As Far As You Know

I have rung in the past four years around the world: in Puerto Rico, Rio de Janiero, Sydney, and Santa Fe. And I've been in Times Square twice when the ball dropped. (My favorites from among those? Rio, followed by Sydney--both were WARM!) This year I was on the Choate campus with friends, which was a pleasant change of pace.

At any rate, all the best for a healthy and prosperous 2009!

This is the time of day in the colder months when I am reminded of a stanza from an Emily Dickinson poem:

There's a certain slant of light,

On winter afternoons

That oppresses, like the weight

Of cathedral tunes.

Given the beginning of 2009, this snippet of wisdom from Mark Twain seems appropriate:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Just finished seeing The Reader, a story set in postwar Germany about an affair between an adolescent boy and a much older woman, who turns out to be a Nazi war criminal. The film has a stately feel, and at times does seem to drag, but it's provocative and well-crafted.

Since I am heading into the city for a couple of days, the easiest way to get to Manhattan without the hassle and expense associated with parking is to take MetroNorth from Connecticut. I usually catch the train in New Haven--a quick twenty-minute jaunt from home. But several of my colleagues in the Development Office at Choate have suggested South Norwalk station as a better place to park. So I tried it today. I don't see any advantage: it's nearly three times the drive from campus, you only save a few bucks per day to park there, and there's not much savings on the train ticket either. Next time, I'll leave from New Haven.

I am attending my first Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association here in New York this weekend. I've been a member of this group--which once claimed Teddy Roosevelt as its president--on and off over the years. Since this gathering was in New York and scheduled at a time when I had no other trips nor obligations planned, I decided to give it a whirl. And as a bonus, the special hotel rate makes a weekend in the city eminently affordable. While the conference is dominated by college professors, there are a fair number of high school teachers, public historians, and independent scholars here as well. I already attended one session and found myself sitting next to a Choate grad who now teaches at the university level.

Since I am staying right in Times Square, in the heart of the theater district, I am taking advantage of the opportunity to see a show or two. Tonight was Gypsy, which I was scheduled to see a month or so ago but it turned out Patti LuPone's understudy was on that night, and I decided to wait to see the star herself. LuPone is the closest thing we have today to an Ethel Merman or a Mary Martin--a genuine Broadway star. The show was much better than I remembered it and it was easy to see why LuPone bagged a Tony for her tour de force performance.

Guess who is wearing sleeves now? And those Capri pants appear to be a thing of the past, too. These photos are from the exhibition being played in Abu Dhabi this week. (Nadal advanced to the final, where he'll face Andy Murray, who knocked off Roger Federer 7-6 in the third in the other semi.)

As many times as I've stayed in New York City, I think I've never wound up sleeping near Times Square. I usually wind up somewhere on the West Side of Manhattan. I am reminded a bit of my old central London lodging of choice: the Regent Palace off Piccadilly Circus. You could walk out of the hotel and feel like you're in the center of the world. But Times Square is Piccadilly Circus on steroids: everything is bigger, brighter, and louder.

I ordered the Apple TV unit from Amazon for my soon-to-be-acquired new HD television. Ordering it from Amazon was the smart move, in that it was 3% off the retail price (which is what you pay at an Apple online or bricks-and-mortar store) plus I get two-day free shipping as an Amazon Prime member, plus--and this was the kicker--no tax. Ordering from Apple, I'd have to pay Connecticut sales tax, as the company has physical stores in the state.

I traveled to Brooklyn tonight to see the new production of The Cherry Orchard in its second night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. This fine Sam Mendes-directed show is the inaugural effort of The Bridge Project, which seeks to unite American and English theater actors, directors, and producers with performances scheduled on both sides of the Atlantic (as well as on far-flung stages in New Zealand, Singapore, Germany, and Greece). Tom Stoppard's new version of the Chekhov classic lent itself to a first-rate production, with excellent production values--the set design and lighting in particular were phenomenal--and a solid cast.

