I’ve called the piece ‘Threnody’, which, language fans, is a real word.  Dictionary.com defines it as “a poem or song of mourning or lamentation”, and it’s the first in a planned set of similar works.  I first encountered the word ‘threnody’ as a girl’s name in a book when I was just a teenager, and it’s stuck with me since then.

The piece itself was written in response to a recorder player asking people on a forum to write some music for him, and I accepted the challenge.  This piece was actually the second thing I wrote, and, while it’s not perfect, and some of the chords may sound wrong, it’s what I meant.

You can listen to it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjkvnMla4lo

Cover: The Master and Margarita

The edition I read was the Vintage edition, available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Margarita-Vintage-Classics/dp/0099540940/

Covers like this make me somewhat suspicious, as they suggest an artist being cleverer than is perhaps necessary.  Without reading the novel, who is to know what the symbolism is?  Whereas for me, a cover should entice a reader into wondering what is represented, this cover is so seemingly abstract that it is almost an in-joke, sniggering at the obtuse who don’t get the reference.  It also reminded me strongly of the old Gollancz series of classic SF novels with plain yellow covers.

Nonetheless, I took the plunge.  The novel is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the devil’s appearance in Moscow and introducing us to the main players in the farce.  The second part then introduces us to the eponymous heroine, unseen to this point, though referenced by her lover the Master from his cell in an asylum.

The first section is beautifully written.  The exchange between Berlioz, his young poet companion, and the devil, is pregnant with meaning and unmeant irony, and readers conversant with the conventions of fantasy will have winced along with me as Satan predicts various catastrophes and is poo-poohed by the admirably materialistic Berlioz — casting Satan in the unaccustomed role of Cassandra.  The various magical and fantastic happenings that then transpire are strongly reminiscent of some of the oldest works of fantasy, and I was reminded constantly of Lord Dunsany’s The King Of Elfland’s Daughter in the way characters act and react to the magic that is happening around them.

There’s something distinctly non-Western in the denoument of the second half.  Where we might expect a morality fable to go, instead we have deals with the Devil coming off, and Satan actually coming across as something of a soppy romantic.  The theological aspects of the relationship between Satan and Matthew (his seeming heavenly go-between) are rather dubious, though perhaps a more enlightened view of infernal punishment and those who do and do not deserve it than has been evinced by the Church in the real world.

I actually found that, despite their featuring in the title of the novel, it wasn’t the Master and Margarita’s story that I was most interested in, but that of Satan and the in-story novel about Pontius Pilate.  While it was satisfying to see a somewhat happy ending for our two ostensible protagonists, the true centre of the book was the literary creation of the Master and its treatment and eventual restoration.  Which is perhaps as Bulgakov intended in the novel’s theme of artistic integrity and how the accepted powers of the literary firmament can short-sightedly slight true artistic endeavour.  What other reason can there have been for Satan to visit Moscow at that particular time?

A truly enjoyable read, in any event.  Onwards!  The next novel I shall tackle in this series will be Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment.

So, the first novel in this year’s series was loaned to me a long time ago by my brother (who never reads, so it came as something of a shock).  It took me a while to get around to it, and it was actually the genesis of this resolution, something of a spur to get on with it by creating an occasion around it.  And the novel in question is Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.  I’ll confess to never having seen any of the many adaptations, though I knew the main character was Pip, and that it featured a Miss Havisham.  That was the extent of my knowledge.

Cover: Great Expectations

The edition I read was the Penguin Classics edition, available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Expectations-Penguin-Classics-Charles-Dickens/dp/0141439564/

My brother had warned me that it would take some time to get into the Victorian style in which Dickens wrote, but actually I found the contrary: I was immediately immersed in the sense of time and place that is conjured with the opening paragraphs.  That wasn’t surprising to me, really, as Dickens was very much a writer of his own time, and his use of the local idiom to place the reader firmly in a geographical context as well as a chronological one was only to be expected.

