What is the deal with single socks? I did the “once a month” gathering and sorting of socks from our laundry today, and as usual, ended up with an amazing number of single socks!! Where do the other ones go? I think it must be like the lost pens… there is a secret mission for all socks to travel to their home planet.
Unexplainable number of single socks
I’m sooo angry with myself! I keep on telling family members about being careful to not click or run wierd programs off the internet. I had recently spent ages getting wierd malware and spyware off my parents and parents-in-law’s computers. And what do I do this week? I accidentally ran an executable called “wmcodec_update.exe” thinking it was a high definition codec update for an embedded Windows media player!
As soon as I ran it I knew I shouldn’t have. Luckily my hard drive isn’t totally silent – because the thing that made me realise it was bad was hearing the hard drive go crazy! I thought “*@^&$!! It’s deleting all my files!” I immediately shut down the laptop and pulled out all my external USB drives.
I first ran my favourite Spybot Search and Destroy but it didn’t seem to have done the full job. I first tried to remove wmcodec_update.exe by following the instructions at geekstogo and I followed the recommendation on Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware at Yahoo Answers.
I also noticed a few wierd things – my wallpaper had changed to show a fake window about viruses, I didn’t have the permissions to change my wallpaper back, and there was a “new” virus scanner that had installed itself on my computer called Antivirus XP 2008 which seemed to scanning my computer, reporting hundreds of viruses!!
I noticed a few wierd processes running in Task Manager. I tried to kill them but they seemed to keep coming back.
Avast found a virus
I’m naughty – I had recently removed all virus scanners from my laptop, so I quickly put on Avast and did a few scans which did reveal and repair more traces of the virus.
msconfig showing 2 suspicious startup processes
Unfortunately the fake antivirus program was still there. I used msconfig to disable it and Task Manager to delete the process but it wasn’t all gone! I came across this article on bleeping computer with details to remove it and its files and I think I’ve now got rid of it.
Suspicious folder on hard drive
Arghhh!! I’ve lost a few days use of the laptop and my Friday night. Well, now I’ll be extra careful about running unknown processes and have that virus scanner permanently running *sigh*.
Guess who!
After dinner on school nights, we usually ban the TV and encourage the kids to play a board game or card game of some kind. Last night was Uno, but tonight was Guess Who!
Unfortunately having a 7 year old play a 9 year old does expose differences in logic and problem solving between the ages. Guess who is an interesting game in that you need some problem solving skills to determine the best question to ask depending on what people you have left. Our 7 year old is still asking semi random questions that don’t help all the time. Like “Does your person have a moustache?” when all her remaining people have a moustache! Cute 
The other hard concept that comes up in the game is the double negative? Like, “Does your person have a hat?”. “No”. This means you eliminate the people WITH hats. Our little one still gets mixed up and sometimes eliminates the opposite! One day it will click…
The Opera and Music Theatre Resource
I’m so proud of my wife! A couple of years ago, she was asked if she would like to co-author a new music resource book for teachers, focussing on teaching musical concepts through Opera and Music Theatre. She would be in charge of writing the section on Music Theatre – a personal passion of hers. She of course was very excited, agreed and started the hard slog.
It was a very different experience – designing example lessons and writing for teachers, rather than creating lessons for her own students. Also, it was all a new insight for both of us into how a book is produced – the deadlines, the proof reading, but then afterwards all the activities that followed like layout, and obtaining permissions for musical examples.
The other different thing to deal with was that she didn’t get paid while writing. I’m assuming that this is the usual way it works unless you’re a very successful author? For my wife, the money (a very small percentage) only starts to roll in for each book that is sold. We both did sit down and discuss the purpose of this whole exercise – we agreed that large financial rewards was not the key goal (although that would be nice!) but rather it was to contribute to the greater community of music education in Australia and for the personal experience.
Well, finally the book is now being sold and the book launch is tomorrow! It seems sort of anti-climatic since it was written last year, but it’s good moment to pause and celebrate.
If you are a classroom music teacher (high school) and want some new ideas or to incorporate Opera or Music Theatre examples and concepts into your teaching, buy this book!!!
More info here: http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.au/html/9780070137967.html
One photography technique that I have really started to dig recently is HDR – high dynamic range images.
Basically, it’s a photo that has been processed to portray a large range of brightness (really dynamic range, but I’ll use the term brightness for simplicity). If you look at the environment around you, there are parts that are light/bright, for example, where direct sunlight is hitting objects. And there may be parts of the environment that are quite dark, for example, objects in the shadows. I like to think of all the brightness available as a line, going from dark to bright.
