I have just added a page with a good bit of the music I have written on it to this blog. It can be accessed at ColtonJProvias.com/compositions. I will be adding more music as time goes on.
Recently I have adopted using my middle initial when writing my name. This has been reflected in several locations around the internet and even in the title of this blog. Well, to keep things consistent, this website can now be accessed via ColtonProvias.com and ColtonJProvias.com. Not much of a difference, but I have a new section of this site in the works. I am also going to be fixing all of the issues with music on this site with the addition of a Flash MP3 player.
So I have now started my program at Walt Disney World. Until January, I can be found dressed head-to-toe in green at the Tree of Life in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It’s a fun position and the technology behind the attraction is quite amazing.
As a small note: I will not be giving out any backstage information on this blog.
At the present time, I have 28 days left until I start at the Walt Disney World Resort. For now, I have a few quick notes.
I do not know the exact day I depart for Orlando yet but I will be capturing video, taking pictures, and possibly ustreaming on the trip down. I’ll post more on this in a week or two.
Vlogs will be starting up again. I am going to attempt to record one this Friday. I will definitely be recording one next Friday and will be ustreaming the entire thing live as I record it. More information will be posted about this in the next few days.
That’s all for now.
Through what could be a stupid decision, I have once again become an early adopter of the new version of a piece of software. In this case, it’s WordPress 3.0 beta 1. So far, I have had no problems with it. The only complaint would have to be the size of the text, but I’ll fix that when I’m not too lazy to do it. I’ll also replace the image in the header soon.
Anyway, final week is approaching in just a couple of weeks. And yet there is now no excuse to stop me from blogging more often as I now have WordPress on my Droid.
This comes from a small issue that I ran into while working on one of my projects. When I would try using django-tinymce‘s HTMLField while using South, it would throw a nice error when attempting a migration. To anyone else having this issue, you may be pleased to know that the fix is simple. Add the following code to the models.py file that contains the models that are affected (have at least one HTMLField). I personally recommend placing it after the import statements and before the model classes.
from south.modelsinspector import add_introspection_rules add_introspection_rules([], ["^tinymce\.models\.HTMLField"])
Ever since I got it, my Motorola Droid has basically replaced my iPod for apps. This means that my iPod has been reduced to being an MP3 player (which it is). Meanwhile, I’ve had some time with the apps on the Droid so I thought that I give some opinion.
Facebook’s app is very well designed. It features built in chat, pages, and messaging. The design is very sleek and…
Wait, that’s the Facebook iPhone app.
The Android app for Facebook is poorly designed. Most tasks are handled by launching a browser and displaying the mobile (not touch nor lite) version of Facebook. Android also makes it easily possible to sync your contacts with your Facebook account. Thus Facebook Sync puts people in the awkward situation of contacting a person without having to ask for their number first. When asked where did one get their number from, there is nothing that sounds more stalkerish and creepy than “my phone got it from Facebook.”
Foursquare
As if tweeting about what you are doing wasn’t enough, now you can earn points by going to places for no reason!
I’ll admit that I am addicted to Foursquare. The premise is simple: the user visits a place and checks in. By checking in, they earn points and badges. The person with the most check-ins at a single place is crowned the mayor. All of this is posted to a website for the world to see. You can see my profile here. At the time of this post, I am proud to say that I am the mayor of Five Guys Burgers and Fries and The West Wing.
Foursquare’s Android app is really well designed. It makes use of Android’s location services and gives a reasonably accurate list of venues. I just wish that there was a way to correct locations from the app. Somebody put the Willard Building at the wrong end of Pollock Rd. and it rather irks me.
WordPress
It’s a lot like the iPhone app, and the recent redesign looks great. The design for editing content can be cleaned up some more. Plus, it really should allow for managing more posts along with category and link management. All in all, it’s a good app and it works well.
As I’ve been progressing on the writing of my musical, I found that I need one song that breaks the boundaries of reality within the show and launches the cast and audience into a world of fantasy for a few minutes. Well, it’s not a world of fantasy as much as it is a dream sequence gone awry. So, faced with this challenge, I decided to once again go back into my past, blow the dust off an old song of mine, and re-score it for stage. In this case, I chose Siderial. Siderial is a piece I have been thinking of putting into the show for a while (as evidenced in the overture for the show) but never found a spot for until now. The song has undergone massive alterations and has been expanded to about 5 minutes in length plus an additional play-off/scene change piece that also incorporates Apex into the piece.
For now, I will publically refer to the song as Siderial until I get a few recordings done. Siderial is not the name of the piece in the show. Although, I will say that the song has to do with physics.
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I apologize for the massive delay, but I’ll be posting some updates later this week. I have a lot of drafts for updates stored on my phone, so stay tuned!
Why is it that we give up on our dreams so easily? It could be that society is geared for mediocrity and thus we are expected to only do the status quo. Those that reach for the stars are claimed to be insane, idealistic, or idiots by the keepers of our society. Dreamers go further and face obstacles created by others that attempt to stop them.
It’s alright for a child to dream. It’s okay for a person of high social ranking to dream. But the others who dream will be shot down. As one thinks back to their childhood, they remember having large dreams for their futures. A lone child may dream of shooting into space in a rocket. They yearn to be able to walk hundreds of miles above the Earth, floating free of gravity. To explore the cosmos at which they look up to on a clear cold night.
As time passes, the dream falls apart. The child may learn that according to physics, there is gravity in space and that astronauts are constantly in free fall. They may learn that traveling through the cosmos is much more time consuming than they thought. And they may learn that NASA has a really low acceptance rate for their astronaut program. The dream has been ripped to shreds by reality. All that remains is a memory of a childhood spent in wonder and “worthless” dreams.
The lone musician attending college, wishing to score the next generation defining movie, is a dreamer. The courses teach the generally accepted structure, and he accepts it and uses the knowledge. Another set of courses teach melodic work, and he gladly learns it and starts writing based on this knowledge. By the end of his college career, he is writing music based on logic. He follows what was taught to him in college and has lost the pure creativity that was there before. The great composer that could have been has fallen to mediocrity. He no longer stands out and the dream has faded into nonexistance.
Randy Pausch had spoken on the idea of following your childhood dreams. And, after his passing, I raised a question to numerous people: what is your greatest dream? The answers I have been receiving from many people are roughly the same. Everybody in our society wishes to find a secure job, have a family, and retire without anything to worry about. This is not a dream, it’s a goal. Getting a job performing on Broadway is a goal. But getting a lead role on an award winning show on Broadway is a dream.
One must learn to go back to their childhood. Think back to when you dreamed your grandest dreams. Make the dream your goal in life rather than the status quo. Aim as high as you can and do everything in your power to make your dream a reality. And, when you find yourself to be truly happy, you will find yourself to be living your dream.
So, to close, I ask all of those who read my blog one simple question: What is your greatest dream?
