| I miss music |
[Mar. 3rd, 2009|10:02 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | essay, music, weight | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Mozart - "Requiem" | ] |
I think I miss singing. Last week I couldn't get the Durufle Requiem out of my head (beautiful piece of music), and today I have the same problem with the Mozart Requiem, probably due to this 30 Rock episode. Maybe after the whole wedding thing I'll look into rejoining Austin Civic Chorus.
Another bit of self-reflection: The last few weeks I've been waaaay too moody. Insignificant things will bring me down, but then I'll feel better for no reason. I'm not sure how to work on that exactly.
We're seeing Watchmen at midnight Thursday and I'm quite excited!
Also, my weight sure bounces around a lot. |
|
|
| the usual |
[Sep. 15th, 2008|10:40 am] |
Clinton and Palin on SNL:
Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes - one of the things I'm most looking forward to the end of is cronyism - hiring friends for the job rather than the most qualified person. It looks like Palin wouldn't be the end of that at all.
Picked up a few new albums yesterday (I looooove me some amazonmp3.com!) - "Appetite for Destruction" by Guns N' Roses and "Speak for Yourself" by Imogen Heap. I didn't know that Guns N's Roses first album had both "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Sweet Child O' Mine" on it! Interestingly:According to Rose, the inspiration for the lyrics came from an encounter he and a friend had with a man while they were sleeping in a school yard in Queens. When they were approached by the "little black man", he yelled at them, "You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby; you're gonna die!" This incident inspired the main lyrical declaration for the song. |
|
|
| Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog soundtrack! |
[Jul. 21st, 2008|01:46 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | music | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | proud | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Joss Whedon - "What A Man's Gotta Do" (IMH) | ] |
We watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog this weekend and liked it a lot. (it's by the guy who did Buffy, Firefly, etc.) It's a musical, but there's no soundtrack available. However, the songs are so darn catchy that I went ahead and ripped one for myself, thanks to Audio Hijack Pro and Fission. It's available where the rest of my music is, under "Joss Whedon" (which is probably not technically accurate, but oh well). If you don't have the info, drop me a line and I'll hook you up! |
|
|
| not a complaint |
[Jul. 16th, 2008|10:38 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | asmc, movies, music | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  worried | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Peter Gabriel - "Down to Earth" (from Wall-E soundtrack) | ] |
but we have to be off-script and music by Friday. Like, two days from now. That is extremely frightening/implausible.
I bought the Wall-E soundtrack and I'm liking it enough to review it, mostly because I still associate the music with what's happening in the movie and I'm pretty sure that's gonna fade away soon. To that effect:
(you probably shouldn't read this if you haven't seen the movie. and you should probably see the movie.)
( Review! )
Anyway, wow that was a lot of typing for minimal benefit. Next time I do this it will be on an album with fewer than 38 tracks! |
|
|
| mathing it up after dark |
[May. 20th, 2008|09:37 am] |
I couldn't sleep last night, so I worked on the Target probabilities project. It was annoying me that the old version of the generated HTML (which was generated by LaTeX2HTML) looked kinda ugly - look how jagged the math graphics are! (especially compared with the beauty that is the generated .dvi file) So I tried a few different packages and settled on TeX4ht, which produced this much nicer looking page. Ah, that's better. (although why is that table floating to the right? grr)
I've been making slow progress on actually figuring out the numbers (3 card straights and straight flushes are the worst!) but I'm getting there. Getting the right numbers is a little more challenging.
Before that, we watched Citizen Kane (still good even though we weren't paying full attention) and I played some GTA IV, including a little multiplayer with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) destroyerj. It was tough without a headset and sucking at the game :-) I managed to flip the cop car we were driving in, and another time destroyerj was driving and I was shooting at something and I saw him jump out of the car. Had just enough time to wonder "Huh?" before we slammed into a stopped car and caught on fire :-)
Finally downloaded The Slip by Nine Inch Nails. So far: very good.
