Archive for the ‘random coolness’ Category
I’m finishing up the podcast this morning – at least the mp3 version, YouTube might have to wait until I get back – so have a couple of pictures of rocks, taken last weekend at Harrison Hot Springs. Click to enlarge.
Keep yourselves busy a few hours; I’ll be back.
Home again for a few days, under the dome hanging out in environment suits as we test the new… yeah, no, Dr. Horrible taught us about not blogging things like that, right. We’re here ’till Thursday, then it’s back on the road again for a few. Harrison Hot Springs was pretty and relaxing, we played a lot, I met some musicians and we hung out Sunday night late and kicked it a bit.
Whup – I’d type more, but it’s time to throw the battlesuit into the dryer. Enjoy some picspam, or else. There will be a quiz. And by quiz, I mean interrogation. And by interrogation, I mean lasers.
Clallam Bay is up next. You’ll be there, if you know what’s good for you.
Nice little theory posted at marco.org which is very much along the lines of Facebook Destroys Everything, attributing Google’s shuttering of Reader as another step in the centralisation/corportisation of the internet, and replacing free/distributed content with corporate-owned. It’s a nice little rant, tho’ some of the commenters at jwz’s DNA Blog dispute it. You might give it a glance.
jwz also provides your advertising horror of the week: using bone sound transmission to drive ads into passenger’s heads if they try to nap by leaning against windows.
Ah, well, enough of that. We ran into the De Temps Antan. I told Eric that Anna said he’s a better bouzouki player than his brother Simon and everybody exploded. It was hilarious. Ah well, Simon can have the consolation of being hotter. XD
Here, have a phone picture from last night, of the lake from the beach of the festival. Well, of my feet in the lake, really. XD
Heading off today, north! To festival! To Harrison Hot Springs! Back on Monday. I’ll probably be tweeting a lot tho’. Remember: send any geekmusic news you have for the podcast by Monday if at all possible! If you don’t have any, forward that link around to people who might.
Here, have an awesome link – I actually already knew some of this but not this particular early outright-digital state. Ironically, I think this process got more analogue before it got less – there were comparably-small machines in the 60s and 70s which did more or less this, only with a single copy of the photo print. But they sent over ordinary phone lines, and I think those machines were varying tone in a more analogue fashion. But I could be wrong; maybe they were digitising down to these same five-bit images. Anyway, enjoy:
Finally, welcome Radish Review readers; I think you’ll find this post on harassment in person vs. online trenchant. It’s called “Power and Supervillainy.” And my regular readers may also enjoy Scalzi’s Q&A on his anti-harassment-policy policy, including complaints made by some calling his policy anti-free-speech, an idea about which I can only giggle sadly, not manically. And if I’m not giggling manically, you are doing it wrong and I have a heat ray. Shape up – or else.
TO THE NORTH!
I keep trying to see this bat’leth bagpipe and not think “keytar: the next generation.” And it’s not, it’s a generalised midi controller, and acts more like a guitar than a keyboard.
But as much as they try to differentiate it from the keytaur, all I can think is KEYTAR KEYTAR KEYTAR.
I still want to play with one tho’. If it’s actually any good, there should be entire bands made up of Klingons playing it in shows at conventions.
IF YOU DO THIS I WILL BOOK YOU FOR NWCMUSIC. I AM NOT KIDDING, I WILL DO IT.
bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth KEYTAR KEYTAR
How goofy is it that the same day John Scalzi updates about Snailquake – as a proposed companion piece to Sharknado – I simultaneously dig up 20 year old goofy fanzine art I did on Bad Ideas in Mecha Design: MechaSnail?
I actually think that MechaSnail would make a fitting opponent for Sharknado. They’d be highly effective as long as the Sharknado isn’t saltwater OH NO THE SAME FATAL FLAW STRIKES AGAIN WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING MECHASNAIL NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
It’s less a “rainbow” and more a “raindot” or maybe a “rainsmudge,” but it was pretty, in its own little -68db way.
And after the way the internet has been filled with assholes this past week (like eliminationist much? and goddammit Mike Krahulik makes it hard to be a Penny Arcade fan sometimes*) and, I thought, hey, we could all use a little of something not entirely horrible.
At least Kickstarter apologised for the horrible rape-manual project, which meant I didn’t have to decide about (and feel horrible about) either backing or not backing Abby’s webcomic. Because that webcomic looks awesome and I wanted to back it. And now I can. Yay!
I think I need something to kickstart my motivation. Or maybe it’s just that had-to-get-up-early-to-meet-the-plumber kind of 1am-the-next-day guh-just-kill-me-already feeling, because I can’t even get up the motivation to go to bed. How fucked up is that? I should invent a GO TO BED RAY or something. I can’t just repurpose the Fukkit Field, because that just makes you not do anything and you end up typing on the internet…
…oh.
Did I leave that on again? Damn.
*: Seriously. It’s like, I’ve been a fan since 1998. I have the original ill-fated Year One book. I look forward to PAX months in advance. I get to play all the games, and as videogaming events go, it’s one of the less hostile and sexist. But despite that, you get horribleness like this. So I’m torn, right? I’m torn between, “Fuck you, you can’t force me out of here” and “Fucking hell, how the hell can I support these assholes?”
It’s time to play everybody’s favourite quiz game, “What the hell is this?” Featuring me! And a found musical instrument at an estate sale*, which I rescued, and which appears to be some kind of recorder variant. But doesn’t entirely act like the recorders I’ve known. Is there a name for this thing? Check it out:
It’s in F! For FEAR ME. Which really should be PH for PH33R M3 but it’s probably too old for that. The head is totally recorder-like:
But it has keys! And thing is, there was a recorder right next to it, which did not have keys, but was in the same size and has the usual double-holes at the bottom, and which also sounded a lot more like a standard recorder.
This doesn’t sound completely unlike a recorder – it’s still obviously a woodwind and all that – but there’s just some qualities of it which sound different. Maybe that’s just being what I suspect is at least partially hand-made – check out these holes, they look like ones you find on handmade bamboo flutes, only shorter. Also, the upper octave is played – in my experiments trying to figure it out so far – unlike a normal recorder.
Anyway, it’s clearly some sort of recorder variant, but does it have a name?
* IF THIS HELPS: the estate was of a Jewish couple originally from South Africa. There’s acres of old original-8mm-size movie film marked things like “Rhodesia road trip, 1954,” and a projector for the film. Also acres of slides going back 60 years. And pottery supplies priced in South African Rand. If you’re a visual artist, contact me, I’ll tell you where.
Meet Carol Kaye, bass goddess of the The Clique, a.k.a. the Wrecking Crew, the semi-famous group of top-level session musicians who could play anything, anywhere, for anyone, and generally did. You’ve heard her work many times if you’ve heard anything from the mid-20th century.
Here’s a bit of work where she’s featured, on YouTube – fuck yeah bass melodies! – and here’s a cool exercise for bass she invented I should adopt because it’s awesome, also on YouTube. I didn’t see a video of her demonstrating this exercise herself, or I’d’ve linked that instead. She’s still around, too, which is awesome.
For those following along on plumbing adventures: yeaaaaaah that … was not cheap. But not as expensive as it could’ve been. And! No greywater in the ceiling anymore? A bargain at twice the price. Today I start meeting up with drywall repair. We’re going to have to change the wall a little bit. That won’t be cheap either.
THE NEW SINGLE
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