For a budding composer, there are many ways to build their chops. One method is to build an original melody on an existing harmony or as a jazz musician would say "playing the changes". For example, Charles Gounod composed his Ave Maria using the harmonic changes in J. S. Bach's Prelude in C Major. Other composition students have used this prelude for writing a melody.

Many jazz composers have done this as well. Charlie Parker used the chord changes in How High the Moon to compose his song, Ornithology. There are lots of other examples of this in jazz. This technique is known as a contrafact. The most common contrafact is based on Gershwin's I've Got Rhythm. Basically, it repeats these changes:
C - A minor - F - G

Next time you are stuck composing a song try this technique.

I like actors who have the...
...ability to play a variety of roles
...ability to bring the character to life in a believable way
...ability to balance their role with the ensemble

Below is a current list of my favorite actors.

• Alan Rickman
• Amy Adams
• Ashley Judd
• Audrey Tatou
• Bill Murray
• Bill Nighy
• Catherine Keener
• Charlotte Rampling
• Chris Cooper
• Daniel Auteuil
• David Strathairn
• Diane Lane
• Elizabeth Banks
• Emma de Caunes
• Emma Thompson
• Gena Rowlands
• George Clooney
• Guy Pearce
• Helen Mirren
• Hiam Abbass
• Hugh Grant
• Jean-Pierre Bacri
• Joan Plowright
• Josh Brolin
• Juliette Binoche
• Kelly McDonald
• Kevin Spacey
• Laura Linney
• Liam Neeson
• Maggie Gyllenhaal
• Melissa Leo
• Morgan Freeman
• Nicole Kidman
• Patricia Clarkson
• Phillip Seymour Hoffman
• Reese Witherspoon
• Renée Zellweger
• Scarlett Johanson
• Steve Buscemi
• Tom Hanks
• Toni Collette
• Vince Vaughn

Wordspy n. A Web site that coins new words (neologisms) usually based on one or more existing words. Here are a few examples:

Google in its capacity as the ultimate reference has become a great resource for ambient findability.

With the bad economy, the real estate market is in a state of brickor mortis.

Try not to be one of those employees that spend all day social notworking.

Sarah Palin is a stay-at-work mom.

John Mackey's use of a sock puppet to praise his business savvy and personal charm blew up in his face.

What do composers JS Bach, Corelli, Rachmaninoff, Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Vagelis have in common. They have all written treatments of the folk theme La folia. Like the popular tune Greensleeves, La Folia has been around for hundreds of years. Also, both have been referenced by many composers. This site documents many uses of the La Folia theme. Arguably, the most famous use of the La Folia theme is the Variations on a Theme of Corelli by Rachmaninoff (needless to say the original theme is not by Corelli).

Here is a guitar arrangement of the theme:

Anybody who has tried to upgrade their computer skills is familiar with the O'Reilly book series. There are books on Photoshop, iPhone, Windows Vista, etc. Now you can create your own O'Reilly book covers at oreillymaker.com. You make up a title, subtitle, author's name and select an animal and color.

Sample:

My car stereo is pretty current in that it has MP3 capability as well as line-in. So I can play mp3s burned on a CD disk or connect the line-out of my mp3 to the line-in of my car stereo. Also, you can find a portable stereo ("boombox") with the same capabilities. But I have an older Sony boombox that did not have a line in.

There is a simple work around that costs about $10. Search Amazon for "Line-in Cassette Adapter" and you should find a gadget that looks like a cassette with a cord connected. With this, you plug the jack at the end of the cord into your mp3 player's line-out and you insert the cassette player into your boombox. This also might work with your car cassette. Before you dive in to this make sure the cord is not going to cause problems by getting jammed into the cassette. With my boombox this works just fine but there is also the possibility that when the cassette is inserted, it will spin in place, making a little noise (or maybe a lot of noise). This simple technique has made my old boomboxes useful with the more current devices.

These days there are lots of singers who mumble, slur, whisper, gargle, mangle, etc. their lyrics. It's downright hard to get their meaning. It may have started with Bob Dylan, I'm not sure. Anyway, this site provides an enunciated version of many popular songs. It's a riot. This is not a new site but recently I was remembering this "music" and I had to search pretty hard to figure out where I heard it.

Who wants to listen to a bunch of old 78 rpm records? For one thing they have that scratchy sound. And the music is ancient. How many young hipsters have heard of Charlie Burnet, Jimmy Rodgers, Spike Jones or Bunny Berigan?

