Tuesday, April 28, 2009
To chrome or not to chrome?
Various signs of activity on the Mr G. front. Various incremental changes to the search and mail screens. Like getting things put up in a fancy google viewer when downloaded. Tales of being charged to intall Google Earth - something which I am sure was free when I installed it. And now invitations to be chromed. Do I want to disturb this PC to that extent? Do I want so many eggs in one basket - this despite the reassuring noises about open source? We shall see.
Last Saturday to Dorking to hear Piers Lane, both a pianist and a showman, with, inter alia, a nice line in introductory chat. Old colonial. So we learn that Brahms was into games, with a three note theme in his third sonata being made up of the first letters of the sentimental motto - 'free but lonely' - of a friend. In the right order. Or something like that. And that the Chopin preludes are in a systematic order. Each major key followed by its relative minor and then by the major key which is a fifth below. Or something like that. Seems obvious enough once you have been told, given that he is going through all 24. Doing them at random would seem most unsatisfactory. Something new for me was a sense, over the first few preludes that major equalled cheerful and minor equalled mournful - but a sense which was lost as the thing proceeded, with the major-minor thing losing any predictive force of that sort. Got three encores. A nocture, Dudley Moore's version of Beethoven (which was very entertaining and a useful tension breaker after the serious business) and a Bach cantata (I think. Also a well known hymn. A useful winder down to cocoa, car-park and bed). All in all a very good evening.
Then there were more alcohol fuelled rug bubbles (see March 13 2009), to the extent that I have now found out that the rug is a hand made Iranian Kashgai. Colours - with a lot of red - wonderfully rich under electric light. And rich, geometric patterns (with glimses of stylised animals) on several levels. With the pleasing quirk that the patterns are not completely regular. It looks to have been done by eye, so that sometimes the weaver (if that is the right word) runs out of space for a particular motif and has to improvise.
The rug moment was preceeded by what might have been a rather embarassing senior moment on the train. Climb on train to see a jacket in the overhead shelf where I had decided to sit. Can't see an owner so get it down and wonder what to do with it. After a while take a peek in the pockets to find a small amount of small change and a rather nifty key holder containing two Chubbs, two Yales and the fob for a Merc. Decide the only thing to be done is to hand it into Epsom station, assuming that there is anyone there to hand it into at this time of night. No identification so can't contact owner myself. Much pondering. And then the rather posh looking gent. from a few seats down (in the part of the carriage where there are no overhead shelves) looks up and wonders where his jacket has gone. He looked vaguely familiar so maybe a minor celeb. Fortunately he was not, or at least did not appear to be, too peeved at this invasion of his privacy. Complete mystery why it never occured to me in the first place that it might be his jacket.
The train moment was preceeded, perhaps accounted for, by a visit to the Wheatsheaf in Vauxhall. As it was raining I had my Mount Gay umbrella, so it was entirely appropriate to sample the Mount Gay rum sold there. The bottle had been full last time I saw it, now about two fifths down so the stuff does move. Good rum in a posh glass, but rather dear at £3.50. Perhaps that just shows how long it is since I bought spirits in a public house. The surveillance helicopter was out again, and seemed very loud, perhaps because the noise from the thing was bouncing off the low cloud. There appeared to be some accompanying police action in the vicinity of the Wandsworth Road Sainsbury's to judge by the directions. But then I learnt something new. My rule of thumb was that at busy times, airplanes put down at Heathrow at a rate of about one every two minutes. But this evening, over a space of half a dozen planes, it was at a rate of about one every minute going over, not counting the city airport traffic in the other direction. OK so I was counting rather than using a watch, but I would not have thought that I would be that much out. If anything, counting to sixty would be less than a minute rather than more. And Vauxhall seemed to be the mouth of the funnel. Swinging in from quite a wide range of direction to line up on the landing runway.
Last Saturday to Dorking to hear Piers Lane, both a pianist and a showman, with, inter alia, a nice line in introductory chat. Old colonial. So we learn that Brahms was into games, with a three note theme in his third sonata being made up of the first letters of the sentimental motto - 'free but lonely' - of a friend. In the right order. Or something like that. And that the Chopin preludes are in a systematic order. Each major key followed by its relative minor and then by the major key which is a fifth below. Or something like that. Seems obvious enough once you have been told, given that he is going through all 24. Doing them at random would seem most unsatisfactory. Something new for me was a sense, over the first few preludes that major equalled cheerful and minor equalled mournful - but a sense which was lost as the thing proceeded, with the major-minor thing losing any predictive force of that sort. Got three encores. A nocture, Dudley Moore's version of Beethoven (which was very entertaining and a useful tension breaker after the serious business) and a Bach cantata (I think. Also a well known hymn. A useful winder down to cocoa, car-park and bed). All in all a very good evening.
Then there were more alcohol fuelled rug bubbles (see March 13 2009), to the extent that I have now found out that the rug is a hand made Iranian Kashgai. Colours - with a lot of red - wonderfully rich under electric light. And rich, geometric patterns (with glimses of stylised animals) on several levels. With the pleasing quirk that the patterns are not completely regular. It looks to have been done by eye, so that sometimes the weaver (if that is the right word) runs out of space for a particular motif and has to improvise.
The rug moment was preceeded by what might have been a rather embarassing senior moment on the train. Climb on train to see a jacket in the overhead shelf where I had decided to sit. Can't see an owner so get it down and wonder what to do with it. After a while take a peek in the pockets to find a small amount of small change and a rather nifty key holder containing two Chubbs, two Yales and the fob for a Merc. Decide the only thing to be done is to hand it into Epsom station, assuming that there is anyone there to hand it into at this time of night. No identification so can't contact owner myself. Much pondering. And then the rather posh looking gent. from a few seats down (in the part of the carriage where there are no overhead shelves) looks up and wonders where his jacket has gone. He looked vaguely familiar so maybe a minor celeb. Fortunately he was not, or at least did not appear to be, too peeved at this invasion of his privacy. Complete mystery why it never occured to me in the first place that it might be his jacket.
The train moment was preceeded, perhaps accounted for, by a visit to the Wheatsheaf in Vauxhall. As it was raining I had my Mount Gay umbrella, so it was entirely appropriate to sample the Mount Gay rum sold there. The bottle had been full last time I saw it, now about two fifths down so the stuff does move. Good rum in a posh glass, but rather dear at £3.50. Perhaps that just shows how long it is since I bought spirits in a public house. The surveillance helicopter was out again, and seemed very loud, perhaps because the noise from the thing was bouncing off the low cloud. There appeared to be some accompanying police action in the vicinity of the Wandsworth Road Sainsbury's to judge by the directions. But then I learnt something new. My rule of thumb was that at busy times, airplanes put down at Heathrow at a rate of about one every two minutes. But this evening, over a space of half a dozen planes, it was at a rate of about one every minute going over, not counting the city airport traffic in the other direction. OK so I was counting rather than using a watch, but I would not have thought that I would be that much out. If anything, counting to sixty would be less than a minute rather than more. And Vauxhall seemed to be the mouth of the funnel. Swinging in from quite a wide range of direction to line up on the landing runway.
# posted by Jim @ 11:19 PM 
