Alex's first orchestra - The Music of John Williams

One of my dreams has been to take Alex, who is now 2 years and 9 months, to see and hear a symphony orchestra play live and preferably be playing John Williams. Today my dream came true.

I've been training him from the beginning. Even when he was but a month or two old I would snuggle him in my arms until he fell asleep listening to film music on my stereo. For a long time he wouldn't fall asleep unless there was music. I love nothing more than to lie down for an afternoon nap with him as we listen to random music from my collection over the PC.

In March I flew down to Melbourne for the day to listen to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra play the music of John Williams in the Star Wars and Beyond concert at the Town Hall. Unfortunately, the cost would have been too expensive to justify flying Alex and B down as well and risk Alex not lasting for the whole concert. Then last month I noticed an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph at McDonalds of all places for a John Williams concert at the Sydney Opera House. Perfect! I booked us tickets as soon as I could.

Would Alex last the concert? Would he enjoy himself at all? I didn't know, but he's been pretty good on trains and planes. And he was excited too! Just witness the number of times he opened my birthday card to hear the opening bars of Star Wars, and how he identified various tunes when I played them over our sound systems.

The advertisement said that dressing up was encouraged and by that they didn't mean coats and tails. One family were seen walking along Circular Quay with the dad in Superman lycra and the kids in Harry Potter and Jedi costumes. There were the obligatory Stormtroopers guarding the Opera House and the atmosphere for the matinee show was one of family fun rather than classical seriousness.

For the first time we were seated behind the orchestra. It gave a good view of the orchestra, especially the usually obscured percussion section, though I suspect that it may have upset the sound balance a little.

The popular comic Shaun Micallef, dressed in a white suit, provided the introductions. It wasn't that long ago that we saw the conductor, Guy Noble, doing the same thing at another concert - I don't know that Shaun's presence was a necessary gimmick, much as I enjoy his humour.

The concert opened with a rousing Olympic Fanfare, which certainly got Alex enthused. The theme from Lost in Space was thankfully short as it is too obscure for many in the audience: I heard a more extended treatment in Melbourne. Jaws was menacing, but by the dissonant start to Close Encounters of the Third Kind Alex was getting a little whingy. I carried him up to the near empty rear and he soon fell asleep on my shoulder. I was very thankful that I could stay for the entire piece, because that dissonance metamorphoses into a triumphant conclusion that sounds so much better live than in a recording.

I returned to my seat and we lay Alex down over our laps. I really enjoyed ET's Adventures on Earth, despite some curiously lazy, then too fast conducting across the long piece. The Theme from Schindler's List was much better measured and both beautiful and sad with a lovely solo from the first violinist Kirsten Williams.

At the end of each piece Alex stirred with the applause, but he woke up completely for the Raider's March, one of his all time favourites. I was somewhat disappointed with the performance of the horns section throughout the concert as they seemed to lack the necessary agility for some of William's faster passages and twice played very obvious wrong notes. Indeed the brass section often sounded a bit brash. Whether this was an artifact of our location or the Opera House's poor acoustics I'm not certain, but I found the SSO's performance inferior to their Melbourne counterparts.

I had played Alex some Jurassic Park the previous night so that he would recognise it, and he did. Whenever I hear those themes I am returned to the amazement of seeing those giant dinosaurs come alive on the screen. The session ended with the ever exciting Superman. Alex turned to us and said "I like it!", his whole body joining in the rhythm.

There was then a twenty minute break to take him to the heavily utilised toilets and a run around outside, then we returned for the second session. The March from 1941 is a rousing big band piece, but not what I consider William's best music. I didn't realise how complex Hedwig's Theme, from Harry Potter, is until a talk given during the Melbourne concert. It's another that sounds better live than recorded.

My favourite performance came with the concert arrangement of Sayuri's Theme from Memoirs of a Geisha. Just as in Melbourne I was transfixed by the beauty of the music, taken back to 2006 and the scenic Japanese Alps. I'd love to get hold of the concert arrangement, different as it is to anything of the brilliant soundtrack.

By now Alex was getting antsy, unable to sit on the seat for long. He didn't want the second lollipop that we had given him. Fortunately this also marked the beginning of the Star Wars sequence, mostly loud and exciting music with the Main Title, Imperial March, quieter Princess Leia's Theme, jazzy Cantina Band and the Throne Room Finale. I'm not sure he enjoyed Star Wars as much as if it had been played nearer the beginning, but he still listened. He did like the encore of Superman again, joining in the long and loud clapping at the end.

So despite the discouragement of my colleagues, Alex made it through the entire concert! Not only am I very proud of him, I'm also delighted that I could share the music with both he and B.

Thanks for the memories Space Shuttle

I remember watching the very first NASA Space Shuttle launch on television back in April 1981. I was almost seven years old. Today marked the final flight of the shuttles. It's sad to see this magnificent, but flawed, vehicle retire, especially when the US has no replacement.

It felt funny visiting the Powerhouse Museum last Sunday and seeing the mock Shuttle cockpit standing over the other displays of space paraphernalia, knowing that Atlantis was up above the Earth on its final mission.

I hope we never stop gazing upwards.

