today, i went on a second walk, this time north from my place. here are some impressions.
a beautiful view downwards onto a half-frozen river:
i don’t know how to describe this in words, but it’s simply beautiful. even though i don’t think this picture captures the full beauty the “ice flowers”, here it is:
today, i saw dracula (imdb). the one from 1931. well, you might now think, “so what?” well, i did not just saw the movie on a big screen, but the more important reason – the one which made me pay CAD 52 for this show – was the score. the original movie did only had music played during the intro and the outro. until 1998, when minimalist philipp glass was given the task to write a score. he composed a string / piano piece, performed by him and the kronos quartet, under the direction of michael reisman. well, a philipp glass score together with the movie is still no reason to spend that much money – but a live performance of the score by philipp glass and the kronos quartett themselves, together with the movie, definitely is. the whole thing happend in the context of the high performance rodeo 2009 in calgary; an advertisement can be found here.
this was actually the first time i saw the movie. and probably the first time i saw béla lugosi in a movie not made by ed wood. well, it was quite funny, even though some of the dialogs were hard to follow because of the score.
anyway. this event was definitely worth its money.
since january 4th, i’m living in calgary now. here a few impressions from inside the place where i’m living this time:
and here a few impressions from a walk i took today. also compare them to these photos i took last may, as i ended in the same park i began with in last may. note that the current temperature got up to +14 degrees celsius right now (3 p.m.), this morning it was a bit less but still positive.
some ducks swimming in parts of the river which are not covered by ice:
finally, the place where i’m staying. very easy to recognize due to euler’s identity scratched into the concrete:
somehow, it’s funny that people don’t complain when planes get delayed for two hours, but almost start crying when a train is say 30 minutes late…
on the third day of the ants, we had half a day off. some of us took the chance to make a small hike to sundance canyon on that afternoon.
to reach the sundance canyon, one has to walk a bit through beautiful nature.
the first picture still belongs to the way to the canyon. the canyon itself is going upwards, a small river is floating downwards. it’s pretty steep, as you can see. when one reaches the top, one gets a pretty neat view.
the way back featured several other great views.
finally, we reached the banff hot springs, which are not in use anymore to ensure the living of the banff springs snail. this is a kind of snail which basically only lives at exactly this place.
after returning to the conference center (which involved a stop in banff and drinking some beer), we took a small walk to the bow river, from where one has a good view on the banff springs hotel.
another thing one can see from there are the bow falls, a pretty low (just a few meters) waterfall.
well, last but not least, a really big thanks to all involved in making this trip possible!
this week, i was attending the ants. that’s not a conference on ant colony optimization and swarm intelligence, but the eighth instance of the algorithmic number theory symphosium, held in banff, canada.
banff is situated in the canadian part of the rocky mountains, whence one has a pretty neat sight:
here are some impressions from the conference center facilities. the first is a shortcut to the dining hall, the second the professional develop center, and the third one a pathway inbetween:
the next two photos show a view from inside the professional develop center, where we were housed, and me together with my poster:
this conference has been really great. i had lots of fun, learned a lot, met a lot of nice folks (again). and some more.
i was there. expect more photos soon…
yesterday, i made a short trip to downtown calgary. the first time during my stay. after a quick walk through downtown, i decided to walk trough some parks. here are some impressions. enjoy!
this evening i experienced another concert, an instance of the progressive nation 2008 tour, featuring four bands all doing different kind of prog.
the opener was 3, a woodstock based prog/experimental rock band. they are really fantastic, and i have to get one of their albums—the ones at the concert were already sold out when i tried to get one. besides playing great music, they also had a great life performance. there were two bad things though, even though the band has nothing to do with them: first, lots of people decided its fun to smoke weed. i don’t care what people do to themself, but it’s pretty annoying to smell that all over the place without having the chance to go somewhere else. the second, way worse thing, was that some people decided to start a mosh pit. again, anyone might feel to do what he wants, but i hate it to get kicked and pushed around all the time without asking for it. in particular, a mosh pit might fit well to a metalcore band, but to a prog band?! geez…
well. the second band, between the buried and me, was a metalcore band—a prog metalcore band. i’ve never been a fan of metalcore, and this gig didn’t made that better. obviously, the situation in the front didn’t got any better, the mosh pit simply got larger…
then, after surviving this one, the main part of the evening began: opeth entered the stage. unfortunately, at the beginning, the accustics weren’t too great; for example, the keyboard was pretty quiet and sometimes hardly audible—even at parts where it basically was the only instrument playing. fortunately, this changed later. since the whole tour already played in calgary yesterday, they had a slightly different playlist today. yesterday, it apparently was master’s apprentice / baying of the hounds / in my time of need / wreath / heir apparent / the drapery falls. today, they apparently started with demon of the fall—which was a bit hard to grab, as the keys were too quiet and a certain mosh pit pretty annoying (though that got better later, maybe the kids got tired?). after that, they played baying of the hounds or beneath the mire—have to listen to them again, i think. the third song was to rid the disease, my favorite song from the proggy damnation album. after that, they played heir apparent—something from the new album, which really rocked, i’m really looking forward for it—and the drappery falls. then, mikael noticed that he screwed up the set list, i.e. that they had enough time to play one more song. they decided to play wreath from the deliverance album, which i’m really really happy about: so far, i’ve never heard that song life, and i really like it a lot. unfortunately, as it’s a really heavy song, it again got pretty uncomfortable in the front. i still managed to throw my hair around, in particular at the end of the song. then, it was over.
after that, i decided to buy something to drink; it was some banana smoothie. somehow it looks like my stomach didn’t like the idea too much, so i wasn’t feeling too good afterwards, as dream theater began to play. shortly after they began, i decided to sit down at the back of the hall. besides not feeling too good, the concert was nice. they started off with in the presence of enemies and also played a lot older stuff, for example from the scenes from a memory album, one of my favorites. after their first part, a funny video showing some super mario sequences with dream theater references put in was shown, with both dream theater music in gameboy style and real music. the encore began with some improvisation, first by jordan rudess on some cute electronic device, then accompanied by john petrucci, and later by the other band members, which turned into a pretty cool medley.
too bad it’s over.
if there wouldn’t have been some annoying people around, and if maybe between the buried and me wouldn’t have played and 3 and opeth played much longer, it would be definitely the best concert this year. it still is a very good one, but as it was it has tight competition, for example the symphony x show in hamburg. but then, in particular 3 rocked the house, and i have to take a closer look on them. the new opeth album also sounds very promising, at least the two songs i’ve heard so far: heir apparent today and the porcelain heart video. and, i just saw, roadrunner offers the lotus eater for download. have to check that out, too…
