General Chat

[bickster]

20 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Shoots everywhere.

[trekka]

19 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Just been down the garden. 

Shoots everywhere. The days are getting longer. 

Hopefully in 2 / 3 weeks Omicron has blown itself out, spring flowers are starting to open and we can all look forward to a much better 2022. 

That's it.  I'm feeling much more optimistic now.  Whilst working from home has been a novelty, I'm bored of the whole thing. I want to be able to take people for coffees, shake their hands when I know they have done well, or just because, you know, because they are lovely people. I miss greeting people properly and having the social interaction.  Next year will be better, I'm certain of it. 

[sidcow]

2 minutes ago, trekka said:

That's it.  I'm feeling much more optimistic now.  Whilst working from home has been a novelty, I'm bored of the whole thing. I want to be able to take people for coffees, shake their hands when I know they have done well, or just because, you know, because they are lovely people. I miss greeting people properly and having the social interaction.  Next year will be better, I'm certain of it. 

Hear hear.  I've missed touching up the women in the office too. 

[foreveryoung]

11 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

10/10 for storytelling with font sizes. 

 

Tom, no

Blonde women no

Next 2 definitely would

[Genie]

3 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Tom, no

Blonde women no

Next 2 definitely would

Middle blonde remembering the time she had a threesome with 2 blokes. 

[Xela]

52 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Just been down the garden. 

Shoots everywhere. The days are getting longer. 

Hopefully in 2 / 3 weeks Omicron has blown itself out, spring flowers are starting to open and we can all look forward to a much better 2022. 

Knowing the luck we are having, the shoots will turn out to be Triffids! 

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Tom, no

Blonde women no

Next 2 definitely would

Even the one with the unfeasible large mouth on the right?

 

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, Xela said:

Knowing the luck we are having, the shoots will turn out to be Triffids! 

Don't be such a bloody doom merchant. 

By the way did anyone see that meteor shower just now? Absolutely amazing. 

[foreveryoung]

16 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Even the one with the unfeasible large mouth on the right?

 

That's Margot Robbie, she a hottie

[Davkaus]

Buckle up, this one has some ups and downs.

I'm 9 days into this "being a dad" thing, and it's still very bizarre, it's at least another 2 months until she's home so it's kind of weird having a team of professionals looking after her 24/7 and mostly feeling like a spare part - though I've been pitching in with the feeding and nappy changes, I get to just go home at the end of the day and life is as normal until the next morning. She's doing bloody brilliantly for a 9 week early baby, no concerns at all, so I'm not even worried when I get home, I just get to live my single life for a bit in the evenings after a day of nurses teaching me how to parent - can't complain

A few downsides of course. We're in a tiny room smaller than my home office, with 4 incubators in there, 4 nurses, only room for one chair per incubator, and you can't stay still for 5 minutes because someone needs to get to the equipment, or the sink, or the bin. So it's long old days, in a very hot, very cramped, very noisy room with no natural sunlight, constantly being asked to move. We've agreed to each have a separate day off once a week as well as taking a decent break each day so we don't go mental. A small price to pay for her being in safe hands though.

Sharing a room can be fairly unpleasant in far more distressing ways, though. Today, and there's no nice way to soften how I say this, I heard the noise a mother makes when her baby dies before her eyes, and it's a sound I'm never, ever going to forget. I could feel her pain and I had to excuse myself so she didn't have to watch me crying as well. I have no idea how people can put themselves in a profession where handling that becomes just part of the job.

Good luck deciding which reaction to use for this post, ****.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Davkaus

[choffer]

4 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Good luck deciding which reaction to use for this post, ****.

There isn’t an emoji that’s appropriate for what you describe. Dreadful thing to have to witness. 
Thankfully your wean is doing well and it sounds like you’re adjusting to it well. Enjoy all the joys of having your nipper. It’ll change your life and although it’s not always gravy, it’s something that will change your life for the better. 

[villa4europe]

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

Buckle up, this one has some ups and downs.

I'm 9 days into this "being a dad" thing, and it's still very bizarre, it's at least another 2 months until she's home so it's kind of weird having a team of professionals looking after her 24/7 and mostly feeling like a spare part - though I've been pitching in with the feeding and nappy changes, I get to just go home at the end of the day and life is as normal until the next morning. She's doing bloody brilliantly for a 9 week early baby, no concerns at all, so I'm not even worried when I get home, I just get to live my single life for a bit in the evenings after a day of nurses teaching me how to parent - can't complain

A few downsides of course. We're in a tiny room smaller than my home office, with 4 incubators in there, 4 nurses, only room for one chair per incubator, and you can't stay still for 5 minutes because someone needs to get to the equipment, or the sink, or the bin. So it's long old days, in a very hot, very cramped, very noisy room with no natural sunlight, constantly being asked to move. We've agreed to each have a separate day off once a week as well as taking a decent break each day so we don't go mental. A small price to pay for her being in safe hands though.

