32 replies to this topic

[Todd Gross]

Have a great weekend!

Don't have really anything planned. just chillin'.

[craggy]

It's MASS EFFECT 3 weekend, Todd, you silly boy!

[Lucian Von Dooom]

I recently thought I broke my junk. I did the 'ignore it and it will go away' treatment and huzzah! Healed! I'm celebrating this weekend but will be more careful in the future.

[garjones]

A fairly active weekend for me.

Tomorrow I have 2 hours at the University of Science, Malaysia where I've been asked to act as a mentor for some students on how to use innovation in business, then I take my daughter to see Disney on Ice at the nearby sports arena that never has any sports in it. Then watch some rugby on the telly.

Sunday is still free.

[njerry]

Just a reminder to my fellow Yanks and any other nation that plays the Daylight Savings game: don't forget to move your clocks one hour ahead on Saturday night.

No specific plans this weekend, other than potluck dinner at my niece's house Saturday night. On Sunday my son is returning to campus and my better half leaves on an overnight business trip to Atlantic City, so poor Jerry may actually go to the office to catch up on some paperwork. How pathetic is that?

[garjones]

Just a reminder to my fellow Yanks and any other nation that plays the Daylight Savings game: don't forget to move your clocks one hour ahead on Saturday night.

...and thank heaven for that. It means no more meetings ending at midnight for me until November.

(The week people switch isn't universal, I have to synch with the UK/Ireland and Australia too and they switch over at the end of March/start of April.

[steveuk]

This weekend, I will mostly be eating ham.

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[brucegray666]

Play some video games, return a shirt and build a great dodecahedron to show my students on Monday.

[Christian U]

Yesterday - met a very good friend that I haven't properly seen in a long while. Irish pub, quite a lot of beer. Great fun, but at some point what you're left with is two tired old men more or less falling asleep talking.

Today - Planning on going to the museum, and tonight there's a thing at school. Singing and stuff.

Tomorrow - Work. Rehearsals. Almost done with that for a while...

[steveuk]

My cooking obsession continues;

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Poached egg, a la Heston. No liquid nitrogen required and it works.

[Todd Gross]

Play some video games, return a shirt and build a great dodecahedron to show my students on Monday.

Wouldn't have been easier just to give each student a D12?

[garjones]

Disney on Ice was fun. I was impressed they had a 15 minute finale all about Christmas without once mentioning the word.

Buzz Lightyear waved at Cerys which has made her day.

[brucegray666]

Wouldn't have been easier just to give each student a D12?

D12? I presume that's a 12 sided dice (or a dodecahedron to give it its mathematical name). We'd already made some of those using the nets from this website. The one above is extending the task even further.

[Todd Gross]

D12? I presume that's a 12 sided dice (or a dodecahedron to give it its mathematical name). We'd already made some of those using the nets from this website. The one above is extending the task even further.

Way back in the day, I used to play Dungeons and Dragons. D12 and Die 12 are still part of my lexicon.

As to the new project: You hate your students, don't you?

[Mike]

I used to love making stuff like that in school.

Have you done hexaflexagons with them yet Bruce?

[brucegray666]

I used to love making stuff like that in school.

Have you done hexaflexagons with them yet Bruce?

Yeah, most of the kids are of your mindset too Mike - been a good few lessons doing this and it was still holding their interest at the end. Hadn't thought of doing flexagons. Shall save that for a later date.

[Stephen G]

Cane.

And a busy weekend of errands, birthday's, some range time, and other such shenanigans.

[David Meadows]

My weekend so far. FRIDAY:


A GARLAND OF FLUTES
9 MARCH 2012
BEDERN HALL, YORK

Bedern Hall is a really interesting venue, an ancient stone building stuck in the middle of a modern housing complex. (And really hard to find, requiring a magical mystery tour in a big circle round half of York – it would have helped if my map had actually had useful things like streets marked on it.) I guess it held about 100 people, and there wasn’t a free seat in the place. I was sat right at the back due to getting there with seconds to spare (see story about getting lost, above) but the view of the stage and the sound were fine. A really good venue for this type of music. The concert was in two halves of about 45 minutes each.

For those that don’t know: ‘A Garland of Flutes’ is a flute quartet, so naturally the evening consisted entirely of flute quartets and trios.
I’ve never been to a chamber concert I didn’t enjoy, but I normally pick concerts where I know at least some of the music and the programme at last night’s concert was completely new to me. And it’s a two-hour drive to York on a Friday night. So let’s be honest: no matter how much I love music, I wouldn’t have gone to the concert if it didn’t have Angela Gordon’s [former flautist with best rock group of the 21st century, Mostly Autumn] name attached to it. But it did, so I did.

And I’m really glad I did, because it was a hugely enjoyable evening.

More than half the programme was contemporary (or near-contemporary) music, some of it commissioned especially for this quartet. Mixed in with the modern were some older pieces (Mozart, Haydn, Dvorak), and one piece I actually recognised (a theme from Carmen, arranged by Angela Gordon). The modern pieces by Simaku, Cottom, Heneghan, and Berthomieu (composers I had never actually heard of before this) were by far the most interesting parts of the programme, and I would happily go along to listen to any of them again.

It’s hard to comment on a piece of music after hearing it only once so I can’t say much about the new pieces. Simaku offered three beautiful Albanian folk tunes; Cottom’s ‘Various Trouts’ (surely the plural of trout is trout?) was a theme and variations – the variations being in the style of waltz, ragtime, and tango, among others – and was amusingly clever; Henegan’s ‘Three Scenes for Flute Quartet’ was the only work with I think a less-than-conventional tonality, and was probably my favourite piece of the night.

So the verdict: absolutely beautiful music, beautifully played, in a really good venue. And all in aid of a good cause (http://www.jessiesfund.org.uk). I can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday night.

Play some video games, return a shirt and build a great dodecahedron to show my students on Monday.

When you show them, be sure to tell them it's an ICOSOHEDREON, not a dodecahedron.

That doesn't stop it looking very cool, of course

[brucegray666]

When you show them, be sure to tell them it's an ICOSOHEDREON, not a dodecahedron.

That doesn't stop it looking very cool, of course

Nuh huh, a icosohedron has 20 regular triangular faces. The greatdodecahedron has 12 intersecting pentagonal faces. Wikipedia has a nice pair of comparing images:



Same arrangement of edges, different arrangement of faces.

Does indeed look cool though (and is an absolute pig to build too!).

[Miqque Loveland]

Hey Folks!

Just dropped by library - all is "fine". Should have my computer back in a week or so.

Miss ya!

-M.