Random Playlist Song: Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto in E minor op 64 - I- Allegro molto appassionato (Hilary Hahn, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra)
Hilary Hahn’s version of the Mendelssohn concerto is outstanding. Her sweetness of tone is emphatic yet not overtly emotional, which if not properly gauged can kill a performance of this wonderful concerto. Technically, her playing is superb. She is given sympathetic and thoughtful support from the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra led by Hugh Wolff. But there are occasions when I wished the orchestra didn’t stay right on her. This is an exuberant work were the soloist dazzles; there is no need for an orchestra to propel the violinist along. Hahn is in complete command of the Mendelssohn piece. Nothing is lacking in her interpretation of Mendelssohn, and although there might be more glorious versions, (Heifetz’s recording with Charles Munch and The Boston Symphony Orchestra or Menuhin with Wilhelm Furtwangler and The Berlin Philharmonic come to mind), her performance is first rate. The sound on the Hahn disc is extraordinary, owing to the high quality audio afforded by the SACD process.
Random Trivia bit: On September 11th, 1941, construction began on the Pentagon.
The Pentagon, headquarters for the United States defense department, was conceived as a way to consolidate military leadership into one building from the more than 20 they were occupying in the late 1930s.
Pentagon construction began on September 11, 1941 and the first occupants moved into the building in late April 1942. The building was completed in January 1943.
The Pentagon became the third target hit by a hijacked airplane on 9/11/01, the 60th anniversary of the start of its construction, killing 125 people in the building, plus 59 innocent passengers and crew on the plane.
A massive reconstruction project followed the attack, and people moved into the newly-repaired area less than one year later. (It Happened 9/11)
***
I am the Polar Bear Wildzord! You got to be cool if
you want to hang with me. I don't associate
with just anyone, you know.
Which Wildzord are you?
Which Wildzord are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
***
An embarrassingly parallel problem is a parallel computing problem that can easily, or very obviously, be split up into parts that can be computed in parallel. What these problems generally have in common is that each step can be computed independently from every other step, thus each step could be made to run on a separate processor to achieve quicker results. Examples of embarrassingly parallel problems include the computation of the Mandelbrot set, and brute force key searches in cryptography.
I don't see what's so embarrassing about it.
***
These people put things so well:
Fighting Fantasy
"Fantasy peddling titans Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone pioneered this disparate series of gamebooks during the early 1980s. Their names soon became closely associated with the booming franchise, and when their individual efforts tapered off, publishers Puffin ushered in additional authors to participate in the gamebook authoring melee, but chose not to soil the front covers with their names. Thus Steve and Ian's altruistic cover presence remained throughout the series, with the supplemental authors acquiring little fame, unlike their Ganjees-like overlords.
Each imaginatively titled 'interactive adventure' attempted various methods to disguise the inevitable linear route that comprised each 400-paragraphed gamebook. Early plots invited readers to journey through mountain, tower, forest and dungeon locales with Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom, and the oft-quoted seminal dungeon crawl, Deathtrap Dungeon. Jackson also crafted some fiendishly tricky titles such as House of Hell and Creature of Havoc.
The public's demand for the series, and gamebooks in general, began to wane towards the late '80s, but falling sales did not necessarily equate to weaker output. Dead of Night, Black Vein Prophecy, Legend of the Shadow Warriors, Moonrunner and Ian Livingstone's final effort, Legend of Zagor, were some notable examples of solid work that appeared towards the tail end of the series.
By the mid '90s however, new plots that could adhere to the relatively simplistic "FF" format seemed practically exhausted, and Puffin's inevitable gamebook implosion occurred less than 15 years after the big Fighting Fantasy bang of '82. And history looks set to repeat itself with the commercially stale rebirth by Wizard Books, who simply opted to reprint existing stock, albeit in a slightly different order, with updated covers.
An aesthetically pleasing iconic symbol of '80s youth fiction, the original numbered lime green spine paperbacks can still be seen today, in amongst charity shop bric-a-brac, second hand book shops, and eBay. For many '80s teens, Fighting Fantasy represented a never seen before exciting fusion of solitaire game play, reading, and fantasy escapism, and perhaps made reading, for some anyway, truly engaging for the very first time.
Nostalgically remembered predominately by 30-somethings today, the actual game play itself could be considered less appealing than the fondness of an ever-distant childhood memory.
Now turn to 400..."
***
10 songs
1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the “shuffle” command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That’s right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It’s time for total musical honesty.
5. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.
6. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You don’t have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you’d like.