Now I know the diagram below is not mathematically correct, but it’s a simple way to think about dynamic range.
Brightness line
Film and digital camera sensors (of today, 2008!) currently are unable to capture the detail in extreme bright parts of the environment, and the detail in the extreme dark parts of the environment simultaneously in one photo. If you want to be able to “see” things in the dark areas or shadows, you will probably end up with the bright parts being extremely bright or white and washed out. Alternately, if you want to be able to “see” things in the bright areas in a scene, the objects in the shadows will be all dark.
Using the simplified Brightness Line diagram above, I like to think of the camera as being able to capture only a portion of that brightness line. And the “exposure” settings of the camera determining where that region is – whether it’s more on the dark portion, or more on the bright portion of that line.
A typical example of an image with this problem is if you take an indoor photo looking through a window.
Subject exposed, background washed out
Here you can see the features and detail of my daughter, but nothing through the window. It was too bright. If I had exposed the outside, my daughter would have turned into a silhouette.
The are two main sources of the problem. The first is that the digital camera sensor cannot capture such large differences in lighting – that is, it has a small dynamic range (typically 12 bits worth). The second, is that the screens we view pictures on, and the paper we print photos on, also have a small dynamic range (typically 8 bits worth).
So why bother with high dynamic ranges? Really, it’s a photographic style that tries to recreate all the details as “seen” by the human eye. Our eyes don’t see a washed out window background in real life. A combination of the eyes ability to adjust “exposure” dynamically through the use of the pupil, the actual sensitivity of our retina and the cleverness of our brain allows us to resolve a much higher dynamic range than currently possible on a camera sensor or display.
HDR images are really images with a large dynamic range. This is all good, but our computer screens cannot display a large dynamic range. So what people do now is to process the high dynamic range and convert it into a low dynamic range, but in a way that doesn’t lose detail from the extremely bright and extremely dark areas of the scene. This is known as tone mapping.
And as for how HDR images are captured in the first place if there is a limitation due to digital camera sensors? By taking multiple photos of the same scene with multiple exposures. This way, we are moving that fixed region along the brightness line, and taking snapshots along the way. Afterwards, the photos can be “mixed” together and then tone mapped to produce a single photo with detail in both the shadows and highlights.
Multiple exposures to increase dynamic range
There are heaps of amazing photos on the internet and lots of links to learn more about HDR images. Here is an example of a beautiful capture of a boat by Peter Van Allen, found on flickr. If only a single shot was taken, the boat would most probably be very dark or silhouetted.
The Chesil Beach at Portland by Peter Van Allen on Flickr
In the end, HDR is another photographic technique that has really popped up due to digital photo editing software making it easier to combine images. Not everyone likes HDR images and I’ve seen some that are more artistic and stylistic than realistic, but there are some other images that are just awesome. And sometimes, we may really want to blow out the background so that it emphasises the subject in the foreground. In any case, it’s another technique to play around with! See the links below for some other great examples.
Photos
35 Fantastic HDR Photos – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/10/35-fantastic-hdr-pictures/
Flickr’s HDR Photo Pool – http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/pool/
Flickr’s Photomatix Photo Pool – http://www.flickr.com/groups/photomatix/pool/
More detailed explanations
Detailed FAQ on HDR -http://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#dr
Detailed explanation on bit depth and dynamic range – http://www.normankoren.com/digital_tonality.html
Software
Dynamic Photo HDR – http://www.popphoto.com/popularphotographyfeatures/4472/hdr-how-to-dynamic-photo-hdr.html
Tutorial using Photoshop CS2 – http://backingwinds.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-create-professional-hdr-images.html
Photomatix – http://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/tut_mac/index.html
How to
A collection of HDR tutorials – http://tutorialblog.org/hdr-tutorials-roundup/
A very clear step by step walk through using Photomatix and Photoshop – http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandmania/2734520399/in/photostream
Each year the kids take part in some dancing exams for jazz and tap. As usual, we’re slack parents and we suddenly realised that the exam is this Monday. And… the dance costume and shoes aren’t done yet!
I’m not sure how it happened, but a few years ago, I became the allocated shoe painter.
So, while the kids were watching their movie on Friday’s movie night, I started the ritual again… anticipating the smell of newspaper, the blackness of my hands when I’m done, the smell of the paint, the joy of finding a corner of newspaper I can hold to turn the shoe upside down…
Painting dance shoes
I’ve had a think about the whole recording thing. I want to do more and just post them up here on my blog.
I woke at 4.30am this morning, from a coughing fit and congested nose (yep, I’m sick) and couldn’t go back to sleep. So I lay there, listening to the sounds from the road, thinking about my blog and my violin and the internet.
