I’m mostly doing graphic design today. But enjoy some nature photos from hatsumode 2015. More at Flickr as usual, but I liked these two particularly.

…celebrating over in the korrasami tag on Tumblr. bbiab.

ps: preorders are still open

eta: I wrote up a thing, on Tumblr, about Korra and Asami. I guess even the band blog is a Legend of Korra blog today. Sorry not sorry about that.

Over the last week, a post that’s well over a year old has received almost 1,000 hits. And most of the people loading it are sticking around long enough to read it, or at least large chunks thereof.

I have no idea why. Or where they’re coming from. None. No referral URLs, no sources given, they’re not search results. I got nothin’.

My best guess it it’s found its way onto some school mailing list. But that’s a complete guess. Anybody got any ideas? Because I got nothin’.

Also it’s Cyber Monday or whatever so go listen to the new single and pre-order the album! We need to pay the mastering engineer. DO IT DO IT DO IT! XD

YES EDIBLE GEODES OH MY GODS I WANT TO MAKE THESE SO MUCH

SCIENCE! Sort of.

I’d seen this going around day before yesterday, but hadn’t hit play. It should’ve been labelled MAD GENIUS AT WORK – HIT PLAY NOW. Because goddamn.

Yaybahar by Görkem Şen from Olgu Demir on Vimeo.

The idea of using long heavy metal cables as resonance objects in and of themselves is pretty brilliant. (Tying them to the soundboards makes it loud, but isn’t the source of the sound generation.) And keep playing after the initial bit; yes, the damn thing is tonal.

It’s called a Yaybahar (emphasis on yay) and was invented by Gorkem Sen. It sounds like a hurdy-gurdy and a sitar and an electric guitar and a cello and an early moog somehow managed to have one very large and kind of weird kid. And I want to invite that kid to my party.

(And thanks to @djwudi for the tip.)

Hey, sorry for all the radio silence. Too many irons in the fire at the moment to blog much – nwcMUSIC stuff, a big show that I’m hoping I can put on in late January, all that sort of thing. Lots of exciting possibilities, but nothing to announce until it happens.

So here, have a costume I made, from the “Korra, Alone” mini-arc which ran a few episodes ago on Avatar: Legend of Korra. (If you haven’t seen it, she’s going around in Earth Kingdom peasant-wear, due to reasons.) It’s not as green in the photo as it is in real life, and I don’t know why, so assume More Greener and you’ll get the idea. I was pretty happy with how it came out, particularly for such a rush job.

Did you cosplay for Halloween? Post pics if you did! 😀

In Character

Out of Character

ps: More costume and cosplay pics from the party on flickr.

Most of my weekend involved power outages and damage control, fortunately relatively little of the latter given everything. So it’s a music links roundup of awesome.

NASA have dumped a huge library of space sounds you can use in music. For free. They’re public domain. THIS IS AWESOME. I have no idea what I’d use any of this for, but I WILL FIND A REASON.

Not on Bone Walker, maybe, but I will find a reason.

Here are some posters about music theory which I have confirmed are incredibly useful, particularly if you can read music. (I can’t, I’m still getting a bit out of them. Also wow some of this shit is weird.)

My friend Ben Deschamps of The Heather Dale Band has finally started releasing some solo work. It’s one of those song-a-week things, and he’s been building up a backlog of material in a bunch of different modes – instrumentals, silly, rock. You might enjoy giving a listen; he’s a really strong guitarist.

And I don’t know Four-Stroke at all, but if you like your punk thrashy, 80sish, and funny, check out Ottawa’s number one punk band on Reverb Nation. I particularly like “(I Wanna Be a) Suburban Jihadi,” which is a free download.

So, yeah. How was your weekend? Less power-spikey, I hope.

Looks like we’re finally going to get that gnome problem in the garden sorted out.

It’s been a busy weekend around the lair – and a bit bloggier than usual, too. You might enjoy “GamerGate True Believers are the Anti-Vaxxers of the Online World,” or maybe my ‘okay I’m done’ rant about Doctor Who, written after walking out on “Kill the Moon.” Check comments in particular on that second post, there are some good ones.

Apparently, some people rather liked the episode. I don’t see how, but hey, carry on.

No, here, it’s been mostly paperwork – even supervillains have to catch up on email and clear the desks sometimes – and a decent bit of Legend of Korra! Yes, I’m finally through all of year three. So far behind but so worth it. If you’re one of the people who didn’t get much out of the first year, give it another go, starting, oh, no later than midway through year two, with “The First Avatar.” It really rocketshots after that. I’m pretty sad that year four is probably the last year – it’s been so good. I’ll miss it.

I never did write up that VCON report, dammit. Wrote a bunch of other things, but not that. Here’s a nice one by Steve Fahnestalks at Amazing Stories, if you want, wherein he was kind enough to give me a little shout-out for my drum work. Thanks, Steve! 😀

But even in all the paper catch-up this weekend, music hasn’t been entirely set aside. It’s just mostly been MIDI instruments, which means lots and lots of keyboarding. I’m… vaguely competent on keyboard – good enough for this – but wow, do I have no emotional feel for it. OKAY LET’S PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS DOOT DOOT DOOT OKAY LET’S PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS AGAIN DOOT DOOT DOOT

I’m trying, I really am, I have touch sensitivity and aftertouch and all that, and I’m using it. But – yeah. It’s just not my thing.