Game night tonight! |
|
|
| Chrstina Aguilera: gay icon? |
[May. 9th, 2008|02:50 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | music | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  curious | ] |
Is Christina Aguilera a gay icon and I just didn't realize it? If not, why not?
I'm listening to her album "Stripped" and so far it's pretty full of strong woman be yourself kinda songs. The song "Beautiful" really exemplifies this (and the music video for it won a GLAAD award for using gay and transgender images).
...aha, according to Wikipedia she is! Yay! |
|
|
| scenes that made me look twice |
[May. 6th, 2008|12:48 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | asmc, music | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  mischievous | ] |
1) The guy who had his laptop open and was doing work on it while walking down the stairs during our fire drill.
2) The elderly woman playing some sort of puzzle game on a pink Nintendo DS at lunch.
I was thinking about doing "Mix Tape" from Avenue Q for my ASMC audition Saturday, but now I'm pretty convinced "My Girlfriend, Who Lives In Canada" is the right choice. |
|
|
| BOCA 2006 review |
[Apr. 29th, 2008|09:05 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | music | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  busy | ] |
I got some new CDs for my birthday, so I'm in a reviewing mood, so here goes:
First up is BOCA (Best of Collegiate A Capella) 2006. I now have 6 different years so I feel like I have a decent basis for comparison here. You can listen to an Amazon preview here.
( review! )
All in all, not a bad album but not as good as some previous years. |
|
|
| SxSW music |
[Mar. 25th, 2008|10:19 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | health, links, music | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Bodies of Water - "I Guess I'll Forget the Sound, I Guess, I Guess" | ] |
Bands coming to South by Southwest (never been - gotta make it one of these years!) can release a free MP3. Paul Ford listened to all 763(!) of them and gave them six-word reviews. (short interview in the Houston Press, in which the interviewer mentioned he once listened to 24 hours straight of Houston radio, changing the station every 3 minutes) It even manages to be pretty amusing along the way.
If you're looking for a distraction, you could do a lot worse than listen to the 4 and 5 circles tunes. I was going to listen to all of them and pick my favorites, but I'm really busy now apparently, so here are the ones I got to listen to and liked.
* Creature - Brigitte Bardot - Didn't like them quite as much as Paul. Reminds me of Freezepop.
* Alabama3 - Woke Up This Morning - it's the Sopranos theme! I loooove that guy's voice - nice deep baritone.
* Wisely - Through Any Window - catchy guitar and vocals.
* Album - Stab You - "Mexican alt-rock" is a pretty good description.
* Black Tie Dynasty - Tender - as promised, kinda 80s-ish.
* The BoDeans - Everyday - nice guitar backing, sounds...good. (this is why I don't review albums)
* Bodies of Water - I Guess I'll Forget the Sound, I Guess, I Guess - interesting mix of choral folk singing and jamming and stuff. Nice harmonies. Very very good!
* Chiwoniso - Kurima - catchy African drumming and xylophone and guitar and stuff.
* Dr. Dog - The Girl - interesting Beatles-esque sound.
Also, randomly: this neat patientslikeme.com where you can share your experience with drugs/treatments. Article in NY Times about it.
(all via waxy.org) |
|
|
| role reversal, music recommendations |
[Jan. 17th, 2008|10:18 am] |
This week I've been in the odd position of being really excited about work and not so excited about non-work projects. Work has been going really well - a lot of the setup for my big project is done so I'm getting into the fun part. The non-work project of pulling down Netflix ratings and analyzing them is pretty similar to what I've done in the past, but has enough different parts that just aren't interesting to leave me totally unenthusiastic about working on it. But I've already done enough that I feel like I should finish. I'll put it on hiatus for a while.
