What's Roy Up To?

Hysteria!

2011-02-23T05:40:00.000-08:00

One of my friends on Facebook posted this link:

Do we need to have a full investigation when a woman miscarries to ensure she did not actually purposefully induce an abortion? If you're Bobby Franklin, a Georgia Representative, your answer would be "yes."

Well, if you read the bill, it doens't actually call for investigations. I pointed this out. The response from my friend:

Roy, I absolutely disagree. Read lines 118 through 120 of the bill. Determination of whether there was "no human involvement whatsoever" can only be made through investigation; it is implicit in the bill.

So apparently it's more dog-whistle hysteria. If reality isn't sufficient to gin up your outrage, find a way to read it as code for something more sinister. I said:

I think that is a possible reading, but an incorrect one, and one that would be impossible to implement. You don't investigate without probable cause.

yielding this response:

If a bill is that open to interpretation, it is insufficiently specific and therefore poorly crafted.

and, from another person:

Bills like this don't get written until they've been analyzed, strategized, etc., to a fine point. The fact that two people can look at it and find room enough to interpret it so differently is no accident. And history has shown that, when this is the case with legislation, the true intent of the legislation is usually closer to the more extreme, dire interpretation.

You see? It's all a conspiracy! They intentionally wrote it to be interpreted (though only by its opponents) as calling for investigations, although the bill itself never says "shall be investigated" or any such thing. My final reply:

I didn't say the bill is open to interpretation, I said it could be read incorrectly. The bill does not call for investigations. It simply doesn't. To say that it does, which your source claims, is a lie. If it's a lie you want to believe strongly enough that you find a way to believe it, that's your call to make.

I'm not saying it's a good bill. I don't know what it purports to address -- whether there's a legitimate problem of some kind, and whether this bill would address it. It doesn't appear that this thread is the place to discuss the bill, but just a jumping-off point for people to vent their political spleens.

I thought it might be fun to occasionally post pieces like this to my blog, as a reminder not to get so caught up in wanting to be outraged by the political opposition that I set aside all critical thinking. I will try to include similar pieces from the conservative side, for I know they happen, too, and that I'm more likely to be caught up in them.

Caroling

2010-11-24T06:24:00.000-08:00

I'll be caroling with Master Chords at Bayou Bend on Dec 2, 9, and 10.
Details on the flier.

70 pushups!

2010-10-21T05:44:00.000-07:00

I've been doing my push-ups* in sets: 20 push-ups, hop up, rest 10 seconds, down and do 20 more, etc., for a total of 80 push-ups (my third rest period is 15 or 20 seconds). I think I've done them that way for two weeks now. The hope is, of course, that it will increase the number I can do all in a row.

This morning, I did a progress test, and there was definite improvement. There's always some variability in how many I can do, so it might range from 63 to 67, but today I did 70. I have never, ever, done 70 at a stretch. So yay. I'll keep doing the sets, and probably slowly increase the number per set.

*Hmmm...no hyphen in the title, but hyphen here. There doesn't seem to be a consistent version in Google.

Can't Go Bach Again

2010-09-12T17:44:00.000-07:00

At the end of the Bach choral season in the spring, we have re-auditions. This allows Albert (the conductor) to review what he's got, and compare it to any potential new members auditioning. This year, I didn't hear back from Albert in a timely fashion. Around mid-summer, I got a phone message from him asking me to call back. I did, and left him a message. Then later, another.

I took the fact that I got a phone call rather than an email as a negative sign. Not hearing back was another. Finally, I got the email that confirms that I'm not in the core group for this season.

Sigh.

We All Deal Feet

2010-08-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

We went to Ideal Feet today. As you may know, Shelly has been plagued with foot and back pain for years. I heard Ideal Feet's commercials on 740 KTRH (which, I have to say, is not the best place to find things to try) and I thought it would be worth looking into.

The first thing to say about them is we do not like the way they do business. Most notably (and you'll find this complaint if you web search) is that they have no money-back guarantee. No refunds. Their policy on this is

"Since our products are personal items we do not offer refunds. But should you have any difficulty wearing the supports we will adjust them for FREE!"

What? I should point out that an "adjustment" means you bring them back and they re-measure and give you a different size. And you can do that at any time, as often as needed. The point being, they don't mind taking them back, they just don't want to give you your money back over your dissatisfaction. So it might help to think of this as a service contract, and not merely paying $400 for a couple of pairs of insoles.

On to our experience: we were helped by Brandon, who is a nice guy, and when he's not in the process of delivering the company-mandated spiel, seemed to be inclined to be honest with us. He is a salesman, and was up-front about having no medical expertise.

The spiel, on the other hand, is unadulterated hucksterism. It consists of mentioning "aligning 26 bones and 33 joints" any number of times; a "balance test" that doesn't test balance, but purports to show that the insoles provide stability (but is really just a bit of trickery worthy of the Church of Scientology); and taking impressions of your foot without and with the insoles to show how the pressure distribution changes, which is the most honest (and relevant) bit.

Then came the fitting. He measured Shelly's feet— the significant measurement being the arch length— and took "2 seconds" (yes, part of the script) to go to the back and pick out the insoles for her. Shelly asked whether this was a one-size-fits all solution, and he said that, no, there are some 40+ sizes back there, very precisely sized by arch length (not arch height). As your feet adapt, your arch length can change, and you would then need to come in for a re-fit (i.e., exchange them for a different size).

The insoles are noticeable: there's a big lump right under the middle of your arch, which requires you to gradually work up to wearing them for extended periods. Shelly required that I go through the fitting, as well. I actually like the main insoles; the secondary ones (that you wear when you're not wearing your primary ones, to keep your feet from reverting) I did not like.

In the end, in spite of all the red flags, we got a set for Shelly. Desperation makes you try things that you would otherwise consider stupid. Maybe the company is counting on that. There is a chance that this is a worthwhile product, and that the company is just horrible about how they do their marketing.

We'll let you know. So in the meantime, feel free to go in for a fitting. Enjoy the spiel. But don't buy anything. Tell them you're waiting to hear how they work out for us.

A little JavaScript™ Invention

2010-08-05T16:10:00.000-07:00

One deficiency in JavaScript™ is that it has no sleep command. Instead, it has a setTimeout function, which works differently: you tell it what you want to run, and how long you want it to be before it starts, and that acts like a little time bomb in the background while your program continues on. It doesn't pause. So if you want it to actually pause, you need to pass the entire rest of your program in.

That sounds crazy, and it kind of is. But JavaScript™ (I'm writing it that way because it really is a trademarked name) is for web apps, where you don't really run a whole program. What you're usually writing is callbacks for widgets. It's a callback-oriented language.

So today, I had the need to put a pause in a series of requests I was making, so that they wouldn't all happen at once. How to do that as I'm looping through the array? Tail-recursion, of course— that's how you loop in a functional language. I came up with a function that works like the forEach method, only it has a specified pause before invoking the callback:

          // Like forEach, but with a delay
       function delayForEach (queue, callback, delay) {
         var qIdx = 0;
         // recursive block
         (function () {
           if (qIdx < queue.length) {
             callback(queue[qIdx], qIdx);
             ++qIdx;
             setTimeout(arguments.callee, delay);
           }
         })();
        }

It's just a little thing, but I thought it was nicely elegant. It should be noted that this call will all run "in the background": if you call delayForEach on some array, your program will continue on, and the looping will be done as if it were running independently. Still, could be useful for somebody.

Upon reflecting a bit, it seems to me that it might be more appealing to use setInterval instead.

         function delayForEach (queue, callback, delay) {
         var qIdx = 0,
         interval = setInterval(function () {
           if (qIdx < queue.length) {
              callback(queue[qIdx], qIdx);
             ++qIdx;
           }
           else {
              clearInterval(interval);
            }
          })();
         }

Deriving the Y Combinator

2010-08-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

The Y-Combinator Derived

The Y-Combinator was something that came up in my Programming Languages class at Rice. It was bizarre and inscrutable to me, and I never really acquired a deep understanding of it. Frankly, it doesn't have a lot of practical application, but it is interesting. And Douglas Crockford said something like, "If you understand this, you can call yourself a computer scientist." Well, I certainly want to be able to do that. And maybe this post will create a few more computer scientists. I hope so.

