Growing experiences

So I guess I should write something about having played with the symphony.
It really was a great experience. I wrote a while ago bout when I played with them previously, but that was for playing Scottish style medley; my style kinda thing, this time it was definitely a symphony deal.

The piece of music chosen was a Peter Maxwell Davies piece - Orkney Wedding, with sunrise. Anyhow, it called for an actual concert A chanter. The piece seemed easy enough, but it was the hardware that was to be the issue.

Turns out a guy I met in Macalester had one, and had even played the piece before. Small world. So he rented it to the symphony and sent it on up. I spent most of the time learning to play the piece properly. From the mp3 that Arthur sent me, it was only 90 seconds. I should be able to handle that right?

It was pretty simple. Right up until I had the hardware. I didn't give it much thought, which was a mistake. Turns out the chanter was all sorts of fun.

The drones he sent were just set weird, the balance of pressure made it hard for the chanter, but easy for the drones. This meant that the drones would have to be WIDE open in order to play, which meant it sucked and lot of air. Couple that with the fact the drone reeds wouldn't fit in my stocks because of the ash plugs so I had to put together a set hastily (with much much help from Rory - seriously, without him the whole thing would have sucked majorly).

So aside from some hardware issues, there wasn't much else for difficulties. I did have trouble counting out where it was that I started, thankfully Stephane was there to give me my cues. It was really good in the end. I would tune for a minute then rest for about fifteen. Without a moisture control system the pipes would get soaked super easy.

When I was cued to go on I was quite nervous. But, as they say, you aren't measured by how well you do in your best scenarios, but by how you handle yourself when the going gets tough.

My piece was kinda neat. It was explained that the score is set up as 3 parts: getting together, getting drunk celebrating and then the sobering sunrise. That's when I step out and signify the rising sun in the morning. From what people who were there (including my parents, but they might be biased) it was a pleasant surprise and sounded really good. Apparently it was also in the paper, but I can't find it.

All are part of growing up really. But not just aging, but growing in ability and diversity of my skills.

I had been feeling really bit of a funk for a while with my piping - being pipe major can do that. But I didn't think I was really progressing... but thanks to Pierre Schreyer for the recommendation to play, it has pushed me.

Couple that with the last weekend's activities in Winnipeg and I'm ready to be excited about playing again.

I'll save the discussion about the SFU weekend for another blog post.

*note: that's not a picture of me, I didn't have any, but I'm sure it looked like that!

The Resistence [i.e. Fun with Music]

saw this on Facebook, and I'm stealing it

1. Put your iPod on shuffle.

2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.

3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

 

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?

house of the rising sun (be good tanya's cover)

 

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?

hornpipes (royal scots dragoon guards)

 

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?

Courage - live

 

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?

Showacho [Medley]

 

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?

We're Going to Be Friends

 

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?

Will Ye Go Lassie, Go?

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?

Smokin' in the Boys' Room

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?

Gift Shop

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?

She Didn't Know

 

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?

Listen

 

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

I Wanna Be Sedated

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?

Magic

 

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?

Amazing Grace

 

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?

Alasdair Gillies Master Piper

 

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?

Medley (note it starts with "Up to the Line")

 

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?

Slow Air / Hornpipe & Jig

 

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?

Speed River

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?

Medley [David Urquhart Travel - European Championship 2001]

 

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?

Solo (Stuart Liddell - Blue Cloud / Mason's Apron)

 

HOW WILL YOU DIE?

When the Weight Comes Down

 

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?

Vaccination Scar

 

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?

Reunion

 

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?

Courage

 



WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?

Pride

 

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?

Killed Myself When I Was Young

 

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?

At the Hundredth Meridian

 

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?

6/8 Marches

 

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?

Donnie MacGregor/The Clumsy Lover

 

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?

The Resistence

 

Reminder to self - better shovelling required

I rewrote that title a couple times now - because I wanted it to read that as that I don't need necessarily a better shovel, but the job done by a shovel needs improvement.

I found out for probably the 2nd early spring (it is officially the first day of spring around here at the time of writing this) that I should ensure that the job of shoveling is done much better, not just overall, but in specific areas around my house.

Early last week we found that the corner of the basement (northwest) was damp. Nothing I haven't dealt with before if we've had a bit too much rain and the downspout is having issues. So luckily I still had my father-in-law's dehumidifier and put it to work. Then I left it with a cyclone fan.

A day later it's less damp (hrm... usually it's more effective than this) so I leave it for another day.

It is now Thursday and our band is getting ready to go out to some bar to enjoy St. Patrick's Day festivities. I thought - before I head out I should check on the progress of the drying. When I do that and step downstairs it is now wet. hrmm... not wet 'still', but wet as in 'another leakage'.
Turns out all the snow that's backed against side of the house (soutwest) is now all melting like crazy and it's seeping in on that side.

