Vacation means time to do stuff I want, like starting Minecraft!

omg this game

If you haven't heard of it, it's a sandbox game that can be played alone or with others. You spawn in a world by yourself and you basically do what you want--some people build huge castles, some people go out hunting and dungeoning, some play PvP, and because there's a strong modding community, there are also adventure maps, which are set-ups where you follow storylines. The rules of physics are altered rather drastically (most blocks, once placed, will not fall if you knock the support away), and everything has a stylized blocky appearance. You can mine and farm and plunder, whatever you really want.

I'm slowly getting a hang of FP games. I've always played third person, especially the kind where you click with the mouse to make the character go somewhere, and every time I tried playing first person games I'd scramble myself. I fell off the catwalk where you spawn in Portal 2 about four times in a row....and the game hadn't even started. (At least it was funny. I enjoyed GLaDOS' commentary.)

I made a cobblestone house by the sea:


I put some 'bushes' (actually they are leaves from trees) next to my windows so they'd look like windowsill plants. The block of bushes off to the left is where I have a wheat field; it's just a hedge. The reason the entryway protrudes so much is I've set up an airlock--on one of the first nights when I didn't have a bed to sleep in, I had three zombies try to break down my door. I swear they spawn in mobs now--if you see one, there are more coming.

( more talk and pictures under the cut )

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I have already died in these following ways: killed by zombies, trying to swim in lava (I fell into running lava D:). So I think I am doing all right! I mean, I haven't killed myself via creeper, spider, cactus, suffocation, drowning, falling from heights, being shot by anybody...

The reason I'm in gold armour is because I'm low on iron and I haven't got anything to do with gold anyhow. And I finally got an enchanting table and in my excitement also enchanted my iron stuff--I have Power I on the bow (hmph), but Efficiency II on my pickaxe, so it goes through stone blocks beautifully, like butter.

I'm still figuring out what to do re: modding, but I do want to put in some--a minimap for sure (I got so lost in the mines, so many times), maybe Mo' Creatures (more animals!), Optifine for better fps and zooming, and definitely a better texture pack. Gold and iron look very similar, wheat doesn't look ripened, etc in the default pack. And I need to figure out how to change my appearance--Steve? has a blue shirt untucked on the left side and what looks like a frown.

I forgot to talk about choir!

We have two (2) pieces this season!

They're two full masses, that's why there's only two: one by Haydn, one by Beethoven. (At this point, why not just go for a mass by Mozart, sez I, to round out the collection? But I don't make these choices and I suppose that'd make our one-hour concert too long.)

At any rate, the alto section has become the Fake Soprano section. Palestrina was quite low last term - we sang G below middle C frequently - but here the altos are frequently singing around the C above middle C, up to E, and so on. Personally, this is my "sounds escape with little (volume) control" range, which is uncomfortable and also why I'm an alto in the first place. The sopranos, meanwhile, are practically stuck on the high F and G these days. (We were singing and the music made a dip to B-flat below middle C and I thought: "oh man that's low grk" since we'd been stuck in the higher registers for so long - normally B-flat is dead easy.) Also, whomever arranged this score did not do a very good job, because occasionally I'll turn the page and there is this massive jump that was totally unexpected next.

But it's great! There's so much variety contained in the masses, and I am deeply amused that there are parts in 6/8 - part of the Benedictus, even, I think. (The often-repetitive nature - by design - of Classical pieces means that the same motifs show up in multiple movements, so I can never...quite keep track.) I mean, you don't expect swingy 6/8 in masses! But there it is, in full "hosanna in excelsis deo".

ANYWAY.

We are doing both masses in Germanic Latin. The Germanic bit is because of our conductor, and I don't know why. In the second week of this, he said: "I've had attempted mutinies from choirs before [over the pronounciation]" which is kind of amusing, but I get why. So far, we are just replacing things like "coeli" with /tsø.li/, /ts/ with everything I thought was supposed to be /tʃ/ (dona nobis pacem became /pɑ.tsem/ which was confusing because everyone tried to sing it the conventional, Italian-style way), and also vowel replacements. Like "kyrie" with /ø/ instead of /i/ which makes me grumpy because it's harder to sing (farther back in the mouth plus lip rounding!) and also kyrie is not Latin anyway. And "qui" became /kv/ instead of /kw/ or just /k/. Also, all the esses are being turned into z (/s/ -> /z/) which makes us all sound like we're putting on awful German accents.

*appeals to schwa* Does German voice /s/ word intially? Or intervocalically, at least? Also, do you actually use /kv/? That's always pinged me as "terribad accent", but IDEK anymore. Technically there is a German bass, but he is tall and physics-y instead of linguistic-y and I can't ask.

Mostly I'm pleased, though. I had to learn about masses-set-to-music in music history when I was studying piano, and had to memorize things like the order of movements (Kyrie-Gloria-Credo-Sanctus-Benedictus-Agnus Dei) and it's fun to actually get to sing through them all. Plus one is a missa brevis, so we are often singing different texts over top of each other, and it's fun to puzzle out the Latin. When the conductor is working with another section I try to figure out what the words mean and whether I've seen any of the daughter words that have budded off from them.

Doesn't seem to be an easy way to shift pictures around galleries (I had to sort a number of SW gifs out of my unsorted gallery) so this is all under the "Unsorted" album.

[Note: if you're viewing this on my journal on LJ, you will need to use the scrollbar...900px is too wide, so Expressive side-scrolls instead. You can also "View Image" to see the original sizing.]

( Large images warning! *wail* And they're sized down! )

I was browsing through The Modern Vocalist forum; this part is basically where people post clips of their singing and ask for critique. Most of them are okay, and some of them are good, but this one blew my socks off. It's a cover of I will always love you:

http://soundcloud.com/jillhuber2012/01-i-will-always-love-you#play

Happy, happy New Year! May this year be better than the last.

