AVR debuts on TSX and keeps climbing

Well, AVR moved from the Venture exchange to the TSX on Christmas Eve (news of this was released on Dec 22).  It went as high as $1.97 and closed at $1.89.  I'm up over $4000 since I bought in on Monday Dec 22.  I'm hoping for a CNL like rise.  If it does, it will indeed be a home run.  A great Christmas present indeed.  General Lewis Mackenzie and Pierre Pettigrew are on the board of AVR and Sprott Asset Management holds about 20% of the company.  I think this may be a real winner.

Trying to find more info on CNL's yearly production, but it doesn't seem to exist!?  They reported some recent drilling results (Dec 21) with very high grade gold deposits (10x more gold than say AVR's deposits).

It has been another year to be thankful.  Well, every year is one to give thanks to the Lord.

AVR Still Climbing and it was hand, foot and mouth disease, not strep throat

Well, wondering why I wasn't getting any relief from the penicillin after two days of treatment.  I thought it was because I needed something stronger (like what a specialist prescribed for me years ago Zithromax I think it was).  Went to the Southdown medical clinic again and saw a different doctor.  This one was more thorough.  He said right away - you have a virus - that's why the antibiotic didn't work.  So, I went to get some ibuprofen as the Tylenol was only giving me an hour of pain relief.

AVR is still going up - it hit another all time high.  What a run it's having!  How do you value this stock?  I was using Kinross Gold as a benchmark.  Kinross had a little over 2 million oz/yr production.  AVR is hoping to reach 200 000 oz/yr production in 2012.  So, shouldn't it be worth about 1/10th the price of Kinross?

AVR Rockets again, I'm sick with strep throat

I started feeling something wrong in my throat on Sunday (Dec 19).  My body was aching on Sunday, then by Monday night, my throat and ears were in pain.  Finally went to the doctor on Tuesday morning to get antibiotics.  The mediclinics here don't open until 9 AM.  The first one I went to (Southdown and Truscott) was the one I eventually got treated.  Had done a circuit up Erin Mills, to Dundas/Laird and back as all of the mediclinics along the route open at 10 AM.  I've taken 4 antibiotic pills and I'm still in pain from this strep throat.  This is a real bummer.  I've not felt this kind of pain for years.

However, I noticed that AVR has rocketed up to a record high today.  I'm up $1600 since buying 10,000 shares on Monday.  This is my hope to recover past losses.  Also trading TKO to try to make some smaller gains as copper is hitting record highs too.  ATH is getting out of range for me, but it's still moving up.  Wonder if I should get back into K sometime too.  Just don't have enough cash to do everything I want.

A $2.8 trillion unfunded liability

Great point by Andrew Coyne on At Issue tonight.  The aging population is a $2.8 trillion unfunded liability.  Often, we hear that students need to have context to learn things.  How about this oncoming financial burden for a context. I often think that this desire to find context and to change how education works is influenced by the sense of entitlement we have in well-off nations.  I don't think a student sitting on a dirt floor in an African school will need context - they don't have a sense of entitlement to education - it's a privilege.  Coyne noted that the US and especially the UK are doing things right now to address this problem of the aging population.  Canada is not.  We may be financial stars of the G8 now, but not in the future!

An excellent three months for my RRSP

I have achieved Active Trader status and now pay $10 trades for any number of shares.  This is a great benefit from my previous cost of $29 trades for up to 1000 shares.  I could have made a few thousand more than I did, but one has to fight the bad psychology of "what could of been".  How do you move your RRSP up by about $3000 in 3 months?  I traded ATH-T, TKO-T, STB-T and MFC-T.  I dumped MFC-T and ATH-T too early  and made hundreds instead of thousands.  TKO was just for a quick 10s of dollars.  Now, I also got lucky by buying WTN-T on Dec 2nd when they announced an extension of their takeover talks with Walther.  On Dec 3rd, it rocketed at the open and I made a cool $480.  RESEARCH!  I've done a lot of reading on GlobeInvestor, so that was essential.  You also need a stock that has a high volume.  WTN was very active once it was a takeover target. I noticed since STB-T pays its generous 9% dividend monthly, you can trade it during the month to make small capital gains as well as collecting the monthly dividend.  Now, I'm holding K-T and it's risen nicely this week.  I bought too high, but now it's in positive territory for me.

Let Us Be Kind, poem by W. Lomax Childress

I got the yearly Christmas letter from a retired Presbyterian minister today. In it, he mentions a poem that was taught to his sister by Miss Ruth Stuttaford at the Chatsworth Continuation School.  I found it in a free book called Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two (available from Project Gutenberg).  I was telling my IP10/20/30 class today that it's going to be a tougher world for them than it is for me.  I referred them to the recent Maclean's article - Generation Screwed Cover Story.  I would think we need more of this:


Let Us Be Kind
  Let us be kind;
The way is long and lonely,
And human hearts are asking for this blessing only--
  That we be kind.
We cannot know the grief that men may borrow,
We cannot see the souls storm-swept by sorrow,
But love can shine upon the way to-day, to-morrow--
  Let us be kind.

  Let us be kind;
This is a wealth that has no measure,
This is of Heaven and earth the highest treasure--
  Let us be kind.
A tender word, a smile of love in meeting,
A song of hope and victory to those retreating,
A glimpse of God and brotherhood while life is fleeting--
  Let us be kind.

  Let us be kind;
Around the world the tears of time are falling,
And for the loved and lost these human hearts are calling--
  Let us be kind.
To age and youth let gracious words be spoken;
Upon the wheel of pain so many lives are broken,
We live in vain who give no tender token--
  Let us be kind.

  Let us be kind;
The sunset tints will soon be in the west,
Too late the flowers are laid then on the quiet breast--
  Let us be kind.
And when the angel guides have sought and found us,
Their hands shall link the broken ties of earth that bound us,
And Heaven and home shall brighten all around us--
  Let us be kind.

    _W. Lomax Childress._

Bad day for hard drives! Don't buy Chinese produce!

At school a teacher told me the external hard drive wouldn't respond.  I looked at it and found it wasn't even spinning.  So, I took it out of the case and a piece of plastic fell out.  The drive had worked out of it's power connection even though it was screwed in! Looks like too many G's were applied to it.  Anyways, it worked fine once I put it back together.  Good luck for that one.

Then at home, my Athlon 64x2 5000 wouldn't boot.  I eventually traced it to a troublesome Seagate 250 Gig SATA drive.  I took the Seagate 250 Gig SATA drive out and the computer booted.  I had just recorded some TV onto that drive on Sunday!  It had given me problems a few weeks ago - wouldn't show up in the BIOS and I had to jiggle the cables and it worked again.  This time that wouldn't work.  So, I put it in a USB 2.0 case I just got and it still wouldn't work. Next, hooked it up to a temp USB-SATA connector and the drive would show up in My Computer, but I couldn't access it.  It kept on making a cyclical clicking noise.  This wasn't a heavily used hard drive.  It was once a boot drive, but I don't use that computer very much anymore.  Very disappointing - was it poor QC from this Chinese made drive?  They just don't make hard drives very reliable nowadays!

