George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra

Many years ago, I bought a 2 LP album of George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra in Mozart's Symphonies 35, 39, 40 and 41 from Fidelio Records in Calgary.  It was released at the time of Szell's death in 1970. I read with great admiration the story of Szell and how he built the Cleveland Orchestra into a first class ensemble.  The finale of the Jupiter Symphony blew me away - I had never heard any version that was better than this!  I only wish Szell would have taken some of the repeats.  I wish the recording quality could have been better.  I think the British are right and the Decca and EMI engineers outclassed the RCA and CBS engineers.

Now, I had also bought the LP of Leon Fleisher playing the Beethoven 4th and Mozart 25th piano concerti.  These are by far my favorite recordings of these two piano concerti.  The speed at which Fleisher takes the last movement of KV 503 is amazing, but never slick and just for show.  Stunning virtuosity indeed, but at the service of the music.  I gave that LP to my cousin when she visited us in Oakville from Chicago.  I also gave her my 4 LP Art of Dinu Lipatti.

Szell also made some great recordings with Rudolf Serkin.  I love the Mozart, but also the Brahms.  Again, the poor recording quality is a drawback.  I also have the Brahms with Fleisher as well.  Tonight, I was listening to Mozart's Exsultate Jubilate with Judith Raskin.  Glorious.

What can I say?  George Szell built a great orchestra that was second to none.  I'm glad that I've had the pleasure of enjoying the fruits of their labours.  Especially their collaboration with Leon Fleisher at his peak.

An Example of Xibo Open Source Digital Signage

This video shows an example of a Xibo Open Source Digital Signage layout in action.

Have Yahoo weather RSS as a roll

Have Student Notices (word converted to text, then pasted into text region) as a roll (currently, we will use an RSS feed instead for remote update of the announcements)

Have photos in an image region.  We will use Powerpoint to show the photos since it is easier to import a folder of photos to create a slideshow in Powerpoint.

Have a digital clock as a webpage (corner of webpage) -  used the website with GMT time since the NTP timer servers are blocked by the school division.

Drum Machine Freeware to Turn Intec Wii Drum Set into Windows Drums

I bought one of these for $20 today.  It didn't work with the Wii Disney Ultimate Band Game. So, I was wondering if it would work on a Windows 7 PC.  After some Googling, I found Drum Machine.  It lets you make drum set sounds, but you can't follow some music like the Rock Band game.  It's still pretty good as now we have an el cheapo drum set.  I had to install DirectX 9.0c before it would work though.

Mozart was born 255 years ago today

Yesterday night, I felt the urge to listen to the Prague Symphony, KV 504.  I chose Karl Böhm's recording with the Vienna Philharmonic. I also have Böhm's complete set of Mozart symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic - a friend who worked at HMV in Edmonton got it for me in the early 1990s at employee pricing. The first movement of that symphony has always been a favorite of mine.  I really like Benjamin Britten's recording of it, but I only have that on a London LP.  Next, I listened to Rafael Kubelik's recording of the Jupiter Symphony, KV 551.  I only listened to the triumphant last movement - the epitome of the classical symphony.  Today is Mozart's birthday.  He is still one of my 3 favorite composers along with Brahms and Schumann.

 Now this recording was released shortly after Sir Clifford Curzon's death in 1982.  The performance was also conducted by Benjamin Britten.  It is yet another gem that I treasure.  I should listen to it today.

Gold is sliding, but 2011 January 26 was an up day

The red line shows the weird trading day for gold on January 26.  It looked like it was going to take a nosedive similar to the previous day (blue) when the price hit a 5 month low.  Because of that, I unloaded Kinross for a loss in my RRSP and also dumped my 10K of Avion for a small profit to offset that loss.  I also unloaded Avion outside of my RRSP for a $100 capital gain (it could have been $2000 profit 3 weeks ago).  Anyways, as the gold price started to recover, I got back into Avion at $1.55 in both accounts.  Today, it is trending down again despite Japan's debt rating being cut by Standards and Poors!  Don't think about what could of been, just try to build, however small the gains.  Minimise losses and trade another day!

