April 13th, 2008 by Aaron
The Baecker Jazz Worship Service is the name of the composition commissioned by my father for the 50th anniversary of the United Church of Christ. Through the extraordinary efforts and talent of composer John Cooper, the piece came to life as a full-length worship service and (eventually) a jazz album featuring an all-star cast of instrumentalists.
The album starts slowly with “In the Beginning”, which teases the listener with a little bit of Rev. DaNita Bell’s spoken-word voiceovers, which are every bit as wonderful as her vocals throughout the remainder of the album.
“Gospel: John 21″ features a full dose of spoken-word voiceovers accompanied by pianist Matt Michaels’ lively jazz piano.
“St. Anthony’s Light” introduces the power of the full horn section and features solos by trumpeter David Hoffman, tenor saxophonist Chris Collins, and trombonist Tom Garling.
“Offertory” is a rambling walk down Bourbon St. featuring the percussion of David Taylor and doses of the horns in just about every combination imaginable. When it’s all over, you’ll feel like you’ve been out all night partying: tired, but happy.
“Doxology” and “Communion (And Now You’re Gone)” bring the tempo down considerably and allow the listener to relax and enjoy the vocals of DaNita Bell and more of Matt Michaels’ piano. Rick Simerly also showcases his talent in “Communion”.
“This Little Light of Mine” pulls out all of the stops: the big horn section, Jeff Halsey’s bass, and DaNita Bell’s towering vocals. As the closing notes play, it will have listeners hoping for a hidden track 8, but sadly, that’s not to be!
I can’t say that I’ve had anything to do with the production, but I can attest to the huge amount of work that goes into composing, recording, marketing, and performing the work. By purchasing this album, you will enrich yourself and support the fine musicians who made this all possible. Encore!
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Also of note: This is one of the few albums you’ll purchase these days that has good liner notes. They are invaluable reading as you listen to the work, as they give incredible insight into the composition from composer John Cooper himself. It’s also a testament to the fine composition that each time I listen, I hear something new that adds more depth to the piece.
The album was recorded at Chicago Recording Company and mastered by Leon Zervos at Sterling Sound in New York. Leon has worked on projects for Avril Levigne, Gavin DeGraw, NSYNC, Duran Duran, INXS, Aerosmith, and now Garth Baecker.
April 11th, 2008 by Aaron
A few of my favorite items from the past week:
Fire and Motion
Forcing your enemy or competitors to adapt to you is one key to winning. From Inc.com via Joel on Software.
Ball Skills
A demonstration by Tim Nolan, a professional juggler and basketball entertainer.
Solving the Enigma
The fascinating history of cracking the German encryption mechanism.
Webby Award Nominees
See who’s better than you on the web ;-)
April 10th, 2008 by Aaron
As pretty much a lifelong Cubs fan (I was a south-sider for a while in my early years), each season brings new hope that this will be the year. Of course, I’ve been disappointed for many years now. So how are things shaping up this year for the Cubs in my opinion?
- The addition of Kosuke Fukudome has brought a lot of excitement to the team in the early going. He looks to be an all-around good player, both in the field and at the plate.
- It looks like Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot will be around all year. Theriot seems like he gives maximum effort on every play, which I enjoy in a player.
- Kerry Wood’s move into the closer role is off to a pretty good start. I’ll be glad if he can play all year without injury.
- The bullpen in general has been fairly suspect in the early going. Luckily, the team has been scoring runs. Hopefully Bob Howry can work through his early-season problems.
- The one position that concerns me the most would have to be catcher. Geovany Soto is a good, young player, but Henry Blanco makes me a little uneasy as his only back-up - particularly at the plate. Last year, he was almost a guaranteed out. This year, he has impressed me a little bit more, so I hope that’s a sign of things to come.
We’re off to a 5-3 start - and picked to finish 2nd in the NL - but we’re currently in 3rd place, so we have some work to do! Go Cubs!
