DD/Kozena - London

London Barbican Centre - last November 26. Exactly, ages ago, but I thought it was high time I wrote something about it, in case I ever want to go back to my own memories (because I happen to be my only reader after all, heh). And I am THAT lazy I am to copy and paste from what I wrote at the time in the two music lists I usually lurk about (and post every million years), the Andreas Scholl Society (SchollSoc for short, never the acronym please!)) and David Daniels Fans (DDF). And I'm going to do what I always resist doing, posting my own piccie online. I don't why, really, it's a sort of odd shyness. But gosh, I do have a piccie with David Daniels!! (I also have piccies with Scholl, should look them up and post them). I would have liked one with Kozena, but the woman was so busy signing, she was positively sieged! XD
So here we go:

I wrote to SchollSoc:

I quite agree in everything Sally said, so I'm only going to add a couple of thoughts. I think someone just expressed my feelings re comparisons between Scholl and DD. John said he was "forever intrigued by how two great singers can be so different and each so thrilling".

Just my thoughts. It is really difficult (if not painful!) for me to compare them - it's like comparing, I don't know, Placido Domingo and Cecilia Bartoli? They are such different voices! I know what characteristics make me like each so much, but it would be unfair to make those the forte of one against the other. Just like Sally, I think Scholl's coloratura is quite unrivalled in its sheer clarity and seemingly effortless deliverance. Then, DD gives me the real goosebumps at times. His voice and his singing are so warm and so intense (his Dove Sei at the Barbican was one of the most amazing renditions of a fav of mine ever, I was left quite breathless), and he's such a superb actor (you didn't even need to listen to the first bars of the music to know the general tone of whatever he was singing, you knew by his facial expression before they even started playing, I'm sure he really felt everything he sang!). But that is not saying I find the one lacking in those qualities I emphasized in the other. Gosh, Daniels' coloratura is still much better than many a reputed singer, and may my lips be sealed forever if I ever suggest I don't find Scholl's singing extraordinarily entrancing and melting!

It was a superb concert. I am a big Kozena fan as well, and it'll be almost impossible for me to forget her thrilling rendition of Dido's Lament. Same for all the brave spite she put into "Scherza Infida". It felt so tragic, so betrayed, so resentful. Just like Daniels, she's an amazing actress who seems to be able to relate so well to the feelings she's conveying with her singing. Indeed I would have wished she would have answered several glances from Daniels - I think he wished to interact a bit more with her while singing duets, she was more for singing to the audience. It would have been quite amazing as they are both such good actors. Their "Pur ti miro" was quite a historical performance in my view - difficult to express how exciting it was. I'm sure even Monteverdi would have been a bit awed at the rendition of his own piece!

And her dress was one of the most awesome bits of clothing I've ever set my eyes on. Quite a dream frock. And as Sally and I were discussing on our way back from the concert, they really should stop making those piccies that make her look like your average soft blonde.
She's very attractive, but she also looks much more intelligent and interesting than in the pictures.

I had a fantastic time, in brief. Worth the exhausting trip to and back. Worth anything twice as exhausting as well. I also took the chance to do some Christmas shopping - though they confiscated my Christmas crackers at the airport. What merciless cruelty, dear dear.

And then to DDF I wrote:

I've already posted a bit on the subject in SchollSoc, and was considering quoting myself, but as a few of you are members of both, it might be a bit boring, so anyway.

Yes, it was my first time seeing Daniels live. All worth the trip to London in its own right. Then as Sue said, I am a Kozena fan as well, maybe not as devoted as I am to Scholl and Daniels, but who else am I that devoted to? So the concert was a wonderful treat. And of course one has listened to the cds so many times one thinks one knows the voices so well, but nothing, not even all your enthusiastic comments on the subject, could have prepared me for the experience. Wow, such super actors both were. I have seen Daniels doing opera in video, so I know he is a good actor, but recital is a different thing, and it might be harder to get the mood right, but he certainly got every single of them just as right as if he were performing in the staged version of the full opera. And it was quite a wide range of moods. Even in "Se in fiorito" wasn't my favourite of the concert (just like Sally I'd like his coloratura a tad clearer - please don't shoot me!), he really looked the part of sudden love and butterflies in one's stomach and the likes. Quite amazing. But my big favourite was "Dove Sei" - slow, passionate grief seems to suit his singing so much. I caught myself trembling, and the place was quite overheated, you know! One of the most deeply felt performances of that pieces I've ever heard, and ever wil for all that.

