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.