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Left-hand guitar workout

admin — Sun, 20 May 2012 23:41:04 +0000

…there’s nothing quite like Bach’s Prelude #1. At least not in my current set. I’m using the transcription by S. Ranieri, and wow, it may be possible that the left-hand sequences are incantations intended to summon a Great Old One. Actually, come to think of it, they’re most likely intended for tentacles.

I’ve worked my way through the piece – finally, after years of being satisfied with the first eight bars – and with a bit of a run up I can now do each bit. I think I’ve worked out what I’m supposed to do. Now it’s just practice.

In other guitar news: the Diablo Tristram theme is very nice. I had a bit of a go at it, but have yet to find a really good classical guitar transcription (though there are several excellent youtube recordings). I mention this because I started playing Diablo 3 on the weekend.

IE is a steaming boot-boot

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 05:35:31 +0000

I had to do a bit of web development for a website at work. It was a simple and quick job – a bit of web form stuff, some javascript glue, done.
Until I had to make it work in Internet Explorer. It really is appalling just how many little “gotcha” bugs they have in that implementation. Bizarre things like the “innerHTML” attribute not working correctly for certain kinds of elements; css display properties not updating when you set them in the html and then modify them in javascript; differences in getAttribute() for classes, etc.

Anyway, I’ve finally churned through them all. I’m really glad I don’t have to worry about IE for my hobby code, and can just tell people to use Firefox if they want to view it. Hunting down incompatibilities is just miserable. I probably should have used jQuery, but even that wouldn’t have sorted out my most recent headache.

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 01:58:28 +0000

I discovered an exciting intermediate-to-advanced classical guitar verison of the classic “Take Five” tune, which included a book-and-dvd package with detailed installation… um, I mean, detailed instructions on mastering the piece. This is moderately exciting to me, as I’m usually on my own when it comes to advanced fingering and performance tips. Other guitar instructions I’ve seen (one dvd, many youtube videos) do the basic “place the third finger of your left hand on the fifth fret of the third string, then play a rest stroke with your index finger” type of instruction, which is perfectly obvious from the tab/sheet music, thanks.

Anyway, in this morning’s practice, I kept going back to the opening bars of Take Five, two chords in 5/4 time in a seemingly endless loop… I’m very much looking forward to getting the full thing in the mail. Here’s the performance that got me interested.

Mezzacotta World

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 01:49:48 +0000

I finally got Mezzacotta World working on my new laptop computer. The issue (in the end) was with php’s interaction with mysql: apparently, the name “localhost” is not the same as the network address “127.0.0.1″ as far as php is concerned: it tries to do smart things when it’s connecting via “localhost” that contrive to stuff up the connection that result in it complaining that you have the wrong password for your mysql database. The symptom is that you can connect to the mysql database using everything except php. The solution is to connect to “127.0.0.1″ instead of localhost.

This is for my future reference.

Anyway, now that I can program while lying in bed again (whee!) I did some more coding on the game. Got my github repository to the point where people could plausibly install the whole thing themselves; fixed some graphical glitches that have been bugging me for a while; moved inexorably closer to the next release which will include user-editing functionality.

Quick update

admin — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:29:36 +0000

So, Jade got sick again. She’s actually been sick twice recently, both times coming back from Friday’s daycare with something (just like before she turned one, and it was happening every second week). Last Friday was a bit more worrying on account of the call in the middle of the day reporting that she had a 39.5 degree temperature, and that perhaps I should come and pick her up right away. Fortunately, she bounced back very quickly, and by the time I got home and took her temperature, she was already at 36.5.
She had a fever all weekend, but didn’t get that hot again. Meanwhile, both Von and I have itchy throats.

In more interesting news, we got out to Canberra two weekends ago for Simon & Sarah’s wedding. A lovely park wedding with a grand shindig in a brewery to follow, and Jade was happy running around all night. It was great to catch up with people too, some of whom I haven’t seen in years – Ms Lindor, Nola, Polly, Chris F, Chris T, Andrew Abernethy, too many more to count. And we had a delish dinner on Sunday with the Versace clan (Jade had a terrific time with Connor and Bella) and got to see Nandi much too briefly before it was time to head back.
Note to self: We owe the Versace’s a dinner. An awesome one.

Challenge from Von

admin — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 01:15:09 +0000

Me: Here’s my list of memorised pieces!
Von: Cool! I’ve been practicing Claire de Lune… I can play the first three pages with my eyes shut now.
Me: Oh.
Von: That way I can concentrate on the expression. It’s too distracting looking at the keys.
Me: Oh.
Von: So…
Me: No pieces. I have memorised no pieces.

Guitar pieces memorised

admin — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:01:49 +0000

For my own record keeping purposes, here is an (incomplete) list of guitar pieces I’ve memorised:

Composer	Piece	Standard
Enrique Granados	La Maja de Goya	4
Stanley Myers	Cavatina	6
Isaac Albeniz	Leyenda/Asturias	3
Nikita Koshkin	Waltz	6
Claude Debussy	La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin	6
Leo Brouwer	Cancion de Cuna	5
Anonymous	Romanza Espanol	6
Heitor Villa-Lobos	Prelude #1	7
Heitor Villa-Lobos	Prelude #3	6
Piero Umiliani	Crepuscolo Sul Mare	4
Francisco Tarrega	Adelita	7
Francisco Tarrega	Lagrima	8
Francisco Tarrega	Recuerdos De La Alhambra	3
Fernando Sor	Study Op.31 No.20	6

Music

admin — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:51:55 +0000

I finally put together the Darths song and the Spit song. They sound pretty decent now, but they’re not *quite* ready to release – I want to check with Ev first (I added some compression, and I can’t tell much difference, but Ev definitely will). Von recorded a rocking piano part for the Spit song on the weekend to finish it off.

With guitar: Cavatina is getting smooth, and I’ve put “Girl with the Flaxen Hair” back on my playlist. I used to have that memorised, but it was too hard. Now it’s in reach. However, Recuerdos de la Alhambra is stagnating. It needs a lot of dedicated practice, and was taking up too much time (and it was getting a little boring doing the same stuff over and over). I’ve also been practicing Bach’s Bouree in E Minor, with the goal of getting that into my first set of youtube tunes.

I also did the second lesson with my student, which went pretty well considering. He’ll really need to get a proper classical guitar at some point, though.

Hobbies

admin — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:55:49 +0000

1. Still putting together the Spit and Darths songs.
2. I took a bit of time on the weekend to annotate Darth Jade’s video (the only additions/changes to the clip are the subtitles and addition of my voice.)
3. I worked on a couple of possible puzzles. One looks very promising – I’ve got a good last step, and now need to work backwards to the puzzle presentation.
4. I ran a cube draft at work (this is a Magic: The Gathering thing). The gimmick: the cube consists entirely of French Vanilla creatures (creatures with at most one keyword ability, and no other rules text) and Combat/creature-effecting instants. We played some games today; it seems pretty fun.
5. Lots of guitar. Cavatina is now memorised, and I’m working on getting it smooth.
6. I started teaching classical guitar to someone at work. He has no knowledge of music, nor I of teaching music. It really brings back just how hard it was getting started.
7. Finally got to see Hugo 3D late last night. Excellent film. Now very tired.

The Adventures of Darth Jade

admin — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 12:14:27 +0000