I also got an e-mail from a church friend warning against eating Chinese Mandarin oranges.  This was sent by someone from VIDO.  Her friend broke out in a rash because of a reaction to the pesticides used.  I don't buy Chinese Mandarin oranges.  They tend not to rot because of how they are chemically treated.  The Japanese Mandarin oranges tend to rot quickly - a good thing actually!

Taiwan Elections - no break throughs, but hope?

Well, there were no breakthroughs in the Taiwan local elections.  DPP wins Tainan and Kaohsiung and KMT wins Taipei, Taipei County and Taichung.  It was pretty close in Taichung though. Sad.  Taiwanese didn't wake up yet.  I'm very disappointed.  However, the number of council members for DPP and KMT was even at 130 each.  Tsai Ing-wen may well be running for President in 2012 and I hope she can build momentum and WIN for Taiwan.  We need her.  Full results were obtained from the Central Election Commission website.

Now, to show the cultural difference between Taiwan and Canada, in the summary of candidates, the CEC displays the educational level achieved by each candidate:

Now, using President Ma as an example, what use is a bought PhD in law from Harvard University if said PhD says illogical things like "the judiciary is biased" when the judgments handed down don't satisfy the KMT?

We were at parent-teacher interviews yesterday and instead of focusing on how many "E's" our kid got, the talk was about is he being a good kid and does he enjoy school.  Is he learning?  Note:  more "E's" doesn't mean more learning.  It's not about being smart, it's about working at it (practice).  Our kid is very lucky to have the teacher he has.  I would say she is a master teacher.  She genuinely enjoys her job and spends a lot of time in the classroom with her students academically and during the lunch hour.  A dedicated teacher indeed.

Cyprien Katsaris Plays Listz's arrangement of Beethoven 9th

I bought this CD decades ago in Calgary I think.  I was telling my baby that it was "music singing piano".  He really likes the dvd of Karajan conducting Beethoven's 9th.  So, we pulled this CD out and he thought it was funny that a piano was replacing the entire orchestra.  Cyprien Katsaris is quite a virtuoso pianist.  His recordings are hard to come by nowadays, but the complete set of Beethoven symphonies is available for quite a reasonable price.  Too bad they didn't sell it even cheaper given that these were recorded in the 1980s.  One of the interesting things is that Katsaris plays a Mark Allen concert grand that was custom built.  I found this 1982 article by Gary Graffman about Mark Allen's pianos.  Graffman is a pianist who lost the use of his right hand and had to end his two-handed career in the 1960s.  He's a teacher at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

Don't climb on the Dinosaurs

This sign use to be at the Tyrell Museum.  However, after the renovations, not only the sign, but the dinosaurs disappeared.  Too bad. It was a pretty funny sign!

Stephen Kovacevich and Schubert's D 960

I bought this CD at HMV in Square One I think in the 1980s (or was it Sam's on Yonge Street?). I pulled it out to listen as I was exercising again.  It was the first recording of Schubert's last piano sonata I ever bought.  I think I read good things about it in Fanfare and the Penguin Record Guide.  I had always admired Stephen Kovacevich. I think I heard him interviewed on Stereo Morning in the early 1990s and Terry Campbell mentioned something about how his recording company (Philips) was good.  I distinctly recall Kovacevich pretty much had no comment.  I guess that's because he was moving on to EMI at that time.  I always felt Philips slighted him and favored Alfred Brendel.  Too bad, Kovacevich made several great recordings for them (Beethoven concerti, some solo work including the Diabelli Variations, some outstanding Brahms, the Bartók concerti, the Grieg & Schumann concerti, and a couple of Mozart concerti records).  I would like to get more of his recordings, but even his EMI Beethoven Sonata set is hard to get, let alone his old Philips recordings.

As for this Schubert, he upheld his usual high standards of dynamics and judgement. I added Pollini's recording after I bought his.  I also have Leon Fleisher's (his first major 2 handed recording in decades).  Then recently, I got Clara Haskil, Géza Anda and Curzon's (on CD and DVD).  I guess there is something about Schubert that draws me in.  Perhaps, it is because he lived such a short life (even shorter than Mozart!).  For me, this sonata is to Schubert what Mozart's KV 595 was to Mozart.  You can sense the end (of their lives) is near in both works.

Lin Cho-liang - Saint-Saëns 3rd Violin Concerto

Exercising downstairs listening to the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto from this CD.  When the Saint-Saëns 3rd Violin Concerto came on, Elisha ran upstairs to get his baton (pencil) to conduct.  I have the Julia Fischer DVD of this violin concerto, so he was familiar with it. He conducted the first movement and part of the 2nd.  He doesn't like slow movements.  He then had a change of taste and wanted to conduct "music singing" - Beethoven's 9th.  So, we went upstairs and put on the von Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic DVD and he conducted the last movement.  I had bought the entire set of 3 DVDs for a bargain on Amazon marketplace. Glad I did, my baby loves it and so do I.  Beethoven is totally other worldly.  How could a deaf man compose such a glorious work!

SMTP Server in Windows 7 Pro - FRUSTRATION!

There was an SMTP server in Windows XP.  With Windows Vista Home Premium, that disaappeared.  I'm using Windows 7 Pro and I figure it should have the SMTP server.  Did several searches and still couldn't figure it out! Tried to install some stuff in IIS, but that didn't work (couldn't actually see SMTP anywhere).  Tried Free SMTP Server - it wouldn't even run (said couldn't find the internet).  Also found this page about setting up hMailServer, but I haven't been able to figure it out!  This is very frustrating.  I just want to send out e-mails from Integrade Pro.

Tried running Integrade from Windows XP mode under Windows 7. That didn't work either.

Now trying to setup Outlook 2010 for the board IMAP server.  Taking quite a long time to setup.  Crashed. Error said you can't configure an Outlook Exchange E-mail account while Outlook 2010 is running.  Have to do it from Control Panel. Tried to do it - can't find the server.  Can't check the username (you have to have Outlook on!).  Circular problem.  This is VERY STUPID.

This SUCKS.  That's why it's handy to have a Windows XP machine lying around.

Valerie Tryon and the Schumann Fantasie Op 17

This CD does not disappoint.  I was most interested in the Schumann Fantasie, Op 17 as that is one of my favorite solo piano works.  I heard the name Valerie Tryon and the Rembrandt Trio on CBC Stereo when I was in grad school (1990s). Never gave it much thought back then as I don't listen to chamber music too much.  The Schubert and Mozart sonatas are nice too.  I had a chance to listen to Valerie Tryon in Ancaster in the summer of 2009, but didn't act on it.  That recital was actually put together by the piano dealer I bought my Mason and Hamlin Model A from (don't buy a piano from The Music Group - I got terrible service from them and had to deal with Mason and Hamlin directly).  I have no problem with Mason and Hamlin - great company to deal with as they fixed the problem my dealer should have resolved.