Sharing a room can be fairly unpleasant in far more distressing ways, though. Today, and there's no nice way to soften how I say this, I heard the noise a mother makes when her baby dies before her eyes, and it's a sound I'm never, ever going to forget. I could feel her pain and I had to excuse myself so she didn't have to watch me crying as well. I have no idea how people can put themselves in a profession where handling that becomes just part of the job.

Good luck deciding which reaction to use for this post, ****.

Its a weird feeling isn't it, my daughter was 9 weeks early, born weighing 1080g and then dropped down to 800g after the first week, it's a scary time, my wife wasn't even allowed to see her for the first 24 hours because my wife was so sick... And bear in mind I'm in germany and don't speak German she was also born on the opening day of the new hospital so everything was new, signage was missing, none of the staff knew where anything was all that kind of nonsense

You're right about the heat, its crazy hot and the masks don't help, the lights, the beeps, the "sun visor" and the blue lights, the scary stuff like when they take blood or I even saw the nurse squeeze a shit out of her... They're incredibly tough little bastards and the nurses I had were amazing, I'm there scared of how hard to touch her and they're straight in there pushing pulling flipping them round and the baby can take it all without a care, skin on skin if you can do it do it every day 

Would say I did get frustrated at the end, there was no clarity as the rules as to when she could come home, one nurse said when she hits this weight, another nurse said when she holds this temperature, one said after x number of days, me and the wife stayed strong (my wife was also incredible) and didn't argue with each other, spent a lot of time treating ourselves to the Burger King around the corner as an escape (don't feel guilty if you have to get out of there, it's really hard to leave if and when they're crying but sometimes I had to) I did start to dislike more or less every nurse though I funnelled my frustration away from my wife or myself and in to them as a coping mechanism, they told us she could go home in a couple of days but then added a "new" rule, all the time she was there she never did it but the night before she was due to leave she skipped a heart beat so had to stay 3 more days... Wasn't happy about that

Would also say we were in the "fortunate" position where she was always healthy, she was properly **** tiny and was sick a lot and stuff like that but the Dr's were always happy with her, other kids in there weren't as early or as small but from who we shared a room with one of them had a bost hip, one of them bad lungs and come the end a kid who's parents lived 100m away (bonn has a specialist premature baby ward) during corona with another 2 kids at home and he needed a heart operation that was scheduled for 3 months away - I never felt sorry for myself, we were almost lucky given the circumstances, I didn't experience another baby dying but can imagine how horrible that would be 

Found small comforts, I'll admit that I prayed (to Buddha...) and I read esio trot to her every day! 

Finally would say that the worst and hardest thing they did to her was the eye test on the very last day, might not be the same everywhere but the premature baby eye test is **** horrific, made me cry let alone her 

We left after about 8 weeks, she's now 18 months old and you'd never know she was early

[TheAuthority]

9 hours ago, sidcow said:

Just been down the garden. 

Shoots everywhere. The days are getting longer. 

Hopefully in 2 / 3 weeks Omicron has blown itself out, spring flowers are starting to open and we can all look forward to a much better 2022. 

Well I really appreciate the sentiment but 2022 is already going to get off to a bollock for me

Myself and my top graduate ensemble were invited to go to perform at a big conference the weekend of January 14th - 16th. It's been booked for months. The Chancellor of the University has just announced that they will be no in person classes for the 1st 2 weeks of January. Zero. Zilch. All students must return to Colorado but stay off campus and just get tested.

So as well as Zoom lessons (which are shitty anyway) my grad group can't rehearse at all. My Department chair has already emailed me to say that they can't circumvent the process by rehearsing off campus and I should carefully consider if should be flying out of state to perform due to the contagiousness of omicron.

This pandemic s**t is really starting to wear on me. I got my grad group to meet up on a zoom chat in 10 minutes - I can't believe they are having to go through this s**t at their age. 

[sidcow]

6 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

Well I really appreciate the sentiment but 2022 is already going to get off to a bollock for me

Myself and my top graduate ensemble were invited to go to perform at a big conference the weekend of January 14th - 16th. It's been booked for months. The Chancellor of the University has just announced that they will be no in person classes for the 1st 2 weeks of January. Zero. Zilch. All students must return to Colorado but stay off campus and just get tested.

So as well as Zoom lessons (which are shitty anyway) my grad group can't rehearse at all. My Department chair has already emailed me to say that they can't circumvent the process by rehearsing off campus and I should carefully consider if should be flying out of state to perform due to the contagiousness of omicron.

