Author: mcq

Cheap technology

So Deb accidentally went out and bought an SACD of Yo-Yo Ma instead of a CD. Of course, being the geek that I am, I took this as an excuse to go buy an SACD player. There is actually a reasonable selection of various makes and models in Ottawa, but most are either too expensive … Continue reading “Cheap technology”

So Deb accidentally went out and bought an SACD of Yo-Yo Ma instead of a CD. Of course, being the geek that I am, I took this as an excuse to go buy an SACD player. There is actually a reasonable selection of various makes and models in Ottawa, but most are either too expensive or too limited in capability. I eventually found a Samsung that, in addition to playing, SACDs will also play DVDs and DVD-Audio disks. It seems to have pretty decent specs, but I won’t know for certain until I’ve got it home. In any case, $200 seemed like a surprisingly low price for something with this many features.

update: I played around with it last night. The picture quality is good — I’d say slightly better than the old one. The GUI is pretty basic though. It played everything I could throw at it: DVD with DolbyDigital, DVD with DTS, CD, SACD and DVD-Audio. The only wrinkle was that I had to plug in the analog outs to get SACD to work. This actually makes sense: It’s not a PCM signal, so it’s not suitable for writing out over the optical digital connection.

(Did I mention it has a DVI out and will upsample to HiDef? 🙂 )

Last snowboarding lesson of the season

Today is our last snowboarding lesson for this year. (I’m just waiting for Dennis to get ready. I’ll update tonight to let you know how it goes.) update: We’re back. It started snowing heavily just as we were leaving, so by the time we got to the slopes there was about 5..10 cm of new … Continue reading “Last snowboarding lesson of the season”

Today is our last snowboarding lesson for this year.

(I’m just waiting for Dennis to get ready. I’ll update tonight to let you know how it goes.)

update: We’re back. It started snowing heavily just as we were leaving, so by the time we got to the slopes there was about 5..10 cm of new powder. What an awesome way to end the season! Actually, I think Dennis and I will try to get out one more time over the march break.

Cello sectional

A cello sectional is when only the cellos get together to practice. The Divertimento cello section had one last Thursday at the Agudath Israel Synagogue. It was led by Donald Whitton, who is a well-known and highly skilled player and teacher. He had not previously seen the pieces we are doing for this semester, but … Continue reading “Cello sectional”

A cello sectional is when only the cellos get together to practice. The Divertimento cello section had one last Thursday at the Agudath Israel Synagogue. It was led by Donald Whitton, who is a well-known and highly skilled player and teacher. He had not previously seen the pieces we are doing for this semester, but was able to play them well (much better than I) after only a few moments with them.

I learned a number of playing tricks and some better fingerings. All in all a very successful evening.

Whew!

Ok. This time for sure. Getting MySQL and PHP installed: easy. Figuring out how to configure and install WordPress: no problem. Figuring out why WP thought my site should be called “G5.local”: now that was a problem. In case you were wondering, it was because that’s what hostname returns until you modify your /etc/hostconfig to … Continue reading “Whew!”

Ok. This time for sure.

Getting MySQL and PHP installed: easy. Figuring out how to configure and install WordPress: no problem. Figuring out why WP thought my site should be called “G5.local”: now that was a problem.

In case you were wondering, it was because that’s what hostname returns until you modify your /etc/hostconfig to not say “-AUTOMATIC-“. I mean, of course (!), how could I have been so stupid. 🙂