Learning to Play the Piano, James Rhodes’ Style + Extra

About a month ago, I saw an article on the BBC, with video, about pianist James Rhodes and his attempt to teach the masses to play a Bach prelude (in C, BWV 846) on the piano in six weeks at about 40 minutes per day. I thought it was convincing. I liked how it wasn’t about scales and other monotonous piano and mandatory musical teachings. And I thought six weeks at 40 minutes a day was a reasonable commitment I could commit to just to see if I could do it as a catalyst to a more serious attempt at learning piano. So off I went to order a cheap keyboard and James Rhodes’ How to Play the Piano book, to be supplemented by his website, to learn the piece below!

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Happy Ranniversary to Me!

A year ago, thanks to Jack Scrine of Halifolks, I got something unusual that I did over the years captured on video. It started one of the funnest weeks of my life so far.

Thanks a lot also to Brad Verge, the bus driver who was a fantastic sport to make this video super! And thanks to some people in the local media, especially Kelland Sundahl of ATV news, who did a very fun story, to make my special week what it was!

How Marathon Results Could, and Maybe Should, Be Shown

I recently took a typical online set of marathon results in a table, from the 2016 Mount Desert Island marathon, and turned it into an interactive display and analysis here. I’d embed it to show you but I can’t use JavaScript embedding on WordPress.

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How Running Race Results Could Be Presented

Race results are often given in tables of data that are none too interesting, and a little hard to do much with for anyone wanting to know some things from it not given as part of the results. I recently did some visualization and analysis with some traditional running race results, on Tableau Public software as a self-learning exercise, to show how running race results could be presented in a feasible manner of a few hours’ work now that a model has been created. I’d show it here except I’m not able to use JavaScript on WordPress to embed it. However, you can see what I mean through these links.

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Why the Toronto Maple Leafs did NOT Draft in 1965?

Really, who cares? Right? I wonder how many Maple Leafs fan even know the Leafs didn’t draft in 1965… let alone why?

I didn’t know, though there was no reason I should have known. I like NHL hockey but not THAT much to know such trivia. I wouldn’t have cared, either, except that in doing my first post for a Athletic Analytics, a sports analytics blog I’m starting with JavaScript visuals I can’t embed here, I saw an anomaly in the visual. Curiosity then got the better of me.

In the first post about the number of drafts in which NHL teams participated, I saw that the Toronto Maple Leafs had one fewer year of participation than the other five Original Six teams. I’m not a hockey historian but I know the Leafs had been around long before 1963 when the drafts started, so what was going on?

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