Gratuitous Friday – Peter Mattei is Wolfram

Happy Friday!

Surprising (and Not so Surprising) Search Keywords

I just upgraded my stat counter (beyond the Blogger freebie to a product called, interestingly enough, StatCounter*). I do like to check my blogger stats to see which posts are getting the most clicks. 

While I am waiting for StatCounter to start tallying fun stats about my blog, I decided to take a look at what search terms are leading people my way.

Not surprising (in no particular order)

Tara Erraught
Jonas Kaufmann
Peter Mattei
Malin Hartelius
Miah Persson
Diana Damrau
Nina Stemme
Rolando Villazon
Alison Hagley
Ian Storey
Anja Harteros

Somewhat surprising (people are actually searching the title of the blog!)

regie or not regie

Totally surprising (I need to find this version of Idomeneo)

arbace porn videos

*Thanks to stray for directing me to StatCounter.

Glyndebourne, von Karajan, and Joyce DiDonato from France Musique

Because my French comprehension is less than optimal, I listen to France Musique less frequently than British and Austrian online radio. But France Musique offers many musical gems.

Lirico Spinto is the French equivalent of the Austrian Stimmen Hören. The episodes are available for much longer after their original broadcasts than their Austrian counterparts, and they are available as podcasts from iTunes, which you can subscribe to for auto-downloading—much handier than trying to record them with Audacity!) The most recent two programs are wonderful compilations:

In English with English Subtitles

It keeps cropping up, then disappearing again. There seem to be three different posts this week. This one has subtitles. Watch (and especially listen) while you can. 

Featuring R. Croft, D. Daniels, L. Hunt, D. Upshaw, and F. Olsen

There's an App for That – Audacity Audio Editor/Recorder

Sometimes I just don't have time sit and listen to a radio broadcast when it's broadcast, or even when it's held in archive for a week. So, if I come across a can’t-miss performance, I cue it up and record it with audacity. Yes, it's audacious to record online music broadcasts, but what I am talking about here is the software app called Audacity. 

The advantages of this app are it's free and fairly easy to use, as long as you're not trying to do anything too complex. The downside is that (at least with my limited knowledge of the software) it records absolutely every sound your computer makes. So if you get an email, connect/disconnect your smartphone, e-reader, or music player, or try to close a Word document without saving it first, it records all those little chimes, chirps, and beeps. (This can be slightly disconcerting during replay—especially in the car—when I check to see what email (hasn’t) come in! But hey, the software—and broadcast—is free!) I try to shut everything down and record stuff only when I plan to be away from my computer for an hour or so.