First, I want to note that I depended heavily on this page for my derivation steps. I changed them as I saw fit, but it was nice to have them to refer to when I screwed up.

My intent is to derive the Y-Combinator in a way that makes it obvious what's going on. This subject has been done quite a few times (and in quite a few languages), but they always use meaningless function and variable names, and I find that makes it hard to follow. So I'm taking my stab at it. I've been writing in JavaScript lately, so that's what I'm using here.

The first step on that road is to understand what we're deriving. The Y-Combinator is a function that provides "anonymous recursion". That is, if your language doesn't provide a way for a function to call itself while it is being defined, the Y-Combinator can give you that.

Specifically, let's say you have a function that you can tell how to call itself, and then it can be recursive:

function factorial (myself, n) {
 return n <= 2 ? n : n * myself(myself, n - 1);
}

What you want, though, is a function that doesn't have to tell itself how to call itself every time.

// This doesn't work. We need "myself" to be defined somehow
function factorial_wish (n) {
 return n <= 2 ? n : n * myself(n - 1);
};

The first step is to "curry" myself out of the original function:

function curried_function (curried_self) {
 return function factorial (n) {
   return n <= 2 ? n : n * curried_self(curried_self)(n - 1);
 }
}

With this, curried_function(curried_function) returns the factorial function you want, which you can then call with a single argument, and it will work:

var working_factorial = curried_function(curried_function);
working_factorial(5) // returns 120

But what we really want is for the factorial function to reference itself, and not the curried outer function, so that it would be written more like factorial_wish above.

We do that by wrapping a function around it that will define myself for it, and will take care of calling curried_self with itself.

function curried_v2 (curried_self) {
 return function factorial (userArgument) {
   var inner = function(myself) {
     return function(n) {
       return n <= 2 ? n : n * myself(n - 1);;
     };
   };
   var myfact = inner(curried_self(curried_self));
   return myfact(userArgument);
 };
};

Now the innermost function is in the form we want; the function that wraps it, inner, defines its myself for us. The function that wraps that is our new factorial function, which will be what we pass an argument to, and which takes care of the curried mess.

The use of the variables is not strictly necessary here, but it helps make clear what's going on. In programming, it is often a bad practice to combine multiple operations into one monolithic, incomprehensible statement. But in math, it is called "reducing", and it's good. And the Y-Combinator comes from math called Lambda Calculus. We're just trying to understand it in terms of programming.

The calling of this hasn't improved. You still have to call it with itself to get your factorial function out:

var working_factorial = curried_v2(curried_v2);
working_factorial(5)

What has improved is that the inner function is independent of the stuff it's wrapped in, so it can be pulled out, and you'll note that it looks exactly like the factorial_wish function from earlier, wrapped in a function that takes a myself. So what remains is (almost) the goop we're looking for.

var inner = function(myself) {
 return function(n) {
   return n <= 2 ? n : n * myself(n - 1);
 };
};

function curried_v2a (curried_self) {
 return function factorial (userArgument) {
   // inner was here, and is still needed
   var myfact = inner(curried_self(curried_self));
   return myfact(userArgument);
 };
};

So the next thing to do is to pass inner to our function, so it's not hard-wired to look at some global(ish) variable. We'll do this by (of course!) wrapping it in yet another function layer, where we can do the double call, as well:

function basically_Y (inner) {
 function curried_v2a (curried_self) {
   return function (userArgument) { // not necessarily factorial, any more
     var myfact = inner(curried_self(curried_self));
     return myfact(userArgument);
   };
 };
 return curried_v2a(curried_v2a);
}

To use this, we pass in the inner function we previously extracted (or any function that is built like it), and we will get back a well-behaved recursive function that knows how to call itself.

var myfact = basically_Y(inner); // using the inner defined earlier
myfact(5)

All that's really left is generalizing it to handle more than one userArgument.

function Y (inner) {
 function curried_v2a (curried_self) {
   return function (/* any number of user arguments */) {
     // .apply(null, arguments) is how you pass along all arguments
     return inner(curried_self(curried_self)).apply(null, arguments);
   };
 };
 return curried_v2a(curried_v2a);
}

I went ahead and substituted in for myfact, since it's not all that complex, (not to mention that this is no longer just about factorials) but I have retained the variable that is curried_v2a.

To get to the no-variables form, we do a little re-writing: Instead of defining curried_v2a, we create a function that takes it as a parameter, and then pass its definition to that function. The function does the calling-it-on-itself part, and we're done!

function Y (inner) {
 return function(curried_v2a) {
   return curried_v2a(curried_v2a);
 }(function(curried_self) {
     return function() {
       return inner(curried_self(curried_self)).apply(null, arguments);
     };
   });
}

It's still incomprehensible, but if you've been through the derivation, the parameter names might jog your memory about what's what.

The question nobody is asking

2010-07-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

Shirley Sherrod is feeling a little vindictive. That's not surprising. She's been on quite a roller-coaster lately. She wants to sue Andrew Breitbart for releasing that out-of-context videotape of her. Again, that's understandable, although he didn't make the tape, and didn't know it was out-of-context.

She says, "[H]e came at me. He didn’t go after the NAACP; he came at me." Now that's not true. He released the tape in response to the NAACP's accusations of racism among the Tea Party ranks, to show that the NAACP has their own problem with racism. And it did. Sherrod doesn't know it, but she wasn't being held up as a racist, she was the one pointing out that the NAACP has a problem with racists in their ranks. She was Breitbart's ally in this.

The fact that the tape was edited to make her sound more racist than she is, is just a little bit of delicious payback in kind. It doesn't change the real point being made, which is the answer to the question no one is asking: Why was she giving this talk?

Well, she was trying to promote enlightened views on race, of course. (I should probably put "enlightened" in quotes, since her message was that it's "not so much" about black vs. white, but about class warfare instead.) It's admirable to want to promote enlightened views about race reconciliation. To whom would you want to promote such views? To those who already have them? Or to those who seem to identify more with the bad example? I don't think NAACP meetings are like AA meetings, where you get up and talk about how bad you were and everybody sympathizes because they're all recovering racists, too, and that support helps keep you on the wagon.

I think Shirley gave that talk because she believes that the NAACP has a problem with racism in their midst, and she would like to see it improve. Much like Andrew Breitbart.

Javascript and Dojo

2010-07-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

Since I don't have any theater projects coming up, I figured I might as well fill in the space with what I'm doing at work. My latest gig is working with Javascript and (in particular) the Dojo toolkit to develop some web apps.

In the process of coming up to speed on Javascript and Dojo (neither of which I have used a great deal), I'm hitting Google a lot to learn how the various things work. There is, of course, some level of documentation on everything at the Dojo site, but in some cases it's incomplete, and I have to look elsewhere for someone to explain it better. So in the hopes that maybe someone else will be doing the same sort of thing someday, I'm offering this post to explain how dojo.deferreds work.

Update: Naturally, an updated version of Dojo has made this whole discussion nearly obsolete. The new features in the deferred are more intuitive.

What is a dojo.deferred?

In short, a dojo.deferred is an alternative to threads, a way of having relatively independent parts of your program running at that same time. As the documentation page says, "threads are hard."

Think of it as a chain of functions, which you build up one link at a time. You schedule them in the deferred, and kick it off, and it will work its way through them while the rest of your program continues to run uninterrupted (particularly useful if it's a time-consuming operating like waiting for a response from some remote server). If it reaches the end of its chain, it will sit and wait until you put another link on it.

