The Musings of the Kat

Posted by Kat Crichton Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:39:00 GMT

Normally the rooms of our home echo with shrieking, strange music and argument. Now there is but silence. My Beloved and I have the whole house to ourselves for a week and it is utter bliss.

I don’t have the whole week off (I have to go in for Tuesday and Friday), but it’s enough to make me feel much more relaxed.

So far, I’ve managed to get the bulk of our wedding invitations sorted and tidied up a bit. Hopefully we can get a some painting and music done later in the week.

I have decided to learn to sight-read Piano music. We constantly seem to be missing an accompanist for many of our endeavours, and I figure it can’t be much harder than learning to touch-type!

Just a little focused effort should do the trick…

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:33:00 GMT

We're into the last handful of rehearsals for our next stage production, which differs somewhat from October's performance of The Gondoliers in that it's a spoof Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. The full title, which takes a little remembering is...

The Farndale Avenue Housing Association Townswomen's Guild Operatic Society's production of The Mikado

The majority of the cast are women, alongside myself playing David the acerbic producer and Bruce Vyner playing the vicar - Reverend Reginald Bishop - who has been roped in to play Pitti-Sing (one of the Three Little Maids)!

Anything and everything goes wrong with the production. From the moment you enter the auditorium, you're part of the action. The script is side splitting when simply read aloud. The show itself should be hilarious - although I would say that as my partner Penny Gerken is directing it.

Come along if you're anywhere near Poole or Bournemouth, it's only six quid and you'll have a riot.

Posted by Kat Crichton Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:56:00 GMT

It's all over - thank **** for that.

It turned out very nicely for most of the cast. The director did not fare so well. He has spent the last seven weeks converting an enthusiastic and supportive amateur cast to one that wouldn't even clap when he came on stage to take his closing night bow.

This was quite vindicating. Hearing of his tantrum (in front of several cast members who were about to go back on stage) about the orchestra performing a completely traditional act of minor rebellion - adding a cheeky bar of music where it wouldn't hurt anyone - confirmed my gradually evolving opinion of our "professional" director.

I expect this story will run and run. For now I must sleep, as I'm back in real life again and have to work to earn a crust.

Perhaps I'll be summoned to be the next King of Barataria and I won't need to bother any more.

Please note: Opinions expressed in this blog DO NOT represent those of the Operatic Society that put on the show.

Posted by Kat Crichton Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT

I'm knackered! Tonight (Friday night) is show 5 of 7 in one week. We're past the hump performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta The Gondoliers.

We got a glowing review in the local rag yesterday night. It praised the energy of the performance as well as the interesting set and lighting effects.

Each night there's a small party. You might think this is pushing things a little, but with the adrenalin still flowing it's practically impossible to sleep straight after a show.

Our schedule of entertainment this week is: Monday, Chinese takeaway; Tuesday, Italian restaurant; Wednesday, Wii & Karaoke night; Thursday, Curry at our MD's; Friday, Snacks and drinks; Saturday, End of Show Party at a local (and rather ancient) pub in Poole.

In retrospect I probably should have taken a few days off this week instead of just the matinée performance. Oh well, I'll try and have a bit of a lie in tomorrow before the Saturday matinée.

Posted by Kat Crichton Fri, 25 May 2007 11:14:18 GMT

Project Gutenberg has out-of-copyright books and Mutopia has out-of-copyright sheet music.

The Web is a wonderful thing... Yay!

Posted by Kat Crichton Fri, 18 May 2007 15:55:00 GMT

I took the Carlsbro Orion 10 active speaker that I bought for Jay's birthday back to the shop when it stopped working. I'd checked the fuse in the plug and thought that the damn thing had just broken down after an hour's use.

Embarrassingly, when I took it back to the shop, they quickly pointed out that the internal fuse had blown (very kindly not abusing me for my stupidity).

In future I promise not to take things back to the shop when they blow a fuse!

Posted by Kat Crichton Thu, 17 May 2007 13:08:00 GMT

Listening to music in the car back home from rehearsals last night, Penny suggested that we learn the song Paranoid Android by Radiohead, with myself on guitar and Penny on bass.

There's only one tiny snag in this plan, Penny can't play bass... yet!

She does have a lot of experience singing alto vocal parts (kinda like female bass singing) and can already play other instruments and read music, so presumably she'll have a natural ear for basslines.

We shall see... I've bought a beginner's bass guitar book, a Muse notation book, some new Super-Slinky's and a couple'a plectrums.

We'll start tonight!

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 09 May 2007 16:28:00 GMT

Over the last couple of weeks, I performed Around the World with Gilbert & Sullivan with the Bournemouth G & S Operatic Society. This was a compilation concert of Gilbert & Sullivan mixed with other popular music, that went down very well and was highly enjoyable to be involved with.

Auditions for the next show, "Gondoliers" (Half term, Oct 2007) take place in a few weeks time, so I'd better get practicing those audition pieces.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:28:00 GMT

Today I tried to book a ticket to go and see The Decemberists in Seattle using the Ticketmaster Web site. Everything went fine until I tried to pay for the e-ticket using my credit card issued in the UK. Lo and behold I am obliged to choose my State from a selection of US States and enter my Zip code.

This seems pretty silly since the ticket would not even be physically delivered. Given that making credit transactions in the US is ridiculously easy - my signature hasn't been checked once in the last month - it's amazing that the Web is so unaccommodating.

Bad Web design is one of my pet peeves. All Web sites should be location agnostic given the global nature of the internet. Ticketmaster have a UK presence, but the events on the US site don't show on the UK site. Seems the only way I can see the show is turn up on the night and hope.

Posted by Kat Crichton Tue, 16 May 2006 18:56:00 GMT

Well, I've managed to get MythTV working fine with Fedora Core 5. XMAME isn't quite working in conjunction with it, because of a feature of the last version of Metacity window manager that caused the fullscreen window to not have keyboard focus. I think this is reverted in version 2.14.3 which I'm downloading right now.

Haven't yet got an iTunes server running on the box. I've read about the Multi-Threaded DAAP Daemon which seems to be a better DAAP server than the one I recommended previously. I'll update my little tutorial if I start using that instead.

Fedora Core 5 seems to be pretty good. Not 100% sure about the new bubbly look, but if it continues to offend my sensibilities I really should try and create my own desktop skin. Mind you most of the time it sits quietly behind MythTV, so It's not such a big deal.