Next weekend is Other Minds 12!

The composers and performers for Other Minds 12 started arriving at the Djerassi artists retreat in Woodside from all around the world this weekend. The festival is next weekend (Dec 8-10) in San Francisco, but the best part is the composer's residency at Djerassi. And one of the benefits of being on the board of OM is to be able to sit in on these sessions.

This year, composers and performers came from as close as Emeryville, and as far as Australia, with Denmark, Norway, Germany, France, and Boston in between. In this picture, Peter Sculthorpe explained how aboriginal themes are used in his music.

This was followed by a demonstration of the didjeridu by Stephen Kent, our local didjeridu virtuoso, who will be accompanying the Del Sol Quartet in Sculthorpe's 16th String Quartet.

The Del Sol will also perform Danish composer Per Nørgård's 10th Quartet, seen here in rehersal with the composer. I've been interested in Nørgård's music ever since I first heard his Voyage to the Golden Screen in the 1970's.

His unique approach to harmonic color and sound spectra set him apart from most of the composers of his generation, who were deep into their Schoenbergian roots, like Boulez and others. Nørgård explained that he was more interested in how and what we perceive as sound. Much of his music of that period utilized his "infinity series", which he described as a way to derive the harmonic elements of a pieces out of a small cell of notes.

Being able to spend a couple of days with Per and the other composers and performers was really a unique experience. The Djerassi ranch, in the hills above Woodside, some 30 miles south of San Francisco, is an extraordinary place and the weather was surprisingly springlike, which was unusual. By the way, applications are open for the 2008 session at the Djerassi Artists Residency Program.

This year's group of composers and performers is quite remarkable. There is a wonderful spread in ages, from 33-year-old Maja Ratkje from Norway, to 77-year-old Peter Sculthorpe, Tomorrow everyone heads for San Francisco for rehearsals at Kanbar Hall. And need I remind that tickets are still available. Go here. I'll be there at all three events, so I hope to meet everyone reading this.

NEWS FLASH! Josh Kosman has an article in today's S.F. Chron

I'm there, in the back on the right. It's a good article. It's here.

Other Minds 12 started it's weekend at Kanbar Hall in San Francisco last night with a concert that included Elohim by composer Daniel David Feinsmith. But about one-third into this 50 minute, 8 movement piece for piano, guitar, cello, and electric bass guitar, the hall's fire alarm went off, requiring the evacuation of the entire audience, performers, and the rest of the building.

There was a bit of chaos, but as the fire engines started appearing the event was declared a false alarm, and everyone, or nearly everyone, filed back into the hall.

Which makes one wonder what to expect when you name a piece of music after one of the names of God used in the Talmud, and you give each movement of the piece a name from one of the verbs used by God during the creation of the world.

After locating all the performers and getting things back together, the performers picked up where they left off. Which is a testament to the power of Feinsmith's piece and the extraordinary abilities of the performers, in that most people did return to their seats after this interruption, mainly to hear how it would all come out. It's a very driving and exciting piece, and received a standing ovation.

We try to prepare for all possibilities, like composers or performers getting sick, or missing their flights, or instruments in need of emergency repair. But this was the first time anything like this had ever happened at an OM concert. One usually doesn't expect the performance to be so hot as to set off alarms evacuating the audience!

Earlier in the evening we heard music by Peter Sculthorpe, Per Norgard, and Maja Ratkje, all wonderfully performed by members of the Del Sol quartet. And it was a great audience. We'll see what's in store for the second concert tonight.

Photo blogger and Other Minds supporter "SF Mike" covers the first two Other Minds 12 concerts from this weekend in San Francisco on his blog here, with pictures. Thanks, Mike!

Here's SFMike's coverage of Sunday's concert. He even has pictures of the intermission event, VCS Radio Jazz.

There was a major solar flare earlier this week. The graph above shows a remarkable spike in X-ray radiation being received by one of NOAA's Earth-orbit satellites. Below is an image of the sun showing the source, a monster solar storm around sunspot number 930:

Even tho we are at the bottom of the current 11-year sunspot cycle, with very few sun spots appearing on the surface, this one packs a lot of X-ray energy, and a lot of it has been heading our way since Friday. Big solar events like this cause lots of problems for terrestrial communications. In particular, the ham radio bands are useless at the moment. (Read the story from NOAA.) Even NASA was worried about the astronauts on the space station, and told them to sleep in protected areas to avoid the radiation.

Most people would be totally unaware of this massive explosion on the sun and the effects raining down on us right now. But many people are seeing auroras. Here's one photographed in Iowa yesterday:
You can see more on the Space Weather website.

This is the end of an era.
Last week the FCC removed the Morse code requirement for obtaining Amateur Radio licenses. (Full story is here.)

I personally think this is a mistake, but it does conform to an international trend to remove the Morse code requirement, which is seen as a barrier to obtaining a license. The battle within this country has been smoldering for years, with very lively (and rude) discussions on various internet forums among ham radio operators.

When I was in high school in the '50s, 13 words/minute was required to obtain a General class license. And, it is true, that was an inhibitor, so I went for the more restricted Technician Class license, which, ultimately, I never used. But when I reapplied for a license some 40 years later in 2000, the requirement was 5 w/m, which I passed after some minimal practice, giving me the General license I now own.

It's really cold tonight. Cold at least for these parts of the world. 4.2C or 39.5F. That's cold, because most houses here in San Francisco Bay area are not winterized. I grew up in New York, where it gets colder, longer, and more often. 40F would be considered a nice Spring day. But here, without double-paned windows, brick walls, and efficient heating systems, we shiver through these rare but cold nights this time of year.

