Random Monday, Early Edition: Barbarians at the Gates

Surviving an attack
A number of WordPress web sites at the same host as Horn Matters were slammed with malicious code last Friday. Sites that did not have the latest updates were hit hard, says our tech support.

Horn Matters was fairly unstable and irregular over the weekend as it was slowly rebuilt and tested; almost everything is back in good working order.

Fortunately I keep up-to-date on software and back up data on a regular basis so we sustained relatively minor damage. One casualty in this attack however was the Serialized Articles, whose code I found out has exploitable vulnerabilities.

Visualization as time travel
I have used visualization as a learning tool for some students. A recent study finds a link between performance and the vision kids have of themselves as adults.

Kids, in other words, are much like adults: They’re not going to work hard unless they envision some sort of payoff. This research suggests that rather than berating them for bad grades, it’d be far more productive to help them shape that vision and understand the direct connection between effort today and success tomorrow.

R.I.P. the Mozart effect
Putting the final nails into the Mozart effect, researchers in Vienna claim definitive results.

ScienceDaily (May 10, 2010) — For over 15 years, scientists have been discussing alleged performance-enhancing effects of hearing classical music. Now, University of Vienna researchers Jakob Pietschnig, Martin Voracek and Anton K. Formann present quite definite results on this so-called “Mozart effect” in the US journal Intelligence. These new findings suggest no evidence for specific cognitive enhancements by mere listening to Mozart’s music.

A sigh of relief
Sometimes in performance a sighing technique can help in moments of stress. An article from Discovery News confirms what I had suspected, sighing can work like a reset button on poor breathing.

Bored in rehearsal? Maybe its your fault
A post at Horn Talk includes an extensive quote from Verne Reynolds’ Horn Handbook, pages 44-45

Being bored in a large ensemble rehearsal says more about the player than about the rehearsal. Orchestral brass players do not play as often as woodwind or string players, and percussionists, happily, play hardly at all. During these non-playing times, we can choose to be mentally active or drift off into dormancy.

A new hall for Stanford
The Bing Concert Hall will seat about 800 in a quasi-theater in the round setup.