Ryan's birthday today and he got a Wii (I can see myself grabbing this for the foreseeable future). If you don't know what a Wii is, look it up.
I have passed on the gadget gene to him I think. This is what I carry around every day (see pics for details:)
1) Moleskine notebook (music manscript version). My brother got me this a few years ago when he was working in Milan - I have 5 now and use them all the time.
2) Pentel 0.9mm pencil - recommend these to anyone requiring a pencil...
3) iBook (running Sibelius software etc.) - This is my third - I love Macs...
4) Moleskine diary (see moleskine.co.uk for info)
5) My newest gadget, Nokia 6300. I have had loads of Nokias, briefly diverted to Sony Ericsson and now back to Nokia. This is fantastic - doesn't have a great camera, no 3g, no wi-fi but so classy. I have a 2GB card to store TV and radio programmes and use ipod headphones with a 2.5mm jack converter.
6) Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 4GB usb drive - can carry everything I need between computers and will survive an attack from a sledgehammer (always a possibility in Salford...)
7) Fisher Spacepen - writes underwater (I know, I've tried it, but the paper got soggy...)
Having dabbled on and off for a couple of years with aborted personal websites Alan Williams set me up with this myspace page in minutes - thanks Al! To Yukihiro and others who have been encouraging me to get online, hopefully this will be a means of catching up with what we are all doing.
So, the past week:
Friday at Salford - an excellent presentation by Steve Bingham, "The Violin but not as we know it". Check out Steve's myspace page for information on his unique approach to violin playing.
Saturday: over to Yorkshire for the premiere of my wind piece Sirocco by the Doncaster Concert Band at the Hot House Festival. A very good group (and nice people) led by the excellent Karen Roberts. I'll post photos soon.
Sunday: off to the cottage in Scotland to get some work done (no web distractions etc.) and made some headway with the new piece promised to Yukihiro (a year late). No hurry back because Salford began easter break on Monday - three weeks without students (missing you already...) two of which will be spent sunning ourselves in Florida...
Today: My brother's birthday - hope he enjoys the present, carefully selected from a wide range of Thora Hird validated merchandise.
Can you persuade my dad to get me one of those moleskin manuscript books please. Just tell him they're good!