This pandemic s**t is really starting to wear on me. I got my grad group to meet up on a zoom chat in 10 minutes - I can't believe they are having to go through this s**t at their age. 

I hear you, but I'm pretty sure we're going to see a big drop in a couple of weeks. 

Omicron has just got everywhere.  It just cannot sustain it's rate.  Hopefully it does usurp Delta which seems to be happening now. 

If not we've got a well boosted population moving towards summer months. 

All the drug manufacturers are stating that they're now working on their formulas so we should have more up to date vaccines if things start to kick off again instead of one 2 years out of date. 

From what I gather viruses tend to mutate to be less deadly but more transmissible so hopefully Omicron doesn't suddenly reverse the usual trend.

I think most restrictions were seeing are just belt and braces and will be relaxed pretty quickly once they get real world data on how these massive case numbers translate to the healthcare system. 

[lapal_fan]

One for @TheAuthority I think!

I went to watch "The best of John Williams" at Birmingham symphony hall a couple of nights ago. It was the London symphony orchestra who performed.  It was brilliant.

my question is about the conductor.  How much influence does he actually have on the orchestra?

at one point after some music, he even laughed and thanked the horn section for not joining in when he signalled a bar early!

The orchestra rarely looked at him either, more so concentrating on their sheet music.

The orchestra are obviously a very talented group of musicians, so I wondered exactly how much the conductor actually does.

Kudos to him for ripping his shirt open to reveal a superman t-shirt during his theme music too

[mjmooney]

2 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

One for @TheAuthority I think!

I went to watch "The best of John Williams" at Birmingham symphony hall a couple of nights ago. It was the London symphony orchestra who performed.  It was brilliant.

my question is about the conductor.  How much influence does he actually have on the orchestra?

at one point after some music, he even laughed and thanked the horn section for not joining in when he signalled a bar early!

The orchestra rarely looked at him either, more so concentrating on their sheet music.

The orchestra are obviously a very talented group of musicians, so I wondered exactly how much the conductor actually does.

Kudos to him for ripping his shirt open to reveal a superman t-shirt during his theme music too

This is a perennial question, and I'm sure @TheAuthority can answer it better than me. But I assume it's to do with the thorny problem of keeping a large group of musicians in time. Somebody has to be in charge, so the others know who to follow - in a jazz or rock band it's normally the drummer. But in an orchestra the percussion is only used as occasional decoration, rather than as a pulse. Hence the conductor, effectively acting as a metronome, and prompting the various sections  as they drop in and out. 

[Chindie]

There's an episode of much missed Channel 4 documentary/reality series Faking It where they took a rock musician and spent a month training him to be a conductor, which kinda reveals what the conductor has an impact on.

It's been literally years since I saw it but IIRC it's a combination of keeping the orchestra in time but also influencing that timing and directing the group in the nature of the performance which then gives personality to the performance as a whole. A lot of their work is in the practicing and organisation building up to the performance.

[villaglint]

1 minute ago, Chindie said:

There's an episode of much missed Channel 4 documentary/reality series Faking It where they took a rock musician and spent a month training him to be a conductor, which kinda reveals what the conductor has an impact on.

It's been literally years since I saw it but IIRC it's a combination of keeping the orchestra in time but also influencing that timing and directing the group in the nature of the performance which then gives personality to the performance as a whole. A lot of their work is in the practicing and organisation building up to the performance.

I actually saw this episode about 4/5 months ago. Brilliant show, surprised it’s never made a comeback. 

[mjmooney]

2 hours ago, Chindie said:

There's an episode of much missed Channel 4 documentary/reality series Faking It where they took a rock musician and spent a month training him to be a conductor, which kinda reveals what the conductor has an impact on.

It's been literally years since I saw it but IIRC it's a combination of keeping the orchestra in time but also influencing that timing and directing the group in the nature of the performance which then gives personality to the performance as a whole. A lot of their work is in the practicing and organisation building up to the performance.

Yeah, that's right. I didn't mean to suggest it was just about timing. There's also stuff like controlling the dynamics - volume, style of attack and decay, etc. of the various sections, so as to shape the effect of the piece as a whole. 

Edited December 30, 2021 by mjmooney

[Chindie]

5 hours ago, villaglint said:

I actually saw this episode about 4/5 months ago. Brilliant show, surprised it’s never made a comeback. 

I think it partly burnt out because, well, part of the appeal is the reveal that one of the contestants in the final test is a fake. After a while you'd have any judge looking at 4 'new faces' in a competition looking for the fake rather than rating them genuinely.

Also I think they ran out of things that worked in the juxtaposition of things - there's only so many burger flipper to haute cuisine paths that make the show work.