Now this is avant-garde.

Social bookmark du jour:

http://www.theartguys.com/works/4d/music.html.

Emptying the Bedroom

Today's being spent throwing things away. 'Tis the season.

A garbage bag full of clothes went to the Goodwill, so it's not all waste. I've finally gotten rid of some Nike/Adidas t-shirts I whined and pined for in middle school, and that are still too big for me. Glad to be rid of those. What a horrid-looking clothing habit that was, walking around looking like I was wearing a tent. Which made me the pole.

Oh. Maybe that was the idea. 'Twas the age.

I found something floating on my night stand, which had settled in two or three other places before in previous cleanings. I never had the heart to throw it away - call it narcissism, I suppose. I like to think of it as an age (uh, so far removed) when I was beginning to get active in SOGO and music, just starting on SOGO's student boards, and doing room setup for OCO's rehearsals.

That concert, Sam and Andrew played a two-clarinet concerto's Rondo (Krommer). It had a nice tune to it, along with those fast and complicated stuff Krina's clarinet students tend to do. My favorite piece in the concert was the Carnival Overture, though the beginning always sounded funny to me - no discredit to the conservatory's playing, the writing just sounded odd.

Well, the program's gone now. The room's gotta get clean, and the only way to assure that is to make Volume_out a positive quantity. 'Tis the chore.

Cookies & Metal, Yum

Today's cookie party was fun stuff. I've picked up on a fudge recipe, and contributed to a train in the best way I could: With a binary progression depicted by little candy square-spheres. Good times. Also enjoyed conversation on politics, the Apple Powerbook, education in several PNW universities, and 1st-4th century CE Buddhism and its transformation travelling between India and China and back.

Later, with Aaron and Cassie I went to a metal show downtown. We saw Powercastle, which was fuckin' (a) awesome, and fuckin' (b) loud, which was fuckin' (c) appropriate. They played instead of another band that had a member in jail. So it goes. I'm blanking on the band's name.

That other band's singer was there, though, and did one song with Powercastle: "Hallow Be Thy Name," from Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast." Incredibly fun song. I did a little ditty to it, singing along with the guitar chorus. That doesn't happen often...or, uh, ever, actually. Aaron saw me dance; he got to see somethin' special, 'cuz I'm incredibly shy with non-swing dancing.

Good day. Cookies & metal. Num.

OCO (De)Populates for the Ninth

After Sunday's Messiah Sing-Along concluded (SOGO's), Damian's presence was requested in the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. This picqued my curiosity, for as far as I knew, there were four violas, a fair number against the nine or ten violins and four celli. Turns out, we were down to two violas; the other two quit earlier that weekend. Yeah, that's trouble.

Later, Damian and I were talking about it, because I know he is not fond of the group, and he would definitely not enjoy cramming all the viola parts for Beethoven's Ninth into four days of practice (he has two concerts this week). He told me sorry, but one of the group's former violinists may break out her viola; good news for me, he said, since otherwise I'd be alone. He told me that the other viola player quit too.

This left me pretty pissed off until Monday's rehearsal, as I thought suddenly that I would be going solo for an hour and a half in some music that calls for ten violas and a full orchestra, with my part splitting into four two double-stopped lines at times.

Thankfully, I found out Monday night that the other violist was just going to miss one rehearsal because of a class, not the whole concert. Damian's bad at the telephone game. We aren't getting that other violinist, but that's OK; the two of us can handle the part fine, and bringing on another person this late in the game would be just plum stressful. On the plus side, we're probably one of the tightest sections in the orchestra, next to those sections that are one to a part.

The concert should go fine. I don't necessarily think it'll improve the experience of the Ninth, beyond what it is - but I don't think it'll fall short, either. (Except for the winds being too loud in one part of the fourth movement...but, that's a gripe for the next rehearsal.) I just hope we can get a fourth horn by Saturday.

Oh, yes, forgot to mention: We lost a French Horn this weekend, too. What to? A gig he just got, on the concert night. Such dedication.

The Olympia Chamber Orchestra is getting an ambitious selection of music now. I believe they won't be a good group, however, until they can get a consistent player base. That point is not yet come — there are still people rotating into the group halfway through the rehearsal sets, and there are always a few who leave after concerts, usually leaving holes in the winds. This has been going on at least as long as I've been there (since Fall, 2003). Actually, their next concert's really going to be interesting, as I'm leaving the group to take a Statistics class. (This is planned, and I told them a month ago; it's going to break the recruiter's heart, but alas.) There's a possibility they won't have any violas in January. Good luck to them.

The concert's Saturday, and will probably overlap completely with Fools Play. This will be the third year in a row I'll have missed Fools Play: Santa's Lap. I've never seen that one. Ah well, for the Ninth, I can stand to miss it. FPRL on January 7th, though, means I'll miss Damian's sight-reading chamber music concert. …That, I don't regret. Chamber music isn't yet my cup of listening tea.

For now, I get to enjoy being in the heart of the Ninth. The best seat in the house this time is probably second-chair viola - right where I am. Tee hee.

A Night on Freezing Fire

Once more on the weather. Why? I'm just that interesting, that's why.

The air has gone still again in Oly. Friday there weren't any clouds out, or mist rising, but after that was crummy and grayed — too grayed, actually; the rising mists have had time to collect, which leaves sunset poor-looking a lot of the time.

Friday's skies were clear, though. I returned to Capital before teaching Yujin, and hung out in the parking lot doing prep. work there. This time, the photographing was good and bountiful. These is the kind of hues I saw at that Olympia Symphony rehearsal, only without the pink.

After the photographing, though, it was pretty nasty. Before the sun wholly set, the sky was a burned-red/brown. Gross stuff.

The nights weren't as impressive as they were the first time this weather hit Olympia, though. There was a mighty fog that struck Puget Sound that November Wednesday, hampering Jim, Georgia and I as we drove together to the Abbey Ballroom. This was the heaviest fog I'd ever been in - I never understood the so-thick-you-could-cut-it analogy, but thar she blew. Or didn't, as the happenstance was.

Headlights, street lights and lot lights colored our entire fields of vision with white, yellow and orange. Made for a pleasant trip home - what we could see of it, anyway. But what was truly impressive was what a lining of trees could do.

It was so impressive, I made a web page about it. (Yeah, I know; first the weather, then the web. How interesting.) I looked out my kitchen window and saw a wonderful set of glow and shadows. So, I hobbled out of my house at 3 am, with my camera and a chair. The chair served as a substitute tri-pod — I'd say its arms made it a variable-height tetrapod, which I should probably have called it to sound more high-tech. But I enjoy low-tech solutions.

I set up my Mac at home to be web-accessible recently, so I could do my e-mail management strictly from home, so-to-speak (got sick of webmail, but wanted to see it at work; solution: remote viewing). I followed the advice from this page and successfully set up two things: SSH access (granting VNC, which lets me work on my Mac with all the GUI glory), and webserver hosting.

So, I invite you to see the fruits of my brains' halfs: Content from the right, hosted by the left.

http://emerald-den.homeip.net/~alex/
(Note: The site may be sporadically up, as its host machine is on a circuit that is susceptible to a tripped breaker if a microwave and water heater are turned on at the same time.)

Granted, it's just a single webpage at the moment. The purpose wasn't to have a whole website, per se, but to be pretty. If it were going to be a whole website, which it may be after I add a few more stylesheets, I'll have a big whomping Links page, and a slightly more verbose Contact page, my resumé… and whatever else goes on a web page. Except for this blog, or a blog period. I'm happy with what I have here. (And, I've made so many absolute links to past entries.)

For now, though, I found making that page at least a fun exercise in layout. Certainly not my last.