Just what one needs on a holiday weekend, is having to deal with computer woes. It seems that part of the problem behind the Harp Blog being hacked earlier this year was that the template we were using had been compromised somehow. So, I’ve changed the template to the most current (non-hacked) version. Unfortunately, as you can see it’s messed with the formatting somewhat. I’ll be searcing for a tidier template when I get back home, but in the meantime, all the content is the same (and all the posts seem to have remained spam-free, thank goodness), so you can still browse harpy goodness to your heart’s content.

To all the Canadian harpists out there, hope you’re having a good Thanksgiving weekend! Here it is wonderfully sunny, cool and breezy, and the fall colours are just brilliant. Off to go do more food prep (hopefully we’ve kicked this hacker business once and for all!).

The first signs of fall are everywhere here in Ontario: changing leaves, apple trees laden with fruit, cool brisk evenings. Soon wedding season will be giving way to teaching season for many of us. Although as we all know, there’s nothing quite like one of those late-fall outdoor gigs – numb fingers and toes, music fluttering in the chilly wind, layers of sweaters. Good things to keep on hand: fingerless gloves, dressy coats and sweaters, and a good thick padded case for your harp. And don’t forget to stock up on all those back-to-lessons essentials: dictation books, extra copies of method and exercise books, pencils, stickers, receipt booklet, and that all-important new daytimer (hopefully to mark down all those pre-booked gigs for next year!)

1:13 p.m.: Harp Blog technical glitch fixed. I never knew this could happen in WordPress, but after going through all the Harp Blog posts attempting to fix an apparently random formatting glitch, it became clear that the Harp Blog had been hacked (!). Aside from putting some very inappropriate links at the bottom of one of my old posts (from over a year ago), it also put junk spam code in every post on the site (all of which have been either deleted or cleaned up), arbitrarily reset the categories for about 90% of the HarpBlog posts and messed up the formatting on a handful of them as well. So this afternoon I got to go through the whole site editing and re-categorizing everything. You should now be able to find free print music, pictures of harps, events announcements, beginner tips and so on using the categories again. Hoping this is just a one-time freak security glitch! (Grr.) And yes – the first thing I did after fixing everything was change my password.