The only thing I was disappointed with was that the audio quality didn't wow me.  Not that it was poor engineering, but I was hoping for something great from APR - a small English company. Valerie Tryon's technique has stayed solid even though she was over 70 when this CD was recorded.  She should be better known!

Cashing in on the US mid-term elections

I had a hunch that the irrational stock market would surge after the US elections.  It was delayed, but today, the TSX and the Dow hit pre-recession highs.  My bet on MFC-T paid off, but I could have made even more money (sold too low).  MFC-T rose over $1/share even though it lost almost $1 billion.  Weird.  I'm not one to believe that QE2 by the US Fed is going to work.  As others have pointed out, it's meant to devalue the US$ and export the pain to US trading partners. After cashing out of MFC-T, I decided to put some cash into TKO-T which took a big hit yesterday when it's mine in BC was rejected by the federal government.  Now, this mining company has a PE of 7.4 and I think this is a buying opportunity.  I hope I'm right!

Well, I really cashed out of MFC-T way too early.  It's continued to go up to almost $15 on Nov 5.  Darn it!

Elisha likes Schumann's 3rd and 4th Symphonies

I have Schumann's Rhenish Symphony playing and our little conductor, Elisha, took up his baton (pencil) again to conduct.  He's conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra (actually it's Bernard Haitink).  He definitely likes German romantics as Brahms is also a favorite of his.  I'm also an addict as I started out with Sawallisch's set with the Staatskappelle Dresden, then got Haitink's, next Norrington's and now Gardiner's (in the DG Schumann 200 year box) sets of Schumann symphonies.

Géza Anda and Brahms Piano Concerto Nr 2 + Clara Haskil Edition on Decca

Reading the notes from Géza Anda's second DG recording of the Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto was quite interesting.  Apparently, Brahms' metronome markings for the first movement would have it clock in at about 14-15 minutes.  Anda was no dawdler and he took under 18 minutes (about the same as Pollini).  Apparently, in 1968 (when this album was released), his reading would be considered 'slow'.  I have Sviatoslav Richter's RCA recording and he takes almost 3 minutes less than Anda for the whole concerto. Nowadays, Géza Anda's tempi would be considered relatively fast.  How times have changed.  What is the truth though?

Also found out that a 17 CD Clara Haskil Edition is being released in November 2010 to commemorate 50 years since her untimely death from a fall at the Brussels train station in December 1960.  This includes everything from the Philips Original Masters 7 CD set and 10 more CDs.  From what I've read about Clara Haskil, she's one of the once in a century naturals.  How lucky classical music collectors are now that these huge boxed sets are being released at bargain prices.

La Petite Bande is broke?

I went to the website of La Petite Bande and they are asking for donations!  Very sad.  With austerity sweeping Europe, there is no money for the arts.  I have some recordings from them (Bach Orchestral Suites, Bach Violin Concerti, Vivaldi Four Seasons) and they are all full of baroque convention.  I wonder how Toronto's Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra is doing?  Last I heard, they were still giving concerts.

Socket 1366 is cool (not like HOT AMD Phenom II) & Handel's Water Music

On Friday night, I put together an Intel Core i7 system for a friend's son.  The CPU was $300, the GeForce GT460X was $200, the Asus Socket 1366 board was $220, the case was $60, the 8 Gig if DDR3 RAM was $200.  The hard drive didn't arrive yet, but I put it together anyways.  I was pleasantly surprised that it was pretty painless.  I booted up Ubuntu 10.04 LTS from the CD and it worked no problems (no hard drive, so I did the test drive with Ubuntu Linux).  This contrasted sharply from my horrid experience with trying to put together a Phenom II 940 system for myself - the stupid AMD CPU kept on overheating.  Impressive Intel.

Recently, I decided to put on the English Concert's recording of Handel's Water Music.  I first heard about this recording from Bob Kerr's CBC Radio show, Off the Record.  It sounds as fresh today as it did almost 30 years ago when I was in high school in Calgary.  I've quite a few of the English Concert's recordings from the 1980s when the period instrument movement was picking up steam.  They are all excellent - check out their recordings of the Bach Brandenburg Concerti and the Orchestra Suites.  I miss the old CBC with hosts like Bob Kerr and Max Ferguson.  There was also a show at 1830 called Listen to the Music.  Arts National is long gone and the new CBC Radio 2 is something I don't listen to anymore (classical is pretty much out except for one show in the daytime.

The chaos of the developed economies

On the radio yesterday, Kevin Page was on talking about the problems facing this country fiscally.  Unlike Paul Martin's time when the economy was strong, we are now in a period of weaker economic growth and he also mentioned the demographic crunch that is coming (aging population).  That was something that I've been harping about to people who think the STRP can keep paying best 5 years instead of career average.

Today, on the Current, they were talking about the austerity measures that are wreaking havoc in Europe.

Yesterday, on Globeinvestor, there was a piece from David Rosenberg about the importance of what Bernanke didn't say.

What Bernanke did say amounts to printing money and quantitative easing.

Why all this mess?  I think it has to do with the sense of entitlement people in developed nations have.  Just like the buy it now pay later generation individually, we can expand this to how nations behave.  We just can't cut that program - people feel they are entitled to it.

What is real anymore when it comes to money?

Formosa Calling reading at Lakeridge School this morning

I had the opportunity to do a reading from the Preface of Formosa Calling, by Allan J Shackleton, this morning at Lakeridge school.  As part of Valuing Diversity for Education Week this year, Lakeridge School invited parents to share about what was unique about their culture or family.  The only thing unique I could think of was that I created the Taiwan Library Online 13 years ago by putting Formosa Betrayed on the internet (then on the WUFI website http://www.formosa.org/ - now defunct).

I started out by showing the grade 2's where Taiwan was on the map and explained that my grandmother was Japanese (Taiwan was ruled by Japan before World War II) and that Samuel's great great grandfather on his mother's side was from Canton province.  I said, "When I was your age, and people asked if I was Chinese, Japanese or Korean - I said NO.  I am Taiwanese".   I told them that I was born 20 years after the crimes of 228 and that the law that said you could be arrested for no reason wasn't lifted until 20 years after I was born.  Thirty years after I was born, I read Formosa Betrayed and cried.  I told them I decided then to contact Mr and Mrs Lin (in California) to ask permission to put the book online.  I mentioned Mr Lin was a mainlander, but he cared enough to republish Formosa Betrayed even though the criminals were mainlander soldiers.  I mentioned that I then published 4 other books about Taiwan on the internet.  I read from the preface and said "as you can see, even back then, you had to be careful about who you named for fear of the army".  Then their teacher asked if there were any questions.  One boy asked how do you get to the library.  I told him he had to search Taiwan Library Online and it will get him right there.  I told the class, people today still don't understand about Taiwan (as back in 1948 when Shackleton wrote his words). 

So, it was a 12 minute event and then the grade 2's got ready for lunch.

This was a small way to tell the story.

