Sephy’s Platzish

Note: Like last week, I’m posting this before the Sunday walk. Check back in about 3 hours for the Sunday walk write-up and the In Other News section…

Monday, 24th September

Looking back towards the parking lot of the park from the road leading to the entrance/exit.

It was a warmer day, and I made a really bad decision. I went out of the park and around the long way, up the road that I go under to get to the park. That led to me having to slide down a big hill very slowly. Not an experience I’m going to be repeating anytime soon, unless I want to take a really long walk.

Total distance - 11324 steps, 9.05km

Tuesday, 25th September

Looking down a slide on the playground equipment? Wanna go down it?

I walked just after the rain ended and got back just before it started raining very heavily. Quite good timing, I should think. Even the mosquitoes weren’t too bad though their numbers did increase as I went along as it was still quite humid. Hopefully it will end soon and they will go away!

Total distance - 10418 steps, 8.33km

Wednesday, 26th September

A grab shot experiment - this is of the parking lot; I really liked the colors as they wound up in this picture.

I really cheated today. I was making good time when I started walking, but due to some conflicting events (such as needing to head to the grocery store to visit the bank before a specific time), I wound up only walking halfway back home until I was picked up. I decided to then make up the rest of the way to 10000 steps by doing some walking around the house.

Total distance - 10337 steps, 8.26km

Thursday, 27th September

An anvil cloud forms to the north of the park; I don’t know if it actually caused any rain though.

It was another wet day, this time with thunderstorms in the area, but I waited it out until the rain stopped. Just to be sure, I took the umbrella with me, and that was good since just as I was walking out of the park, a light shower started which lasted for maybe 30 seconds.

Total distance - 11230 steps, 8.98km

Friday, 28th September

A bit of a time lapse look at some bugs flying around alongside the road. I decided to go around them

Again, being Friday, I decided to repeat the keeping track of my steps during the day while at volunteering. I walked in the evening using the white light and it worked actually quite decently, better than I would have expected.

Distances -
10.13am (after walking to volunteering and working for a couple of hours) - 1403 steps, 1.12km
3.35pm (after volunteering) - 1651 steps, 1.32km
6.15pm (after getting home and before walking - 4433 steps, 3.54km
8.20pm (after walking) - 13354 steps, 10.68km
end of day - 13560 steps, 10.84km

Saturday, 29th September

A 30-second timelapse looking towards the southwest. The purple light is actually a combination of the white and red lights on my headband.

I went to walk late in the day again, just because I still have time management issues. It’s something that I desperately need to work on. Anyway, as I was walking, I spotted what I thought was lightning in the southwestern sky, but I think now it was just a camera’s flash, as it only happened a couple of times, and wasn’t followed up by thunder. I continued on though and it never did rain.

Total distance - 11446 steps, 9.15km

Sunday, 30th September

A woodpecker goes to work on a tree. (I’m having problems with the image showing up, so it might not appear for you…)

Today’s walk was a bit different because I decided to break it into two distinct sections. I decided to get to the shelter that’s at the park and then stop to do a bit of writing - it worked pretty good, I think because I don’t have the distractions that I have on the computer available to me in the park. Hopefully, it will help me to focus on writing when I’m at the computer.

Total distance - 10752 steps, 8.60km
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In other news, I’ll be honest and say that it wasn’t the greatest week with keeping on target with my goals. I’m still falling victim to temptations on the internet. As I mentioned, what actually worked was taking 15 minutes with a pencil and paper to sit and write in the park. I also fell down on the work with putting together a to-do list every day; I only admittedly made one on Thursday.

I’ve now purchased a very simple day planner (no fancy type on it that says “Day Planner” or “DayRunner®”. Nope, this is just a $1.84 “assignment” notebook, with a line for the date on it; it’s simple and, provided I make myself determined to actually stick with it, should work. I’m also taking advantage of a small egg timer I have here to help me with eliminating the distractions by allowing myself only to do them after doing something, and only for a short period of time (10-20 minutes).

The final GYST Update:

Has it been 4 weeks already? The time certainly seemed to fly. I’ve successfully made it to walking 10,000 steps every day this week; however, I am still around the 2-hour mark for my daily walks. I’ve gotten to the point now where I will walk in just about any conditions, including the dark of night, with the assistance of a headband flashlight.

However, this week, I’ve been bad with my eating by having junk food (really the first junk food that I’ve had for almost a month, but still it’s bad) and doing a bit of overeating. It’s a minor setback, but I feel that I’m ahead of where I was at the beginning of the month.