Each link in the chain is a pair of functions. Which of them is called depends on what the previous link returned: if it returned an error, the errback function of will be called; if it returned a normal value, the callback function will be called. So it is critical that each function return something.

Building the chain

There are four possible functions you can call to add a link to the chain: addCallback, addErrback, addBoth, and addCallbacks, and which you call depends on whether you want to specify just a callback, just an errback, the same function to be run in either case, or separate functions for each. In general, the first link in the chain can be just a callback, because there's no danger of an error preceding it. But subsequent links should include both; if a piece unexepectedly ends in error and you have no errback to handle it, the whole deferred silently grinds to a halt.

Kicking it off

It might not be obvious that you have to actually start the chain processing. It doesn't start chugging immediately, you have to "prime the pump" with something for it to consider as the return value of the previous link. You do this by calling its callback() method, which you pass whatever value you want sent to your first callback.

Example time

I find that most examples are too detailed, so I'm going to keep this one more abstract, so that you see what the deferred is all about and don't get lost in the weeds.

//Let's say we have some functions we're going to chain up
/*
* The deferred is going to call each with the
* result returned by the previous one
*/

function thing_one(i) {
return 'Done with 1';
}
function thing_two(result) {
return 'Done with 2';
}
function thing_three(result) {
return 'Done with 3';
}

/* And here's a generic error function to
* use for every step
*/
function myErrback(e) {
alert("Some step of the deferred returned an error!");
}

// Create the deferred
my d = new dojo.Deferred();
// Chain up the steps
// No chance of failure, so no errback on the first
d.addCallback(thing_one);
d.addCallbacks(thing_two, myErrback);
d.addCallbacks(thing_three, myErrback);
// Kick it off by passing 'Go!' to thing_one
d.callback('Go!');

Note that even after you kick it off, you can add more function pairs to the chain, and they will be processed in the order received. I hope this helps somebody understand this nifty tool.

No performances on the horizon

2010-05-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

Bach season is over, and I haven't lined up any theater for the summer. There's a good chance I won't be doing any, because we're focusing on getting our house remodeled. There's a certain amount of irony in having to get a house in shape to be torn apart and re-made, but that's what's going on. We've got stuff that we will have to move out and store (plus, we'll have to move out, ourselves), so we have to go through everything and get rid of anything we don't really want.

Fun.

Videos from the Far Side

2010-03-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

What conservatives say:

What liberals hear:

Camera Lust, The Next Generation

2010-03-08T08:42:00.000-08:00

The new entry-level Rebel has everything I'm looking for in an SLR: full HD video, low-light performance, more pixels than I need, and a sub-$1000 price tag ($800 for body only, $900 for kit including 18-55mm lens).

Want.

Sucked into Facebook

2010-01-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

In the unlikely event that any of you have clicked on my Blogging Friends link for "Not Worth The Effort", you would have found that his blog has finally lived up to its name. He has abandoned blogging for Facebook.

I don't intend to completely abandon blogging, but I have joined Facebook, and it is probably a better way of keeping in touch with my friends and family. On the other hand, I can say things here that I can't say there because there are fewer people to offend here. You, dear reader, are one of a very select group. You get to see this, which I think is gut-bustingly funny:

Not that I would mind Mom seeing that.

A push-ups update: I did not find that I gained much in the way of push-up endurance by doing multiple sets. I think I did gain about three on average, but it stopped there.

And in upcoming events: I'll be part of a ballet for the first time. Not cavorting around in tights, but I'll be onstage, in costume, singing. The Bach Choir, with Mercury Baroque and the Dominic Walsh Dance Theater are presenting a ballet-opera hybrid, Romeo & Juliet. A preview:

Swing and a miss

2009-12-14T13:14:00.000-08:00

I had an audition at Masquerade Theatre last week. It went well. As I went in, I recognized the accompanist. That seemed to be a good sign. We talked a bit, he went over the music, and then the director came in. I sang for him. He complimented me on my timbre. We talked about my availability and he asked me about when I played the Music Man and who directed.

He said they'd be calling either Thursday or Friday. Nope.

Why don't they ever call?

I have a theory that he did a little digging and found the lackluster review of my Music Man performance. That made me think I should note in my resume that I was an emergency substitution in that role. So that at least gives me something to do.

Oh, I didn't get the part at Theater LaB Houston, either. But we did go see the show, and it was very good. Not as good as it would have been with me in it, of course, but...

And Bach performances are over for the year. Next one up is February 7.

Snow Day

2009-12-04T12:08:00.000-08:00

December 4, 2009: The earliest snowfall on record for Houston, TX. Shelly is loving it.

Bach Concert December 6

2009-12-01T11:32:00.000-08:00

The Bach Society presents Abendmusik on Sunday, December 6, at 6:00 pm. The program features the festive Advent cantatas Wachet! betet! betet! wachet! (BWV 70a) by Bach and Machet die Tore weit by Telemann, and the brilliant Magnificat by Jan Dismas Zelenka. Soloists are Melissa Givens, Sarah Brindley, Sishel Claverie, Randolph Lacy, and Paul Busselberg. The Bach Choir and Orchestra (on period instruments) are under the direction of Albert LeDoux.

Christ the King Lutheran Church is located at the corner of Rice Boulevard and Greenbriar. There is no admission charge; a free-will offering will be received to support the series. For more information visit our website at www.bachsocietyhouston.org or call (713) 523-2864.

Limited free parking is available on the lots west and south of Christ the King Church. Ample parking is available for $1.00 (credit card only) across the street at Rice University's stadium parking lot on the southeast corner of Rice & Greenbriar.

The Bach Society is funded in part by grants from the
City of Houston
through the Houston Arts Alliance.

New answering machine message

2009-11-11T14:16:00.000-08:00

I try to make our answering machine message entertaining. Call if you want to hear the new one.

Quality News Reporting

2009-11-04T12:36:00.000-08:00

Above-the-post update: Apparently, what they mean is that the district, regardless of its number, that includes Clinton County, New York, has been Republican since the Civil War. That's very hard to verify.

Today, you can read news sources all over the web telling us that a Democrat has won the New York 23rd Congressional District for the first time since the Civil War. That is a very interesting fact. It's so interesting that it doesn't even matter that it's not remotely true.

Where did this meme come from? The Newsday article says

Democrat Bill Owens Tuesday won New York's 23rd Congressional District, parts of which have been in Republican hands since the Civil War.

Parts? What does that mean? New York has been subject to re-drawing district lines many times, of course, but the 23rd district has been Democrat much more than it has gone Republican for the past century. What is this mythical "district" they're talking about that has been a GOP stronghold for 130 years or so?

Where did this lie start, and why are so many supposed news outlets repeating it without checking?

And now for something completely different:

Hat tip.

Gala!

2009-11-03T12:41:00.000-08:00

I'll be in the Fort Bend Theatre Gala next Friday, November 13. It is a fund raiser for the theater. There will be some sketch comedy performed by actors (like me) who have been involved in theater productions this year, and there will be some minor celebrities who will be involved in sketches, as well. See the link for more information.

And this weekend, I'll be auditioning for a play at Theatre Suburbia. This one is not a musical, just a straight play. It is about a radio station in Minnesota, and it is directed by Bunny Hartman, who I acted with in the last straight play I did, Impossible Marriage. So it will be nice to see her again, and maybe that will give me a little edge. :)

Bach Vespers This Weekend

2009-10-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

See also the sidebar to the right for Upcoming Performances.

The Bach Society presents Bach Vespers on Sunday, November 1, at 6:00 pm. The program features works reflecting on the themes of All Saints Day, including J.S. Bach's cantata Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben, a setting of the German Nunc dimittis from the Musikalische Exequien by Heinrich Schütz, and the cantata Bestelle dein Haus by Christian Boxberg.