April 9th, 2008 by Aaron
If you’ve lived in locations along the east coast for long, you’ve probably had the pleasure of eating at “CalTor” a time or two. The food is good for a fast food establishment and the atmosphere is generally lively. It probably helps that they play mostly 80’s tunes, too!
For a chain that prides itself on its extra-spunky cashiers, the service on two of my last four or five visits has left me somewhat soured on CalTor.
The first problem I experienced was when my wife and I ordered a meal and tried to redeem some coupons we had gotten from a previous “spin the wheel night” visit. The cashier ended up charging us for an item we didn’t order and we were missing one of our free items! When I inquired about it, the manager told me that we had actually gotten a better deal. We argued for a minute or two and I gave up trying to teach 1st grade math to him. In the car, I figured out that the total cost difference was somewhere around $4 on a $10 order.
Our most-recent visit was another service disappointment. We waited a total of 27 minutes for an order of fish tacos and a chicken quesadilla! When I inquired as to what might be taking so long, the manager gave me some excuse about the fish needing to cook. Our total compensation for the ridiculous wait was an order of chips and queso. Luckily, we had good company during our wait.
As a result of these service blunders, CalTor is out of the rotation for a while. I love the fish tacos (my new favorite there) and the burritos, but the quality of service is too much for the food to overcome. I’ll try again in a few months when they have a new cast of characters working behind the counter to see if things have improved.
April 7th, 2008 by Aaron
Wow, two days in a row with a post. This may be a new record!
Anyway, I added pretty much the full range of Google products to the site tonight:
- Google Analytics (GA) - I have used this product on other sites and some of my clients actually use GA. It’s a nifty tool and quick to implement. I just slapped the appropriate JavaScript in my theme’s footer file.
- Google AdSense - Even mentioning this product is probably against their Terms of Serivce, but I’ll do it anyway. Things got off to a hairy start because I couldn’t log into my account (for whatever reason), but a quick email to Google resolved the problem. I set up ad units to match my site’s theme (using OS X’s handy “Digital Color Meter.app” to quickly grab the colors off of my screen, rather than have to look them up in my stylesheet).
- Google Webmaster Tools - This is a very handy web application to get information about your site from the Google search engine, as well as to submit a site map to aid Google in indexing your site. Submitting the RSS feed is about the easiest way to handle a blog’s site map.
The overall process took about an hour, even accounting for some technical difficulties. Not bad at all!
April 6th, 2008 by Aaron
I finally got around to putting my new WordPress theme into action today. No, it shouldn’t have taken 5 months to do it, but that’s about the speed I operate at when it comes to my blog. Those (few) of you that have followed my site over the years would most-assuredly agree.
For those of you that are interested in Wordpress, here’s a short synopsis of the steps I took in this process:
- Downloaded WordPress 2.5. It was time to upgrade and WordPress 2.5 is a fantastic blogging tool.
- Purchased Coda from Panic. I had taken advantage of the 15-day trial version of the software when I last updated the blog, and it made development a breeze (if nothing else, than for the embedded Transmit engine!). If you’re a Mac-based web developer, there’s almost no way you should be without either Coda or TextMate.
- Mocked up a site page in XHTML and CSS until I got about 90% of the look-and-feel the way I wanted it. Being totally unfamiliar with WordPress, I was prepared to crash and burn once I actually tried to turn the design into a theme.
- I copied the Kubrick default theme files into a new theme directory and started dissecting each file to adjust the mark-up to match my mocked-up page. I overwrote the style.css file with my custom CSS.
- After about 2-3 hours of playing around with various elements of the site, I’m satisfied that I’ve covered enough to let the site run for a few days untouched now. Once I get more content and comments on the site, there will undoubtedly be more changes to make.
In the coming days, weeks, or months, you’ll see some more changes to the theme and some additional content on the site. Pray I stay motivated! ;-)
October 22nd, 2007 by Aaron
I’m working on a new WordPress theme. Once that and a few other odds and ends are complete, I’m back, baby!
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