The launch of Columbia on the very first shuttle mission © NASA

Atlantis lands on the last mission © NASA

Atlantis on its final mission as seen from the
CSIRO Parkes Radiotelescope
© John Sarkissian/CSIRO

I'd rather a robot than a dumb model: Android vs iPad 2

I bought my wife a Android tablet for her birthday. Then I had to take it back and replace it with an Apple iPad 2. It should have been the other way around.

I have to admit that, when I visited JB HiFi (I had a voucher), the iPad 2 felt so much sexier in my hands than the Acer Iconia A500 Android tablet. It was light, sleek and responsive. If I had a choice of which one to take on the train every day the iPad would win hands down. But I was purchasing a wifi only tablet to replace a heavy notebook PC that sits beside the bed and occasionally makes it to the kitchen to display recipes.

B wants to

1. View websites
2. Check her Gmail account
3. See photos
4. Play basic games

How do the two tablets stack up? Well, I never got to use the Iconia, but I did check the specs and I own an Android phone (HTC Desire).

1. View websites

I've read that some websites automatically serve mobile pages to all Android devices, regardless of whether they are tablets or phones, while iPads are often treated separately to iPhones. However, I've had few problems with websites on my HTC Desire. I really like the common url/search functionality of the address bar, a feature it shares with Google's Chrome browser, and I believe that in the tablet version it has tabbed browsing, a must-have for me. The phone and the iPad share a "new window" system.

Where the iPad really falls over is in the lack of Adobe Flash support. B can't view things like Masterchef videos, Sydney Morning Herald videos, the ABC for Kids website, all things that would be really useful from a tablet.

I have no such issues from my Desire and often content displays better than on my Intel Atom based netbook. I can amuse Alex with a Playschool episode in the car thanks to the Flash support on Android.

2. Check Gmail

Considering that both Android and Gmail are Google products you'd expect that they would be better on the Android tablet. I have no real quibble yet with the iPad mail client, but I do like the Android notifications system and the ability to put widgets on your home screen so you could easily check email without needing to open a dedicated client. Plus Android supports Google Talk - good for when we are apart.

3. See photos

The Iconia offers Acer's Clear-fi DLNA client out of the box, and all our photos are available from a DLNA enabled networked hard disk. My Windows computers can view them, my phone (with Twonky Media installed) can view them, my Playstation 3 can view them, one of my televisions can view them, my digital photo frame can view them. Like my phone, the iPad requires the downloading of a third-party DLNA client (though I believe that newer versions of various Android phones have this feature included).

Where the Iconia comes into its own is the ability to mount an external USB drive through the USB host socket. It also has a mini-SD socket and presumably you could mount full SD cards it you attached a card reader to the USB socket. Photos, music and files can then be transferred using a simple file explorer rather than going through iTunes. More on that later.

4. Play games

The iPad probably has the edge here thanks to the number of applications available through the Apps Store. There are still plenty of games for Android, enough to keep her happy I'm sure.

Other comments

The need to use iTunes with the iPad really irritates me. I have other Apple software installed and their constant updates are a real pain. I just want to drag and drop files from any computer or device I care to hook the iPad into, not go through an overblown program. The iTunes account sign up process also feels like an invasion of privacy.

The Iconia offered flexibility and I could see it largely replacing a laptop, especially if using an external keyboard for faster typing. The ability to plug in external devices would be great for travel, where you may not have access to a PC running iTunes.

I love the ability to use widgets on the home screen of Android devices. They are great for checking Twitter posts, RSS feeds and email. The iPad screen is really just icons.

Using the iPad 2 feels like you are constrained to do everything the Apple way and it's irritating how many want to slavishly follow them. I'd rather freedom.

There's a duck in my bed

"Quack quack!" said Alex, as he slept beside me. "Quack quack!"

I think he was asleep. Or maybe he just wanted to make me laugh before returning to sleep this morning.

Sleeping in is such a wonderful thing.

Changing the thumbnail layout in Plone

I had a lot of trouble searching for the simple task of changing the number of thumbnail images displayed on a page by Plone 3. The answer is to go into the Zope Management Interface (ZMI) and change portal_skins/ATContentTypes/atct_album_view .

Click on the Customize button, then replace the number 12 with the number of thumbnails per page that you want to display in the line:

batch python:Batch(images, 12, int(b_start), orphan=1)">

Reload the page.

Thanks to Mike Takahashi's post here.

I have my Desire back

I lost my Desire for a while. We tried to work together, but our time was constantly aborted and we had from scratch anew. Now my Desire has a new heart, but at least most of our memories are the same. Oh Desire, how I missed you!

I am, of course, talking about my HTC Desire Android phone. It was constantly rebooting so I took it into the Telstra shop for a warranty repair. It was returned yesterday with a new motherboard, as expected. From what I have read it's a manufacturing flaw that has affected many of the phones.

I really did miss the constant internet access, as well as the 15 Gigs worth of music on the phone. Still, my old Sony Ericsson w705 worked admirably well as a phone and music player in the meantime.

Like father, like son

I'm was very proud of Alex today. When I picked him up the class was playing cricket and he wanted to play too. Then he told me that he wanted to fly in a plane. The free newspaper on the train had a photo of the latest Dr Who, Matt Smith, attending a premier with Karen Gillan, who plays Amy Pond. Alex immediately recognised them as the Doctor and Amy, despite not being dressed in character. (Matt  Smith had an ordinary tie, not a bow tie. I thought bow ties were "cool"!)