Playtime is over. This was enjoyable vacation, if not a particularly productive one, but I needed some down time to read, reflect, and relax. I am about to leave New York City on a train to Connecticut and will be back at school early this afternoon, ready for the pitter-patter of little feet all around me once more.

I've started a series of suspense novels with a heavy dose of historical mythology and conspiracy theories aplenty that feature an ex-government agent, Cotton Malone, living as a rare book dealer in Copenhagen. In The Templar Legacy, the first installment featuring Malone, the story wanders into The DaVinci Code's territory, with Biblical secrets at stake in a battle involving the modern-day Templars. I finished that on the way home from the city today and am already well into the first sequel, The Alexandria Link. As literature, this stuff is fairly disposable, but no doubt these books are fun reads.

Thanks to my friends of HEAD, I will be playing with a new racquet at practice today: the Microgel Extreme. It's light (but not too light) and has a nice feel to it on touch shots.

It's the second intermission at La Bohème here at The Met. An enjoyable show--albeit it's surprising that one of the most popular entries in the world opera repertory doesn't really contain any recognizable melodies--and the real star is Franco Zeffirelli's staging; the sets are spectacular.

Today Apple released an update to its iLife suite of applications. The highlights for me: facial recognition enhancements in iPhoto should make it loads easier to catalogue and sort pictures; animated travel maps--like those in the Indiana Jones movies--can be easily added to iMovie videos; and Garage Band now includes downloadable "Learn To Play" lessons for keyboard and guitar, including sessions with musicians like Sarah McLachlan, John Fogerty, and Sting.

The iWork package also was refreshed, with lots of useful tweaks to Pages and Numbers (which I rarely use) and Keynote (which I use somewhat regularly).

At this year's MacWorld conference--which Apple has announced will be the last one the company participates in--a familiar keynote address was delivered by an unfamiliar face: Senior Vice-President Phil Schiller subbed for CEO Steve Jobs, and while a lot of the presentation contained the usual "oh wow" moments, as a whole it clearly didn't have the same spark that Steve brings to the occasion. I watched most of the streaming video of the keynote this morning and while it's good to see Apple keeps improving its products, there were no huge surprises nor major product unveilings. No folks in Cupertino are hard at work on the next "big thing" though!

My Apple TV unit arrived today. Nothing to hook it up to yet, but now all the pieces are in place save the actual television, which is but a few days away now.

I got a call this afternoon informing me that I have been named High School Coach Of The Year for the New England Division of the United States Professional Tennis Association, the premier organization of coaches and teaching pros in the country. Not sure how my name got on the Association's radar, so this was an unexpected honor. I'll now be expected to attend the awards luncheon in New Hampshire next weekend--and will have to juggle my schedule a bit to do so. It will be a good chance to catch up with some USPTA folks I haven't seen in quite a while.

With Apple's recent agreement with the three remaining major record labels that were holdouts on stripping DRM from iTunes downloads, all music purchased from the iTunes Store is now available in higher-quality 256-kbps AAC encoding without DRM. To upgrade the songs I already purchased, I am getting hit up for 30¢ apiece. My grand total? A little over $180. But of course, I feel compelled to upgrade. It looks like some of the stuff I most want in the better format--like the rarities included in The Complete U2 digital boxed set--may not be available, though, which is a bummer. Ah, the price of progress!

Bono has a nice piece in this morning's New York Times about the legacy of Frank Sinatra:

Like Bob Dylan's, Nina Simone's, Pavarotti's, Sinatra's voice is improved by age, by years spent fermenting in cracked and whiskeyed oak barrels. As a communicator, hitting the notes is only part of the story, of course.

Singers, more than other musicians, depend on what they know -- as opposed to what they don't want to know about the world. While there is a danger in this -- the loss of naïveté, for instance, which holds its own certain power -- interpretive skills generally gain in the course of a life well abused.

You can read the whole thing (or even better, listen to Bono deliver it) here.

