Omega block is weakening

The system map looked like this yesterday

and it resulted in a beautiful fall day where the high was about 27°C.  The front is weakening and cooler temperatures are on their way.  Sigh.

I had took the heads off three Russian mammoth sunflower plants and they've been drying for 2 weeks.  There are 3 more in the front yard.  I think the largest may be ready before frost sets in later this week.  The other 2 might not make it.  One of them is lighter yellow and I think that was one we got from the Farmer's Market in June from Agrium.

The other's were gathered from plants we grew from Oxfam seeds and harvested last year.

Why isn't there a tartar fighting sensitive toothpaste?

Tartar fighting toothpaste typically has sodium fluoride (NaF) as its active ingredient.  Colgate sensitive toothpaste has arginine, sodium monofluorophosate and calcium carbonate as its active ingredients.  The Colgate toll free line is 1-800-268-6757.

Sensodyne ProEnamel uses potassium nitrate and sodium fluoride.  I noticed some sensitivity toothpaste also used some kind of sulphite as well.  I couldn't find any Sensodyne that used sulphites anymore.  Hmm, wonder if this is related to the sulphites in wine issue that sometimes crops up!

Wonder why they don't list them as tartar fighting (ProEnamel would seem to fit the bill).

Four Seasons DVD: Julia Fischer

I got Julia Fischer's DVD of the Vivaldi Four Seasons from Presto Classical.  It's PAL format, so I had to play it on a Momitsu DVD player that can play PAL or NTSC.  It can also be played on a computer.  It's actually on sale for $6 + about $4 shipping.  My little guy is enjoying it right now.  Maybe he'll get some inspiration from Miss Fischer.  We're watching the Director's cut which features scenes from the Welsh country side.

My favorite Mozart Piano Concerti

I have listened to KV 503 a lot because it's probably the Mozart piano concerto I love the most.  The recordings by Fleisher, Kovacevich, and Anda are favorites.  I recently added Tryon and Perahia and they don't disappoint.  I think I'll start listening more to the Clifford Curzon recordings I have, especially the two of KV 595.  I was listening to KV 595 in the car (Clara Haskil's DG recording).  The Larghetto is so poignant and this concerto is so distant from the bucolic joy of say, KV 449 which is my favorite middle Mozart concerto (which I came to love from Peter Serkin's RCA recording).  I think you hear a restrained version of this in the Rondo of KV 595 (the only 'sunny' side of Mozart's final piano concerto).  I've always enjoyed KV 491 through Kempff and Annie Fisher's recordings.  The Jeunehomme Concerto, KV 271, is also a favorite because of the depth of emotion that early concerto has.  I especially like Clara Haskil's playing of this concerto.  I also have the distant, happy memory of hearing Maria João Pires playing this concerto with the Toronto Symphony when I was an undergraduate at U of T.  The only other Mozart concerto I've heard live was a 12 year old Kathy Chi playing KV 467 with the Calgary Philharmonic when I was in high school. 'Elvira Madigan' concerto was the first Mozart concerto I ever heard.  Géza Anda's Eurodisc recording of this was in the Time-Life Great Men of Music Mozart box I bought so long ago in high school.  That was my introduction to the glories of Mozart piano concertos!  I think I would have to add KV 482 and KV 488 as favorites too.  Wilhelm Kempff's 1982 recording of KV 482 (made when he was in his late-80s) has never been released on CD.  I am still waiting Deutsche Grammophon!  Wilhelm Kempff plays his own cadenzas for the LP of KV 467 and KV 482 (I have two copies of this DG LP, one never opened).

Upgrading to Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

This long weekend, I was fixing a friend's computer (Athlon X2 3800+), but it turned out that both the motherboard and the case needed to be replaced.  I had a Gigabyte AM2+ mainboard I bought off Kijiji a couple of years ago with an Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit.  So, I took out my board and put it into a different case with her hard drive.  Because of this, I now had a free Windows Vista Home Premium license.  I had a six core Phenom II with 16 Gig on an MSI mainboard I built earlier this year running Ubuntu.  I wanted to convert that to Windows Vista Home Premium, but I needed the 64-bit edition to take advantage of the 16 gig of Mushkin DDR3 I had.  Previously, I had done several searches for Vista 64-bit, but I had no luck (even on E-bay) to find something cheap.  The link given in the box by Microsoft to buy Vista 64-bit disk was no longer active.  Yesterday, I found a link at Dell which showed one how to create a Windows Vista 64-bit install disk.  This link has excellent instructions and I downloaded the required files and created my own 64-bit Windows Vista install DVD.

Now, even with upgrade editions of Vista, it is possible to do a fresh install.  That was the case with the 32-bit version, but this 64-bit disk I created insisted my DVD key needed to have a pre-existing Windows installation on the hard drive.  I tried installing Windows 2000 first.  It screwed things up big time.  The Vista install couldn't see any partitions.  So, I installed Windows XP Pro and activated the installation.  Then I stuck in the 64-bit Vista install disk I made and it let me install Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit edition. Doing all 119 Windows updates followed by installation of Vista SP2 took about 4 hours!

Blue Moon - 2012 August 31

Took a picture of the full moon yesterday night:

This one was about the best I took and it was the closest to the actual colour observed (no filtering or processing).  I think I will have to use a tripod to get a clear picture.  This website has some good tips.  About.com also has a few good tips.  Now, a blue moon is a second full moon in the same month and here are some nice pictures.

Here's a picture of a sunflower through the telescope with a Powershot 560 mounted on a tripod.  Used the delay timer to avoid shaking.