Being the history geek I am, I read Kings, Queens, Bones and Bastards, a rather light-hearted history book that enumerated all the regents from Egbert.

( And then I found this video. I can't stop laughing at the chorus. )

(Starts from 1066 and William, but it's amazing. Just amazing.)

There are little music rooms here that you can sign out to use. One has drums, one has a good upright, and two have deconstructed and badly-out-of-tune pianos. And so although each room has a window and is bordered by its neighbouring rooms, it's like locking oneself into a room and practicing. I like it. The closed door and the location - in the basement by the laundry - makes me feel like I can make mistakes and practice that one part a million times without worrying.

All this piano practice has made me aware of a Thing I first dreamed up of in grade eight when my Humanities teacher asked us for inventions. (She was a very cool teacher.)

PREMISE: A music score display.

PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES: Like an iPad! A tablet! The pianist for our choir used an iPad once, so that he could just tap the screen and have it shift to the next page. Anyone who's ever had to play long pieces or take music from a book knows what a pain it is. (I used to use those big clips to hold pages open. And bend spines without even a flinch, because it was so frustrating.) It should be about the same height and width as a sheet or two of paper, perhaps foldable in half, to save space. Light, so that it doesn't mess with the piano. As well, there should be some kind of flap or physical button to hit, when turning pages.

When I tried the idiocy of playing Erlkonig (link goes to Youtube, of a fantastic Fischer-Dieskau (baritone) and equally amazing pianist - watch the speed of the octave triplets), it was something like twelve pages. I taped six together - that was the length across that would fit - and ripped the sheets down to get to the next part. Dramatic, but cumbersome.

SPECIAL EFFECTS: A system of automation - set the pages to flip every, say, 21 seconds automatically. You could time your piece and then enter timings for each page - just play consistently. Even for pieces heavy with rubato you could set timings individually. Or documents in certain file types could have meta associated with it, so that it could calculate tempo (given by composer) and number of bars and estimate.

Even better, we could have another pedal, off to the left, which would turn pages! Like a sewing machine's pedal - stomp on it (the only important pedal's on the right anyway) and the page turns.

BENEFICIARIES: Pianists. Any musician that needs both hands to play. People who prefer not to pay freaking thirty dollars for ten pages of music (oh Debussy) and can get scores online. People who want to take music scores around with them but don't want to cart loose sheet music. Musicians who are too trivial to have page-turners assigned to them :P

DISADVANTAGES: The tech would be expensive, of course. And we might wind up with the same problems as ebooks do now, but by God, I'd love to have something like this.

(Of course, all of this is why you memorize pieces as fast as possible. But still!)

Oddly formatted requests sound like poetry
especially the garbled ones
composed in a cranky email editor
fed through an internet translator and back
the meaning struggling through the words--

It's been snowing gloriously for the last few days. I think there was freezing-rain on Thursday, so everything - tree branches, grass blades poking through the snow, the fence - acquired the most exquisite spikes of ice. Then it snowed, and is snowing, and the street looks picturesque. The wind has made one side of the trees white and green, and blown the snow off the other side :P

*political noises* Non-confidence vote re national budget is forcing an election. Maybe this time we can get a majority government; it's been three minority governments in a row and it would be nice to get things done quicker. *crosses fingers*

I've been listening to the soundtrack from Tangled and I am in love with Donna Murphy's voice. Warning: it is by an emotionally manipulative mother trying to control Rapunzel - but so dramatic, powerful and perfect for the scene.

By sheer force of repetition (a lot of requests are filed from Russian-speakers), I recognize "Thank you" by sight - Спасибо. вопросы - problem. Attempts to learn the alphabet have been vaguely in the not-success-and-not-failure range - I never realized quite how much easier it was to learn something like French, for example; the (almost) shared alphabet is an enormous help.

And note to anyone on LiveJournal using attempting to use Internet Explorer 9 and the Rich Text Editor - it's currently quite broken (anything requiring the grey pop-up window - poll creator, adding links, etc), it's been reported to developers, and in the meantime try the HTML editor.

From The Dark is Rising Sequence. The first one moves at a clip, and the only thing that bothered me was (in my accent) the slant rhyme thaw/before. I believe it's probably a full rhyme in other accents, and presumably Cooper's. I keep finding second, and third meanings; five will return might refer to Bran, Will, and the other three kids staying and Merriman going. Or not.

I always liked the last part the best: "All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree". Perhaps it's just my liking of the word silver. It just sounds so gorgeous (and in a book that is very much Light vs Dark) and imbued with a certainty - "All shall find the light at last".

( When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back; )
--
It took me awhile to appreciate this poem. It's much less sing-songy than the other one, which is quick to memorize and easy to set to a rhythm; this poem immediately slows down. The very first line is my favorite. It always impressed me how Cooper manages to fit the prophecy and the story together, without mangling either.
( On the day of the dead, when the year too dies )

Dear Yulegoat:

OMG THANK YOU FOR OFFERING TO WRITE THIS STORY. REALLY, JUST WRITING A STORY FOR ANY OF MY REQUESTED FANDOMS WILL MAKE ME HAPPY, EVEN IF IT'S JUST CUZ NOW I KNOW THERE ARE FANS OUT THERE. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

NOTE: This post assumes you've read all the books, and may contain spoilers. Just PM me if you want a yulegoat letter that stops at the book you finished at.




( general notes )

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( Cats of Grand Central: Diane Duane )

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( Georgina Kincaid series: Richelle Mead )

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( Gone With the Wind: Margaret Mitchell )

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( The Eight: Katherine Neville )