into it) and not enough time making it WORK well. It is silly have have an OS that only runs well with a gig of RAM minimum.
Also it is silly that though this laptop is capable of 4 gigs of ram it has two 512 meg chips to get it to 1 gig so to upgrade I'd have to replace BOTH. But that is par-for-the-course as far as prefab systems go. So is not having freaking RESTORE disks instead of the wonderful restore PARTITION everyone is using these days.
Ugh... If only it worked well to build your own laptop. My 9 year old desktop system has been upgraded multiple times now and works GREAT (except for the dead USB on the MB but that is FIXED with a card (of course the PCI slots are now FULL).
I wouldn't have spent the money to get a new one if I wasn't commuting 4 days a week to school but it's just so good to have a laptop while I am doing that and to be able to go into the library (or a coffeeshop or atlanta bread company, etc) and do all my research that way.
Oh, and Wednesday when I was putting the new USB card in my desktop I removed the secondary, unused (since I only have one monitor right now) video card but for SOME REASON this caused the primary video card not to work... I don't understand THAT at all. So I removed another unused card and put the silly secondary card back in... Whatever. Oddness.
Today I work 10 hours and then I grill. Yay for the weekend.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Laptop = dead
Yeah so... I got the order from TC today, ram had no effect. I have decided that it isn't worth it to buy a $100 processor that might or might not fix it (and I am beginning to think it may be the video adapter that is out, which is part of the motherboard, which would cost $500 to fix). Instead I have started looking at new ones. I can get a better one for under $500 right now. 64bit AMD processor with 1gig ram. It's got Vista though... most anything will but... ugh.
Good news: The 44-40 pin IDE adapter worked and I have now transfered all the data off my old laptop hard drive to my desktop. The USB card worked and now I have 5 USB ports on my desktop that work at USB 2.0 instead of 2 that only work one at a time not at USB 2.0.
Class was canceled again today. I missed the first day and the last two days haven't met. Tomorrow maybe?
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Oddly, this morning as I was showering I had Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in my head for some reason and then as I was driving to school they mentioned that today was the 40th anniversary of the release of that album. Odd.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Summertime
And I have school again! It's my first time doing a summer course, I've got oratorio lit this month and next month I've got conducting. I was an hour and half late for my first class today because of a horrendous wreck on I-20 eastbound just outside of Aiken... It was, I think, an RV that burned. All that was left was the charred remains of the chassis and engine. I assume it had been there since the morning since it was not smoking, and it was still there 2 hours later when I made the trip back, traffic still blocked up behind it for 6 miles.
I got to class in time to get the syllabus and my two assignments for the month, and to find out we don't have class tomorrow. I'll be doing reports on Arvo Pärt's St. John Passion and Tan Dun's Water Passion on St. Mathew. Tan Dun is the composer of the score for Crouching Tiger and for Hero, he composed an opera that made it's debut at the Met this past winter (that I saw on simulcast if you remember) and Pärt is one of my favorite contemporary composers as well. Nifty!
Got home and did the yardwork and went swimming with my sisters and Mike.
Not a bad day if you delete the sitting on I-20 for an hour.
Klasinc&Loncar Duo (Just trying to help it get picked up by Google spiders, I maintain it for them)