Chao's String Quartet No. 2 World Premier

This is Chao's String Quartet No. 2 World Premiere in yesterday's concert at Kresge Hall, Carnegie Mellon University.

Waltz for Debby

Waltz for Debby is my favorite Jazz piano piece since I started to listen to Jazz music. I'm always a fan of Ballade, and this piece is a perfect combination of beautiful ballade and swing. The chords are beautiful.

My teacher, Chris, always tell me slow down and play with a speed that I can enjoy and handle. I have to remember that. :P But recently I also found that I can enjoy the movement of the chords better and appreciate its beauty when I play it slower.

Here is a piece on YouTube play by the master, Bill Evans:

Covert Flickr Badgr to be W3C XHTML Compatible

I used this verion of flickr badge on my personal web page. It looks great. The only problem is that the XHTML source code of my web page is no longer W3C-compliant. I spent a few minutes on this a couple of days ago and finally was able to figure out how to do it.

The original code to be included in your web page looks like this:

<embed src="
http://www.mentalaxis.com/fl8/badgr2.swf?framealphas=0,0,0,100,100&
framescaling=1.05,1.01,1.22,1.04&userid=16722880@N00&
framecolors=#ffffff,#535353,#000000,#ffffff,#000000&waittime=1&
rolling=yes&displaytime=3&badgrmode=1&limit=all&
columns=20&rows=4 " bgcolor="#ffffff" height="760"
width="152"></embed>

There are couple of problems.

1. Writing '&' in the URL to pass parameters is not allowed. So you'll have to change them from '&' to '&amp;'. (no space between '&' and 'amp;')
2. They don't like <embed>. So instead of using <embed src="[url]" width="" height="">, we use >object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="[url]" width="" height=""><param name="movie" data="[url]"></object&gt
3. That's it. (Unless I forgot something.....)
   

The final code looks like this:


<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
data="http://www.mentalaxis.com/fl8/badgr2.swf?framealphas=0,0,0,100,100&amp;
framescaling=1.05,1.01,1.22,1.04&amp;userid=16722880@N00&amp;
framecolors=#ffffff,#535353,#000000,#ffffff,#000000&amp;waittime=1&amp;
rolling=yes&amp;displaytime=3&amp;badgrmode=1&amp;limit=all&amp;
columns=20&amp;rows=4"
width="760" height="152">

<param name="movie" value="http://www.mentalaxis.com/fl8/badgr2.swf?framealphas=0,0,0,100,100&amp;
framescaling=1.05,1.01,1.22,1.04&amp;userid=16722880@N00&amp;
framecolors=#ffffff,#535353,#000000,#ffffff,#000000&amp;waittime=1&amp;
rolling=yes&amp;displaytime=3&amp;badgrmode=1&amp;limit=all&amp;
columns=20&amp;rows=4"/>

</object>

It looks a little bit more ugly, but it's standard compliant. :-)

All the things you are

I have not posted to this blog for two years now. I thought I might reopen it and post some Jazz Piano piece I like occasionally. This is my second semester taking Jazz piano classes in CMU.

I'm playing this song for the last couple of weeks. This is probably the first time I am able to do improvisation to a point that I feel "okay" about it. The following is a piece I found on YouTube played by Keith Jarrett. I kind of like the feel of the fast tempo he did. It is funny to see that all 3 of the players had that kind of "painful" expression on the face. (Nah....they are just very into the music...) :-P