Thomasina’s last waltz

Useful and beautiful: a tribute to the work of Steve Jobs (1955–2011)

I can’t claim to be the first to draw a comparison between Steve Jobs and British designer William Morris. Long before this past week – around the time of the Stanford commencement address where Jobs explained how calligraphy led to his innovations with fonts – people were already making this connection. Jobs himself “got it”:

“We don’t have a way to talk about this kind of thing,” Steve said. “In most people’s vocabularies, ‘design’ means veneer. It is interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

Or as Morris said: “If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

There’s an irony in the comparison, as Harry Rutherford observes in his tribute, but the comparison holds nonetheless. I’ve been attracted to Apple products since 1987, in large part because of their simplicity, their beauty and their elegant functionality. And we have Steve Jobs to thank for these qualities. 

It’s not all roses. If there’s one area where I’m critical of Apple it’s the way aesthetics all too often take priority over ergonomics – it’s been a long time since I used an Apple mouse or keyboard for that reason. So not always useful. As for computer fonts: such creative power is fabulous but it doesn’t always lead to beauty. Think how many ghastly, half-baked flyers, posters and newsletters we could have avoided if Steve Jobs had never attended calligraphy class? (Ok, that price is worth paying…)

As others have also pointed out, it wasn’t just about the design and technological developments themselves, the real achievement was the way Jobs and Apple changed (and raised) our expectations of technology, sparked creative possibilities, gave great delight and empowered a generation. I didn’t know the man, but I’m grateful for the legacy.

Trolls

Since I’m immersed in all things Peer Gynt…

The first is a trick for Mac users.
1. In System Preferences > Speech > Text to Speech, set the System Voice to Cellos.
2. In TextEdit, type the following:

We are nasty little trolls, little trolls, little trolls,
We are nasty little trolls and we are after you!

3. Select the text then choose: Edit > Speech > Start Speaking

Don’t own a Mac? It sounds like Steve Jobs should be paying Grieg royalties…

Nasty Little Trolls

This next item from a quartet of Sibelius Academy-trained cellists is suitably savage (adjust volume to taste):

 

Send in the live-twitterers

Previously on Thomasina…
“This isn’t to say that someone who undertakes to live-tweet a performance might not have a role to play. But it is a role.”

Assuming it could be done with courtesy, why would you set out to tweet a performance in real time?

As a form of personal note-taking? – Pen and paper is actually much quicker and less disruptive to all, including the note-taker.

As a way of sharing an experience and discussing it with others? – Sure, but then why not at interval or afterwards, which is when we normally gather our ideas and share them with others.

As a form of citizen reportage? – Well… there just might be something in that.

The other day, @DarrynKing (real name, Darryn King; profession, entertainment journalist) live-tweeted the Sydney production of West Side Story (hashtag #wss). If you go look at these tweets – which is easier said than done since it was on 15 July and twitter is the most ephemeral of media – you don’t get the sense of them coming from an average Joe in the audience. At one point Darryn was talking of wearing all black and lurking in the wings, or even tweeting from the pit. (Sometimes these things boil down to where you can get decent reception.)

He was very well-prepared. And over the two-and-a-half hours the #wss feed included backstage insights, commentary on the performance, slang definitions, pop quizzes drawn from the lyrics, wry plot summaries, musical observations, witty expressions of enthusiasm, meta moments (“If Tony had Twitter he’d be like ‘Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria Maria’”) and even some good advice (“Don’t do it, Maria. Let this endless cycle of violence and great dance numbers come to an end”).

For someone to live-tweet a show and come up with something worth following, a few things are needed: access (not everyone gets to sit in on the general rehearsal, or find a corner in an orchestra pit, or watch the performers warm up before the show); some fairly thorough knowledge and preparation; and skill in rapidly formulating an entertaining commentary that will make sense to someone who isn’t there.

You could be describing the requirements of a traditional arts critic. Or a radio sports commentator.