"Sound the trumpet" was pleasant more as a curiosity, I think. I think I'd rather have two mezzos or two CTs, voices with a similar colour. It was nice though. But "Pur ti miro" was just amazing. Amazing. Absolutely impossible for me to describe. Such a pity Kozena decided not to look at Daniels for the duets, they both being such singers. I saw Daniels turning to her both in "Io t'abraccio" and in that Theodora duet, but by "Pur ti miro" he had desisted. So much the pity for her, she was missing a nice view! I remarked a couple of times I really liked the suit - not the usual ones for recital, but it suit (!) him a lot. A very nice suit indeed. And her dress, or in Sally's words, THE frock. Gosh. It was quite a work of art. I loved it so much.

And I got my piccie with the man (I didn't even need to ask him to pose, he immediately reacted on seeing Sally approach with my camera - quite nice of him, as I was sort of embarrassed!). I look huge :-S (I'm certainly not wearing that outfit in a loooong time!) but he looks great. I have a notion improvised snaps suit him even more than studio ones. It seems to bring that natural charm of his to the surface. Something one can't understand that well either until you see him in the flesh.

I should really treat myself to another chance to see him live again. Certainly in an occasion with a little less instrumental music. However good the orchestra was, it was not for them I was there! And I'm sure I could really have done with a few more jewels from Daniels and Kozena! He has been a great success in Spain, so I'm sure I'll get plenty of opportunities to do so in the near future!

So here it is! Off to work now.

Perl, ACL2 and Japanese GBA games

Finally I can actually write something on my blog!

Well, it's not like I haven't had anything to write. What I haven't had is TIME.

That said, I've got some work done on my end of minor project. Now it can process the output produced by the list inversion example. It's a very simple one, but hey, it's a first step.

Still, Perl IS a Swiss Army Chainsaw. And I thought regular expressions were already powerful enough. The problem is that the language lets you get away with too much. Good thing I turned on strict mode with all the warnings. Phew.

On the Japanese side, I've been playing FF Tactics Advance on my GBA for a while. It's nice that I can play some REAL games now without resorting to a dictionary every 5 minutes. Now it's only every 15 LOL.

I played Pokémon Sapphire for a bit, but it's not so good for my Japanese: EVERYTHING is in Hiragana! How am I supposed to practice my kanji with that? Square games are nice, though. It was to be expected, anyway.

It's funny that sometimes they use weird kanji compounds just to save some screen real estate. (Whoops, can't remember an example. Blah. )

Right now, I think I have just about enough reading and comprehension materials to last me for a while: a newspaper, several flyers, a tourist safety manual, manga, games, anime...

I think I'll shop soon for a better dictionary. The Kodansha and the Collins are good, but they ARE entry-level dictionaries. And no matter what they say, real dictionaries are still the best.

Intermediate-level textbooks would be nice too, but I don't think I have enough time for that.

Though it is true that looking up words by kanji and the like is best done in electronic dictionaries. Wonder if anyone made one for the GBA? Now that'd be a nice project for the summer, yup.

Anyhoo, enough for today. Ja!

Vanity Fair

I did say I'd be updating more regularly. Well, I was reading this book on autobiography for my new subject, you see, which is not going to be of any use, as it focuses not on the genre itself but on how to address the issue of writing your own life narrative. But it does encourage people to sit daily and write any reminiscence, miscellanous comment or the likes that crosses their minds at the mo. I liked the idea. I always tell myself I'll just write something plain and straight to the point, but I suppose I like chattering that much. I was reading the Dalai Lama the other day saying in a way senseless chattering is a sort of sin (in the Bhuddist sense, you know, something that might carry bad karma as it implies harm to others) and it has worried me somewhat, just in the self-knowledge sort of line. I should try and find his own explanation of the fact (he does not go into details, he is just listing examples) But then, what's senseless about my chattering, anyone? Do not let me down, oh reader.

