Our local housefilk is coming up in two weeks:

ACORN at Great Oak Cohousing (common house dining room), 500 Little Lake Dr., Ann Arbor, MI 48103.
Saturday, December 5, 1:00 PM until whenever.

We usually order pizza for dinner around 4:00-5:00. This time, some folks will be leaving after dinner for the Christine Lavin concert in Sterling Heights. I'll be staying in Ann Arbor, and if there is "critical mass" we'll continue singing.

Please bring snacks and drinks for the afternoon, and be ready to sing or play.

or maybe it was early this morning - it was while listening to the Player Piano at fmsv & cowfan's Minn-StF Meeting last night:

( Judi Dench & Max Raabe within )
Can anyone pass this along to Hershey & Sahara?

I have been listening to Death Cab For Cutie's Grapevine Fires obsessively lately (man, Narrow Stairs is just such a great album all over) and enjoying the beautiful, wistful, thoughtful images of watching fires in California. Last night we went to see 2012 and now the song makes me giggle uncontrollably as I picture California crumbling in to the ocean. Hee hee hee. OMG this movie. There wasn't a giant squid, but that's my only complaint. SO GLORIOUSLY DISASTERRIFIC. They jumped a sports car out of a burning plane on to a mountain top! Just as a throwaway thing! Shortly before a giraffe in a helicopter flew by! Bwahahahaha. (Also, "helicoptering the giraffe" is the new "jumping the shark.") John Cusack was so perfectly cast to embrace the ridiculousness. I laughed SO HARD. We were kind of Those Annoying People in the theatre actually. Several times no one else was laughing and we were laughing very, very loudly. Oops. But I mean, THE NEUTRINOS HAVE MUTATED. THE EARTH'S CORE IS MELTING. Hee hee hee hee hee. Joe says it would have been better if they'd only had a tenth the budget. "It's the perfect script! They just had too much money!"

I'm up to 105 shots now! Usually Sundays are quiet, but I'm hoping word of our no-lines+hooray-lollies service will spread and keep me busy stabbing folks today.

On CNet, there's a warning of the "12 scams of Christmas." With a little work, this could even be sung:

On the nth day of Christmas,
A spammer sent to me:

Twelve notes of ransom,
Eleven banking rip-offs,
Ten password grabbers,
Nine crooked auctions,
Eight bad job offers,
Seven sneaky carols,
Six loose connections,
Five pyrite rings,
Four malware cards,
Three false friends,
Two phony bills,
And a plea from a fake charity.

In practice, "12 Days of Christmas" parodies shouldn't be sung, or should be reduced to the last verse. So don't worry, I don't plan to sing this.

Friday evening I went to a gathering of electronic chums at the enormous Indian buffet restaurant Feast - always wanted to go as it looks so huge - like an Indian Resr=taurant space station plked down at the edge of town. There were 7 of us, a nice number, and the buffet style mae for informality as one got up and got more at the various food stations - starter bar, chaat bar, dosa bar, stir fry bar, salad bar, curry bar, desert bar. Shekhar the Synth, Jim the Laptop, Victoria the Voice, Chris the Guitar, Dave the Cello, Jacaline the VJ & self.

Saturday
Had a posh piano gig - so posh I;d gone out and bought a black suit and bow tie as it was a black tie do. This is the forst time in 20 years I have gone black tie. Hard to find the place in he Loughboough Univ complex - the satnav postcode took me to a housing estate..., plus there was a complete downpour and traffic jams out of Leicester. Got there OK int he end. It was for a Cathlic College 50th year celebration. Nice folks. Had to play quite a while tho - ended up playing maybe 4 hours - fingers were a bit sore next day.

All my songs albums are hearable in full on widgets (and downloadable - £5) on my songs page - Talking Fish Live is now a free download - enjoy. So...the Bandcampisation of my Cds is coming along...

