Anyway, I love them but it seems so improbable and made for such a tiny niche market, you can't help but wondering.
The NES pad is just a regular mint not even that strong and the blue Shroom contains blue raspberry sours but not that sour either.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Last night was the first of a series of three concerts by John Williams with the New York Philharmonic returning to Avery Fisher Hall after last year’s great success.
Fun was the keyword and it was fairly obvious early on that everybody was just having a good time. By everybody I mean John Williams, the musicians of the New York Philharmonic, special guest Stanley Donen but also us the audience and what a great audience it was, a bit on the noisy side but very reactive yet considerate.
The first half of the concert was all Williams and immediately after walking on stage and briefly greeting the crowd the Maestro starts with Sound the Bells!
A classic concert opener and a crowd pleaser it’s a piece well suited for the acoustic of Avery Fisher Hall which, as pointed by pi, tends to favor brass and percussions. It sounded to me very similar to the album version heard on “Call of the Champions”. Williams then briefly turned around to acknowledge the applause and then went right into Flight to Neverland.
It was my first time hearing this piece in concert (well second if I count the rehearsal this morning) and it was absolutely wonderful. I don’t particularly care for the movie but I do love the score (I have the Concorde 2 CDs version… Can I say that?) and it was beautifully executed by the New York Philharmonic. After much applause and cheers from the audience John Williams picked up the microphone and started talking about the Brontë sisters, their influence on literature and how pleased he was to have been involved with the made for TV movie 1970 version of Jane Eyre. He indicated it would be three separate compositions from the score.
This was really a revelation. I admit I’m not excessively familiar with this particular work (I promise to work on that next week) and this was easily the high point of the concert for me. That’s also where the audience showed consideration because you could hear a pin drop during the brief moments of silence between the three pieces. Out of 2,700 people not even one attempted a clap of hand. Magical.
Speaking of Magic, I always get the giggles when John Williams speaks geek and he gladly does for two franchises, Star Wars and Harry Potter. To see him on stage very seriously talk about Moguls, wizards, Hogwarts and the likes, always seem to me odd and funny at the same time. I was really having cold sweats on that one because during the rehearsal this was by far where Williams went back to work the most with the Philharmonic and for good reasons. Besides “Aunt Marge’s Waltz” feeling a little rush towards the end I thought it went a lot better than in the morning.
After waiting for the roar of the audience to calm down he started to talk about his involvement in Fiddler on the Roof and his work with Jerry Bock’s composition, started to reminisce about his life as a piano player in the 1950s and how his best friend at the Los Angeles Philharmonic was Harold Dicterow, Glenn Dicterow’s father.
On a side note: Williams last year never mentioned he knew Glenn Dicterow since the 50s, just that he played violin on the studio recording of Jaws.
I thought it went great but then again I didn’t have any significant problems during the rehearsal in the morning either, so I’ll let others be the judge of that. It’s a rollercoaster of a piece and Avery Fisher Hall might not be the best venue for it, because of its quick switches between full orchestra and quiet strings but it’s quick joyful and entertaining and a great way to conclude the first part.
Intermission
The projection screen rolls down during the intermission and just like for the first part, John Williams walks back on stage, salutes the audience and goes right into Hooray for Hollywood. Again a crowd pleaser, great way to start and put everyone in the mood for a tribute to the Films of Stanley Donen. I could swear it sounded exactly and I mean exactly like the “Salute to Hollywood” version.
After another round of applause the Maestro picks up the mic and introduces special guest, Director of many of the greatest musicals of all times, Stanley Donen who turned out to be an incredibly entertaining guest. I went through the whole thing during the rehearsal but he was even funnier this time around.
Donen: “No, you’re the genius John. I’m just here to try to help you the best I can”.
The first piece is You’re All the World to Me from Royal Wedding, where Fred Astaire dances from the floor to the walls and then to the ceiling. Donen goes on to explain with the help of a crude 3D animation (laughter from the crowd) how they built the room in a cylinder and the camera was rotating at the same time as the room.
