Once again I'm trying to make sense of how to go about replacing our 15+ year old TV set with a HD version. At this point my difficulty is with the definition of 'smart' and what devices need to be of that type. My bigger, philosophical problem is that video components don't do 'component' the way I expect and all of them try to be everything, ( Read more... )

Although I generally try to keep my recording odds and ends confined to the butifidid account, an event from this weekend might have interest beyond that audience. I've been talking with Karen Linsley for a few weeks about the possibility of her singing lead on a couple of the songs that I'd like to have on my next "album1She was in Toronto at the end of ( Read more... )

There were two meetings held at work on Thursday afternoon. The one I was in started with, "Those of you in this room still have jobs." I wasn't certain whether to be happy or sad about that ( Read more... )

I've just come in from gardening and, while doing that, had one of *those* ideas. I wonder whether anyone in filk has tried to rewrite a well-known album for some alternate context. (My personal definition of well-known tends to be pop or rock from the 60s and 70s, diminishing over the following decades. YMMV ( Read more... )

As usual, I've been having fun writing songs for 50/90. The site is up to 383 entries as I type this, everything from partial lyrics to complete, well-produced works. I've had a good weekend, adding five new songs for a total of six since July 4. So far, I'm not embarrassed by any of them...but time could always change that ( Read more... )

One of the things about trying to write songs quickly is that I don't spend a lot of time weighing what I should choose as a subject. It's more, "I can work with that...go ( Read more... )

My brain is about half-convinced that Suzanne Vega wrote a "Game of Thrones" song for her first album in 1985 in spite of the fact that the book came out eleven years after that ( Read more... )

The The 50/90 Challenge site was reset during the past week as a start to this summer's songwriting adventure. People are starting to drift in and make the forums active with chatting about how everyone has been, along with some discussion of writing, composing, playing, recording, mixing, hosting, and the rest of the community's interests. It's ( Read more... )

In this case, I'm talking about the *seasons* being almost normal. Since we first planted raspberries, the first ripe ones from our garden tend to be found on the last day of June or the first of July. Last year was an oddity with them ripening more than two weeks early ( Read more... )

This morning I recorded a quick take of the song that came second in the Conterpoint song contest and uploaded it to the FilkArchive: http://www.filkarchive.org.uk/cgi-bin/song.cgi?FileID=595Read more... )