Favorite Violin Concerto Recordings

Of course Jascha Heifetz' recordings would be up there for me, but here are some other favorites:

Bruch Violin Concerto 1/Scottish Fantasy:  Cho-liang Lin / CSO / Slatkin

Brahms Violin Concerto:  Nathan Milstein / VPO / Jochum (he plays his own cadenza)

Beethoven Violin Concerto:  Itzhak Perlman / Phil O / Giulini 

Beethoven Violin Concert:  Schneiderhan / BPO / Jochum

Mozart Violin Concerti: Artur Grumiaux / LSO / Davis

Sibelius and Nielsen Violin Concerti:  Cho-liang Lin / Salonen

Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn Violin Concerti:  Milstein / VPO / Abbado

Bach Violin Concerti:  La Petite Bande

Elgar Violin Concerto:  Nigel Kennedy / LPO / Handley

Other recordings I like:

Bruch Violin Concerto 1 / Mendelssohn Violin Concerto:  Uto Ughi / LSO / Prêtre

Brahms Violin Concerto:  Herman Krebbers / Concertgebouw / Haitink

Now, the Bruch G minor violin concerto is about as beautiful as anything ever written.  When I heard Ughi`s recording in high school (I bought that CD mail order from England), I was just in awe.  Wow!  My wife loves it too.

These flowers survived multiple -4°C freezes

Don't know what they are called, but these annual flowers we bought from Wilson's can survive -4°C freezeing temps.  It was a beautiful fall day today (high 17°C).  The marigolds are pretty hardy too.

 

 Above: This was taken on October 27, 2010 (still blooming!)

Below:  This was taken on October 30, 2010 (still blooming!)

Elisha likes Brahms 3rd Symphony & Samuel's Great Violin Lesson

The young Brahms

Yesterday, I decided I was feeling 'fat' and the blood sugar was up again, so I went down to do 30 minutes on the NordicTrak.  I played Brahms 3rd Symphony while I was skiing as it was one of his favorites.  The Brahms Violin Concerto and the 2 piano concerti are also his favorites.  He listens to Brahms 3rd in the van, so I let him listen to that while I was exercising and he was playing with cars.  He also likes Schumann's 4th Symphony and sleeps well to the CD of the Schumann 3rd and 4th Symphonies with Haitink and the Royal Concertegebouw Orchestra.  That's one orchestra I would really love to hear live.  He says he wants to go to the symphony again every time we drive near TCU Place.  This is a toddler who loves his classical music - especially some of Dad's favorite Romantic composers - Schumann and Brahms.  Unfortunately, he doesn't like Mozart - it's not loud and big enough for him.

Samuel had a great violin lesson yesterday. His teacher is very meticulous and he didn`t have a lesson last week.  His teacher said he has done as much in a month and a half  as some of his other students do in 1.5 years.  That`s due to his hard work as his mom makes him practise piano and violin every day.  His piano teacher is also very picky (more so than his first teacher).  He`s lucky to have two such great teachers to start out with.

Jan Lisiecki in Saskatoon 2010 October 15

Jan Lisiecki played a Chopin/Bach recital at 3rd Ave United Church today.  I only went to this sold out recital because an Aden Bowman colleague gave me a ticket.  He's quite talented for a 15 year old for sure.  It says in the programme he graduates from high school in January 2011 (before his 16th birthday).  I noticed for the more technical stuff (Etudes Op 25), he's good, but not at the level of a professional (eg Pollini).  He forgot to play Op 25 #11, so he played that after the break -  he's still a kid.  He ended with the Black Keys étude as an encore.  I wonder if he'll go study with someone who will bring him to the next level?  Pinchas Zukerman, Boris Brott and Howard Shelley are listed as his mentors.  It's a big world out there and once the novelty of youth wears off, sometimes these 'stars' lose their shine (eg Dimitris Sgouros).  He has academic interests as well, so it will be interesting to see if he goes to university and studies something to pay the bills or if he tries to work towards being a concert pianist.  Thomas Yu comes to mind as a talented pianist who, I suspect, can nurture his piano 'hobby' with his day job as a dentist.

NO macro recorder in Powerpoint 2010

Well, I was working on the Evan Hardy honour roll powerpoint.  It crashed on a line of code about inserting a new slide.  So, I tried to find record a macro in Powerpoint 2010.  No luck.  Tried the office help system. Nothing.  Google.  Found that according to this MSDN page, there is no macro recorder in Powerpoint 2010.  Well, this just blew away the main tool for VBA programmers!  I don't see how MS can say they'll keep supporting VBA and then omit the macro recorder!  What a load of crap.

I see they left the macro recorder in Word and Excel.  Why the heck would they remove it from Powerpoint 2010?

For Powerpoint 2007, the macro recorder is hidden.  Hit Alt-T M R (found the tip at this site).  Wonder if this will work for Powerpoint 2010?  IT DOESN'T!

Thanksgiving 2010

We had a nice turkey for lunch with stuffing and gravy.  Elisha made a mess of some corn too.  In the evening, I put on the Valerie Tryon CD of Chopin Scherzi and Ballades.  I had the luck to find it in the bargain bin at L'Atelier Grigorian in Oakville the summer of 2009. I also bought another CBC CD of Kuerti playing solo Schumann works too.  A beautfiul weekend has come to an end.  The omega block that has given us such nice weather for two weeks is weakening.

2010 October 9

Today is my grandmother Yoneko's 95th birthday.  Happy Birthday Grandma.

We went to the Saskatoon Symphony's opening concert for the season tonight.  The concert opened with Michael Swan's own composition.  Then they played Brahms' D minor piano concerto with Angela Cheng as soloist.  I counted 54 musicians in all, so it was more like a chamber orchestra.  The Bechstein grand projected very well.  I didn't notice very much difference as far as balance between piano and orchrestra - usually recordings have the piano balanced quite forward.  However, since there were very few violins (18 in all), I think that's why it sounded like the piano was more dominant than when I remembered from the only other live performance I've been to from my high school days.  Ivan Moravec played it with the Calgary Philharmonic (that was back in 1985 or so).  I have at least 15 different CDs of this concerto which I fell in love with in grade 10 when my Decca CD of Ashkenazy with Haitink and the Concertegebouw Orchestra arrived from Templar Records in London.  I've since come to prefer Fleisher, Pollini and Freire's recordings of this work.  I tend to prefer faster tempos for this work and Cheng is in that camp too.  Elisha was quite drawn to everything except the slow movement.  Samuel wasn't as interested, but still listened to the entire concert. The horns weren't in good shape for the concerto today.  Angela Cheng was very capable in this very difficult piano concerto.  The concert closed with Dvorak's 6th symphony.  As conductor Victor Sawa noted, it was all very listenable music.

I've not been to a SSO concert since Angela Hewitt came to play the Schumann Piano Concerto.  I think a colleague gave me the ticket to that one (over 10 years ago).  Live music can be expensive, but I remember Perlman's Brahms Violin Concerto with the TSO (1998), Sarah Chang playing a Paganini Concerto with the TSO when I was a student and Maria João Pires playing the Mozart Jeunehomme concerto with the TSO when I was a UofT student.  The same day student tickets back then (mid 1980s) were only $10.  It was sad I didn't go to more concerts than the two I went to.  Someday, I hope I can hear the Berliner Philharmoniker with a favorite soloist.

