You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

Score by Clark Genser
Based on "Peanuts" characters by Charles M. Schultz
As performed by the Platte Valley Players

Well, musical time has come and gone again 'round these parts. Actually, this year was the first year that the PVP has put on two shows in a year, instead of just one, so the musical was quite a bit later than usual, in November. I played viola in the pit orchestra, and ended up conducting one show due to a schedule conflict with the director.

YaGMCB is, essentially, a musical 'sketch' comedy. It contains a number of scenes, some musical, some not, that are linked thematically by the Peanuts cast, rather than as a simple narrative structure. It feels very much like a compilation of Peanuts strips. The revised score is somewhat lacking in places (among other things, the instrumentation is quite sparse), but there are some nice numbers in the show nevertheless.

The Platte Valley Players have once again impressed me with their talent, dedication and skill: the choreography was good, and well-executed; although there were some rough spots, there wasn't a huge problem with keeping the actors with the orchestra (and vice-versa); the set design was good and fit well with the style of the show. It is remarkable to me how well the troupe can do with the limitations that they have as a community group (low budget, time constraints, etc), which they have shown before in their production of The Mikado.

In particular, though I doubt they will ever read this, kudos to Charlie Brown, who, so far as I noticed, only messed up a line once during the performances; to Lucy, who did a remarkable job singing in the annoying voice of her character (and not the actress's normal singing voice... it's always hard to sing poorly when you've been trained to sing well); and to Sally Brown, who worked so very hard to get the rhythms right, and eventually did.

I never know beforehand whether I'll play for a musical or not, but I think I'm inclined to play again for PVP if they ask.

Terry Hancock on Why Free Software is Important

In a recent blog post at Free Software Magazine, Terry Hancock explains (some reasons) why free software is important, and why we should spend our time promoting it and working on it, even though there are "bigger problems to worry about" in the world.

I would still point out that there are many other things that one could do, including protests (among others), although some are not terribly effective. Nevertheless, long-term planning and creating stable, ethical and expandable communities and methods for the future to build on is certainly worthwhile.

Thud!

Terry Pratchett

Thud!, a Discworld book, tells the story of Sam Vimes, Commander of the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork, and the events surrounding Koom Valley Day, which commemorates the Battle of Koom Valley, fought a thousand years ago when a band of Trolls ambushed a band of Dwarves (or maybe the other way around) in the treacherous Koom Valley. Vimes must solve the mysterious murder of a Dwarven agitator, and keep the city from descending into a troll-dwarf gang war in the meantime, not to mention dealing with the bureaucracy and, of course, Lord Vetinari, the city's Patrician.

Like most of Pratchett's novels, Thud! is not merely reflective of our own world, but highly entertaining. Dealing with themes of love, devotion, family, jealousy, prejudice, ancient grudges and more, it allows us (as good science fiction and fantasy do) to examine ourselves from the outside, in order to gain a bit of perspective. It also allows us to laugh out loud at Terry's imaginative and sometimes surprising turn of phrase. The book is easy and fun to read, but hard to put down.

I highly recommend this book, as well as the other Discworld books, to anyone over 13 (parents, use your own judgement for younger).

Edit: That should be Vimes, not Grimes. Dunno what I was thinking!

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Gregory Maguire

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is the story of Cinderella, told from the point of view of the Ugly Stepsister, in usual Maguire fashion. Set in 17th century Holland (about the time of the collapse of the tulip market), the story is not so much revisionist as a simple retelling of the classic story, removing somewhat the fantasic elements of fairy tales and making it seem, if not actually true, then plausible.

Unfortunately, Maguire's storytelling is merely adaquate. The ideas presented in the book are good, from murder and betrayal to sisterly love and devotion, but the entire book is rather bland, as if it were a story told a thousand times.

Although I enjoyed Wicked, Maguire's first novel, it, too, suffered from the fault that reduced the novel from adaquate to poor: near the end of the story, everything suddently twists around, as if he had forgotten that he was writing a retelling, a new telling, of a fairy tale, and suddenly has to make it conform to our memories of the story it is based on. Each of the novels of his that I have read, Wicked, Mirror, Mirror, and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, has felt adaquate until this sudden, jarring, forced inclusion.

My advice, Mr. Maguire, is don't force it. It's a retelling. People have done it for thousands of years. Don't get hung up on the most popular details; make it your own.

My advice to the rest of you: don't read it. Go find a nice collection of Fairy Tales if you want a different version of Cinderella. You'll enjoy it more.

Ethics Questions

If I have the ability to stop, without risk to myself, someone from performing an act that conflicts with my ethics, do I have an obligation to do so?

What if the method I have for doing so is the same act that I intend to stop them from doing?

What if my act will only stop a portion, perhaps even a tiny portion, of the total set of "unethical" acts that this person (or group) will perform?

(Nothing sinister, just wondering)

Random Quoteness

"She couldn't have married a better man... he'd have run too fast." -- Steve.

"Without email, my life would be plunged into darkness!" -- Random ITS caller.

"Text is neat. You can do all sorts of stuff with it that you can't do in speech. And vice-versa." -- Me.

Essentials in Conducting

So, I'm working on a Distributed Proofreaders (check it out, proofread a few pages if you have a few minutes...) project right now called Essentials in Conducting by Karl W. Gehrkins. And, I swear, it contains the following line:

The conductor must see to it ... that, in general, the musical performance be permeated by that steady throb of regular pulsation...

He is, of course, speaking of rhythm... ;-)

More linkage

How Genesis 1 should have been written and How to recognize an imaginary friend.

Jokes

What do witches and wizards use while typing up their incantations?

A spellchecker.

What do grasshoppers use when they're typing up theories on grass consumption?

Locust Notes.

A piece of computing history

Every once-in-a-while, it's good to look back at events that become turning points in history.

15 years (and two days) ago, Linus Torvalds made the first post about Linux on the comp.os.minix newsgroup. Torvalds' work, enabled by the GNU project's tools (such as gcc), gave us a completely free-as-in-speech operating system, just as the GNU project had been working towards for years.

w00t for GNU/Linux!

Dark Matter!

Scientists have shown that dark matter exists!