A Messy Mess

The latest KMess (v2.0.3), a 3rd-party MSN client, is supposed to properly set-and-retain the friendly name.

However, I still encountered a situation where the friendly name is always reset to the MSN ID (e.g., abc@def.com) which is an email address. Guess that's the price to pay for messing around with different 3rd-party clients.

Luckily the situation could be salvaged, somehow. This was after a series of trials-and-errors (coupled with frantic login/logout sequences). Talking about having too much time with nothing to do!

Anyway, enough with the babbling. Here's how to sort out that messy mess:

1. First, change the friendly name from abc@def.com to another (random, meaningless) email address such as xxx@yyy.com.
   
2. Logout and re-login.
   If the friendly name is still the new email address xxx@yyy.com, then this is a good sign.
   
3. Now, change the friendly name to whatever wished.
4. Logout and re-login, and hopefully the name stays intact.
   

Tuesday Water Cooler: 9-Mar-2010

[Original Post at my Blog | My Blog]

“For 37 years I've practiced 14 hours a day, and now they call me a genius”, Pablo de Sarasate, violinist and composer (1844-1908).


Sarasate, apart from being a virtuoso, is perhaps best reknown for his composition, Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs). Apparently, he composed that song specifically to showcase his mastery (much like Paganini's motivation for his concerti).

Surprisingly, there aren't many videos of Zigeunerweisen by top-tier violinists in Youtube. The cleanest one found is by Zino Francescatti. For the impatients who thirst only for fast-paced virtuosity, please jump straight away to 5:22 onwards and enjoy all the left-hand pizzicatos. Left-hand pizzicatos is analogous to playing a guitar with left-hand fingers only.

Actually, I wanted to put Anne Sophie-Mutter's, but it's audio only aka. no video. Well of course I could've put Perlman's yet again, but I thought this time should be by somebody else, for a change — still, check it out at least for the banter in the beginning.

Finally, I see a Video Footage of Young Yehudi Menuhin

[Original Post at my Blog | My Blog]

I've been hearing or reading how “young” Menuhin (1916-1999) is a wonderkid of his generation. But I've never really find his video footages. Well, maybe I wasn't looking hard enough.

Until I encounter a DVD titled “The Art of Violin”. There's him, playing a fragment of the 1st movement of Mendelssohn's violin concerto, performed in Hollywood in 1947.


The “Young” Menuhin
What's so special about this “young” Menuhin? Well, young may not be the most exact word. It should be: “prior to being ravaged by a serious injury”.

That injury nearly caused him to forsake violin for the rest of his life. That is, until he underwent a yoga treatment in India — that's how he started his collaborations with Ravi Shankar.

Some said that his injury is (partially) attributed to overstressing his body for performances. Performances that he believed as an act of reconciliation between the Jews and the Germans, done straight after the WW-2. This stirred some controversies, considering both the timing and that Menuhin himself is a (American) Jew.


The Art of Violin
And now, back to the DVD. I'm still going through the 1st part (out of 3). You'll see modern musicians (e.g., Perlman, Hillary Hann) discuss how each of the so-called greatest 20th century violinists are unique in their playing & musicality. Menuhin apart, there're Kreisler, Heifetz, Stern, Francescatti, Ricci, Rabin, and many more.

Listening to their explanations puts me in awe, for they just have the rich and beautiful vocabularies to describe the subtleties among those legends.

Now, before I mislead anybody into thinking how clever I'm, let me be the first to confess that I don't understand at all what they are talking about!

[I saw some parts of the DVD uploaded to youtube, but haven't had the time to check them]