I am only one, but still, I am one. I cannot do everything but I can do something. - Edward Everett Hale
2007, March 18
Hauptwerk Virgual Pipe Organ Software
James Pressler uses Hauptwerk to create his music files at Virtual Baroque.
Hauptwerk is a wonderful program from England; your computer can become a pipe organ. It uses sound samples of organs from all over the world; if attached to an adequate sound system, it can serve as an organ for churches, auditoriums, or in outdoor public spaces.
James Pressler uses Hauptwerk to create all his wonderful mp3 organ files on Virtual Baroque. He occasionally has midi files and a few wav files available also.
Using My Super PC and PC Perspective Hardware Leaderboard as starting points, I recently spent some time virtually building a Windows system that would meet Hauptwerk requirements and I was surprised to find that the cost, though self-built, was comparable to an equivalent Mac system.
Then, a few weeks later, the news broke from Hauptwerk:
Hauptwerk is now available for the Apple Mac (Intel and G4/G5) as well as Windows PCs. It performs so well on the current Mac range and OS X that we now recommend them as an ideal platform for Hauptwerk.
So now you can have the best of both worlds, the Mac world and the Hauptwerk Organ world. You can blow your neighbors' socks off with your virtual pipe organ on your Mac.
Requirements to use Hauptwerk Virtual Organ Software.
2007, February 18
Stress Management Ideas
Making its way around the internet.
Accept that some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue.
Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.
Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
Drive carefully. It’s not only cars that can be recalled by their Maker.
If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
Never buy a car you can’t push.
Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won’t have a leg to stand on.
Since it’s the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.
The second mouse gets the cheese.
When everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.
Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
--
2007, February 05
Very Early Signs of Spring
Today is the beginning of meteorlogical spring, halfway between the Winter solstice and the Vernal equinox.
Kate, at Ciderpress Hill has seen the Bald Eagles arrive and begin to nest. Here the signs are more subtle--the cats are beginning to shed. Both these signs are related to the increasing day length, so now we know officially that Spring will arrive.
From James Pressler, here is Georg Friedrich Kauffmann's "O Jesulein süß", a short piece to lift your spirits. It seems to bring Spring to life.
Here is the same melody, in the hands of J.S. Bach, from the Schemelli Songbook, BWV 493.
Granted, this is usually considered a piece for the Christmas season, but somehow it speaks to me of new beginnings.
2006, December 29
Louis Vierne
The Westminster Carillon in D Major for New Years.
Louis Vierne was the organist of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from 1900 to 1937, when he died at the keyboard giving his 1750th recital. A prolific composer, he is hardly heard of today though he is considered by some to be one of the greatest composers of the last century. His music seems to me to be Modern, perhaps a little prematurely. This is a favorite piece, I find it inspirational. I hope it will inspire us all to have a peaceful and productive year.
Louis Vierne, Organist of Notre Dame
The organ (English is in the second half of the page)
2006, December 21
Christmas Eve Sarejevo
For all of us at Christmas from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, directed by Paul O'Neill.
2006, December 02
More Macs in my Life
After the Classic, there have been more Macs in my life.
After I outgrew the Mac Classic in 1994, I upgraded to a refurbished LCIII, with a color monitor. This was a big step; I remembered a woman doing a MacDraw tutorial had said, you should always get a color monitor because it is so much easier on the eyes. I thought, Oh, no, I'm not a computer person, so I don't need to spend that kind of money. Well, here I was 3 and a half years later, a computer person. And she was right. On the LCIII I learned html and put up my first web page, the first version of jsbchorales.net, on March 31, 1996. I did not have storage for the ftp files so they were stored on a server at a college in Texas, thanks to Henry Howey. I covered a lot of territory on that little computer. My daughter used it while studying for her Masters degree, then it was given away.
Eventually I outgrew the LCIII after I had upgraded the RAMM, put in a new hard drive (750MB - so huge) and installed a floating point processor. This computer was connected by an AppleTalk network to a printer and another computer. I had phone lines running all over the place, mostly held in place over the doors with masking tape. Not so aesthetic, but effective.
In April 1997. I moved to a Very Large Computer, the PowerMac 9600, with a 4GB hard drive and 128MB of RAMM. This seemed so large I couldn't imagine that I would ever need another computer. I could run FrameMaker and any other program I wanted. I seemed to have arrived at the top of the world; I didn't yet appreciate how fast change happened in the computer world.
And of course, a new operating system was around the corner, OS X in March, 2001. So while I continued running my main programs on the 9600, in December 2001 I got a Mac iBook to start learning OS X and more about ethernet networking, web serving and databases.