I still have issues with resolving the distraction issue I have, along with managing my time so that I can do everything I want to do in a day. I’ve invested in a small notebook which will be only for setting out tasks for me to do on the day, and am going to make use of a small egg timer that I have to put a limit on the time I take in pursuing my distractions, if they do arise.

I feel that I’ve made a start on the way to improving my life, but I know that there is still a long way to go for me to get to where I want to be. However, I know that I can make the changes, I just have to commit to them.

Note: This post is a paid post

I’ve been active off and on in chat rooms for about nine years. Now, of course, there are other people who I know who have been around the chat scene ever since it started, but that’s their story.

There have been a lot of different ways of being in chat rooms, from the bare-bones IRC server networks, to one-on-one environments like ICQ and AIM, and then to Yahoo Instant Messenger which was one of the first chat clients to include a variety of chat rooms right there in the messenger client.

However, over the last couple of years, chat systems have moved away from separate, downloaded, programs to being able to chat right in your browser. One of the newer services out there that provides these free chat rooms is wireclub.com.

Interestingly, aside from a chat site, wireclub also provides a sort of “lonely hearts” club by letting you know if a member is there for just to chat, or if they’re there to possibly start dating. Also, the site goes beyond just having chat, and into the web 2.0 world with the availability of clubs to join (literally everything from erotic discussions to almost any sport out there).

If you sign up, you will also be able to start a blog there, post photos of yourself in the gallery (which is only visible to registered members), participate in the forums, and of course, have access to the chat rooms.

For me, as a stats junkie, the most intriguing page on the site is the country listings, where they show profiles from the ten most active countries for the day. Not surprisingly, the most popular countries are the US and Canada, but usual suspects like India, Australia and the Philippines are there, but you also have three African countries represented today - Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa.

They’ve got a good setup going there, and the best part is that to use their services, you don’t even need to have extra software - it’s all based on javascript and html, no need to have Java running and taking up system resources.

If you’re into chatting with new people online, have a go with wireclub - it’s completely free and you might even meet some new friends there.

After making the Zucchini Bread last week, there was still an appreciable amount of shredded zucchini left. In fact, it almost completely filled up this container in the fridge -

That means only one thing - I have to find more things to do with the zucchini, other than just putting it into a shape that looks like bread. As it also happened, my mother took one of the loaves of bread into her work, and on Monday I received a thank you card from the person who’s in charge of the office she works at.

The best thing about the card is that the reason it was sent was that they liked the bread and were apparently sending a message of “More, please” for me to make some more stuff to be brought in.

My latest experiment was to make the same recipe that I used for the bread, but I made the decision to halve the recipe because I wasn’t totally sure on how it would work to use the bread recipe for muffins. Fortunately, almost everything converted neatly for halving - the only “oddball” measurement was the milk - 1/6th cup; no half eggs needed either.

The batter all came together quickly this time, and I had some fun with the bowl while waiting for the oven to heat up - manually taking the spatula and creating a bit of centrifugal force causing the batter to go up the sides of the bowl.

Then I put the batter into a couple of muffin tins, chucked it into the oven for about 15 minutes, after which time it was all done. The half-recipe yielded 12 larger muffins and 9 mini muffins which made a nice pile when it was all done. Amazingly, we still have most of the muffins - one is enough for a nice snack.

Here are a couple more pictures -

The mini muffins ready for the oven

All the muffins made, piled up and ready to eat.

This week, we look at another of my all-time favorite jazz albums: Arturo Sandoval’s Hot House. It’s an album that I always depend on to allow me to focus on whatever it is I’m doing. In fact, of all the tracks I’ve played that have been transmitted to last.fm, Arturo comes in 7th overall.

The album is one of the first albums that I had bought on my own (as in I got it based on it appealing to me without having had a taste of it in the past). I’ve had it ever since May of 1999 when the school jazz band I was in for the year took a trip down to Chicago. One of the things that the trip involved was a visit to the Jazz Record Mart which was still at 444 N Wabash St (and no, I didn’t need Google to remember that address ;)) at the time.

All this time later, I don’t remember exactly what hooked me on buying the album, it might have been the color on the cover, with the pastels, though I seem to remember there being a sticker on the shrink wrap that said something about being a Grammy-award nominee or winner.

Anyway, whatever the reason I bought it, the album is still worth paying full price for.