What's Wrong With Our Schools (book)

I was lent a copy of What's Wrong With Our Schools.  The lead author (Michael C. Zwaagstra) was in the clip from CBC News on 2010 September 27.  It is quite a different read from the AFL direction I've been reading.  Seems to advocate common sense.  I can't jettison all AFL ideas because of Dan Pink's revelations in Drive.  That's why there was such a kerfuffle this past week.  It was good that the Southwest School Division Director of Education pointed out that AFL ideas are central to the new provincial curriculum. That should give Mr Wall and his Department of Education (not Learning anymore) something to think about!  However, it's good to read the other side too.  Common sense doesn't always point to the truth (as Drive shows).  This book is also available from Amazon.ca.

AFL on CBC Radio this morning

AFL in Saskatoon Public Schools was featured on a CBC Radio story this morning. The comments are quite interesting too and the poll on the Morning Edition homepage is overwhelmingly against AFL. They also mentioned the Globe and Mail article I found in the staff room a few weeks ago!

After reading Mindset (Carol Dweck), The Talent Code (Daniel Coyne) and Drive (Dan Pink), the poll results don't surprise me. Science says one thing (intrinsic motivation works, carrots and sticks don't), but business and society in general has done what Pink calls Motivation 2.0 (carrots and sticks). It's going to be a tough sell I think.

2-4-D or not 2-4-D?

Sprayed 2-4-D broad leaf herbicide on my lawn yesterday.  The stuff really stinks and I wasn't exactly feeling too great after taking over an hour to spray the lawn.  According to the industry, this stuff is really safe and has been researched as such.  Here is the other side of the story.  Cosmetic herbicides are of course banned in a lot of Canada (Ontario and Québec for instance).  I heard Weed and Feed isn't going to be sold in Saskatoon anymore too.  I know the Turf Green Weed and Feed sold by Co-op in the past was really effective at controlling broad leaf weeds.  It's more convenient than spraying 2-4-D mix like I did yesterday.

Now, it would be nice if I could find something like this balanced reporting about the pros and cons of CFL bulbs.   This site also has some good information about CFLs and their dangers.

Playing DVDs in Ubuntu is a pain

I've set up playing DVDs in Ubuntu 9.10 before.  Today, trying to install with 10.04 LTS and it was a pain.  I finally found the page I looked at before about playing restricted formats.  Right now, I managed to install VLC (after running two command lines), but it still won't play in Movie Player.  So, I'm using the instructions on this page about restricted formats.  I had installed the packages for playing DVDs, but it still wouldn't work, so I got VLC.

Julia Fischer confirms that practice makes perfect

Yesterday, I got the Julia Fischer DVD I ordered from Amazon.ca in which she plays the Saint-Saen's 3rd Violin Concerto and the Grieg Piano Concerto.  Elisha really liked watching both performances, but he likes the Grieg Piano Concerto more.  Now, in the interview with Fischer, she said that she decided in the spring or summer of 2006 to prepare for the concert (which occurred on 2008 January 1).  She also mentioned how she decided as a child that she wanted to be a musician.  So, this is confirmation of the ideas mentioned in the Talent Code (talent is developed from deep practice - practicing at the edge of one's ability) and Drive (intrinsic motivation).  Another musician who could play piano and violin was Clara Haskil.  From the stories of her I've read, it would seem she's actually one of those once or twice in a century 'natural talents'.

2010 September 12

Well, the day started with sad news that Great Uncle #4 has passed on.  He was the first son of my great grandfather's 2nd wife (on my dad's side).  My great aunt from Edmonton had left for Taiwan this past week.

I heard Michael Swan play Bach's Air from Orchestral Suite 3 in church this morning.  This is of course very famous and sublime.  I guess given my Great Uncle's passing, it was kind of appropriate.

On a happier note, we went to Shaw Centre again. It was quite crowded today and we noticed that the diving section was open.  Samuel took quite a bit of coaxing, but he eventually tried out the 1 m springboard.  After about 30 tries on the 1 m board, he tried the 3 m board.  Again, it took quite a bit of coaxing.  There was a fearless little girl in a life jacket jumping off the 3 m springboard.  There was also a slightly older little girl jumping off the 5 m platform.  I saw a few kids jump off the 7.5 m platform, but nobody attempted the 10 m platform.  No pictures though - didn't bring the camera.  The pool is 5 m deep, so he wasn't very confident at first.

I give up on the Phenom II 940

Well, I got this huge Coolermaster fan today from Amazon.ca.  However, it was way too much of a pain to install (I would have had to take my motherboard out), so I decided to give up on the troublesome AMD Phenom II 940 Black Edition CPU I bought.  I took it out and packed away the new fan and put in the AMD Phenom 9650 I had also bought.  Hopefully, I can sell the 940.  What a difference 95W and 125 W CPUs are!

Next, I popped the Radeon HD4350 PCI Express 2.0 Video card back into the system.  The mainboard has ATI HD4200 onboard.  It was a bugger to configure dual display with two display adaptors!  You have to make sure the BIOS is set to surround view.  Also, when I attached my LCD TV, my DVI connexion to the LCD monitor disappeared (BIOS switched to initialising the TV (PCI-E card) first.

I'm kind of ticked.  This was a huge waste of time and $$$.

The Phenom 9650 is running cool with core temps of 20°C with light load.  The Phenom II 940 would be at 45-55°C core temp.

Anne Davies - Ignite 2010 Aden Bowman Collegiate

My notes from the Anne Davies Presentation 2010 August 23-24

ALL Students - need to differentiate assessment (HOW?)

Really engaged students in assessment process - leads to more meaningful discussions @ report card time

The last word strategy: select a sentence or phrase

-group of 5: read your passage, others listen then make connections, take turn making connexions while reader is quiet

Give one get one: strategy for quick exchange (eg short oral presentations)

Hawaii Kindergarten

-the plans the teacher had already done resulted in her just being a intro and debrief guide. The student did most of the work! The student showed independence and competence. How long did this take?

Teacher had a guided learning centre - scaffolding

Teacher helped to get the student to express their interests and learning targets

\

Teacher preparing HS students for PT conference Lynne Sueoka in Hawaii

-pathways to help students link to relevancy

-quarters

-portfolio is students way of showing what they learned

-YOW to describe standards and how their evidence supports the standards

-asks (checks progress) if they know how to match evidence to standard

-refers back to the rubric

-when doing the role play, she could just randomly pick a kid to get up and he did it with little resistance

-sounds like these porfolios were used instead of a test

-student liked that the audience is not just the teacher (since they used digital porfolio) - parents, peers etc are also in the audience

-this school uses digital portfolio over the 4 years of high school so that it's a historical record - the teacher noted that the students are more selective of what they document as they get older

Grade 6 students preparing for @home student conference March (rubric was from page 101 of her book)

-student describing portfolio

-if this stuff is just sent home, then the parent could organise the portolio for the student

-student was using the standards lingo, rubrics, goals.

