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Showing posts from May, 2013

The Orchestra: An App Review

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The main menu of The Orchestra app.  You can select one of the eight featured pieces of music or tap on the right to enter the instrument section.  The app is highly visual and packed with plenty of facts and information to read as well. Recently, as part of my birthday celebration, I treated myself to a couple of iPad apps pertaining to classical music. Anyone with any familiarity to this blog knows I have a strong curiosity for the classical music form. I recently completed a cycle of posts on what I consider to be the greatest symphonies ever composed. But, as I admitted several times throughout those posts (and others on the subject of classical music) I am a musical amateur. I have never received any musical training. I taught myself to play the guitar in college. I am extremely mediocre. I can pick out a few tunes (mostly Christmas carols as it turns out) on an electric keyboard I have in my study. Of course, I have already reviewed the app, GarageBand . So, I dabble wit

Daises of Our Field

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These are photos of the land between my house and the road where we have wild daises growing.  In February and March I walk my fields to find the daises.  Thanks to the precision of my Gravely mower , I miss almost all of them.  The few I fail to miss are noted and I don't mow them in April.  The result in May is a fullness of rich, open-spaced daises of the field.  Looking south from the northern corner of our property along the road. Another angle of our lower field.  Notice a few more daises in the distance. Part of our front yard looking south. Front yard looking east toward our house. Front yard looking north back toward the lower field which is hidden by the trees lining our driveway.

Nala Haunts Me

Two weeks ago my oldest dog Nala ( see her in an earlier post ) turned up missing. None of my neighbors had seen her. I searched my property as best I could, tracing her various paths. She was nowhere to be found. I have had many dogs during my lifetime. Only a couple of them ever wandered off to die. So, it worried me about Nala. She had grown very old and incontinent. Her bad hips were bothering her to the extent that she could not walk without daily pain medication. She was deaf and had not barked in months. Her peripheral eyesight was failing but she could see clearly straight ahead. She would still go for walks with me though sometimes she chose lay around and sleep. The possibility of having her put to sleep was very real and near. I was hoping to get her into summer when she seemed to do better in the warmth. Maybe into the beginning of next winter. We'd have to see how it went. It is was ever-present mental debate about how much longer to let her live. She wa

An Artsy Space Oddity

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This was released on the internet yesterday.  Astronaut Chris Hadfield does really nice work with this David Bowie classic presented for the first time in its intended surroundings.  Pretty cool stuff.  For the record (so to speak), the first rock album played in space in its entirety was Delicate Sound of Thunder by my all-time favorite rock group, Pink Floyd .  That happened aboard a Soyuz spacecraft mission in late 1988.  On the back of the neck of a couple of Pink Floyd t-shirts I own there is an antennae symbol commemorating this historic first with the words: "Still First In Space."

Zero Dark Thirty Wins My Best Picture

By now I have seen a large number of films released in 2012. Argo was the Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards. I have previously devoted reviews to The Dark Knight Rises , Zero Dark Thirty , Lincoln , The Hobbit , Silver Linings Playbook , and Prometheus  all of which I saw on the big screen. Here’s some short thoughts on several other 2012 movies that I chose to watch outside of the theater. The Master featured acting on the level of Lincoln in every way. Joaquin Pheonix was as brilliant as Daniel Day-Lewis in 2012 and proved conclusively that he is one of the world’s best actors. He completely disappears inside his character. Philip Seymour Hoffman almost matches him with a powerful supporting role. Hoffman deserved to win the award for Best Supporting Actor in my opinion.  I really like both of these actors. They have some very intense and satisfyingly written scenes featuring just the two of them. Truly captivating performances. Unfortunately, The Master bui