Mostly music

[mdlbear]

Went out for a walk; Los Gatos Creek again. I was feeling a little creaky, so I didn't take it quite as fast as I usually do. Still, three miles is a reasonable walk. Took it easy on lunch.

Along the way I did a little more thinking about the inside two pages of the jewel-case insert, and spent some time this afternoon working on layout. Not as much as I should, of course.

Spent most of my time this morning and afternoon finishing a Debian upgrade (Sarge + DeMuDi to Etch) on my IBM laptop, and trying to persuade Audacity to recognize my USB soundcard. Darn it, I have it working on the desktop system. Maybe. A fair amount of the morning went into getting X working again -- the secret is disabling DRI. Late in the afternoon I decided to give ALSA's dubious OSS compatibiltiy (if you're not a Linux audio geek don't worry about it) and compile the new Audacity from CVS to see if it would get me ALSA support. It does, so I'm a happy bear.

I also know exactly what it's going to take to upgrade my main server, which was the real point of the exercise. It should be pretty smooth.

At 5pm the flower_cat, chaoswolf and I headed for Don Quixote's International Music Hall for delicious Mexican food and a concert with Mike Simpson and Broceliande. I had the chile verde, and found out that when you order it "spicy" it comes out red. Tasty anyway.

Mike was OK; a very good guitarist with a pleasant enough voice that would have been even better if he'd stuck to the lower end of his range. (And a couple of up-tempo pieces would have varied the set a little.) First time I've ever seen someone use a tenor guitar in a concert.

It was Broceliande we really wanted to see, though. They didn't disappoint us: seasonal medieval and renaissance music on their usual wide range of instruments. They did P.D.Q. Bach's "Throw the Yule Log On, Uncle John" as their encore, probably as a way of ensuring that they wouldn't be called back for a second one.

We'll be back -- they have Wake the Dead coming up on Sat. Feb. 3.