I run to go get 2 more dehumidifiers a shop-vac and more fans.

This makes me miss the fun at St. Patty's day :L

Lesson learned - snow melts - melting snow gets into the closest thing - which is usually my house - note for next year - keep snow away from house as much as possible.

Pi(e) day

Happy pi day everybody

Stepping out of your comfort zone

Or… how I played with the Symphony one day.

You know in all the time I played with the band I had never done anything ‘like this’ before.  Sure, my first day ever playing with the band at a gig we played Mull of Kintyre with the Diamonds in the Rough, but that wasn’t so hard.  And we did play with the symphony at another point in time when we played for the McCartney night.  But again, that was just Mull of Kintyre, and we spent some time ensuring we could reach the pitch.  (bit of music/math geek… typical Concert Pitch is a low = 440Hz.  Pipebands tune their “A”, which is really a B flat, at 480Hz.  In order for us to match, A=440Hz means B flat would tune for “A” at 466Hz – which means quite low for us).

This however was a bit more of a stretch – not only was I pitching differently but I was given a bunch of ‘scores’ to learn for it.  “SCORES”?  Pipers don’t have scores.  We have a rudimentary sheet music notation we follow and that’s about it.  Really it’s only 9 notes, and there’s only us and drums and they have their own notation to follow, so reading music for me hasn’t really ever been ‘difficult’ … until now.

Pierre Schryer had contacted me some time back as the ‘recommendation’ from Dylan for somebody that could play well together with others.  He at first gave me a list of the tunes to play and I did my own research, then as it turned out, there were actual scores to learn.  I did my best to figure them out – but I’m no real musician.  But I got close.

The real shock tho’ was learning we were going to play MacCrimmon’s Sweetheart.  Hrmm… wait, that’s a PIOBAIREACHD!!  I hadn’t played piob’d in years.  And even then I had a basic ‘rudimentary’ understanding of what to do.  The biggest issue was taht I couldn’t just read the sheet and know how to play.  In piob’d you need to be ‘shown’ or sung to for it to make any sense.  So I went to my local resource – Bill Peters – to see if he could help shed some light.  In my research I also used him and a youtube video as my basis of what to do for this tune.

wait… 10 minutes of playing????

So, that’s what I had to work with to figure out what to do.  Then it turns out there’s another score for that.  Well… I had one setting, I was going to go with what I “knew” or at least knew I could learn.

The day of the 1st rehearsal came and after some ironing out the medley set.  Not a major worry there.  We never got time to practice the piob’d.  Hrmm… But did sit down with the conductor for about 10 minutes to go over it on the practice chanter.  Second day we went to it first and got maybe 4 bars into it when Pierre made the appropriate choice to say “Ryan, just play it solo".  *Phew* Okay, I didn’t have to worry about playing it ‘symphony style’ – when really all I knew was the piob’d style.  But playing a piob’d by myself brought it’s own case of nerves.

I’ve competed dozens of times.  Look on the blog space – I have them all listed out.  But I had never been so … nervous about this playing.  I live tweeted the crap out of the night.  I felt so weird… like I was some diva, requesting special treatment; and really I was only playing like 2 sets.  I felt like everybody else automatically just ‘plugged in’ where I need special ‘handling’.  I even got my own special room (even tho’ i know it was because they needed someplace that was remote enough that my tuning wouldn’t affect them).

To compound to my nerves, the medley set had dancers dancing as well, so I wanted to ensure that it was up to speed – then for the piob’d I would do some little introduction on the tune and what is piob’d.

---

All in all – it was a great experience.  Despite some of the difficulties it was really worth it.  Gave me the incentive to practice as much as I could.  Who knows I might even give piob’d another shot when I compete (if I compete this year, and I REALLY want to).

Samsung 'update'

So, I thought I'd take a second here to write about my recent trials and tribulations with the latest update for Samsung's Galaxy S on Rogers - i.e. the "Captivate".

I won't even get into the whole TBayTel / Rogers fiasco as that really only muddies the waters and makes me madder (a lot of handing off... "well you were a Rogers, so you have to go to Teleco...", "oh, well you're a TBayTel customer now, so we can't do anything for you", etc...)

Anyways, recently the Captivate has been allowed the upgrade to FROYO.  Which is great because there's a lot of benefits of updating (tethering will be good).  But I was a little hesitant after hearing about the fiasco Bell had when they updated their version - the Vibrant.  But, then again maybe they learned their lessons.  The Captivate and the Vibrant are essentially the same aren't they?

So I did the update.  And as always with any time I monkey with updates it's always nail biting.  In order to do the update you had to use Samsung's junk software "KIES" in order to apply the update.  There were a few things you had to google before you finally did everything.  But before you knew it the phone had booted up (okay, i lie... it was locked on some screen for a VERY long time - I thought it was dead and after an undeterminable amount of time I decided to pull the battery - at that moment it came to life.. *phew*).