-How did you know you did quality work? I did my best, I met the criteria, I followed feedback

-What needed to occur in order for students to be partners in the assessment process?

-student needed to learn the lingo and process

-student needed to know why they were making the porfolio

-teacher needed to organise the room so that these big portfolio binders could be stored

-noticed the other students were largely engaged in their work

Can you (LR) now see what was missing in your plans the last two years?

-portfolios

-more explicit teaching about WHY we do what we do

-more explicit teaching about how to match indicators to evidence

-need to get students to be more active in assessment (need to know more of the HOW)

I like how Anne emphasised that you have to teach to the learning outcomes (and indicators). I know this is not the case in the division with all staff - it's all over the place. Mentioned how one district had a teacher who told a parent the reason why her kid did poorly was because of her crummy attitude and the parent looked up the outcomes on the NET and complained to a superintendent.

Criteria - definition of quality; what is quality in terms of this product and process. Eg how to work as a small group, show what you know ...

Rubric -

Poor: Rubristar accuracy, frequency, support Has lots of errors, doesn't point them to success

Does your rubric provide specific next steps (needs to add periods rather than no punctuation)

Criteria with samples is the highest level of your rubric

Don't use numbers in your rubric (notice the examples in her book)

Developmental continuum

starts at birth and continues to death

we excerpt the section that makes sense for our learners

-this is part of differentiating assessment because a Gr 2-3 increase is celebrated as well as a grade 9-10 increase (in the same class)

When you start to see disengagement, find out why?

-as soon as marks show up, disengagement sets in

5 year old and developmental continuum

-student identified the level she was at by referring to specific details (space in front of words, neatness of letters, amount of writing)

HS clip Democratic AP English Scoring AP essays (developmental continuum)

-they (like the 5 year old) are very specific in the reasons for why the essay was ranked the way it was (metaphor, off topic etc)

Find the baseline from the start (before/after portfolio)

Ensuring status for every single student!

-build an expert sheet (flesh out what the student is good at)

-Alberta Chem teacher who does 3 terms of just comments and last term of marking everything (gets highest Diploma exam scores for last 12 years)

Google subject area exemplars and you'll get examples

-BC Gov't website has samples performance standards (downloadable)
http://www.gov.bc.ca/bced/ (search exemplar)
-New Zealand www.tki.org.nz (assessment area, examplars)

Making mistakes on purpose is actually a great skill

Visual models to let students see how it's done (role play, have one student read, other checklist)

Kindergarten Edmonton Catholic

-notice that they always go back and revisit criteria and practice it

-rubric right on/ not yet

Manitoba (40 minutes in Sept, 8 minutes in May) Elementary School Gr 5?

This is what I have to do, this is why I have to do it, This is how I have to do it

Students

self/peer/student feedback

set goals

select evidence

communicate their learning

Chapter 6

Last word strategy

Vicki mentions consistent and logical (very true) This planning is not easy

What product or process fits with co-constructing criteria? Is there time to do this for so many things

-I've used it for labs in my class, for the VSF, they were fixed criteria, but I made the weightings (should I let them decide the weightings?)

Grade 12 Vectors Manitoba

-Beginning of class students said good to go

-did some examples on whiteboards and found out it wasn't good to go

-focussed on explaining criteria and how to meet critieria

How can you make it as simple as possible.

The little books we looked at: free blackline masters

http://connect2learning.com/cp/

Anne Davies.com

http://annedavies.com/assessment_for_learning_ar.html

http://annedavies.com/assessment_for_learning_stories.html

Starting points

-one class, one group of students, one unit?

-think first of co-constructing criteria

-do it for only one process (eg group work, cleanup time)

-videotape classroom entry and then showed this to them (grade 9) - they were shocked (don't give them cues, let them do silent processing)

-non-judgemental feedback is what works

-freeze, lets go back and look at the criteria for ... (when things are about to go bad)

Conferencing & Reporting (purple book page 41-42-43) and page 101

-summarised curr into 5 statements

The evidence doesn't have to be marked or graded, it has to be present (you have to have a portfolio)

Write down and example (not just check off a box) Be as specific as possible.

Parents:

Students e-mail parents

Students blogging and two questions for parents

Students show parents evidence of learning

Students share learning destination

All learners need to be able to articulate what they are to learn (before they can be ready to learn)

Give students an opportunity to give others a chance to see their work (not just parents)

Building culture

-involve students

-start from beginning

-use the lingo

-spend a lot a time

-have them use their language

How to Efficiently Create Quality Assessment

-plan

-significant role for students

-Check reliability and quality

2nd last activity, write a letter to yourself

Dear _____: To get better at _________, I plan to

1

2

One way I'll know its working is ....

Reflections

Reflect on your learning journey and the ideas that have been shared. What lessons do you want to carry forward into your work in this area? Record your thougts. Incorporate these ideas into your plans.

REFLECTION
After going home and browsing some stuff on AnneDavies.com, I can only conclude that I've been a surface adopter of AFL (I'm the 8 out of 10 teachers in this study who tried AFL and it didn't work). I had read about this in a different article early on in my AFL journey. I've tried some of the O'Connor stuff and co-constructing criteria, but what's missing is the COMPREHENSIVE plan. So, the task now is to be a full adopter and I think these 2 days have helped, but there's lots to do and I'll start with this handout from her site (School Year Plan which was also handed out at the workshop).

Problem with Windows 7 and Esata resolved

In a previous post, I noted that I had my SATA drive controller set as native IDE instead of AHCI. That's the reason why my E-SATA drive wasn't recognised (see yet another post) until I went into device manager and scanned for new hardware. Now that I've set my mainboard SATA controller to AHCI mode, the E-sata drive is seen automatically and it can be ejected (like a USB drive).

Perhaps, this mainboard BIOS setting was at the root of all my previously documented Windows 7 problems? So far, this reinstallation hasn't encountered any problems.

On another note, I forgot again that if a hard drive was formatted with Ubuntu Linux, you have to do an fdisk/mbr (pre XP) or fixmbr (XP) to make the drive usable for a fresh Windows installation.

Windows 7 Installing Network Printer

I have a couple of parallel laser printers connected to a 3 port HP Print Server. HP Network Printer Install version 8 didn't work for me. I had to go and get the version 7 file from my Vista Computer (luckily still had it) and installed that - it worked. Then I forgot that Win7 doesn't ship with a comprehensive set of printer drivers, so I had to install a local printer as HP Laserjet 6L (download required) and then the driver would be available for install as a network printer - again - hardly a seamless procedure for installing a network printer. This is yet another example of what makes Mac fans cheer so loudly.

I give up, reinstall Windows 7

I give up on my Phenom 9850 / Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H Windows 7 Pro computer. It kept on crashing after I rearranged the RAM. So, now I have two matched pairs of 1 Gig DDR2 in there (1 set of Nanya and 1 set of Elpida Elixir) for 4 Gig total. It was crashing with some Platinum (GB Micro) 2 gig sticks (not of the same manufacturer).

