changeling music rone 11/28 '19

Did you ever eagerly await an album by a favorite musician that was such a disappointment that not only did it sour you on subsequent releases, but also caused you to more skeptically analyze their previous work, as you wonder if you ever really liked it as much as you thought you did?

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11/28 '19 9 Comments
the most recent Vampire Weekend album did this for me.
CM Adams
Oh yes. Who's the culprit this time?
Thomas Boutell
In chronological order, from most recent, Sleater-Kinney, Toadies, Pearl Jam, Arcade Fire. In general, they survive, but it's still a shock.
rone
The Center Won’t Hold is so bad it made Janet quit. :super sad face:
Kevin Schnitzius
Corin and Carrie cut her out of the creative process. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/janet-weiss-sleater-kinney-interview-podcast-915033/amp/
rone
Wow. I had not read that. Just wow.
Kevin Schnitzius
yeah, that is some bullshit. one of the 3 or 4 greatest living rock drummers and they run her out of the group. idiots.
CM Adams
Weezer? The Pixies?
Kevin Schnitzius
Never liked Weezer, Pixies have been uneven forever.
rone
 

Oh My How the Internet Has Grown Matt Lichtenwalner 11/23 '19

So this picture is from... ahem... a while ago. I was a big fan of the shirt (thanks to Jill "xtingu" Knapp for that!) and I went to look up a precise translation online. Google had nothing for me at the time.

Then I looked it up again a few years after that - still nothing.

I just did a Google Search again after stumbling on the image for the first time in a while and the top half a page or so is all a series of links to direct translations of this specific phrase. That just seems impressive to me.

These are the things I think about sometimes. I think I may need a hobby.

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11/23 '19 6 Comments
This makes me extremely happy.
Lindsay Harris Friel
Yay!
Matt Lichtenwalner
There's a phrase that needs the Castellar font.
Ray Conrad
Agreed!
Matt Lichtenwalner
What a great shot. :)
Karen Kuhl
It's sure is from a fun era. Miss Knapp's zest is infectious in the best possible way.
Matt Lichtenwalner
 

Firing on all thrusters since 1970 Lindsay Harris Friel 11/22 '19

Today I learned that a last name like mine (Harris Friel) is known as a double barreled surname.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barrelled_name#British_tradition

I will be sure to use this information the next time they can't find my prescription at CVS and try to shame me for not allowing myself to be absorbed into patriarchal standards of naming conventions. 

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11/22 '19 9 Comments
Seriously. The Spanish like to string all their family names together too. It's by no means new, and also, it's 2019? Have they been living under rocks?

Thank you for alerting me to Leone: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leone_Sextus_Tollemache

I must share this info with my Names You Might Enjoy group.
Chris Herdt
Heh. I found this out by reading the Wikipedia entry for Sacha Baron Cohen. His grandfather added “Baron” to the surname.

By the way, this is exactly what goes through my head every time someone insists on hyphenating my last name or not leaving a blank space in between. Fucking databases, I swear to Dog.
Lindsay Harris Friel
Ooh, and I found out that OPW won’t force me to hyphenate! I can have blank spaces in the name field! YAY!
Lindsay Harris Friel
You're welcome!
Thomas Boutell
You have MORE IDENTIFICATION. It should make it EASIER.
Thomas Boutell
YES, AND...
Here’s where it gets ugly. My insurance company says that my last name is Friel, because I get my health insurance via marriage to Vince. My identification has my entire full name. Pennsylvania is awesome and let me do that, out of exhaustion and rage over the whole thing. But, my first and middle name are printed on line 1, and my last name on line 2, so when most people read it, they assume that my middle name is my last name.

So, when my prescription is filled, my doctor’s office says my surname starts with an H, but the pharmacy files the prescription under F. And because my middle name starts with a Y, they always start on the wrong foot with, “we don’t have anything with that name.”
Lindsay Harris Friel
Wow. I don't have your level of suffering at all. Two of my kiddos do have double middle names, spaced with no hyphens, so occasionally someone tries to take the second middle name and hyphenate it with the last name [giant eye roll]. It's mostly airlines that screw it up, which normally doesn't matter much until we're traveling out of country with a passport (which has the correct order of things). Then the airlines have to reissue the whole ticket. Big nuisance.
Anne Mollo
May your kids never, ever, ever, have to apply for SSI. That is where they git ya.
Lindsay Harris Friel
Well... eventually they'll turn 65... I hope.
Anne Mollo
 

A Knight to remember nerdsholmferret 11/22 '19

My trusty steed Ki-Rin-Tin-Tin was killed by a wand of death.
Then I managed to explode my bag of holding, my two primary weapons, and quite a lot of other useful things.
And Ki-Rin-Tin-Tin-Too was disintegrated by a black dragon!
So I limped onward, no longer a mounted knight but determined as ever.
"The guardian Angel of Lugh will not accept the name Cool Hand of Lugh."
I went to my reward with 3285282 points, happy just to have made it.

