Saturday, April 28, 2007

Al Altered at the Al-tar

Worth1000.com | Photoshop Contests | Are you Worthy™ | contest

In passing. . .
This is a great site if you like such stuff. Community participation. . .so why are they still using Photoshop instead of an open source equivalent?

Friday, April 27, 2007

The Deadest of Lines

Hiyo. I had my practice defense presentation yesterday--thanks to those who attended, and hello~! --and it was OK I guess. I am determined now to finish up the revisions of chapters 3 and 4 this weekend--
and I have good reason to hurry, as the publishers are breathing down my neck for real. They insist on having the whole enchilada finished and to them by May 7th. . .ten days away. Aside from unit 3, which I did as a demo chapter, I haven't done anything for book 2, which will have 16 chapters in all. So. . .time's a-movin! Once I'm done with the dissertation revision, I'll have to throw myself into the textbook revisions till they are all done and proofread and shiny clean. Then back to hunting down dissertation citations and making sure the format and "style" is all done plopperly.
Wishin' you all well. Don't let the Bumsteads get you down.
Litmus

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Stoked and Frustrated

Glory be! URU is back and I didn't know until today. Get info here. But I have no time for that!
Actually, I have no time for this, either. Back to the diss, foolish mortal!
Oh boy oh boy oh boy!! I REALLY WANNA PLAY!
This is a great piece of salvaging, it seems, of the Cyan Myst series' successor, the online game set in D'ni. The original games are fantastically fantastic.
By the way, our school got a copier--our first--at a good price. Grooviness.

Theremin Love!

Open Source » Blog Archive » Passion: The Theremin(-)

A family favorite! (Yes, what a family!) This instrument sounds great in the Tiomkin (I think) score to Forbidden Planet and the The Simpsons's "Treehouse of Terror" episode introductions.
En-Joy!

CORRECTION: Information on the score of Forbidden Planet provided by users of the Internet Movie DataBase:

  • First mainstream film to have the music performed entirely by electronic instruments.

  • Louis Barron and Bebe Barron worked on the electronic soundtrack music "tonalities" for only three months, the length of time given them by Dore Schary, head of MGM. He authorized the studio to send them a complete workprint at Christmas 1955. They received the complete 35mm Eastmancolor workprint at New Year's 1956, a week later, still with many visual effects sequences missing and timed in with blank leader by editor Ferris Webster. From January 1, 1956 to April 1, 1956, they worked on the soundtrack score in their Greenwich Village studio in New York City while the film was in post-production in Culver City. The score was completed and delivered to MGM on April 1, 1956, and the film was released for a studio sneak preview soon afterward. The musician's union, however, objected to the soundtrack, and blocked the Barrons from being credited as "composers", hence the term "electronic tonalities".

  • Apart from the electronic tonalities composed by the Barrons, the music score known to many as "Forbidden Planet Fanfare - Parts 1 & 2" on the original 1956 theatrical trailer was composed by AndrĂ© Previn, and pieced together seamlessly by an MGM music editor. The music was originally written by Previn for the MGM films Scene of the Crime (1949) and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955).
I was thinking of the score of another great favorite, The Thing from Another World, 1951, as being by Dmitri Tiomkin.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Flock to me, everybody!

I’m working on my dissertation pretty well today, which is good, though I really SHOULD have sent out the finished draft of the revision (called draft 3) of the 3rd and 4th chapters to my advisor.

But I’ve been busy in more ways than one today, and here’s my first post from the built-in blog agent in the Flock browser. How’s it look, everybody?

I’m getting really interested in trying out Linux: either Debian or Ubuntu. Will keep you up to date on that. Also, using Greasemonkey in Firefox. Groovy browser!

Well, let’s see how she flies, Orville!

Litmus

Saturday, April 14, 2007

April Showers bring May Flowers

. . .and May Flowers bring furniture. Yeah.
Just a couple of updates [by the way, it drives me crazy when people drop the "of" in the phrase "a couple of Xs; it's not used the same was as "a few"!] for y'uns.
My advisor emailed me to let me know that he's signed and returned the Defense Application Thingy (official title) to the Department office; I'm committed now to finishing the degree this semester. . .no more delays! So I have got to get this turdiform "bovine theses" all titivated up and shoved out the scholastic vomitorium before cockshut time, or it's "Arnold raced for the door" for me!
Chapter 3 I think is in for a radical laparotomy today, as I cut off most of its header material. I will cut to the chase and focus on dear old wonky Borrow.