Today is the day most of Choate's winter sports teams play their counterparts from Andover--the only day this season when we do this sort of school-to-school match-up. It's especially nice to host it in odd-numbered years (especially given the snowy weather today) and spend the afternoon and early evening moving between the squash courts, the hockey rink, the basketball courts, the pool, and the wrestling mat.

Even though my cameras don't have a GPS chip, I can use the "Places" sorting feature of the new iPhoto '09 pretty easily by taking my pictures on a WiFi-enabled memory card that records locations of each shot using Skyhook technology, triangulating information from cell towers and wireless signals. Pretty cool.

Pretty striking full moon hanging over a snowy winter landscape this evening. Native Americans called this one the Full Wolf Moon.

The season just came to an end for the New York Giants. After such a thrilling run a year ago, it seems like this team had the potential to go all the way again, but was simply outplayed by the Eagles this afternoon.

On the drive up to Worcester for a NEPSAC Executive Board meeting, I played a video lecture on my iPhone: "How To Really Achieve Your Childhood Dreams" by Randy Pausch, a Carnegie-Mellon professor of computer science who delivered these inspirational remarks just after he had been diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer a couple years back. Well worth the time to watch this. The lecture and other good stuff is available on the late professor's website.

My Samsung 52" HD flat screen television arrived this morning. I now have to deal with unpacking it, making all the requisite connections (cable box, DVR, PS3, Apple TV, etc.) and lugging my heavy Toshiba CRT upstairs to the study. But this is pretty sweet!

The first of the final ten episodes of the series Battlestar Galactica just aired and it was as good an hour of television as I've seen in a long time. This was well worth the wait!

After an extended layoff due to the writer's strike and an exclusive first-run distribution deal with DirectTV, we've had to wait about a year to see new episodes of Friday Night Lights on NBC. The show returns tonight.

My DVR bungled the recording of Smallville last night, so I splurged for the HD version of the episode on the iTunes Store via my Apple TV--it cost me an extra dollar--but it was money well spent, for the picture quality on my new Samsung was amazing.

Fox and Warner Brothers have settled out of court, so the tangle involving the distribution rights to the filmed version of Watchmen has been resolved, which means the movie will be out on March 6 as scheduled.

Fox is running back-to-back nights of double episodes to kick off the new season of 24. It's been over eighteen months since we last saw Jack Bauer in action (aside from the season 7 "prequel" movie in November) and the show looks to be in good form thus far.

I spent some time tonight setting up my new TV and accessories. The toughest task was actually moving my 200+-pound Toshiba set down onto the floor without throwing my back out. I got the Samsung unpacked and in place, and then managed to get the Apple TV and PlayStation 3 units connected via HDMI cable, online over my wireless network, and running. Pretty good accomplishment. Thus far I have not hooked the new toys into the sound system nor to the cable feed; those parts of the project will come later this week. But I can report that my first viewing of Planet Earth in Blu-Ray splendor was jaw-droppingly gorgeous!

In what might be construed another shameless attempt to cash in on the publicity surrounding the inauguration of Barack Obama, Marvel Comics published a special variant cover of The Amazing Spider-Man today, after Obama indicated he was a Spidey fan while growing up. It's a pretty cool honor, I suppose. Apparently people are storming comic shops all over the country today to secure a copy. The real winner in all of this? eBay!

I am heading up to the Granite State today for the USPTA New England annual convention. It's a three-hour trip I hadn't planned to make, but I was notified that I won an award, so it would be a bit awkward not to attend the awards luncheon. Unfortunately this means missing a day of coaching when the Choate girls have three dual matches against good opponents.

I've been easing into Guitar Hero on my PS3. I've been playing guitar and bass, but haven't yet connected the microphone or drums. This morning I successfully downloaded some additional tracks from the PlayStation Network. I enjoy this game far more for the music than for the "game" aspect of it, which is why I tend to play just the songs I know.

