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

Views after watching Nick & Norah’s

So I just watched this flick, and I must say I enjoyed it.  Several things came to me as I watched it and I felt I wanted to share these thoughts with you, my reading audience (of which I think the population is … can you have negative numbers in viewing audience sizes?).

Anyways, I felt there was some great parallels in this movie and another recent Michael Cera hit (Scott Pilgram vs. the World – which I still have yet to read the comics of) that I felt it required me writing out a formula:

 

 +  +  = Michael’s future career

Has he been type cast so quickly?  I also thought it might be worth mentioning that there were some gay characters around for both flicks as well (Michael plays in a band with 2 other gay guys in NNIP, and room with a gay guy in SPVW… also there’s a lesbian too in SPVW), but I didn’t want to really bring up the gay card – too controversial a topic for me.

Just found it interesting that both great movies had him dealing with being in a band (playing the bass no less), dealing with breakup.  Maybe I just look for patterns too hard.  But it doesn’t make me lose the forest for the trees, as the saying goes.

---

One other thing that came to my attention while watching the movie (coupled with a recent trip to Toronto with friends and the other movie mentioned above) was that there must be an ENORMOUS amount of great music out there, just outside my grasp.  I enjoyed not only the cinematography of NNIP, but also the soundtrack.  It’s rare that I do like soundtracks, it’s just something I notice (another favourite soundtrack was for another Michael Cera movie – Juno… it’s almost like Zach Braff using good music in his movies/shows – using mass media to further good music).

When I went to Toronto with work, Devon dragged us to this band called “Tin Star Orphans” and they were… well a joke at first.  But by the end of a few days, I was finding myself on their myspace page to listen to their music online (doing so right now as I haven’t bought their CD yet).

Was a bit of  a wake up to me that “I’m getting” old, and I haven’t been keeping up with the music scene.  Not that I was ever bleeding edge for music.  But I liked indie stuff.

Music was also predominant in SPVW, and I’ve been meaning to download it’s soundtrack.

So, my point of this is that I think there’s a great amount of ‘culture’ just below me, and my radar is totally off in terms of being able to find it.  So – anybody out there, in my large reading audience, please recommend to me some good music to listen to.  My playlists lately consist of:  Collective Soul / Jeff Martin / Tragically Hip and Pipeband; it could use some varying.

---

Oh, and I also wanted an excuse to use this clip as it’s something that Adam and I recently talked about.

The Bass Player (Kids in the Hall)

Maiming the main character

So why is there such a trend with the books I read for the authors to maim the main character?

I've come late to the Walking Dead comic series (thanks michelle), and I'm really enjoying it up until -SPOILER ALERT- our main hero gets his hand chopped off.

Kind of a pain to get invested in a character and then have to see them go through that.

True, the point is probably to have them suffer and allow us to feel further pity for them... But come on, that is something that I cannot identify with.  (sure could I identify with walking zombies?)

Also this is a permanent change to the character and how he'll adapt to life... I can feel that frustration.

I've almost stopped reading for that reason alone.

But it's happened so often in sorties and it is so annoying.

Wheel of time - rand gets his hand chopped off (I have yet to get back into that series, but that is another story)

Star wars - all sorts of people losing limbs there

Dune - Paul is blinded

Robocop - enough said, but this was the point of the whole movie

Evil Dead - and this was only so he could put a chainsaw in it's place, so it's forgivable.

Lost - Boone had a leg amputated before he dies... So at least we don't have to worry about our character living with the maiming.

The Dark Tower - Roland loses much of his main shooting hand.

And I'm sure there's more... But I think it's highly frustrating for a reader.

Especially as I'm not even half way through The Walking Dead, how is Rick going to be as an effective zombie killer...

15 Things

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="108" caption="i used to love these headphones - great response"][/caption]

I've seen this about and thought - I should give it a shot - try it out.

My mp3 collection is growing every larger (and I'm contemplating starting to rip older CDs, just to have an ultimate media library)... and as I load and reload my Zune or my new phone for music I often debate whether or not I'll listen to this song or that, as I often notice that I just skip over many songs hoping for 'that one'.  Kinda like old school channel flipping.

I'm not sure how this is going to turn out... I mean I've got some really lame stuff on there, full discographies of bands I really only like one song from, and I've got comedy included as well... should I just put the first 15 that pop up?  Or should I be somewhat selective?  If so, where do I draw the line?  ...  Hmm... raw data is probably the best.

