The last month and a half has seen a huge increase in the variety and type of music I listen to. Associated with that is the ressurgence of piano in my life. Amazingly, since I made a new years resolution to play more music, I have managed to practice at least an hour a day when a piano was available. This means every day since Jan. 4th up to today. That would seem more exciting if it were more than two weeks and a day. But at least I am excited by it! There is a simple Beethoven sonata (op. 49, no 2 in Gmaj), a wonderful violin sonata I can play together with Jean (Dvorak, Sonatina Op. 100 in Gmaj), along with sight-reading training (Bach Inventions, Mozart Sonatas) and the usual scales / arpeggios for finger strength and coordination.

All I currently lack is a teacher of worth. Going through all of this on my own has been wonderful, and at times inspiring. However, having a teacher would greatly benefit the whole process. DS recommended his teacher, but US $90 a session is a bit beyond my current means. In the interim, I imagine DS could teach for a little while, at least. The moment I have concern for how it impacts our friendship, I will, I imagine, find the next level of teacher. But until then, I might as well enjoy it.

In other news, CodeTek's Virtual Desktop is the best thing to come to Mac OS X since, well, Chimera at least. Finally I have the interface enhancements (focus follows mouse) in the windowing environment I like and with the applications I prefer. If only Illustrator made smaller files, all would be well with the computer world here. That, and getting postfix running properly.

Ciao for now.

I still feel uncomfortable using this journal service. Most likely that's connected to a desire to write in other (non-roman character) languages on occassion. So far this seemingly simple task has only just become possible in the livejournal codebase / client software on Mac OS X. It still's a crap shoot with regards to editing posts and other such niceities, but at least when you go here you get all that funky character business as designed.

I can only imagine I will continue writing in here at times. It seems appropriate, if inapplicable most times.

A draft of the most recent nuclear-spin work I've been slaving over for the past four months went out to collaborators today. This, along with emails indicating that another (unrelated) paper is well on its way should mark the day as a wonderful one. I even had more than the usual contact with friends and warm fuzzies from strangers becoming friends; the net result is one of muted joy.

The muted part becomes clear when you consider the many other aspects of my normally hectic life that have taken a back-seat to self-centering and research. Aikido in particular has been hard hit; however, five practices a week where too much for my body anyway. The puppet show, which we're nominally in charge of (okay, puppet show explanation will come later), has taken up all the evening time that normally goes towards aikido. The upcoming ikkyu exam may be a tad more difficult in those conditions.

Back to the melee.

Yesterday night I purchased a fountain pen to aid in the writing of thank you notes. Megatokyo has been updated as well. All is well with the world.

If only I could get Japanese into this journal, I imagine I would use it more often. ::sigh::

Well, the holiday turned out to be more useful than anticipated. Some websites were reorganized, finances and notes put into filing cabinets, and leisure reading finally got done. I also managed to read through a great deal of Piro and Largo's great adventure for who knows what reason.

Now, back to spin-orbit effects in semiconductors. If only anyone understood the Kane model.