And what does anyone get out of it? Right now it’s novel, so there’s a public relations benefit. When (if?) live-tweeting becomes commonplace – in the way that arts criticism or cricket on the radio is commonplace – then it will simply become another way of sharing a performance beyond the doors of the auditorium and giving a taste of the event in real time to those who can’t or won’t be there. Time will tell whether twitter is a good medium for this, and whether the effort will be worth it.

What does the live-twitterer get out of it? Potentially a great deal: knowledge, awareness, access, insight, and all the benefits that come from choosing to focus on a performance with the specific purpose of communicating its details and flavour to others.

But the exercise also represents a lot of work – it’s far more than a few idle tweets from a good night out. As I said, you could be describing the experience of a critic, or the broadcast presenter, or the operator of the camera for a webstream, or the surtitle operator. The live-twitterer will, by necessity, be deeply involved in what’s going on, but they won’t necessarily be sharing in the experience the creators intend for the audience.

They’re not free to simply put down their mobile device, forget about reporting, and weep or laugh or listen in awe. They’re playing a role.

Postscript…

Darryn has posted his own reactions to the experience, which I chose not to read before writing my own post.  This was interesting: “That’s the thing. The live tweet itself turned into performance, and arguably my performance, for much of it, was more important than the performance taking place onstage. Heck, I could have written much of what I did listening to the cast recording at home (somewhat more comfortably). But that wouldn’t have been nearly as fun, would it? If it worked, it was the idea, of the illusion, of shared experience that made it work.”

Four things Twitter does for the performing arts

There’s a bigger question behind the #tweetseats discussion: What are the benefits of bringing twitter into performance venues?

At the moment we’re playing around, experimenting, finding our feet. (By “we” I mean presenters and tweeting audiences equally.) Right now, I think perhaps too much excited emphasis is being placed on the particular medium du jour and not enough on the value of what is actually taking place…

1. Connection
One thing at which twitter excels is enabling the connection of like-minded nerds fans. Through twitter we can share impressions with someone who might be attending on a different night or perhaps still be deciding whether to buy a ticket. But unlike a chat with friends, a tweet reaches many more people and it also allows a tweeter to get to know more fans whom they might not otherwise have met.

So you can imagine presenters being very interested in the word-of-mouth potential of that, as well as the community-building potential. And those of us who tweet just love it.

2. Broadcasting

Another thing that twitter does, although not very precisely, is provide a simple mechanism for broadcasting grabs of information to an audience of followers. The equivalent of the opera surtitle, but sent to your phone. The problem is, there’s not much control over exactly when a tweet will appear to a follower. So it would be pretty bad for actual surtitles, and not much good for music alerts of the “listen to the oboe’s entry” variety. But it’s ok for sending generic pieces of background information or pointing out things to listen/look for that are likely to hang around (“see those sheep…”).

Orchestras around the world have been trying this sort of thing, mostly at outdoor concerts. I’ve followed some of the program-notey feeds and found them either prosaic or a bit twee. But there’s scope for a really imaginative use of this strategy.

3. Open conversations
Twitter is also pretty good for opening up conversations and sharing information. Traditionally, performing arts presenters have communicated in very controlled ways: we “broadcast” information through program books, websites, marketing materials, and print and broadcast media (that is, one-to-many), and we allow people to talk to us by phone or in writing, responding in a closed dialogue (one-to-one). But active and flourishing online forums are relatively rare and don’t necessarily include presenters and performers as participants. In any case, the old-school forum environment doesn’t always seem to generate as generous a conversation as twitter does.

Presenters in the 21st century need to be bold enough to participate in many-to-many conversations, engaging the intelligence and passions of the smart people who make up the audience – and a medium like twitter allows a presenter to talk to people, respond to them, answer questions, solve problems and bask in compliments (twitter nurtures an extraordinarily positive atmosphere).

Somewhere between open conversations and spontaneous response is the use of twitter by performers and audience together as part of the creative and performance act. That’s too specific a scenario to cover here.

