Music and Sea Disasters

Now that I’ve finally finished hacking on newslog for a while, I’m going to post my weekend update and then get some sleep. I decided not to post the freshmeat annoucement tonight as it looks like freshmeat is having some sort of problems – each post is appearing about 5 times. Probably best to wait until tomorrow.

Saturday I did a much needed software upgrade to the NCC phone system. In the evening Susan and I went to the DSO. The program consisted of Don Juan by Richard Strauss (ok if you like Strauss), Concert de Gaudi for Guitar and Orchestra by Christopher Rouse (sorry, classical Guitar is just not my kind of music – I found Adam Seymour’s guitar work at the Pretenders concert earlier this month much more to my liking), and finally Symphony No. 4 in E minor by Johannes Brahms (quite good – made the program worth going to).

Sunday we went to the Titanic artifact exhibit at Fair Park. It was really intersting and the only complaint I had about the exhibit was that the lighting was really bad. Everything was in dark rooms with black walls and only a few spot lights that seemed to have been carefully placed so that there was no way to view a display case without standing between the light and the case, thus casting a shadow over whatever you were trying to see. But there was lots of cool stuff there including a huge section of an actual hull plate, the steam-powered whistles, life-vests, and an assortment of personal items such as jewelery, money, and letters. There were a couple of models of the original ship as well as really big (about 40 feet long!) model of the front section of the hull as it exists today on the ocean floor. There was also the ever-present gift shop as you leave the exhibit: Titanic shirts, hats, mugs, shot glasses, spoons, posters, puzzles, books, you name it. There were CDs of the music heard on the Titanic, a batter-powered, inflatable Titanic, a Titanic computer game, complete sets of china with the Titanic and White Star Line logo, key chains, ash trays, cigar cases, and zillion other things I can’t even remember.

The Pretenders at the Bronco

I’m working late again tonight but thought I’d take a break and post a news update. Most of the weekend was spent coding more Perl stuff but I actually left the office for a couple of hours Sunday night so Susan and I could make it out to the Bronco Bowl for the Pretenders concert. The opening band was some truly awful sounding thing from the UK called Gay Dad. The Pretenders sounded great. Chrissie had a mirrored guitar that was useful for reflecting the spot lights back into the audience. Adam Seymour was really impressive on the guitar, as was Martin Chambers on drums. Well, back to work now.