silver

I am not a fan of updates that radically change appearances/workflow, and I like Windows 7 very much--aesthetically, as an operating system. I know it really well.

But you know what? If Excel on Windows 8 actually windows properly, i.e. when I open two workbooks they show up as two different windows I can manipulate in two separate windows instead of this complete rubbish of "you can totally tile them together! But only in one window. Can't look at both simultaneously unless you use side-by-side function! Can't put them on separate monitors! Alt-F4 closes the entire thing not one workbook!"

then I say, ROLL ON WINDOWS 8.

Because seriously.

It makes me smile every time Angel Clare comes up on meme and piles of people talk about how much they hate him. I hate his guts. I hate him so much. I love a lot of characters usually, I like antagonists and villains and protagonists and most characters. But I can't stand Clare. He makes my blood boil. I mean, I liked Alec better than him, and Alec is a rapist. THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG THERE if I like Alec better. I hate him so much that I went through and stripped out a lot of the italics and capslock I used but guys, normal text formatting isn't enough to contain my seething hatred and loathing for him.

I think it's a combination of Angel basically dismissing Tess after he finds out her past, running off like a huge prat, and then--when he gets back--doing absolutely nothing. What is the use of repenting if you never do anything?! "Let her wake naturally"--oh thank you so very much, Angel Clare, that's all you can do? That's all you do in the whole thing! Oh my god, why are you such a horrible person? Maybe this comes of being weaned on stories where it's normal for the protagonist(s) will do something (anything) to help each other. I'm not asking him to whip out a weapon and fight through all the men surrounding them. But he literally leaves her to be killed.

Also, he never gets his comeuppance. At least the husband in the Mayor of Casterbridge does. No, he just goes off with Lizzy-Lou and presumably marries her in a bit. It reminds me of the closing stanza of "Clementine."

I really have to get around to reading Jude the Obscure. I don't like Hardy's poetry (I can't get over his Titanic poem. It was an abomination) but I love his novels, and that's the last of the big ones I haven't read.

I have links about Star Wars! Here is an article on why The Phantom Menace is needed: http://www.jedinews.co.uk/news/news.aspx?newsID=12452

I never understood the theory that midichlorians=the Force. The movie implies they are an indicator, not an agent that causes the possessor to have the Force.

But what better reason for TPM than we get to see Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan go on an adventure? On a gorgeous planet like Naboo, no less? The older I get, the more I cringe (I always fastforward through any Padmé and Anakin scene) but I liked the adventuring very much.

And a ridiculously cute comic about Leia and Darth Vader: http://subaroosmiles.tumblr.com/post/49827583031

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Choir! CHOIR omg omg omg. I found out our program. Do you know what we're singing this season??

Haydn's The Creation.

!!!

The Creation (actually, technically, Die Schöpfung) is an oratorio about...the creation of everything, with a libretto set to mostly Biblical text. This is one of the works I learned about in music history. A snippet of the chorus' singing was included on the anthology's CD track ("The heavens are telling", plus a chunk of the recitatives before it), and I loved it. It seriously boggles my mind that I'm singing what was on our curriculum; it is a big work, and famous, and I always thought of it as too difficult to really do--not just me personally, but the choir has to be skilled enough too.

To put the icing on the cake--the trills in the aria? the cadenza on the ending?--we're singing with an orchestra! Our conductor also conducts an orchestra, so we're teaming up, and it's going to be such a cool sound.

The only drawback is the German. I can...kind of deal with Latin now, but I'm pretty sure one of the reasons Lobet den Herrn was so horribly difficult was trying to deal with German on top of Bach's madness. (I have such conflicting feelings about that man. For now, I don't want to do any of his stuff, piano or vocal.)

--

I tried to type about piano, but...I don't think it's actually very interesting. In the heat of the moment I think about all sorts of things (usually thoughts that go "third finger there! move under now! THREE TRILLS INCOMING! be quieter! be louder!) Except I don't really think about fingering in terms of words, just feeling--you know how the thumb goes under? Words are longhand. If I try to think about something else, or about my playing on a meta level, my playing deteriorates. This is especially obvious any time I'm sightreading.

Instead, please try Marina and the Diamonds! Her voice is so distinctive and powerful.

So, guess who deleted her Lightroom catalogue because it looked like a random .lrcat file lying around and was just clutter? And then cleared out her recycling box before opening Lightroom to ascertain whether or not the file was important, as she meant to do?

*facepalm*

PROS:
*This being Lightroom, I did not lose any photos. They're still all there. Except the ones I deleted through Lightroom, but I meant them to be wiped off the disk and they were. No sweat.
*I found my old catalogue! At some point I must have made a new catalogue. I remember this actually (well, not the making-of-a-new-one, because if I had, I'd not have deleted this one) because I remember opening up Lightroom and discovering that all my pre-November 2011 photos were gone. "Weird," I said to myself, and didn't investigate further.

CONS:
*Because I did not export many of the photos I developed, I still have the raw photos, but now all my work on the files is wiped. AGH, and I'd added not only cropping & other fixes, but also my tagging set! My metadata!
*I have to manually re-import a bunch of photos. I think all my photos are still there. Hrmph.

So now I'm mud-wrestling with Windows Backup (I've never had to restore a backup before, this is kind of exciting.) Since I don't have exactly emotional attachments to my developed pictures - more an annoyance that all my work's been wiped - it's kind fun! I didn't know that you could separately restore files; this is great! I was afraid you'd have to lump-restore the whole thing.

But...I last ran Windows Backup in August on to my behemoth external hard drive which lives under my table? Really? I'm pretty sure I did it before then...

I feel a right dolt.

1. We have a Conservative majority. OK, even though I'm liberalmaybe this means the government will be more efficient since they actually have adequate support.

The thing that blows me away:
2. Official Opposition Party: NDP.


WHAT.

Thought of the day:

Thanks to the organization of my iTunes collection (read: haphazard), in my mind the possibly-lost-to-time fifth movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is actually the Kyrie. Dido and Aeneas lead directly into the (really jarringly) happy Four Seasons, and somehow I've merged Mozart's 40th Symphony (aaaah) into Pathétique.