Eternal Novice

Bird Identification

Thu, 22 May 2008 22:17:36 GMT

A thought while spending far too many hours digging:

A Saw Whet Owl is not dangerous. A Chain-saw Whet Owl is dangerous.

Another Garden Report

Wed, 21 May 2008 17:27:42 GMT

Things are looking OK. I have a portion of the vegetable beds that's about 12x4 feet left to dig. Then topping up with manure, peat, or something of the sort. Then more weeding. Then planting. The weather report says it will start warming and clearing some time tomorrow, so that should work out well. Through a combination of accident and planning, I've managed not to make any joints or muscles so sore that they refuse to do more work.

One of the interesting byproducts of physical, mindless labour is that my thoughts get to roam where they will. As something of a good news/bad news story, mine have now come up with a song idea...that would fit quite well for next year's FilKONtario song contest. Now I have to decide whether to sit on the idea for a bunch of months, write the song and sit on it for a bunch of months, or add it to my "public" repertoire and assume I'll think of something else appropriate by next year. (I know that the rules only say it can't appear on a recording, but there's also the spirit of the thing.)

The Choir Has 3 Minutes For Rebuttal

Tue, 20 May 2008 12:25:47 GMT

Last night, janeg and I were practicing some songs and I was speculating about the "choreography" for my DucKon set list. Since the plan includes more than just my guitar and voice, it seemed reasonable to consider who would actually be doing what on which song. This discussion got sidetracked onto the question of whether the extra vocals on one particular piece could reasonably be called "backup singing". We decided not to push the definition too far and settled on the compromise, "There's a fine line between counterpoint and heckling."

In gardening news, I have a faint hope that the morning sun will dry out the earth enough that I can get some digging done before the afternoon rain arrives. Early attempts with a shovel were called on account of mud.

Around The House

Fri, 16 May 2008 22:37:29 GMT

My gardening vacation got off to a good start today with about 3.5 hours of outside work, mostly digging vegetable beds. To say that this isn't the kind of exercise my body is used to is a grand understatement. Things like bending or turning suddenly (from the hips) are not on my immediate "to do" list. But it was a good start and counts for maybe 30% of the heavier chores that I have planned.

The vandals we hired to work on the glassed-in room at the back of the house finally finished yesterday. This being the cats' favorite summer place, they spent some time investigating the changes. Willow seems to have accepted it. Ashton was OK until he saw me come in from the yard, at which point he stood, meowed at me a few times, and ran away. The outside door has been moved and apparently it was just wrong for me to be walking through a different part of the wall.

Changing Chords

Fri, 16 May 2008 22:01:36 GMT

I wrote a song last month and have been resisting playing it because something about the sound of the music was bothering me. I think the melody is OK, but the main chords I was using were D-Gmaj7-Bm-F#m. The problem with these is that the most common shapes on guitar all put an F# note on the highest-pitched string. After about eight bars, all I can hear is that one note, sitting there like a constant ringing in my ears. The solution seems to be a liberal application of the G-chord, in some cases replacing Bm. But mostly as a replacement for Gmaj7...so what if I have trouble singing notes that I don't hear in the chord I'm playing; it's time to get over that.

Funny thing: I've got used to the idea of listening for bass patterns in the chords I use because I often play those notes individually. This is the first time a treble "progression" (or lack thereof) has ever jumped out at me. This is becoming scarily suggestive of people who play two or three independent parts at the same time. I don't think my brain should start channeling Chet Atkins...'cause my fingers sure aren't going to.

--> May 26 <--

Thu, 15 May 2008 23:02:56 GMT

Let me write that again: May 26. That's the next day that I'm scheduled to be at work. Yipee!

So, just to get into the right mood, I went shopping on the way home:
- janeg has been wanting a wireless router so that she can make easier connections between her main computer and the laptop, use the laptop at random locations, and so that I don't rewire the house when filkers arrive.
- I've wanted to get a second hard drive for my music computer so that I could physically split media files away from the OS and applications. 320GB was at a good point on the price curve and should keep me in free space for the foreseeable future.
- I replaced the 512MB SD card that came with my Zoom H2 recorder with a 8GB SDHC card. (The brand name is Transcend and it worked on power up without formatting. OK.)