If you don’t know anything about Arturo, the important thing to know is that he is originally from Cuba, but has been a citizen since 1999. In fact, in 2000, HBO did a movie about him called For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story. To this day, I have not seen the movie*, but from what I’ve heard, it was done really well.

I’ve actually had the chance to meet him in person. It was November of 1999, and we were attending a jazz clinic at a college up in Appleton. The first event we went to was a clinic and Q-and-A session he held for all the participants of the event. However, the bit that I still remember to this day was the concert.

He had flown in from Denver on that day, but thanks to some foul-ups in luggage, he didn’t have his usual equipment with him. That didn’t stop him from putting on an amazing show, with the major feature in the show being his performance of “Sandunga” where he did solos on just about every instrument available to him - the piano, trumpet, flügelhorn, drums, timbales, and even making rhythms on his stomach.

To top it off, some of us stuck around after the show and he came out to chat a little bit, while enjoying a cigar, and I was fortunate enough to have my copy of Hot House signed by him. Looking back, about the only thing that wasn’t perfect was that I didn’t have a camera with me, but I have my mental camera and I can still see the stage that he was on, and that’s all I need.

But I do digress back to the topic at hand. Hot House is one of my favorite albums, partly because of the history I personally have with it, but also for the fact that the music is just great to listen to. Interestingly, in my Senior year in High School, we played two of the songs from the album, partly as a result of us petitioning the director to let us play them.

The album starts out with “Funky Cha-Cha” - I think that if every album started out like this one does, you’d have people enjoying music more, but you’d probably have a lot more deaf people because right out of the gate, you have a trumpet glissando up to an approximate high-C and a pop! sound. It’s hard to describe in words what the song sounds like because of its just overall “poppiness”. If you have a listen to the Amazon sample of the song, you will hear the first 30 seconds of it.

The second track, “Rhythm of Our World”, is one of those songs that, for me, sets me in a good place. It starts out with the trumpet again, this time there’s no popping, but rather a very smooth flow, with minimal backing from the piano. It is some of the cleanest playing you will ever hear, with just an amazing vibrato when a note is held. Luckily, this is one of the songs that you can listen to in its entirety on Arturo’s official site - it’s well worth the five minutes.

Both of these songs are the ones that we played in my Senior year. I didn’t play the feature part on Rhythm, but I can tell you that the person who did play it gave it justice.

Then we head back into the driving jazz with the title track, “Hot House”. It’s in the style of almost power rock, but done with the Latin beat. Next up is the first of the two vocal songs on the album, “Only You (No Se Tú)”. It’s a love song performed in both English and Spanish; I don’t remember exactly who the singer is, but she has a very rich voice that perfectly fits the role that is necessary for this song.

The fifth track is the aforementioned “Sandunga” - again, it’s another powerful song, with a lot of the popping you find in Funky Cha-Cha. It features the late Tito Puente on the timbale, and some excellent solos by the house band. This is the other song from this album that is available in its entirety on Arturo’s site, another five minutes well worth the time.

Next is the second voice track, simply titled “Tito”. It’s an homage to Tito Puente, sung in Spanish by Ray Ruiz, and again features Tito on the timbales. It’s another excellent work that features lyrics such as this -

Para tocar al timbál
Tito tiene la llave
Si tú quieres aprender
Tienes el vida de saber

Translated:
To play the Timbal
Tito has the way(?)
If you want to learn
You have the life to know

Later on, the song goes on to say that he is the king of the timbál - which is a very true statement.

Up next is “Closely Dancing” (even though for some reason Amazon have dropped the C of the front…). This is a ballad-style tune, which shows off really how sensual the trumpet can sound, along with the amazing range that Arturo and his band have. However, the range that has been shown up until now doesn’t match the range that is used in the next track - “Mam-Bop”. Being another tune with quite a bit of ‘popping’, it fits right in with the rest of the album and has some amazing sounds in it, not only from the winds, but from the percussion section as well.

We then go back to another ballad with “New Images” - it starts out with the fluegelhorn, transitions to the alto sax, then builds more layers starting with the trumpet, followed by a guitar interlude and then concludes with the whole group playing their hearts out, led by the trumpets again.

Next is “Cuban American Medley” which, as the name suggests, is a medley of American “standards” played in a Cuban style - the first two are instantly recognizable as “Back Home Again in Indiana” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. Another tune performed is the “Little Lulu” theme - I’ll admit that I had to look that one up on the Amazon reviews as I don’t know where the sleeve booklet went for the album.