In any case, why Vanity Fair? Because I'll be chatting about the current sales and about that kimono sewing I shall hopefully be undertaking in brief. I think my sewing abilities hardly go further than attaching buttons and things of that sort, first-aid sewing, you see. But there's this anime convention in Jerez my friends and I look forward so, and this year it's bound to be great fun because all my anime friends are coming, plus I shall be back from Scotland by that time, unlike the previous year. So Carmen is really insisting in our dressing the part - maybe going as one of our fav characters, or something Japanese at least. I love the idea myself, and I bought a pattern for a kimono from Ebay last summer. Lack of experience and procrastination have stopped me so far. But now I've decided, I'll do it - and I'll do it on my own - it can only be spoiled, and I'll always learn something. So I've been looking into what I need. I'll be transferring and cutting the pieces into the paper before I leave for Scotland (I also need to consider widening a bit around my sitting apparatus, which is the bit which seems to be a few cms too narrow for my generous proportions - I'll have to consult whether I'm measuring my hips at the right place though; then narrowing the waist, as mine is thinner than the average for my size, am I not an odd shape or what?) Then once back I'll set myself to cutting the fabric and sewing, which should be done promptly or I won't make it before the convention. I'm only making a kimono, a bow and a string, not the haori or upper jacket. Now if I make it right and on time, I might be making that one as well. Colours: Black outside, lining read, bow red, string black. Prospective haori red, to go with my tabi socks (see piccie - this was a Christmas pressie from Japanese friend Takko, aren't they cute?).

I know I said I'd be talking about my only sales shopping trip of the season, but it is so late and there loads I need to do today. Just bought some shoes, some lovely Mickey Mouse slippers, the softest, cutest Minnie Mouse cushion for my pc chair and a Winnie the Pooh ornament for my mobile. Just a couple of whims - all cheap and nice ;) And I did need the shoes, it just annoys me to buy them during the season to see the same pair half price during the sales! So I'd rather wait unless they are the most wondrous pair of shoes ever made.

Vain indeed. So far so good. Off to work you procrastinating pro XD.

Long time no see

I've been so dreadfully naughty. Carmen is right - not updating for such a long, long time. At the beginning it's just because one doesn't have that much to say, and then when there is one doesn't have the time and in the end there are too many things to say to write a single post

So here I am - less than two weeks before leaving for Scotland. February is mid-term at uni, and the subject I'm lecturing in has come to an end, so here I am with a pile of essays to correct. Oh dear. There are some amusing bits, like a student reporting "vulgarities" in Lord Tennyson's "The War", you know:

Let your Reforms for a moment go,
Look to your butts and make good aims.
Better a rotten borough or so,
Than a rotten fleet or a city of flames!
Form! form! Riflemen form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen form!

So I wonder how my student pictures looking to your *insert appropriate vulgar term* while making good aim. I was tempted to draw a huge ROTFL smilie, but then I just wrote - "Check in a dictionary" or something to that effect. Now I'm correcting another essay which states that the rhyme is "perfect" for almost every poem in the collection. Whatever perfect is? A sonnet? An iambic tetrameter? These are, of course, just the amusing bits. Then there are those pasting straight from their bibliography, gosh, how can they think I will not find it odd when a first year with dubious grammar and basic vocabulary writes "The kind of aesthetic connection that the speaker experiences with the urn is ultimately insufficient to human life"? And this is one of the simplest bits I've marked as "suspicious". Now mistakes are ok, but I just can't stand people not doing their own work. Tut tut. They are lucky I'm a softie, as my colleague told me, don't wear your Sister of Charity habit!

In any case, yes I've been baaaad, but I promise to write my bit every now and then. I should post on that DD/Kozena concert - have a piccie and all! Then about our trip to Barcelona, Christmas, my ordeals with the new subject, and my second initiation (I can't remember anything from my first, so it still is an act of initiation, is it not?) in knitting (just a scarf with the Gryffindor colours, heh). Thanks Lauri for teaching clumsy me!

It's a Mozart anniversary, btw. Started one of these serial collections but just bought one cd as I have most of those anyway. Not getting into much new in that front (I went to the Liceo in Barcelona last December!) - I'm drawing from my instrumental music collection for my corrections (vocal music is bad for concentration in my case - I end up listening to music rather than working!) Alejandro gave me a Toscanini live recording of some miscellaneous Baroque a couple of years back for my birthday, and it's working wonders now. It's light and easy, and cheers me up as I wield my red pen in my judicious hand, lol. Or so it better be for the sake of my students and their perfect rhyme!