The Bach Choir is joined by soloists Nathan Medley, countertenor; Randolph Lacy, tenor; and Paul Busselberg, bass. The Bach Orchestra (on period instruments) is joined by the musicians of the trio Tinta Barroca, including guest organist Sebastian Knebel, who will play Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B Minor, BWV 544.

The Bach Society is funded in part by grants from the
City of Houston
through the Houston Arts Alliance.

Push-ups and Bach

2009-10-07T11:55:00.000-07:00

They have nothing to do with each other, as far as I know, except that I'm going to mention them both in this post.

The push-ups part

I have done push-ups on a regular basis for most of life, since I was an adolescent. They work out a lot of muscle groups at once, and don't require much time, space, or any equipment. My limit has always been "about 60". That's how many I could do in a row when I was at my peak of fitness in college, that's how many I could do in high school, that's how many I can do now. It is interesting (and somewhat frustrating) to me that the number never goes up. To be fair, in college I think I could hit 67 in a good set, while now my top number is 64. Still, not much difference.

There is a website called One Hundred Pushups that lays out a plan to work up to doing 100 push-ups in a row. According to their schedule, if you can do 60 push-ups, you're on week 6, the final week. You will do multiple sets of push-ups, with prescribed rest periods in-between. No doubt this is the key to building up endurance. However, when I tried, I was unable to even come close to doing the prescribed workout, which is (again) instresting and frustrating.

Anyway, five sets is too time-consuming, so I've been doing three sets: as many as I can do (about 60), 30 seconds rest, as many as I can do (about 13), 30 seconds rest, as many as I can do (about 10). We'll see if it leads to increasing my maximum. I know it has to be possible. Look at all the records!

Another exercise I like is Burpees. Again, it works a lot of muscles at once, in a short time, and requires little space and no equipment.

The Bach part

We had our first vespers of the new season with the new, smaller (16 singers instead of 24) Bach Choir. It went well. We were situated on high risers so that our voices could carry over the orchestra. Having heard the recording made by KUHF, I have to say we sounded really good. So if you get a chance to come hear us, please do. Next service is Nov 1 (see the sidebar).

Bach Vespers October 4

2009-09-30T04:58:00.000-07:00

The Bach Society opens its 2009-2010 season with Bach Vespers on Sunday, October 4, at 6:00 pm. The program features J.S. Bach's Cantata 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, as well as works by Heinrich Schütz and Max Reger.

The Bach Choir will be heard in its new, sixteen-voice configuration. Soloists are Bach Choir core singers Tricia Frank, Briana Kruse, Sarah Brindley, Sishel Claverie, Patrick Perez, Jeffrey Ragsdale, and Gabriel Preisser. Guest organist is Robert Brewer. The Bach Orchestra (on period instruments) plays under the direction of Artistic Director Albert LeDoux.

The Bach Society is funded in part by grants from the
City of Houston
through the Houston Arts Alliance.

Another silent "no"

2009-09-28T11:06:00.000-07:00

It's been over two weeks since my audition, and I haven't heard back from them. At about day 3, I figure it's a pretty definite "no". It's just annoying that people don't follow up to say "Thank you, we won't be using you." They make certain they have all kinds of contact info, and then they don't use it.

It was a good audition. I know, because I was there while two guys ahead of me auditioned. The first one did his songs, and then they talked to him about the show and had him tell a story (because the show doesn't have much actual dialogue to check speaking style). The second one had a bad audition and didn't get anything beyond singing. I got the long form. At the end, they ask if you have any questions. I think the question I should ask in the future is, "Will you let me know if you're not going to use me, or at what point do I assume a 'no'?"

Drawing a political cartoon

2009-09-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

You might be able to tell I'm not a real artist. I just thought it was a pretty good concept.

Audition Preview

2009-09-11T13:33:00.000-07:00

This is the ballad I'll use for my audition. I wanted to see how effectively I was presenting it. I tend to have a stand-and-sing style that doesn't really sell the song, so I worked on that.

The left half of my face is lazy. Gotta work on that.

Another audition

2009-09-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

Well, the audition at Rice didn't work out. They wanted a maniacal, bombastic madman, and I don't have one of those in me. Not that I'm not evil, I'm just not loud.

But I have another audition this weekend, so that's something to look forward to, rather than moping about the part I couldn't get...I'll mope later, when I don't get this part. No, really, I'll try not to mope. The odds are usually against you at an audition, and I understand that (I do wish that they would let me know when I don't get a part, though — Update: just got the "thank you but" email.). And this would be a paying gig, which makes it even more competitive.

But it looks to be a pretty neat two-man show. The Broadway version closed down after one weekend, but I consider that a plus. I specialize in unsuccessful shows. Most of my early roles were in such shows.

You can hear a couple of the songs from the show at the show's website. Quite charming. And one of the characters was played by Malcolm Gets, who played Richard on Caroline in the City. We used to watch that show. We liked Richard. So that's a sign, right?

Back from vacation

2009-08-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

For about 10 days, Shelly and I were away from Houston's August heat, exploring Oregon. It was beautiful. Temperatures seldom above 80, often in the 50s. Ocean, mountains, big old evergreen forests, wineries... What a great change of pace.

Came home to an answering-machine message from the director of the Theater program at Rice (I didn't know they had one!) She was inviting me to audition for The Threepenny Opera at Rice. She'd got my name from Rebecca Udden, at Main Street Theatre. It flabbergasts me to know that Ms. Udden even remembers me. I never know what's going to lead to something else, or when.

Paid Protesters

2009-08-10T10:25:00.001-07:00

Amazing. I've captured a PDF-converted-to-PNG below, for posterity.

Think it's an isolated incident? Think again. Verum Serum does some digging to find who these people are.

Meanwhile, Obama works out a quid pro quo with Big Pharma. Who's in cahoots with industry, again?

Worrying

2009-08-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

Not only do I think that "health care reform" is likely to be a horrific boondoggle, I find it disturbing that the political majority are working so hard to marginalize and dismiss those who oppose it. I get the strong sense that Democrats believe that people who are not on board with their agenda comprise oh, maybe 10% of the population. Just the far-right extremists, you know. A small but well-financed group of agitators out for themselves who are staging protests that aren't real, and who are stating concerns that aren't real, and who must be excluded or subdued. Vilified. Or at least informed upon.

You know who else was maligned and scapegoated this way? That's right, and look what happened to them: they got Israel! So I don't know why I said I'm worrying. The future looks greaaaat.

But just in case you've never met anyone who thinks Barack Obama is a bonehead full of bad ideas starting with his first executive decision (choosing Joe Biden as vice president), we exist.

Let's get those eyes back on the teleprompter

2009-07-09T15:02:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday to my little brother

2009-07-02T14:26:00.000-07:00

Lt. Col. Del "TAC" Johnson, USAF. Now serving in Afghanistan. Happy 40th.

Look at those roots!

2009-06-15T09:40:00.001-07:00

Tomato season has come to an end, for us. As usual, the pest and disease pressure have pretty well shut down the plants. It has been a good year. We put mosquito netting up over the tomato bed to keep the bugs out (as well as the birds and squirrels), and it worked, though not perfectly. Spider mites got in and wrought havoc. Armyworms and leaf-footed hoppers (stinkbugs) also managed to get in, but not in nearly the numbers that they did last year, when our crop was almost entirely a loss. So, success.

But the happiest surprise of the season came when it was time to uproot the plants. As you see above, they have very normal-looking roots. This is the first time we've seen normal-looking roots on our plants. You see, ever since we built the garden beds and filled them with sandy soil, we have had root-knot nematodes. We have tried several controls in the past, but at the end of the tomato season, the roots are always galled and ugly.

The most-recommended treatment is to plan Elbon cereal rye as a cover crop, over the fall-winter, and till it in some weeks before planting out tomatoes. Well, we couldn't find Elbon cereal rye, but we did find rye grain in the bulk bins at Central Market. We bought a half-pound or so, and tried sprouting it. It came up very readily, so we planted it all over the tomato bed. It grew into a nice thick lawn of grass. In January, we dutifully turned it under to allow it to break down into the soil. In theory, the nematodes have attacked its roots and doomed themselves, or been poisoned by chemicals the rye gives off. Maybe some of both. I don't know.