Yes, as you can tell, I took this time off so that I could work on the garden. :-)

Stalkers In Space

Sun, 11 May 2008 15:52:39 GMT

So...instead of doing any number of things that I'd planned, I spent the morning playing with the song that I posted here as lyrics a few days ago. I don't have attention deficit problems; I'm quite able to give my full concentration to a project...just as long as something interesting doesn't come along before I finish. :-)

Here's an arrangement of Frozen April as I currently think it should sound. I'm reasonably sure it will never sound like this live, so I still need to work on a guitar part. (Though, any of you who actually play piano, feel free to contradict me.) It's about 3.5MB to download and may not stay around too long since that server doesn't have a great amount of space.

I also need to create sheet music for it. I don't think I've ever taken a song this far before without having a visual aid for the melody!

Now It Can Be Told

Sun, 11 May 2008 00:27:58 GMT

Well, actually, it could have been told lots of other times, and sometimes was. As secrets go, this one was about as poorly kept as any I've been involved with.

It started late last year when janeg and I were trying to decide which conventions we might go to in 2008. Since Chicago is closer than Georgia or England, DucKon sounded like our best chance to see Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, and that made it a major contender. At ConFusion in January, we pretty much decided we would go ahead with the idea. janmagic was in the room at the time and started speculating about concerts.

At FKO, I engaged in a number of conversations about it, mostly repeating, "No, I don't feel that I can do a full concert, but if you can swing a half-hour slot, I guess I'm OK with that." So, as she mentions, I'm on the list.

_{(Good grief! The rest of that list is fairly impressive! But as long as I can tell myself I'm not doing a concert -- just a half -- I can prevent panic, right?)}

Space: The Last Refuge

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:15:37 GMT

I mentioned a little while ago that I'd started working on a song with nothing but a title as a starting point. What started as a comment about the weather, turned into a [something] about cryonics.

Frozen April
  - Phillip Mills, May 2008

"We have been as close as friends could ever be,"
She said to me,
"And so I know you'll want to hear my news."
Accepted on a colonizing starship,
The cold-sleep trip,
April joins the lucky, chosen few.

Sometimes spring is colder than its promises;
It does its best.
She asks me, "What were you about to say?"
Aprils stands, her eyes brim-full and laughing.
I say, "Nothing."
Nothing of a ring or wedding day.

	I made my choice.
	I could have watched her fly away.
	I could have been the kind of fool
	To beg and hope she'd stay.
	I might have found a substitute
	To warm my nights and days,
	But I'd rather see her future:
	Frozen April.

She's an engineer; I work security,
No rarity,
No expertise they'll need once they arrive,
But some are picked to grow old at guard stations.
Automation's
Arms to help the passengers survive.

	They taught me well:
	To keep the mechanisms clean,
	To monitor all vital signs
	As long as lights stay green
	And how to wake one from near death
	If threatening signs are seen.

	The lights are glowing green....
	Her light is always green....

	I made my choice.
	I could have watched her fly away.
	I could have been the kind of fool
	To beg and hope she'd stay.
	I might have found a substitute
	To warm my nights and days,
	But I'd rather see her future:
	Frozen April.

How Many, How Many, I Wonder

Tue, 06 May 2008 23:04:29 GMT

I wandered into a grocery store on the way home and, while standing near the ill-named customer service desk, spotted a sign that was there as an apology for a mistake in their newspaper sales insert. Apparently the 16-roll packages of toilet paper that are supposed to have 198 sheets each only have 150. I'm trying to imagine how they discovered their error. I suppose they could have read the outside of the package, but since they didn't do that before printing a million pages of advertisements, I'm not convinced that's the best guess.

I think someone complained. The only question is, when did they notice.

Customer: "I got to what should have been sheet #163, and began to suspect there was something wrong...."

Ashton Sings

Sat, 03 May 2008 23:50:44 GMT

This is sillier than usual. You've been warned.

I was playing with my new digital recorder when one of our cats decided he had to investigate. Here's the result as an 800kb stereo MP3: http://www.axxent.ca/~pmills/Ashton.mp3 If you decide to listen to this, it sounds pretty good through headphones but note that during the last 10 seconds, he comes very close to the recorder.

Now, the other thing that comes to mind is that I have sampler software that lets me pitch-shift sound clips and map them to MIDI events...and I need background for Universal Follower....

The Weather Report

Sat, 03 May 2008 21:58:12 GMT

Gray. It started out gray and misty, then advanced to gray and heavily overcast. This progressed to gray with showers and more rain. Not long ago it was gray and pouring noisily, accompanied by moderately-heavy winds. The only thing that wasn't gray was the electrical brown-out.

Oh, and the torrent rushing by on the street outside my front door, carrying away all our two-doors-down neighbor's magnolia petals. That was pink, and startling enough that it almost made up for all the gray.

