Beethoven Opus 111

I'm am just crazy about the last 3 piano sonatas of Beethoven.  Last year, Opus 109 consoled me in mourning.  Then, as I listened more to Opus 111, it pierced my soul as much as the other solo piano works I love (Schumann Opus 13, Schumann Opus 17, Brahms Opus 24, Brahms Opus 118, Nr 2, Chopin Barcarolle).  There is a part in the last movement that sounds jazzy.  This is followed by a part that just blows me away -- trills and chords together.  I have a DVD of Kocsis playing this sonata and it makes you appreciate how hard it is to play.  Wow.  Today, Bruce Hungerford's recording of it arrived from Passionato.  I like it.  I also like Pollini.  For sheer beauty of sound, Simone Dinnerstein is unbeatable.  This is why so many regard Beethoven as the greatest of them all.  Click here for some insights on Hungerford's Beethoven.

Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0

I got another set of Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 today.  Their uncle bought them one for Christmas in 2010 I believe.  This should keep the kids busy!

It uses a version of Labview to program the bots:

If you want to do something sort of like this, Scratch is free and pretty fun.  You can also program your Android phone with AppInventor.

Opera - I think I'm going to get hooked

In this era of DVD, I finally am taking to opera.  In the DG 111 box I have, there are several operas which I have yet to view

• Der Rosenkavalier (Kleiber)
• Carmen (Karajan)
• Don Giovanni (Furtwängler)
• La Traviata (Barenboim)

I watched the DVD of Rigoletto (McVicar production) I have and I quite like it.  The most famous tune is at the start of the third act. I have another McVicar production on the way - Manon and I'm looking forward to listening to Natalie Dessay's singing.

HP Parallel Print Server Workaround

Every time I reinstall Windows, I have to setup the printers again.  I have a 3 port HP Parallel Print Server I got off Kijiji with an IBM Network Printer 12.  In order to be able setup the printers on the print server, I had to first install the printer and set the port to File:.  With Windows 7, you have to wait quite a while as Windows update builds the list of printers.  Once the printer is installed locally as printing to File:, you can run the HP Network Printer Install program to install the printer as a network printer on the print server.  The local version printing to File: can them be removed.

Music to remember

Today, is one year since my grandmother died.  Music is the language that means the most to me.  I started the day (midnight) by listening to some old standards (by Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, the Gershwins, Rogers and Hart) sung by Linda Ronstadt and Carly Simon.  I had first heard Linda Ronstadt's singing of these old classics on Richard Uuzounian's Say It With Music on CBC Stereo Sunday afternoons when in grad school.  I loved it and bought all three of her CDs (which I later gave to a fellow grad student, Joko, when he returned to Indonesia).  I had bought the 2 CD re-issue ('Round Midnight) to replace the ones I gave him.  When I was in San Francisco for the 1992 December AGU meeting, I walked into a record store and bought LPs Lush Life and For Sentimental Reasons as well as the 3 LP box of 'Round Midnight.  That's how crazy I was about this music!  Lorenz Hart wrote some beautiful lyrics.  Some of my favorites are But not for me (Gershwin), Little Girl Blue (Rogers and Hart), It never Entered My Mind (Rogers and Hart), Skylark (Carmichael).

Then I listened to Strauss' Beim Schlafengehen with Lucia Popp.  That was followed with Beethoven's 3 last piano sonatas with Maurizio Pollini.

I borrowed Simone Dinnerstein's CD The Berlin Concert from the library yesterday and listened to it this evening.  She plays Beethoven's Opus 111 much more romantically than Pollini does.  I love the fullness of the recording.  Not too bassy like Kovacevich's newer Diabelli recording.  Very enjoyable indeed.

Clone the drive, can't do a partition copy!

I was trying to move Windows 7 Pro 64-bit from a 250 Gig drive to a 1 terabyte drive that was partitioned.  I used Easus ToDo Backup Free Edition to copy the C: partition from the 250 Gig drive to one of the partitions on the 1 terabyte drive.  To my surprise, the system wouldn't boot with the 1 terabyte drive.  It wouldn't boot with the 250 Gig drive either!  I was really up the creek.  Luckily, the data on the terabyte drive could be read from my Windows 8 computer and I copied the C:\User data over to a partition on my Windows 8 desktop.

I had forgotten that Windows 7 (and 8) have some stuff on another hidden partition!  CRAP!  Lesson learned.  Clone the drives, don't copy partitions over!

I then proceeded to reinstall Windows 7 Pro from scratch.  This might not be a bad thing though.  This particular computer would sometimes not start and I had to shut the power off and try again (and select boot as normal instead of startup repair which did nothing).  So after several hours with all Windows updates and Windows 7 SP1 installed, I cloned the 1 terabyte drive back to the old 250 Gig drive and then disconnected the 1 terabyte drive to check if the system would boot with the 250 gig drive.  Success!  The 250 Gig drive will now be disconnected and the 1 terabyte drive reconnected.  The 250 gig drive will be my basic Windows 7 Pro backup in case I ever have problems.  My system is now upgraded with a 1 terabyte hard drive.  Now to install all the software back!

Classic Shell causing problems with Windows 8

The Lenovo X220 Core i7 notebook my kid has would not let him login as a standard user.  After some fruitless searches about Windows All user install agent, I decided to uninstall Classic Shell.  After a reboot, his account was now able to be logged in.  I had installed Classic Shell to make the Windows 8 look more like standard Windows with a Start Button.  Oh well, back to plain new Windows 8.

How blind are our energy analysts?

