2008 at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

November 29, 2008
Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver, BC
Conductor: Carlos Miguel Prieto

Verdi I vespri siciliani: overture
Awesome piece. If you were def you could still feel the music's energy and passion by virtue of Carlos' conducting!

Corey Cerovsek plays Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47
Played with amazing skill and passion! Corey took time to chat with the audience about growing up here in Vancouver and the history of the Orpheum Theatre. A woman sitting next to me mentioned that she'd watched Corey perform throughout his career and that his family had been very encouraging from the start.

Bartok Concerto for Orchestra
Strange piece. Lots of great melodies that get prematurely truncated to explore other ideas then it ends. Did Bartok have ADHD?

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October 25th, 2008
Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver, BC
Conductor: Pinchas Zukerman

Alexina Louie Infinite Sky with Birds
Pinchas Zukerman plays Mozart, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 3 in G Major
Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 in E minor

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October 4th, 6th, 2008
Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver, BC
Conductor: Bramwell Tovey

This was my first symphony experience and turned out to be a great introduction. Since this concert I've been a regular at the VSO.

Ryan The Linearity of Light
Modern, interesting, but not (currently) my cup of tea.

Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major
Hilary Hahn played this amazingly. I enjoyed this so much I bought another ticket to see the Monday performance as well. This has since become my favorite piece and a great version can be found here.

Berlioz Symphonie fantastique
It really is fantastic!

Tennis Notes

Notes from recent tennis lessons

Serve

• Toss should be single fluid motion
• Align the toss with your body (don't toss wide or body can't get behind the serve)
  
• Upon tossing keep tossing arm up pointing at ball, eyes on ball, keeping your head up
  
• Hit 'over' the ball to get it to drop
• Pronate to get more speed
• Tuck left arm in holding stomach to aid balance
• Don't over rotate, should land on left foot
  

Forehand

• One preparation (rotate body and ready racket once in a single motion)
• Elbows up, moving to ball (get 'around' the ball, right foot behind the ball)
  
• Stop
• Follow ball in with left hand (can you tell what brand of ball it is?)
• Swing. Left arm kicks back and catches racket
• Shorter contact with ball (brush up the ball), fast racket head speed
  
• Front foot moves heal to toe as you step into the swing
  

Backhand

• One preparation again but pinching the racket with your left pulling the racket up to your shoulder, elbows raised, racket grip turns in right hand until knuckles line up with racket frame.
• Move to ball (small adjustments)
• Stop
• Swing low to high: drop the leading shoulder, extend your arm through the swing making contact in front (don't hit too late)
• As right arm swings, extend left arm backward
• Leading foot pointed towards target (weight moves back to front)

T60 and Eclipse

The Password Manager captures the Ctrl+Shit+G key sequence on the IBM T60. Unfortunately this key sequence is the default command sequence for locating References within Eclipse. To disable Password Manager from intercepting this key sequence do the following:

Open the Client Security Solution from the start menu. Press the Manage logon passwords button. (swipe your finger) Then you'll find yourself in the Password Manager. Here click on Advanced. (swipe finger again!) Select keyboard settings and disable the default (Ctrl+Shift+G) keyboard binding.

access to native programs

To get access to platform programs and associated icons:

Program.findProgram(extension).getImageData()

Beautiful Banff and Lake Louise

I attended the CSCW 2006 conference in Banff (Alberta) last week. The conference was excellent. I had a chance to present Mylar and got a lot of excellent feedback. I was able to take a quick trip up to Lake Louise and (of course) brought my camera along. The lake itself is a beautiful emerald colour and is nestled among some magnificent mountains!

Assignment 1

time out
[1/125th @ f8 (25mm)]

This weekend I set out to complete the first assignment of my photography course. This assignment has three sections: Difficult Scenes, Low Light, and Details. Three images are to be submitted for each category.

The suggested 'Difficult Scenes' include scenes with lower or higher than average lighting, light object on dark scene, dark object on light scene, back lit object. I found this portion of the assignment tricky because I usually don't go -looking- for these sorts of scenes. The picture above will be in my submission for this section since it meets the criteria of being a bright scene and the subject is backlit.

The heart of this image is the pattern/contrast of the stairs leading up to and the woman whose gesture completes image. The lens flare effectively gives depth to the image leading the eye from the high contrast skyline back to the subject (making a 'Z' with the stairs). The middle ground may be a bit busy and detract from the overall story of this image, though I like the dome. What do you think?

You can see from the metadata that this image has been cropped. It looks more like it was shot at 50mm rather than 25mm. Also, f8 gave me far too much depth of field so a little Gaussian blur was applied to the middle/background to emphasise the foreground/subject. Since contrast in this image reveals luminance, I punctuated this by conversion to black and white. See the original image here.

Here are some other back lit images taken for this assignment that probably won't make the final cut (but are a close second):

high voltage

gnarly

I took this shot while visiting family in Campbell River on Vancouver Island.
- Line/texture of the rocks
- Boat masts and their reflection in the water

> iso 400 1/60s f11