The number starts with the audio from the movie then as we get into the dance part the orchestra picks up. The challenge here is to remain in sync with the movie but after E.T. last year, I believe Williams can keep the Philharmonic in sync with just about anything.
Donen introduces next Bless Your Beautiful Hide from “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” known for this concert thanks to the horrible pan and scan version that was shown as “Four Brides for Four Brothers”. He goes into a colorful story of how the producer of the movie didn’t want dancers (+ expletives) to play outdoorsmen and how he (Donen) asked Deutsch who was doing the orchestration to make DePaul’s score sound like Copeland.
Next is I Like Myself from “It’s Always Fair Weather”. Donen starts a fairly long story of how Gene Kelly was such a great roller skater and he always wanted to do a dance number with him on skates. All of a sudden in the middle of the story he says “but I’d better move on because I think we’re running a little long”, Williams reassures him “no it’s quite alright Stanley”.
During the introduction of The Worry Song from Anchors Aweigh at the rehearsal I really thought Donen had lost his marbles, because he goes into that whole story about Singin’ in the Rain (the next number) and how it was all about rehearsing preparing and precision and to go back to his original point this dance number with Gene Kelly and Jerry the mouse (an animated character) was all about preparation. He had also a great story on how his original idea was for Kelly to dance with Mickey Mouse and Disney told him in a meeting that Mickey didn’t work for MGM.
Finally Singin’ in the Rain. More funny stories about his brilliant idea to have Gene Kelly singing… in the rain. Priceless.
All and all this tribute from a musical standpoint might not have been totally satisfying (long introductions and short sets) but the interaction between Williams and Donen made it all worth it and how many more opportunities am I going to have to see Stanley Donen in person? Come on give the man a hug.
Now back to Williams work. Sayuri’s Theme from Memoirs of a Geisha. I think the score for Geisha is just OK. I don’t dislike it but I won’t go out of my way to listen to it. As a concert piece I thought it was great I especially liked the intro by Carter Brey going Cello solo.
Finally: A Tribute to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg: A musical montage that includes Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders and E.T. It’s fun very dynamic and gets the audience excited and a fine way to end the second part of this concert.
After coming back on stage a couple of times due to a bad case of standing ovation we get into the encores
First was Sugarland Express very laid back jazzy piece great for calming things down. This was the only encore that was rehearsed in the morning. No harmonica however substituted by a flute but it works just great.
Olympic Spirit came second. I thought it was a little pretentious to have an encore with a video montage. Considering the logistics it’s like saying “yes we knew there would be a second encore” but what the hell, he’s John Williams!
Finally The Mission Theme. The classic ending to most John Williams concerts with the classic joke “just in case you don’t make it on time for the evening news”
It was yet another great evening with the Maestro. I can’t believe I’m going back tonight… And tomorrow!
[7:00 AM] Ridding the train on my way to the rendezvous point, I realize I can't insert symbols besides what's on my cellphone's keyboard. Crap!
[7:10 AM] Got to 42nd Street and debating with my fellow strap hangers if this is a local or express 7 train. I think it's a local and it better be.
[7:15 AM] It's a local (I told you guys). The dude sitting next to me looks like he slept about 2 hours and keeps starring at me typing on my cell. The guy across from me looks like he slept 3 hours. I love early morning train rides.
[7:21 AM] The train just turned into an L. Everybody in the car check their cellphones. I think I'm going to be way early.
[7:27 AM] Just text messaged Amit. I forgot to print driving directions. I hope Steve's printer is working.
[7:29 AM] Pulling into the station. I'm half an hour early. Damn!
[7:33 AM] There's a spanking new Starbucks at the corner but I already got my bucket of coffee so I'll pass. No reply from Amit.
[7:45 AM] I'm on the sidewalk checking my email, checking the board and blogging... Awesome!
[7:50 AM] Steve just walked out. His printer is indeed working.
[7:56 AM] Printing driving directions or at least trying... What's that flashing?
