#37: Improvisational Nocturn
I promised myself I'd get to bed before 1 AM this evening. This week has been a string of late nights preparing presents and dishes for family functions. I guess it didn't happen. My wife went to bed early feeling under the weather. I started to get a little moody as I am apt to do from time to time. I decided to work through it at the keyboard. I also decided to record it. And now here I am posting it online.
I've been improvising on the piano since high school. I was fortunate enough to attend one with a music wing and dedicated sound proof practice rooms. Though I played saxophone at the time, I often would slip into one of those rooms and tinker on the piano whenever I could steal a minute... during lunch, after school, etc. It was a good stress reliever.
A few years ago I bought a small digital "virtual studio" (this was pre-Garage Band days) to start recording some of my compositions, though I use that term loosely. Most of what I create is very ephemeral. I have no background in reading piano music. I doubt I could reproduce anything I play. I only hit record when the mood strikes, capturing only a fraction of what flows through me. I'm okay with that, though. It's all about the moment of creation and the creative spark.
I don't have much background in audio engineering either, so this recording is pretty raw. It was recorded in one take. No overdubs or edits. I transferred it into Garage Band, slapped a small amount of reverb on it, converted it to AAC and uploaded it here.
So if you find yourself in a bit of a mood tonight or tomorrow or sometime this holiday season, this track is dedicated to you.
Holiday Cookies 2009
Yes, second post in two days. I'm making a conscious effort to resume blogging. Twitter has made it much too easy to neglect this site.
Inspired by daily photo postings by an old friend which often involve food, I decided to post a few photos of the holiday cookies Jennifer and I made this past week.
The recipes come from the December issue of Sunset magazine. We chose these recipies because we figured they'd be unique and tasty. We made a double batch of the Honey Caramel Nut Bars to share in various cookie exchanges.
Google Realtime Annoyance
Recently Google started inserting Twitter posts into the search results for current "trending topics". Apparently they, along with Microsoft, paid a handsome sum to bring this "feature" to the masses. While I'm glad this has made Twitter profitable as I am a Twitter user myself, I find the animated display of tweets in the results very annoying. The last thing I want when trying to read through the results is an eye-catching distraction.
So to take the matter into my own hands, I figured out a relatively easy way to remove the animated elements from the page. In Firefox, you can set custom Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) rules for any web site in a file called userContent.css. The file is located in the chrome folder in your profile, the location of which depends on the platform.
Once you've located the userContent.css file, just add the following lines to block the display of the elements used for the real time results animation:
@-moz-document url-prefix(http://www.google.com/search) {
#rtr {display: none !important;}
#sb {display: none !important;}
#rth {display: none !important;}
}
The first line indicates to which pages the CSS rules should be applied. The next lines block the display of the real time result (rtr) list, the scroll bar (sb), and pause link in the real time header (rth). Unfortunately there is no ID value for the markup that includes the "Latest results for [search term] - " portion. I suppose I could get fancy with following the hierarchy of tags from a specific parent element with an ID, but I figure it's just as well to leave the link there in case I am interested in seeing those results.
After making the change, you will need to restart the browser for it to take effect.
Apparently Safari also supports userContent.css files, though I'm not sure whether it supports site-specific rules.
Native species
I was just looking on Amazon for a book about landscaping in Michigan and came across this passage in the first few pages of the "Look Inside" feature of Landscaping with Native Plants of Michigan
Not only does a native plant depend on the organisms with which it has evolved, but the other organisms also depend on it, creating a true web of life. This natural system of checks and balances ensures that native plants seldom grow out of control in their natural habitats.
I got to thinking, why is this important? Objectively speaking, nature finds a way of "adapting" regardless. What will be, will be.
I think the importance is actually a reflection of our own values. Humans value control. We value predictable situations. Checks and balances afford predictable situations and non-dramatic, non-disruptive shifts that we can adapt to or react to to minimize adaptation requirements.
Where else do we hear about "checks and balances"? As any high schooler could tell you, the U.S. government. The founding fathers were smart men.
I only wish the financial industry were open to more checks-and-balances style regulation instead of feeling like it cramps their style. Perhaps we wouldn't be in global economic crisis we are in now if they were.
A Reminder
It's been 4 years now since my friend Justin passed away. Though time has tempered the magnitude of the loss, his absence still enters my consciousness on a regular basis. So much has changed since then... uprooting from CA to MI, home ownership, birth of a child, my oldest child entering the educational system, the deaths of two (in-law) grandparents... the list goes on. Each milestone and major event is a reminder of the passage of time. In idle moments when my mind wanders I often begin to dwell on my own mortality and whether I'm making the most of my time here on Earth. Justin's passing is a regular reminder that there are no guarantees in life and that I should make the most of it while I have the opportunity. So, while I have to say I'd much rather he was still around, I'm thankful for the intangible gift he left behind. Thank you, Justin.
Site Redesigned
In an effort to get myself interested in blogging again, I've made some tweaks to the design of this site. I stuck with the lonely cloud image in the header, as there's something about it that resonates with me, even nearly 5 years after I took it. I've also become a fan of blog designs that have a wallpaper-like background, so I modified one that I came across a few months ago on a tiling image creation site to fit what I had envisioned for this redesign.
