Archive for November, 2010
Nov
09
Posted under
A Geek Dad's Life,
Blog Posts,
Quitting Cable So, my fancy-schmancy single-bay Hoverman antenna looked cool. It worked well, considering that it was 75 feet from my headend in my house. The problem – the cable run was 75 feet from the headend in my house. I couldn’t just re-route it because I needed to keep the ground bonded to my house ground. What to do, what to do.
I decided to try putting it in my attic, but the single-bay Hoverman is some 38 inches tall, and my attic space was 30 inches. In desapair, I looked around my garage and saw my old coat hanger hoverman that I had made. It sat collecting dust, waiting to be donated to a friend. It was about to become supremely useful again.
Long story short, the coat hanger Hoverman is now in the attic, the cable run is now 25 feet long, and the signal strength is superb. The amazing thing is that the antenna is up there, sitting behind a metal duct, beside some other metal conduit. Just sitting there, pointed in the general direction of the general area of the TV transmitters many miles away. It is a superbly ugly and elegant piece of garage tech.
Nov
04
Posted under
A Geek Dad's Life,
Blog Posts As I mentioned yesterday, I uncovered a set of audio tapes that our college choir recorded in 1988. While most of the tapes were labeled with details of their contents, one of the tapes was not. Of course, that tape contains a work that is eluding our ability to identify its name and composer. After several hours of searching online on YouTube, iTunes, and some more obscure sites, we have not found a match for the piece.
It is a “Jubilate Deo” for choir and organ recorded by our choir in 1988-89. There are a lot of “Jubilate Deo” pieces in the wild. Ours does not appear to be one of the more common ones. It sounds like a John Rutter composition, but I cannot find a match for it in his compendium. (Maybe I just didn’t look far enough?)
So I hope to leverage both ‘the human processing power’ and ‘the human generosity’ that is the Internet. Can you help us? Do you know the name and composer of this piece? Extra-extra-super-duper brownie points if you can provide a link to audio/video of someone else’s performance of it to help us confirm the identity.
Can you help us? Leave a comment, or reach me on Twitter – as – MrScottFletcher – Thank you in advance for solving the mystery!
Nov
03
Posted under
A Geek Dad's Life,
Blog Posts 
We cleaned out our basement a couple of weeks ago, and I found three of my old audio cassette drawer units FULL of vintage 1988 tapes. Two of the units were full of copies of terribly lame 1980’s albums. (Did my copy of Vixen’s Rev’ It Up really deserve its own type-written label? In retrospect, I think not.)
One of the units contained audio recordings of my old college choir, jazz band, and jazz singers. Jackpot. I have many fond memories of the RMC music program, college-type shenanigans, road trips and choir tours (usually involving beer), and staying up way too late with the crew. I’ll save the story of how I met my wife for another time, but I want to thank my manipulative friends. Ah, good times.
I dusted off the old Technics RS-T212 and plugged it into my computer. Wow, there was some good stuff on those tapes. Don’t get me wrong; there was a fair share of imperfect/poor performances to be found on the tapes, but most were quite respectable.
I must say that Dr. P (Dr. Donald Francis Pihlaja) was an incredible director and an even more amazing person.
At the request of several former members of the RMC Choir from that era, I am making a few select recordings available as MP3 files here. The key soloists shall remain nameless to protect the innocent.
November 20, 1988 – Billings Presbyterian Church
circa 1989 – Unknown Date, Unknown location
Enjoy, and be well fellow choir mates.