4. Spontaneous response

Twitter encourages spontaneity and a real-time response to the world. It’s worth remembering that twitter reached its tipping point in 2007 when a bunch of nerds South by Southwest conference attendees used it to keep in touch and to let each other know which were the good sessions and events. If that’s not real-time critiquing, then nothing is.

So it’s the most natural thing in the world to contemplate adopting that approach for a concert or an opera or ballet or in the theatre or at any other traditional performance event. Except it turns out that live-tweeting from the audience in those contexts can be difficult and unrewarding, and it compromises the experience.

In fact I’m going to come right out and say that live-tweeting (as opposed to foyer tweeting) is not going to help you engage more fully with a performance. It’s not going to enhance your appreciation, increase your understanding or blow your mind.

This isn’t to say that someone who undertakes to live-tweet a performance might not have a role to play. But it is a role.

#tweetseats, or #foyertweets – that is the question

On Saturday night, Opera Australia used the power of comp tickets to harness the energy of some opera-mad tweeters (Mad Sceners, to be precise), endorsing a posse of nine or so to do what they usually do at the opera: tweet their impressions before and after, and during the interval.

It’s kind of unfortunate that it went under the tag #tweetseats, since no actual tweeting was taking place from their seats. I would have loved to see them sacrifice the rhyme and an extra character and opt for #foyertweets instead

Not because I’m a pedant or anything, but because, despite the Opera Australia event being accurately described in the media, the whole #tweetseats thing seems to have stirred unnecessary outrage in some quarters, with many assuming the tweeting was going on during the performance itself.

But for many of us, the last thing we want to do is tweet during [traditional] performances. The best summing up came from @primalamusica, who managed to condense the sentiment of my post from the other day into a mere 55 characters: “if it’s tweetworthy, it’s worthy of undivided attention”


But I don’t want to get bogged down in matters of etiquette. It’s pretty obvious to any remotely considerate person that there are times and places for everything. What’s outrageous in a hushed and darkened auditorium might be absolutely fine on a picnic blanket at a concert under the stars. Use your good judgement.

Live-tweeting and getting into the gig

My corner of the twittersphere has been abuzz this morning. The topics fleeting by: the lamentable editorial omission of any musical representatives from the weekend’s article on twitter in the arts, the state of arts journalism generally and its apparent promotional/PR focus, and tweeting during performances.

It would take me hours to compress my thoughts on tweeting during performances into 140 characters (or even 280) and I don’t have the time. So…

First, this isn’t about the arts using twitter outside the performance time/space or using it as part of the performance – that’s another story, and at times quite an entertaining one. (#operaplot anybody?)

It’s about the matter of audience members tweeting during theatrical and concert performances.

And I’ll be honest. I actually can’t do it. Not while the performance is going on.

I do tweet during interval as well as immediately before/after performances. At concerts I’m often doing that in a vaguely official capacity as @sso_notes. Very occasionally (mostly during long stage moves) I’ve tweeted between pieces.

Here’s my rationale: I only tweet at those points in the performance where it would be undistracting, and natural, to talk.

But it’s not really good manners that motivates me so much as pure selfishness. I simply don’t want to miss anything. And if what I’m doing is likely to mildly distract someone nearby, then it’s absolutely certain that I am, myself, being distracted to be the point that I will have missed a minute or two of the performance – a minute or two that can’t be reclaimed.

As everyone is finally beginning to realise, multitasking is a furphy. Even for girls. In a concert there’s usually so much to pay attention to and to hold in memory that I’m lucky if I can scribble an illegible word on my program in the darkness. Plays/operas/ballets are much the same. If someone tells me they can look at a screen, formulate and type a concise idea for public consumption and remain fully aware of what’s going on during those 50 to 120 seconds, I will happily tell them they’re deluded. Of course, if the performance is really boring…but let’s not go there. 

Actually, let’s do go there. Because my ideal performance in the concert hall or theatre is one that's so compelling and engrossing, so riveting, that it doesn’t even occur to me to tweet while it’s taking place. If my mind is wandering in the direction of epigrammatic things to tweet about the performance then that’s a very bad sign for the performance.