But I do know that those roots look beautiful to me.

Bach Choir CDs will be released May 24

2009-05-21T12:51:00.001-07:00

Come for the vespers, stay to buy a CD. Admission is free (as always), so spending $20 on the CD won't seem so steep. Three Bach cantatas are included, so that's less than $7 a cantata.

Growing Old Together

2009-05-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

Today is my 19th wedding anniversary. (Yes, it's the day after my birthday. Makes it easy to remember.)

I used to kiss frogs. I didn't do it in hopes that I'd find a princess, I just did it because I liked frogs. Eventually, I did find my princess, and I haven't kissed any frogs since. I don't know whether there's a lesson in there, but if there is, maybe it's: if you're going to kiss somebody, do it because of who they are, not who you hope they'll be.

Also, be nice to frogs.

Growing old

2009-05-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday to me! I'm 41.

I have a theory that around age 40, age-related changes start coming on more rapidly, kind of like the changes of adolescence that take you from being a child to being an adult. Only this transition is from being a young adult to being an old one. Or, you know, some euphemism that means old.

Through the 20s and 30s, there's change, of course, but it's pretty gradual. Metabolism slows a bit. Some lines in the face, that kind of thing. Nose hair, of course. A few introductory gray hairs.

Around 40, it accelerates: metabolism drops again (clunk), the gray hairs go from being token residents to being a strong voting bloc, and I presume the stray hairs springing up where they aren't wanted are going to be kicking into high gear. Presbyopia is also kicking in, all of a sudden, which is a real annoyance. And I'm guessing it's all this change that (like in adolescents) makes people more prone to depression.

Anyway, I'm not depressed. Just observing. I had a sticky bun for breakfast this morning as a birthday treat, how could I be depressed?

In completely unrelated news, do you ever wonder what comedians would do if they could find anything funny about President Obama? How about if he could make jokes at his own expense? That, it turns out, would be awesome!

Million Dollar Ideas #3

2009-05-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

Audio. Everything on the market is about HD video, but there's nothing about improving audio quality. Super-Audio CDs are something of a niche market, which seems strange to me. Home theater systems are widespread, meaning lots of people have Surround Sound systems, and their music doesn't take advantage of it.

We need more availability of high-quality, multichannel audio. There is no reason, for example, that the data on a Super Audio CD couldn't be lossily compressed by a factor of 10 (via MP3, for example), and thus fit on a standard CD while sounding a great deal better than a standard CD. The reason for compressing at all is to make downloading practical. Surely some audiophiles will object to any compression, even if it's a significant quality improvement over their current stereo FLAC downloads. Alternatively, FLAC handles multichannel and high sampling rates, so we could do that, but the bandwidth difference is at least a factor of 5. It might be passe to even worry about bandwidth, but there it is.

Then, of course, you have the issue of how to play it. At the very least, being able to translate the download to Dolby Digital and write it to a DVD would ensure that it was playable on pretty much every Surround Sound system out there. Writing to Dolby True-HD would allow more of the high-frequency sampling to come into play, but it's not available on all Blu-Ray players (although it was required for the now-defunct HD-DVD standard).

But let's bring this concept home: we're recording HD movies now, but still using stereo microphones, at best? Why? Well, probably because that's about all that home computers really handle. But if we had the devices to record real Surround Sound, I think manufacturers would bump up the playback technology.

Certainly it wouldn't take a great deal of horsepower to record 4 or 5 channels of sound on a device. I envision a shotgun mike mounted on the camera top for center channel, and then a hat that the camera operator would wear, with three omnidirectional mikes on it to pick up left, right, and rear. Then with software, apply this soundtrack to the video, and burn a real DVD or Blu-Ray disk with appropriate Dolby sound. (Or, if doing an audio-only disk, just the soundtrack.)

That hat is the million-dollar idea for this post.

Camera Lust

2009-05-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

Wow. Canon has finally done what I'd been hoping they'd do: they made a super-zoom camera with pretty much all the features you get in an SLR:

10 megapixel CMOS sensor
4.2 frames per second continuous shooting
Digic-4 processor (makes pictures taken with high ISO speeds usable)
Full HD 1080p 30fps video, in 4:3 or 16:9! Not even the latest Rebel has this (it's limited to 20fps at 1080p)
Can save RAW images
Stereo microphones
20x optical zoom
Image stabilization
$600 price tag

With an effective focal length range of 28-560mm, I don't need interchangeable lenses. Maybe just a really nice wide-angle converter, though it looks like the available 58mm adapter is somewhat limited in what it can accept.

The weak point is the sensor: it's still typical point-and-shoot size, which means the pixels are crammed pretty tight, compared to a real SLR sensor.

Breakfast: the most important meal of the year

2009-05-02T08:54:00.001-07:00

This was the morning we made our first BLT of the year. The tomato is a home-grown Nyagous, a black type, which surprised us with how early it was. It is, of course, the home-grown tomato that makes this particular breakfast so momentous.And so tasty.

Next Vespers

2009-04-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

May 24, at 6pm, back at the usual place.
We'll be singing

Handel: O Sing unto the Lord (Chandos Anthem)
Bach: Cantata 12, Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen

So, I did get this announcement up early!

Still no idea what, if anything, I'll be doing this summer. Getting the house ready to be remodeled is taking priority.

In other news, tomatoes are ripening in the garden. We picked our first, which was prematurely ripening because it had been attacked by a caterpillar. We cut out the bad parts and ate the pink fruit. It was still pretty good; better than supermarket tomatoes. The tomato bed is enclosed in mosquito netting this year, in hopes that further damage by bugs and other wildlife will be prevented.

Vespers this Sunday

2009-04-23T14:45:00.001-07:00

For a radical change of pace, the Bach Choir will be singing a vespers service at First Evangelical Lutheran Church this Sunday, April 26, at 6 pm. We'll be singing Christ lag in Todesbanden, Cantata BWV 4, plus a work by Schutz, and another by Van Brock(?).

One of these times I'll announce it a whole week in advance. Or more!

Oh, let's not get crazy.

Handel's Brockes Passion

2009-04-04T17:05:00.001-07:00

Palm Sunday, 6pm

Good Friday, 3pm

Christ the King Lutheran Church

corner of Greenbriar and Rice Blvd.

Admission is free, as always.

Come see this. The music is beautiful. The talent is impressive. The Bach Choir always does a good job, but this is a special event. Really, come if you can. Arrive half an hour early, because it's a small church and it will fill up.

A couple of sneak preview clips from the orchestra rehearsal today. I took them with my little old camera, so the sound and video are far from what you'll experience. But Zach does an absolutely gorgeous job as Peter:

And Melissa Givens, as always, delivers beautiful soprano coluratura:

Making peanut butter

2009-03-30T06:14:00.000-07:00

I have peanut butter every day in my lunch. It is homemade peanut butter (to go with homemade sourdough bread). If you like "natural" peanut butter and you have a food processor, it's easy to make your own. If you're used to brand-name peanut butter like Peter Pan or Jif, it may take a few eatings to get used to peanut butter that just tastes like peanuts.

For it to be a money-saving proposition, you'll need to get your peanuts on sale. Kroger periodically has 12-oz. cans for a dollar. We stock up, then. Sam's Club has giant cans of peanuts for a reasonable price, too, but they're salty. It's important to get either lightly salted, or to balance regular-salted with unsalted, or your peanut butter will be too salty. Don't used dry roasted. Spanish peanuts or cocktail peanuts are what you want.

We have a Cuisinart 11-cup food processor, and I grind about 32 oz. of peanuts at a time. That's enough to fill two 18-oz peanut butter jars, less a little because I generally have some left over already in one of the jars. Three 12-oz. cans of peanuts works out nicely to 36 oz. of peanut butter.