I Am Not (Just) A Number

Fri, 02 May 2008 20:59:07 GMT

CAPTCHA is the name for the on-line tests that check whether you're human when you try to access certain web sites. They're composed of images of letters and numbers with skewing, other types of distortion, and random distracting elements that make automated recognition impossible...in theory. A Washington Post article discusses how spammers and other criminals have been able to defeat CAPTCHAs using a computer. (Previously they'd defeated them by hiring low-wage workers in certain countries.)

To me, the most thought-provoking comment comes at the end, "Web companies say they are interested in creating human verification tests that are harder for computers to crack. But there's an inherent difficulty. Making the tests harder for the computer makes them harder for humans, too."

And when the tests are solvable by computers, but too hard for humans, the internet's transition will be complete.

I Has A New Toy

Fri, 02 May 2008 17:02:14 GMT

I am slightly more dangerous than I was before lunch. There's a small music store on Queen St. that has Zoom H2 digital recorders at an OK price, but fewer by one than a short time ago. My main question at this point is how portable this thing will turn out to be. It's about 4x the size (by volume) of my MP3 player, which makes it a bit much for a shirt pocket. That's fine; a workaround shall be found.

(Also, it's rather a neat store with microphones, effects, interfaces, accessories, some software, MIDI controllers...even a Theremin.)

You Like Tomato, I Like Bad Weather

Thu, 01 May 2008 16:48:38 GMT

Coming back to work after my lunch-time walk, I noticed -- in a barely focussed way -- a blackboard with specials written on it outside a local restaurant. The writing was a bit sloppy. I thought their soup of the day was "Tornado and Vegetable". Funny thing is, even after I caught myself and concentrated on the writing, it didn't become any clearer. I don't think I'm going to eat there...just in case. They might try to serve me snow peas or iceberg lettuce.

Top 40 Here We Come

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:59:36 GMT

I've read some books on songwriting that were aimed at those who are hoping to produce material for a commercial market. One of the bits of advice that made me feel that those writers weren't really talking to me concerned song titles. They stressed the importance of an obvious title that would make an impression, one that was memorable and often repeated so that it would stick in a consumer's mind when buying time came. The books even suggested that if you had a good title, you could figure out the song later, sort of as an add-on.

This morning, for the first time, I started working on a song with nothing but a title in mind. I think I now have a chorus to go with it. I am becoming superficial -- deeply and profoundly superficial*.

_{(* Which might also work as a title: Deeply and Profoundly Superficial. Whee!)}

It's A Chord

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:40:47 GMT

I once wrote a parody containing the line, "Whenever three or more of you are gathered with a name, it's a chord." Sometimes I play something, usually a passing chord, and have no idea what it is. Luckily one of the features of Band-in-a-Box is that if I enter the notes as MIDI, it will (almost always) give me a name for my chord.

I suppose that 'F#7sus#5' is, indeed, a name. What it's not is a reasonable mnemonic for "keep playing the Bm, but lift your index finger". :-)

If I Had A Hammer...

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:41:49 GMT

...I'd probably write songs with stronger percussion.

I have words to a number of would-be songs that are looking for music. Yesterday, jhayman made a reference to composing on a keyboard and I thought, "I've done that, but not in quite a while." So, today, I have just finished a first pass at one melody and realized:
- When I pick out a melody on a keyboard, it tends to move stepwise by scale tones;
- When I pick out a melody on guitar, it tends to move as chord arpeggios

Though neither of these are necessarily good or bad (in small doses, at least), it's nice to be aware lest one end up re-writing the "Joy To The World" Christmas carol.

Days Of Rice And Chickens

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:29:22 GMT

Looking at our house right now, it would be hard to tell there was a filk gathering here yesterday. Unless, of course, you checked inside the fridge. When 14-or-so people show up at a pot-luck event, each with enough food to fill at least six other people, well...it's not an advanced math problem. I'm especially grateful to mvt and sal_utations who did a massive amount of kitchen clean-up. I was prepared to deal with it, but rather happy that I didn't have to.

And sometimes there was singing. Everyone seemed to be in fine form. On a personal level, I was happy that I could fake my way through guitar support for two songs I'd never seen before...though the one composed of flurries of dominant 7ths did cause some moments of panic. I'm getting closer to convincing myself that I need a portable recorder for house filks. I think it would be fun to create highlight CDs of the events to give to the participants as historical records. (And anyone who didn't want to have their stuff persist beyond the moment wouldn't need to opt in.)

Hobbit Songs

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:10:47 GMT

Words to another song inspired by The Hobbit follow. I think I'm coming to the end of these. There's one more that has a bunch of associated ideas scribbled in my notebook, but then...something else, I guess.