We've been catching up on Simpsons episodes from the last few months with people, and as a result I've seen "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind" twice in the last week or so. It's a pretty good episode, but the part that struck me both times was the montage-like scene where it shows lots of pictures of Homer throughout his life to some hauntingly beautiful piano music. Anyway, djedi found the song, which is called "Everyday" by Carly Comando and I bought it last night - yay for Amazon MP3! The scene itself is based on Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years which is pretty creepy in itself, although the music really amplifies that. Good stuff all around, and I feel bad I missed this all the way back in 2006.
Yesterday at lunch I was really happy because of a problem I had just solved, so I went out to Pars Deli, a greek place at 183 and Burnet. Unfortunately, the parking spots are deceptively thin, and so as I was pulling in I heard a noise and realized I hit the car parked next to me. After I parked and got out, the car looked like a mess, but I could brush off most of it. (dust from my bumper or something?) There was still a scratch that was very narrow but kind of long, and I wasn't quite sure what to do, and I was mad for having done it, so I just walked away to the deli. It didn't take long for my conscience to get the better of me and realize that that was a pretty stupid/selfish/horrible thing to do, so after I ordered I went back out there and left a short note with some paper I found in the car. Not my finest hour - "doing the right thing...eventually" isn't exactly high praise.
I have a few Best Buy gift cards and kinda prompted by that I'm looking for some new music. Definitely getting the new Radiohead album, other options include "Year Zero" by Nine Inch Nails, "Distortion" by The Magnetic Fields, maybe something by LCD Soundsystem ("Sound of Silver"?), maybe something by Arcade Fire. I am open to suggestions! (surprisingly hip suggestions stolen from the AV Club's best of 2007) |
|
|
| Spiers' Speech |
[Jan. 14th, 2008|02:57 pm] |
(stolen from cifarelli)
Directions:
1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, iPod etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS
( Here comes the quiz! )
Not bad; I wanna be a 30 sec. bonnet when I grow up! As I always say, "Sunglasses at night"... |
|
|
| weekend update |
[Dec. 2nd, 2007|06:43 pm] |
Friday started pretty crappily (as I noted), then we went to see Beowulf 3D with people. It was better than I expected - I guess 3D technology has come a ways since I last saw it. The movie was pretty typical action fare, except it was all motion capture CGI-y. It was pretty well done - you could tell most of the time that the characters weren't real actors, and some of the emotions didn't come through as well as they could have, but not bad.
The music was also surprisingly good - the few themes they used are pretty catchy, and the "main" song was sung during the end credits by Idina Menzel! (the original Elphaba in Wicked)
Saturday was spent being cranky for a large part of the day for various reasons. We did get to start Super Mario Galaxy which is a lot of fun, and hang out with wildrice13 in the evening. I worked on my arena rating graph which is coming along nicely - got some statistics to show. (did you know we are much better against teams with 0 mages than teams with 1 mage?) Next step is making it so you can choose criteria (say, matches where the opponents had at least one hunter and paladin that we played in Blade's Edge) and show statistics based on that. Should be fun.
Today was church and then house-hunting. After talking for a while about the way things work (helpful if a bit long), we looked at 6 houses. Unsurprisingly, our top choice was one that looked kinda OK on paper, and our #1 choice on paper was OK but not great (and is under contract anyway so we can't buy it). I took a ton of pictures that hopefully will help us remember the one we liked. It was pretty good but not super amazing or anything. I guess in the future we'll just get more listings from our agent and periodically look at more houses. It's a bit anticlimactic. |
|
|
| i dunno, stuff and such |
[Nov. 27th, 2007|01:17 pm] |
Busy week! Last night was a WoW raid (more on that below), tonight is game night, Wed. is a church thing and Thurs. I'm probably going on a Rice recruiting dinner thing.
The past weekend at home was nice, albeit a bit busy. And I could have done without the rain. We did manage to assemble a new grill for my dad. I'm getting a little tired of the drive to Houston - if you count the renaissance festival last weekend (you drive all the way to Brenham and then some more) and if I drive on Thursday that will be 3 trips back and forth to/from Houston in less than three weeks. Oh well.