The album ends on a lighter note with “Brassmen’s Holiday”, which could almost be mistaken for the I Love Lucy theme music with other tunes mixed in, but it is its own piece and a fitting end to the album, with a final display of amazing range from Arturo and winds up getting you moving to the beat in the end, wanting to hear it all again.

That is one thing about this album - it never seems that once is enough. I know that I’m prone to going back and listening to it over and over again, just because it is such an amazing piece of work and worth listening to.

Should you get this album? Absolutely - even if you’re not a jazz fan, it’s worth listening to at least once. Of course, my opinion might be slightly tainted by the fact that I’ve met the man and seen him play in person, and that I’ve actually played songs from the album. Though you never know, listening to this album might change your mind.

Lastly, a mention needs to be made of his version of A Night in Tunisia. For years I’d had heard only the first half of the song, but recently have heard the full version. While it isn’t the most famous version of the song ever done, it is one of the best; it goes for 15 minutes, but it doesn’t feel like that long when you’re listening to it. Below is a clip from the Montreal Jazz Festival where Arturo played a version of Night In Tunisia.

Be forewarned though, that it gets cut off right before the end, and that there is synth playing involved.

Next week, I’m not going to feature an album, but rather a radio show about music…

*Actually, I did see the movie, but it was scrambled so I could only hear it (anyone else remember the days when you could watch the scrambled feeds of the premium channels? ;))

A few days ago I was tagged by Meg for a meme called the Blog Improvement Zone. She tagged me because I’m getting my world more organized.

However, there are some stumbling blocks to my organization. I’m not saying that it’s an excuse as to why I’m not already more organized, but once you see it, you understand why I’m working towards changing this one thing.

This is a picture of my desk as it is right now. I will say that it has improved greatly over the past when I had a CRT on it (over on the right hand side of the desk, over the lower compartments), however, as you can see it doesn’t take a lot of stuff to make the desk cluttered.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a major cleanup of the desk, throwing out a lot of junk because I looked at the area around the desk, looked at the mess that the desk was in, and it made me feel really blah. It was right there when I realized that the thing that is holding me back from a lot of stuff is actually my desk - it’s too small and inefficient for me to be able to reach my maximum productivity.

An interesting thing about this desk is that it is the same exact desk that we’ve had ever since we bought our first computer over 13 years ago. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a sort of corner desk with a small piece connecting the main desk to a printer table at a ninety degree angle, a feature we never took advantage of.

A few years later, we decided to get a new desk that was larger due to us having a larger monitor that didn’t exactly fit onto the old desk. This was a really nice desk - a proper corner desk with a keyboard drawer and plenty of room to move around in. It also had a nice side shelf on the left side and an open space on the right side, which was useful to put things like a VCR (and this was in the days before I had a TV card).

When my brother moved out, however, it was around the time that I was heading off to college, so there wasn’t a real need for the desk to be here anymore, so we let him have it. I think that he still has it, but I haven’t asked if he’s still using it or not.

Where I go to volunteer, I’ve worked the last couple of times at a desk that is a full corner desk, fitting into a space of about 8 or 9 feet square, and the surface is about two feet deep. I have room on that desk to spread things out and work on them. However, a quick measurement of this desk reveals that it is a little over 3.5 feet wide by 1 foot 11 inches deep.

I have the computer on a small table to the right of the desk and on my immediate left is a couch which winds up being a dumping ground for other stuff I’ve used such as newspapers and books. We’re thinking of moving a table out here to take the place of the couch, the only problem being that the table is appreciably higher than the desk - I can deal with that though.

However, I am now saving up to either build my own desk or buy a kit to build a desk. I have a draft drawing of the size I want the desk to be - if I keep it as I have it now, it will be a massively huge desk - approximately three or four feet deep and filling an area of 11 feet square. Needless to say, I’ll have to reduce the size I want in order for it to fit into the space I have for it. I haven’t even started to think about materials or even how the desk is going to hold its own weight.

I’d be interested to know if anyone has tips of where to find a good desk plan (that’s free preferably), or if you have an idea of a desk that might be a good fit for me (what I’m looking for is a corner desk with the monitor in the corner part, and the option of having a keyboard shelf - preferably wide enough to have the mouse down there as well), please let me know where to find it.

And as far as the meme goes, I’ve discussed the thing that I’m going to change for my blog yesterday, but if you have any suggestions for what’s bugging you with this template, let me know.