Sunday - had nice moning reading whilst having coffee & croissant while listenign to Stockhausen's Stimmung - very chilling. Have a Domestic Violence charity songs benefit slot tonight might sing my new song.

Happy Birthday thnidu

I went back to Bristol yesterday, with P, and we visited my dear friend Juliet, who is a very fine potter. She was taking part in the Totterdown Art Trail, where numerous arty folk open their homes and turn their front rooms into exhibition spaces; many serve refreshments, local cafes and churches join in, and it's all a huge amount of fun. I got to enjoy the pottery of Juliet Fleming and Sarah Jordan, the paintings of Terry Burke (also a friend, and it was lovely to spend time with her), and there was knitting too, in a beautiful space that Juliet had made into a gallery for the day.

P and I ate at our favourite cafe, Acapella, (twice! - spag bol and roasted vegetable and hummus panini with salad at lunchtime. Shared an Tempo pizza with smoked ham and fresh basil in the evening). We had tea and cake all over the place - Ooh, Anna's cookies! - and made side trips as well. Saw my pal C and chatted, made a quick foray to Get Knitted - oh, my - and popped into other artists' houses as we encountered them. They were so inspiring! I loved seeing the different approaches artists had taken to the challenge of making their homes into public space for the day. And Juliet's work is delightful and witty and utterly beautiful. I'm so proud of her.

After supper, P and I returned to Juliet's and I gave her and her family and guests an informal house concert, which was a complete indulgence as they seemed to love everything I sang. The setlist, or rather, what I sang while making it up as I went along, was as follows:

Keepsake Day (new), Jam Tomorrow, Gathering Summer In, Bag Ladies, Scarlet and Green (new), When I was a Mermaid, Fourteen Hundred Hours, Head of a Pin, The Orchard, Rampisham Down, A Change of Heart, Kitchen Heroes.

I had a lovely day. I feel as if I've had a holiday; it was a gem of a day, and all very good for the soul.

And, uh....I seem to have started writing filk. Help!

OK, not really "help" per se. My honey and I were kidnappe^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H introduced to filk at Conflikt last January by pocketnaomi and I've already written (and rewritten) (and rewritten) three filks that were debuted at cflute and pocketnaomi 's housefilk a couple weeks ago. They even got some applause! (and then some more rewriting).

What I asked about at the housefilk was "what do I do with those songs where I get the first 2 (or 4) lines and then...nada! it stops. No more shows up?"

They company suggested posting here and asking for help and suggestions. So...here I am.

The one that has me currently cranky is the start of a Vorkosiverse song, based on the book Cetaganda, and to the tune of "How are Things in Glockamorra?". I have one verse. It needs more! Help?

How are things on Cetaganda?
Is the dowager still dead?
Has Ivan pleasured all those ghem-girls?
Has Vorreedi lost his head?

How are things on Cetaganda?
.....
the floor is open for comment :-)

Hello again all!

Just a reminder that you are invited to gather on Sunday, December 13th from noon to 8pm in South Amboy.

To add a sight detail, the Trebuchet in the back yard can be seen by those parking in the driveway(we can fit 6 cars) and is just a lawn ornament outside the SCA >:)

Please note the date of December 13th
Directions are included below by road and Rail

We down a bit on the jersey coast would like to invite you to join us Sunday December 13th from noon to 8pm to sing and make merry! I have invited George Carmichael AKA Lord Andrew Stewart McRobb of the SCA and he has agreed, health permitting.

For those of you who are not familiar with Andrew, he has been active musically writing lyrics and some music for parodies and some serious subjects of an SCA or Medieval nature for the last two plus decades. Our home can fit more than we can seat which I have seen as a trend in house filks >:) We have seating for 20(which will be crowded). We will be providing snacks, including Kosher(new bought packets served on new bought paper/plastic ware or in wrapper and purpose bought plastic utensils) for the observant. I do realize this will be during the Chanukah celebration however it was the best timing we could get.

RSVP Please.

