A Leslie Wong Blog

When I bought a Nexus S in December, I had problems using the Android keyboard because I have big fingers. They aren’t the sausages I remember when I shook George Duvivier‘s hand, but they’re big.

Inevitably, when I used the keyboard in the portrait mode, a key press would often result in a mistyped letter. I thought a Bluetooth keyboard would help with this problem and I miraculously received one for Christmas.

The Apple Wireless Keyboard follows Apple’s design aesthetic, which I happen to like (in spite of the Macintrash category I use on this blog).

I thought it would be a simple task to pair the two Bluetooth devices, but for several months, I was unable to find a suitable IME app that would work. You would just think it would work, but it didn’t. Last December, I tried Teksoft’s BlueInput demo and Elbrain’s BlueKeyboard JP. Neither of them worked at the time – I couldn’t get the keyboard to pair with the phone.

I don’t know if it was the Gingerbread update to 2.3.3 or an update to BlueKeyboard JP, but the last time I tried to connect them, the Nexus S and the Apple Wireless Keyboard started working together. I did the following:

Finally, open an app that uses text input. Touch and hold (long press) in the text box until “Edit text/Paste/Input method” pops up. Select “Input method” then select “BlueKeyboard JP.” In the Status bar, next to the Bluekeyboard JP notification icon, it will say, “Connecting….”

Elbrain’s documentation for Bluekeyboard JP shows that the notification icon changes color for three different states – Disconnected, Connecting and Connected. It’s very subtle.

I’m currently using version 2.16 of Bluekeyboard JP, which has ads displayed at the bottom of the screen. Since I got Bluekeyboard JP working, I thought I’d use the paid version, which has a user dictionary, but the comments in the Android Market for BlueKeyboard Pro JP say that the paid version also has ads.

Update: I just installed Teksoft’s BlueInput demo 1.8 and it also works, pretty much the same as BlueKeyboard JP.

I saw him at Bradley’s many times.

NY Times Obituary

Listen to Hank Jones on Marian McPartland ‘s Piano Jazz with guest host Bill Charlap:

In the past couple of months, my headphones have failed. The ear pads on my fifteen year-old Sony MDR-V2 headphones began to deteriorate. The wiring connections at the jack and drivers became intermittent. I soldered on a new jack, but it was difficult to get the insulation off the fine gauge wire. I got tired of fixing them and figured I got my money’s worth. My earbuds started having an intermittent connection too.

It was time for new headphones. I’ve been in a few recording studios in the past 30 years, and I often saw Sony MDR-V6 headphones being used. These fit my budget (~$70 USD) and all those recording studios can’t be wrong. There’s even a Wikipedia entry for the MDR-V6. The headphones are circumaural – they go over your ears. The sound reproduction is accurate.

When I ride my bike, I use earbuds, but only in one ear, so I’ll be able to hear the SUV, driven by a woman talking on the phone, nearly hit me.

I chose a lower price point for earbuds, since I’m mostly listening to podcasts and the whizzing wind isn’t really conducive to high fidelity. Most of my music is ripped at 192 kbps VBR anyway.

I narrowed it down to the ~$30 USD Sennheiser CX300 ear buds and the ~$33 USD Sony MDR-EX75. I bought the Sennheisers. Hopefully they’re not counterfeit .

The great jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died yesterday in California. Peter Keepnews wrote an obituary at the New York Times.

Wikipedia has Freddie Hubbard’s discography.

Over the past 35 years, I was fortunate to see Freddie Hubbard perform many times. The first was in the early ’70s, when I took this photograph at a concert in San Francisco.

I was always partial to the trumpet, maybe because two of my friends, Bruce Baxley and Eugene Madsen, both played. I took lessons with a rental trumpet when I was a kid, but at Christmas, it came down to a trumpet or a bike, and the bike won.

When I moved to the mecca of jazz, New York City, the first thing I bought when I sold a photograph was a Yamaha Flugelhorn, a YFH-631 (now the 631G). My friend, Tim Luey (I think mistakenly), told me a fluegelhorn was easier to play than a trumpet. One year, while attending Comdex in Las Vegas, I bought a Bach Stradivarius at a pawn shop. Both of them are in the closet.

David Remnick, at The New Yorker, compiled a list of 100 Essential Jazz Albums after doing a profile of jazz broadcaster Phil Schaap.

I used to listen to Phil Schaap and Bird Flight on WKCR, when I was up that early. I also always used to play Charlie Parker’s rendition of Just Friends on the juke box at Bradley’s, which closed in 1998, about the same time my life started going downhill.

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We bought a Samson C01U, a large condensor, USB connected, microphone for direct recording to a computer.

The microphone includes a USB cable and a 2.75″ (69.85 mm) table top tripod stand. I recommend a heavy desktop base like this On Stage DS7200B Adjustable Desk Microphone Stand and the Samson SP01 Shockmount, which cuts down on vibration when that truck drives by, but makes it look really professional.

It’s pretty much plug and play with Windows or Macs, but Sansom has a “software preamp,” SoftPre applet, that has an input level meter, volume control, high-pass filter and phase switch.

Skype will never sound any better.

It’s pianist’s Cedar Walton’s 74th birthday today.

all about jazz has his biography and an interview by Russ Musto.

Google has Cedar Walton’s discographies.

February 12-17, 2008, he’ll be at Yoshi’s in San Francisco and Oakland.

You can get his Underground Memoirs album somewhere.

The great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson died today. You can read his obituary at the New York Times (free registration required) or the Los Angeles Times.

I only heard him live once, at El Matador on Broadway in San Francisco. Fortunately, we still have his music to remember him.

Trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis turned 46 today. I have a faint recollection of complimenting him on his set outside Sweet Basil, (or was it Joanna’s) in the early 80′s. That’s a lot of water under the bridge.

Currently, my favorite work of his is Doin’ (Y)Our Thing, on his album, From The Plantation To The Penitentiary.