We're going to look at houses on Saturday! Exciting stuff.
I finally broke down and bought the Beach Boys's (that's the correct punctuation, right grammar folks?) album "Pet Sounds". (I say "broke down" because we have very few magazines in our bathroom and the one that's always open is mental_floss and it's always open to the article about Masterpiece #98, which is that album) I bought it from the Amazon MP3 store which I'm starting to love for convenience and pricing. ($8 for the whole album!) Anyway, it has some catchy songs but overall I'm not as impressed...maybe my expectations were high after reading it was #2 on Rolling Stone's top 500 albums of all time. It's growing on me a little as I listen, but not as much as I would have hoped. Also, I have 0 of the top 25 albums on that list (well, except for "Pet Sounds" now). Shameful? Maybe.
So the last (and first) time we went to Zul'Aman, we had to take a PuG offtank, and so we wiped many times on Nalorrak (the bear boss), and finally downed him after like 3 hours. Since we had our real offtank last night, we thought we'd try to do it in 20 minutes. (for "extra" loot, meaning two pieces instead of one) We engaged him within 20 minutes, barely, but apparently you have to kill him within 20 minutes to get the loot...since it takes us 8 minutes to kill him, that will be difficult.
Anyway, we went ahead and tried Halazzi (the lynx boss). We wiped probably 20+ times trying it...we did make some progress, getting him to 70% once, but no better. Pretty frustrating, all in all. We discussed some strategies at lunch (wings!) that will probably help, but we might just try Akil'zon (the eagle boss) instead, whom we thought we were headed towards last night. He's supposed to be easier. |
|
|
| iTunes rating analysis! Portal, TexRenFest. |
[Nov. 19th, 2007|09:58 am] |
I'm "officially" releasing the iTunes Rating Analysis after making a few last minute tweaks. Unfortunately you have to be at your home computer (or whatever computer your iPod is synced to) to use it, but you can at least see see my analysis, complete with fancy charts! Not being able to use it at work means it'll probably be significantly less popular than the WoW Frost Mage DPS calculator (currently the most popular page on my site by a factor of 2 or 3 or so), but that is OK.
We bought and played through Portal this weekend, which is a first person puzzle game and pretty darn fun (and pretty short). The end credits song is extremely cute and catchy, and it's sung by the passive-aggressive computer who's talking to you for the whole game. The song was written by Jonathan Coulton (here's his blog post about writing the song) who happens to have lots of music available for download! So I'll probably check that out this week. Edit: live version of Jonathan Coulton performing "Still Alive" - there's cake!
wildrice13, abstractseaweed, quijax, djedi and I went to the Renaissance Festival on Saturday. David and I were going to see the Bolton's renewal of vows (here are the few pictures that I took - we participated in the ceremony so I didn't want to interrupt too much :-) ) which went well except for their not letting us do it at the festival proper (the words used were "unauthorized wedding" which I found amusing), so we went out to the parking lot and had a nice ceremony. The trip back wasn't so great - we got stuck in the parking lot as everyone else was leaving and then there was an accident 10-15 cars in front of us just as we were about to get to 290, so we didn't moved for half an hour or so. Ugh.
I slept on my neck funny. It hurts. |
|
|
| Writer's Block: Music: My First Favorite Band |
[Sep. 10th, 2007|11:02 am] |
The first band I was a fan of was "Weird Al" Yankovic. This was in middle/high school, and I went through a phase where I listened to exclusively him - no radio, etc. I remember thinking "Why would I listen to popular music when I can hear a lot of popular songs but with funny lyrics?" It was always a thrill when I'd later hear the real version of a song I only knew as a parody. Not being exposed to more popular music always made me feel a little out of touch, though. I wouldn't recommend it. |
|
|
calm
blah
tired
hyper
bouncy
uncomfortable