Re: google summer of code

[Janek Warchoł]

2012/2/11 David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
> Łukasz Czerwiński <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> 2012/2/10 David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
>>> Don't get me wrong: it is probably quite enough work for getting someone
>>> started.  I'm just not sure whether it will be easy to sell it off.  The
>>> largest part of the work would realistically consist in digging oneself
>>> into sparsely documented areas, just in order to be able to come up with
>>> a good plan and implementation that would, if you discounted all dead
>>> corners, take two days to do.
>>>
>>> It seems a bit like visiting a term of art classes in order to make a
>>> convincing sketch at its end.  The real deal is not the sketch, but the
>>> ability to do so.  And if all you are going to do is that one sketch,
>>> the exercise seems a bit pointless.
>>>
>>> But of course, if you want to turn sketches into a living, having
>>> someone pay what it takes to do the first sketch is going to be a _big_
>>> help.
>>
>> Like Janek, I'm also thinking of participating in GSoC. If one of us
>> works on that bug during GSoC and moreover while coding also adds some
>> documentation to the poorly commented code, this will result in far
>> more than "one sketch", because we will stay connected with Lilypond
>> after the end of GSoC 2012.
>>
>> If you think that Issue #34 is too little for GSoC, you could add to
>> that some other similar issues with MIDI or grace notes in a form
>> similar
>> to: http://community.kde.org/GSoC/2011/Ideas#Project:_KStars:_Improve_the_
>> observation_planner_and_logging_feature
>
> I was just thinking of a story I wanted to share in this context.  In my
> high school days, I was in some sort of school band.  I played
> electrical guitar, another one (with a classical guitar education I
> believe) bass, I somehow managed to get the son of a resident music
> school director to play drums, and we had a flutist who had just changed
> from recorder to "regular" flute and was rather fond of experimenting
> around.
>
> Not much came off that, but the flutist kept the first "real" piece we
> had been doing in his repertoire for quite a while.
>
> Now fast forward a dozen years, and the younger brother of the flutist,
> the unmusical brother, calls me.  The flutist is getting married, and
> the younger brother has the idea that at his wedding, he'll play that
> old first piece on the flute.  It is my job to write down the notes (it
> would be nice to put in some LilyPond angle in here, but in truth I just
> wrote them by hand on notepaper) and to play the guitar.  I write down
> the notes (still know them by heart more or less) and start thinking.
>
> Several phone calls and letters later it turns out that the drummer is
> living in Ireland by now, but will be in Aachen because of a friend's
> wedding.  So if we organize a drum kit...  The bass player is living in
> Munich, but considers the gag worth his trouble to drive a whole day
> just to make an entrance, if we are getting him a bass guitar for the
> occasion.  I actually still have my own guitar, so I'm the one actually
> playing on original material.
>
> Three days before the wedding, the brother makes his first appearance at
> my house.  He has taken the notes to a friend playing flute, and has
> been working for close to half a year getting the scale he needs into
> shape.  Rhythm and interplay are all wrong.  After the first day, he got
> the rhythm more or less right.  After the second day, we are playing
> this together smoothly and I stop worrying about this becoming a total
> catastrophe.  On the third, he starts improvising solos.  It was like
> high school all over again.  "Unmusical" or not, it was obvious which
> family he was from.
>
> On the wedding, I made some sort of lame speech, put the flutist (who
> can play pretty much everything) at the bass and picked up the guitar,
> then we started, and I stopped, saying "that is not good.  Take the
> drums instead, I think I have a bass player here."  Who actually arrived
> just 20 minutes ago, having been stuck in traffic almost all the way, so
> we had no real practice together.  The same game with the drums, and we
> had the original drummer pick up the drums instead, and gave the flutist
> a flute.  His brother was doing the PA stuff all the while (actually,
> that was stuff he was good at in his youth as well), and was now holding
> the mic for his brother.  And then the same "that is not good.  Take the
> mic instead, give the flute to your brother".  Of course everyone knew
> that the flutist was being led on all the while, but nobody had a clue
> just where.  And the brother stood there with a puzzled look at the
> flute while the flutist now held the mic, while we others played the
> intro.  And then the brother played.
>
> A few days after the wedding, he handed back the borrowed flute and
> stopped doing music again.
>
> It was pretty much the "single sketch" equivalent, but it was something
> that a lot of people won't forget.  It was totally silly but worth doing
> for some reason, and a number of people put in their smaller (but still
> considerable) contributions of letting it happen.

wow... thanks for sharing this story!

Janek