Events

Alexandra Fits in concert in Medias

A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of attending a concert given by Alexandra Fits in Medias, as part of the seventh edition of the annual Medieval Festival. Alexandra sang French songs, in a style reminiscent of Edith Piaf and Georges Moustaki. We were thrilled to hear and see how good she was, especially since we’d never heard of her before.

If you do a search for her on the internet, only a few hits come up. In an interview with Mircea Hodarnau (from Radio Ring) after the concert, she admitted she needs to work on her internet presence, but knows little about how to do that. She has a MySpace page, where a few of her songs are posted, and there are a few videos on YouTube as well.

Thanks to a collaboration between Mircea Hodarnau and the nice folks at Nova TV, I’m thrilled to let you watch what we heard the night of the concert. They’ve posted the full length concert on YouTube, and I think you’ll agree that Alexandra Fits has a talent for music that more people ought to hear.

Let’s hope we see and hear more of her! I for one would love to buy a CD of her music, but she hasn’t yet published one.

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Reviews

Initial thoughts after installing OS X Lion

I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts about OS X Lion, having just installed it on my MacBook Pro. I looked forward to getting it for months, and as luck would have it, I happened to be out of town with little internet access when it was released on the 20th.

  • The upgrade was painless. I bought it from the App Store, it began to download, and when it was done, it ran and finished without any bugs.
  • Without a media disc of some sort, or at least an image file, I am somewhat concerned about a re-install of the OS, should I need to do a fresh install. I hear there’s going to be a Lion Flash Drive available for sale in a month or so, but short of paying for that as well, is there some way for me to burn Lion on a DVD or make a bootable flash drive?
  • Overall, I like it. The design is more refined. It feels like a more mature OS.
  • I like the full-screen functionality of the apps.
  • The login screen is interesting. It’s a departure from what we’ve seen thus far. I like it, but I’m not sure what to think about the round thumbnails for the accounts yet. I’m used to square thumbnails. Photos are rectangular. Square photos? They used to be en vogue in the late 1800s. But who knows, maybe those round thumbnails will grow on me.
  • I do wish iCloud were launched at the same time as OS X Lion. For example, I don’t know if I did something to cause this, but every time I start up Safari, it wants to log me into MobileMe, where I don’t have an account. (I only have a .Mac email address.) If iCloud had been available right now, this glitch wouldn’t have occurred, because .Mac and MobileMe would have been unified already. And I think more people are going to run into it as they poke around in the new OS.
  • The hidden scrollbars are great, but they’ve changed the direction of the scrolling, haven’t they? It’s counter-intuitive… and yet it’s not. You now push up with two fingers on the trackpad to scroll down, and pull down to scroll up. If you think about it, it makes sense, but it’s been the other way around until now, so it’ll take a while to get used to it.
  • I like Launchpad. I think it’s a visually appealing way to present a list of all the Apps on my Mac, and to allow me to easily choose which one I want to run.

A couple of pieces of advice before you upgrade:

  • Run Software Update to make sure you’ve got the very latest version of Snow Leopard and whatever other updates you need.
  • Run Time Machine to make sure all your stuff’s backed up, just in case something goes wrong.

For those who like this sort of thing (I do), I’ve included a couple of before and after screenshots of my “About This Mac” window.

Before the upgrade to OS X Lion

After the upgrade to OS X Lion

That’s it for now.

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Thoughts

Ted, a dog at 25

Ted is a dog of 25+ years who belongs to my wife’s mother. He’s been a guard dog all his life. I first knew Ted in 2003, when I first visited my wife’s home. Outwardly, he’s looked the same since then, the way you see him in these photos, so I had no idea he was this old. He was always on duty, guarding their property, barking at everyone who approached the gate, including me. It took him a few years to get used to me, and to obey me when I asked him to stop barking. Now, he just sits in his dog house and no longer barks.

His vision is likely gone. We think he has cataracts. If you look at these photos, you’ll see his eyes are cloudy. He still hears well though, but doesn’t react when people approach him, which isn’t like him. It’s quite possible that with his advanced age, he’s getting ready to leave this world, so I thought I’d take a few photos to remember him. He’ll be missed, the old grouch…

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Thoughts

Analog LOL Cats

Laugh-Out-Loud Cats by Adam Koford is one of my favorite comic strips. It’s about two hobo cats who love travel and minor mischief. Adam posts the hand-drawn comics on Flickr, where I’ve been subscribed to his stream for over a year. I hope you’ll enjoy them as well!

Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #1746

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Events

Father and Son: STS-1 and STS-135

Here’s Chris Bray and his father at the space shuttle launch, in 1981 and 30 years later, in 2011.

Excerpts from an interview with him done by the Flickr staff:

Early on the morning of April 12, 1981, after a couple of delays, the space shuttle Columbia was finally getting ready for lift-off to the first ever shuttle mission into space. One of the spectators, Flickr member arockalypse, was standing in the crowd, being terribly excited and anxious. He told us he grew up loving astronomy and following the space program, but until that day he had only seen Apollo launches on TV, so this was a huge thrill.
30 years later, when STS-135, the last space shuttle mission before retiring of the program, was planned, arockalypse and his family entered a lottery for tickets and managed to score passes to the Astronaut Hall of Fame viewing area.
When the launch finally took place, “it was bittersweet. We are big supporters and followers of the space program, and it is somewhat sad to see this great era come to an end. However, the Shuttle was a fantastic program and despite 2 horrible tragedies, it was an amazingly successful one. I’m looking forward to what comes next!”

via Father & Son « Flickr Blog. Photo by Chris Bray.

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