Trivia that matter
New Zealand must have lax or poorly enforced copyright laws. An outfit called “Pixiluv” that ships from there advertises numerous calendars on Amazon.com. Many feature old art and advertisements that are, or should be, out of copyright everywhere, but quite a few others display recent illustrations, such as the Katanagatari calendar above.1
While cleaning house a few days ago, I unearthed the first piece of music I ever wrote. It’s a piano rag, written half a lifetime ago for the first music theory class I was able to fit into my schedule.2 I was curious to see how it sounded after all these years. I could barely play it when I wrote it, and I’m way out of practice these days, so I transcribed it into Logic and let the computer play it.
It’s not as bad as I feared, but not as good as I hoped. Don’t look for the score on my sheet music page. I didn’t really know what I was doing then3, and it shows. The title is “Hairy Toes.” Please don’t ask me to explain that, or what I had in mind in the penultimate section.
Update: Uploaded a recording with a different virtual piano.
… yet the weatherman thinks I’m from France.
On the way to work this morning.
On the way to work this morning. Click to see larger images with more vivid color.
On the way to work this morning. Click to see larger images with more vivid color.
What’s so potentially offensive that Twitter places a warning label on it?
(Via Dustbury.)
I spent part of the afternoon downtown today at the Air Capital Comic Con. Overall, the cosplayers were underwhelming — perhaps they wore their better outfits yesterday — and there was a surfeit of Spidermen and Harley Quinns, but there were a few who made bringing the camera along worthwhile. There are more pictures here.
At the Air Capital Comic Con, November 12, 2017 in Wichita, Kansas. (Update: the cosplayer above is now the subject of a jigsaw puzzle.)
At the Air Capital Comic Con, November 12, 2017 in Wichita, Kansas. (Update: the cosplayer above is now the subject of a jigsaw puzzle.)
I foolishly attended the orchid show last weekend with my checkbook on hand, with the result that I now have half a shelf of mostly “easy” orchids under lights in the kitchen. Most were in flower when I bought them, and you can see them here.
However, the one that is not blooming has perhaps the most interesting history. That is Neofinetia falcata (recently reclassified as Vanda falcata), the “samurai” orchid. According to the Fūkiran Society of America website,
Furan or wind orchid, the Japanese name for Neofinetia falcata, started to be called ‘Fūki-ran’, which means the orchid of the rich and noble people. Many years ago, only the rich and royalty could own Fūkiran, and they searched the country far and wide for rare and unusual varieties. These plants were often covered by a gold or silver net in order to protect them, and people had to cover their mouths with Kaishi (a thin paper usually used for calligraphy) in order not to breathe on the plants while they appreciated them. This, by the way, is the same way the Japanese appreciate a great sword.
Although prices have come down over the centuries, some varieties can still be pricey:
In Japan at auction in 2005, bidders paid from $20,000 to $70,000 for rare varieties of fuukiran which seems a bargain compared to the $300,000 or higher often paid during the 1980’s to late 1990’s.
According to the dealer and most online sources, Neofinetia is fairly easy to grow, as orchids go. It blooms in summer.
At the orchid show last weekend, I got careless and took my checkbook along. Big mistake. I now have half a shelf of allegedly “easy” orchids under lights in my kitchen. As usual, click to embiggen. To view a stereo picture, cross your eyes as you look at the image pair until you see three … Continue reading “Orchids, mono and stereo”
At the orchid show last weekend, I got careless and took my checkbook along. Big mistake. I now have half a shelf of allegedly “easy” orchids under lights in my kitchen. As usual, click to embiggen.
To view a stereo picture, cross your eyes as you look at the image pair until you see three images. Focus on the center image, and the image should snap into three dimensions. It’s not difficult, but it does take a little practice.
Not pictured: the Masdevallia I took home. The dealer claims that he’s been able to accustom many pleurothallids to the Kansas climate. If I can keep this one thriving, I might try growing a Dracula species next year.
Update: Better pictures of Phalaenopsis equestris, and one of Masdevallia Redwing.
It’s the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Be sure to torture a dissident, starve a kulak, censor a newspaper, and shoot anyone who disagrees with you. Comrade Lenin would’ve wanted it that way.
Some of the orchids on the sale tables at the Kansas Orchid Society show, November 4-5, 2017, at Botanica in Wichita, Kansas. A couple of panoramas of the show. These are large pictures; right-click and open in a new window to see at full size. Some low-resolution interactive panoramas of the orchid show. Click on … Continue reading “Orchid show, odds and ends”
Some of the orchids on the sale tables at the Kansas Orchid Society show, November 4-5, 2017, at Botanica in Wichita, Kansas.
A couple of panoramas of the show. These are large pictures; right-click and open in a new window to see at full size.
Some low-resolution interactive panoramas of the orchid show. Click on the titles to see them in motion at their Flickr pages.
Bulbophyllum, pleurothallids and miscellaneous genera at the Kansas Orchid Society’s show and sale, November 4-5, 2017 at Botanica in Wichita, Kansas. Click to embiggen and to see with better color. Right-click and open in a new window to see the pictures at maximum size.
