Jennifer Grucza

Right now I have four violas in my house: mine, a big 17-incher made by Michele Ashley and two made by Douglas Cox (one 16 5/8″, the other 16 7/8″).

This whole viola-buying business is so hard. I’ve tried many very nice instruments, but it’s hard to remember the sound of them all over the months I’ve been doing this. Do I like these more than the Wallin viola I tried before Christmas? That one definitely had a lovely sound, and the only thing I thought was missing a little bit of bite, of clarity and penetration. These violas I’m trying now all seem to be very clear and have good projection, but are they a little bright sounding?

I did some quartet sight-reading yesterday with the Ashley viola, and it did a fine job. When I stepped on the gas, it really responded. In general, it seems to respond very easily and quickly. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to get a good sound.

Tomorrow I have a quartet rehearsal (different people than the sight-reading yesterday). I haven’t decided which Cox viola to try out then. The larger one recently had its front plate replaced (the old one was apparently damaged beyond repair in an accident), and Mr. Cox said it needed playing in. It has a big sound, but it struck me as sounding slightly metallic. Not sure if that’s due to the new front, new strings (Evah Pirazzi), or whether it’s just part of its sound. The smaller Cox viola sounds slightly more muted under the ear in comparison, but it has a darker tone, which I like.

It’s kind of too bad we don’t mummify people anymore. Part of me would like to be mummified when I die, with a nice sarcophagus carved in my likeness (a flattering, young likeness, of course). Then centuries later, archaeologists will dig me up, put me in a museum, and speculate as to who I was and what I did. School children would see me on their field trips, and marvel at how well preserved I am, considering how long ago I lived. They’ll buy pencil boxes shaped like me in the museum gift shop. Scientists will use cutting-edge equipment to create images of my insides, and they’ll draw conclusions about my way of life by analyzing the trace remains of what I ate for dinner the night before I died. Occasionally there will be TV programs (or whatever the equivalent is in the future) outlining the exciting discovery of my remains and the quest to identify them.

Image by Chris McSorley, found on Flickr

I’ve been wanting to dip my toes into the water of graphic design for a while now. But I have no schooling or training in it, and any attempts I’ve made in the past have not gotten very far. Part of the problem, I think, was that the graphics programs I’d tried were either too simple or had horrifically unintuitive interfaces.

Recently at work, I downloaded the trial versions of Macromedia Fireworks and Adobe Illustrator, since those were two programs that seemed to be recommended by various people in the web design community (note I did not mention Photoshop, because I’m mostly interested in web graphics right now: icons, buttons, boxes, logos, etc.)

As soon as I opened Illustrator, I was quite appalled (yes, appalled!) by the fact that all the little pallets remained where they were when I moved the window, and didn’t even stay within the bounds of the window itself! It made shivers go down my spine! (Ok, maybe I am a little weird.) Anyway, the controls weren’t all that intuitive either. But I admit I didn’t really spend that much time trying things about, because…

I pretty much loved Fireworks as soon as I started it up. No bizarre floating windows, and it was so easy to get started making fun little pictures.

I’m loving vector graphics. They just make so much sense. You create an object, you should be able to go back and tweak it. Each object has properties associated with it: color, brush stroke, shadow, size, aliasing, etc. Decide you don’t like the color after all? Simple, just select the object and change the color. Now, maybe it’s possible to do this with non-vector-based software, too, but I certainly didn’t find it self-explanatory and simple, like it is with Fireworks.

I’m just getting started exploring this program, and already I’ve created some pretty cool looking little icons for work. Fireworks makes me look like I know what I’m doing. I’m looking forward to learning more. Oh, and the star shape tool is wicked awesome (to use a Bostonian turn-of-phrase).

Just got an email from the Amazon Associates program about their new Product Preview links (hover over that link to see what they are).

Pretty slick, don’t you think? Good use of AJAX, if you ask me. I bet they really help increase associates’ conversion rates.

Update: Oops, I forgot - they’re doing some sort of test, so you only have a 50% percent chance of seeing the effect. So don’t worry, if you don’t see anything when you hover over that link, that’s why. If you really want to see it, you’ll have to go to your browser cookies, delete the “amazon_vf” cookie for this domain (jennifergrucza.com or www.jennifergrucza.com), and refresh the page. Of course, you’ll still only have 50% percent chance of seeing it, so you might need to be a little persistent.

Apparently my friend Rob doesn’t think I’m too old yet for dolls, because that’s what he gave my for my birthday! Actually, it was a doll-making kit. I think I did rather well with it, if I may say so myself!