I’m back

I am glad to announce that I am back from an involuntary blogging hiatus. My old computer died, and I have finally gotten a new one. This means that I will be back at blogging.

Plinky Prompt FAIL

A feature recently added to WordPress is Plinky Prompts, which appear at the screen just after you publish a post. They provide suggestions as to future posts. For my last post, I got these ones (see picture [click to enlarge]):

FAIL

 For those who can’t read the circled writing, the one in the upper left says “349th post.” The one in the lower right says “Do you blog? Why or why not?”

Epic FAIL.

As for those questions, the first one is pretty obvious and is utterly unworthy of wasting any more attention on. As for the second, I blog because if enough people speak up, all will hear us.

As for the Plinky Prompts, this is another example of why dictionaries define human intelligence, animal intelligence, military intelligence, extraterrestrial intelligence, and artificial intelligence and in that order.

Some days it’s not worth getting out of bed

An actual conversation I had today:

Another person: What are you doing on that computer?

Me: Stuff for college. Why do you ask?

A: I tried using it earlier today. All I got when I turned on the monitor was a logo saying that there was no signal.

Me: Did you turn on the box?

A (looking at the CPU part): What was the computer doing turned off?

Me: I’m pretty sure they turn off the computers when the place is closed, so that they save power.

A: Tell them to keep them on all the time.

I’m back

Near the beginning of April, my mother accidentally broke the network card on my computer (don’t ask; it’s a long story), and I was cut off from the internet for a month. But now, I’m reconnected. Here’s a month’s worth of posts, all rolled into one:

• Canada’s general election was yesterday and the Harpercons and Reformatories won a majority. Fuck. I feel like my country just died, its beating heart ripped out by the grimy hands of a reactionary. Women will suffer under the new regime. I’d like to be wrong about that and hope I am.
• If it’s any consolation, the Bloc–headed separatists were basically blown away by an orange wave in Quebec. Good.
• The Green Party has now entered the club of “serious” political parties as it won a seat.
• Premier Christy Clark is running in a by–election in Vancouver–Point Grey. I predict that she will crush the NDP candidate and gain a seat in the legislature. Various governing parties’ by–election losing streak will finally come to an end.
• An Epic FAIL for wingnut economics.
• O RLY? Barack Obama released the long form of his birth certificate. To the surprise of no rational person, the birthers were wrong. He really was born in Hawaii. Of course, to conspiracy freaks, all evidence is created by the New World Order™, so this won’t really sway them. I wonder why such a conspiracy theory ever managed to gain hold. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Obama, and therefore conspiracy theories ought to be beneath the dignity of everyone.
• The same reasoning as above applies to Parentism involving Trig Palin.
• Team USA won the 2011 Women’s World Ice Hockey Championships. Congratulations to them. This is their third consecutive title and fourth overall. Just like in every other final, they faced Canada. Just like in every previous tournament, Finland played in the bronze medal game. They won, beating Russia who had their best showing since 2001. My prediction from last May was correct. Despite beating Finland, Switzerland didn’t medal.
• In the Division I tournament, China was relegated. For a team that played in the last Olympics and at one time was a medal contender, it truly is the Great Fall.
• Osama bin Laden was killed by an American special forces team. Good fucking riddance.
• I wonder if my absence has caused a frequent commentator here to finally leave. Part of me kind of hopes so, as he commented semi–on topic on virtually every post, resulting in threadsurrections and endless discussions, sometimes with dozens of comments. Real people have a life outside of commenting and blogging. If you are still here (you know who you are), please, shut up a little.
• I really like this picture (hat tip: Blag Hag).
• Many people here in BC are boycotting Carrie Underwood. This is because her husband, Mike Fisher, plays hockey for the Predators. Seriously, folks? Ms. Underwood has minimal control over which team her husband plays for. She is in no way responsible for the fact that our local team is playing her husband’s team, and as a matter of fact has nothing to do with it. I’d like to think that we live in a civilized society where a woman is not seen as subordinate or lesser than her husband.
• Just before I was cut off, I downloaded music composition software called MuseScore and since then have been loads of fun with it.
• Also a note to this guy. MuseScore is free, so there’s no need to shell out hundreds to get the next version of Sibelius or Finale.

Music under the dense canopy of flowers

This is a good arrangement of the most famous duet in classical music. I really like it because it’s instrumental (and therefore non–sung, making it a billion times better than the sung version), because this number is one of my favourite pieces of classical music, and because I played the flute in school band.

If you cannot see the video, click here.

If you recognize the music, you’re in good company. “The Flower Duet”, also known as “Viens, Mallika” and “Sous le dôme épais“* has been used in gazillions of commercials to sell all sorts of different things.

And what’s with this number having all these titles, some of which look like French phrases?† Any what do I mean by being better because it is “non–sung”? To me, that raises an unsolvable issue with (some of the) classical music I like. I like lots of classical music, but I don’t like the singing that does with some parts of it. Basically, I don’t like the sound of the voices in that style of singing. In other words, I don’t like opera, cantatas, etc. The unsolvable problem is that several of my favourite pieces of classical music, happen to have singing in their “complete” versions. “The Flower Duet” comes from an opera and I like the music, so long as Lakmé and Mallika aren’t singing to it; I like playing the Queen of the Night’s vengeful call for murder on my flute, but not the Queen of the Night herself; “Sheep May Safely Graze” is Bach’s best work, so long as Pales isn’t singing in it; and so on. And sometimes it’s hard to find good–quality instrumental versions of such music, unless you play it yourself.

The Words on What’s Second Blogiversary!

Today marks the end of two years blogging about whatever is worth talking about.

As I have no intention of stopping, to celebrate the start of year 3, I’d like to thank all my readers and commentators.

Thank you, everyone.

Sad stuff

In my neighbourhood there lived this really friendly cat, a black longhair. We called her Spook. She was always visiting everyone on the neighbourhood. But she especially liked us. Whenever she appeared on our deck or on our street, we would always open the door for her and she would always come. We often fed her, and oftentimes she would sleep in our house, sometimes on our beds. Spook was the best cat ever.

Today, Spook’s owners moved away, taking her with them.