As I was poking through the BIOS, I noticed my hard drives were not in AHCI (native SATA) mode and that hardware virtualisation wasn't turned on. So, before I reinstalled, I backed up my hard drives to a Fantom Esata 1 terabyte HD. This was much faster than using USB 2.0 (what would have taken hours on USB 2.0 took about 20 minutes with Esata). The Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H mainboard has Esata built in, so this was one reason I chose that board. These SATA and hardware virtualisation settings must be set BEFORE installing Windows (as I discovered when my Win XP Virtual Machine didn't work when I turned on hardware virtualisation in the BIOS with my previous crashing setup). So, with these BIOS settings changed, I'm hoping to finally have a stable Windows 7 Pro 64-bit system.

Vista Ultimate 32-bit install with Vista Home Premium Upgrade Disk

Well, finally got around to installing the used OEM Vista Ultimate 32-bit I bought on Kijiji in June 2010. Problems galore! Using the DVD that came in the case didn't work. It always hung at the last step. I also had the problem of the system being way too hot in a mini-tower case. So, after 3 tries with that Vista Ultimate DVD, I transferred the mainboard and HD to a bigger case with 4 extra fans. Tried to get Ubuntu 10.04 to install and it failed. So, I remembered I had a 32-bit Vista Home Premium Ugrade disk. I installed Vista Ultimate from that disk (which has SP1) without issue! What you do is DON'T TYPE IN THE PRODUCT KEY and choose Vista Ultimate as the edition you bought. It worked! Then the activation problem - internet activation said the product key was already activated. So, I had to do phone activation. First time, I got cut off, so I phoned again and finally got to a live person and he activated Vista Ultimate over the phone for me. Now, I'm doing SP2 and getting it all updated. BTW, the computer is a Gigabyte AM2+ (AM3) mainboard with 4 gig and a Phenom II 940 processor.

Now, I didn't get this idea by myself, it's based on this article I recalled from a few months ago.

The Talent Code and Mindset

I've been reading the Talent Code (a condensation of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance). One thought that came instantly to mind is how do the Aden Bowman Senior Football coaches ignite the players of a small school to 3 straight city championships and two provincial championships in 3 years?

Talent Code starts with deep practice which creates the broadband networks that result in expertise. Myelin (page 44-45) is the stuff which wraps around nerve fibres (page 31, 38) and Coyle compares it to creating a broadband neural network. What is deep practice? Rule 1 (page 79) is to chunk up the task. Chunking is about taking it one step at a time and slowing down practice so that you can attend to errors and correct them. Rule 2 is repeat it - attentive repetition is a must. As Horowitz said (page 88) skip 1 day practice, he notices, skip 2 days practice, his wife notices, skip 3 days practice the world knows it. Rule 3 is learn to feel it. He sums it up as (page 92): 1. Pick a target, 2. Reach for it, 3. Evaluate the gap between step 1 and step 2, 4. Return to step 1. In other words, when one is deep practicing, you are operating at the edges of your current ability and this helps to build expertise (and myelin).

The second part of the book is about ignition (motivation). On page 104 there is an interesting graph showing that a student who is committed can practice less and achieve more that an uncommitted student who practices more. On page 107 he quotes an interesting piece from Tom Sawyer (Tom 'conning' his friend to paint the fence). On page 135-137 he refers to Carol Dweck's Mindset work. Students who were praised for effort rather than achievement eventually achieved more because they adopted a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindest.

Now, this stuff all makes very good sense. There are really very few natural born talents. The 'talented' are not born that way. Instead, they have unconsciously developed a way to attain expertise. The physiological manifestation of this expertise is building myelin (much like athletes building muscle through exercise). The unconscious mind can process 11 million pieces of info/sec whereas the conscious mind can only process 40 pieces of info/sec (page 112).

The next part is about KIPP, a college prep school programme. One common thread seems to be a built-in desire to achieve as the students are largely from have-not families (sort of like the rundown Russian tennis school). The standard motto is "Work hard and be nice". The primal cues KIPP students follow (page 149) mirrors the sporting examples he's already used. Page 150, self-discipline is twice as accurate as IQ in predictng a student's GPA - more evidence that one is not born with talent. Page 150 (Mindset stuff) - the only way to reach them is to change the way they see themselves.

The last chapter - Epilogue is a must read. He refers to Dweck's work again and summarises most of what he's talked about. He also ends with a personal experience coaching his previously hapless Little League team. Although they did not win the tournament, they did improve vastly over their previous outings. He also noted that Toyota's culture of continuous self-improvement was key to their rise. This is what I thought was needed in our CDMs last year - however, there is not a true learning community where people feel comfortable having a real discussion rather than the typical show and tell.

Wooden's quick and precise comments is similar to what Dylan Wiliam indicated about feedback in a video Garry Davis referred EHCI staff to - feedback should be given every 30 seconds. Now, that would seem hard to do in a class of 35 like I had last year. I think the only way to get this kind of 'just in time' feedback is to develop a true learning community where students use peer and self assessment to make progress.

More to come ...

Piano lid finally installed

The piano lid that was lying around the living since April was finally installed by John's Furniture Repair today. He was recommended by both Bruce Gibson and Yamaha Piano Centre. Still not happy with the whole process as Willem van Suijdam doesn't give his customers any service. NEVER BUY A PIANO FROM THE MUSIC GROUP in Burlington, Ontario. Mason and Hamlin, on the other hand is an honorable company that manufactures quality instruments. Do not confuse the head office with Mason and Hamlin Canada which is largely the same thing as Willem's good for nothing outfit.

Suzuki Summer String Experience was Great

Our kids attended the Saskatoon Suzuki Strings Summer Experience and it was great. We found out about this summer camp from a flyer sent home from Lakeridge School and signed up our kids. They had a pretty good time and will be signing up for the program this coming fall. It's pretty amazing when they can arrange something for a 3 year old (it was 'taxing' for our guy, but it worked for the most part). I highly recommend this summer camp even if you don't plan on taking violin lessons. They even played tennis with Philip Kashap for one of their electives. We have asked him to give our kids private lessons this coming year.

Windows 7 BSOD strikes again

Surfing with Firefox (3 tabs) and while reading about the VBRun site on VisualBasic.about.com, the computer rebooted (blackscreen). On reboot, it started up, but as my desktop was showing up, it blue screened and showed an error IRQ not less than. Rebooted and it hung at the BIOS startup screen. There were some strange pixels showing up. Had to press the reset button to reboot. It hangs as the OpenOffice.org registration popup came up (I couldn't click on anything on the screen - it was hung up). Pressed reboot again and now I'm doing this blog post.

THIS IS CRAP.

As I was searching for info on my problem (in Firefox), the computer rebooted (black screen) again. Upon successful reboot, I did a system restore back to June 18 (before the June 24 issues). Noticed that there were more updates on July 1 and 2nd as well. When the system restore rebooted the computer, I got a black screen, but it wasn't hung up as I could move the mouse around. I turned on my TV to check if it was also a black screen and it was. So, I control-Alt-DEL into task manager and finally my desktop magically appears after a while and the system restore says it was successful (to June 18). The OpenOffice.org registration popup came up again, but I could click on it.