For me, hearing an old country western song with the scratchy surface sound evokes distant memories. I didn't necessarily like the music but it was around a lot so many memories were imprinted with the music as a kind of soundtrack. So hearing the music now causes memory flashbacks that had been lost for ages.

Cliff Bolling took it upon himself to convert a bunch of 78s (over 3700 songs) to mp3 format. Currently, all the songs reside on one page and when I accessed the site the server crashed. But it may be because Wired Magazine had an article about the site today. So far, Mr. Bolling has not had any copyright problems.

Check out the site. (Hopefully, the site is back up now).

Give it a listen...

The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating

• Beets
• Cabbage
• Swiss Chard
• Cinnamon
• Pomegranite Juice
• Dried Plums
• Pumpkin Seeds
• Sardines
• Turmeric
• Frozen Blueberries
• Canned pumpkin

This is taken from Tara Parker-Pope's excellent Health blog on the New York Times site.
The list was submitted by Jonny Bowden, author of The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth.

Free Credit Report has a slick advert with a guy in a pirate outfit singing about how he is stuck in this lousy gig because of identity theft. Well, Free Credit Report is NOT free, in fact, hidden in the small print is a commitment to their monthly service ($15/month...$180/year). Experian is behind this very deceptive ad campaign. The real free credit report site is Annual Credit Report

What do recipe books and sheet music have in common? Typically, when we use them we want them to stay open for hands-free use. If you are reading sheet music while playing the piano, it gets tedious trying to hold a songbook with a spine open. The same applies to working off a recipe while mixing ingredients.

A real inexpensive solution is converting the recipe books and sheet music to spiral bound. I go to a copy/print shop and get this done for about $3-5. I have done this with large songbooks with over 500 pages (e.g. The Real Book). Ask the clerk which type of binding is most suitable for your book.

Saturday evening I was taking pictures of the moon. I took about 10 pictures. Afterwards, I was looking at the results in XNView and I zoomed to the moon to look at the detals. The images were moderately sharp but I noticed a small red dot just below the moon in the sky. I thought it might be a dead pixel or noise or something.

I looked at more photos and the red dot was in all the moon pictures. I tried taking a picture in pitch dark and the red dot was not there.

Next, I went to a Web planetarium and entered the latitude and longitude for Austin and viewed the evening sky (virtually). The heavenly bodies near the moon were labeled. There was a sun called Antares that seemed to correspond to the red dot.

Wikipedia describes Antares as "a red supergiant star in the Milky Way galaxy and the sixteenth brightest star in the nighttime sky..."

It was kind of cool that my camera is able to register a distant star (600 light years from our solar system) even if it just shows up as a small dot.

After postponing for years, I FINALLY got a cell phone. Admittedly, I was stubborn and I really didn't want to pay $50-$75 for a monthly service with lots of hidden charges and a 2 year commitment. Especially since I didn't think I would use it except in emergencies.

Anyway, I decided on a modest phone (Nokia 1600) and basic prepaid service (Net10). It is looking like it will cost about $15/month for 150 minutes and I can carry over leftover minutes. With this plan you have to keep adding minutes in order to extend the expire date.

Researching online, I encountered a lot of negative chatter on both my chosen phone and service. I was concerned about all the problems the reviewers encountered. However, as it has turned out it, the process was trouble-free and I'm glad I finally went ahead and took the plunge.

Mexican Lasagne

Author: New York Times

Category: Entree

Ingredients:

1.5	lb.	ground beef
1.5	tsp	ground cumin
1	tbsp	chili powder
1/4	tsp	garlic powder
1/4	tsp	red pepper
1	tsp	salt
1	tsp	black pepper
1	can(16	oz.) tomatoes, chopped
10	to	12 corn tortillas
2	cup	small curd cottage cheese, drained
1	cup	Monterey Jack cheese with peppers
1		egg
1/2	cup	grated Cheddar cheese
2	cup	shredded lettuce
1/2	cup	chopped tomatoes
3		green onions, chopped
1/4	cup	black olives

Steps:

Brown beef, drain thoroughly.
Add next 7 ingredients, heat through.
Cover bottom and sides of 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking dish with tortillas.
Pour beef mixture over tortillas, place a layer of tortillas over meat mixture and set aside.
Combine cottage cheese, Monterey Jack cheese and egg.
Pour over tortillas.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
Remove from oven.
Sprinkle rows of next 5 ingredients diagonally across top of casserole before serving.

