Sephy’s Platzish

As I was running disk cleanup on the Windows 98 machine we have here (it’s not used too often, and the only practical use that I have for it is to use our ancient parallel scanner, other than that my mom uses it for the most part), I thought of the contest being run at sitefever.com.

It was going to run until October 23rd, but apparently it’s been shortened to end in the next week or so. What is the contest, y’all are asking? It’s a contest to win a 1TB external hard drive. So, there’s the link bait

However, there is another part of the contest - what I’d do with a 1TB hard drive. Well, I haven’t mentioned it before, but I’m addicted to watching TV shows from around the world - particularly Australia. We don’t get a lot of the quality shows that they have down there - Enough Rope with Andrew Denton and The Chaser’s War on Everything (even though I didn’t think that their stunt at APEC was terribly funny) are two shows that I watch on a regular basis, usually by them magically being sent to my computer.

I’m also a sucker for forms of racing that, while they do air here, they don’t show it until December, when the series has already finished their seasons; and even then, they only show highlight shows. Again, these are magically sent to my computer.

The problem is that it takes up hard drive space. I do have DVDs, but I’m a lazy sod that has a ton of DVDs, but need to make the time to actually burn them (it’s a longer process because I like to confirm the burnt data).

With a 1TB hard drive, I’d be able to store tons and tons of videos on there. I’d also be able to record more TV using my capture card, as the recording settings I use take about 70 megs per minute. I then compress the video files down to about 8 megs per minute.

Oh, and the other computer? I’d be able to take almost everything that isn’t system or program related and store it on the vast expanses of the terabyte. Trust me, there are a lot of documents on that computer, though they could almost all be removed, but I’m a certified digital packrat.

I know that one terabyte is probably more than I’ll ever need, but if I did have it, I’d certainly take that for a test. Then again, I thought that 200GB would be more than I’d ever need, but I’ve gone all the way down to 20GB free.

This is the first in an occasional series of posts about some of my favorite albums, and chances are that you have not heard these albums before, as they are in a bit of a niche (mostly Jazz) that obviously isn’t the most popular these days; at least if you weren’t involved in the art when you were in school.

The first album that I’m going to highlight is one of the most famous live albums in all of jazz - Ellington At Newport, recorded in July of 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival and released shortly after, it revitalized the fledgling career of Duke’s band, one of the last big bands that were still touring at the time.

The version of the album that I own (the 1999 re-release after discovering a “lost” tape of this concert) starts off with one of the best renditions of the national anthem out there. Coming in at a scant 1:14, it should serve as a lesson to anyone performing the song that you can do it without a lot of fanfare and make it sound amazing. The secret is that you just can’t have someone signing the words to the song since that is the cause of the time loss.

After some introductions and a few more songs, the band leaves the stage and Father Norman O’Connor discusses the goings-on at the festival, mentioning one Quincy Jones who would become famous a few years later as a composer.

What had happened was that half of the band were off on their own, so when they were all found once again, they retook the stage and performed what is Duke’s signature tune - Take the A-Train. With the concert finally back in full swing, they then get into the meat of their performance - the three part piece especially written for the festival. This is also where you start to see massive differences between the live album and the “studio” album.

Since I’ve heard this album too many times to count, I know the specific markers in some of the songs that will tell you if it is the live version or the recorded version. For example, in the first segment of the performance, Festival Junction, there is a point in the live version where (this is about 1:30 into the track) you hear grunting in the background. The studio version removed this grunting, which takes away a bit of the character.

The part that I really dislike about the studio version is that, since solos are what they are - meant to be different every time - the solo at the end of the production track just doesn’t have the same feeling as the solo that was done live (the production version’s solo is, for the lack of a better term, bland).

Taking center stage for this album, though, is the 14-minute rendition of Diminuendo in Blue and Crescendo in Blue, with a long solo in the middle by Paul Gonsalves, which leads to pandemonium in the crowd. It starts out pretty serenely, but as the track progresses, the momentum builds as you experience the solo going on and hear the background noise of the audience just build and build.

