Category: General

My Opera Calendar

Granted I've always been an opera nut, but this year I am particularly looking forwards to the season, which is set up with a few twists.

15 August 2010: AIDA by Guiseppe Verdi
I'm not gonna write too much about the opera itself, that can quite easily be read elsewhere, e.g. on wikipedia . What is special about this one is the location. Its played outdoors on Oscarsborg Fortress, most famous for, on April 9, 1940 sinking the German heavy cruiser Blücher.

So I'm hoping for some decent weather on this one, to fully enjoy the play against the castle walls.

So, for the more traditional locations, in the Oslo Opera house where the other 7 are played.

31 August 2010: Tosca by Giacomo Puccini

23 October 2010: The wedding of Figaros by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

17 December 2010 Eugene Onegin by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

20 January 2011 Orphée by Philip Glass

25 February 2011 Lulu by Alban Berg

3 April 2011 Rigoletto by Guiseppe Verdi
I consider this show the highlight of the season. A fun trivia is that the ring tone on my cellphone, La Donna e Mobile by Guiseppe Verdi is from this Opera.

6 June 2011 Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten

Joining the hype: Testing the iPad

Since there seems to be quite a lot of fuzz going on about the Apple iPad, even though it hasn't officially reached Norway yet, I figured I had to give it a try. Since an acquaintance has just been in the US, and gotten hold of the 64 GB, wifi-only version it was easy enough.

I must admit I was positively surprised, especially for reading text. The clear screen resolution and the zoom ability is decent.

My favourite application is as always Bloomberg, even though I only tried the free version (is there an Anywhere version as well for iPad as there is for BlackBerry?). Although a con is that I miss the email integration that I have on BB, despite iMail being configured for mail on the device.

Also, the facebook application needs some tweaking, but with such a screen resolution the web interface is OK anyways.

Now I only have to decide if I want one of my own. After all, I have quite a few computers already (by last count I had 8 in my ownership that I connect to on various locations, most of which are servers that I use through ssh/ command line interaction). At least i have some time to make up my mind before apple officially sell it in Norway.