I came upon an article last week that indicated that the significance of the Nexen takeover by CNOOC was China's access to fracking technology.  This morning, I decided to try to find that article.  I couldn't, but I found these:

• A Chinese article confirms this deal will help unlock China's vast shale oil reserves
• The Council of Canadians opposes the deal for environmental and indigenous heritage reasons
• This BusinessWeek article stresses that technology was the most important asset CNOOC bought.  Technology that includes deep water drilling
• The deal was put throught despite CSIS concerns about Chinese espionage
• This article highlights the deep water technology

Having seen my homeland's economy hollowed out by short sighted business leaders (such as those who run Acer, Asus and other Taiwanese companies).  They were pivotal in developing China's IT industry by shifting production to China from Taiwan.  It is rather sad that Canada is following in the same path.  How the heck would there ever be a need for the Northern Gateway pipeline if China can now develop, with western know-how, their vast shale oil reserves?  What of the geopolitical fallout for America in the western Pacific if energy poor democracies such as Korea and Japan are beholden to the People's Republic of China (PRC)?  Is that why the PRC has been so brazen (along with the misguided Kuomingtang-led Taiwan) in the Senkaku Islands dispute with Japan?

When will we learn?

Mischa Elman

My first ever Mischa Elman CDs arrived yesterday from Passionato.  This 2 CD set only cost me about $6.  Wow.  You can't get bargains like that on iTunes!

His version of the Gossec Gavotte from Suzuki Violin School Book 1 is something else!  Very charming.  There is also the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Lalo's Symphonie espagnole and the Khachaturian Concerto.  It's crazy how cheap classical music is these days.  Elman died in 1967, but he didn't record for the big record companies it would seem.  He was about 12 years older than Heifetz and Milstein (a couple of other great Jewish violinists from Russia).

Spectrum 2013

I took my grade 9 class to Spectrum 2013 on Thursday morning.  On Friday night, I returned with my kids.  I also met a former Walter Murray student who told me about the cheap TI MSP430 microcontroller.  I had mentioned I was considering Arduino, but it was still expensive.  He said the MSP430 promoted "proper C programming".  Arduino uses its own version of C.  Interesting!

Mendelssohn Violin Concerto

The Mendelssohn Violin Concerto was one of the first violin concerti I bought on CD (way back when I was in high school). I think the others I ordered from Templar Records in London were the Brahms Violin Concerto (Anne-Sophie Mutter) and the Beethoven Violin Concerto (Itzhak Perlman). I bought this EuroArts DVD from Presto Classical last year when it was half price and I was watching it tonight in preparation for the SSO concert on Saturday, January 19.  Frank-Michael Erben, the concert master of the Gewandhaus Orchestra is the soloist.  Interestingly, the first soloist of the concerto was Ferdinand David, then the concert master of the Gewandhaus Orchestra during Mendelssohn's time.

My first CD of this concerto was with Uto Ughi and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Georges Prêtre.

When I first got this CD from Templar Records in London, I just listened to the Mendelssohn concerto and ignored the Bruch.  Of course, when I actually finally got around to listening to Bruch's first violin concerto, I was entranced and it is, to me, the most beautiful of all violin concertos!

Anyways, it is good to be able to hear the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto live played by the Gewandhaus Orchestra's concert master.  It is, after all, a very listenable masterpiece!  Mendelssohn was even more precocious than Mozart as a prodigy.  I've heard the Brahms Violin Concerto played by Miriam Fried and the Calgary Philharmonic back in the 1980s as well as with Itzhak Perlman and the TSO back in 1998 (during Easter break!).  Pinchas Zukerman was conducting the TSO that evening and the Mendelssohn Reformation Symphony was on the second half of the program.

More piano this year?

We have a Mason and Hamlin Model A grand piano that doesn't get played very much.  It was purchased in May 2008 and I hope it will get played more this year.  Maybe, someday, someone will play Beethoven Opus 109 on it!

Maybe the kid in the picture will play late Beethoven on this piano some day!

Shell Science Lab Challenge Regional Finalist

Just when I thought I was not in the running, today just before noon, I got an e-mail telling me that I was a regional finalist for the Shell Science Lab Challenge.  I will have to make a short video about the science facilities at my school and submit it for the next round.

The joy of this happy news was tempered by last Friday's tragedy.  I saw this article posted in the staff room and those heroes epitomise Bunyan's famous quote:

You have never really lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.

God bless them and their families.

God keep our land ...

Today, I found a little booklet in the supermailbox:

It was a King James version Gospel of John and Book of Romans from Bearing Precious Seeds Canada.  The Bible Society isn't allowed to distribute New Testaments and Psalms at citizenship ceremonies anymore and I don't think the Gideons give out Bibles to grade 5 students anymore.  So, it was kind of refreshing to see this new effort to plant God's seed.  Interestingly, I was feeling kind of empty today.  Perhaps, it was because of some minor disappointments (don't think my application for the Shell Science Challenge is going anywhere and I'm waiting to see if I'll get a paper published in the Science Teacher).  I was also looking for my Delphi Informant CD.  I had tried to find it last week when I was working on the RSS feed submitter.  Well, I found it today!  I was also reading the first chapter of Joel Osteen's Christmas book.  Well, when one door closes, there is always another that will open!

Dinu Lipatti and Clara Haskil

December is the month when both of these Romanian born pianists died.  Lipatti succumbed to leukemia on 1950 December 2 at the age of 33.  Haskil died from a fall at the Brussels train station on 1960 December 7 just shy of her 66th birthday.  They are two of the supreme pianists from the 20th century.