So here's what you do:
Put half the peanuts in the bowl of the food processor (fitted with metal blade). Give it about 10 1-to-2-second pulses, so that the nuts are getting chopped up pretty well. Then let it run for a few seconds until you start to see some clumping. Open it up and take out about half of the contents. They will be the "crunchy" part of your peanut butter. Put the rest of the nuts in the processor. Turn it on. Let it run for several minutes.

It will go through several different phases, from loudly chopping the nuts to seeming to just whir through a semisolid mass without affecting it, to gradually turning it into a smooth, semiliquid mass. When it's glossy-smooth, stop processing, put in your reserved nuts, and run for a couple more seconds to get them stirred in. Done. Scoop it into jars and store in the fridge. It will not separate as long as you keep it in the fridge.

Absolutely optional: I grind up 1/4 c of flax seeds in a coffee grinder and add that to my peanut butter.

It's wrong to laugh

2009-03-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

But see whether you can resist.

Annie Get Your Gun

2009-03-06T05:42:00.001-08:00

Last night was dress rehearsal for Annie Get Your Gun at the Stafford Centre. I took my camera along. Since I'm only in two scenes, I had a lot of opportunity to take pictures. I didn't take this one; I lent the camera to a stage mom so that I'd have a chance to be pictured, too.

As always, the show is coming down to the wire. There are more unsettled issues than we'd like, but I think that we're going to put on a good show, and I'm pleased to be able to recommend that y'all come see it. It would always be nice to have more polish, but in the realm of community theater, it's a good-looking show.

Below is a video clip, in which the Sioux Nation is inducting Annie as the adopted daughter of Chief Sitting Bull.

Back to the stage

2009-02-20T18:43:00.000-08:00

It's funny: the roles seem to choose me more often than I them. Neither of my recent auditions got me a callback, but Fort Bend Theatre called me to invite me to step into the role of Mr. Wilson in Annie Get Your Gun. This is how I wound up as Freddy in My Fair Lady. Most of my other roles have resulted from being invited by someone involved with the show, rather than my finding out about it and going.

Still, my favorite role so far was one I chose to go after: Lumiere. I hope there will be another, one of these days.

The show is March 6, 7, and 8 at the Stafford Centre. Information at the link.

A change of hope

2009-01-20T09:26:00.000-08:00

The post title isn't about Obama's inauguration, it's regarding my audition for Beauty and the Beast: The cast list was published, and I'm not on it. I didn't even get a callback. So now I'm pinning my hopes on the more long-shot possibility of a role in China: The Whole Enchilada.

Audition Season!

2009-01-12T13:54:00.000-08:00

Got one tonight, for Beauty and the Beast, with HITS Theatre. The performances will be at Miller Outdoor Theater in April. And it pays! So here's hoping.

More of a stretch, but I'm going to give it a shot, is for Theater Lab Houston's production of China: The Whole Enchilada, which is a three-man show, and also pays. That audition is next Sunday.

Also coming up, Fort Bend Theatre will be producing Annie Get Your Gun. I don't really think there's a role for me in that one. That is, the only one that gets much singing time is Frank Butler, and I don't see myself as the leading man/wild west show star.

The schedules overlap, so in the unlikely event that I was cast in more than one, I'd have to choose. I have to say that I tend to favor the one that spells "theater" in the American way. But I never know where I'm going to end up.

A Parable

2009-01-06T09:39:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, there was a middle-aged couple who got married. She was kind of a selfish b*tch, and he was a supremacist, given to erratic fits of rage. Each had numerous children from earlier marriages.

As you might expect, the marriage did not last long. After the divorce, her standard of living improved, because she'd had a better job, and now she didn't have to support him anymore. He was enraged about that. The property was divided in two; she built a house on her half, as she saw fit. He never built a house, because he thought he should have gotten the whole property. He was enraged about that.

Every now and then, he would pack up all his children and go to her place and throw rocks. She wasn't often available for him (and his kids) to throw rocks at, so they usually threw at her children, who were playing in the yard. She didn't like that a bit.

So she made his life a living hell. Since he never built a house, all his mail came to her, and sometimes she would just hold onto it, rather than giving it to him. Since she had a job and he didn't, she would sometimes hold onto his child support for a long time. "Stop throwing rocks at me and my kids," she would admonish him, "and maybe we can treat each other like civilized adults."

One day, things came to a head. Literally: one of the rocks he threw hit one of her kids in the head. She'd had enough. She came out of the house with a baseball bat and set about him. She yelled at his kids to get out of the way, but the fact is that each of the kids held a bunch of rocks for their dad, and he kept running from kid to kid to get more rocks to throw. So as she swung at him, she'd sometimes hit a kid.

"Stop hitting my kids!" he screamed.
"Send your kids someplace safe," she countered, "and we'll finish this without them."
"I can't fight without my kids," he growled.
"Then give up."
"Never!"

So the battle raged...

Million Dollar Ideas #2

2008-11-24T14:14:00.000-08:00

Ok, I have another one, since Ben & Jerry's apparently have already taken my first one.

This one is in the improbable field of automobile design. I say "improbable" because lots of people have lots of ideas about improving the automobile, but the car companies generally don't buy in. So those who have money build their own, and those who don't, never have their ideas go mainstream.

One neat idea I like but can't find the link to was a guy in India who basically just carved an "X" in the tops of the cylinders, causing more turbulence in the fuel-air mixture, better burning, etc. He could do away with the transmission entirely, because the power output was high enough. Or something. It was in Popular Mechanics at some point.

Anyway, my idea is a take-off on another Indian innovation: the air car. Instead of storing electicity in a battery, they store highly compressed air, and use its kinetic energy to run the motor. As a bonus, the air coming out is supercooled, so it works as an air conditioner, too. The slight downside is that they have to make the car superlight, and even then it only has a range of about 125 miles.

My idea: hybrid. Like the Prius, but with the air cylinder instead of a battery. Why is it good? Because it's more efficient to store mechanical energy as air pressure than it is to convert it to electricity and back. Also, batteries are heavy and expensive. And dangerous, although I'm not sure that a super-high-pressure cannister is really safe. I imagine you get a pretty big kaboom if that gets punctured.

But there it is. Run with it.

Million Dollar Ideas #1

2008-11-10T11:21:00.001-08:00

You know those ideas you get every so often, for things that could make a million dollars, if only you could manage to make them a reality? Yeah, I'm going to start posting mine here. So if you are one of those people who can do anything but doesn't get ideas like this, feel free to steal mine and make it happen.

Then send me some money.

One I've had for a long time: ice cream koozies. Insulated holders for ice cream pints, especially. It would also be nice to have them for half-gallons, at ice cream socials. But it would be really great to have them for the pints, because they melt way too fast on the outside while they're still too hard to spoon in the middle. And they freeze your hand if you're eating right out of the pint.

Which I never do. But some people must, right?

The Fickle Flame of Fame

2008-11-10T07:27:00.000-08:00

This weekend was quite unusual for me regarding our Flickr photostream. First, a photo I posted made Explore. That's a set of 500 of the photos loaded each day that Flickr's algorithms find to be the most interesting. I've had a few photos in the high 400s, but nobody notices those. This one ranked as high as 71 (we monitored its progress at various times over the weekend) before falling (which is to say other photos gained interestingness, relative to mine) to — as of this writing — #179. Still pretty respectable, and satisfying, but not the most significant thing to happen. [Update: I see it has dropped off of Explore altogether.]

The other Flickr happening was that a photo I posted in March 2007 started getting marked as a "favorite" by people. I couldn't figure out why; I hadn't posted it to any new groups or done anything to give it attention. Looking more closely at its stats, I was astonished to see it had 12,000 views. That's 10x as many views as my next most-viewed image. I added a query to the photo's description, asking visitors to tell me why there was this sudden avalanche of viewers. The answer was posted almost immediately: Digg.