Our home is in South Amboy, NJ one block from the South Amboy NJ transit rail station.
We can also be reached via the Garden State Parkway(Exit 125), The New Jersey Turnpike(Exit 11), Route 1, Route 9 and Route 287. Driving to us from Staten Island is best coming across the Outerbridge crossing.

DIRECTIONS:
Arrival by NJ Transit Rail:
If you take the train from the North(From NYC or Newark NJ) you can take trains from Penn Station(NYC or
Newark) on the "North Jersey Coast" line to station South Amboy. If you are coming from Trenton(or
services connecting there) you will need to come north to the Rahway station and then switch trains.
Once you arrive in South Amboy, look to see if you are on the station side or not. If you are on the
Station side, you need to cross sides.
There are foot-bridges north(more modern) and South(older) of the station itself. Once on the correct
side, turn your back to the rails and walk(via an alley or nearby road) to Broadway, South Amboy's main
road. Once on Broadway, cross the far side of Broadway and look left and right for a green and white
sign for "Amboy National Bank".
This sign marks the corner of David Street and Broadway. Go to that intersection and follow David
Street(there is only one way) to house number 263 on your left. Thats us.

Arrival by Road:
North:
NJ Turnpike:
Take the best route to the Turnpike south. Go to exit 11 and pay the toll. Follow the signs to Route
9 South. This will put you on NJ Route 9 south over the Raritain river. Follow from *** below

Garden State Parkway
Take the best route to the Parkway south. Go to exit 129 and follow the signs to Route 9 South. This
will put you on NJ Route 9 south
over the Raritain river. Follow from *** below
Outerbridge Crossing: Once you cross the OBC you are on Route 440. Follow that until you see signs for
Route 9 South. Once you are on Route 9 South, Follow from *** below.
South:
NJ Turnpike:
Take the best route to the Turnpike North. Go to exit 10 and pay the toll. Follow signs to Route
440 towards Perth Amboy. Once on 440, follow signs to Route 9 South. This will put you on NJ Route 9
south over the Raritain river. Follow from *** below
Garden State Parkway
Take the Parkway north. Just past exit 120 there is a rest area(Cheesequake Rest area), take the
exit into that rest area. Go to the northern parking area and pass to the north end where there is
an exit onto a local road. This is Bordentown Road. Turn right onto Bordentown and pass under the
Parkway and then, after some distance, under Route 35. Once under Rt 35 you will see a foodtown
and then pass through one full traffic light before coming to a blinking light. The blinking light
is the intersection of Bordentown and Stevens. Turn left here onto Stevens. Once on Stevens, pass
the intersections for George, John and Henry to Stevens and David.
Turn right there and go to the third house from the corner on the right, number 263. Thats us.

*** Once over the river, be prepared to take the very first exit off the foot of the bridge. When you
come to the light at the end of the ramp you want to be in the right most of the two left lanes.
Turn left at the light and stay to the left until under Route 9, then move to the right at the
light you are approaching. At the light, turn right onto Main Street(yes, it looks pretty
desolate). You will pass through one more light almost immediately and then some distance before
three more lights.
The third light is Main Street and Stevens Avenue. Turn left here. Follow Stevens through one
traffic light to the very next intersection.
This is Stevens and David. WARNING: There is no street sign for David where it hits Stevens.
Just remember that is the next intersection after the light you pass through. Turn left at this
intersection. We are the third house on the right, number 263.

RSVP Please

Andrew has given permission in advance for recording his performances but hopes everyone who wishes to will join in

Marc and Gemma

Thanks for your patience, everyone -- my year's touring is drawing to a close, which means I'll have more time for article writing here on LJ. :)
--------------------------------------------------

A friend of mine recently asked "what exactly goes in a press kit?" These are the materials you send to prospective live music venues, in order to ask for performance bookings there. They're also what you send to media reporters ('the press') in order to solicit CDs reviews or articles about your live show.