I've also fixed a few things that have bugging me:
- Styling of my recent Twitter feeds
- The banner/background "seam" when the browser window was extended
- Everything is now centered in the browser window rather than fixed to the left.
- Upgraded to most recent version of Movable Type
There are a still a few "smells" that I need to take care of, including:
- Using a proper tabber for the right-hand column
- Re-evaluating the contents of the right-hand column
- Re-enabling comments
End of Summer
Wow. Eight months have flown by since my last update. I think that's a record for me.
Just wanted to stop in to say I'm still around. This summer has flown by. I was just getting into the swing of things, now our first child has started Kindergarten. Yikes!
Back in May I participated in the Bayshore Half Marathon up in Traverse City, MI. The weather was beautiful and cool, which contributed to me setting a PR of 1:48:36. Hopefully I'll be able to beat that at my next half marathon.
In June I had my hike up Half Dome in Yosemite National Park for which I was training through the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Hike For Discovery program.
I combined that trip out to Yosemite with a 5-day backpacking trip with my friend Rob Totte. We started at the White Wolf campground, hiked down to the Tuolumne River and then followed it up, through Tuolumne Meadows, along the Lyell Fork to the highest point in Yosemite NP, Mt. Lyell (13,114 ft / 3997 m) and back down to Tuolumne Meadows. Nearby forest fires to the west of the park made many of the views quite hazy in the Grand Canyon of the Tuoumne River, but we could see for miles at the peak.
The kids, Jennifer and her mother also headed out to California during that time. After my excursion into the wilderness, we met back up in the San Francisco Bay Area and met up with old friends.
In August I took another trip back out to San Francisco to see the SF Outside Lands concert in Golden Gate Park. It was the first time a concert had been held in the park at night. The Radiohead performance opening night was spectacular.
A few days ago I participated in a 100 KM trail running 5-person team relay event in Hell, MI called Dances With Dirt. The course involved running along the trails of Pinckney State Recreation Area in widely varying levels of use (or disuse as the case may be). There were numerous fallen trees and branches, hills a' plenty, sand patches, abundant poison ivy, thigh-high muck at stream crossings, a shallow lake crossing. Sounds like fun, no? Though we didn't even come close to winning, it was well worth the experience. Pictures to come (hopefully!).
Welcome to the Jungle
Last week I was checking out Amazon's Mechanical Turk web site. For those of you not familiar with the site, it allows people to set up simple tasks called Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) for others to do that are easy for people to do but too difficult to automate by computer. The people who perform the tasks are then paid a modest amount for their effort.
I came across one HIT that I thought would interest some friends so I right-clicked the link to a preview of the HIT, chose Copy URL, then shared the link with the friends. After checking the site out, my friends astutely noticed that visiting the site logged them in as me. Looking closer at the URL, I realized it contained the actual session state. Rut roh! But that's not all. There was a link to a "Your Account" page, which then linked to an option to change the name, e-mail address, and password on my Amazon account... without prompting for the current password. Double rut roh! Even after I changed the password, that URL could be used to log in and change it again.
ReaIizing the security exposure, I immediate deleted the credit card info that was on file. I then sent a few messages to the Mechanical Turk team through a few different channels describing the situation. Though I only got "Thank you for your feedback. We'll be looking into the situation." type messages from their team with no way to respond back, it appears they did act on the messages. Upon revisiting the site later that day I noticed that:
- I could no longer find a HIT preview link with the state information included in the URL.
- The offending URL brought up a page saying the request could not be completed successfully. However, this could just be because the session had expired. The top of the page still shows my name and there's still a Your Account link. But...
- When clicking on the link to change the password, the site now prompts for the existing password first.
Kudos to the Amazon Mechanical Turk team for addressing the issue so quickly after I reported it. I have to say, it was kinda fun, though a bit unsettling, to find a security issue with such a high-profile site.
Here we go again!
Two years ago I participated in the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training program to complete my first marathon. I had a terrific experience, made many new friends and raised over $5000 for the organization from the overwhelming generosity of my friends and family. I received a brochure for their Hike for Discovery program in the mail and knew it was time to do some fund raising again.
So this year I'd like to repeat the experience doing something I have a passion for in a place that I love: hiking in Yosemite National Park. I will be training, hiking and fund raising in memory of my wife's grandmothers Barbara Pugsley and Dorothy Andrews, both of whom past away in recent years due to blood cancer-related illness. I've committed to raising a minimum of $3700. If you have not already, please considering donating. Your support is greatly appreciated.
I've set up a separate blog to record my thoughts and experiences while training for the hike. I'm sure it will be a terrific experience and I look forward to sharing it with you.
The Illustrated President
It's been a few years since I've posted anything related to the current presidency. A friend past along a link to this Harper's Magazine article regarding a painting by W.H.D. Koerner titled “A Charge to Keep” (1916) that George W Bush admires.
A blurb from the article:
Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious.
I thought it was quite humorous. Life imitates art? How true.
