Patrick Foley’s Blog

My newphew Brett and my dad performed Abbott and Costello’s Who’s on First for the school talent show today. It went great!

For those willing to download an 8 megabyte file, here’s a video.

For those willing to download a 40 megabyte file, here’s a higher quality version of the same video.

Note: for those with highly up-to-date versions of Windows and Media Player, this will start playing immediately (it streams). For Luddites, you are better off right-clicking on the link and choosing “Save As”.

Well I’m going to buy FogBugz. As I mentioned, I’ve started using it, and it brings significant advantages. We’ll see how it goes.

I went to lunch with a friend today - he pointed out that my view of the world was pretty straight-ahead agnostic. I came home, looked up the word, and what do you know - he’s right! It’s funny how you can get a definition in your head that’s not quite right. I always thought agnostic meant that you believed in something but you weren’t willing to name it, which isn’t quite what I believe. The actual dictionary definition fits my beliefs rather precisely:

Agnostic: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly: one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god. Etymology: Greek agnOstos unknown, unknowable

I’m so excited - I can be labeled now!

“Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way you’re a mile away and you have their shoes, too.”

Thanks to Daniel Yokomiso for this one.

I just started using del.icio.us as well. While not quite as life changing as Google Search History, this site is pretty cool. I browse to a LOT of sites through the course of my work, and the better ones I want to remember. The bookmarklet feature makes it as convenient as adding a favorite.

del.icio.us is also a great example of a RESTful architecture. More about that later.

http://www.google.com/searchhistory/

This will make my life so much better. This is HUGE.

I’m surprised at how ill-equipped I am to handle some aspects of parenthood. My two-year-old, Gus, is the greatest kid in the world and my reason for living. He has the capacity to melt me with that sly grin, but he also has the ability to shatter my nerves, as John Prine would say. That whiny sound two-year-olds make works like a parental frazzle-ray gun.

His latest irritation has showed up during bath time. Understand that bath time has been precious for us, because he entertains himself in an enclosed space for upwards of an hour, giving Paula or me a chance to read or put on makeup (just a little eyeliner for me, and I’m done). We get splashed a bit, but we’re sitting - almost relaxing, even.

Now bath time has a dark side. Gus has discovered that putting water in a vessel leaves the inside - gasp! - WET! For more than a year, he’s loved filling up these stupid little water bottles and dumping out the water - over and over and over. Now he’s decided it’s a problem that he can’t actually get all of the water out. What used to be a simple process of fill, dump, fill, dump has been replaced with fill, dump, inspect, whine, hand-to-daddy-to-dry, inspect, fill, dump, inspect, whine, etc.

This has happened for a couple of baths now. I suppose it should be obvious to me that he’s sucked me into a game, but he seems genuinely upset by the situation. I hope he gets over it soon.

The links to RSS feeds at the bottom of the page were broken. I fixed them.

I also changed some wording from the default WordPress template - instead of “No Comments” for posts on the front page, I changed it to “Leave a Comment”. That makes it a bit more obvious that it’s a link. The default template, is pretty and all, but I think it hides some important details. For example, clicking on any of the post titles takes you to the “permalink” for that page, which isn’t completely obvious.

One of these days, I’ll implement my own template.

I thought I’d be able to sleep tonight, but I can’t. I just had the most fun on stage since playing with Pavarotti almost ten years ago (a little name-dropping never hurt anybody, hmm?). Alten Skies came off wonderfully. Ric Troll is a genius composer, and the whole band played great. Ric was great on drums. David Devos more than lived up to his reputation as the funkiest white bass player around. Jeff Boughner was at the top of his game – what a guitar sound. Bob Hartig was his usual jaw-dropping, bopping self on sax. And what a treat to have Kurt Ellenberger join us at the piano. He was truly amazing, and he helped bring the sound of the band together in ways that we hadn’t achieved before. And oh yeah, I wasn’t too shabby tonight, either!

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Rehearsing tonight for a concert Friday night, I had one of those Eureka moments: all I need to do to play jazz the way I want is to practice really hard for about 5-10 years.

April 1 at 8 PM: Local composer and performer Ric Troll and The Rhythm Comedians will be presenting a concert at UICA. Ric Troll’s original compositions range from modern jazz to contemporary chamber music similar in approach and texture to the work of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. His latest series of works has been inspired by the skies painted by the artist Mathius Alten. Tickets are $12 ($8 for UICA members).