BBQ yesterday and today… leftovers at the water cooler.

Emma and Diane had their end of the year dance show yesterday evening. That was the opener to the Fete de la musique in Barraux. I guess they figured there would be a bigger turnout Saturday than Sunday.

Today the girls are going to sing with the choir.

Just in case you were wondering, it is not the size of your screen that matters. It is whether you have a remote control for your conference phone. (near the edge of the desk, next to the pad of paper)

From Normand Baillargeon’s blog:

Quelle est la différence entre un mathématicien et un philosophe ? Le mathématicien peut travailler avec seulement un stylo, un papier et une poubelle; le philosophe croit pouvoir se passer de la poubelle.

They didn’t catch anything. They were trying to fish with flour and water dough.

Diane was in the car while I washed it. She found my phone and started taking pictures and a video, mostly of the inside of her mouth.

This is the only one that turned out somewhat interesting. (Click for full size view.)

You have perhaps heard me say that I do not like traveling. By that I mean I do not like being in transit. The time and space constraints are a bother. Sitting somewhere other than normal is only an irritation to the extent that carrying more than a small subset of one’s gear cannot be done easily. Imagine servants loading chests onto the Titanic.

The anonymity and quiet can replenish my energy, however. I notice myself shaving and think that too much time has gone by without good exercise. Nathalie heard something about monasteries offering retreats to those addled by the noise and bustle of town.

Matt’s wife Colette suggested running with other people. The peer pressure forces you out. In fact the quiet and solitude draws me out. Unless I have been spending so much time with people that I am too tired to go.

Although I have not yet reached the point where there’s been time to investigate why Twitter is interesting, there’s nevertheless been breathing space.

MySpace now lets you post up to 10 songs, so I did. If there were more time, I’d start looking into drum loops in odd time signatures. GarageBand is pretty good, but there are two missing features: 1) More loops in odd times; 2) Easy way to change tempo in mid-song.

If there were so much time that I’d discipline myself out of boredom, I’d sit down with the Berklee book on sight reading and work through the exercises.

I tried iWeb in an attempt to make http://mcraig.org/lltt/ look nice. I was in a bad mood after two pages. Could not see how to edit HTML source from within iWeb. Ended up using vi to add the JavaScript of the Yahoo Media Player.

Even updated my CV as suggested by a reminder mail from l’APEC.

A while ago I was trying to record music on Ubuntu. A long time ago, Dave Wolf and I started LLTT. I left the country and ended up getting a job. The Internet makes it possible to collaborate.

Apple really did three nifty things with GarageBand. First, they made recording easier than with the 4-track cassette decks we used to have. Second, they added a bunch of loops to let you demo an idea quickly (as long as you stick to the beaten path of 4/4 — I’ve only done one bit in 7/8, and some other fragments not in 4/4). Finally, they made GarageBand files compatible with their music software, Logic, which I hear is what real musicians use.

I started recording some ideas. Dave suggested I upload them to MySpace, see http://www.myspace.com/llttinprogress. Perhaps he will have time to chuck all the Apple drum tracks, and perhaps rerecord a the bass I did with the keyboard before Nath bought me a cheap Squire P-bass copy.

In about 1992 Darryle told me that he was trying to write one song a day. He figured that if he wrote enough of them at least a few would be good.

If I had one a day to throw away, there still might not be anything good left at the end. Depends how high one puts the bar.

Creativity. A lot of what is truly new would get thrown out.

I was sitting there trying to imagine the music that would come from depression, but I could not hear it. When I search for music depression or depression music at Google, the first page of hits is all about how music therapy, or songs of the Great Depression.

I tried playing something from depression, but what I came up with was just listless.