I've poo-pooed New Year's resolutions for most of my adult life, noting that the gyms tend to be full in January and sparse in February - ie, i never had faith that i'd ever have the willpower to actually commit to superficial statements of intended change. But after seeing the powerful effects of slaying a $55,000 debt ogre in only 9 months thanks to a written budget and goals glaring at me from a (digital) page, i'm beginning to realize the true benefits of word-smith'd dreams. What seems so mundane on the surface belies the underlying secret of such exercises, mainly: organization and focus.
I spent some time filling in the outline via Google Docs and came up with the following goals for 2008 (so far):
1. FINANCIAL Income, Investments
Five-Year Goals
Set up substantial kids' college funds
Be on track to have net worth of $1 million
One-Year Goals
Set up $50,000 emergency fund
Achieve all wishlist budget items
Beginning TODAY!
Budget weekly savings of $200 for wishlist items
Develop better business accountability and profit/loss statements and future plans for real income growth
2. PHYSICAL Health, Appearance, Exercise
Five-Year Goals
Get body fat down to 15%
Be able to bench 200 pounds
Beginning TODAY!
30 minute workouts in the morning
3. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Five-Year Goals
Improve Korean, especially reading
Learn Japanese
Learn German
Learn French
One-Year Goals
Learn about mutual funds and stock market investing
Find wholesome books for inspiration and motivation
Read at least 2 new books per month
Memorize Japanese characters
Learn PureData/GEM
Learn Blender 3D modeling
Beginning TODAY!
Learn 2 new Korean words per day
Maintain list of books read on website
4. FAMILY Relationships(incomplete...still working on this one)
Five-Year Goals
Get closer to family members - be praying for them regularly
One-Year Goals
Closer relationship with Mom and Dad
video interview parents for their history and personal backgrounds
Beginning TODAY!
Teach piano lessons to Eric and Timmy more regularly
Read to boys every day
spend more time talking with Kyungmi
Beginning TODAY!
Pray more actively and specifically for church members and missionaries
Begin memorizing select psalms
6. SOCIAL Increased number of friends, Community involvement, etc.
Five-Year Goals
hmmm....
One-Year Goals
Connect personally with network contacts at least once this year
Reconnect with old school alumni
Prepare Christmas cards and messages ahead of time
Keep in touch with family on a regular basis
Beginning TODAY!
Improve responses to emails and phone calls
7. CAREER Ambitions, Dreams, Hopes - REALLY INCOMPLETE
Five-Year Goals
One-Year Goals
Beginning TODAY!
I'll try to update this as soon as i'm able, particularly on the Career section. On the book side, here's a list of what's been read this month:
Several more are on the burner as we speak - the list immediately above has been loaded from my Audible library onto my new 8 gig iPod Nano (Kyungmi's Christmas gift to me - thanks, Honey!)
Quite a long list...certainly more than daunting at first glance, but hey - if i can chunk away almost $55K in 9 months, i think i can start attacking this list of resolutions, in much the same way: a little bite at a time. I'll keep y'all updated, and hope you'll keep me accountable in return!
Best wishes for your own New Year's resolutions for 2008!
Thanks to that crazy radio finance guy Dave Ramsey, we finally paid off almost $55,000 in debts within 9 months using his common-sense "debt snowball" system! To celebrate, the Sung family created a fun video "dramatization" depicting what our phonecall would be like to "The Dave Ramsey Show", talking about how we got out of debt and how we would scream "WE'RE DEBT FREEEEEEEE!!!" Kudos to my kids for being such good sports, and to my wonderful wife for allowing me to share the good news to the world! No more rice and beans for us, no more 'starving artist' mentality - if you want to have some inspiration and inertia to attack your own debts, then visit either www.DaveRamsey.com or www.MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com. Thanks Dave!!
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December 28, 07
The Best Method for "Getting Out of Debt" a la SNL
Careful, Folks - this video gets really complicated really fast, especially for those of us that are so used to buying everything on plastic:
Thanks to my sister and her husband for pointing out this money-saving video tutorial on this effective method for getting out of debt. Seriously. Really.
Thanks to that crazy radio finance guy Dave Ramsey, we finally paid off almost $55,000 in debts within 9 months using his common-sense "debt snowball" system! To celebrate, the Sung family created a fun video "dramatization" depicting what our phonecall would be like to "The Dave Ramsey Show", talking about how we got out of debt and how we would scream "WE'RE DEBT FREEEEEEEE!!!" Kudos to my kids for being such good sports, and to my wonderful wife for allowing me to share the good news to the world! No more rice and beans for us, no more 'starving artist' mentality - if you want to have some inspiration and inertia to attack your own debts, then visit either www.DaveRamsey.com or www.MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com. Thanks Dave!!
