laymusic.org

Yesterday I wrote about how I was keeping track of which blog posts get read the most. That was so much fun that I've also been keeping track of what pieces on the Serpent Publications Site are being downloaded.

It's also fun, but a bit more irritating. Most of the old stuff that people are still reading on my blog is fairly good stuff (most notably the Bread machine brioche post, which is almost three years old, but I really haven't changed the way I do it, and it's still something I like bringing to places and people still ask me for the recipe).

Unfortunately, a lot of the music people are downloading from Serpent Publications is my really early attempts at getting music notation software to print unbarred parts, and isn't anything like as good as what I can do now.

So if I ever get this website migration under control, one of the things I'm going to be doing is taking the stuff that people are interested in and fixing it up to the current standard.

Another problem is that the most downloaded piece is a not very interesting drinking round, called Tom Jolly's Nose. It's the most downloaded because it's by a man named Henry Aldrich, so in the alphabetical list by composer he comes first, even before the really popular "anonymous". I'm still producing the most downloaded list in the sidebar by hand, and I've thought about cheating and just not listing that one, since anyone who wants it can see it right at the top of the page anyway. I am cheating and giving the Drinking Songs book address instead of the composer, since that will lead to other songs of interest to someone who wants that one, whereas clicking on Henry Aldrich will only give you another link to Tom Jolly's Nose.

But most of the other pieces on the most downloaded list are real big hits that people who come to the site actually are probably interested in seeing.

The reason some of the older ones are downloaded most often is that they were the ones I wanted to typeset first, and so people like me want to download them first. And a lot of them have been updated, even if they aren't this year's latest and greatest typesetting.

I took my car to the mechanic yesterday because the air conditioner didn't seem to be doing anything. Not that we've needed it for cooling this Spring in this part of the world, but it wasn't defogging the windshield, which we have needed.

He checked it and found the fluid was low, which was probably from a leak, but there was no way to tell what was leaking, except by filling it up and seeing where it came out.

In this case, he only had to start putting more in, and it was clear what line was spewing expensive ($150/tank) fluid.

But if it had been a slow leak, I would have had to come back a week or even a month later. And I wouldn't have come back until quite a lot of environmentally destructive stuff had leaked out on the roads.

So what my mechanic has started doing about this is putting in fluid with a flourescent dye in it, so that he can see as soon as it leaks where the leak is.

This seems like a very good idea, and I would encourage manufacturers to put the flourescent dye in in the first place, so that a leaky air conditioner can be caught and fixed in routine maintenance.

In general, manufacturers who aren't also maintainers should look for tricks like this that make maintenance easier, cheaper, and greener.

It wasn't great day for it -- I'd hoped to be out in the back yard with the grill going. If we'd been fanatical outdoor cooks, we could have done that; I don't think the rain ever exceeded a heavy drizzle. But we all decided there was nothing wrong with cooking on a stove and staying dry.

So it was good that in spite of having invited the whole attendance of the Boston Early Music Festival, the people who actually showed up fit comfortably in my living room.

One thing I mean by a successful party is one I'm excited enough about to get housecleaning done in advance, and this one worked quite well for that. While little roomba vacuumed the living room, I sorted music from the stack that had accumulated on the sideboard where I leave music when I'm running a rehearsal, but put drinks on when there's a party. There's still lots more music to put away, but it isn't getting in my way as much as it was yesterday morning.

I said in the invitation that if poeple told me what they were bringing, I could coordinate. Of course, this is true only if people tell you what they're thinking about bringing before they actually cook it, or do the shopping for it. One guest asked me whether I'd prefer a green salad or sweet potatoes, and since one point of this party was to use up the greens that Picadilly Farm has been sending me, I told her sweet potatoes. Then the next email I get is from another guest who has just made a sweet potato salad. So I decided we were just going to tell everybody that sweet potatoes were this summer's trendy health food, and suggested that the next person who emailed me might want to get in on the fun, too. She said she'd done her shopping the day before and already had the cookies in the oven. In the end, one sweet potato dish was mashed with pecans and maple syrup and the other was a salad with peppers and scallions, so it wasn't a problem.

I have my friends pretty well trained to bring stuff when they come to parties, so all I did was provide beverages, a large green salad, and sausages and veggie burgers. I'd planned to make the veggie burgers, but I decided more cleaning was more useful than more cooking, so I bought them.

The less successful aspect of the party was that nobody new came, but the flip side of that was that everybody liked each other, and the conversation was pretty good. My sister was there, so we did singalong around the piano (with serpent and fiddle) instead of playing Renaissance or West Gallery music.

Another good thing that happened was that one of my friends borrowed my xaphoon. I forget why I wanted to buy it a few years ago, but I did learn to play Never on Sunday on it at the time, and concluded that getting saxaphone chops was going to be too much work. I couldn't demonstrate it at the party. Anyway, he might end up buying it, or even if not, it will clutter up his apartment instead of mine.

I read this book because I've always been fascinated by books about life aboard ships, and I thought it would be interesting to hear how it worked out with a real, contemporary family.

That part was interesting, although it's mostly from the mother's point of view, so you wonder how well it meshes with what the children would have said. The short version is that the kids, especially the oldest one, were grumpy about leaving their friends and toys behind at first, but then settled down to become amazingly adult crew members.

What was more interesting was the description of the night they were shipwrecked on the coral reef, with the father's leg having been practically amputated by the mast falling on it.

And probably the best-written section in the whole book is the one comparing their shipwreck experience with the shipwreck in almost exactly the same place in 1855.

Some things I thought while reading the book:

• Definitely not very good "experience of alcoholism" writing -- there's description of the family reaction to the idea of the father taking a drink, but no description of why this would be something to worry about.
• The area where the shipwreck happened had been mapped by the Bounty under Captain Bligh. Both the 1855 and the 2005 shipwrecks occurred when the captains believed they were 16 miles away from the atoll. It's apparently possible to believe that the chart was compiled with an error by the disaffected crew of the Bounty that has never been corrected. (John Silverwood thinks it's more likely that some of his electronic equipment didn't work quite the way it was supposed to, but he still likes to think about the other possibilities.)
• I still don't really know why you aren't supposed to go to sleep when you've been losing a lot of blood. I spent several hours with Bonnie once when she was hemorrhaging, and the doctors and nurses thought it was important for her, and John Silverwood's family and the medical personnel who rescued him tried hard to keep him awake. After the fact, he denies that he was ever unconscious, but you apparently could have fooled all the people closest to him.
• It was hard to stay oriented in time -- a timeline or even just some dates on the map in the front of the book would have been helpful.

It's a pretty quick read, and I enjoyed it in spite of some flaws, so you might, too.