[8:01 AM] I can't get the printer to go. No news from Amit.
[8:15 AM] Amit is 5 mn away. Printer is printing.
[8:25 AM] Where's Amit?
[8:29 AM] Steve got tired of waitng. He's going to get some caffeine.
[8:30 AM] Here's Amit!
[8:34 AM] Steve's here. We're on our way!
Sony Cybershot DSC-H7. I was looking for a new camera and this is the review that convinced me.
I just thought I'd drop by Barnes and Noble at Union Square to check the launch of the last Harry Potter book and the event is just massive. They took over all four floors of the store and have schedule a whole bunch of activities since 5 PM to keep everyone busy until midnight. More later.
I was able to get my hands on an iPhone for a full day and went through the entire process, from taking it out of the box to activating it, to configuring it, to actually using it.
Unpacking the iPhone is pretty much like unpacking a video iPod. It comes in that sleek black and silver box with a color photo of the device on top. In the box is the phone of course, a set of headphones looking exactly like the ones for the iPod but with a mic so that you can pick up a call while listening to music, a USB cord to connect the phone to your MAC or PC, a power supply similar to the iPod but smaller, a dock station and a lint free cloth to keep your shiny new toy clean. Also included is a small booklet giving a brief description of all the basic functions but do not be fooled, the full fledged user's guide is 124 pages long.
The first surprise was, although the phone is silver and black, all the accessories are white. You could make the case for the iPod that most people got theirs in white but as far as I know, the iPhone comes only in one color.
Activation. The phone out of the box is locked and has to be activated via iTunes 7.3. My task was to transfer an existing Verizon number out of a business account with multiple numbers. So just to make sure I wasn't messing up with the entire account I called At&t (the only carrier for the iPhone but more on that later) and the first operator I spoke to wasn't very knowledgeable, she told me that I had to call Apple and offered to transfer me. I realized quickly I had been transferred instead to another At&t operator on top of her game this time. She answered all my questions and I went ahead with the activation on iTunes. It took less than 10 minutes to complete the process and the old cell number was transferred to the iPhone within 30 minutes.
On one hand I was very impressed but on the other a couple of things hit me. One of the reasons I wasn't planning on getting an iPhone to begin with was the single carrier thing. As far as New York City is concerned I would not consider using anything else but Verizon and I'm perfectly happy with my Motorola Q but besides that the minimum requirements to have an iPhone are:
1. A Mac or a PC with a USB 2.0 port and one of the following operating systems:
2. the latest version of iTunes.
3. a high speed Internet connection (iTunes 7.3 + QuickTime is a 58Mb download)
4. a major credit card
and it left me wondering how many people were left in the cold for not meeting just one of those requirements?
Configuration. Apple's strong suit. Not very much to report here. It's very user friendly and fairly intuitive although I find the ringer to be too low even at maximum level and you cannot install your own custom ringer (although there appears to be a hack for MAC users).
Configuring a POP3 email account is very easy as well, as long as you have your account information.
Same goes with the Wi-Fi which was a pleasant surprise since I thought the only way to go online with an iPhone was through At&t.
Using the iPhone.
Part 1 - The Good: You've seen the commercials, you've seen the demos on TV or maybe you've been lucky enough to have someone at the office let you hold his or hers for a brief moment yanking it back quickly from your prying hands.
Yes, it's that cool and having one will make you cool, for the next month or so anyway and since you'll have to agree to a 2 years contract with At&t, I would suggest you to drink a glass of ice cold water and think before you run out the door to buy one.
The touch screen is awesome and seem to be as scratch resistant as Apple is advertising (as in: not like my video iPod). The quality of the display for video playback is amazing. I loaded an episode of LOST to check the quality and it's all I've been waiting for from a next generation iPod.
The user interface for the iPod part of the phone is substantially different from the interface of the standalone iPod and I was finding it awkward to use initially until I figured out I could customize it to my needs by dragging and dropping the functions I wanted to the browser bar and all was well with the world again.