What I hadn’t expected, though, was the sense of real jeopardy Pip is almost immediately placed in with his encounter in the marshes, which (as we come to realise) forms the central spur for all the action that follows thereafter.  The characters are extremely accessible, none moreso than Pip himself, and one really feels an attachment to him with the revelation of his persecution by his sister.  This early in the novel it’s clear that we are meant to identify with Pip, and cheer when his gradual betterment begins to occur.

It’s thus disappointing when Pip fails to live up to our expectations and treats Joe with such disdain as his station in life improves (though he has no idea why).  Now my sympathies switched almost entirely to Joe, and with Pip’s removal to London almost hoped that he would suffer some reversal that would bring home to him the changes in himself.  The latter part of the novel, with the revelations about Miss Havisham, Pip’s unknown benefactor, Estella, and Pip’s eventual return to Joe, was devoured rapidly, and the final scene was rather bleaker than I’d expected.  (I noted with interest that Dickens’s original ending was even bleaker than this, changed at the suggestion of one Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whose name has become such a byword for terrible beginnings.)

So, an excellent beginning to this series of classic novel reads.  Next up will be Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.

1. Driving test: duly passed, first time, licence now updated — look out world!  Woo-hoo!  Don’t know when I’ll actually get myself a car, probably not this year (or at least, not until well after we move buildings to Salford Quays).  But it’s on the horizon now, and I’d kinda like the independence and freedom it would bring (or so I imagine).

2. New bike!  I actually rode to work for the first time on my new bike this morning, and it was great fun.  It’s been ages since I was on a bike, but you know what?  It was really easy to remember how to do it.  I’m sure there’s a simile in there somewhere, but I can’t come up with one, so please supply your own!  Reckon I’ll be cycling a lot from now on.  Might even keep an injury/near-miss count.  Watch this space.

3. New Year, new resolutions.  First and most urgent, my resolution to read at 1 book a month by a different author, that would be considered a ‘classic’ novel.  First up: ‘Great Expectations’ by Dickens.  I had lots of suggestions on FB for novels to add to my list, but please feel free to add your own suggestions here.  This may even become a recurring resolution, if it works out.

4. PC build — I will add the second part of the build when I have more time.  Suffice it to say now that it went very well, and I’m extremely happy with the result.

5. Music: two things.  Piano teacher — acquired, yay!  First lesson tonight, in which we’ll just talk generally about what I want, where I am music-wise, and what we might aim towards.  Second thing: Halle Choir joined!  First piece we’re doing is Delius’s “Sea Drift”.  Madeleine Lovell is the new chorus master of the Halle, but due to family issues won’t be taking up her post until March.  I want to find a singing teacher up here, but need to get some recommendations from people I trust.  Debbie didn’t have many contacts up here, so I’ll have to cast my net wider, I feel.

6. Xmas — fun.  Parents: well.  Brother: bonded with, but still annoying.  Ireland: snowy.

And that is all.  Hie-yahh!

The first step then: motherboard, processor, heatsink fan and memory.

The motherboard unboxing was fairly painless — made sure I’d earthed myself, and used my new anti-static wrist-strap religiously.  The motherboard is freaking huge, larger than I’d expected (but that was nothing compared to some of the stuff I’d be unboxing later).  It came with a variety of cables and mounts, a big box of screws and plastic thingummys, none of which I had any idea of their puprose, at that early stage.

The board itself came wrapped in an anti-static bag, as shown below.  Custom PC mag recommends assembling the base components outside the chassis, using the mb box as a base of operations.  I followed this recommendation, and it was good advice in the main as I found it easy to organise myself around the box.

This pic shows the motherboard unboxed, still bagged, with the various components and cables that came along with it.  Included in this were the port shield for later replacement into the chassis, some switch combination bits, and cables.

Now unbagged, you should be able to see the motherboard clearly, and I used this point to acquaint myself with its various areas — time that was to prove invaluably spent later on.

