A Classical Experience of a Lifetime

note: You may consider playing the video (at the bottom of the post) in the background while you read this post.

I'm very grateful to a very generous friend and his wife who gave me one of the best gifts I've ever received. The gift was season tickets to the Portland Symphony Orchestra. Although its 'just tickets,' my friend knew me well enough to know how much I would enjoy them. Its selfless generosity that truly magnifies the power of the gift...its not just the tickets, its the message communicated in the giving of the gift from the heart that makes its so special. I don't feel I can thank him enough.

To add to the value of the gift, it gave my wife and I an opportunity to do something we enjoy together that we could never afford to do on our own. (And we didn't have to fight kids to sit still through the concert.)

The musical experience was special to me because you can't match live music. Especially music with such complex textures and activity that you can only get from having so many instruments working together.

No matter how good your sound system is, you can't get sound waves to dance from a recording and speakers like they do in a live concert hall. You have each instrument creating its own sound waves from different positions in relation to your ears. You also have the sound waves bouncing off the ceiling and walls at different angles and distances. So the timing and stereo effect of each individual soundwave presents so much depth and detail to the listener. The pure, uncorrupted, and unmanipulated waves from each instrument mix together in organized timing and frequency--sometimes cancelling each other out and sometimes building on each other and complimenting each other. I can't express it well enough how incredible live Orchestra music is-- from a general entertainment perspective to a mental-scientific analysis perspective.

It was so relaxing and wonderful to be totally submersed in the sounds of the Orchestra. I also really enjoyed watching the different instruments and hearing what they truly sound like with all of their overtones and textures. I was amazed at the skill the musicians showed as they executed the pieces with seeming perfection.

If you ever have the opportunity to go to a live symphony, take it! And if you have people in your life that treat you like a king or queen, you will understand why this was such a special gift for me. Thank you, Rich and Ruth!

Note: I really like music surrounding the baroque era (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and others). One of my favorites is Mozart's Symphony no. 40. Although this is no where near live-quality sound, it gives you a little idea.

Ready for Christmas

One of the things I'm thankful for around Thanksgiving is Christmas time. Although I've been enjoying the Christmas Season since September with some of my favorite music of all time (or if you count the Christmas lights in our living room that we haven't taken down for two years we've been enjoying it year-round,) Thanksgiving kicks off the Christmas Season. What better way to kick-off the Christmas Season than to remember all the things for which you are thankful.

Each year, my dad puts up his Christmas village and train. We had a tradition growing up where each year we would each paint a house. Mine, of course, always looked the best (regardless of what my brother and sisters might say.) Since we've all grown-up somewhat, Dad supplemented his village with more professionally-done village homes....although they still don't look as good as the one's I did, I'm sure.

I love the mirror ice ponds. I've learned that Christmas decorations and lights look much better when taken without a flash. Generally, for that matter, point and shoot flashes really ruin a picture unless there is enough light from other directions to reduce the visually abrasive light the aggressive head-on light produces. I also really enjoy taking pictures from a 'being in there' point of view of tinier scaled environments. I think it adds depth and perspective to photographically 'imagine' what it would be like if that was your world.

Out of a half dozen attempts to get ornaments in focus (with no flash) this one is about the only one that turned out. I love how the clear glass is in focus and you can see all the surrounding lights reflecting in the glass. I love the classy Christmas colors in this picture.

Again, several attempts yielded this truly focused picture of a Christmas light. I love how the light filters through the texture of the plastic cover. Then add the actual glass light with its unique textures. I like how the light seems to concentrate on the tips of the flower. Then add the fir tree background with its needles adding a nice subtle texture.

A Mixed Pair

This morning the boys got themselves dress for church while I was at meetings. They had shirts laid out, but their church pants were in the dryer.

The two older boys did alright, but as we were walking in from the parking lot, I noticed my middle son's (age 7) pants were extremely short.

After sitting down, we noticed our youngest son (age 4) was wearing pants that were too big, but not big enough for our middle son.

Fortunately, our second oldest son (age 5) was also wearing pants that were too large.

So a quick trip to the bathroom and they all came back with the right pants-- a miracle considering all the extra choices they could have made.

The Office With A View

I feel blessed to live on the Oregon Coast. There is so much beauty in so many things. One of the special blessings I have is the opportunity to have a decent job allowing me to live here. To add icing to the cake, I work with some of the best people in the world.

The sprinkles on the icing on the cake have to be the location of my office. Where else can you have an office job and look out a window at some awesome sites? My office is on the second floor of a strip mall-sort-of-complex that is located right off of Hwy 101 at the corner where Hwy 101 (north/south coast hwy) meets up with Hwy 30 (East/West along the Oregon-side of the Columbia River.) My window faces Southeast towards the Coastal Range--I overlook the hwy and the Astoria Coast Guard Air Station.

