Archive for the ‘random coolness’ Category
The review raffle has until midnight Cascadian time, so if you’re gonna, go write up a little commentary post about Cracksman Betty in public and link me to it by EOD tonight if you’re gonna!
Here, have this:
You’re welcome.
So I’ve survived my first small brush with the larger YouTube audience with that live video of the Skyrim song (Open Mic Night at the Winking Skeever) I posted last week, and I think I came out I think okay. Many more likes than dislikes, noticable spillover to other performance videos, hopefully one or two of those viewers made it here! (Hiya!)
That was kind of scary, because YouTube is merciless, but coming out okay is good. Almost three times as many likes as dislikes, and over 400 views – it’s not exactly viral, but it’s not bad.
If you missed it, it’s here. It’s about this NPC guard you run into while playing OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, omg, and he’s always complaining about his lot in life. This is kind of him going down to the inn (The Winking Skeever, in Solitude) and doing an open mic. Because that’s the kind of thing I find funny: briefly glimpsed and then crushed hopes and dreams. XD
Anyway, have some links:
Nick Mamatas has a really interesting post on a certain type of story structure he sees a lot.
This is an article about a contest to find exploits in Chrome, but that’s not why I’m linking it. I’m linking it because what the exploit does. Screenshot at URL. I lulzed. ^_^
This is going viral right now. If it’s not already. It’s in Portland, which, well, really, there is no part of that which is not Portland.
Have a good weekend, guys – you doin’ anything? Me, I’m going to a show, Bekah Kelso down in at Sidhehaven, where I played back in November. I’ve never heard her, but I know a lot of people who recommend her music. Road trip!
Supervillainy took a holiday! We saw Le Vent du Nord:
…who proceeded to dedicate a song to us (!) because…
…Anna and I got Canada married at a Quebecois music festival where there was…
…poutine, and I got…
…a hat that is wearing another hat. This is the best hat evar.
Then this happened:
…which is not actually Wil Wheaton playing the accordion while noted fan Rusty Hevelin dances like a maniac. Or is it?
Set out early north from Portland – well, early for me, like 10am – and I have photos and hopefully video from the Portland show! I hope to post a couple… if my camera stops being stupid. (Right now, it’s all BUTTER BUTTER BUTTER BUTTER and I don’t know why.)
On the way back, southwest Washington looked totally like the flat parts of Skyrim. I’m not even making that up. Thanks to a snowfall, you even had the increasing-layer-of-snow up the slopes of the foothills. I took the scenic route north – Jackson Highway / Toledo / Silver Creek / Morton / Route 7 / Route 161 – and it took forever but gorgeous and I have photos! I hope.
But since we don’t have that, at least not yet, please enjoy this parrot dancing like a maniac to dubstep.
Take that, bunny with a pancake on its head. Take that.
A linkfest post? Really? YES. I did enjoy meeting up with Songwriters in Seattle on Monday, tho’. Hey, if any of you make it over here, hi! I’m getting ready for my show in Portland on Sunday. It’s a house concert but I can get you in; just email me if you’re interested!
Anyway, a small number of links:
I haven’t loved an XKCD post this much in a long time.
This is possibly of interest to anybody doing creative work. Publishing houses cutting back so much on their own promotion and shifting that burden more heavily to authors has shoved writers over. It’s not as bad as label musicians yet, tho’.
I used to guerilla garden. I planted edibles. Now the entire town’s going apey for it!
Vostok Lake pointed me at this musician networking website. No idea whether it’s useful yet, but I signed up because hey, why not.
My hair got all red! I have proper supervillain hair now. Well, not all red – red panels, but I held them all in front so you can see ’em! I love it, even if the inside of my shower stall looks like an axe murderer’s rehearsal studio.
…or is that because?
This sounds like a joke, but it’s not. A while ago, when the Web was young, this guy built a hamster-controlled MIDI cage. Notes would be set off by the hamster movements, where they went, and what they did. He released a couple of particularly good sample results online; I still have one. It’s called HAMSTERS! and it’s by HAMSTERS!
This is kind of the same thing, only with tree rings and an optical scanning turntable, controlling a MIDI piano. And it’s kind of awesome:
Of course, the human is making lots of artistic judgements about what kinds of things can happen, when building the device. That was true for the hamster music as well. But even with those caveats, I still think of the result as Entmusic.
I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t agree
Still looking for house concert venues! Know any?
I recently found turntable.fm. It’s kind of a chat site except for playing music. Each room is a also DJ room; you can play music for everybody in your room, your own or from the site’s library. People can take turns playing DJ, and they make it easy to buy tracks you like, which is how they make their money and how they don’t get shut down. You need a US proxy server or a an IP in a block that is generally believed to be in the US because of DMCA bullshit, but if you have that, it’s pretty epic.
Here’s the thing; I live in range of KEXP and C89FM, two of the best independent music stations in North America. I listen to them! They’re locally programmed and that’s awesome, because they’re run by people who care about music.
But they each have their preferences. There’s a definite KEXP sound. Same for C89FM. Once upon a time, a decently-sized city would’ve had a few of these stations – if you were lucky, several – so you’d have non-generic options in the ways you don’t, generally, now. Most towns ended up with zero; we’re lucky even to have the two.
