December 3rd, 2006
Well golly. Would ya look at what happened here:
We had a few flurries over the past week, and one dump of slush in October, but this is the first real snowfall that looks like it will stay for a few days. Wednesday might be too warm, unfortunately, so we might get some rain then, but the rest of the coming week looks like it will be cold and snowy! YAY!
(thanks for the pics, Sari!)
November 30th, 2006
I haven’t done a whole lot in the past month. However, I have eaten some food. More than once, even!
First was a big chicken that Sari and I roasted with some veggies:
Then she (Sari, not the chicken) ran off to Japan and had many adventures, some of which also involved food. (Raw whale meat, anyone?)
Upon her return, inspired by yummy Japanese food, we had a feast or two:
(follow the link to see what all the stuff actually is)
And finally, now that it’s getting a bit colder out (no significant snowfall yet though…), I’ve started making bread again!
I managed to get a nice texture with lots of holes in it, which is nice. I’ve been trying to do that for ages, but it didn’t usually work. Not sure why it did this time though! Maybe because I put in more olive oil than usual? Or did most of the second rise in the oven while it baked? (with interesting side effects).
November 6th, 2006
Last week I recorded a few tracks to use as a demo for Jeunesses Musicales.
I’d like to start recording more often, and posting more tunes here. Now that I have some slightly better equipment for recording, and don’t have to deal with the minidisc, it might actually happen. Can anyone recommend some good cheap microphones though? The one I have isn’t really up to the task. It’s a little minidisc stereo microphone, Sony ECM-MS908C (basically an older version of this one). It actually works surprisingly well for being a tiny little simple microphone, but the level it puts out is way too low. For some reason, I didn’t have that problem so much when I used it with my minidisc, but it might just have a higher recording level than just about everything else I’ve tried.
I’ve had Oktava mics recommended to me. They’re apparently very cheap for what you get, though it’s still expensive. With all the cables, stands shipping and all the rest, I think I’d be looking at no less than $600 to get a pair of them, and possibly quite a bit more. This isn’t a ridiculous amount, and for microphones, it’s not much at all, really, but for something that I’m not really serious about, it’s a little much!
October 27th, 2006
For the latest concert with the Seasons Baroque Ensemble, Sari and I decided to rent a car and drive there and back. It was fun to have a road trip together, and to not have to worry about schedules or anything like that. It was exhausting though… and somewhat more expensive than the bus (since we were there for a whole week).
The concert was also exhausting. Katherine and Graham only got back to town two days before the show, so we put together a very challenging programme, including F. Couperin’s L’apothéose de Lully on very short notice. The end result was very good though – many people commented that it was our best yet. We certainly had a good turnout, too. The Cathedral is a very nice place to play.
October 6th, 2006
I’m writing this from my living room with no cables attached to the computer! I finally went out and got (well, sat in and ordered) a wireless router, after months of waffling on it. It’s nice to have. After spending far too much time wrestling with a defective ethernet cable (which was also the only one long enough to reach over to the bed comfortably), I decided enough was enough, and $20 really isn’t that much money anyway.
September 30th, 2006
I complain about the computer industry all the time. Today is no exception. I just helped Philip fix his internet connection after random websites stopped working the other day. Apparently he spent at least an hour on the phone with Sympatico technical support, and the technician there gave up, basically just saying that windows was messed up.
Turns out Sympatico’s DNS servers are just junk, and switching to other servers fixed the problem right away. But why couldn’t the person working at Sympatico figure that out? Even worse, some web searches show that this problem has been occurring intermittently for years now. It’s appalling how tolerant we are of incompetence in this field…
September 30th, 2006
I ust finally got around to registering redowl.ca! So you should now be able to reach this site at http://www.redowl.ca instead of using the longer dyndns.org address.
I can also receive mail at jono@redowl.ca, though I’m still using jonathan.addleman@mail.mcgill.ca as my main address. Having my main e-mail on a not-all-that-stable ADSL line kinda scares me.
Any of the other e-mail addresses hosted here should work with the new domain too.
If it’s not working for you just yet, give it another day or so – I just registered it last night, and sometimes it takes a while to propagate through the net.
September 29th, 2006
The concert in Fredericton went very well! I didn’t get it recorded, unfortunately, but there will definitely be more. Gallery 78 is a very nice place for a harpsichord recital – just big enough to hold some people and sound good while still being cozy and intimate. We have a concert coming up with the Seasons Baroque Ensemble in a couple of weeks. If you’re in Fredericton, it will be October 15 at the Cathedral – I’ll get some more details up here in the next little while.
While in New Brunswick, I went roaming in the woods, of course. The weather was fantastic most of the week, and with the trees starting to change colours, it was really perfect.
September 20th, 2006
So I’m back in Keswick Ridge, in preparation for the concert I’m doing this Saturday. I guess I should have posted some more updates in the past month, but it hasn’t been too interesting – just busy. I’ve been working full-time at the helpdesk (I’m mightily glad that I’m finished with that now!), doing a bunch of choral gigs at church and with the Montreal Symphony, and frantically trying to prepare for this solo recital.
This concert’s been quite exhilarating to put together. I haven’t done a solo recital since I finished my master’s degree three years ago, and haven’t done a harpsichord recital in Fredericton ever (for that matter, I don’t know if anyone ever has, at least not in the past century or so). But it’s been going very well, with a good mix of familiar and obscure (some familiar for the audience, and some for me!), simple and difficult. I’ve been playing a few pieces that I performed many years ago – I always find that to be a rewarding experience, since I can feel how much I’ve improved. Something that took 6 months to half-learn now takes a couple of weeks to play very nicely.
If you can’t make it to the concert, I’m going to attempt to record it, but can’t make any promises – my laptop has pretty terrible input sound quality, and I haven’t gotten an external sound card yet (though the Tascam that Mershie suggested is looking like a keeper), so I’ll be struggling with the minidisc.
In any case, I have a preview available: the Scarlatti that I’m performing Saturday is available (in ogg format, as usual – let me know if you have trouble playing it, and I can get you turned away from the Dark Side). Unfortunately, it’s one of those acrobatic Scarlattis, so on a recording, you won’t get to see all the fun hand crossings and leaps, but you can surely imagine them. Without further ado, Sonata K.54 in A minor.
August 29th, 2006
I’ve been back in montreal for a week now, so it’s about time I put up some pictures from the travels! A couple of weeks were spent in New Brunswick, doing a concert with the Seasons Baroque Ensemble first of all.
Then we drove back to Montreal to meet a Joe at the airport.
After a very brief rest at home, we dashed off to Calgary for Ben’s wedding, presents in tow.
All in all, it was a fine few weeks! Just busy enough to keep things interesting, but with plenty of rest-time in there as well. We had a chance to do the usual walks in the woods and so on, but also managed some not-so-usual things in Calgary: a visit to the Zoo, horseback riding, and of course the wedding itself was anything but ordinary.
Now I’m back to the drudgery of working full-time at the help desk for a few weeks, while I frantically put together the first concert in my solo series in Fredericton that will take place September 23! Not much free time for editing pictures, unfortunately, which explains why I haven’t done much picking and choosing of the wedding pics as of yet.
update: With Sari’s help, I’ve gone through most of the pictures now, and trimmed it down to a much more manageable amount! If you were put off by the obscene number of terrible pictures, it’s much better now, and you should have a look.
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