There are so many budding photographers out there, all displaying their work on the internet, some sharing it with Creative Commons licenses. There are photographs of so many things in the world – all with different compositions, angles. Sure, many of the photos from people on flickr and similar sites aren’t professionals – they aren’t doing it for a living.
So I was thinking, why can’t music be the same? Surely there are millions of musicians out there, millions of kids learning instruments, learning all sorts of classical (and other) repertoire. Why can’t all this classical repertoire be recorded and shared with each other? Imagine if there was a site where people could upload their recordings of a particular piece, tag it like “Mozart”, “Clarinet”, etc. Eventually, the end dream would be that as much of the classical composed repertoire out there would be able to be listened to, recorded by any number of people, all with different interpretations. For free. In the same way photos are stored and shared by flickr.
I think I’ll start recording my “back catalogue”. That is, going back to all the pieces that I have already learnt and trying to get them back up to some standard and recording them. In fact, I think it’s a shame I didn’t record them at the time I learnt them, as now I have no idea how well or badly I played them!
I did a bit of a search to see if anything existed that is like this. I did find an article about Tasmin Little “giving” away some recordings (see here: http://www.reuters.com/article/musicNews/idUSL089358120080111) , and did come across some sites with “free” mp3s of classical music, but nothing that has the central community spirit of flickr or similar sites.
Free Classical Music
* Piano Society – http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=1
* List of links to various free mp3 sites – http://www.dmoz.org/Arts/Music/Sound_Files/Classical/MP3/
* Royalty Free Music – http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/index.html?genre=Classical
If you know of any others, please let me know.
Back to my violin again. I had it out on the weekend to play some Secret Garden music and other standards at Church. Then, I had all the recording gear set up to record our 9 year old singing.
So I thought – why not record my violin playing? It’s something that I used to do once in a while as part of practising. It’s weird, but what you think you are producing and playing is not always what comes out. Not just on technique like intonation, clarity, etc, but also in interpretation.
I’m going to try something that I’m not sure others have tried before – I will record myself once in a while and ask for advice over the internet. It can be to do with anything – performance, interpretation, technical, etc. I’m open for suggestions!
So, first up is the Adagio from the Sonata No. 1 by Bach for solo violin. It is a beautiful piece that I always wanted to play when I was really learning the violin. Last year I had a look at it and worked on it a bit I practiced it a little last night and recorded this.
Bach Violin Sonata No. 1 Adagio
Next up is the Fuga, the second movement from the same Violin Sonata. I only started working on this after the Adagio, but I haven’t finished learning the notes by far. I recorded this raw with no practice beforehand as a snapshot of what I have to work on. As you will hear, I need to practice quite a few things including mastering the 3 and 4 note chords more fluently. Unfortunately, I also whistled the E string quite a few times but I didn’t want to go back to re-record it yet. Listening back, my playing sounds a bit all too uniform and needs much more contrast, in dynamics and articulation and interpretation.
I made a little recording mistake and didn’t watch the recording levels and ended up clipping the recording a few times. You’ll also notice that I did cheat a little – I played with music and had to stop to turn the pages – I tried to remove the gaps, but they’re not totally seamless. However, I’d still like some feedback on it overall.
My plan is to take the feedback, as well as continue to practise, and post up a few more recordings as I go along.
On the weekend, the kids had a sleep over party with some relatives and a friend. Our little family of four suddenly became a large group of seven! It sure did seem like a good idea at the time
Judging by the amount of running, screaming, singing, dress ups and general mess that was made, I think they all had a good time. Wifey and I did comtemplate once during the weekend if this is what it would be like with 5 kids. (Note to self – need to save up for another TV – one TV is not enough to share between seven people.)
Luckily the kids are now old enough that I can get them to pack most of the debris up themselves.
Here’s some of the aftermath:
Wanna play dress ups?
Bath time
Drying out in front of the heater
Well today I had a small photo assignment.. at work! I had to do a group shot, probably outdoors. I do have a cheap studio lighting kit, but it’s not portable and I don’t have any battery packs or anything. So I decided to do it minimalist – strobist style.
Unfortunately, I suddenly realised last night that I didn’t have any adapter to mount my Speedlight onto my lighting stand! D’oh! After dropping off the kids, I tackled the traffic into the city and eventually was lent an umbrella swivel bracket from PRA Imaging. Thanks PRA! You saved my day
Now to wait until they come in stock and I’ll grab a couple…
Umbrella & Flash Shoe Swivel Bracket