At this point, the crowd were totally out of control, so Duke goes straight for another song, I Got it Bad (And That Ain’t Good), featuring Johnny Hodges (of whom is said, “If you’ve heard of the saxophone, you’ve heard of Johnny Hodges”). If it wasn’t for discovering the “lost” tape of this concert, one of the best-sounding mistakes would likely have been lost forever.

In the opening of the tune, Hodges (pardon the technical term here) “fracked” a note as he started to play. He did it twice and then got it right on the third try, yet the studio version cleans all that up in the name of a good sounding album. In my opinion, if there was ever a time when you could get away with a mistake, this certainly was it.

After a couple of more tunes, the album then has a track simply titled “Riot Prevention.” How can anyone resist an album that has a track with that title? It starts with someone yelling “That’s it!”, but Duke persuades this person to let him just say good night.

As it so happens, saying good night means announcing that there’s a heavy request for drummer Sam Woodyard and Skin Deep - which lasts for almost 10 minutes. They finally do say good night to a crazy crowd who are disappointed to see them go, but I suspect that if they did go on, you’d have heard stories about arrests.

Like I mentioned, the album then has the rerecorded portions of the concert, mostly as they were released in 1956, including the noticeably fake crowd noises interspersed into the comments by Father O’Connor and Duke; you also hear the crowd inserted into the songs, mostly during solos. While there are a few people who say that the studio version is the better version for a variety of reasons - less mistakes, I’ve always preferred the live version of the songs, and will do so for as long as I listen to it.

If you’re interested in checking out the album, you can find it on Amazon, where they do have clips of each of the songs available for you to listen to. This is one of the albums that I think anyone who is studying jazz should definitely listen to over and over again. I have to admit that I’d not listened to it for a while, but have been listening to it during my walks lately and it is a truly remarkable work that everyone should listen to at least once.

Are there any albums that you can think of which would be considered essential listening for everyone?

Over the last couple of years, we’ve been changing up what we grow in our garden here. It used to be that we’d grow the staples - potatoes, onions, radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, peas, carrots, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli and a couple of rows of sweetcorn.

Then, we decided to have a go with starting our own seeds, along with planting some different vegetables. One of the vegies that we planted were zucchini. Prior to growing our own zucchinis, I hadn’t tried it, and thought the idea of zucchini bread was bizarre - I mean, vegetable-based bread? You can’t be serious.

However, we planted a couple of them, and they came up. We then got one recipe for bread with chocolate chips - that turned out really good and we’ve already made two loaves this year of that (the recipe makes 2 loaves). Even after that, we still have loads more shredded zucchini. Since it was up to me to shred it up, I wasn’t totally sure on how to shred it, so I did some searching and came across this recipe which was a result of the person having fifteen cups of shredded zucchini.

As you can see, it does call for some interesting ingredients, including lemon or orange zest (which I did skip since we don’t have any oranges or lemons around), and an interesting quartet of spices - cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice. I knew that we didn’t have allspice, and wasn’t totally sure about the ginger, yet the whole thing worked thanks to a miracle product: Pumpkin pie spice!

Yep, pumpkin pie spice has cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice (along with an anti-caking agent). As the recipe calls for a variety of amounts of the individual spices, I decided to go on my own with the measuring and went with 1 teaspoon of pie spice, along with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon (since it was 2 tsp. of cinnamon for the recipe). I also skipped the raisins and only put in about a half cup of walnuts.

By far the coolest thing was making oat flour by putting a cup of Quaker Rolled Oats and processing it in the food processor for a couple of minutes.

I could have gotten three slightly-smaller loaves out of the recipe, but I decided to make two larger loaves. Fifty-five minutes later, it was done; so I let it cool for about an hour or so before taking it out of the pans. Before I took a picture, I had sampled a piece of the bread and it was fantastic.

And, of course, here’s the bread, minus a smallish sample :

The topic for this week’s Hump Day Hmm.. is about How I Matter.

One of the most important ways that I matter is that I am a very helpful person, and always willing to be out there to help out. It’s something that I’ve shown quite often here on the blog, with offering to do how-tos for things that I might not know how to do before doing it, but learn how and share the information with everyone.

