Harry Potter release party at Women & Children First

The Women & Children First bookstore put on a great release party for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Some pix:



Added bonus: Pix from the 2005 party for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Bugling banjos

I just stumbled upon a realization: I can do bugle calls on my banjo.

At my first banjo lesson on Wednesday, my banjo instructor tuned my 5-string banjo to the most common tuning: open G tuning (gDGBd). At the end of the lesson he gave me some homework to do, including some finger work.

As I was doing some random fingering this morning I discovered that I could play Reveille with just my right hand. Then I tried a couple of other bugle calls and found that I could do them, too.

Makes sense, really. An open G banjo has the same harmonics as the military bugle, which is pitched to G. I'm not the first person to figure this out, of course -- witness Bugle Call Rag, written by Pettis and Meyers in 1922. But I'm still pleased that I figured it out on my own.

So here are some of my new fingering exercises from Wikipedia's bugle call page:

Reveille

reveille.mp3

First Call

first_call.mid

Mess Call

messcall.wav

P-meter, day 19

P-meter, day 18

Whew. That was a lot of fun. The first six Harry Potter books in 18 days. OK, except for the last chapter, which I'm going to leave until the morning because that feels like the right way to read it.

I'm really glad that I've been charting my progress. I was able to make slow and steady progress without feeling unduly rushed. Also, I knew to kick it up a notch when I was falling behind. Now I'm ready for tomorrow's midnight run to Women & Children First for our copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Good idea for conference evaluation forms

My business partner Don writes to tell me about a good use for SharePoint:

Now here’s a cool feature Microsoft implemented in their conference SharePoint communication site. Instead of passing out paper evaluation forms, your badge (a proximity card) is scanned when you enter a session. When you get back to your hotel and log onto the conference site, there is a list of online evaluation forms just for the sessions you attended and have not yet filled out an evaluation form.

P-meter, day 17

Almost there.

Banjo blogging

I had my first banjo lesson today at Flatts & Sharpe. Things I learned:

• Easy tablature.
• Seeger's boom-titty-boom. (Wikipedia says: "Pete Seeger popularised a folk style by combining clawhammer with 'up picking' without the use of fingerpicks.")
• Three chords: G, C and D7. More to come!

No Deathly Hallows spoilers

I created a handy sign that you can post on your office door to let people know they've entered a Deathly-Hallows-spoiler-free zone.

Cliff's Notes for a Team System Install

One of AgileTek's tech leads just pointed me to Cliff's Notes for a Team System Install. He describes it as a "short and sweet" alternative to Microsoft's full-blown installation instructions and says, "I wish I had had them before I started the install."

Using Subversion clients with Team Foundation Server

Brian Harry tells us about SvnBridge, a server bridge that allows Subversion clients to connect to TFS.

P-meter, day 16

P-meter, day 15

P-meter, day 14

I had to take some painful shocks to get here, but I've managed to get 178 pages ahead of schedule. Yea!

Ow!Ow!Ow!Ow!Ow!

A dispatch from the world of unexpected pain.

I was listening to an audio book (yes, Order of the Phoenix) on my personal CD player while doing household chores. As I yanked the sheets off the bed I felt a painful, crackling, stabbing sensation in both ears at once.

Apparently the sheets' discharge of static electricity decided to fork its way up the cords, through both earpieces and into my ears to conclude its journey in the center of my brain.

P-meter, day 13

Better.

P-meter, day 12

Project sluts getting all the attention

The Business of Software interview with Tim Lister is getting lots of attention because of Lister's provocative term "project sluts." That's one of many project patterns that Lister and friends will be describing in their upcoming book, tentatively titled Project Patterns: From Adrenalin Junkies to Template Zombies.

Project sluts are teams that can't say no; the Ado Annie of software.

But I think several of his other project patterns are noteworthy, like seasons for change and -- surely to be one of my favorites -- testing before testing.

P-meter, day 11 at the doctor

The plus side of waiting in a doctor's office is that you can catch up on reading.

P-meter, day 10

It's the mid-point of the P-meter, nine days from the beginning of this exercise and nine days from the end. I've reread 1,382 of the 3,341 pages that make up the first six Harry Potter books: 41%.

At this pace I'll have finished book 5 by the time book 7 comes out on the 21st.

Better kick it up a notch.

P-meter, day 9

Almost halfway through the time and somewhat-less-almost halfway through the pages.