Trivia that matter
There are still a few glitches, but it looks like I finally have my website back after a botched migration. (Thank you so much, InMotion Hosting, for a most memorable weekend.) To celebrate, here’s Sylvain Chomet to show why I am not a twit, featuring a cameo by President Selfie.
Update: It seems InMotion forgot to repoint both nameservers. Within 24 hours — in principle — everything should be working properly. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Update II: See also Terry Teachout.
A recent message from the website host:
System Administration is currently migrating or will be migrating your account … to a newer server to better meet your needs. You should have no downtime during this move, and will be notified with your new server information once it completes. Please postpone changes until the move has been completed and DNS propagation completes.
This may be why my recent posts disappear and reappear and disappear again, and why Steven’s recent comment vanished overnight. You might find it annoying. I find it infuriating.
The monsoon rains paused long enough for me to walk in to work today. I spotted the above on a traffic light pole. I have no idea what it signifies.
(Blame Josh for this one.)
“Eternal Shrine Maiden” is the theme of the first level of the first Touhou game, Highly Responsive to Prayer. ((You can tell it’s Touhou by the obsessive 3+3+2 rhythms, i.e., dotted quarter, dotted quarter, quarter note. The notation component in Logic annoyingly assumes that every dotted quarter must be immediately followed by an eighth note. Apparently the coders have never played a snappy strathspey or a Touhou tune.)) Like most of ZUN’s tunes, there are innumerable versions on Youtube of widely varying degrees of listenability. For no good reason, I made my own. As usual, the performance is by my computer, though I think this arrangement is playable by any pianist with passable thirds and a reliable sense of rhythm.
Update: I uploaded the score to MuseScore.
I’d planned to work on music this evening, but it’s hard to concentrate when sirens keep going off nearby.
Update: It looks like the main event is scheduled for Saturday.
Update II: I suppose I should be grateful that there weren’t any tigers loose in the area.
The audio player that I’ve been using no longer works, so I’m trying a new one. Let me know if this doesn’t work for you.
The tune is “Captain Murasa,” yet another piece from the vast Touhou project. I worked on the arrangement for a while, then got sidetracked on other projects. I doubt that I’ll do more with it, so here is my not-quite-satisfactory version as it is. (It’s not entirely my own work; parts of it are almost verbatim from the transcription I worked from. Also, that’s my computer playing, not me.)
Incidentally, if Minamitsu Murasa asks you for a ladle, be sure the one you give her has a hole in it.
(The illustration is from here.)
Update: The new player doesn’t work so well when there are many tunes on a page. Let’s try a different one.
Update II: Uploaded a better-sounding recording.
I don’t care how good your blues band is, 8 a.m. Sunday morning is not the time to rehearse.
I finally finished going through all the pictures from Figments and Filaments last week, and my eyes are bleary. You can see them all here.
I uploaded a picture taken several pairs of glasses ago to How Old Do I Look? The MS robot is not very accurate, but give it credit for originality: throughout my life I’ve been told that I look young for my age, not a decade or two older.
(Via Steven.)
Is that so?
On my way home from Overland Park this past weekend, I listened to Be Bop Deluxe, who fall within the 33-year limit. However, on the way up I listened to Floating Cloud and Onmyouza, both of whom are recent bands active in the 21st century. I recently compiled an iTunes playlist of favorite non-classical tunes. It includes plenty of pieces from my youth by Fairport Convention, Frank Zappa, the Lovin’ Spoonful, Spirit, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, Cream and so on. But there are also such artists as the Hot Club of Cowtown, Jun Togawa, ((Hers is the only version of “Pachelbel’s Canon” I can tolerate.)) No Strings Attached, Gjallarhorn, Yuki Kajiura, Rare Air, Mayumi Kojima, Susumu Hirasawa and others whom I never heard until well after my 33rd year.
In fact, I’ve found more music in the past 15 years than in all my years in the previous century, thanks to the internet. I may be atypical, but I don’t think I’m unique. I seriously doubt that I’m the only person my age who actively searches for new music to listen to.
(Via Dustbury.)
… editing the rest of the weekend’s pictures, here are a few videos that might be of interest.
(Via Peregrinations, Borepatch and the Brickmuppet.)
Update: One more, via JCW.
The Dealers’ Hall at Figments and Filaments 2015
Here are a couple of panoramas from the weekend. Above is the dealer’s hall at the Figments and Filaments site; below is the booth of one of the vendors. (If you need fancy trim for a sewing project, Calontir Trim is the place to go.) These are best seen in full-screen.
A couple of specimens I found in the hall at Figments & Filaments this evening.
One recalls the literary writer who, after grasping a story of a Mars voyage as a metaphor for isolation and the precariousness of relationships, realized that at a deeper, more subtle level it might even be a story about an actual trip to Mars!
(From the comments here.)
This is a test of the emergency blogging system. This is only a test. Had this been a real emergency, you would have been instructed to run around in counterclockwise circles waving your laptop overhead, screaming.
(This post should automatically appear on my Facebook and Tumblr pages. Theoretically.)
Update: The “publicize” function in WordPress’ Jetpack works perfectly with Tumblr, which matters very little because I rarely use my Tumblr account. It does not work with Facebook, which matters somewhat more. True, I loathe Facebook and almost never post there. However, it’s the best way to keep tabs on many friends and family, most of whom rarely venture into the more demanding realm of weblogs. It would be convenient for my posts here to automatically appear there, but I’ll have to find some other way to do it.
(If I ever do manage to connect my site to Facebook, it will be interesting to see how many of my “friends” unfriend me when they realize I have conservative tendencies.)