Moonlight
 - Phillip Mills, April 2008

We were formed by lesser hands and waited long in night
While the first ones claimed the world, its pleasures fair and bright
Hard, the anvil; hot, the fires and sharp, the shattered stone,
But we had moonlight to show us where to go.

	Silver ink from silver pen 'neath shard of crescent moon
	Bound the light of elder days, inscribing hidden runes.
	Silver shard of crescent moon with ink from silver pen
	Bound the voice of elder days, now sets it free again.

Some may walk through forests, feel the vital force those give.
Some may find in sun and cloud the reason that they live.
We have touched the roots of Earth, the rocks and caves below
And we have moonlight to show us where to go.

	You will see a light that shines clear after day is done,
	Echo of the morning in the setting of the sun,
	One last ray to show the secret placement of a lock
	When the thrush on gray stone marks the moment with her knock.

Ev'ry light's a message sent to cross both time and space,
Bringing with the written words, the author's hour and place.
There's a tunnel leading home you'll find by sunset's glow,
Then there'll be moonlight to show you where to go.

There's a great hall waiting after sunset's final glow,
Then there'll be moonlight to show us where to go.

I hope to keep this from sounding stupidly sentimental in performance. By the time I'd finished the above words, I was already coming up with couplets like...

When dwarves get too self-absorbed and try to steal the show,
Elves, men, and hobbits all tell them where to go.

:-)

A Well-Mannered Aphrodasiac

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:47:38 GMT

Apparently I'm getting a less-intelligent variety of spammer these days, which...well, the mind re-boggles.

Latest subject header:
"Spanish housefly sold here"

A Too-Vivid Imagination

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:55:42 GMT

This may be a little difficult to explain.

My current subway song (writing words while traveling between home and work) is another from The Hobbit and is primarily about the map that Gandalf gave to Thorin. As I was writing verses and parts thereof, I noticed that the mood and subject details were swinging wildly between the practical and the philosophical. I ignored that mostly and figured it would work out in the end, probably by having me throw away the parts that didn't make sense for the song.

As I was standing on the street corner, waiting for the light to change, I was suddenly in a cavern watching an old dwarf inscribing instructions onto the map (Thrain? ...must remember to check the book). He would write a little, then settle back to think about his life and his coming death, then return to writing. Repeat.

For me, the sensation of coming out of that fantasy was fully as strong as waking from a dream. I had to shake my head to focus on the signal light that had turned green...at least once. :-) I'm glad I wasn't actually crossing the street when that happened, but at least I now know why the verse subjects bounce back and forth like that: 'cause that's the way it happened.

Ticking Away The Moments That Make Up A Dull Day

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:08:52 GMT

Odd that I see something every day for ten years and then one morning I notice that it doesn't make sense. Why is 25% of my spam trying to sell watches?

Gore Vidal wrote a book called "Sex, Death, and Money"; it wasn't "Sex, Death, Money, and Knockoff Timepieces". Maslow's hierarchy of needs notably misses putting 'Rolex'** on the same level as breathing, eating, and sleeping. In fact, I don't think it even made the same tier as burping and bubblegum! I get it that there are people stupid enough to believe they are going to be given more money than has ever existed in the country of Nigeria. Or that a pill will magically improve their attractiveness. Or that someone who steals from Microsoft and Adobe won't steal from them.

Sure. But watches?

(** I notice that if I put a single quote in the wrong place, it comes out R'olex and turns Lovecraftian.)

Tolerably Virtuous

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:04:24 GMT

I have now filled in a poll submission for the Pegasus brainstorming phase. I'm not going to lobby for any person or song in particular, just for the act of doing it. I split my suggestions among things that were so obvious that everyone might assume others would suggest them and things that I consider good, but perhaps a bit obscure.

I also suggest looking at the list of past nominations. I was hesitant about putting one song forward in case it had already won, then discovered that -- apparently -- it had never been on a ballot.

Rites Of Spring

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:26:03 GMT

This morning was primarily dedicated to pruning raspberries, trimming the fresh ones and removing the dead wood of old canes. About ten weeks from now, I expect to be reporting the picking of the season's first berries. Not so promising is the state of our two main gooseberry bushes. For the last three years they've been producing less and less. Another part of today's yard work was cutting away about 80% of those plants. It won't help this year, but either that will rejuvenate them for next or else I'll be digging them out completely about a year-and-a-half from now. The josta bush that was moved from the front to the back last year because of landscaping needs is looking like it will recover.