A press package nowadays has a nice one-page summary which includes the artist's professional biography, and some idea of what the live act sounds like. The bio should be written in a more conversational style than a professional resume; try to emphasize why your band will appeal to the venue's clientele. Hint: the vast majority of venues make their money by selling beer and food. Their live music schedule is really just there to bring in more eating, drinking, paying customers; don't make the mistake of believing that your creative work is actually important to the booker/manager of your venue. Just bring your fans and encourage them to have a drink or entree (and play music that won't drive the rest of the clientele out) and most venues will be happy.

*Never* over-hype yourself. Ever. Writing something like: "A tremendous talent, Sandra is a rising star who is taking the Canadian music scene by storm" is totally blowing your own horn, and no one working in the music industry will take it seriously. You should only include a phrase like that if you can directly quote it from a reputable, published media source; if you can, then by all means include a photocopy of the review or at least name the media source (newspaper, radio, respected online site) after the quote.

The 'one-page' should have a clear photo of the performer(s), if at all possible. Try to make it interesting. If you can tie it in with the theme of your musical style, so much the better. But trust me, folks: *every* rock/metal band has had themselves photographed looking somber in front of a brick wall. Come up with something else.

The demo CD should include 3 tracks that best exemplify the live act -- or if you're including a full CD, indicate which 3 songs the venue owner should listen to. As a courtesy, take off the shrink wrap; the booker has to deal with dozens of these per week. A cover note with a cheery yet professional personal message is a nice touch, particularly by folk/Celtic venues (rock clubs don't usually care, but folkies tend to be a more informal sort). Include full contact information on every piece of the package, in case things get separated. That's really it -- if you have any positive newspaper reviews of your live show, I'd throw a photocopy of the best one in, otherwise don't bother. The music/bio should give the venue a good idea of what you're offering.

Follow-up calls are important for both venues and media people: give them a week, then start calling every few days to try to talk to the booker in person. If you catch him/her, be friendly but don't take up any more of their time than you have to -- get right to the point, then let them get on with their day. Before you get a booker on the phone, have an idea of what fee range you'd like to ask for, but don't discuss money until you they've expressed an interest in hiring you. Figure out what your "no-go" conditions are: too little money, not enough stage time, have to rent your own PA, too late in the evening, a date you're unavailable... if the booker can't accommodate what you need (note: this is very different from what you *want*), then look elsewhere. Don't be too fussy though, or you may never be given a second chance. With venue shows, you're just one part of the team -- everyone has to win.

----------------
THINGS TO REMEMBER:
- The music venue has its own reasons for hiring you... try to find a way to give them what they're looking for.
- Don't over-hype yourself and don't behave like a diva.
- Make the package as simple as possible, and do everything you can to make the booker's decision easier.
----------------
THINGS YOU NEED TO LEARN ABOUT:
- Promotional writing. Read other artists' bio blurbs (on their websites, concert posters, etc); what works and what doesn't?
- Confidence on the phone. Be professional, friendly and to-the-point.
----------------

Just for a laugh, I published an album today.

Here it is. All instrumentals, so you don't have to worry about being afflicted by my voice, and I'm fairly sure there's at least one that hasn't been available anywhere before. Maybe even two.

If you know anyone who might be interested, maybe you'd pass the word...

Both kids graduated belts, big time last night. For Tate it was her first belt graduation. For Aidan he went from the white series to full orange belt last night.



( More pics below the cut )

Our Gr. 3-6 students participated in a worth-while project in the gym yesterday at lunch. Canada's Family Channel sponsored an event for Anti-Bullying Week called "Stand Up! Wave bullying good-bye!" and encouraged schools to run anti-bullying activities leading up to a wave to take place in schools across Canada at 12:20 yesterday. You can see the final cross-Canada wave at five representative schools in the last two minutes of the video in the link listed above.

