Look it up

Mac OS X 1.4 (Tiger) introduced many new features, including Widgets, small programs accessed from the Dashboard. One of these was the dictionary widget, which does just what you would think. It lets you look up a word and gives you the definition. It works very well as long as the word you want is in the Oxford American Dictionary, which the widget uses.

If the widget doesn't find the word you are looking for or if you don't have a Mac, try looking it up on OneLook®. It uses 931 dictionaries (at the time of this post) and produces a very compact list of results to look at, along with the most common definition of the word and lots of links to related and more specialized result lists. Unlike the venerable dictionary.com, OneLook® has no pop-up windows.

A Night with Nick Charles

For anyone who hasn't heard of Nick Charles, he is a fabulous guitarist and songwriter from Australia. I was pleasantly stunned to find out he was playing Las Cruces. Cindy and I were blown away by his playing earlier this evening. It is easy to understand why Nick was chosen “The Blues Artist of The Year” and “Solo Performer of The Year" in his native state of Victoria, the most recent in a long string of awards. He played mostly his own compositions, both instrumental and vocal. An outstanding fingerpicker, he did justice not only to his own work but to songs by Norman Blake and Peter Green and others. Some of his playing reminded me of John Renbourn for the sheer beauty of his guitar instrumentals. Other songs were pure blues, both traditional and his own.

We got a bonus in the concert, too. Steve Smith, a fine musician from Las Cruces, sat in with Nick on mandolin. Steve is an amazing picker himself and it was a treat to see him play with Nick as though they had been playing together for years. Both are very talented musicians but easy with letting each other take the lead.

I had heard Nick's music before on CDs and radio but never had a chance to see him in concert. Besides being a really outstanding musician, he's a very warm and friendly person. He played at the High Desert Brewing Company, a small restaurant and microbrewery in Las Cruces. In between sets, he chatted with audience members about his music and whatever else people wanted to talk about. We talked about house concerts and who knows, maybe we'll get to host one for him next time he comes by this area.