Grieg - Holberg Suite - 2 - Sarabande (Andante)
Handel - Water Music - Adagio (Capella Istropolitana/Bohdan Warchal)
Muppets - Under The Boardwalk
Haydn - String Quartet No 48 In C, Op 64, No 1 - 3 Allegretto scherzando (Kodaly Quartet)
TBS and Friends [Ed: Toh Ban Sheng's 2000 farewell concert] - John Rutter - The Music's Always There With You
Beethoven - Piano Sonata 13 In E Flat Op 27 No 01 - 02 - Allegro molto e vivace (Arrau)
Victoria, Tomas Luis De - 02 - Jesum tradidit
Classic Disney Volume I - A Whale Of A Tale - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
Chopin - Etude Op 25 No 5 (Mei-Ting Sun)
Bach - Wachet Auf, Ruft Uns Die Stimme - 2 - Recitative - Er Kommt, Er Kommt (Karl Richter)
Curiously, none of my Power Rangers music showed up *g* Of course, this is really embarrassing only for those who don't upload their playlists.
(Source: podeam)
***
"Hilary Hahn, despite her serious, thoughtful approach to music, seems to have succumbed to the current trend among today's performers--perhaps symptomatic of the jet-age--to play as fast as their fingers will carry them. The fast movements are taken at such speeds that they lose all their elegance, grace and charm, become prone to false accents, and sound aggressive, hectic and breathless."
After hearing a sample of BWV 1043 (included on the album this comment is about) I tend to agree.
***
Q: I want a low-stress high-paying job where I can help people. Do you think psychology is the right career for me?
A: No. Become a plumber. Just about anyone will pay you a small fortune to unclog a stopped-up toilet.
***
Someone offers this justification for Islamic polygyny:
I think what most people don't understand about polygamy is that it isn't just for the male's whims and fancies. There are laws governing polygamy, one of which is that if a man chooses to take a second wife, the first wife has to give permission. If she doesn't, it isn't polygamy as allowed by Islam. The fact that most men do take advantage of polygamy and give it a bad connotation shouldn't detract from its intent.
In polygamy, the man is expected to treat each wife fairly. In adultery, the feelings of the victimised party are hurt. The logic behind allowing adultery was that sometimes the wife is unable to satisfy her husband sexually or emotionally or whatever, so he takes another wife such that he can have his needs fulfilled without having to abandon his wife in favour of another woman.
Islam is a logical religion; polygamy allows a Muslim man to take up to four wives. If you notice the population trends, there are a lot more women than men. Polygamy gives every woman a chance to have a husband and to have legitimate children, if she should wish. Don't confuse polygamy with adultery, which is basically being unfaithful.
I dunno how to put it across effectively. There are books which can explain it better. But in some cases, a man is capable of loving two women with the same passion and if he's able to provide both with equally fulfilling marriages and lives, he should be allowed to do so rather than to have to choose one and leave the other one cold.
Sexual dissatisfaction isn't the only grounds for monogamy, but you can't deny that sex is an important part of marriage, since it contributes towards intimacty. And men do have stronger sexual drives than women, generally speaking. It's just taking into account that as women age, sometimes they aren't as giving, and it's better for a man to have sexual intercourse with a woman whom he is legally married to rather for him to go to Batam or whatever and get AIDS from the women there.
Me: Actually for younger ages, there are more men than women; women start outnumbering men only around the menopausal years or so. More and more women are choosing to remain single nowadays too. Thus, Islamic polygyny reduces the pool of available women for men.
Besides which, what happens if the husband is unable to satisfy his wife sexually or emotionally or whatever?
Going by your logic, polyandry and polygyny both should be legalised, with the former more prevalent when people are young and the latter when people are old.
(Not that I have a problem with that, but I'm betting that you'll recoil at the suggestion)
***
Interview with Wes Cherry, the guy who programmed Solitaire
*choke* There's a Livejournal community with Singapore Idol slash involving (you guessed it) Taufik and Sylvester. Someone, please bludgeon me over the head with a saucepan now.
The most irritating curriculum vitae in the world - in flash, set to music and sung out of tune and rhythm
***
People were expressing horror, shock and outrage at the case of the maggot-infested Shih Tzus in Pasir Ris:
A: These people ought to rot and die a slow and painful death.
Me: And I suppose that those who squash cockroaches should be squashed also.
B: Dogs are pets and cockroaches are pests. They are a world apart.
Me: Dogs are pets and humans are humans. They are a world apart.
How about the torture battery chickens go through? I'm sure they are a level above pests, no? Should we imprison chicken farmers in cages, with nowhere to move and with their noses cut off?
I suppose I have reaffirmed my reputation as a heartless bastard.
***
I have gone wild with my Firefox Extensions!