I have been a recreational swimmer for over 40 years including lots of swims at Barton Springs (Austin, Texas) and a moderate amount of open water swimming. Though technology has not affected swimming as much as it has a sport like cycling, there are some improvements.

The Speedo Vanguisher Plus googles are a big advance. I got a pair recently and it was a matter of seconds before I was using them. They didn't leak or fog and they did a good job of reflecting bright sunlight.

I have a few kitchen gadgets but one of my favorites is the Breadman TR2200C Ultimate Bread Machine. I have probably used it more than 100 times.

It's strength is its ability to prepare dough. I use it just about once a week to prep dough for pizza. It is so easy. Just mix the ingredients and navigate the simple breadmaker menu. The dough prep takes about an hour. So about 20 minutes before the prep cycle is done, I pre-heat the oven and prep the pizza toppings (veggies, meat, olives, cheese and sauce).

Baking using an electric heat element is inferior to an oven. But it is handy for banana bread and during the summer it heats the house less.

I used to try to make pizza dough from scratch: I ended up with a lousy crust and a big mess (flour dust everywhere). Now with this gadget you can easily make pizza or lots of other items.

On one of my computers, I had a constant problem with Browser Hijacking. I tried a bunch of different fixes to no avail. Then I tried the following and it worked:

1. Right-click on IE icon and select properties
   
2. In Target text box after the path/file for IE, add a space and type (or paster) the URL that you want as a home page. This is the site that will come up when IE is launched. e.g. "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" http://www.digg.com

The next time you launch IE the desired URL will be passed. I think this will work for FireFox as well.

The thing that sets the La Crosse Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger apart from other battery chargers is that it can run diagnostics on rechargeable batteries. It can charge, AA and AAA and it has an adapter for C and D batteries. It has the ability to charge batteries at a low current which easier on the battery (extends its lifespan). The charger is also effective at evaluating the condition of a battery.

• Pay it Forward (2000)
• Lean on Me (1989)
• Dead Poets Society (1989)
• Stand and Deliver (1988)
• To Sir with Love (1967)
• The Happy Years (1950)
• Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939)

Apple Crisp

Author: New York Times

Category: Dessert

General Information:

Try substituting brown sugar for sugar

Ingredients:

4	Large	Apples
1	teaspoon(s)	Cinnamon
1	cup(s)	Sugar
10	tablespoon(s)	Butter
1 1/2	cup(s)	Oats
1	cup(s)	Walnuts or Pecans

Steps:

Heat oven to 375
Peel and chop apples and place in buttered pan with sugar(9in. X 9in.)
In food processor mix butter, oats and nuts
Spread topping over the apples and bake for 40 minutes.

I have gone thru 3 loppers doing yard work over the last 10 years. I got the Fiskars PowerGear 31-1/2-Inch Bypass Lopper #9154 recently and it is really handy. It has long arms so there is a lot of leverages. In addition, this lopper has additional cutting power thanks to its PowerGear technology. It can cut limbs up to 2" in diameter.

Foliar Feeding Formula

Mix up the following for frequent spraying
2 TBSP Fish emulsion
1 TBSP Seaweed extract
1 TBSP Blackstrap molasses
OPTIONAL
1 TBSP Medina Soil Activator
[Source: John Dromgoole]

A portable app is a program that can run off a USB flash drive (or other external storage devices). It is a great concept for sharing work (play?) between home, office and the road (with a common O/S). The application must be reasonably small and portable (it shouldn't depend on a bunch of registry settings).

My favorite apps (Windows freeware) are:

• Audacity (audio studio)
• AutoStitch (stitch photos into panorama)
• CamStudio (capture screenshots and video)
• Dexpot (desktop virtualizer)
• FileZilla (FTP tool)
• FotoTagger (tagging tool for graphics)
• FreeMind (mind mapping tool)
• Inno Setup (software installer)
• JOCR (image capture and OCR)
• Launchy (search system and launch files)
• MRU Blaster (Clears most recently used settings)
• nMacro (macro builder)
• NNTP Power Grab (NNTP tool)
• Radio Screamer (Web radio)
• SIW (system info)
• Stickfigure Animator (simple animator)
• SyncBack (file synchronizer)
• TightVNC (VNC)
• Trillian (IM)
• Unlocker (file lock assistant)
• VLC (media viewer)
• Yankee Clipper (clipboard organizer)
• XAMPP (integrated Web dev tool)
• XNView (graphics viewer)

I keep all these on a thumb drive and for the most part they are all portable.