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December 25, 07
A Merry, Musical Christmas
We had a lovely time at our church's Christmas party the other day, hosted graciously by one of our congregation members with a beautiful 18th century house/estate. The highlight of the evening was the beautiful fellowship from everyone joining voices (and instruments) to sing through Christmas carols from our Trinity Hymnal. To my shame, i was surprised at how many of them i didn't know, and struck at how beautiful these lesser-known works were (lesser-known to me, that is). Here's a sampling of my 'new' discoveries:
"Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" - a 15th century German melody, arranged by Michael Praetorius in 1609. Here's a beautiful rendition by Frederica von Stade, with a Boy's Choir and conductor Andre Previn from "Christmas at Carnegie":
Here is a haunting rendition of "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" by vocalist Cynthia Clawson - Liturgy of St. James, 5th century, adapted by Gerard Moultrie in 1864; the source melody is from 17th century France, and arranged in hymn format by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1906:
Last but certainly not least, here is a beautiful rendition of "Once in David's Royal City" by The Chapel of King's College, Cambridge. Melody by Henry J. Gauntlett in 1849, words by Cecil Frances Alexander in 1848.
There are several other hymns that aren't up on YouTube yet, like "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning" by Reginald Heber and James P. Harding, and "Saw You Never, in the Twilight" by Cecil Frances Alexander and arranged from a 15th century French melody by Charles Wood.
Here is a beautiful line from "O Jesus Sweet, O Jesus Mild" by Samuel Scheidt (translated by Mark E. Hunt) and J. S. Bach:
O Jesus sweet, O Jesus mild,
your birth the world with hope has filled.
Your death has ransomed our lost race,
for on the cross you took our place.
O Jesus sweet, O Jesus mild.
What i want for Christmas...a Wii-mote VR Head Tracking System
This had me bouncing up and down in my chair like a giddy schoolboy, even dragging my poor wife out of bed to behold this amazing spectacle of video game possibilities:
Johnny Chung Lee is my new idol, what with his amazing output of creative immediate-impact geekiness like the $14 steadycam...i want to be just like him when i grow up! I have to reiterate his plea to Nintendo Wii programmers to MAKE SOME GAMES WITH HIS VR HEAD-TRACKING SYSTEM!!! (even though i don't personally own a Wii...yet...)
This morning, i sent off the final check to clean up the last dregs of our final debt, a long-standing Home Equity Loan. After 9 long months, our $54,551.02 mountain of debt has finally been vanquished! I still can't believe this is really happening - i think once the check clears and i see an actual zero balance on the account it'll start to really hit me. The kids have been running around the house practicing their "WE'RE DEBT FREE!!" screams, and we promise to make a family video dramatizing what it took for everyone to pull together to make this incredible accomplishment a reality!
Many thanks to that crazy guy on the radio Dave Ramsey for his wild repertoire of witty debt-bashing slogans and for making debt-free screams a status symbol! Even though the Christmas tree will be bare this year, i can't think of a happier celebration to share with the Sung family!
Anyone who is anyone in the classical music world knows that no publicity portfolio is truly complete without a Christian Steiner photo. Some of the most memorable portraits of luminaries such as Pavarotti, Von Karajan, Itzhak Perlman, Leonard Bernstein, and countless others have been captured with Mr. Steiner's lens. Thanks to my recent Hebrew Melodies CD project with violinist Maurice Sklar, i finally had an opportunity to experience a Christian Steiner photo shoot!
Many, many thanks to Maury - of all the CD's i've recorded, this is the first time the solo artist has asked me to be part of their publicity photo set. I'm usually relegated to the inner lining (if at all), so to be asked to be part of such a major part of the publicity is a rare and special honor. Here's a picture featuring Maury posing with Mr. Steiner:
i was struck with the small size of Mr. Steiner's apartment, and the utter simplicity of his studio setup. Somehow i had imagined a vast complex of vaulted ceilings with batteries of cameras, overhead lighting systems, and cavernous rooms with gargantuan backdrop movie studio sets. What a shock to see a basic living room with nothing more than a Bechstein "A" piano, 3 lights, and a 3-color (red, white and blue) paper backdrop frame!
There was a powerful similarity between Mr. Steiner's minimalist studio and Da-Hong Seetoo's sparse audio recording setup: both were masters using the simplest of tools to achieve the most incredible results, proving that artistic perfection lies with the eye and the ear, not with the complexity of the technology.
Mr. Steiner shoots his pictures digitally, each shot captured in a 95 MB RAW format on his Canon EOS-1D digital camera:
His mastery really comes to life in the way he sets up his lighting, poses his subjects, and uses the psychology of a trusted musical colleague to put the artists at ease with his vast repertoire of stories and jokes, or in the way he will just gaze at you until he smiles and finds the perfect angle for the shot.
When it came time to do my solo shots, Mr. Steiner spent a good bit of time exploring all different angles of my profile before decisively concluding that he liked the left side of my face the best ("Your right eye is smaller than your left," he told me). My small eyes were quite a challenge (i've heard that from several professional photographers over the years), and to keep them from squinting closed he purposefully kept me from smiling too much. One neat trick that Mr. Steiner used was to elevate himself on a step ladder, forcing me to naturally open my eyes more to see him at that angle!
