Something about a dragon?

Josh has seen fit to present me with another award. This time it’s the “Dragon’s Loyalty Award.” Gee, thank you, Josh. It’s a great honor, etc., etc., etc. Someday I may forgive you.

Dragon's Loyalty Award

These are the rules:

1. Display the award on your blog.
2. Announce your win with a post and denounce thank the blogger who awarded you.
3. Present 15 deserving bloggers with the award.
4. Link your awardees in the post and let them know of their being awarded.
5. Write seven interesting things about yourself.

These “awards” are a bit too much like chain letters, and I’m not going to pick 15 more suckers. Anyone listed in my blogroll is worthy of an award. If this exercise looks like fun, feel free to participate.

I’m running out of fascinating trivia about myself. ((The most interesting facts about me are none of your business.)) Let’s see, what haven’t I mentioned before?

1. I had piano lessons as a kid, but they didn’t take. When I was around 20, I got tired of being musically illiterate, so I bought an old upright and found a teacher. Later I took a couple of semesters of music theory at the university. I would have taken more, but the theory classes were scheduled for the convenience of freshman music majors, not non-major upperclassmen with jobs and complicated schedules.

2. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still don’t.

3. I deliberately mis-matched my socks during my college years. Similarly, I often wore parti-colored hose when I was active in the SCA.

4. I prefer the fragrance of dianthus to that of roses.

5. I do know how to drive, but I generally don’t.

6. When I was 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, I wandered all over Brigham City, Utah, sometimes with friends, more often alone. Sometimes my friends and I rambled around the lower slopes of the mountain east of town, or we rode our bikes to campgrounds in the canyon to the southeast. I’d pack a lunch and spend entire days at the town park by myself. When I was 11, I explored much of San Francisco north of Golden Gate Park on my bike. I could ride to Baker Beach from home in five minutes, and I’d usually have the sands all to myself. Present-day opponents of free-range parenting would have been aghast.

7. I’ve had fun with depression throughout my life. I rarely mention it because, well, it’s depressing, and others have faced worse and written better about their experiences. I figure it cheated me of about ten years of my youth. Little blue pills have made life a bit easier for me and those who must deal with me. ((This is not a request for advice or inspirational messages. I most likely will never allude to the subject again.))

Not Tweety Pie

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.

Now you see it, redux

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.

Welcome to Gensokyo

Reimu Hakurei

“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.

Shipwrecked

Captain Murasa's Spiced Rum_by_mikoneyoru

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.

Guess again

Nope

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.)

Musical immaturity?

If you’re worried about losing your love of new music, your fears are justified. That’s according to new research that finds listeners reach “maturity” around age 33. In other words, you’re done with discovering new music when you reach your mid-thirties.

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.)