Digg is a site that helps people find interesting stuff on the web. Somebody finds something they think is interesting, and they report it to Digg. As other people check it out, they upvote or downvote it, causing it to become more or less prominent in the Digg listings. Somehow (possibly in a search for turkey images for Thanksgiving), someone found my image, and Digged it. After a while, it made it to the front page, and I was getting hundreds of views a minute. This went on for several hours, before it finally fell off the front page, and my turkey picture had over 60,000 views.

As it happens, the one other photo I'm aware of that made Digg's front page wound up with over 100,000 views. It was worth it.

Shelly and I both had fun watching the progress of these two images. The excitement has ended, now. Maybe one day I'll have another photo in Explore, but I doubt the Digg frenzy will be repeated.

I guess I've had my 15 minutes. It was fun while it lasted.

Making Predictions

2008-11-05T07:36:00.000-08:00

Well, we lost. By "we", I mean America. Bought into a fantasy. It's the Nigerian 419 scam of American politics, and I'm just wondering how much we're going to pour into it before we realize it's not going to work out as promised.

Republicans can take a breather: they don't control anything in Washington. In that regard, it's similar to 1992. Two years later, the Republican Revolution came as the American public realized it's not a Good Thing to give unsupervised control of the cookie jar to those who act like it's bottomless. Maybe that will happen again. I don't see any reason to believe that Democrats have learned to be fiscally responsible, ethical, or in-touch. Sadly, Republicans have not lived up to their promises to be different in those areas, which is why it has come to this.

As for the Obama administration, I expect it to be ironically George W. Bush-like. He's every bit the privileged autocrat that W has been. It will be partisan. It will paint the opposition as un-American. It will probably go significantly further to stifle dissent, a prediction I base on the blinding hatred exhibited by so many of his supporters. It's pervasive and is encouraged more than condemned.

I used to wonder why liberals decried talk radio as "hate radio". There's very little hate in it. Lots of criticism, a fair amount of anger, but very little hate. I can only conclude that they are projecting their own hate for it as coming from it. So I think there will be a big push to shut it down, because they do hate opposing voices.

Predictions for Republicans: I think there will be some level of ODS, the Obama variant of BDS, but I don't think it will be as pervasive, because we've seen how ugly it is. Conservative hate groups are more reviled and marginalized by Republicans than those of the left are by Democrats. And maybe there's more nobility among Republican ranks.

I guess we'll see.

Caring for the enfeebled

2008-10-31T08:11:00.000-07:00

Shelly had surgery on Monday. Nothing life-threatening, and she's doing fine, though still a little slow, unsteady, and easily tired. Perfectly normal for post-surgery.

It was supposed to be day surgery, where she'd go home on Monday afternoon, but you can't go home after surgery until you've voided your bladder, and hers wasn't playing along. So we slept in the hospital that night. It wasn't real comfortable, but I'm pretty sure she was more uncomfortable than I was. And I had to hold her hand through several undignified procedures on Tuesday before things were good enough for her to be released.

It was a happy evening, Tuesday, being at home.

Wednesday, I worked a few hours on our side of town. Thursday, I took her in to her office for a wellness screening (irony!) that couldn't be postponed, took her back home, and went to my normal office. Today, I'm working on my side of town, which is usual for Fridays.

She's making fairly steady progress at being more mobile and going longer between needing to rest. Meanwhile, I'm handling most domestic issues (which, again, is not to say that I want to change places with her). Well, the ones that are being done. Which is to day that the place is something of a wreck. But we're both eating, sleeping, and taking care of personal hygiene, so it's not too bad.

She told me I've done a good job taking care of her, so I'm pretty happy.

Bach performance this Sunday!

2008-10-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

Sheesh, the primary purpose of this blog is to announce when I've got a performance coming up, and I just let this one sit and wait until I had something to write about it.

6pm, at Christ the King Lutheran Church
Bach Choir, orchestra, and soloists. We'll be singing a Bach cantata, a little Telemann, and a piece by Hiller. Guest conductor Gotthold Schwarz (who speaks virtually no English) has whipped us into pretty good shape. So it should be worth a listen.

The pipe organ at the church was damaged by hurricane Ike, so it won't be in use until next year. The orchestra is playing on period instruments (i.e., the forms the instruments had when Bach was composing), which is both interesting to see and to hear.

Strangely relevant

2008-10-10T11:23:00.000-07:00

This magazine cover was on the wall at the train station for the Mount Washington Cog Railway. If our economy were a mountain-climbing train, it would be heading down the mountain. Not on the rails, because the trestles collapsed.

Anyway, I'm looking for a "housing spurt" any day now.

Back from New Hampshire

2008-10-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

And Vermont and Maine. But mostly New Hampshire. We did many things and took many pictures, and they'll appear on our website when we've done all the necessary editing. For now, here's a nice shot of Shelly walking up the road by the Norwich B&B, where we stayed our first night.

Feeling empowered

2008-09-26T19:43:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, on day 13 of the power outage, having seen no activity in our neighborhood to clear the tree debris or restore power up to that point, it felt pretty good to come home to trucks lining the main street all the way down.

It felt like hope. They were going to do it. They were putting a lot of manpower into it, not just a token crew or two.

Sadly, it did not happen that night. The houses on the other side of the street got their electricity, but not our side. There were poles that needed to be fixed. It would take another day.

Ok, we can go another day. An even fortnight. Get a little more use out of the generator.

Today, we came home and watched them work on the poles. Then we watched trucks exit the neighborhood. It looked like it wasn't going to be tonight, either. But it was closer. I had Bach Choir rehearsal.

When I came home, we had power. And internet service. What a relief! There's another section of our block where the poles are even worse off, and it will be another day or more for them. At least we can lend somebody a generator.

Waiting for power

2008-09-22T09:31:00.000-07:00

We're fine. The house is fine. Hurricane Ike was more of a natural inconvenience than a natural disaster for our house. The part of the fence that has needed replacing for years was blown down and will finally be replaced. Other than that, no repairs on our property. You know why? No trees.

But it sure would be nice to have electricity again. We live in an area you might expect to get power quickly: on the west side of town, very near the 610 loop. Not heavily-damaged, not way out in the suburbs. But we don't have much in the way of big retail centers to give us a high priority, and there are a number of trees down on lines, which does make the difficulty higher (pushing us down the priority list). Centerpoint expects us to be restored "by Thursday". My bet was Wednesday, Shelly bet Friday.

Shelly was in Houston for Hurricane Alicia in 1983. She fondly* recalls 11 days without power. It appears we will be breaking that record, although we're a few weeks later, and thus don't have the oppressive heat they had.

We bought a generator, to keep the deep freeze going. It also keeps the fish in our tank and pond alive, and gives us some light when it's dark out. But it doesn't run the air conditioner, and it's pretty balmy out. We're taking a lot of rinse-off showers to cool down.

What did we do in the week after Ike hit? Well, first, we went out in the rain and raked debris out of the storm drains. Then out of the gutters. Our neighborhood drains pretty well, anyway, but it's always better to have the drain paths clear. Then we helped some neighbors clean up the debris (dropped from trees, of course) in their yard, cut up big limbs, that sort of thing.

Over the next few days, we hosted several cookouts, to make use of perishables and get the neighbors together. They were pleasant, and I recommend that sort of thing as a coping strategy. Very positive.

We didn't drive anywhere for several days. We weren't supposed to, so we didn't. Gasoline was in short supply, and traffic lights were generally out. Other people couldn't resist the urge to drive around. A lot. When we did take the car out, on Tuesday, it was because Southwest Fertilizer had generators, and we were ready to buy one. And later in the week, we bought some groceries.