My parents, who have arrived in Florida for their annual snowbird migration called and asked if I would record the concert at the Lincoln Memorial in honor of the Inauguration. Well the state of my transition to the new television probably will make recording the program problematic, but I did start watching the live telecast on HBO HD and got to see a handful of my favorite performers (e.g., U2, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Sheryl Crow) in action. The key thematic elements of the show were Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, which made a lot of sense for both the venue and the occasion. Hard not to feel sentimentally patriotic watching all of this. The Obamas and Bidens had choice seats just off the stage and it looked like the turnout at The Mall was huge. But it looked COLD down there!

So I have a cool plaque for my office, or maybe for the Hunt Tennis Center. Not sure who nominated me for this, but I had a nice time at the Convention up in New Hampshire today. Saw a couple of presentations: one by the Yale women's coach on running a team practice, and another by former world top ten player Tim Mayotte. I also reconnected with a few folks in the tennis world I haven't seen in some time.

On the way home, I stopped at Phillips Exeter to see Choate's boys' basketball teams, who were arriving for their games. I then drove straight back to the Remsen arena for crowd control duties during the Choate/Taft boys' varsity hockey game. I got around to dinner about 9:30 at night.

Just stepped outdoors for the first time all day a bit before 6 p.m. (I have to take an Inauguration-bound Choate kid to the train station.) The lesson is that if it's a Sunday, it's snowing, my fridge is stocked, and I have a stack of Blu-Ray discs and PS3 games to go with my new Samsung, I really don't have the desire to leave home at all.

I am much less interested in today's football playoffs than I am in the start of the 2009 Australian Open, the first major tournament of the tennis year. Coverage of Monday's play starts this evening here on the east coast of North America, and I am watching Andy Roddick's opening match on the blue tones of Rod Laver Arena's court surface on the high def flavor of ESPN2. I have fond memories of Day 1 of this event, as I was in attendance Down Under in 1998 and 2007. Watching this event always makes me wish I was in Melbourne again, especially since it should be about 60-70 degrees warmer right now!

The above is the cover art for the forthcoming (March 3) U2 release, No Line On The Horizon. The track listing has been finalized:

1. No Line On The Horizon
2. Magnificent
3. Moment of Surrender
4. Unknown Caller
5. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
6. Get On Your Boots
7. Stand Up Comedy
8. Fez - Being Born
9. White As Snow
10. Breathe
11. Cedars Of Lebanon

"Get On Your Boots" will be released as the first single on February 15 but it makes its debut on radio stations and on U2.com tomorrow!

R.I.P. Ricardo Montalban.

The Mexican actor may be most widely known as the mysterious Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island, or even as a pitchman for the Chrysler Cordoba, with its "rich Corinthian leather," but I will always associate him as the title character in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.

One of the cool aspects of the disparate time zones between New England and Down Under is that the evening sessions at the Australian Open tend to be winding down as dawn breaks here. So I arise to the sights and sounds of Roger Federer's first-round match in Rod Laver Arena.

. . . to Martin Luther King." Those are the opening lyrics from a James Taylor song, "Shed A Little Light." A good reminder about what today's national holiday is all about. President-elect Obama has asked all Americans to dedicate this day to the principle of service, and I hope the spirit of looking out for the interests of our neighbors is infectious as our nation moves into what is hopefully a new era of politics and society.

"Get On Your Boots," the new U2 single is here! Check it out at the iTunes Store.

My friends at HEAD Squash sent me one of their newest racquets to play with: the 115ct. Though it's lighter than I usually prefer, it has a very nice feel, with a good mix of power and touch.

So sad we have to say goodbye to such accomplished statesmen today . . . NOT!

Hard not to feel the tectonic plates of history shifting while watching today's Inauguration festivities. Surely this is America at its best. There's a spirit of hope and fellowship amidst adversity--kind of like being in New York City in the weeks after 9/11. Let's hope the good will continues and the new administration makes headway in facing the enormous challenges ahead.

I set up my Guitar Hero drum kit tonight, and now I am really ready to rock!