This picture was taken a few weeks ago from inside my office as the sun was coming up. Click on the picture to see the full impact. I love the layers of the clouds, fog, sunlight and the contour of the terrain/trees in contrast with each other. You can see Saddle mountain (looks like a saddle) on the top right of the picture--clipped off by the clouds and partially protected by that tree. The building in the picture is the Air Station. This is one of the best views I've ever seen from my window at work.

Note: I like taking pictures at high resolutions and then cutting them out to make a panorama view. It gives a great spacious perspective. The main reason I cropped this one the way I did, was because the details were drowned by all the space around it (and there was a parking lot light sticking up just to the left of the picture.)

One unique thing about the coast is the opportunity to observe the US Coast Guard. We have the ships and we have the helicopters.

We watch the helicopters train almost everyday from our office. The USCG air station is at the Astoria Airport, so we get to observe a lot of different craft every once in a while (Navy, experimental, Air Shows, smaller commercial).

This picture was taken with the camera's optical zoom to the max and the lens looking through some zoomable binoculars--so its not the greatest, but when you compare the size of the building in this picture to the size of building in the picture above (also noting the camera zoom was at its max for that one) it worked out pretty well. You can even see the blur from the engines' exhaust. Those Jayhawks are amazing to watch.

This is a broad view of what my office looks like. I love all the plants. Out the window you can see Hwy 101, the Air Station and Saddle mountain is just behind the tree (near the flash reflecting in the window). I have my chair set so I can look north east and see part of Young's Bay. I see a lot of different kinds of birds. Quite frequently we will see bald eagles fly over or perch in the bay.

I love the plants in the office...they make it a warmer place to be in all day long. And notice the fish bowl. Actually almost all the plants, the fish and most of my decoration is compliments of the great people I work with. Additionally, they water the plants because they know how much I don't.

Here is my fish, an office-warming gift from our Accounts Receivable person. I named the Beta, "Kim." As in 'Seaweed' in Korean.

It was pretty much impossible to get a well-focused picture through the glass with the camera I used. This is Kim.

Constant Learning

Elder Richard G. Scott

Quorum of Twelve Apostles

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
@ BYU Education Week Devotional, August 21, 2007

At Least Little People Don't Fall Far

Even though I feel bad for the little guy who is more stunned than hurt, it's still makes me laugh the way he suddently dissapears from the camera--like a cartoon.

Then as you look more closely at the smirking brother in the bottom corner of the video, you gain a whole new understanding.

Finale Notepad

About five years ago I came across one of the best pieces of freeware ever in existance: Finale Notepad. Finale Notepad is from MakeMusic, Inc. who makes high class professional music-writing Finale brand software.

Finale Notepad 2008 allows you to make nice quality looking music by simply selecting the staff layout, the time signature, and key. Then you make your music by clicking on the staff where you want the notes, rests, lyrics, articulation, or whatever you want to include in your music. Here what the toolbar looks like:

You can also import midi files into the program to instantly create the sheet music. I haven't played with that feature much, but what dabbling I've done, took some editing to clean it up, but did a pretty good job.

You can also play back your composition and select different midi instruments with incredible sounding SmartMusic Midi codec (for lack of a better term) to play back different lines of music. This works great for people like me who can't play the piano in real time worth beans. Its also nice when you have multiple staffs to play all at the same time with different timing. Mix that with the different instruments and you can literally compose for an orchestra and hear what it will sound like..

Its amazing to think you could get better than Finale Notepad. If this powerful software is free, it makes me wonder what the $600 Finale software can do!

Free does have its price, though. You are limited to one key (no key changes mid-song). You are stuck with only the most common time signatures and a limited number of articulations. There are a few other limitation, but, quite frankly, I'm not knowledgable enough about writing music to know what's missing. Considering the price, those limitations are easy enough to work around.

Here's a sample of how nice the music looks:

A Kindergartener's Theory: Size vs. Speed

My five-year-old and I were running part way to his afternoon Kindergarten class. Amazingly, he stayed slightly ahead of me the whole time. Finally we started walking and he beamed with pride that he was able to go faster than an adult. That's when he explained to me his newly realized theory that smaller people can go faster than bigger people. Therefore the smaller you are the faster you can go.



Then he curled his fore finger into his thumb to make a small hole the size of kidney bean and said, "...a baby...this size (showing me his hand) can go faster than everybody."


This idea threw me deep into contemplation about how a tiny baby developed only to kidney bean size could speed past every other person, until the last part of his dissertation caught my attention, "...if we don't step on it..."

Monster House

Last year we learned that our house turns into Monster House around Halloween time. Although narrowly escaping with our lives intact, we were successful in snapping a few pictures: