Author: Don

Kilts and daggers

It’s Tartan Day today, so here’s a Scottish fiddle tune, James Scott Skinner’s “Fingal’s Dirk,” in a not-quite-traditional arrangement.

Technical stuff, for those interested: This arrangement was assembled in Logic. The guitars are two instances of the AAS Strum GS-2, run through NI’s Guitar Rig; the bass is the String Studio VS-2; and, the percussion is Logic’s Ultrabeat.

(Want to make music on your own computer? If you have a Windows machine, you can download Cakewalk for free. Add a cheap MIDI keyboard (preferably velocity-sensitive, with pitchbend and modulation wheels) and download a few freebie VST soft synths (u-he has a generous selection, including Zebralette, Tyrell N6 and Triple Cheese), and you will have more more synth power at your fingertips than Keith Emerson could dream of during his glory days, for peanuts.)

Hanami II

The Yoshino cherry is coming into bloom now at the botanical garden. Unlike the crypto-British Okame cherry I photographed earlier, this one is a genuinely Japanese variety. (Click to embiggen and see with better color.)

Other colors on display include red-orange,

pink,

purple

and yellow.

There are many more pictures from yesterday’s outing here.

Real or not?

It’s hard to tell. The screencaps above I believe are genuine, but the pictures below might be fake. Then, again, perhaps London really is turning into an updated suburb of Scarfolk. In either case, it would be difficult to top these, and I haven’t had the time to work anything up.

Posts from previous years appropriate to the first day of the fourth month are archived here.

(I’m posting this a day early because tomorrow is Easter.)

Kansas Orchid Society, March 18

The weatherman predicted storms in the later afternoon, and rather than risk my good camera in bad weather, I made do with my toy camera and its on-camera flash. These are crummy pictures, grainy and harshly-lit, but the subjects make them worth posting. I don’t know the names of most of these. If you do, … Continue reading “Kansas Orchid Society, March 18”

The weatherman predicted storms in the later afternoon, and rather than risk my good camera in bad weather, I made do with my toy camera and its on-camera flash. These are crummy pictures, grainy and harshly-lit, but the subjects make them worth posting.

I don’t know the names of most of these. If you do, please feel free to mention them in the comments.

Botanica, March 17

Click to embiggen. Stacked focus close-ups are always iffy outdoors. If the images don’t line up well, use a lot of filters and pretend it’s art.

Click to embiggen.

Stacked focus close-ups are always iffy outdoors. If the images don’t line up well, use a lot of filters and pretend it’s art.

Hanami 2018

Yesterday, the Okame cherry at the botanical garden reached peak bloom on a sunny day with light wind, and I was able to visit there then. Most years this doesn’t happen, so I took a lot of pictures to record the event. There are more here. As usual, click to embiggen and view with better color.

Curious fact: although Prunus “Okame” is a hybrid of asian cherries and has a Japanese-sounding name, it was actually bred in England.

Hanami

Prunus “Okame” reached peak bloom on a day when I could get to Botanica and the March wind wasn’t gale-force — a rare occurrence. As always, click the pictures to embiggen and see with richer color.

Prunus “Okame” reached peak bloom on a day when I could get to Botanica and the March wind wasn’t gale-force — a rare occurrence. As always, click the pictures to embiggen and see with richer color.

The last Phalaenopsis, and some more yellow

Phalaenopsis. Cross your eyes to see this in three dimensions.

This orchid was already in bloom when I got it back at the beginning of November, and it kept going and going. Every single blossom lasted at least two months. We’ll see if I can get it to bloom again in the fall. (The other Phalaenopsis, the little P. equestris, is still going strong, and it looks like there is a new bloom spike emerging.) (Update (April 14): The last blossom finally dropped off yesterday.)

Click on the images to see them larger and in better color.

Continue reading “The last Phalaenopsis, and some more yellow”

“There is no conspiracy”

First Things? Really?

Yeah, right.

Carelessness and stupidity are insufficient to explain how this thoughtful religious, largely Catholic, magazine can be labeled a source of “hate” and “violence.” It’s extremely difficult to believe — impossible, in fact — that there wasn’t some active malevolence involved.

(Via Kim du Toit.)

The vision of noses

The Vision of Escaflowne dates back to 1996, when animators understood the concept “nose.” Crunchyroll recently added it to their library. It’s allegedly a classic, but three episodes in, I’m not convinced. It seems to be an attempt to combine as many genres as possible. It’s partly shoujo, partly shounen, partly mecha, partly science-fiction, partly fantasy, partly romance, partly war story, partly whatever. Aside from the noses, the show is noteworthy mainly for the soundtrack, composed by Yoko Kanno and her then-husband, Hajime Mizoguchi.1 I may watch more, or I may not.

Continue reading “The vision of noses”