It is useful, though. At least, once I can stop myself from just setting everything to drums and mashing all the keys at once. That is fun. But… kind of useless. And the MIDI tenor sax isn’t entirely bad.

I’m wondering whether I have time to get just good enough on xaphoon to fake my way through a soprano sax solo. Should I try it? I don’t think I have enough time. But it might be fun to try.

PAX Prime tickets went up for sale while I was on the road, and by the time I could stop and add myself to the queue, it was too late. Thanks to Anna, I still managed a couple of days of tickets at face value.

This was the first time I’ve ever been nervous going to a PAX, mostly because of not just last year’s most recent round of crap (and before you ask, other than “I was here first, you fuckers,” here’s why I keep going) but because of the threatened protests by “men’s rights” misogynists.

Thankfully – and typically – they were too disorganised and cowardly to actually do anything in public. I only saw one I could even identify – he wore a “men’s rights” organisation T-shirt with a long name which makes an anti-women acronym; their logo is the venus/woman symbol with a big international NO graphic over it. I have a picture, but I’m not posting it.

But that wasn’t what the show was about; it was instead pretty awesome. I’m really disappointed I chose poorly on Saturday night and missed Abby Howard‘s feminism panel, her tweets made it sound excellent.

The queues weren’t bad this year. From this picture, that sounds like a “lol what” moment, but seriously, they weren’t. For one thing, crowd control second only to Disney. For another, even when long, the whisked right along, it was really impressive.

Welcome to Nerdvana

The big game buzz post-show this year apparently ended up being Gigantic. That surprises me, honestly, because all the buzz I was hearing Saturday night was about Lichdom, which is a lot like “we really like the magical combat and look of Skyrim, let’s turn those up to 90 and drop most of the other stuff.” I played it; if that sounds good to you, then you want this game.

Hadooooooooooooooken!

Evolve’s booth drew a lot of attention, too. Mostly because of the Big Guy here. Paul and I ended up scrappin’ with it ’cause that’s just what happens.

World of Tanks, as always, had a giant-ass tank. I’m pretty sure they bring in a bigger tank every year. Nothing will top the year they brought in an actual tank, but that had to be outside, so I get why they didn’t do that again. Plus there was this bioshock-ish angry bear next to the Gauntlet demo booth that I liked.

I did not know Lenovo had a 27″ Windows tablet! They call it a tabletop, and it’s about the size of one. This is the first Windows Tablet that’s made me go “ooooooh, I do want that, but it’s $1500. Still, that’s a lot cheaper than a “surface,” so maybe in another couple of years it’ll even be doable. I’m not picturing it as a “tablet” of any sort, but damn, as an RPG add? I hung out at the Intel booth playing Risk against the computer for 45 minutes, that’s how cool it was.

I didn’t take a photo, so I’m a bad person and should feel bad. But they had a picture on their website.

Alienware has a new high-end gaming PC that looks spectacular. I mean honestly, this is one gorgeous beast. They say that the atypical shape helps cooling by eliminating dead airflow pockets.

Frankly, I’m not convinced, particularly with the drive bay, and I’m nervous about the GPU bank. There are fans at each corner (or just offset) and I can see what they’re doing, and I’m… they know how to run airflow tests, I’m sure it works well enough. But even given that, the drive bay side smells like Bad Choices to me. And any other cooling options are kind of off the table, because of the shape. I think I want to like it more than I do.

Also, holy crow, I actually won something in a drawing! I enter all the drawings, but of course, so does everyone, so usually I just get a T-shirt or something. Or a cape. Intel did capes two years ago, that was awesome. But this year I won a gaming headset! I may do a review later. You know how I talk about headsets and amp equipment aimed at consumers trying to “help” and being terrible for mixing? Definitely that category. On the other hand, the positioning of sounds in this headset is amazing. I don’t know what they’re doing, but it’s neat.

Lots of cosplay! If I’d had a third day there I’d’ve had more pictures. But I liked Snow White playing Lara Croft, so I had to snap that, and a few others just needed photos even though I was running around so much.

Snow White Plays Lara Croft

Power Rangers!

Game of Thrones – these looked better in person than in photo. Acting!

The Best Ewok

Paul and I went to concerts on Friday night, about which I felt kind of bad later, because I was also going to go to Shubzilla and Death*Star’s big concert block off-site, but I thought that was on Saturday so I didn’t. And then OOPS SAME TIME ;_; but well, that’s how PAX works.

I wasn’t, I admit, into the Triforce Quartet that much – see, most of you people were Nintendo or Playstation people and are all up in the Zelda things, and some of us were SEGA!heads, and chasing rings with hedgehogs, and that’s just how we rolled. Still, they were good. Don’t get me wrong, they performed well and got a standing ovation – it’s just not my thing. But The Doubleclicks were definitely on, and in the last song they got Paul and Storm to join them a song early, and hilarity ensued. Those two groups together really multiply up the funny.

LOOOOOOOT. I don’t have the assortment of T-shirts or the giant balloon Gauntlet spiked hammer when I took this photo, I don’t know what was wrong with me. But HEADSET! and SHOT GLASSES! One of which I didn’t even have to pay for!

I also ran into some people I’d love to talk about and made some early possible arrangements for some other things I’d love to talk about that I can’t talk about, which is why not talking about them is all down at this end of the post because I can’t talk about them.

But if any of it comes through, it’d be awesome. And it’s definitively related to music stuff I do. And it could be pretty epic. And that’s all I can say right now.

I hate secrets. I’m so bad at them. But if they happen, these will be worth it. 😀