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11/22 '19 7 Comments
O my stars, they are still iterating on the game
Thomas Boutell
They are iterating both it and several wildly differing variants:
* nethack the original, v3.6.1 and counting.
* unnethack - kitchen sink of additions, harder than vanilla, very actively developed.
* Slash'em/Slash'em Extended/SlashThem - I play this one a lot, basically 3.4.3 with new roles, races, monsters, artifacts, longer dungeon, shorter Gehennom. Kinda hard. Playing as a Vampire wizard is super fun. Playing as a Doppleganger is OP AF. Dev seems stalled for most of these subvariants.
* dNethack - new and actively changing as we speak, new mechanics for almost everything, WAY harder monsters, new roles that are basically impossible to ascend, Elbereth replaced with a series of Wards and spirit bindings that convey an intrinsic but only if you don't break conduct...easily the most complicated and difficult of the current variants. You can play as an android or a convict or a time traveler from the future who doesn't know why he has all these crazy plasma weapons etc.
* FiqHack - mostly UI and QoL improvements...didn't do much for me.
* GruntHack - intended to be harder; can't say, never tried it.

I think that's the major ones? AceHack and NitroHack got folded into one or more of those...NetHack4 became FiqHack I think...NetHack Fourk might be active.

Still a great (set of) game(s).
Paul Lord
https://alt.org/nethack/hterm/ has NetHack 3.6.2, using a very convenient interface so you don't have to download or install anything. But now I need to play a time traveller? Aw, man.

https://ascension.run/hterm/ appears to have many of the variants Paul listed.
nerdsholmferret
Hm, getting unstable connectivity to that variant site, it seems.
nerdsholmferret
OH MY STARS AND GARTERS I can watch random people play nethack this is so much better than playing nethack
Thomas Boutell
Oh, and you can send them a scroll of mail with your kibbitzing thoughts. That's fun.
nerdsholmferret
Eeeeee
Thomas Boutell
 

Fabric Sean M Puckett 11/22 '19

Printed tote bag. 

The design I wrote with a calligraphy brush then turned it into a printing block.  The ink is regular artist acrylic white, ultramarine and primary magenta with some thinned retarder to make it more fabric compatible. Mixed into a gradient on a glass palette with a wide brayer. 

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11/22 '19 1 Comment
Good job!
Lindsay Harris Friel
 

Without further ado... Ray Conrad 11/21 '19

Marvin Gaye's isolated vocals from Heard It Through The Grapevine.



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11/21 '19 5 Comments
Flawless. Flawless. Without flaw.
Jill "xtingu" Knapp
Thank you for this.
Thomas Boutell
This gives me chills. Actual chills. Sigh.
Anne Mollo
I too love this. In fact, I love it so much I wish there was a version sans the reverb.
Matt Lichtenwalner
Now see, I LOVE the fact that you can so clearly hear that magnificent EMT 140 Plate doing its plate thing here. In the full mix it disappears almost completely, there is almost always a horn stab or backing vocal that runs over the decay. Here you can hear the whole tail, and that shows what it's actually adding to the body of the vocal, at least to my ears. A little emphasis on the high end, some spatial depth obviously, a thickness to the falsetto parts...and yeah, a slight metallic sheen, but come on. That's how the song has always sounded. If you love this vocal performance, part of what your ears latched on to was the EMT 140, it's inseparable.

Plate reverb drives me crazy. I can't dial it in on instruments for shit (plus/or digital algorithms are shit for replicating a giant sheet of metal). It's useless to audition a single sound on a plate algo because the whole point is how it affects where things sit in the mix. Which is what makes it so great for vocals. Which I never record. So.

Anyway this way awesome, thanks Ray.
Paul Lord
 
 
 
 

Thanksgiving, 2019 edition Ray Conrad 11/18 '19

From time to time I get drafted to cook Thanksgiving dinner for some friends who are destitute when it comes to culinary arts. This year's menu:


Crown roast of brined pork loin
Mashed potatoes
Cranberry walnut sausage dressing
Green bean casserole
Corn pudding
Yeast rolls
Gravy
Apple cranberry chutney

Dessert will be a cornucopia of pies, provided by the hostess.

Of course I have to make the epic quest to the Buy N' Large a week ahead of Thanksgiving to lay in most of the supplies for the feast. Assuming I survive, the meal should be memorable.

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11/18 '19 4 Comments
Delicious and impressive! I've never ever seen a crown roast of pork; it sounds like something you would go on a quest for, like the sword in the stone.
Anne Mollo
I've done a traditional turkey and trimmings and a prime rib for this family's holidays. Basically, I'm working my way through the top tier cuts of meat.
Ray Conrad
I'm a fan of prime rib for Thanksgiving. This meal sounds amazing and I'm wishing I could be there! Good luck. :)
Karen Kuhl
Good choices.
Lindsay Harris Friel
 
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