Judy says I should post more
and I should, really. She's right.
So let's start off: Melinda's off on the east coast visiting Cornell and Columbia. She's on a bus right now, en route to Cornell, having just gotten off a red-eye flight into JFK. Glad that's not me, but I'm sure she'll have lots of fun when she gets to Cornell.
We hiked up along the Lost Coast during spring break; really astoundingly beautiful, though it's too bad that it was most beautiful when it was cold and rainy. splag, no way that on this particular trip I stepped somewhere where no one else has. Maybe when I climbed that one cliff looking for a camp site, but I doubt it.
Thought: the word count thing that judytuna found is definitely cool... would be cooler if it omitted "closed-class" words (articles, pronouns, etc). Gimme nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. What could be cooler still, I think, would be to see the words that are (relatively) unique to one users' posts within a community. Alas, I'm not going to implement it. Any takers?
(full disclosure; the music has since changed, going through Lambert, Hendrix and Bavan singing "Watermelon Man" to mvt. IV of Beethoven symphony #3 (David Zinman conducting if anyone cares.) I'm still not sure how I feel about my playlist randomly playing just one movement of a symphony. I could prevent this, but as I said, I'm not sure how I feel. Thoughts, anyone? Also, I love nested parentheses in prose writing.)
I've been wasting time on iCompositions.com listening to the songs that people make in GarageBand (basic apple DAW software on the Mac which happens to have a really nice loops library and some good effects). Most of them are crap. *Especially* (and these are truly unfortunate) the "Jazz" and "Classical" compositions. Without exception, "Classical" can be taken to mean I-ii-V-I piano rock (with a formulaic modulation to some semi-related key to sound clever). "Jazz", with only the barest of exceptions, can be taken to mean "Smooth Jazz" or "Downtempo". Some of the electronic and blues stuff is surprisingly decent, especially given how much of it is just built up of loops with a melody instrument riding over the top. Phillip Glass would be proud. I'm tempted to flood the "classical" section with absolutely bizarro serialist stuff.
Speaking of which, I've been inspired by Umesh's website to put some of my artistic output online once again. Check out my website sometime later today and stuff will be there - I'll get to work as soon as I post this.
And speaking of artistic output, I have my first pottery class today. totally looking forward to it, except that it's going to drain time from working on my final project for my animation class.
(more disclosure: music is "Mama Perfecta" by Manu Negra. Question: why do people post the music they're listing to? Is it just to show off how (un)cool my music collection is? are you supposed to be impressed at my erudition for listening to semi-obscure spanish musicians? am I just being too cynical? yes. But now at least the music is something I can get behind: "A day in the life of Man Ray" by Ben Allison & Medicine Wheel. Check it out, if you have ever been known to like jazz. Ben Allison is a bass player, Medicine Wheel the rest of his group. I tend to think of them as Steve Reich to MMW's Phillip Glass. Actually, I don't. I just made up that metaphor, but I like it.)
I won't bore all y'all any further. The song ended.
So let's start off: Melinda's off on the east coast visiting Cornell and Columbia. She's on a bus right now, en route to Cornell, having just gotten off a red-eye flight into JFK. Glad that's not me, but I'm sure she'll have lots of fun when she gets to Cornell.
We hiked up along the Lost Coast during spring break; really astoundingly beautiful, though it's too bad that it was most beautiful when it was cold and rainy. splag, no way that on this particular trip I stepped somewhere where no one else has. Maybe when I climbed that one cliff looking for a camp site, but I doubt it.
Thought: the word count thing that judytuna found is definitely cool... would be cooler if it omitted "closed-class" words (articles, pronouns, etc). Gimme nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. What could be cooler still, I think, would be to see the words that are (relatively) unique to one users' posts within a community. Alas, I'm not going to implement it. Any takers?
(full disclosure; the music has since changed, going through Lambert, Hendrix and Bavan singing "Watermelon Man" to mvt. IV of Beethoven symphony #3 (David Zinman conducting if anyone cares.) I'm still not sure how I feel about my playlist randomly playing just one movement of a symphony. I could prevent this, but as I said, I'm not sure how I feel. Thoughts, anyone? Also, I love nested parentheses in prose writing.)
I've been wasting time on iCompositions.com listening to the songs that people make in GarageBand (basic apple DAW software on the Mac which happens to have a really nice loops library and some good effects). Most of them are crap. *Especially* (and these are truly unfortunate) the "Jazz" and "Classical" compositions. Without exception, "Classical" can be taken to mean I-ii-V-I piano rock (with a formulaic modulation to some semi-related key to sound clever). "Jazz", with only the barest of exceptions, can be taken to mean "Smooth Jazz" or "Downtempo". Some of the electronic and blues stuff is surprisingly decent, especially given how much of it is just built up of loops with a melody instrument riding over the top. Phillip Glass would be proud. I'm tempted to flood the "classical" section with absolutely bizarro serialist stuff.
Speaking of which, I've been inspired by Umesh's website to put some of my artistic output online once again. Check out my website sometime later today and stuff will be there - I'll get to work as soon as I post this.
And speaking of artistic output, I have my first pottery class today. totally looking forward to it, except that it's going to drain time from working on my final project for my animation class.
(more disclosure: music is "Mama Perfecta" by Manu Negra. Question: why do people post the music they're listing to? Is it just to show off how (un)cool my music collection is? are you supposed to be impressed at my erudition for listening to semi-obscure spanish musicians? am I just being too cynical? yes. But now at least the music is something I can get behind: "A day in the life of Man Ray" by Ben Allison & Medicine Wheel. Check it out, if you have ever been known to like jazz. Ben Allison is a bass player, Medicine Wheel the rest of his group. I tend to think of them as Steve Reich to MMW's Phillip Glass. Actually, I don't. I just made up that metaphor, but I like it.)
I won't bore all y'all any further. The song ended.