Adrian's Scrapbook

2009 May 28 Thursday

Flash vs. Silverlight: What Suits Your Needs Best?

Good article describing the differences between the two. Problem is they’re both proprietary and until MS gets on Linux, it’s not even in the running.

2009 May 9 Saturday

Palm Pre

Looks sweet but no memory slot???

2009 Apr 18 Saturday

SitePal

This is one of the most stupid things I’ve ever seen…

2009 Mar 3 Tuesday

Long time, no post

I’ve been totally swamped and right now I’m dealing with the flu.

Last week at IBM we shipped both Rational Team Concert 1.0.1.1 as well as Rational Team Concert 2.0 M2 which is the second milestone in our 2.0 development cycle.

With the IJO, I’m working towards our season finale as well as our forthcoming 2009-2010 season.

Finally, I’m working on a book which has to be complete in April and I also need to record the CD for it too.

Lots of stuff to do.

2008 Nov 29 Saturday

The Stupidity and Selfishness of Crowds

2008 Nov 8 Saturday

2008 Oct 24 Friday

“Der Shtiller Bulgar,” the klezmer inspiration for Ziggy Elman’s “Frailach in Swing” which was then given words by Johnny Mercer to become “And the Angels Sing.”

The fabulous Vikki Carr performing Ziggy Elman and Johnny Mercer’s classic “And the Angels Sing” based on Elman’s “Frailach in Swing” which was in turn based on “Der Shtiller Bulgar” (“The Quiet Bulgar”), an old klezmer dance.

2008 Oct 20 Monday

Willie Shakespeare Blues

Tomorrow evening I’m playing at a fundraiser dinner for the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival. I first started working with the wonderful folks at this festival in 2007 when I put together The Duke & The Bard, an extravaganza featuring Baroque music, jazz and Shakespearean readings. At their fundraiser last year, I brought along a trio and we played some jazz and accompanied a couple of readings. The theme of the evening was Shakespeare and Jazz or something like that. It was a lot of fun with great people and great food.

This year the theme is Shakespeare Sings the Blues. This might sound crazy but there’s actually some basis to it. In the time of Shakespeare, people believed in the superstition of fairies as invisible, magical creatures that could affect their lives. When they encountered trouble or just felt down, they would blame it on “the blue fairies” or “the blues.”

One of the things I did for tomorrow’s event was write a song for Steve Berndt to sing. Steve plays trombone in the IJO and is also a great vocalist. We always have fun on gigs and he is game to try anything. The song which I wrote in a few hours tonight, is of course a blues. The rather colourful lyrics tell the story of Shakespeare’s rise to fame and how the blues helped him. I wrote the story in first-person so in effect Steve will be sing as Will Shakespeare. Before we perform the piece, I’ll talk to the guests a bit about the origin and the form of the blues and the relationship of the blues to Shakespeare.

After we’ve performed this tomorrow night, I’ll post the chart somewhere.

2008 Oct 19 Sunday

How to block ads in Google Chrome

Yep just like the article says, the ad blocking was really the only reason I haven’t been using Chrome as my sole browser. Up until this point I was however using it about 80% of the time but having ads annoyed me when I could see the same page without the ads in Firefox with AdBlock Plus. Guess I’m just using Chrome from now on.

2008 Oct 7 Tuesday

Behind the scenes with Peggy Lee and The Mello Men singing “He’s a Tramp”

2008 Oct 6 Monday

Google Chrome

I am loving Google Chrome and have made it my default browser. I find that I switch back and forth between Chrome and Firefox. For most browsing I use Chrome because the startup time is so much quicker. There are times however when I do want to use one of my Firefox plug-ins and that’s when I have to start up the slower browser.

2008 Oct 4 Saturday

Lung disease to kill 80 million people in China

So the question is will the Chinese government do anything about it? They don’t give a shit about anyone else in this world. Do they care about their own people?

2008 Sep 27 Saturday

Rational Team Concert is one of the products that I am involved in at IBM. In fact, I will soon be moving into a new role at IBM, managing the ongoing development of this product which is based on our Jazz technology.