Little Cheesecakes

Author: Lola

Category: Dessert

Ingredients:

3 X 8	ounce(s)	Cream Cheese
3/4	cup(s)	sugar
4		eggs
1	teaspoon(s)	vanilla
1-20	ounce(s)	pie filling canned
1	teaspoon(s)	lemon juice
1	box	vanilla wafers
16		muffin paper cups

Steps:

1) Cream together: cream cheese (which has sat at room temperature) and sugar using a hand mixer.
2) Beat eggs slowly, mixing well with the cheese mixture
3) Add lemon juice and vanilla and mix well
4) Place a vanilla in the paper muffin cup (use a 12 muffin tin to hold paper cup for baking)
Add cheese mixture
5) Bake at 350¿ for 25 to 30 minutes.
6) Top with pie filling

Eleanor Clift is an editor for Newsweek and she appears weekly on The McLaughlin Group. Her first marriage was to actor Montgomery Clift's brother, William Brooks Clift.

• Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978)
• Tampopo (1985)
• Babette's Feast (1987)
• Like Water for Chocolate (1992)
• Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (1994)
• Big Night (1996)
• Mostly Martha (2001)
• Waitress (2006)

Caramelized Pecans

Author:

Category: Dessert

Ingredients:

1/2	Cup	Pecans
1/2	Tbsp	Butter
1/2	Tbsp	Sugar

Steps:

Melt butter in small skillet over medium-high heat and add sugar and nuts. Stir constantly until sugar loses grainy appearance, about 5 minutes.

Pour nuts onto sheet of aluminum foil and let cool about 15 minutes. Store up to 2 days in airtight container.

Yields 1/2 cup pecans.

Boil the pecans for 5-10 minutes. Then, drain them drain in a olander and crack away. Not only do they crack easily, but the shelling and removing the meat is a BREEZE! Seriously - I did a few pounds in less than an hour while I watched TV and got mostly nice halves instead of little bits and pieces I had been getting. It's much easier on the fingers too, because the shells are softer and super easy to remove.

SHELL PECANS IMMEDIATELY AFTER THEY COOL...if they sit a while they dry out/cool off and are more difficult to shell.

[Source: Amy B.]

I use this a lot to narrow a Web search to within a site. Do a Google search and use "SITE:" to designate the site to search. For example, to search "www.crooksandliars.com" for mention of "Jon Stewart" enter the following: site:http://www.crooksandliars.com "jon stewart". Results

• Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
• Margot at the Wedding (2007)
• Monsoon Wedding (2001)
• Muriel's Wedding (1994)
• Rachel Getting Married (2008)
• The Wedding Banquet (1993)

Cookies

Author: Jack

Category: Dessert

General Information:

This cookie recipe can be modified so that a different type of cookie is made each time.

One stick of butter = 1/2 cup of butter
1 cream cheese = 2 X stick of butter

Ingredients:

2 1/2	cup(s)	Flour (use a mix of white, whole wheat, corn or oat)
1	teaspoon(s)	Baking soda
1/2	teaspoon(s)	Salt
1	package	Cream cheese
2		Eggs
1/2	teaspoon(s)	Vanilla flavoring
1 1/2	cup(s)	Sugar (mix white and brown)
1	cup(s)	Optional--Chips, nuts, raisins, dried fruit.

Steps:

1) Preheat oven to 375.
2) Mix eggs, sugar, vanilla, butter, salt and baking soda with hand mixer or in food processor.
3) In a bowl mix the above mixture with flour. Add optional ingredient
4) Bake for about 10 minutes. Be aware of hot spots in the oven where cookies might burn.

This site archives bits from the monologues of late night talk shows (Letterman, Leno, Stewart, Colbert, Conan, etc.)

At Get Human you can find phone numbers that companies like Amazon, Ebay, etc. don't necessarily want you to obtain. They list the phone number and the codes to navigate the annoying menu.

