John Colton's blog

Almost all pop artists use some degree of autotuning on their recordings these days. It's amazing what computers can do. So here for your enjoyment is "the news", in the key of C. :-)

This kid can do some amazing things, not the least of which are the record scratching effects.

We (the Utah Baroque Ensemble) had a concert last weekend. It went fabulously, even though our second violinist failed to appear. Martha, our director, ended up pulling a violinist out of the audience to substitute at the last minute. The substitute looked over the music for ~20 minutes as we were singing other songs, while her husband ran home to fetch her violin, and then came right up to the stand for the Bach cantata. Amazing.

I've posted some recordings from the concert:
http://www.physics.byu.edu/faculty/colton/personal/choral_music.html

I think they are the best any choir I've been in has ever sounded, be it the UBE or my former choir the La Crosse Chamber Chorale. As one of the choir members observed at practice last night, "The recordings sound like the professional choirs I've heard on CD."

If you live in Utah, you can still catch us at a follow-up concert this Sunday (email me for details if you need them). Also, if you want to hear the rest of the recorded concert, let me know and I'll help you out (I don't want to publicly post the rest of the recordings due to copyright restrictions).

Torrey Pines is a state park just north of San Diego. My only regret about going there is that we saved it for the end, when all of our legs were killing us. We only had enough energy to go on one of the trails. It was pretty spectacular, though.

Here I am! This is on the trail approaching the vista.


The view to the south.


A little closer to the cool-looking cliff.


The view straight down.


Here is one of the actual Torrey pines (a rare species of pine). I thought it looked really cool.


As we were walking along, a couple approached us and said, "Did you see the dolphins?!" We hadn't so they pointed them out to us. We saw at least two, and I managed to snap a picture of one. First time I had ever seen a dolphin in the wild.

The view to the south.
Looking down on a hawk (and a bunch of people).

When I went through my photos yesterday, I was surprised to find out that I had taken about twice as many pictures at the San Diego Zoo as I had at Disneyland. The zoo was pretty neat, and I had never been there before. I'll just put a few of them here.

This is us watching the sea lion show.


Here's the proof:


I thought this was a cool tree.


Pauline really liked this bird, especially the hair.


We got a passer-by to take this family portrait. This was in one of the aviaries, which Pauline and I both thought were about the coolest part of the zoo.


Elephants are my favorite animal. Next to Pauline, Leslie and Emily, I guess. ;-)

Since I'm not teaching any classes this semester, I decided this might be our only chance to take a Spring Break trip. So, we went to Disneyland last week! We spent Tues, Wed, and Thurs at Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure. On Friday and Saturday we went to the San Diego Zoo (day and a half) and Torrey Pines state park (just for a couple of hours).

Here are some Disneyland/DCA pictures:

We got a 3 day "park hopper" pass that included an early opening feature on one of the days. That meant we got to arrive at 7 am instead of 8 am. Here we are about to get in!


Here's a shot of the people starting to congregate behind us at opening. Surprisingly enough, we ran into a family from our ward in Orem.


This is Space Mountain, where they snap your picture with strobe lights at the end, and then try to sell you a print for $15 (!!). I noticed some people using cameras/cell phones to take a picture of the park's picture (for free!), and that seemed like a good idea to me.


We used the RideMax software ($15, satisfaction guaranteed or 100% refund) to plan out the Disney stuff so that we would catch rides when the crowds were not there. Worked like a charm. On the third day (I think) we hit Splash Mountain early in the morning, and there was literally no line. They just let us ride twice in a row since no one was waiting. (Photo of the park's photo.)


California Screamin at DCA is one of the very best roller coasters that I've ever gone on. Very smooth, you hardly notice it when you go upside down. :-) Here's another photo of a photo.


Emily, on Thunder Mountain. I also took a video of the ride which maybe I'll post later (my camera, a
Canon Powershot TX1 doubles as a high def video camera).


Did I mention that Emily is very photogenic?


This is the "Tower of Terror" in DCA. A very fun ride. Have you noticed Pauline's absence in all of the thrill rides? She gets motion sick, but was a very good sport about it. She even waited in line with us on many of the rides. (Photo of a photo.)

Leslie took the state math exam last month. Here's a link to the actual exam if you want to try it yourself: http://science.uvu.edu/math/smc/pdf/JuniorExam2009.pdf

We just got the results back, and she scored 27th in the state (out of 352 seventh graders who took the exam). To put that in perspective, she got a 76 on the exam; the median score for 9th graders (who took the same exam) was a 59. And only the kids most interested in math even attempted the exam; for example, I think just 5 seventh graders from her school took the exam this year.

So, in short--congrats to Leslie!


P.S. If you need to, you can find a link to the exam solutions here:
http://science.uvu.edu/math/smc/currentExams.shtml

I think I asked Pauline if I could post this here once before, but she said "No". (I could be misremembering.) Apparently she gave permission to a friend, because the friend (Michelle) posted it here yesterday: http://mormonwoman.org/2009/04/06/be-partakers/

From today's wunderground.com forecast:



OK, not really a "forecast" anymore, since I can look outside my window and see it happening. Snow in April?? This is part of the reason we moved away from Wisconsin!