I started using my iPhone as a remote control for Apple TV. Once paired to the Apple TV, it's easy to use the iPhone to control music, movies, television shows, podcasts, etc over a wireless network. on the screen. (It works the same way for any Mac, by the way.)

In an unusually sedentary evening session, I spent the past three hours watching Lost on ABC: an hour-long recap of the story so far followed by a double-length Season 5 premiere. Watching this show in high definition is pretty nifty, by the way!

A good day for Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire, but a bit disappointing that The Dark Knight was snubbed in the Best Picture category. I hope Slumdog wins the Oscar. Maybe Heath Ledger will take the Best Supporting Actor nod posthumously?

Lots of early signs that our new president is changing the tone dramatically in his first days in office. The Executive Orders dealing with ethics within his administration are welcome, and it's especially gratifying to see respect for the Constitution as a top priority once more, as Obama is moving ahead with his promise to close the military prison in Guantánamo within the year.

My subscription to the Handel and Haydn Society bought me to Symphony Hall in Boston once more tonight for a performance of Orfeo (or, by its formal name, L'anima del filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice). The opera was not staged as such, but was presented as a concert. Sitting in the center of the third row, I had a terrific vantage point to enjoy the three talented soloists and the violin section in particular. Before the concert, I was invited to attend a reception with musicians and some of the H&H staff. It was quite evident those of us invited were there to be "cultivated," as my colleagues in the Choate development office would say, but it was a nice opportunity for some free wine and hors d'oeuvres in place of dinner!

I am working my way through the recently published A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art Of Stoic Joy by William Irvine. The book is a cogent condensation of the principles of Stoicism, a philosophy of emotional control and balanced living that emerged from the likes of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus in at the height of the Roman Empire. I recommend this work heartily.

Twenty-five years ago today, the original Macintosh computer was introduced. Not only has the Mac product line come a long way since 1984, but Steve Jobs' presentation style has evolved as well, as you can see by checking out the debut of the Mac.

Roger Federer bounced back from an 0-2 deficit in sets to defeat Thomas Berdych and keep his dreams of a 14th major title alive heading into the second week of the Aussie Open.

I spent some time today creating an updated inventory of my DVDs on Delicious Library 2--a cool Mac application that catalogues books, CDs, DVDs, software, iTunes purchases, and various other things, mostly using the iSight camera to scan barcodes and tap the Amazon.com databases. (You can even track loans using the names in Address Book.) I was pretty good about keeping track of all my stuff on an earlier version of Delicious Library, but somehow lost all the data on my MacBook just before the upgrade was released.

So at the end of a few hours of work, here are my lessons learned:

1. I am making backups of my database regularly now.
2. I have FAR too many DVDs in my collection, including stacks that I haven't watched. I guess I need to control my "affluenza" and rein in impulse buys. Perhaps I should make better use of the Netflix subscription I am paying $5/month for and not using; my last exchange of discs was over two years ago! (Now Netflix ships Blu-ray for an extra buck a month plus online downloads, which may motivate me to get back on top of this arrangement.)
3. I dread the task of repeating the inventory process with all of my books and CDs. As easy as it is, this will still take quite a while, I suspect. Maybe small bites--a shelf a day--is the best way to proceed?
4. The improvements Apple made to its iWeb program (and I haven't even received the iLife '09 update yet) make publishing my catalogue to the web an absolute breeze, particularly because it's integrated with the MobileMe service. If you want to check it out, go to www.nedgallagher.com/nedflix.

Tomorrow we begin the Year of the Ox in the Chinese calendar. Happy New Year!

Just notified that iLife '09 has shipped from Apple and will be here tomorrow. Looking forward to playing with the upgrades to iPhoto (with facial recognition built in) and GarageBand (with online music lessons integrated) in particular.

A lot of observers in the game were picking Andy Murray to break through and win his first major at this year's Aussie Open, but the Scot went down in five sets to an on-form Fernando Verdasco. This should make it easier for Rafael Nadal--who has been thrashing opponents in Melbourne--to get through to the final, since Murray was in his half of the draw.