At our school the G. 7-8 "Luke 4:18" community service group ran the event, splitting the students into their grade groups to do an anti-bullying activity before moving together to do the final wave. My Gr. 4 students did an activity called "Stop That Bullying!" and we spent some art time that morning make banners to go along with the lesson. They added a lot to the colour and excitement of the event! (see photo) I ran around and took a bunch of photos while the Gr. 3, 4, 5 ad 6 kids were doing their activities with the Gr. 7 and 8 leaders. We'll use the photos for displays for our upcoming parent-teacher night, the school newsletter and possibly the school board website.

At 12:15 we gathered all the students together to practice our wave and then at 12:20 we joined schools all over Canada by doing the wave and video-taping it to hopefully send in to the Family Channel for possible viewing on their TV channel or website.

A good day and I hear from other teachers that it inspired several intense discussions about the nature of bullying and what we can do in our school to prevent bullying and stop bullying if it happens.

There have been several attempts down the years to make Windows unnecessary. The most audacious is doubtless ReactOS, which cuts to the heart of things and wants to be a complete Windows XP-compatible OS. Needless to say, this is no small project and will take a long time to complete; right now, I'd call it somewhere between completely useless and intriguingly experimental. (It runs Skype, at least.) I'm also concerned that if they ever do get it anywhere near useful completion, Microsoft will stomp on it hard.

That's certainly the high road. But how necessary is it to clone the whole damned OS? A Windows app, after all, is just a block of x86 machine code that makes calls into one or more APIs. If you can clone the APIs in an acceptably clean-room manner, you don't need to duplicate the entire architecture, kernel and all.

And that brings us to one of the oldest and oddest ongoing projects in open-source computing: Wine, which dates back to 1993, and provides a compatibility layer consisting of clean-room DLLs implementing the Win32 APIs, plus whatever magic is necessary to make the deeper host OS machinery look like Windows to the app. This is easier than implementing a whole OS, with the further advantage that if done properly, Wine can act as a Windows compatibility layer over several Unix-like OSes, rather than only Linux. Currently, Wine can operate over Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD Unix, and x86 Solaris.

After 16 years of dogged work, Wine actually works pretty well. Part of its success is due to a remarkable cooperation between the Wine project and a commercial software house in St. Paul named Codeweavers. Codeweavers sells a $40 deployment/management utility for Wine called Crossover, which basically makes Wine noob-friendly. (Naked Wine is pretty stark.) Codeweavers also tweaks Wine itself to improve app compatibility, and contributes those tweaks back to the Wine project under LGPL. Some financial support is also provided to the otherwise volunteer-based Wine project. Wine's founder, Alexandre Julliard, is an employee of Codeweavers, where he works full-time on Wine development.

Codeweavers focuses mostly on big-market apps like Microsoft Office, and doesn't officially support apps beyond a relatively short list of "gold" software. However, I've found that a great many Windows apps install and run just fine under Crossover whether they're on the list or not. InDesign 2.0 is listed on the site as "known not to work" but apart from a minor display glitch, it seems to work as always. (I haven't tested it deeply so far.) Most Microsoft apps work beautifully (especially older ones) and I've been using Office 2000 and Visio 2000 under it without incident since last fall.

Wine implements a sort of runtime environment emulation for Windows called a "bottle." More than one bottle may be created on a single host OS, and each bottle has its own emulated C: drive and Registry. By giving each Windows app its own bottle under Wine, apps are prevented from interfering with one another in the dreaded "DLL Hell" effect. Because it's not a VM, the performance hit for running Wine/Crossover is very small, and most important, you do not need to have a legal copy of Windows running in the VM. On the other hand, a bottle looks enough like Windows to be infectable by Windows malware, though one bottle probably can't infect other bottles on a Linux system, or the underlying system itself. (From what I've heard, the low-level system tricks played by many malware packages keep them from running or at least running completely.) There are known conflicts between WGA and Wine, so don't install WGA if you can avoid it.