For me, it’s just second nature to lend a hand if someone asks; it’s not about my ego, it’s about giving the helping hand. Sure, if the helping out does result in some side benefits, I’ll usually accept it, but it really is about being a nice guy.

Outside of the blog world, I am also quite helpful around the house (even if the outside appearances might be different from the reality). I am usually the one who cooks dinner every night; I fill the gas tank in the car (considering that a couple of years ago I had no clue on how to do that, that is a big step for me). I also make sure that the trash is out by the road every week and go to get the mail in each day.

Most of the time, I am helpful in small ways, such as when I went to the clinic the other week, I offered to give up my chair for a lady who had her children and her mother with her. I didn’t have to do it, but in my mind, it was a case where I can see that she needs the seat more than I do, and I can always find another seat. A little bit of a side benefit for me was that she was a native Spanish speaker and had an interpreter with her, so I figured I could use a bit of my skills in the language to “show off” a little bit, but also to make things more comfortable for her, for which she was quite appreciative.

The most helpful thing that I’ve done recently is to assist my mom when she was recovering from a somewhat-minor surgery she had back in May. This surgery involved having to be mostly laid-up for a couple of days with a piece of equipment that kept the affected area cool and able to heal effectively. This meant that I’d need to go in and refill a small cooler with ice every couple of hours.

I will admit that it wasn’t the least stressful time, as it did get somewhat frustrating to be called in repeatedly for something that was forgotten, or for other reasons. I managed to make it through the recovery, and even was able to take the dressings off when it was time to remove them (even though I was quite squeamish about it).

The best part about being helpful is that I feel that I have put a good impression of myself on anyone I’ve come across. It’s something that I’m proud of, that’s for sure. It’s also something that I really like to do, because it does give me a good feeling, one that tells me that I do matter.

It’s also a major factor in why I do volunteer. As I had mentioned when I blogged about it, the folks that work there are very appreciative for the things that the volunteers come in and help out with. In fact, I’ve just phoned now to let them know that I’ll be in on Friday to volunteer all day.

This week’s Tuesday Think Tank came as the result of a request from Julie, who had some questions about Technorati and why her ranking has been changing recently. If you have something you want to have covered in a future Tuesday Think Tank, we always are willing to take suggestions; all you need to do is send an email to either myself or to Snoskred, and we will tackle your topic on a future Tuesday.

There really isn’t a lot to explain technically when it comes to Technorati. The biggest thing is basically an explanation of how it all works.

Technorati is most often considered the way to gauge a blog’s popularity. It works by counting both the number of blogs that it finds with links to your blog, and also the actual number of pages that link to your blog.

There are three different numbers that come as a result of Technorati’s counting - Authority, Rank, and Reactions.

Authority and Rank are intertwined, one based on the other. Authority is simply the total number of blogs that have linked to your site, or to a page on your blog. In other words, no matter how many links a particular site may have to you, it will only count as one authority point. Rank is derived from authority and is simply where your blog’s authority ranks among all blogs they have listed.

When you start a blog, it starts with an authority of 0 and a rank of somewhere around 8 million. As blogs start to link to you, the numbers do improve; however, to get into the top 100 blogs by Authority, you’ll have to have close to 4,000 different blogs linking to you. To get into the top 100,000 (which would have gotten you a nice graph in the past, but recent changes have seen the dropping of that graph), you would need an authority of around 60.

The most important thing to know is that authority and rank are not permanent numbers; of course you do want them to improve over time, but after a while, specifically six months, they may begin to go down. The simple reason for this is that links listed on Technorati “expire” after that amount of time. While I’m not an expert in Technorati, the main reason would be that some of the links might be in posts, or they might be temporary links which go away (for example recent comments lists on dofollow blogs).

Reactions are simply all the links that go back to your blog. This includes links in blogs’ links lists, links within posts, and links that come from other methods of linking, such as from the dofollow blogs.

If you want to see the daily “performance” of your blog’s reaction, you can check out an image like this -

- which shows you the links over the last X days. The address to use is the following -
http://www.technorati.com/chartimg?q={URL}&days={# OF DAYS}&width=460&height=200&type=url