I recorded a show on Friday night using the "standard" setting on my ReplayTV DVR and it just looks like crap on my new 52" high def television, so I dropped three bucks to download the HD version of the episode on Apple TV and watched it tonight. I don't want to get into this habit, though, so I think I better call Comcast to get an HD DVR unit for the living room and move the ReplayTV into the bedroom, where it will be a nice fit for my 32" standard TV (what I used to think of as a huge set).

How not to begin an iChat conversation in the age of the DVR:

I went to sleep last night after the first set of the Djokovic/Roddick quarterfinal match, after the Serb had taken the first-set tiebreak with a barrage of penetrating forehands. Apparently, I gave up on Roddick too soon, for he won the next two set before Djokovic retired down 1-2 in the fourth. The heat was apparently brutal, with on-court temperatures clocking in at 136°F! So the good news is that the top American unseated the defending champion for a place in the semis; the bad news is that he'll next have to face nemesis Roger Federer, who waxed Juan Martin del Potro in another quarterfinal, dropping only three games in the process. Federer steamrolled Roddick in the Melbourne semis two years ago, so we'll see if things turn out differently this time around.

Bruce Springsteen's latest, Working On A Dream, arrived in my mailbox courtesy of Amazon this morning. The disc has been garnering mostly positive reviews and I am looking forward to giving it a listen.

Rafael Nadal advanced to the Aussie Open semifinals for the second straight year. The Spaniard has been sort of a stealth presence in the draw, getting less attention than the (over?) hyped Andy Murray, the resurgent Roger Federer, or the much-improved Fernando Verdasco. But Nadal is the world's #1-ranked player and he may well be playing the best tennis among the male contenders right now. Should be an interesting weekend . . .

In the iWork '09 upgrade to GarageBand, one can now purchase lessons from famous musicians for about $5. For example, Sting show you how to play "Roxanne" on guitar, in both easy and hard versions. He also gives some background on the song. Pretty cool addition to this application.

I awoke about 4:45 this morning without the benefit of an alarm and flipped on the bedroom television to ESPN2 and caught the tail end of the first set of the men's semifinal match between Rafael Nadal and his countryman Fernando Verdasco in the Australian Open. Over the next few hours, I was mesmerized by some stunning tennis: physically brutal baseline rallies punctuated by spectacular shot-making. Every time Verdasco looked like he had run out of gas, he rallied back to keep Nadal on the ropes. The world #1 prevailed, 6-4 in the fifth, after five hours of play (well past 1 a.m. local time) when his opponent double faulted after saving two match points.

Now we will be treated to the first hard court showdown in a major final between the world's top two players, Nadal and Roger Federer. They played four times in 2008, with the Spaniard sweeping the series, taking three clay-court finals in Monte Carlo, Hamburg, and Roland Garros, as well as the stellar championship match at Wimbledon. That memorable title bout on the greensward was the last time the two have played each other, as Federer lost early in the Beijing Olympics won by Nadal and Nadal in turn surrendered in the semis of the U.S. Open before he could meet his Swiss rival in the final. So Sunday's match represents a much-anticipated renewal of one of the best rivalries in sport right now. Looking forward to it!

D'oh!

Check out more humor from The Simpsons here.

Serena Williams bagged her tenth major title, bulldozing Dinara Safina 6-0, 6-3 in the Australian Open final. Serena also paired with sister Venus to win the women's doubles crown.

It's been a good weekend for U.S. players Down Under, as the men's doubles was won by American siblings as well: the Bryan twins posted their third victory in Melbourne in the past four attempts and reclaimed the top team ranking in the process.

I rented the HD version of Eagle Eye tonight, using the iTunes Store via my Apple TV. (It's soooo easy to use!) The movie itself was pretty forgettable, but I continue to be struck by the quality of the picture when viweing high definition content on my Samsung 52" screen. Film takes on a quality that seems like video in some ways: it's almost hyper-real. Blu-ray discs like Planet Earth are simply amazing.