Last updated: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 06:22:12 GMT
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.8a6) Gecko/20041210 Firefox/1.0+ StumbleUpon/1.999
*** Extensions (35):
stumbleupon 1.999 (Visit and rate random sites - good when I'm bored)
Show Anchors 1.0 (Shows <a name> tags and lets you copy them to the clipboard with a click - good for linking to anchors)
Copy URL+ 1.2.2 (Copy page's URL, Title and/or selected text to clipboard)
Tweak Network 1.0 (Turbo charge with pipelining and boosting simultaneous connection settings)
OpenBook 1.2.0 (Customise Add Bookmark dialog)
Linky 2.2.0 (Open selected links in tabs)
Tabbrowser Preferences 1.1.1 (Tweak hidden tabbed browsing preferences)
Popup ALT Attribute 1.3.2004102501 (Displays img alt tags as tooltips)
ieview 0.84 (View screwy pages in IE)
Disable Targets For Downloads 0.9 (Attempts to prevent links to download files opening in a new window)
How'd I Get Here 0.1 (Goes to the page from which you were first referred to the current page)
Enhanced History Manager 0.4.1.02 (Brings the power of Seamonkey's History Manager back to Firefox)
keyconfig 20040910 (Customise shortcuts)
Autoclose Bookmark & History Folders 0.0.2 (Closes bookmark/history folders in the sidebar when you open new ones, ala IE)
Bookmark Duplicate Detector 0.0.1 (Prevents you from adding duplicate bookmarks)
Browser Uptime 1.6.0 (Displays how long the browser and this browser window have been open)
Chrome Cleaner 0.3 (Removes duplicate entries from installed-chrome.txt, and optionally removes entries that reference non-existent jar files.)
Translate Page 0.1 (Returns Seamonkey's menu option to translate current page with Google)
Extended Statusbar 1.0 (Displays the currently loading page's loading speed, percentage done, time left and loaded size ala Opera)
Favicon Picker 0.2.5 (Change and wipe favicons for individual bookmarks)
FillFilesUploadForm 0.2.1 (Automatically fills file upload forms - good when you're uploading tens of pages)
File Size 1.1.4 (Find the size of a document or file linked to)
HiddenPrefs 0.3 (Expose hidden preferences)
InfoLister 0.7.5 (List extensions, themes and useragent string - what I used to get this listing)
mid 0.2.0.2004120801 (Checks multiple dictionaries at once)
Named anchors 0.15 (List the anchors on the page with their names in the Page Info dialog box)
Pithy 0.2 (Restores Ctrl + I as a shortcut to open the Page Info box - simple but great. I never liked Ctrl + I opening the bookmarks sidebar anyday)
Popup Count 0.2.6 (Count the number of popups blocked so far)
Show Failed URL 0.1.4 (Shows the URL that failed instead of popping up an unhelpful dialog box - good when a link opened in a tab fails to load, so you don't lose the URL)
Linkification 0.9.19 - (Turns plain text email addresses or URLs into live links)
Translation Panel 1.4.13 (Popups a box with translation of selected text - rather buggy, also allows invocation of box where on-the-fly translation can be performed - that one works well)
vbrowseit 1.0 (Privacy browser - good for getting around proxies too)
wmlbrowser 0.6.5 (Views pages written in Wireless Markup Language - WML)
downTHEMall! 0.9.4 (Download all files on a page, filtered by name/extension)
*** Disabled Extensions (6):
User Agent Switcher 0.6.1 (Spoofs useragent string - good for anal IE-only sites, but usually it's easier to just open IE using ieview)
Hotmail Tabs 0.9 (For when M$N Hotmail was screwing around with link tags. Right now I'm fine since I enabled single-window mode, diverting new windows to tabs)
Auto Copy 0.3 (Select text to copy it, ala Trillian and mIRC)
AutoMarks 0.1 (Import bookmarks in the bookmark root folder so they display in autocomplete results - doesn't work for subfolders unfortunately)
Wikipedia 0.5.2 (Simplifies Wiki editing)
refspoof 0.6 (Spoof the HTTP referrer string)
Alt-Text for Links (Displays links' destination URLs in a tooltip window; Nice Title) does the job also, and more beautifully, but doesn't work for all links, so.)
*** Themes (1):
Firefox (default) 2.0 (Aww. I'm so boring. Anyhow theme install is broken on this build)
*** Plugins (11):
Mozilla Default Plug-in
Shockwave for Director
RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In (32-bit)
RealPlayer Version Plugin
Shockwave Flash
Nullsoft Winamp Plug-in for Gecko
Java Plug-in
Adobe Acrobat
QuickTime Plug-in 6.5.1
Microsoft® DRM
Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library
Xephyris would not approve.
