Or…reflections on doing everything yourself with your hands tied behind your back.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
Hi readers!
I feel compelled to step from behind the digital curtain for a moment and address something that happened on the blog last week. There was a post, The Idea of North reviewing the visiting Orchestre symphonique de Montréal at Carnegie Hall. On further examination, that particular piece was riddled with typographical errors. (Those errors have been corrected, and the persons doing these titles have now been sacked.)
I do everything here at Superconductor, with the exception of actually designing the ad banners that sponsor the site. I sell the ads. I do the research. I set the schedule. I go to the concerts and I write the reviews—lots and lots of reviews. However, for the past eight months, this blog has been operating under something of a technological impediment.
(Also, a møøse once ate my sister! No jøke!)
My tech woes started in February, when I was in my hotel room in Hiroshima, Japan, unable to sleep and thinking dark thoughts about America, the atomic bomb, and the irresponsibility of Donald Trump, the current chief executive of the United States. In the midst of my dark thoughts, I was unable to sleep, a recurring problem for a traveling reporter. I decided to make myself a soothing pot of hotel tea.
I then spilt the tea on my laptop. Right on the keyboard, knocking out half of its capability. The rest of the work I was doing on that trip was done out of my iPad using an app called IA Writer and my own ingenuity in getting around the fact that my Mac was not usable. Since my return, I’d been using an external ISB keyboard in conjunction with the still-functioning Mac. Not an ideal solution but a workable one.
This solution came to an end last Tuesday night, when I was coming home from the Met's latest revival of Les contes d'Hoffmann. Tired and careless, I pulled my Playbill out of my bag and tossed it across the living room, Whirling along like a frisbee, its corner winged my treasured external keyboard which was sitting on top of the closed laptop on the couch. This neatly sliced off the F key, meaning it was time to take my computer in for long awaited repair. It also meant that while my Mac was in the shop, everything on Superconductor would be written and published using the iPad.
Today, thanks to the munificence of our current advertisers, I just got my Mac back from the good technological gurus at Brooklyn’s own Mac Support Store. Armed with a new keyboard, a new hard drive (one Terabyte! Solid State!) and all my files transferred I hope that future posts will be less error-prone than last Thursday’s hastily written article.
If you’d like to help Superconductor succeed in its quest to provide readers with the very best dang classical music coverage™ on the East Coast of the U.S. and hopefully elsewhere, why not make a donation or sign up to the blog’s Patreon page. Said monies will be used for technological repairs of this ilk, upgrades to equipment, and occasional Metropolitan Opera rush tickets. I even travel to concert halls and opera performances outside New York. Your help is appreciated. Thanks for listening.
by Paul J. Pelkonen
 |
| Don't worry everybody, sh'cool. Photo creator unknown. |
Hi readers!
I feel compelled to step from behind the digital curtain for a moment and address something that happened on the blog last week. There was a post, The Idea of North reviewing the visiting Orchestre symphonique de Montréal at Carnegie Hall. On further examination, that particular piece was riddled with typographical errors. (Those errors have been corrected, and the persons doing these titles have now been sacked.)
I do everything here at Superconductor, with the exception of actually designing the ad banners that sponsor the site. I sell the ads. I do the research. I set the schedule. I go to the concerts and I write the reviews—lots and lots of reviews. However, for the past eight months, this blog has been operating under something of a technological impediment.
(Also, a møøse once ate my sister! No jøke!)
My tech woes started in February, when I was in my hotel room in Hiroshima, Japan, unable to sleep and thinking dark thoughts about America, the atomic bomb, and the irresponsibility of Donald Trump, the current chief executive of the United States. In the midst of my dark thoughts, I was unable to sleep, a recurring problem for a traveling reporter. I decided to make myself a soothing pot of hotel tea.
I then spilt the tea on my laptop. Right on the keyboard, knocking out half of its capability. The rest of the work I was doing on that trip was done out of my iPad using an app called IA Writer and my own ingenuity in getting around the fact that my Mac was not usable. Since my return, I’d been using an external ISB keyboard in conjunction with the still-functioning Mac. Not an ideal solution but a workable one.
This solution came to an end last Tuesday night, when I was coming home from the Met's latest revival of Les contes d'Hoffmann. Tired and careless, I pulled my Playbill out of my bag and tossed it across the living room, Whirling along like a frisbee, its corner winged my treasured external keyboard which was sitting on top of the closed laptop on the couch. This neatly sliced off the F key, meaning it was time to take my computer in for long awaited repair. It also meant that while my Mac was in the shop, everything on Superconductor would be written and published using the iPad.
Today, thanks to the munificence of our current advertisers, I just got my Mac back from the good technological gurus at Brooklyn’s own Mac Support Store. Armed with a new keyboard, a new hard drive (one Terabyte! Solid State!) and all my files transferred I hope that future posts will be less error-prone than last Thursday’s hastily written article.
If you’d like to help Superconductor succeed in its quest to provide readers with the very best dang classical music coverage™ on the East Coast of the U.S. and hopefully elsewhere, why not make a donation or sign up to the blog’s Patreon page. Said monies will be used for technological repairs of this ilk, upgrades to equipment, and occasional Metropolitan Opera rush tickets. I even travel to concert halls and opera performances outside New York. Your help is appreciated. Thanks for listening.