Also, the publishers have allowed me a few more weeks to finish up the textbooks; I'm now shooting for May 7th.

I have read most of Peter Beagle's Giant Bones on the train and at school this Weds. and think it's the bee's knees. Now I wanna get the other books by him into my line of sight and within dreaming distance.

Now starting up The World Treasury of Science Fiction with general series editor Anne Fadiman's Dad. Its foreword is real good.

Also I finished obsessively reading the wonderful Eats, Shoots & Leaves, wonderful British book on punctuation, from the militant sticklers' angle. Put that with dear Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris and some other great book-loving works I'll try to add to this list. 'Tis true, though, that the book has made me a bit self-conscious about these "little marks".

Wishing you well and hoping you do the same-- Litmus

Thursday, April 12, 2007

New Google Service!

For your information, I'll mention this free new service from Google. I hope everything will come out all right for this new and exciting "underground" project.

The Talk is Clicking, and the Clock is Ticking!

I had to make an emergency visit to my PhD university, NSYSU, to officially get the official tiny little stamp on my official student ID in order to be an official student once more (though I'd already finished the official paperwork mountain long ago) so that I could officially get the official dratted permission to apply for my dissertation defense (officially) before the dead(official)line.
*Gosh,* how I hate paperwork and tangling with any level or type of bureaucracy. Kudos again to Douglas Adams.
Well, I did that, and applied for the defense (no clue yet when it will be though), and made sure of my own defense rehearsal (a demo talk of about 20 minutes' length): it will be on the 26th afternoon of this month.
Also, the school has nominated me for membership in the
Phi Tau Phi Sholastic Honor Society. So I did that work too.
I've also asked the textbook company for an extension so I can first finish the revision (I meant to say, THIS revision, which's not the final one at all!) first, by next Weds., and then work on the textbooks. Hope they go for it.
Weather continues charming.
So tired. Hoo boy.
Best to all. As former VP Al Gore once adjured his listeners,

Peace out, y'all!

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Munch, crunch. . .

OK, one more. . .not much in love with the seemingly inflexible Yahoo template. . .I'll give it a fair shake, though. This would be for the artist in me.

http://360.yahoo.com/oshuhuat

or, more specifically, the blog part (I hardly care about the main page)

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-DxN6gcA.aK604tWoVZDwRA--?cq=1

Catchy, isn't it not?

Amy is safely home from her vacation and she had a lovely time. We all rejoiced!

Speaking of crunching, I am gonna try to finish up the dissertation (chapters 3-4) revisions today, as per Rudy's comments. This week of study has been pretty much a wash, but now I want to make a clean face of it and make it up. So I'd better quit blogging now. . .
C Ya
Meepers

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Coral's Excellence!

Splendid news from our first-grade daughter, Coral, today!

Her Chinese mid-term's grade was a 97%, and on her math exam, she earned full marks! 100%!

What a great gift for Mommy's birthday (celebrated now, but actually it was on Sunday)! (This image was generated by nosiridontlikeit.com, and is not from anybody's real school)
O Frabjuous day, calloo, callay!
He chortled in his joy.

What the heck. . .just one more won't hurt.

Another experimental blog, perhaps just an ephemerality.
http://alternity.wordpress.com/

A Fresh Outburst of Neostalgia

I've begun, mostly out of curiosity, a new blog on Wordpress, another free service with different sorts of options. Perhaps I'll finally merge the two. What I really ought to do is get back to work! I've got lots to do and very little time, and the past 9 days or so have been choc-a-bloc full of a pursuit of busyness--you grok?

Whereas this page is partly focused on one group of theoretical concepts I've been developing--the synecdochal fallacy and misconfirmed assumptions--the new one is to focus on the idea of neostalgia--creating personal items that confirm to patterns established by what you consider nostalgic or classic, resulting in what many call "instant classics." Both groups of ideas are involved with the interplay in the mind of perception, memory, expectations, and dreams.

http://neostalgia.wordpress.com/

Feel free to visit, though I warn you that Chanticleer might be displeased by the first post's title. Well, oh well.

CJO