I’ve also tried tweeting during verbal presentations (e.g. during TEDxSydney and during my orchestra’s pre-concert talks). This is slightly easier. Perhaps all those years of taking notes during university lectures taught me something, and a well-constructed verbal presentation usually incorporates sufficient repetition, exploration and summary of ideas that there are opportunities to “take notes” in one way or another.

But I think there’s another difference: when I tweet from a talk I’m mostly tweeting content, an idea I’ve just heard, a pithy quote. It’s more like transcription. If I were to attempt to tweet during a musical/theatrical performance I’d be tweeting my own response/reactions/assessments. That’s a more distracting activity which, in some ways, takes you out of the receptive mode that a performance demands of you and into a critical one. Criticism is a marvellous thing, but if you’re not really receiving because you’re trying to write and publish a critique in the moment then…?

In any case, it’s been my experience that people have far more interesting things to say about a performance when it’s had even a short while to sink in. For example, for (too) many years my ballet subscription placed me immediately in front of a trio of ladies who insisted on verbalising their reactions during the performances. “Hasn’t she got lovely arms,” was a typical comment. Or, my favourite, “He’s very manly looking, isn’t he?” They drove me to distraction and were the targets of more than a few glares in the darkness. But if you happened to eavesdrop on them between acts it was a different story: the level of the observations immediately jumped.

Anyhow, I’m going to leave this post with the wise words of youth. Just recently my nephew went to hear Karnivool in concert, and he wrote about it afterwards. Nice pictures too. Here’s the telling line:

I feel like I probably spent too much time taking photos and not enough time getting into the gig (you live and learn I guess), but regardless I still enjoyed myself a hell of a lot.

Substitute “live-tweeting” for “taking photos” and I think you’ve got it. You won’t enjoy yourself less, but there’s a good possibility that you won’t be “getting into the gig” to the extent you would’ve liked.

Twitter – doing much better akshully

Today there’s joy on twitter for two hundred or so of us (how mighty is the long tail).

Apropos of yesterday’s post, I’m delighted to report that there have been sightings of @ABCClassic100 using the #classic100 hashtag. Furthermore, they’re mixing things up a bit, interspersing the playlist tweets with  a bit more editorial commentary. The way for this to happen has been opened up in part by their posting a running list of the symphonies as a distinct item on the website. The existence of The List means there’s no longer a need to rely on a “clean” twitter feed to supply the playlist and thus there’s more scope for conversation. (There’s a maverick list being maintained as well, which also includes the performer details for each symphony.)

There are still no “@ replies” to be spotted, but that may be partly because the followers themselves have begun to rely primarily on the hashtag to sustain the generally very entertaining conversation, the whole of which can be seen by means of an advanced twitter search. In particular, we have been joined by @FoodPanda, a remarkably knowledgeable as well as hungry creature.

A phone call today sent me over to look at the Classic 100 message board, which I’d visited only fleetingly yesterday. What a contrast. Compared to the flexibility and immediacy of twitter, the humble message board (as a medium in general) seems like a dinosaur: rigidly hierarchical and ossified, its gems largely buried.

It set me thinking about the nature of communication and how the mould into which you pour a conversation shapes its character. [As someone pointed out to me a while back, you almost never encounter any genuine nastiness on twitter because its concision and its “exposed” nature seems to be conducive to positive rather than negative expression.] For example, the people following the Classic 100 on twitter seem more likely to respond to what they’re actually hearing in the music, and to embark on lively exchanges – they’re having fun. The message board, by contrast, is home for those who want to speculate at length about which symphonies will make the top 10 and so on – they all seem a bit more earnest. It’s an interesting theme but not one I have time to explore – at least not until that spring holiday arrives, at which point it will all be over!

Meanwhile, my fingers are crossed for Beethoven 7.

Twitter - ur doing it wrong

It’s been an interesting exercise following the ABC Classic FM’s “The Classic 100 Symphony” on twitter this weekend.