Here goes: (let me just hit shuffle 10x to truly randomize the start process)

1. John Mayer - Where the Light Is - I'm Gonna Find Another You -- see this is one of those instances that I don't know this song.  I got this album for like one track or 2.  Maybe it's a good song.  I'll listen to it until the ADD kicks in.  Not bad for a nice easy blues/jazz rhythm (which John does quite well - one of those players who makes playing sound like such an easy and fun task).  Okay, next... [got halfway through]


2. The Mahones - Dragging the Days - London -- this is one I would probably just skip while driving... but I used to love this band.  Maybe I've overheard it.  On a lazy sunday or something I think I'd listen to this all the way through.


3. The Tragically Hip - Day for Night - Inevitability of Death -- okay, a 50/50 for a chance of skipping.  Probably stick with it.  Love the hip... if you know me, you know that.  Slow start to the song, but a good driving riff a good 10 seconds in.  Also, has chorus part with the duet and Gord's great mixing of "what" type lyrics:  "but I thought you beat the death of inevitability to death just a little bit".  very catchy!  Thanks Hip for having your "song of the day" in my facebook feed.


4. Scissor Sisters - Ta-Dah - I Don't Feel Like Dancin' -- man, do I take a teasin' for liking this song.  But I do like it... on the odd goofy dancing mood (very rare).  But a jazzy 70's disco pulsing beat can't be beat without wanting to move.


5. Elvis Presley - Elv1s: 30 #1 Hits - (You're the) Devil in Disguise -- you gotta love the King.  But he's got too many albums, so a lazy listener like myself will just download the 'best of albums'.  I downloaded it mostly for 'posterity' and a couple of the classics, but really... all of these are classics.  Also, my ADD loves short songs.


6. Feist - The Reminder - So Sorry -- another "I downloaded the album for 1 song" kinda disc.  The song is kinda meh... if I was doing house chores I'd leave it on, but otherwise -- SKIP.


7. Creedence Clearwater Revival - BOX SET DISC 4 - Born to Move -- I'm not the CCR fan, but Mandy sure is (and her dad), so I downloaded this set for them.  And I do like some of their stuff, but this ain't one of them ... not that I hate it, just ... SKIP.


8. Mitch Hedberg - Mitch All Together - Sandwiches -- RIP man... this guy was darn funny.  I love having some comedy interspersed in my listening to lighten my day.


9. Diana Krall - When I Look In Your Eyes - Let's Fall in Love -- that Elvis Costello is one lucky dude.  Diana is good looking, plays a mean piano flawlessly and has a voice that'll melt your brain ... just love listening to her.  I've got a couple of her DVDs just to listen to her in surround sound -- and I even have her disc as a DVD-Audio just to hear her all the better.


10. Coldplay - X&Y - The Hardest Part -- hrmm... yeah, let's just SKIP.  umm... okay, it's not so bad.  Again, I like some of Coldplay, but I'm really a bandwagon jumper on this band and haven't ventured out of the mainstream stuff to explore them.


11. Beastie Boys - Aglio E Olio - Square Wave in Unison -- now I love some of the Beastie Boys stuff... this, I just don't get.  SKIP


12. Big Rude Jake - Big Rude Jake - Blue Pariah #1 -- this guy puts on a heck of a show.  He's big, he's rude and his name is Jake.  And he smokes a cigar.  Very cool if you like that swing fever that hit a few years back, but isn't the polished fancy big band stuff.


13. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds -- like the King, you gotta have a discography of these guys; i think it's mandated by law.


14. The Beatles - Help! - I Need You -- A lesser known tune, but "it comes with the package".


15. Feist - Let It Die - Inside and Out -- hrmm... something I don't know.  I wonder how much of the 10s of thousands of tracks I have are stuff I don't know.

So, as an experiment of the 15:  9 are ones I would just skip over.  Noticed that not one of any piping or celtic music genre.  No Collective Soul, Dave Matthews Band, U2 or Tea Party (they make up the majority of my collection along with the Hip).

Maybe I should do this again and report on the songs I would listen to.

So... Fail

Yup, I've meant to keep up to date with my postings on here.  That hasn't really happened at all.

And here we are, now shunted over to wordpress for blogging.

I even "have an app for that" and yet it's not made me more prone to posting.  Maybe micro blogging is my media?  Maybe I am not meant to write my thoughts out in more than one sentence... Maybe I just have nothing to say?

I'm going to try to use this app some more... It's a little harder on my phone to really type things out, so they may just be musings, so you may miss out on my really good rants...
(you've missed the whole eclair for my magic, the demise of my magic, tbaytel debacle, amongst other work related ramblings).

Thanks for your patience.