Jeremy

Classical Soundtracks

I have to say, I quite enjoy a lot of John Williams’ soundtracks. When the initial Harry Potter films and the Star Wars prequels came out, I rather poo-pooed his music, as it didn’t seem to really contribute much to the films and what was going on–it was more background noise than anything (However, if you think about the movies that said music was for, then perhaps it is excusable to have written background-noise music for background-noise movies).

At any rate, I’ve been listening to his music again recently, and have enjoyed a fair amount of it. It was rather interesting to listen to the Harry Potter soundtracks in order. In the first one only the main theme is listenable, the second one has a little more music that is good (Phawkes’ theme), and the third has a fair amount of music that I enjoy.

Here are some of my favorites from John Williams:

  • Star Wars – Throne Room, Empire March, Asteroid field, Yoda’s Death, Luke and Vader fight
  • Hook – Main theme, “You are the Pan”
  • Harry Potter – Phawkes’ theme, Hedwig’s theme, Buckbeak’s flight, A Window to the Past
  • Empire of the Sun – Cadillac of the Skies
  • The Patriot – Preparing for Battle
  • Indiana Jones – Main theme, Grail theme, and “Scherzo for Motorcycle & Orchestra” (mostly because of the title)
  • Jurassic Park – Main theme, Dinosaur theme

 

Some of my other favorite classical soundtracks/composers are:

  • Basil Poledouris (Hunt for Red October, Les Miserables, Quigley Down Under)
  • James Horner (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Legends of the Fall, Glory, and… dare I say it? …Titanic)
  • Hans Zimmer (Gladiator, Da Vinci Code, Batman Begins)
  • Jerry Goldsmith (Rudy, The Shadow)
  • Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings)
  • Klaus Badelt (Pirates of the Carribean, Time Machine)
  • Patrick Doyle (Henry V, Harry Potter 4)
  • Trevor Pinnock (Last of the Mohicans)
  • James Newton Howard (Lady in the Water, Signs, The Village, Atlantis)
  • Steve Jablonsky (Transformers)
  • Danny Elfman (Spiderman, Corpse Bride)

Any good ones I’ve missed?

The little things

I had a rather neat experience yesterday. We had a ton of yardwork that we wanted to accomplish, but Ada was being very clingy and wouldn’t let Rosanne put her down, so Rosanne kept Ada happy while I fixed the sprinklers and started working on the back corner of the yard (we are trying to get that cleaned out and all the vines removed–this upcoming Saturday we’ll be removing the stumps).

By dinner time, I saw that there was no way I was going to get it done before dark working alone, but I was sure if Rosanne were helping we could finish it. so I said a quick prayer that Ada would calm down enough so that Rosanne would be able to help. I was impressed that Ada would not calm down, but that Rosanne and I needed to learn how to deal with that.

Nuts.

Oh well, I thought, I’ll just get as much done as I can on my own and finish it up later. A couple minutes later Rosanne came down saying that Janelle had just called, and wanted to play with Ada, so she was on her way over. She showed up in a few minutes, Rosanne was able to come out, and between the two of us we were able to get the job completed.

Now, God didn’t have to do that. I don’t think it really mattered, but it was just a reminder to me that He is concerned about us and He is very involved in our lives. I love seeing the little insignificant things that He does for us, not because it is so important on a grand scale, but because we are His children and He loves us (which is not such a little thing after all).

Comments (and gallery)

Hey, everyone, thanks for leaving comments. On this particular blog I have to approve/disapprove the comments, so you may not have seen them (I was supposed to get emailed when someone submitted a comment, I wonder what happened?)

Anyway, it’s good to hear from you, and I’ve really enjoyed everyone else’s blogs as well. I need to leave more comments, I guess. I make use of the RSS feature wherever I can, which is really handy–most everyone’s blog entries get forwarded to my Outlook. Unfortunately it does not lend itself to leaving comments [sad face].

Also, you may be interested, I have finally started a web gallery on my site. It’s pretty cool–I’ve set it up so that I can use Picassa to create my galleries. You can get to it by going to jersdesk.com and clicking on Pictures.