But I don't need to lay down the selling points for you so lets go right to...
Part 2 - The Bad: I had to transfer manually the phone numbers stored in the old phone to the iPhone. Fortunately it wasn't a whole lot of them and it gave me the opportunity to make an extensive use of the on-screen keyboard... I hate it. I thought that's because the keys were too small and I kept missing the target but come to think of it the keys on my phone are probably smaller. So I'm not sure what the issue is but I'm all thumbs with it and got frustrated very quickly.
There's no "Manually manage music and videos" function in iTunes for the iPhone. Consequently your phone tries to synchronize with your entire library as soon as it's connected to your computer. That might work for most users but my library went over 200GB a while ago so the only option you have in that case is to create a playlist for the iPhone. Drag and drop the tracks and/or albums you want on your phone and then sync.
I have two issues with this. One, and that's because I'm really anal about it but, I don't want a playlist to appear on my iPod or my iTunes if it is there for no other reason than transfer music. it's staring at me taunting me... no seriously it drives me nut. Two, I've always managed my iPods, since the first generation, manually. That's the way I've always done it and I don't see why I'm not able to do it with the iPhone.
Part 3 - The Ugly: Unfortunately the iPhone being a phone there will be times when you will have to hold it to your ear. Even if you're using the headphones or a bluetooth headset there will be that one time when the only option is to pick up the iPhone and slap it to the side of your face and you will discover to your horror a layer of grease coming from your skin on your wonderful 3.5 inch screen. I think the cloth does a lousy job at removing it and of course the more you'll be using it as a phone the worst the problem will get.
To conclude this extensive post, I think the iPhone is a great device but not quite a killer app. Even if all the things I mentioned previously where fixed I'm still not sure I would get one because all I'm really waiting for is an iPod that looks exactly like the iPhone but with a 100GB hard drive and I don't necessarily need it to be a phone.
But then again I could change my mind about this.
And I realized that consciously or not I’ve been playing with the idea of rolling back to XP Media Center for a couple of months now. Vista just won't work for me. Not that's it's a bad Operating System, in many respects I love it and as long as you're dealing with first party software and hardware, it's great but when it comes to third party, I pretty much gave up trying to make things work.
Take my sound card for example. I had specifically picked it for it's ability to output 5.1 surround sound to my receiver and the manufacturer even released a Vista driver. the card works fine except that it will not ouput under any circumstances 5.1 surround sound.
When it comes to third party software you can end up with some pretty funky stuffs. To download 'recipes' off Usenet (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) I like to use GrabIt, specifically an older version, 1.5.2 Beta, which has always been good to me. After completing installation, entering my account information, subscribing to my fovorite newsgroups, I then proceeded to download a first batch of posts, everything seemed to go well except after opening my "Download Folder" nothing was there. I knew however from the free space left on the hard drive (big long recipe) that the files were there. After doing a quick search by size and date, I quickly realized Vista was storing my GrabIt downloads in a mirror directory under AppData. I resolved the issue by changing the security settings on the GrabIt download directory:
Right -click on "Download" -> Security -> Edit -> Users -> Allow full control.
Then there are maddening issues directly related to the Operating System itself like the User Account Control(UAC). This thing will prompt you for something as innocuous as a "cut and paste" job. "Are you sure you really want to do what you're trying to do?" Errrr yes most of the time I do, thank you very much. Some will be quick to point out that you can disable it and they would be absolutely right, however no sooner do you turn off the UAC that the Security Center freaks out because your settings potentially expose your system to hackers and viruses. So now here we go disabling the notification settings of the Security Center. All I was trying here was prevent my computer to ask me twice if I really want to move that file!
Not to mention the sidebar that's buggy at best!
So at the end of the day Windows Vista, as it is, gets between me and my computer whereas Windows XP IS my computer. I'm switching back to XP next week.
PS: G4 you can bring back “Call for Help” still broadcasted on G4 Canada and “The Screen Savers” (I hate “Attack of the Show”) any day of the week