I never knew that Mr. Steiner was a pianist himself! That helps to explain the extraordinary rapport he is able to achieve with his classical music clients. In fact, one way that Mr. Steiner keeps an active hand in the performing world is as the founder of the Tannery Pond Concert Series in upstate New York. Here is Mr. Steiner with Nikolai, the "Tzar of Tannery Pond", and his favorite toy:
All in all, it was a grueling 5 1/2 hour photo shoot with a few solo shots of yours truly snuck in for good measure (a much needed update for my own publicity picture portfolio!). I can't think of a more pleasant, inspiring, and artistically captivating photographer to work with! Can't wait for the contact sheets to see how the pictures turned out, bad hair day and all!
Robot Violinist: the result of too many Rodes etudes?
Robina needs to work a bit on her bow changes, but nevertheless an impressive computational/mechanistic achievement! Now instead of telling students that their playing is a bit "stiff and robotic", i'll just mention that they sound like a Toyota...
Funny...looks like she plays vibrato the same way that i did when i tried to learn the violin as a kid - instead of rotating the finger pad forwards and backwards, i would just lift my finger up and down for a "pseudo" vibrato...
Recently, a certain recording engineer was really impressed with my Tablet PC setup for reading PDF scores and asked if there were any manufacturers besides Gateway that made Tablet PC's with 14 inch screens or larger. He wants to be able to see a native 8.5 x 11 inch score in full size (a 12.1 inch LCD laptop screen actually short changes the full paper view a bit), and if something larger could accommodate full conducting scores, that would be a big bonus.
Way back in May 2006 i wrote a blog article about super-sized screen options for digital ink input. One of the most intriguing options was made by a Korean company called Navisis. At the time, Akihabaranews.com reported its entry to the market, but no specifics as to where to get one.
Turns out this nifty device is readily available over the internet for a much lower price than i had expected! BestTechnologyParts.com is offering the EZ Canvas Screen Tablet PC for only about $170:
The specs on this nifty device seem to allow for 17-19 inch CRT/LCD monitors. Perfect for large scores, though i'm concerned that this device only seems to allow for landscape views...perhaps a homemade jig could modify usage for portrait views?
But wait - there's more!
They have an even cooler device called the Navisis Laptop Pen Tablet PC for only $175 which clips on to the side of your laptop screen and your USB port simultaneously for instant Tablet PC transformation!
The picture seems to have an older price affixed to it - maybe it's last year's holiday sale price? Anywho, the 'real' price is certainly sweeter. Get this - you can even have the device clipped separately to a paper notepad or a sheet of A4 paper and have your digital notes copied onto the computer! Nifty, eh? The device can be used for laptop screens up to 15 inches in size.
One drawback to the Navisis Laptop Pen Tablet PC is the fact that the pen requires batteries, as opposed to Tablet PCs that use the battery-free Wacom pen systems. But hey, it's hard to beat the $175 sticker price compared to a $1500-$2000 tablet pc!
If any of you opt for either of these tools, i would love to hear from you about your experiences with them.
A brand new CD has been released by The Kings Chamber Orchestra, titled "String Heaven":
After having recorded over a dozen CD's as pianist, this marks the first project where someone else has recorded an original composition of mine - quite thrilling, i have to say! Gerard Le Feuvre's remarkable improvisatory string orchestra does a beautiful job of presenting a collection of worship songs, such as "Be still for the presence of the Lord" and "Amazing Grace". You can listen to preview tracks and directly purchase the CD at www.kingschamberorchestra.co.uk.
A quick note: the music is all instrumental, sans vocal parts. I wish that the lyrics to these melodies had at least been included in the liner notes, but i imagine that would've added considerably to the production costs. In case you'd like a refresher on what i wrote, here is the link to my previous blog article about the project which includes the lyrics to "How Lovely Shines the Morning Star" by Philipp Nicolai and the link to the free PDF score. And since i'm such a big fan of embedded apps, here is the flash player once again:
The steep rise in gas prices last year turned me into an avid PATCO rider. The trains themselves are older models that run just fine, but the fare collection system hasn't aged nearly as well - old-fashioned magnetic swipe cards that frequently get rendered useless by accidental proximity to electronic gadgets (like my Curtis optical ID/entrance card) and antiquated ticket dispensing machines that require you to feed the coins with the care and precision of a skee ball match. Having ridden the uber-efficient train systems in Korea several years ago and envying the way most riders just tapped an open turnstile with smart cards tucked in outer wallet pockets made me wonder time and again why we didn't have a similar system here in the ol' US of A. Well, now that wait finally seems to be over.
Cards can be purchased at the Broadway Transportation Center in Camden. The folks there were very helpful and even gave a personal demonstration on how to use the new ticket dispensing machines which can either give you 3-day paper magnet passes, or can be used to 'recharge' your Freedom smart card. I opted for the automatic withdrawal from my debit card, which will recharge the card in $30 increments (or more, if you decide) once the card's balance reaches $5.
No more penny arcade ticket machines, no more change dispensers that spit my old dollar bills back out, no more waiting in long queues for 10-ride tickets at the human ticket window (only open at certain hours of the day) - my Freedom card has me actually excited to ride the train now!
Thank you for visiting this site! I hope you'll find this to be a friendly place to learn about and discuss the fascinating technologies available for the Classical Musician. A great place to get started is with the ongoing "Getting Started" series. Remember, the worst questions are the ones you never ask, so feel free to email me!
After over a year of waiting, the new 