P.S. If you want to upload picture galleries to my site I can set it up for you (and then all you need is Picassa). Keep in mind that I don’t currently have any password protection on it, though. Also, I’m really not asking you to; just if you want to, you’re welcome to.

Family Update

Here’s a quick update of what’s going on with my family:

Jeremy: I’m being kept pretty busy with work, but so far it has been (mostly) enjoyable. Our boss is wanting us to be able to work from home at least a couple days/week, so hopefully that will pan out.

 I’m also trying to work on my own website, jersdesk.com. I’ve got several ideas that I want to do with it, mostly a picture gallery for Rosanne and me.

I had a LAN party the other day (Every so often I have some friends over and we play computer games together). This one was fairly well atteneded, and I think everyone had fun. James and Becca came (Becca even played for a while!). Unfortunately, their computer seemed to break down–the ‘on’ button was stuck and so they couldn’t turn on their computer. I looked online to see how to take the front cover off, and stumbled across a forum where someone else had the same problem with the same computer. The solution? Hit the front of the computer (but no too hard). James tried it and it worked.

Also, John just showed me a site about API’s that have been released from familysearch.org, that allow other programs to saerch their ancestral data, add capabilities to PAF, etc. and I want to do something with that. John and I each have some genealogy programming ideas, and we haven’t decided yet if we’re going to try and work together on something or each do what we want to do. I would be interested to know what others would like to see as far as a genealogy program (besides “something that will do it for me”).

Rosanne: Rosanne is kept very busy with her work and taking care of Ada. She does a very good job with that, as well as taking care of the house. She is the office manager, shipping manager, and on-call support (tech and otherwise) for mightyauthors.com. Fortunately (for us), the business is still rather small. As it grows, other people are supposed to be hired to take care of most of these assignments, leaving Rosanne to be mostly a seceretary.

She’s also been crocheting a baby blanket–ever since Ada was given one and she enjoyed it so much. Rosanne figured we’d better have another one on hand for when the current one gets worn out.

 Ada: Ada is just getting over either a bad cold or a mild case of RSV (we hope the former, but suspect the latter). Either way, she seems to be getting better, which we are very grateful for. She’s stil teething, so life has been a little more interesting than usual for us. Rosanne has been amazing at taking care of her and being patient with Ada’s progressivly getting up earlier… and earlier…

Despite that Ada is still largely a fun happy baby. She obviously enjoys being with Mom and/or Dad the most, and will smile and giggle at our antics. But she is also OK with playing with her toys by herself, though one of us usually needs to at least be in the same roon–if we leave for a few minutes and she notices… we’ll just say that life is a little less happy for a while.

What do you do with a blog?

OK, so I need to either use this thing or uninstall it…

It’s mainly that I can never think of something to put on here. I like the idea of having a space where I can put some ideas or thoughts, but I guess I just don’t think often enough, or something.

So right now I’m typing this while my daughter Ada is trying to reach the laptop and type on it as well (or bang on it, or drool on it, or something along those lines). It’s not too difficult, as she is sitting right next to me while I’m typing. One of her tricks is to ‘feel’ something with her feet, which essentially means “kick it repeatedly,” which while rather amusing, is a treatment I’d rather not put my new laptop through.

Ah, I think she’s finally getting tired. I guess I need to get ready for work.

My cute little Ada

Hello World

<p>Hello World</p>
echo “Hello World\n”; 
System.out.println(“Hello World”);
alert(“Hello World”);

OK, so that was cheesy. Sorry. On the other, it is just as much your fault for reading as it is my fault for writing it.

 …anyway…

So I wanted to create a blog to put some of my thoughts and comments on… actually, anything.

 In case you hadn’t figured it out, I’m a programmer. I live in Utah. Yes, I’m Mormon, which (being a programmer), essentially means I have all the geekiness, but without the caffeine. I enjoy books (mostly young adult fantasy), movies, classical music (and movie soundtracks), chocolate, and my family.