Bottom line: If Wine supports all the Windows apps you absolutely must use, you do not need Windows at all. I haven't tested all the Windows packages that I use here (next up is MapPoint 2004) but for Office and Visio 2000 it's been nothing short of magical, and I'm guessing InDesign will come along eventually. In a mature software market, time works in our favor: One by one, existing apps will be installable under Wine, and each time that happens, Windows slips a little bit deeper beneath the waters of irrelevance.

Next up: For the hard cases, there's always virtualization.

I'm trying to make more room on my shelves, so some books are going. Before taking them to a Got Books box, I'd like to give friends a chance to claim them. If I'll be seeing you in person any time soon (including Arisia and Boskone) or if we can arrange an intermediary, you're welcome to any of these. Dates are mentioned for books whose usefulness might be diminished by age.

( List behind cut )

In putting that list together, I changed my mind and decided to keep only one of the books in the pile!

Request books in comments or by however you know how to reach me. All comments are screened for your privacy.

Reminder: I can't reply to comments without unscreening them. If you have a question about the books, please give me an email address or say it's OK to unscreen your comment.

Happy Birthday callyperry

What kind of day has it been:

23:01 Any members of New Creation Church Singapore out there reading this... STOP FOLLOWING ME NOW. #

Automatically stabbed through your living brain by LoudTwitter

Confirmed Filkers:

SJ Tucker: www.skinnywhitechick.com
Tom Smith: www.tomsmithonline.com
Stone Dragon (Tom/Sue Jeffers): http://www.stonedragons.ca/
Phil Mills/Jane Garthson: http://filk.philmills.ca/

More is in the works......

http://cf2010.stilyagi.org/content/guests-honor

I don't entirely understand this XKCD strip. I know it's a Narnia reference, but the last panel eludes me. What obvious thing am I missing?

And then some. But it's almost over.

I really hate that Windycon is the weekend before finals but not much I can do about either.

The finals I had to deal with this quarter were bunched up - two on Tuesday pretty much back to back and Thursday an hour apart. Tuesday afternoon's final had waaaay too much drama, including somebody who was convinced it started at 1pm - it started at noon. They came in about 6 minutes too late. (We don't let anybody start the exam if anybody has finished and left.) We managed to get page one graded before the end of the day.

Tuesday night at the pharmacy was very busy - still lots of antibiotics and Tamiflu going out.

Wednesday was more grading, grading grading. (190+ exams x 8 pages).

Thursday - one exam at 8am (for which I was the responsible adult) and another at 10am. For the 8am exam, the Greek letters that were critical for one question got eaten somewhere in the editing process of combining 4 people's questions into one cohesive document and making a pdf of it but that was easily fixed. We finished totaling the exams from Tuesday afternoon during the 10am exam and I had everything processed by the time I left.

When I left yesterday, two of the 4 classes were completely done. A third needs the boss to assign letter grades, which will be straight-forward. Then it's a simple matter of uploading the grade file and that's done. That leave the biggest class to assign grades and upload.

And the death march that is winter quarter starts in a week.

Almost forgot about the almost accident on the way to dinner last night. Was cruising down Rt 59 and this yahoo almost t-boned me, turning left. I still don't know how I managed to skate around him and still miss the cars that were trying to pull out of the same entrance he was trying to turn into. It was NOT what I needed to end the day!

If I say we enjoyed watching Bonekickers again, all my credibility's going to go goggle goggle, uggle oof, down the drain, isn't it?

Oh well, so be it. We did. I know they're not proper archaeologists, but then again the True Cross isn't buried under Bath either (as far as I know), so there are obviously some fictional elements here. it was fun. Plus, being localish, we got to spot locations. I could have happily watched another series, if not more.

I could also have done with more of Jekyll, though I realise that's hardly on the cards now, and it's arguable that the story's been locked off in a way that doesn't allow much in the way of continuation. Shame.

And now I am about to submerge myself in water, in preparation for fun and music with V and C. Yay.