Gripes
People who didn't prepare for the storm and thus had to leave home within the first three days to buy groceries. If you didn't prepare the way you were told to, you're part of the problem. Stay home. Don't use gasoline. Don't endanger people with your vehicle on uncontrolled, debris-strewn roads. Three days is not such a terribly long time to stay at home.

People who were under mandatory evacuation orders who didn't leave and now are receiving top priority in relief efforts. The only assistance they should get is help getting out. We should not be channeling resources to areas that are supposed to be empty, we should be putting all efforts into restoring the areas where people were told to stay.

People who blame Centerpoint for their miseries. Yeah, you don't have power. You and two million other people. Deal with it. Don't shout epithets at the people who are trying to help you. And don't hurl abuse at the people who are telling you which lane you have to drive in to get free ice. Grow up. You're not two anymore.

Trees. Ok, not trees, generally. I like trees, generally. They're pretty. They sequester carbon. They give birds places to hang out, apart from power lines. But the notion of an "urban forest" has its drawbacks. Trees in and around power lines are bad. Brittle trees (Arizona ash, Chinese tallow), trees that shed lots of crap in storms (water oak), and ginormous trees (sycamore, pine) are all bad ideas around houses and expensive stuff. Our urban forest should be made of smaller trees.

*irony.

We are all Tina Turner this weekend

2008-09-11T08:18:00.001-07:00

Pleading with Ike not to hit us, but knowing what's coming.

Adding a state

2008-09-05T17:17:00.000-07:00

I haven't been everywhere (man), but Shelly and I are planning to add a couple of states to our experience list: Vermont and Maine. Still haven't been to New York.

You can make your own visited states map here.

How Obama is like George W. Bush

2008-09-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

I don't intend this to be a political blog, but I'm feeling the need to post something, and I have this idea in my head.

Because Obama is running primarily on the platform of being the alternative to four more years of George W. Bush, I started thinking how much like Dubya (the candidate) he is:

Identified strongly with an initial
That initial, with American flag stylization, is the campaign logo
Known to be good at prepared speaking, stumble a lot when speaking extemporaneously
Not a lot of experience
Chose an older, more-experienced crony for his running mate
Hammers a central message, tries not to stray from it
Record-breaking campaign contributions
Party platform
History of use of intoxicants, given up long ago

Got others? Post 'em in the comments.

Pondering the signs

2008-08-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not doing theater for the rest of this year. But I received an audition notice in my email that really made me wonder:

Main Street Theater will hold musical auditions by appointment only on Saturday, September 6 for its upcoming production of THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA. The production will begin rehearsals December 8 to open January 8 and run through January 25. [...] There is one (male) non-singing role.
...
Readings for the non-singing role will be held at later in the week, but please let us know if you are interested in auditioning for that role.

Characters:
Margaret Johnson - an elegant, self-possessed middle-aged American woman
Clara Johnson – her twenty-six-year-old daughter, young and naïve for her age
Fabrizio Naccarelli – twenty-year-old, good looking and charming Florentine
Guiseppe Naccarelli – Fabrizio’s slightly older brother
Franca Naccarelli – Guiseppe’s wife
Signor Naccarelli – Fabrizio’s father
Signora Naccarelli – Fabrizio’s mother
Roy Johnson – Margaret’s husband (a non-singing role)

Wait, what? How can I not audition for this role? Can you imagine checking the program to see who's playing "Roy Johnson", and it's Roy Johnson?

And is there a deeper meaning here? Why is the only non-singing role the one with my name? Is this character actually the opposite of me?

Oh, if you're interested in auditioning:

To schedule an audition, please call 713-524-3622 X106 or email rudden@mainstreettheater.com

Advocating science in nutrition

2008-08-19T08:45:00.001-07:00

The Pollyanna Institute for Comforting Conjecture (I my have gotten the name slightly wrong) has a smear campaign going against Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. CSPI publishes Nutrition Action Healthletter, to which Shelly and I subscribe. We heartily recommend it; we have bought a number of subscriptions for our friends who are interested in current research on nutrition.

CSPI is best known for bringing to light how surprisingly unhealthy a lot of foods are, like movie popcorn and Chinese takeout. The Healthletter goes into a bit more depth, picking a topic or two a month and reviewing the science behind it. A lot of nutritional information is put out by companies selling products, and CSPI examines the supporting studies. Not surprisingly, they are often industry-funded, and the results are inconclusive, but the companies make sweeping and unjustifiable claims based on them.

The Pollyanna Institute apparently has a problem with consumers being informed about what science actually says. CSPI concerns itself with whether studies are well-designed, repeated, and conclusive. The Pollyanna Institute concerns itself with whether they can contrive some way to believe what they want to believe.

Case in point: they quote a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that claims the CDC says obesity would cure itself it kids would just exercise as much as they used to (I cannot find where the CDC says any such thing). Hey, it says what they want to believe. Never mind that it's not true — kids today consume more calories than they used to, so they'd have to exercise more than they used to. Never mind that it's easier to stop buying sugary junk than it is to change their lifestyle.

They beef that Jacobson pays only lip service to exercise (another lie), and focuses on nutrition. Meanwhile, they completely dismiss the role of nutrition, suggesting that Michael Phelps' diet is a fine model, if only we burn those calories. I wonder why they chose Michael Phelps, rather than someone who followed their advice for the longer term, like Jim Fixx? Maybe it's because Fixx died of a massive heart attack at age 52, and that isn't really the message that makes them feel comfortable. Sure, he had a family history of heart disease, but a lot of people do. Nutrition has a role to play in controlling that. Exercise clearly wasn't enough.

But if you want to eat like Michael Phelps and have his world-beating health, there are just three simple things you need to do:

Be under 30
Get six hours a day of strenuous exercise
Have Phelps' athletic genes

You may find that to be a challenge, but you can see it's well worth it. So get out there and make it happen. Oh, steroids also help people be world-class athletes, so you might try them, too. The Pollyanna Institute's reasoning gives a pretty clear endorsement.

Some things I've learned from actual nutritional studies:

Take a vitamin-D supplement. 1000mg of D3 a day is recommended. There are a lot of supplements that have not been shown to have much benefit to health. Vitamin D has. It is cheap.
Take a fish-oil supplement (unless you eat oily fish several times a week). You should eat salmon and other fatty fish, too, but chances are you don't do so often enough to obviate the usefulness of a supplement.
Take resveratrol. The human studies aren't complete, but the results in other critters are so astounding that it's just worthwhile.

We get our vitamin D and fish oil at Sam's Club, and our resveratrol at VitaCost.

Back to Bach

2008-08-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

Rehearsals resume tomorrow with the Bach Choir. Our first vespers performance is September 28 at 6pm, at Christ The King Lutheran Church, 2353 Rice Blvd., as always. Soloists are Melissa Givens, Randy Lacy, and Paul Busselberg. They're all wonderful, so come if you can.
An interesting feature about this season is that we'll be recording a CD. This will be the first CD produced since I've been with the group. The recording sessions will happen the day-or-two after each performance, so we'll be at our most prepared.
And in other news, Joe informs me that HITS Theater will be doing Disney's Beauty and the Beast for their spring show at Miller Outdoor Theater. I don't know how he knows this, but it's my top contender for next production to audition for.

Missing Theater

2008-08-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog!

That's sort of the requisite opening for the inaugural post, isn't it? What are the chances that anyone will read it? :^)

Well, anyway, what I'm up to is "missing theater". It's part of a familiar cycle: when the show's over, you miss it. It's a little like going home from summer camp. There's a period of adjusting to "normal" life and wishing you could still be doing the show. Actually, I'm pretty much over it, now. It was worse after Beauty and the Beast, because my role was bigger and more fun.

The latest show, if you missed it, was My Fair Lady. I played Freddy Eynsford-Hill, the fatuous young man who falls for Eliza, and whom she considers marrying, but doesn't. The chief requirement for Freddy is that he be a good singer, since about half of his time onstage is spent singing "On The Street Where You Live". Pictures (and video clip) are at the link.