Our house is a little cottage. Very cute, but not very warm. Built in 1919, it still uses forced air heat, which is quite common here. But it was built when natural gas for heating was cheap, and you could afford to run the heater all day. And part of the house has no heating vents at all. We keep those rooms closed off. These houses were built for Spring/Summer weather, with no "real" winter. So we walk around with layers of sweaters and fleece, drinking warm tea, and sleeping under down blankets.

There is a very small fireplace, but we don't use it. And if we did, it would only heat the living room, while adding to the air pollution that is a serious matter this time of year. The cold air coming coming down from Alaska causes an inversion layer that traps all the particulates in the air. So burning wood now would not be a good idea. Ironically, this is just the time of year to get a fire going in the fireplace.

The good thing is that these cold nights will only last thru the week as the front that came down the coast from Alaska starts moving east. Warmer air from the south pacific should be arriving soon. Then we'll have milder (55F) nights. Spring will probably arrive in six or eight weeks, when the cherry trees will bloom.

But tonight we covered the potted orchids on the porch, just in case.

Ok. All this talk about dropping the Morse code requirement to obtain an amateur radio license has spurred me on to learn back my Morse code skills. I already have a license (KG6EMF), for which I had to learn Morse code and pass a 5 words/min test. But since the exam back in 2000, I've never used Morse code. But I want to. (See previous post about Morse code below.)

So I'm determined to get my speed up to about 10w/m and try to make a CW (continuous wave, which is how operators refer to Morse code communication) contacts soon. And to help with the learning process, I've downloaded and started to use a Morse code training program by a programmer/operator, Ray Goff (G4FON) in the U.K. It's a free download for Windows, and luckily I do have a W/XP laptop available. Here's what it looks like:



It uses a didactic technique called the Koch method, where you keep adding a new letter to the ones you already know, listening to random groupings of those letters until their sound becomes second-nature. Eventually you work up to the full 40-chararacter set.

As you can see from the image above, I'm working on the first 10 letters (which happen to be S T U O M L P A R K). The letters are added in increasing difficulty to recognize. Once you get to 40 characters, the program then enables you to test yourself with various canned conversations. You can adjust the speed, the amount of background noise, and the degree to which the sounds vary, mimicing actual conversations (QSO's in ham talk).

This is a great program, Kudos to Ray! I'm working on my code for an hour or so each night. I'll report my progress. But it is interesting the tricks my brain plays on me. Suddenly dits sound like dahs and v.v. and R (. - . ) starts sounding like K (- . -). But practice helps. Great exercise for the brain.

But actually, as you can see in the image, I've started out the wrong way. According to the true Koch method, I should be starting with two characters, at the real speed I want to attain. Say, 15 wpm. I just realized that what I've been doing the past couple of days, working at basically 5 wpm, is counter productive. If you read the article about using the Koch method, the right way to do it is to start at the higher speed until it all becomes natural. So now I'm going to start over, at 15wpm. I hope my addled brain can handle it!

We've had 3 minor earthquakes in 4 days, all at the same spot here in the East Bay:

 3.5  2006/12/23 09:21:15 37.862N 122.235W  9.8    4 km ( 2 mi) ESE of Berkeley, CA
 3.7  2006/12/22 22:49:57 37.861N 122.237W 10.0    4 km ( 2 mi) ESE of Berkeley, CA
 3.7  2006/12/20 19:12:28 37.860N 122.237W  9.0    4 km ( 2 mi) ESE of Berkeley, CA

Considering that we live at 37.82N 122.24W, that's really close! The USGS website says they were from 4 to 6 miles underground.

Each one felt like someone dropped something very big out on the street. Whooomp! Odd time of year for this sort of things. You'd expect clusters of minor quakes in October. Rarely in December.

The disturbing thing is that these quakes are all on the Hayward fault, which runs thru Berkeley and Oakland, and hasn't had a major quake in many decades. Something to be concerned about.

The cost of those "12 days of Christmas" has gone up 3% since last year, according to the "Christmas Price Index" calculated annually by PNC Wealth Management and reported in today's New York Times.

Quoting:

The 12 gifts would cost a total of $18,920.59, up 3.1 percent from last year. That is less than the 6.1 percent rise chalked up last year over 2004, though, when the threat of avian flu kicked fowl prices up.

Since the index started in 1984, PNC has found that prices for goods generally have fallen while prices for services have soared — for example, the cost of the performing ladies and lords has gone up 300 percent in 22 years. The only labor bargain this year was the eight maids a-milking, who earned the federal minimum wage of $5.15 hourly, which has not risen in nearly a decade.

Low unemployment rates helped push the cost of the nine dancing ladies to $4,759, up 4 percent over last year, according to Philadanco, a modern dance company in Philadelphia.

The cost of engaging ballet dancers to leap like lords rose 3 percent, and the bill for the drummers and other entertainers went up 3.4 percent compared with 2005, according to a Pennsylvania musicians’ union.

For those hedge fund managers looking for a show stopper, giving the gifts repeatedly as listed in the song for the full 12 days of Christmas (a partridge in a pear tree each day, for instance, and five gold rings from Days 5 through 12), results in 364 items with a price tag of $75,122, up 3.5 percent from last year’s $72,608.

While surely a time saver, shopping online for the shippable items increased the price to $125,767 because of shipping costs, up from last year’s $123,846.

Today's New York Times has two interesting articles that really should go together. The first, on the Business page, is about the fate of Morse Code. The other is on the front page and deals with programs being used to exercise the brains of the elderly - brain calisthenics - as a way to stave off memory loss and dementia.

Well, put the two together. We all should be learning and practicing Morse code! Great way to keep the brain excercised and healthy, and it could save a life. There are recorded cases of people, unable to speak due to sudden stroke, who can communicate by Morse code! Like the Heimlich maneuver, is could be something we all should be proficient in.