Bulbophyllum, pleurothallids and miscellaneous genera at the Kansas Orchid Society’s show and sale, November 4-5, 2017 at Botanica in Wichita, Kansas. Click to embiggen and to see with better color. Right-click and open in a new window to see the pictures at maximum size.
Phalaenopsis, Dendrobium, Oncidium and allies at the Kansas Orchid Society show at Botanica in Wichita on November 4 and 5, 2017. As usual, click to embiggen and see with better color.
Phalaenopsis, Dendrobium, Oncidium and allies at the Kansas Orchid Society show at Botanica in Wichita on November 4 and 5, 2017. As usual, click to embiggen and see with better color.
Mostly Vandas, slipper orchids and their allies at the Kansas Orchid Society show at Botanica in Wichita on November 4 and 5, 2017. As before, click to embiggen and see with better color.
Mostly Vandas, slipper orchids and their allies at the Kansas Orchid Society show at Botanica in Wichita on November 4 and 5, 2017. As before, click to embiggen and see with better color.
Mostly Epidendrums and Cattleyas and their allies at the Kansas Orchid Society show at Botanica in Wichita on November 4 and 5, 2017. Click to embiggen and see with better color. There’s lots more to come.
Mostly Epidendrums and Cattleyas and their allies at the Kansas Orchid Society show at Botanica in Wichita on November 4 and 5, 2017. Click to embiggen and see with better color.
There’s lots more to come.
“Neighbor” is a synonym for “jackass.”
A long time ago, back before the last ice age, I came across a short piece called something like “In Space with Runyon Jones” in a collection of science fiction stories. It was a series of vignettes in which the young Jones encounters a variety of aliens while traveling in spaceships, which the editor of the anthology had gleaned from a novel by Norman Corwin. I was curious to read the rest of the book, but it was long out of print by then, and has never been reprinted. I never found it in any library or used book store.
A few years ago, I remembered the story and thought that perhaps it might be possible to locate a copy of the book online. While searching, I found that Corwin’s story had first been a radio play, “Odyssey of Runyon Jones,” broadcast in 1941. It’s available here. Once you accustom your ears to the low-fidelity sound, it’s entertaining listening. Runyon’s dog Pootzy has been hit by a car and killed, and Runyon wants him back. He braves bureaucracy, meets Father Time and Mother Nature, and eventually finds his way to Curgatory and a trick ending.
Ten years later, Corwin turned the radio play into the novel Dog in the Sky, of which I eventually located an affordable copy. In addition to expanding the episodes in the play, he introduced a sub-plot involving a Mr. B.L.Z. Bubb, a bureaucrat very interested in Runyon’s quest, and adds details of Runyon’s adventures as he travels from planet to planet. The Bubb business is never very interesting and it eventually fizzles out, but the aliens Runyon meets are what caught my attention in the excerpts I read years ago, and are what might make the book worth reprinting someday. There are quite a variety of them, including an interplanetary perfume salesman, a lonely robot, a very important businessman from Venus, and a spooky cat/woman. And a certain 62Kru:
62Kru returned to his monologue as though nothing had happened. “Love is science. Science is love. That is all the protons and isotopes know, and all they need to know. The beta ray hankers for the gamma, both are enamored of the delta, and all in turn adore the lambda.
You see, friend, we Hankerites deplore the fact that the galaxies are rushing away from each other. This is because of a misunderstanding which occurred some billions of years ago. We aim to rectify, restore and reunite the estranged universe, to bind all together under the harmonious love of the true Hruh, whose throne is everywhere and anywhere. Blasphemers and atheists have tried to prove that Hruh is really nothing but
but the true Hankerite is unshakable in his faith, resolute in his virtue, confident in the supremacy and inviolability of love, and we have already killed several million disbelievers to prove this.
*****
Something else I stumbled across at Archive.org: the A.M. Yankovic/W. Carlos version of “Peter and the Wolf.” It’s not the best example of either’s work, but it has its moments. The recording is probably still under copyright, so it may disappear from the site at any moment.
(My favorite version is the that by the Royal Ballet School, with Anthony Dowell as narrator and Grandfather. It starts here.)
It’s the season when I search for calendars that I can stand to look at every day during the coming year. I recently visited a shop at a regional mall, where I was surprised to see not only a Hatsune Miku calendar, but also two of Sailor Moon, one large and one small.
I found a number of Japanese calendars online that might be of interest to some visitors here. Unfortunately, most listings don’t include a sample image. The calendars are probably like the ones I’ve bought in the past, with six poster-sized pages, each representing two months, rather than twelve foot-square images.
A curiosity: there’s a Crassula ovata calendar, though the illustrations displayed don’t much resemble a jade plant. C. ovata is an easy plant to grow, aside from being a magnet for mealybugs, but I wasn’t aware that it’s “lucky.”
Elsewhere, there are calendars of Edward Gorey and Heath Robinson, but none of Glen Baxter.