And I haven't even checked Inuyasha for more than a month! Then as I like my posts with a piccie, I'm going to post a piccie of a game I'm often playing now. I've inherited a Motorola MPX200 from Sis (it's not in me to spend my scanty means in fancy phones), and it's made me such a happy woman. I mean, it's got its own tiny Windows platform and all. Cute, isn't it? But the Java games, mp3 tones and ebook reader are what make me the happiest. Now I love waiting for the bus! And you can just get your themes from your pc - I found a great one of that "Wacky Wheels" cartoon. In any case, the game is Worms World Party - and I know most of you know me as a pacifist, and I am, but this game is so crazy, I just love the worms turning kamikazes and throwing sheep-shaped bombs and shouting "Yes Sir!" in those shrill voices. And there's also "You'll regret this!" or my fav "Are you nuts?" (that's when I hit my own worm, which I often do - I'm so bad at the game). Another one in the peacful line I love is Toki Tori. It's a very addictive puzzle with the cutest of birds as protagonist. See piccie below.





Back to work now!

Whut?

Some people have far too much free time. See, yesterday I had to learn to use a GBA emulator with link support, VBALink, a VBA mod.

And today, I found out VBALink has mods as well! VBA LS is one of them. http://www.vbals.com/

Sorry folks, the site's in Jap. It's interesting anyway: using JavaScript-like code, you can access the memory. You open up the Script option, write your JS code, then run it and voilà!

Yes, there's a reference for the API on the site. It declares three objects, VBA, Event and CPU, I believe. Scripts can be saved and loaded from the "script" subdirectory which is placed right where the VBA exec is (you overwrite it during installation, BTW).

Must be really neat for debugging and gamesharking. A debugger you can code with just scripts and stuff, for the GBA and all. Very nice indeed.

Ja, mata kondo!
~Antonio

Ningen to ha, gakushuu ikimono na no da naaa

Err... just random stuff. It's from the My HiME CD drama. One of Tokiha Mai's (the starring character) girl friends tries to tackle her in the classroom. Mai dodges and says something like "do you really I'm going to fall for the same trick again?". And thus her friend replies the above line, meaning something like "human beings can learn by observation... very interesting".

Yes, "gakushuu" means "to learn by observation". Blame the Japanese for having a word for every single nuance.

Now, what was I going to talk about? Oh yes, my uni project. It's so silly. Since in my uni there's no first, second or third year for the CS major, I've got to complete the minor and then switch. That includes the end of degree project, gah.

It's about a postprocessor for the output produced by an interactive theorem prover called ACL2. It's based on Common Lisp, and I believe the program itself is written in Lisp. There's some really advanced work being done on it.

I've got to make a Perl backend to turn ACL2 output into XML code which can then be easily accessed by a Java application. Interesting it is, but complicated it is too, young padawan. More than anything, ACL2 is COMPLEX.

Thank the Kami we're going to start with lil' prototypes and then build up from there. It's a software engineering thing: the development process is organized in a life cycle according to a model. Mine is called the prototype building process and it's pretty much a cycle: develop something simple, test it, improve on it, rinse and repeat.

Yep, the whole process is to be documented using software engineering methods. Oh well, it'll be good practice.

"Quidquid latine dictum est, altum sonatur", (Highlight the line below for the translation)
Anything said in Latin sounds profound.
~Zio

Purdy circuit!

Well, actually, it's nothing special. It's just that I'm going to make my first circuit ever for that Microcontrollers project. It's pretty simple. Ever heard of the game Simon? You know, the one with the buttons and the lights, where you have to repeat the pattern displayed by the computer.

It's just that. Last Friday, my teacher helped me place the components on the board. Half the stuff I bought didn't work in the end =|. We desoldered some buttons from an old printer's control panel, and then added the LEDs I bought (red, green, yellow and orange), 4 resistors from some odd box in the lab (got to look up their resistance, but they're prolly around 1k ohms) and a pin strip my teacher brought.

Then basically, solder, solder and solder. Looks purdy now. Next Friday we're going to connect everything. We might in the future add its own CPU and power supply (i.e.: batteries) so it'd be autonomous, but that's just a possibility.

Soldering isn't all that hard, it just takes some getting used to. That, and watching the soldering alloy melt like *poof* is a little unnerving. It's good to know it's actually because it's made that way.

Well, that's it for this post.

Spirits are always with you,
~Zio