On the one hand it’s very convenient: I have heaps to do that precludes listening to other things (background or otherwise), so I can follow the countdown silently.

On the other hand, it’s revealing just how easy it is to misjudge in this kind of exercise. Let me count the ways:

1. ABC Classic FM has invited us all to follow on twitter but is not following a single person back, despite the fact that, as far as I can see, all 210+ followers are legitimate souls – not a social network marketer or purveyor of porn to be seen. We’re real people, Aunty; many are your colleagues or important people you’d know by name. Marshall McGuire just joined in, for example. But in any case, twitter is about conversations and that means following those who follow you (providing there is a shared interest, which in this case there is).

2. There is a hashtag: #classic100. Very good. But has the ABC Classic FM twitter feed ever once tweeted what this hashtag is and invited its followers to use it? No. Not once. Ah, it’s there on the website, you say. But not all of us on twitter will necessarily visit the website, and so will belatedly, if at all, glean the hashtag from others.

3. This is just a pedantic thing, but Aunty’s scribe needs to improve in the spelling department. Even if that means just being the tiny bit more careful in copying the information from the source. Haydyn, Askenenazy, Neilsen, Rogers (for Rodgers)… no doubt there’ll be more, and people are noticing.

4. It’s been suggested to me – by way of explaining the spelling errors – that the person behind @ABCClassic100 is some kind of IT coordinator, rather than someone with any real classical music knowledge. That would also go some way to explaining the complete lack of conversation in the thread (i.e. not a single “@ reply” to any of the 50+ messages that have been fondly sent in @ABCClassic100’s direction. (And “fond”, as in foolishly optimistic or naive, is the word.)

In any case, that’s a mistake. ABC Classic FM wouldn’t be the first organisation to think that because twitter is about social networking or “the internet” they need to put an IT-ish kind of person on the task. But in fact, twitter is just the medium. The minute you invite people to follow your countdown on twitter then you’re communicating (and, you’d hope, inviting engagement). So you want people behind the tweets who know the subject and can talk about it.

The other thing this suggests is that ABC Classic FM has been misled into thinking of twitter as just another “broadcast” (one-to-many) medium, instead of the cocktail party that it really is. Note to self: don’t invite @ABCClassicFM to the next party: they’ll just stand in a corner and shout updates at us from time to time. (Although… they would be handy for passing out the sorbets at regular intervals.)

Anyhow, this thing has a whole week to go – the joy of long symphonies, with mega brownie points given for the decision to broadcast complete works.

So here’s hoping ABC Classic FM can get the twitter presence working beautifully: put knowledgeable people behind the tweets; follow the followers; respond to them; use the hashtag from time to time to keep it in circulation – it’ll be great. Worried that all this newfound conversation will clutter up the list of symphonies? Easy, make a separate filtered search [ "No." from:ABCClassic100 ].

Postscript: If you’ve arrived at this post directly, please do read the sequel, Twitter – doing much better akshully.

Simple pleasures

First thing this morning: I downloaded the update for the iPod touch.

And now, at last…

Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and paste. Cut and…

[I know, it should be “copy and paste”, but “cut and paste” sounds better.]

I noticed on Friday night that Apple Optus-promoting-the-iPhone had erected a large inflatable pavilion in First Fleet park near Circular Quay in preparation for today’s launch. It was labelled “Happiness”. They’re not wrong – I’m happy.

Vision of the pianist in a multimedia age

Imogen Cooper’s recital earlier this week has prompted me to dig something out of the archives from 1997. It was based on an interview with Imogen and written up as one of those thought-provoking ‘interludes’ for the program book, although the presenting organisation didn’t end up publishing it – I may write about that some other time.

The piece is showing its age, both in style and content. Its subject – the use of the ‘keyboard cam’ in selected SSO piano recitals – turned out to be short-lived, perhaps because more often than not the pianists in the series didn’t agree to its use. (One response: “I would resist such a thing until my feet were in the grave.”) But the general theme – music presentation, extra-musical additions to concerts, communication – lives on.