This brings some of that back. Different rooms, different DJs, taking turns, a lot of different styles. You guys, I have bought so much new music in the last couple of days it’s just stupid. And cool. Like a fez.
WE HAVE SHOW POSTERS! TAKE AND SHARE! Print some out for your bulletin board! You must have something, right? I know it’s the Friday of Conflikt, I take the gigs when I gets ’em. NOT ALL OF YOU ARE GOING TO CONFLIKT! So come here if you’re not, and bring a friend. Three bands, three sets, no cover! Show page here, poster:
Oh, I forgot; I’m DJ Solarbirdy on turntable.fm, and am usually in J-Pop-and-Anime or Indie While You Work. But I hang out in the K-pop room sometimes too and I will wander around. Wave if you see me. ^_^
My principles have cost me a fan. That sucks. I don’t have fans to burn, and if I had more business sense, it wouldn’t’ve happened. But I have principles, even when they cost me; you might notice a parallel here between real life and band conceit. That’s not accidental.
Here’s the story.
Elsewhere, I relayed an article about Gary Johnson. He’s the libertarian-who-means-it candidate, not Ron Paul; he lacks Ron Paul’s history of racism, and other fatal liabilities. A self-described lover-of-my-music popped in to say disagreed with Mr. Johnson about almost everything, particularly marriage rights. “Marriage is between a man and a woman.”
So being a married dyke, I said, “Well, that includes me and Anna! So there you go,” quietly unfriended, and that was as far as I was going to take it.
But then this person sent mail, chiding me for how I “can’t tolerate as a friend, someone who has a different path from [my] own” and going on about how people like me are about hypocritical about tolerance.
I wanted overnight to cool down. Anna said I shouldn’t reply at all, but I realised I wanted to make a public response, because, in the end, they won’t read it, but maybe someone else will. And that way, maybe it will mean something – even if it is all way too personal. In this particular context, there really is no way for it not to be.
I have spent my entire. life. fighting efforts to keep and make me less of a person in the eyes of the law. I have spent, as they say, both blood and treasure in this war. My arms are wrecked for typing; I can’t do software anymore. (I’m terrified it’ll spread to playing; I work hard to prevent that.)
I’ve been assaulted, harassed on the streets, received death and rape threats more times than I can count. I’ve done ground work against religious conservatives working nationally-funded initiative and legislative efforts dedicated to making me various degrees of illegal, be it blocking me from employment, mandating public schools teach that I am “illegal, immoral, and wrong,” keeping me outright illegal in several states (as was still true when Lawence v. Texas (2003) finally tossed out those laws), and on, and on, and on.
I have spent hundreds of hours monitoring social-conservative and fundamentalist radio broadcasts, sitting there transcribing the blood slander they espouse. (It’s akin to blood libel, but instead of killing the children of gentiles to make our bread, we supposedly rape or molest the children of heterosexuals to “turn them homosexual,” and that’s asserted to be “how we reproduce.”) I’ve sat there listening to people like Beverly LaHaye extoll the virtues of bullying and child abuse against queer children to force them to “repent.” This included intentionally making your own children homeless.
I have not enjoyed it. Aside from the soul-searing brutality of it all, I loathe politics, and always have. But, of course, I lack the privilege of ignoring these fights.
And somewhere around the 20 year mark, I ran out of patience with people whose idea of “diversity” is keeping me second-class in the eyes of the law, on any level. That’s a sophistry I no longer have time for in my life. If someone wants to have religious beliefs, that’s their own lookout, and none of my concern; when they cry prosecution and demand legal action against me for it, I am done.
So do I lack tolerance for your intolerance of me? Do I lack tolerance for saying me and my family should be less than and unequal in the face of the law? Yes. Yes, I do. I also have contempt for the assertion that not being okay with your legal stances against me is “intolerant.” I mean, really? “You won’t let me legislate against you! You’re INTOLERANT!” Yeah, fuck that. I have had more than my fair share of that, and I am finished with it.
It’s not like I have enough fans to waste any. I most certainly don’t. Losing even one hurts me. It is damned difficult to get started in this business, and I need every fan I can get. The smart thing, the business thing, would be to ignore you and have not unfriended. My principles, here, are costing me.
And I can live with that. I lost a lot of friends for my stand against the Bush administration’s torture and domestic spying regime, and against Mr. Obama’s and the Democratic Party’s support of it. I can lose a fan over this. Such has been my story before, I guess that can be my story again.
So long.
— Solarbird, the Lightbringer
…of Second Thanksgiving, what am I grateful for?
The obvious things, of course – my partner Anna, the ability to plot my way through the financial and political crises of the day, the friends I have, all those things that matter to everyone. They matter to me, too.
But more, I’m thankful for the opportunity and ability to at least try to execute my art. I’ve fought hard for this – both for opportunity and ability – in ways most of you will never know, and really, don’t want to know. I don’t have many fans yet (and I love you, fans I have!) and I may never succeed the way I want or be able to make a living wage at it…
…but I can legitimately try.
Getting to that point has been a monumental battle, physical and emotional, of many phases and many years. And I have attained at least that much, at long last.
And for that, and for this opportunity, I am profoundly grateful.
THE NEW SINGLE
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