The cage in the middle, opened up in the pic to the left, was to receive the processor.  To the left were 6 DIMM sockets for the memory.  Above the cage were the expansion slots, 3 PCI-E and 3 PCI.  I had thought this motherboard was enormous — it would prove to be only just large enough when it came to installing some of the expansion cards later on!

Round the edge of the board were various fan connectors, chassis switch connectors, power inputs, and sundry other mysterious and vaguely intimidating gubbins, including the ports.

Next up, then, was marrying the processor to the MB.

The processor itself was a tiny thing, but came (unexpectedly to me) with its very own heatsink and fan arrangement.  I had already purchased my own processor heatsink and fan, so rejected the bundled one from Intel and proceeded to install the processor in the MB cage.

and there you have it — processor safely ensconced in its cage.

I was slightly concerned that I might have failed to marry the two correctly, but there didn’t seem to be any sense that they would ‘click’ in any way according to the instructions that came with the processor.  Just align them correctly, and bind securely with the cage, and all would be well, it seemed to imply.  So I ignored my misgivings, and soldiered on, hoping that all would be well.

But you’ll have to tune in next time to find out whether all was indeed well!  This is the end of Part 1.  PArt 2 will concern itself with heatsink shenanigans, PSU paroxysms, and cabling.  The chassis will be unboxed.

That is all.

It’s going to be tough, there’s no getting away from that.  There’ll be laughter, and tears.  There will be crying, and sighing, and anguished noises aplenty.  But I shall come through the other side stronger than before!

Well, OK, perhaps not.  But it’s certainly going to be fun, a challenge, and quite likely to take more time than I’ve anticipated.

Anyway, this is going to be a fairly major project, and I’ll be documenting each step (forwards and backwards) with imagery of all unboxings.  But the final spec is this:

Case: Antec 1200 Full Tower

Monitor: NEC MultiSync EA231WMi 23-inch

XFX 750W Black Edition PSU (Black)

ASUS 1366 P6X58D-E S/L Motherboard

Intel i7-930 Bloomfield processor

Corsair 6Gb DDR3 XMS3 Dominator memory

OCZ 60Gb Vertex SSD Drive

Samsung Spinpoint F3 SATA/300 1Tb HDD

ASUS XONAR DX PCI EXPRESS 1.0 RET Sound Card

XFX/ATI Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card

Thermaltake Frio – CPU Heatsink + Fan

Logitech USB Microphone

Logitech Webcam C250

Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave – with Mouse

Logitech X-530 PC Multimedia Home Theatre Speaker System – (5.1)

Edimax EW-7128G Wireless LAN PCI Card

LiteOn 8x Internal Blu-Ray Combo Lightscribe – SATA

So, there you have it.   Build will commence this weekend, after I’ve reviewed the Custom PC build masterclass and made sure I’m ready — and cleared some space!  Each subsequent post will be an unboxing and then an assembly post.  The first step is the assembly of the main components outside of the case: motherboard, processor, memory and PSU, hooked up to a monitor, to check that they’re all functioning before mounting them internally.

Wish me luck!

Signed up to 12 hours of lessons with BSM, and I’m hopeful that my prior experience will mean I won’t need much more than that.  Fee includes the theory test, but not the practical test, but does include a pass promise such that, should I not pass first time, test fees are refunded.

First lesson is Wednesday next week.  Wish me luck!  And watch out if you’re going to be on the streets of Manchester that evening!

Post title: classic track by the Cars!  Also used in the first Transformers movie to excellent effect

But I’m hugely gratified by my initial survey of property prices and the rental market in Manchester.  There are some stunning places available for my budget!  Looking forward to taking a trip up there to view some places in the next week or so.  Any offers to accompany me, let me know!

It makes for an engrossing, if difficult, read, especially the first chapter where the original hoax article is dissected, and following the footnotes requires a whole stack of virtual placeholders.  But it’s well worth it.  Sokal is an engaging writer on the topic of scientific philosophy, and his humility comes across as cogently as his frustration with post-modernism and deconstructionism.