Last year [1996] Jon Kimura Parker gave a piano recital here in the Sydney Town Hall. If you were there you would have noticed a large screen above the stage and a tiny video camera focused on the piano keyboard. Regardless of your seat, you would have been treated to an ‘A-reserve’ view of Kimura Parker’s hands, courtesy of ‘keyboard cam’.

We’ve been accustomed to surtitles at the opera for a while now. Patrons of Opera in the Park are no strangers to the use of large screens. And, as was pointed out in the daily press a few weeks after Kimura Parker’s recital, sports and pop concert audiences now take videos and big screens for granted.

Did we like it? One listener thanked the Sydney Symphony for ‘de-fossilising the piano recital’. She will be disappointed, but not petrified, to find no screen this evening [a recital by Imogen Cooper]. The same listener guessed – probably rightly – that ‘most of the audience at piano recitals are piano students and lapsed pianists’ who ‘want to see The Hands’. (You can recognise them: they all sit on the left-hand side of the hall.)

A screen might allow those students and lapsed pianists to observe the minutiae of a performer’s technique – if such things are to be gleaned from a split-second glimpse. But a screen could also be a distraction; the sight of disembodied hands carrying out their pianistic wizardry might just tear us away from the performer, even the performance.

‘It’s difficult for me to imagine,’ says this evening’s soloist Imogen Cooper, ‘quite what one gathers from being able to see a pianist’s hands. I imagine there may be some very good amateur pianists who want to suss out a few fingerings and things like that.’

‘Or maybe it’s part of the body language.’ she says, ‘But to me the carriage of the shoulders, the head, and the expression on the face – which you can see just as well from the other side of the hall – speaks just as much.’

Certainly all of us, as listeners, hear with our eyes as well as out ears. And from the early 19th century – when pianists such as Liszt turned the piano side on to the audience and seating began to be set out in rows facing the stage – pianists have been using body language to help listeners understand the message of the music. But early recitals were often sprinkled with chamber music and vocal items; concerts nowadays are increasingly more specialised, our programs more focused. ‘When there is only the pianist for the whole evening,’ says Cooper, ‘the visual aspect does in fact matter a great deal. But I think the artist should be able to carry that themselves. I don’t think projecting the hands on a screen actually helps that.’

Even so, giant screens seem to be moving from the stadium to the concert hall. ‘Dare I say,’ ventures Cooper, ‘it’s this slightly American concept that one medium is never enough. You have to have two at the same time and, if possible, three. And if there could have been flashing lights too, no doubt that will come up one of these days.’

Perhaps it’s a symptom of the multimedia age; perhaps it’s more basic than that. ‘It’s as if,’ says Cooper, ‘we haven’t got the concentration span – which I suppose for some people is true – to focus on one thing without being amused by something else at the same time. Probably the youngest generation coming up, for the most part, don’t have a very good attention span and have not had a very good introduction to classical music. They are simply bored if they have to sit and listen to something.’

But let’s return to Kimura Parker. He had performed with a keyboard cam in concerts elsewhere and he took the time to explain his thoughts on the new gadgetry. He also took the time to introduce the music he played. The question could be asked: which was it that really helped us to listen more carefully? The keyboard cam? Or the spoken introductions?

For Cooper communication wins out over gadgetry every time. ‘Not only are you introducing the works from your own experience,’ says Cooper, ‘but anybody in the audience can see that you’re not only a wonderful disembodied being that can play, but that you can talk and laugh, and in some ways you use the same language as them – literally.’

Mare's nest

Malcolm Gladwell, I’m disappointed in you:

Here’s a sample question, from the verbal analogies section. “Teeth is to Hen as Nest is to ?” If you want to know the answer, I’m afraid I have no idea.
Outliers (2008), page 71

Google analytica

One of the most amusing aspects of Google Analytics is it will tell you what search engine keywords have brought people to your blog.

Not only is it entertaining to see the sheer diversity of searches, it’s quite an “interactive” experience: I find myself wanting to answer the questions that have prompted the searches in the first place.