Here is a list of my favorite contemporary international directors:

• Pedro Almodóvar--Spain
• Jacques Audiard--France
• Marc Caro / Jean-Pierre Jeunet--France
• Gurinder Chadha--Kenya/England
• Stephen Daldry--England
• Lasse Hallström--Sweden
• Juzo Itami--Japan
• Aki Kaurismäki--Finland
• Krzysztof Kieslowski--Poland
• Ang Lee--Taiwan
• Majid Majidi--Iran
• Mira Nair--India
• Giuseppe Tornatore--Italy
• Lars von Trier--Denmark
• Yimou Zhang--China

Lemon Bars

Author: Southern Living

Category: Dessert

Ingredients:

2	cup(s)	Flour
1/2	cup(s)	Powdered sugar
3/4	cup(s)	Butter
1/2	cup(s)	Flour
1/2	teaspoon(s)	Baking powder
4		Eggs (beaten)
2	cup(s)	Sugar
1/2	teaspoon(s)	Lemon rind (grated)
1/3	cup(s)	Lemon Juice

Steps:

Combine 2 cups flour and 1/2 cup powdered sugar.
Cut butter into flour mixture with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

Spoon flour mixture into an ungreased 13 x 9 x 2 inch pan; press firmly and evenly into pan using fingertips.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until crust is browned.

Combine 1/2 cup flour, and baking powder; set aside. Combine eggs, 2 cups sugar, lemon rind.
Stir dry ingredients into egg mixture and pour over baked crust.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until lightly browned and set.
Cool on a wire rack. Dust lighly with powdered sugar.

This Web site (www.lockdown.co.uk) provides some ideas on how to create a password that is more difficult to crack. In essence, the results suggest using nine plus characters mixing alpha (upper and lower case), numeric and symbols.

Q: What is the name of the character that Donald Sutherland plays in The Day of the Locust?

A: Homer Simpson

Bread Pudding

Author: Jack

Category: Dessert

General Information:

This recipe is kind of like baked French Toast
Good use for dried but not stale bread and bagettes
Fruit possibilities are
Rum soaked raisins
Canned Peaches
Canned Pineapples (w/ almond flavoring)

Ingredients:

2	cup(s)	Bread in cubes
3		Eggs
1 3/4	cup(s)	Milk
3/4	cup(s)	Brown sugar
2	cup(s)	Fruit topping

Steps:

Mix milk and eggs well into batter
In a 9" x 9" casserole dish spray with non-stick and add bread
Pour in batter
Add sugar on top
Add vanilla or almond or cinnamon or other flavoring.

Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes

Page Rank is a measure of the relative importance of a site. The underlying algorithm s trademarked by Google. In its simplest form, page rank calulates importance by determining how many sites link to the site in question. This site calculates page rank for any site you input.

Cauliflower Soup

Author: Nancy

Category: Soup

General Information:

This is best served with homemade crispy french fries to float on top.
Broccoli can be substituted for cauliflower.

Ingredients:

1	head	Cauliflower
1/2	cup(s)	Milk
2	cubes	Bouillion of Chicken

Steps:

Cut cauliflower florets
Cook florets in boiling salty water
Drain florets
Dissolve bouillion in hot water; set aside broth
Mix floret and broth in brender
Mix in milk and heat at low temperature

How many times have you seen this...On Law & Order, CSI, etc. the crime lab takes an image and zooms in to read a license number that had previously been out of focus. This is pure pseudo science. You can't zoom to the pixel level then zoom deeper and pull details that weren't there originally.

I wrote a Web mashup for pulling stock quotes. The cool thing is it returns only the stock quote...no extraneous HTML or no ads, just the stock quote (kind of like a poor man's SOAP call). So I use it in a lightweight Windows app that prices out a stock portfolio. I have expanded on this idea so now I can pull other metrics like P/E, 52 week high/low, 50 day moving average, etc.

Try it out (Javascript must be enabled).


For more examples, check out my Stock Data Grabber. I use this same technique for pulling info from Amazon (e.g. ISBN info), IMDB, as well as a bunch of other sites.

At w3schools, there are helpful stats on the market share for the major browsers. It's handy for Web developers when they need to decide what browsers to support.

CSS Zen Garden effectively demonstrates the potential of CSS for designing Web sites. Web gurus talk about separating content and presentation. At CSS Zen Garden, you will see the same content presented in a myriad of styles.

This Web site provides a couple of metrics on how common your surname is including rank, percentage and cumulative percentage.

For example, MOORE ranks 9th in terms of frequency. 5.312 percent of the sample population is covered by MOORE plus the 8 names occurring more frequently than MOORE. The surname, MOORE, is possessed by 0.312 percent of our population sample.

Actress Swoosie Kurtz's father was a colonel in the Air Force so he was Col. Kurtz. If the name Col. Kurtz does not jog your memory then go see Apocalypse Now.

Felco Classic Pruner #8
This is a comfortable and durable pruning shear. It really is a classic!