So far, with the restore back to June 18, there have been no problems and I could even burn a DVD with PowerProducer 3 (USB 2.0 to IDE DVD burner). I've turned off automatic updates. Definitely a stupid MS Update issue that's plagued my computer for the past 10 days.

Here are some links that may be associated with this problem

Yahoo search irq not less than bsod

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/237132-44-irql-equal-bsod

More computer woes

Got a couple of used Gigabyte GA-M62P-S3 mainboards with AM2 CPUs for cheap this week. These are high end socket AM2 boards that can take AM2+ and even AM3 CPUs (with the beta BIOS). They were also made in Taiwan (unlike the recent new Gigabyte AM2+/AM3 boards I just bought which were made in China. I had preferred Gigabyte because 3 years ago when I was in Taiwan, they were still making boards in Taiwan, not China. Sad, they've fallen into the China fever of other Taiwanese companies.

I took out the Asus AM2+ mainboard I had running Vista Home Premium and swapped in the Gigabyte. Swapped the Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition CPU from the Asus and put it into the Gigabyte and took the Athlon 3500+ from the Gigabyte and put it into the Asus. Then I put the Asus board into the compact mini tower that Tom Shabbits gave me a few years ago. Got the Asus board running Ubuntu Linux 10.04 relatively easily.

Next, tried to get the already installed Vista running on the Gigabyte board. Kept on crashing. So, I booted into safe mode and let the drivers install that way. It was installed and I even could run internet with Safe Mode (with networking). However, no matter what, it wouldn't boot into Vista regular mode. So, unplugged the 500 Gig drive that had Vista installed and put in a brand new WD 1000 Gig. Tried to install Vista. Hung. Checked the size of the drive in the BIOS and it showed up as only 33 Mbyte! Had to do a BIOS update. So, fired up the basement computer and downloaded the latest stable BIOS and put it on a flash drive. Then flashed the BIOS on the Gigabyte board and now it says the drive is 1000 Gbyte. Tried to install Vista again. Hung again. Unplugged the PS/2 mouse and plugged in a USB mouse. Tried to install Vista again. Got the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD - now that I think of it, what an appropriate acronym - an overdose of BS!). So, now I'm firing up Memtest 86+ to see if there is anything wrong with the 2 Gig stick of DDR2 667 MHz I have in the computer. I think I'll plug in a USB keyboard next time too.

Now I know why people don't like Windows. However, I won't buy Mac for various reaons ($$ being a big one). It's a lot easier to get Mac running because it's a know quantity (only one hardware vendor). It's quite amazing how Linux (Ubuntu say) can boot from a CD and run on a great variety of computers. Hopefully, I won't be wasting too much time tonight ....

Still have the problems with Windows 7 Pro being unstable on my "main computer" (Phenom 9850 with 6 gig memory). ARGH!

Here's a link I just found of others who had problems with the 2010 June 24 updates. Not much for solution though, but looks like it's a MS stupdity problem. Here's another post related to QuickBooks that identifies two updates that are causing the problem (I'm guessing)! The problem is from 2 MS updates released on 6/22,KB977354 andKB976576.

Windows 7 Blue Screen of Death

After the June 24th Windows 7 updates, I now have an unstable crashing computer. I am not amused. This morning, I got my first BSOD. I was copying from the Esata HD to the USB 2.0 DVD-RW at home when the BSOD came up. Rebooted and this time, my computer rebooted without warning. It even did this while I was doing an option Windows 7 update (to recognise SDHC cards bigger than 32 gig). This is CRAP. I didn't even get this kind of garbage with Windows Vista. I might have to go back to XP or Vista for my day-to-day computer. This does not happen with Ubuntu from my limited experience. I will not go to Mac because I like using the keyboard and Macs command a premium price.

More 'fun' with Windows 7

I don't believe those stupid Windows 7 commercials one bit. Today, I had trouble with HDMI audio on my ATI Radeon HD4350. The main display is an LCD monitor connected to the Gigabyte mainboard Radeon 4200 via DVI. My LCD TV is connected to the Radeon HD4350 PCI Express 2.0 video card. I wasn't getting any audio via HDMI on the TV and couldn't figure it out (it always was showing not plugged in). Finally, I shut down and did a cold boot. The HDMI was finally 'connected'. Sure is stupid that Windows 7 can't autodetect the connection - you have to reboot before it will see the HDMI audio connection! Of course, I still have to manually select the ATI Radeon HDMI as my default audio output. Kind of dumb I can't tell which one it is (the onboard 4200 or the PCI Express 4350).

Allergy season coming in Saskatoon!

Well, the great thing about the rain has been that I've not had watery, itchy eyes. I got my first allergic reactions today. It's going to rain tomorrow, so that'll be good.

DARN ALL THESE AUTO-IMMUNE PROBLEMS!

Géza Anda died on 1976 June 13

One of my favorite pianists, Géza Anda, died 34 years ago. I got to know his name from the complete 12 LP set of Mozart's Piano Concerti I bought at Fidelio Records in Calgary when I was in high school. That set is still somewhere in the basement in Oakville. It's available on CD now, but I've not bought it because I already have Barenboim's set with the BPO and Ashkenazy's set with the Philharmonia. It's interesting to note that Anda composed some tasteful candenza's for the Mozart piano concerti for which Mozart did not leave a written cadenza. The first recording I ever heard of KV 467 was Anda's later Eurodisc recording with the Wiener Symphoniker which was made shortly before his death. That recording was in my Great Men of Music Mozart box (Time-Life Records). I bought the 5 CD DG set Géza Anda, Troubadour of the Piano from DG Webshop as an MP3 download because I couldn't get it from Amazon.ca. It was from that set that I finally heard the glories of his Brahms B-flat concerto (earlier recording with his countryman, Ferenc Friscay) and the Schumann that I love. There's also his intriguing recording of Schubert's D960 and some beautiful Chopin.

Robert Schumann was born 200 years ago today

Schumann is one of my favorite composers. It's been 200 years since his birth in Zwickau, Germany. I was first attracted to Schumann by the Fantasy, Op 17. I remember when I lived in Oakville, on CJRT, Paul Robinson and Bruce Surtees mentioned how it ends with a question. The 3rd movement of the Fantasy is some of the most beautiful piano music ever composed. The recording I first discovered this masterpiece from was Murray Perahia's. Since then, I've grown to admire the recordings by Géza Anda and Maurizio Pollini. The Symphonic Etudes (Op 13) recording by Pollini made such an impression upon me I declared Schumann along with Mozart and Brahms as the music closest to my heart. I gave my sister the Pollini CD which I bought mail order from Templar Records in London (when I was in grade 10) and she just loves it too. I'm waiting for my DG Schumann anniversary box to arrive. I'm listening to Géza Anda's recordings of these two favorites in my car this past week. I LOVE SCHUMANN'S PIANO MUSIC :)

Next anniversary is 1833 - the 200 year celebration of Johannes Brahms' birth. I hope to be around for that one.