Heifetz in Performance & Uto Ughi Plays Bruch G minor Concerto

I was playing this DVD while exercising tonight.  Elisha was very excited and went upstairs to get his 1/32 St Antonio Violin.  It was a performance of the Bruch Scottish Fantasy with L'Orchestre National de France.  I recall seeing the end of this video when the news was reporting Heifetz' death in 1987.  There was no conductor for this performance.  I've always thought Heifetz has no peer as far as violinists go.  It's amazing how many great Jewish violinists from Russia were born from his era (Elman, Milstein, Oistrakh).  Alas, Elisha lost interest after about 11 minutes.  I love Bruch's G minor violin concerto and his Scottish Fantasy.  I think his G minor violin concerto is the most beautiful of all violin concerti.  Truly romantic music at its best.

So, I thought I would listen to the first recording I ever bought of the Bruch G minor - the one by Uto Ughi.  The original CD I ordered from England when I was in high school had the Mendelssohn and Bruch G minor coupled together.  I always found that CD very satisfying.  Now when I was in San Francisco for the AGU meeting in December 1993, I bought that Uto Ughi recording again, but coupled with the Brahms Violin Concerto (my two favorite violin concerti on the same CD).  I recall I also bought Kyung Wha-chung's EMI recording of it coupled with the Beethoven Violin Concerto.  Uto Ughi's recordings are hard to come by now.  I'm glad I have his recording of the Beethoven violin concerto too.

When a bull is really a bear

Came across David Rosenberg's latest in Globeinvestor today.  He says much the same as what Eric Sprott said in this article.  Rosenberg calls 2003-07 a bear rally (built upon the housing bubble) which of course culminated in the big crash of 2008.  The upswing starting in 2009 to now is another bear rally, this time built upon public sector stimulus.  Now, I don't know if Rosenberg's as rich as Sprott, but I tend to believe these two guys.  There's money to be made in 'bear market rallies'.  Found this gem from a twitter search today - Eric Sprott was quite adamant that manipulation of gold and silver prices by major governments have prevented even greater returns on these two precious metals.  Now, this piece by Gordon Pape reaffirms the strength in gold, but he thinks the Dow will outperform the TSX this year.  I guess if you invest in a good Dow stock now, you can make a tidy gain if the Canadian $ drops.  But, I've been burned on the currency side with US stocks in the past, so I'm not going there.

Xibo - Open Source Digital Signage

I managed to setup Xibo today.  I had trouble setting up the Xibo server on a Ubuntu 10.10 workstation yesterday. So, today, I tried to setup the server on a Pentium 4 2.66 GHz running Windows XP Pro.  Had to install Apache and MySQL server first.  It took about half an hour to setup the server properly.  Next, I installed the client on a Windows 7 Pro computer.  Had to setup a user and permissions properly, but eventually got it to scroll an RSS feed and display 2 pictures (alternating at 1 second intervals).  The only other alternative free digital signage solution is Concerto from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  Concerto is a pure Linux solution though - server and client must be on a *nix machine. The installation instructions were much sketchier for Concerto than Xibo, consequently, I chose Xibo.  Now, Xibo might not have as many features as a commercial solution such as Harris Infocaster, but it works and it is much less buggy.  Yet another great Open Source Solution!

What strategy now?

Well, pretty bad week for gold. European sovereign debt crisis eased when some countries made successful bond sales.  I think this is just a stall tactic as the poor fundamentals remain on that front. I sold ATH for a modest profit in my cash account and switched it into K.  However, K tanked a bit this week as the price of gold plummetted.  I was thinking I should move my cash account into a TFSA account as I have almost $15,000 contribution room as of 2011.  I still have to make up my capital losses from before, so it doesn't really make much of a difference right now (just needing to keep track of losses and gains for tax claims).  Is my need to be an active trader clouding my strategy? I have to make at least 30 trades/quarter to get the $9.95 trades.  Only good news is I'm still in positive territory on the strength of AVR (despite it's downward move).