Example? how to pronounce the word 'gerontius' elgar or speak or gerontius

That one made me want to reach out into the ether and begin explaining the various traditions of ecclesiastical and scholarly Latin pronunciation and which it was that Elgar was mostly like to be familiar with and hence his preferred pronunciation. And I began hoping they found something illuminating online, despite the badly constructed search terms.

Which is the other thing: I’d never realised before how many people actually don’t have a clue how to use Google. They type in single commonplace words, like relevant or string. They ask natural-language questions like what happens inside a music concert or what do you feed a Christmas beetle? and include all sorts of words that will only slow down or muddy the search.

Or they include a search term that’s plain wrong. This one – stravinsky waltz lehar petrushka – had me crying out to my imaginary seeker “It’s Lanner Stravinsky quotes in Petrushka. Lanner, not Lehár”. An understandable mistake, that one. Alas, there’s a netizen perpetuating the error, which goes to show what a dangerous, slippery thing the blogosphere is should one be seeking actual knowledge.

Then there are the stats. Discounting those searches that are clearly for the blog itself, the most popular searches include café du caveau palais royal (I assume these are people who are trying to find the actual café, not people who are interested in the history of ice cream as it connects to Mozart) and Atlanta’s balls.

But first place for the search that most frequently arrives at Thomasina’s Last Waltz belongs to this question and its variants: what tempo should the last waltz be played at?

I’m not a ballroom dancer, but my guess is you’d want to play it at something like a strict tempo, i.e. 115 to 130 beats per minute. Or if it’s “The Last Waltz” by the other Engelbert Humperdinck they’re after, YouTube would suggest it’s quite a bit slower, maybe 110. But notice how the dancers can’t actually waltz to this…

Spelling Strine in Firefox

Monday night's techie tip – for Mac users.

Sick of the Firefox browser marking your perfectly good colourful Australian English as misspelled? Wondering why the System and Firefox preference settings don't make any difference on this front? Is turning off spell check altogether not an option?

Download this addon.

Then, the important part, you need to follow the instruction that the developer doesn't provide – not on the download site, not on his "website" – but which I found here. (Thanks Rooster.)

In any text editing field (such a blog posting/commenting field, or a forum entry field) right-click and choose "English / Australia" from the Languages menu.

As Kelvin Eldridge points out on The Rooster's site, the dictionary in this addon is five or so years old. If that ends up bothering you, and it may not, go here to get a current one for little more than the cost of a Charbucks coffee.

Under wraps

Apple's new Sydney store.

The other night they closed part of George Street in order to install the biggest panes of plate glass I've ever seen.

Here's the piece that appeared in the SMH last year. And a full set of drawings and plans here. The address is 77 King Street, but the grand entrance and facade quite clearly faces George Street.

Operation Undine

Mission accomplished! I have finally acquired a six-month pass for the local pool. I only have to swim once every four or five days to make it worth the investment, and, of course, I plan to swim quite a bit more often than that!

What I really need is an adult stroke-correction course. But in the meantime, I'll brush up on the fantastic tips that I found a while back at this (Swiss) website, featuring photos and footage from some great (Aussie) swimmers! There's a lot of interesting stuff about front quadrant swimming and efficient freestyle technique. And some simple but alarmingly effective strategies such as 'swimming downhill'.

And while on matters Swiss...

I've also recently come across a nice set of podcasts containing Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons that have been developed specifically for musicians — those of us who make a sound using the breath or even just have to sit and stand in awkward positions for hours at a time. The practitioner is an American trombonist, John Tarr, living in Basel. You can visit the Dynamic Musician Series website or pick up the podcasts from iTunes (search Feldenkrais) or directly here. Do listen to the short introductory podcast if you've not done Feldenkrais before.

SBB CFF FFS: Swiss Rail in German, French and Italian respectively. If you go to their site, there are some deliciously nerdy screensavers, as well as a Mac widget, all featuring the classic (and infallible) Swiss railway clock.