WE HAVE SUCH SIGHTS TO SHOW YOU

Seriously, this is part hilarious, and part horrifying. I’m not sure which is the best part. Sensitive DJs and vinylphiles may wish to avert their eyes. XD

Big Petals

I used to post flower pictures a lot back when everybody was on Livejournal; they’re all still up, so if you enjoy that sort of thing, here they are. In the autumn I’d change over to pictures of brightly coloured leaves.

Some of the problems I outlined in the afternoon post yesterday are cleared up, or at least accounted for – plugin status being saved and loaded is working, the asterisk cycling thing is seen by other people and also can be made to go away, loss of synchronisation when changing playlists during playback has been reproduced by dev and they’re interested – but the plugins are still problems. But I can work with this now.

Which means, I finally got to hear some percussion being done by one of our guest artists properly embedded into a mix, and wow, I am totally excited about this track in ways I wasn’t before. 😀 I left some space intentionally for this to be brought in, but knowing ‘a thing will go here’ is not the same as ‘an awesome thing is actually here.’ And the awesome thing that’s awesomeing around in this mix now is pretty awesome.

Because it is. 😀

Also, lots of Norwescon stuff, including this year’s new stage banner, which still isn’t huge but is the largest we’ve had – and we’ve never actually had a dedicated stage banner before, we just reused the concert directions. I thought I’d fix that.

Now if I can just fix those damned plugins…

Anybody knows the original source of this image or the sculptor, let me know? I tried, but Google Image Search didn’t know either. ^_^

eta: That was quick! @revspaced on Twitter reports that it’s a piece called Cutting Records, by David Rinman. Thanks, Liam!

Up late until 1am comping mandolin. So it’s PHOTOSPAM DAY!

The primary reason Anna and I went up island was to see Le Vent du Nord – Anna had bought tickets to the symphony show they were doing with the Victoria Symphony almost a year ago, and friends bought tickets to their more typical bar show up in Cumberland which followed.

The symphony show was a little too respectable for my tastes. The group tends to the conservative – lots of Bach in the programme this year I see, oh look, you’ve got a Beethoven show – and I was in the washroom queue before the show listening to the somewhat older regulars saying things like, “Well, it’ll be different” with a small about of disapproval.

No photos allowed during the show

They won the crowd over, in the end, which was a bit of an achievement. And it’s a nice theatre.

Anyway, after that, we headed up island. The Cumberland show was in a local pub in the actual traditional sense – they have a Dominion-era license from the 1840s and it is indeed a public house. Anna brought Jean-Claude, of course – it’s required!

Jean-Claude Mamut stands in rapt attention!

As you can see, we were front row, again. Anna is a huge fangirl and will not be denied; I’m mostly brought along for the ride. XD Camera conditions were difficult, but I got a few nice shots:

You might recognise this stage from a couple of days ago.

Dark is a supervillain’s favourite colour. Also Batman’s. Think about it.

I got this

The microphone was not actually spring-loaded and did not actually thwock Simon in the eye. It merely looks like that’s what happened. I was not involved. No, honestly, I wasn’t.

The only shot of Olivier that came out.

The energy was good in the pub and we had a lot of fun. After this we went hiking before heading home; I’ll post some nature pictures next.

Oh gods he’s dreaming and making little mrrp noises and just rolled over, now I’m really trapped. Send a crane.

George has fallen asleep on my shoulder. He is snoring. It’s adorable. I can’t move my arm. Send help.

Amongst the news that got somewhat overlooked during the petition-to-SFWA flap of the last two weeks:

• The INSTRUMENT OF MYSTERY! was identified!

• The two-CD-long Destiny came out, with my first voice acting role, and,

• a genuinely nice desert lair went on the market. Any ground- or desert-oriented supervillains looking for a lovely redoubt?

Along the way, I fixed another guitar – I keep repairing instruments I don’t even know how to play XD – and a cool toy appeared! If you have a new enough browser, go play with it, it’s fun.

Finally, this is legitimately hilarious (h/t to Ben Deschamps):

Didn’t get as much done in studio yesterday as I wanted (it was also Cleaning Day) but made some good progress nonetheless. Here, the last week and a half has included too much annoyance: have a toy. (Clicking will take you to another site.)

If you have a browser that supports it (Safari on the iPad does), this is a fun and silly webpage-based synth. It calls itself a theremin, but it’s not, and is very little like one. But it totally is a cool little faux FM analogue synth with which you can make crazy noises of awesome. Go play. 😀