Gold Price Chart

Copper is a hot commodity now.  TKO made a huge upswing this week which I missed again!  There was quite a trading range yesterday too ($5.62-$5.84).  Their niobium property has more reserves than previously thought and it took off this week.  If the Prosperity gold-copper mine ever gets on track (after being rejected by the Feds in November), then TKO will really rocket.

Heiftez The Complete Album Collection 103 CDs + DVD

Wow, Amazon.ca is way too tempting.  Now that Sony (CBS) and BMG (RCA) are the same company, this new 103 CD set is even more comprehensive than a previous 65 CD RCA set.  It's about $3/CD.  Very tempting. I just got the Clara Haskil Edition last month (noticed you can get it cheaper now on Amazon.ca Marketplace). My friend told me Sam's on Yonge in Toronto is gone (again), but this time for good.  Ryerson University is demolishing the block.  I remember the days when I would make my way down to Sam's and A&A to browse the classical department.  Compared to Calgary, it was like music heaven. Looking back, I was paying way more 25 years ago as a U of T undergrad than I am now.  I also saw some Alfred Brendel sets that interest me.  The curse of the internet - you can shop the world!

Commodities - buy during the dips

Saw a David Rosenberg commentary this morning and he's bullish on commodities.  Why? For some of the same reasons Eric Sprott is bullish on gold.  Rosenberg says gold (and even silver) are the new reserve currencies.  Others have recently commented that new production is sparse and demand (from investors and governments stockpiling) is up.  Oil is going to be strong too according to Rosenberg.

Now, it's important not to get tunnel vision.  On the dawn of the tech wreck, I would never have bought commodities and was fixated on small-cap wireless company WiLan.  After the massive losses, I made modest gains with Cisco and Intel, then lost modestly with Motorola and AMD.

A volatile week on the TSX and exercising to Schumann

Dug out 2 Schumann CDs by Youri Egorov this past weekend.  Haven't listened to his Schumann for a long time, so I thought I'd pull them out.  I remember I liked the 2 CDs.  Now this commentator really liked this other Egorov CD and ranked his early death from AIDS as a musical tragedy on the scale of Dinu Lipatti and William Kapell.  I don't know that I would go as far as that, but Egorov's Schumann moves me.  I see EMI has a boxed set of his EMI recordings.  It was interesting that as I was exercising to Schumann's Symphonic Etudes played by Pollini, Elisha grabbed his pencil and started conducting when the big last section came on.  I've also listened to Anda's version too this past week.  I pulled out Egorov's recordings so I could listen to Carnaval and Kreisleriana too.  I should also pull out Perahia's Fantasiestuke recording too.  It's just I'm so attached to the Fantasie and the Symphonic Etudes.

Also, took another loss again on ATH so I could trade AVR in my RRSP.  So, lost $500 on ATH and made $200 on AVR.  Then switched into K, but that's taken a slide.  Darn it.  Could have made $600 more on AVR, but sold early again.  Still have 14,000 shares of AVR on hold to make the big gains.

2010 was a great year financially

December 2010 was an amazing month for my RRSP.  The sequence of events that led to a $4000 rise in it's value were

• unexpected sell order for K @ $18.70 filled on December 17
• purchase of 10K of AVR on December 20
• sold position in STB and bought 2K of TKO on December 20
• forgot to up the TKO sell order price and it sold on December 29 @ $5.15
• bought ATH too early with the TKO proceeds - now sitting at a loss

Now, AVR is up nicely, but according to my rough calculations it's about fully valued when compared to K.  Saw this GlobeInvestor this morning that was down on gold.  Of course Eric Sprott among others (including the AVR S&P report) see a lot more mileage for gold.  Sprott Asset Management owns 19% of AVR, so he must know something about that one.

So, in 2011, I'll have to work on building the portfolio.  To trade or not to trade, that is the question.  I still believe in oil and gold though.  Those are the pillars of my portfolio.

One strategy I'm thinking of is when do I move from AVR (higher risk) to K (mid-tier gold miner)?  I like this simple strategy - low PE and less debt than equity (also look for book value vs share price)