The bonus was that nothing on the phone changed, except that I now had Froyo.  I was on my merry way.

Until I decided to add a few more songs to the memory.  Okay - so the way the phone works is that it has 3 storage banks:  INTERNAL PHONE STORAGE, INTERNAL SD, and EXTERNAL SD.

Internal Phone and the Internal SD are the same thing.  It's a 16gb card in there, built in, but 2gb goes to the programs and apps, and 14gb for SD storage.  When you take pictures you have the option of saving to the INTERNAL or EXTERNAL SD... you can add files and photos to those, but nothing to the INTERNAL PHONE STORAGE (only apps you install, or if you have root access - that's another story tho').

Anyways, normally I kept music and pics on the INTERNAL SD and movies and whatnot on the EXTERNAL.  It was really simple to do.  You grabbed your USB cord, plugged it into your phone and then the phone would ask you:  KIES MODE, MEDIA PLAYER MODE or USB MASS STORAGE MODE.  You would pick the mass storage, and then you can access the data as 2 drives would now pop up (I labelled them INTERNAL and EXTERNAL for ease of identifying).  Copy and delete at will.



That would be what you normally did - as per the manual: 

The  only problem was that I was noticing certain folders I had on the INTERNAL SD weren't accessible anymore.  Fearing the worst I tried to copy a bunch of files off... still no good, gave me several errors.  So I did a scan, found lots of errors... then I tried to recover as much photos as I could.  unfortunately the software I have doesn't save 3gp files (my video format), so I lost some pictures and some videos.  Blurg.

So I copied what I could, and then reformatted.  Suddenly the card that was 14gb, now only read as 2gb.  ACK!  I called Samsung and they said to reformat... I did and the same thing that produced only 2gb minutes ago suddenly allowed 14gb.  So I was happy again.

Or so I thought.

I copied files over and things were ok... until I copied my music over - no go.  After much playing around it would seem I could copy as many files as I want of different types until I reached 2gb.  Any more than that magical cap and I would get:  "Error 0x80070057 Parameter Incorrect".  hrmm.. I really put the scientific method to test on this as I tried a 2gb file, and it wouldn't go.  Try 2x 1gb files - the first would, the 2nd wouldn't.  I tried several variations, all showing that 2gb was the max allowed after it was formatted.  Better than not getting any files on I guess as I was having previous to formatting it.

So I do a lot of research and see several others are in the same predicament.  Samsung's facebook page, the XDA forums had a specific thread over it... and many others show similar issues.  I call TBayTel, the tech immediately sees that there's some issue after googling a little bit and says he wouldn't know how to fix, so I'd have to send it in to get repaired.  My fear would be I would get a 2.1 phone, do the update and then be in the same scenario.  So, I go to the source again and call Samsung.  This guy now says "I've never heard of this, and I'm doing a search on the internet right now and I see nothing".  Well, he obviously doesn't follow their own twitter or get the complaints off their fb page, etc... or he's trying to belittle the issue.  Anyhow, he says he'll send something to the engineers.  He even admits it COULD be the same issue they had with the Vibrant, but wouldn't know for sure.

So what do I do?  I research some more.  Some smart people at XDA are talking and what it sounds like is the FROYO drivers they've put in are some how monkeying the way the phone executes MASS STORAGE mode.  So we try a few things - and what do you know... if I put it into MEDIA PLAYER MODE when I plug the USB cord in, I get the same 2 new drives pop up and I can copy files with no 2gb limit.  Awesome.  Well... not really.  It's agonizingly slow to copy over that way.  And you 'multi-copy' files over (copy files to the music folder, then while it's working, copy files to the DCIM folder at the same time) as it'll tell you the 'device is busy'.

Well, there you have it... that's been my struggle.  I've reformatted everything in every which way to make this work - I even sacrificed my ANGRY BIRDS completed levels to do it.  In the end I have a 'work around' for it - it's painful.  But it beats having to send it in to get repaired, and find out I'd have the same issue when it came back.

So - SAMSUNG - you have an issue with your FROYO updates (2 updates so far in canada, 2 problems - count yourselves lucky US).  This sounds like it's a simple fix in the software driver for how the phone releases the INTERNAL SD when in MASS STORAGE mode.  Please send us a fix.

Pi / Pie?

So, on the radio this morning with Khalil Akhtar, they were talking about what the next best thing is going to be in food next year.

One of the items they suggested would be big (amongst veggies... c'mon...) would be PIE.

Now that will play big on Pi day I hope - you know pi (3.1415926535894626738...), and the day to celebrate it is 3.14 or March 14th.

Anyways.  I just wanted to say that I hope this resurgence in the interest in pies would be for ABC to bring back Pushing Daisies.

That show was definitely way cool, and I was very sad to see it go.  To show how cool they were, they had called this new trend almost 2 years in advance!  Take that Khalil