作譜

Yearly Archives: 2006

A half-week of suck

Vital Signs

Sunday: After cleaning up my studio of all the cord spaghetti, I discover the Kawai K4 synthesizer I bought from eBay more than a year ago produces nothing but static. I embark on a search for a software emulation of the keyboard.

Monday: A blackout caused by all the rain resets the DHCP server of Windows, thereby reassigning all the home network IP addresses. As a result, my internal web site configurations get messed up because the domains aren’t resolving correctly.

Tuesday: I find a Kawai K4 virtual synthesizer, which requires a SoundBlaster card. I also find some Kawai K4 soundfonts. Neither really helps me. I attempt to fool the Windows DHCP server to assign the same IP addresses before the blackout, but I fail. As a result, I must reconfigure my firewall. I also have a bad case allergies, which makes me leave work midday.

Wednesday: I take my Kawai K4 down to Strait Music Co. for repair on the hottest day of the week. I’m dehydrated and exhausted after having spent the day running around preparing for a conference at work.

My new database designing technique is unstoppable!

Technophilia Professional

I’ve been neglecting all my sites in the past week and a half because I’ve been preparing to give a presentation for a conference at work.

It was a training session on how to design a relational database, then applying that skill to creating an XML schema. Yes, I know I’m turning you on.

I spent a fair amount of energy building my slides, and I practiced the presentation daily for about a week. Well, I made my presentation on Friday, and it went over better than I expected.

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dzone round-up

Technophilia Professional

I’m either really busy these days, or there are too many good links popping up at dzone at the same time.

I usually glance at the dzone feed in my newsreader and find little to get me to click. Not that I wouldn’t find any of the topics featured on any given day interesting — it’s just mostly stuff that doesn’t apply to me at the moment. (Lots of Ruby and JAVA links.)

But recently, I noticed I’ve been clicking through a lot more and thinking to myself, "I really ought to point this out to people." And then I get distracted by something else.

So before I forget, here are some dzone links that have caught my eye as of late:

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Aren’t you a little young?

Teh Gay

What’s with these kids today? Coming out at age 13? Back in my day, we waited till we were fully adults and not constrained by the limitations of economic dependency to experience the full insecurities of having no practice at going on dates and having meaningful romantic relationships!

Snark aside, there’s something encouraging about young people having the guts to self-identify at such an age. But it’s still disheartening the reaction those kids get by a still largely hostile society. I’m pessimistic enough to assume that I’m not going to be alive by the time coming out at 13 is a non-issue.

Refurbished

Administrative

Like the new design? It’s actually a variation on a previous design.

Before I went with the design with all the non-scrolling elements, this site and its companions had a simple, centered text column with vertical navigation and the masthead on the right side. It had far more color than the black background of the last design.

Well, I’ve gone back to that design with some variations. The masthead and navigation now follows a more "Western" approach, and I’m using the technologically cool Tahoma typeface than Trebuchet MS.

I wanted to abandon using images for text, so if you see question marks in the masthead, it just means you don’t have Japanese fonts installed. This site still looks weird in IE6, but you know what? I don’t care. I’m tired of IE’s non-compliance with web standards, and I’m not going to hack for that browser any more.

I’ve been wanting to redesign for a while now, but I didn’t get inspired till I browsed around Open Web Design. I’m not slick enough to go for a full Web 2.0 treatment.

Open designs

Technophilia Professional

Found this on dzone: Open Web Design, web design templates for free.

My laziness and creativity are battling each other — I’m not fond of creating front-end designs, and I’d be more than happy to grab something for free. At the same time, I would like my sites to look like, well, me.

String me along

Vital Signs

Now I get to be the annoying neighbor.

Last night, I tried to eek out some sound on my newly acquired violin. I was marginally successful because I didn’t know how much rosin to put on the bow.

I ran into my future violin teacher — she’s a coworker, and we start lessons in two weeks — and I told her I tried to play it. I asked her about the rosin. She told me the first time I play it, I’ll need to apply a lot of rosin on it, till the yellow hairs turn white. If the rosin is smooth, I would need to score it to get the powder to stick to the bow. My rosin cake was indeed smooth.

So I did what she advised, and tonight, I got some sound out of the violin. And man, is that thing loud! And since I don’t have any bowing technique, I wasn’t making the prettiest of sounds.

My next-door neighbors have loud conversations on the terrace, while my downstairs neighbor does obnoxious things in the early morning. Now I get to return the favor of their asshattery and play violin badly in the evenings. What comes around …

Oh dear

Vital Signs

The Brook Mays music store around the corner from my apartment is closing, and this week, it was advertising up to 70 percent off everything in the store.

"What would it hurt just to look?" I asked myself. Perhaps I can get a pair of monitor speakers I’ve been meaning to acquire.

The only monitor speaker I found was a Roland model I had passed over back in December. Instead, I found a copy of Finale sitting next to the speaker. I asked a sales clerk about it, and he asked his supervisor. It turned out to be 40 percent off $179, which totalled $110 with tax. So I got it.

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