Then in 2003 the new G5 PowerMac was introduced. I fell in love all over again and had to have one. So I gave away the 9600 which for all practical purposes I had stopped using and bought the G5.
Open, the G5 is as beautiful as the outside. It is easy to upgrade and easy to clean.
Three years ago this was the ultimate machine, with a 250GB hard drive and a GB of RAMM, and two 2Ghz processors. I expect to use it in some capacity the rest of my life. Here I make web pages, mess with MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Gallery, and work with music files.
2006, November 05
Winter and a Full Moon
Today is the beginning of meteorological winter and a Hunters' full moon.
Halfway between the Autumnal equinox and the Winter solstice, we are now at the beginning of the Celtic winter, now called meteorological winter. Already there has been snow, Loveland Colorado has 22 inches.
Here in the San Francisco Bay area, we have had a few days of rain, always welcome after the dry dormant season. So we begin our growing season while elsewhere the skiers buckle on their gear. Man-made snow has made it possible for some resorts to open early, hardware stores in the northeast are selling out of snow shovels, and people are changing to snow tires in the mid-west.
...our winter predictions are pointing towards widespread cold from coast to coast, especially for the western sections of the country,” shares Peter Geiger, Philom., Editor. Geiger continues, “The cold may not be as frigid as 30 or 40 years ago, but we do expect this to be the coldest winter we’ve seen for quite a few years.” And, after last year’s unusual warmth, this chill might make winter harder than usual.
The 2007 Farmers’ Almanac, released August 28, 2006, predicts the frigid temperatures, as much as 20 degrees below seasonal norms (and nearly 40 degrees colder than last winter), for Montana, the Dakotas and parts of Wyoming. For the Gulf Coast up through New England, unseasonably cold, or “shivery,” conditions are expected.
Snow, and lots of it, is also forecast for the nation’s midsection, parts of New England, and the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. "The Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley may be the only area spared the extreme cold," reveals Sandi Duncan, Philom., Managing Editor, "but this is not to say this area won’t be without its cold spells and significant snowfalls."
November in the NorthEast
1st-3rd. Clearing, colder. 4th-7th. Unsettled. 8th-11th. Pleasant. 12th-15th. Major East Coast storm! Heavy showers, with a few thunderstorms. Gale-force winds Mid-Atlantic Coast. Snow possible New England. 16th-19th. Windy, cold. 20th-23rd. Unsettled, with some wet snow or rain. Bundle up and bring an umbrella if you’re attending the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. 24th-27th. Fair, then very unsettled, with squalls. 28th-30th. Clearing, colder.
November in California
1st-3rd. Chilly. 4th-7th. Mixed clouds and sun, with a few showers possible. 8th-11th. Fair, becoming stormy, with rain and (over the Sierra Nevadas) snow possible. 12th-15th. Unsettled. Light snow on southern plateaus. 16th-19th. Mostly fair. 20th-23rd. Fair. 24th-27th. Very unsettled, then slowly clearing. 28th-30th. Turning much colder.
2006, November 01
A Mac Anniversary
Today is the 15th anniversary of my first Mac, a Classic.
In October 1991, I was assigned an essay for a bird study class at the University of Washington in Seattle. My daughter, who had been to college recently and knew about current trends on campus, asked me how I was going to write it. I told her, the way I always have, pen and paper then type it out.
She said, No, no. Lets go down to the computer lab and I will show you how to use the Mac.
Now, I had used a few computers before, at work, without feeling anything about them. But the minute I touched that Mac keyboard, I knew I had to have one. So on November 1, 1991, I walked out of the computer store in Ballard (Seattle) with a printer and a new Mac Classic. It had a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAMM (the maximum).
I did the paper, then went on to bigger and better things. I bought a modem and was able to hook into the University network, took free classes in Pine, the Unix mail program developed at the UW. By January I was on Compuserve and by June I was a member of the Berkeley Mac Users Group. I was learning about shareware, operating systems, and a lot about Microsoft Word 4, probably the best version they made. This meant learning about fonts, style sheets, layouts.
I would wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and start thinking about what I was working on and of course I had to get up and get going. Sleep went by the wayside for a long time.
Besides Word 4, I was learning Quicken, a small page layout program from Aldus (remember them?), Music Prose from Coda, FileMaker, the Mac operating system and odds and ends of shareware. All of this on a 40MB HD and 4MB of RAMM. It was amazing what that little computer could do.
I loved that little Mac, and how it changed my life. For the first time, I felt I was part of a community. Neither my family of origin or being married had ever given me that same sense of connection.
Here is a great little picture of the Classic with OS X running - sure, sure. Wouldn't that have been something?
