Psalm 1 (NIV)

Psalm 1

BOOK I
Psalms 1–41

 ¹ Blessed is the one
   who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
   or sit in the company of mockers,
² but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
   and who meditates on his law day and night.
³ That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
   which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
   whatever they do prospers.  ⁴ Not so the wicked!
   They are like chaff
   that the wind blows away.
⁵ Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
   nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
 ⁶ For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
   but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

1 Corinthians 1 (NIV)

1 Corinthians 1

 ¹ Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
 ² To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours:
 ³ Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving

 ⁴ I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. ⁵ For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge— ⁶ God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. ⁷ Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. ⁸ He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

A Church Divided Over Leaders

 ¹⁰ I appeal to you, brothers and sisters,^[a] in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. ¹¹ My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. ¹² What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas^[b]”; still another, “I follow Christ.”  ¹³ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? ¹⁴ I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, ¹⁵ so no one can say that you were baptized in my name. ¹⁶ (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.) ¹⁷ For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Christ Crucified Is God’s Power and Wisdom

 ¹⁸ For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written:    “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
   the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”^[c]
 20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²² Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
 ²⁶ Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. ²⁷ But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him. ³⁰ It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. ³¹ Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”^[d]

First Try Using Tables

It is a big challenge for me to use tables to design my homepage although I want to use it to beautify my website. It took me so long to get the right way to make my homepage look like the way I wanted. Now, it is still not the way I want. I will continue fixing it.

I now appreciate the web designers more. I had no ideas it needed so much creativity to design a web page. Because I have seen the web pages everyday, I am so used to seeing these website designing without thinking how much effort the creators need to put into.

First Video

Last Saturday, I video recorded one of my students, Jenny Li, who played the first movement of the Sonatina in C, Op.55 No.1 by F. Kuhlau. Then, I uploaded this video clip to the my homepage under "Works by My Students."

You can take a look here:
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~ssf270/studentworks.html

I will continue this project by putting up more materials.

My Role of Group Project

Last week, Dr.Gilbert assigned each student in class in one of the three groups. The groups were named after the RGB colors, red, green and blue. I am in the Red Team with two other classmates, Oscar Alejandro Baez Gonzalez and Aurora Dreger. Alejandro and I are in the music education program while Aurora is in the dance education program.

My role in this project is to create a website that can link all my piano students together. The reason why I had this idea is because I always thought it was unfortunate that my own students and parents do not have many chances to engage with each other. I would like this website to be a small music community for my students and parents.

This page will contain three main parts. First, the part where I will upload audio and video clips of many professional musicians' performance. I know that learning music instruments costs a lot of money as well as buying CD's and going to live ocncerts. Not every person can afford buying expensive CD's. But, I find that observing from the professional musicians is one of the best ways to motivate students and learn from. Therefore, I would like to offer my students this opportunity to watch the performers through this page.

The second part of this website will contain my students' recording works. I find it very important that my students can share and learn from each other. I like the idea that they are learning piano and music together. No one is learning music by themselves. This music community should help them develop their music learning interests.

The last part will be the comment page. I will have to figure out a way to make this page because I have not learned how to make posting comments yet.

Life without Computer Functioning Normal

Starting from last week, my laptop has experienced some technical difficulties. It may be because of the virus attack so it kept shutting down the computer. I spent the whole week fixing and thanked my friend who helped me to re-install the Window XP during the weekend.

It was a horrible week because I could not use my laptop to do my homework. I was trying to imagine what if my laptop did not get fixed by the last week of this session. It got me into thinking about life without technologies. It could be very scary.

Now, my laptop runs fine now and I can continue working on the homepage and the blog.

Music and Technology

So, music and technology are related? I have never thought about that question deeply before the first class of Technological Resources for Performing Arts taught by Dr. John Gilbert. I never thought about that the invention of piano was an important and successful experiment of music technology during the early eighteenth century. The class made me start thinking about how closely music and technology are related.

Without new technologies, music in this world would not be the same. Without the microphones and recording devices, singers and musicians would not be able to record their works, producers would not be able to produce albums. Without selling albums, music would not be promoted and spread to everywhere in the world. Recently, filming music videos became a popular technique to promote artists. It includes the audio and visual aids that catch audiences' attention more. When we go to concerts by popular singers, we see a lot of fantastic scenes, including the lighting. It is the technologies make it happen.

In asian areas, including Taiwan and Japan, singing karaoke became one of the most popular activities during the leisure time. The invention of the karaoke machines was also a success and helped the businessmen to make a lot of money. People do not have to be professional musicians to use music technologies. Moreover, internet became one of the popular approaches to music. We often download music and songs from the internet and often go to websites for watching music videos. I always share the music and songs with my friends online.

In conclusion, I became more appreciated. Because of the new technologies, music became the core of many people's life. Because of the music, people came closer to each other. Music and technologies have brought most people together and helped people to share the music more easily.