Victor and snow

I went woth Victor and Ruth to his swimming class today. When we got back I took some pictures showing just how much higher the snow is than Victor! Quite unbelievable how much snow we've had this year.

New Phone

While I'm waiting for the servers I'm working on in Falun to get restarted after some electrical work is being done, I'm going to write a little about my latest acquisition, an HTC Hero mobile phone.

It's a smart phone based on the Android OS, which is in turn based on Linux, and produced by Google.

I had to decide between that and an iPhone. It was a very close thing, but the Android/Google/Linux thing swung it in the end. It is a more open platform than the iPhone, which means that no one company can decide if an application is allowed to be supported, which is the case for the iPhone. It also has a more multitasking nature to it, although I'm not completely convinced that that makes any actual difference!

During the first few days I noticed, even when I'd stopped playing with it a lot, that the battery consumption was rather bad, on the first night it claimed to have about half charged battery when I went to bed, and had stopped before I got up!

After a bit of googling I discuvered that there is a known bug in the built in SMS program that stops it from going to sleep once you've sent a message! The solution/work-around is to disable that program and install any of the several alternative SMS programs. Since doing this it has behaved much better.

Trio Zilliacus Persson Raitinen

Margie and I went to a concert in Lilla Salen here in Västerås on Saturday afternoon with Trio Zilliacus Persson Raitinen. They played a very good programme ending with the great Mozart Divertimento.

We like to sit right at the front and get the full experience, coughs and all! Most people won't sit in the very front row, but it must have been almost full, because there were already a few people in the front row when we sat down, and it filled up completely.

This is a group well worth hearing. The string trio repertoire isn't very large, and there's one great master piece (the Mozart). Zilliacus and Persson played the second Mozart Duo first. This is a seldom heard very fine piece for Violin and Viola. The first duo is played slightly more often, and is a touch easier to play!

After that the cellist played a wonderful cello solo piece by Sibelius which was only discovered relatively recently when clearing out a summer house (or some such place).

Then there was a modern work, which was more enjoyable that we expected! After the interval was the tour-de-force, a work I know very well, since in the seventies while these three were in dagis, when our quartet lost one the the violinists (she moved to Hampshire) we worked at this not realising quite how difficult it was!

After the concert we went and ate a very nice meal in Ruffinos followed by too many beers in the Sky Bar.

All in all a very nice day.