www.halfpennyorchestra.com
For the last few Februaries, Ryan Miller and I have written songs for FAWM under the name Halfpenny Orchestra. We registered the halfpennyorchestra.com domain but never really did anything with it. Well, we’re doing something with it now.
From time to time, we find ourselves lamenting that we’re too busy, that we don’t push ourselves enough to be creative, that we feel like we’re not using what gifts we have very well. Our friend James Van Lommel feels similarly, so we three decided to start a blog together.
The main purpose of the site is really to provide mutual accountability and creative encouragement for ourselves. We’re each committing to post some sort of original content or commentary there at whatever interval we can, with an ultimate goal of weekly posts from each of us. We’ve started with two essays and a photo with commentary, but future posts may include music, book reviews, sketches, short fiction, and all sorts of other things.
So, if you’re interested in seeing what we’re up to, you can find out at www.halfpennyorchestra.com. Please feel free to peruse whatever is there and leave comments…and please pester us if you notice that it’s been a couple of weeks since something new was posted. :)
Notice to Picketers
There are three main groups of people: those who will ignore you; those who are annoyed at you; and those who are already on your side (who may yet be annoyed at you). The number of people you convert to your side is pretty much guaranteed to be lower than the number of people you alienate…just so you know.
I'd choose the same...
I don’t know if I’ll be able to suppress my gag reflex long enough to actually write a post about how much I dislike America’s political system (and am frustrated by people who have unflinching loyalties to their chosen political parties). Maybe I won’t…it would just make me grumpy. We’ll see.
Pop Quiz, Hotshot
So, after finding a link to this site on Craig’s blog, I decided to try it and see how I’d do. After all, it’s just the kind of meticulous eye strain-inducing test that we all like to take for fun now and then. Right? Are you with me? Guys?
After spending long enough on it to discover a few helpful strategies and develop a mild headache (translation: way too long), I nervously hit Score Test…and got a zero. Every colored block in the correct place. I’m pretty surprised that it turned out that way, since there were a few that didn’t look quite like they fit anywhere, but apparently I guessed right. Anyway, I’ll take it.
So what were the strategies I came up with? Turn your monitor brightness up and adjust your screen angles if you’re on an LCD. Move the blocks which most match the extremes toward the ends first and then try to fill in the middle. When you’re getting close, try moving each square left and right by one space and decide if the spectrum is better or worse than it was before the move.
And in the end, remind yourself that it’s a meaningless amusement on the internet, and not really worth a headache…
Yet more spam issues...
As some of you might have noticed, my Hotmail account got broken into. Regardless of what my email might have said, I am not now an “electronics wholesale.”
(I assume you all know this, but as a public service I’m reminding you that you should never click on links in emails unless you’re 100% sure they’re safe…)
You probably know that I’m not a naive user—I run antivirus software and keep my browsers relatively locked down, I never let browsers remember passwords, I don’t give out personal information online if at all possible, etc. So what’s up?
A little Google searching has shown me that this particular issue has been an ongoing problem for the last year or so. The interesting thing is that it’s not just a Microsoft issue. It has been reported on Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo webmail accounts (at least), and it happens to both Mac and PC users. Similar messages are also getting posted to internet forums all over the place.
To me, that implies that it’s not a virus or malware problem. It’s more likely someone out there using brute computing force to guess passwords…which has an extremely low probability of working, but isn’t impossible. That might explain why the the outbreak reports seem so sporadic. (Hotmail considered my old password “strong,” but in all honesty it was pretty mediocre…get yourself a good one.)
Anyway, my password has been changed and I sent all the details to Microsoft’s help department. I hope this won’t be a problem again…but unfortunately I can’t make any promises.
Andrew Peterson's New Album
“Resurrection Letters, Vol. II” isn’t due in stores until October 21, but it can be streamed in its entirety from this page on the Centricity record label’s site. Awesome. Is there anything that isn’t streaming on the internet? (Don’t answer that…)
By the way, I found this through the Rabbit Room site, which I’ve started to frequent. Notice that you can pre-order 2 copies of the CD there for only $15…
Worth Watching on Pitchfork.tv
For those of you interested in music, and especially traditional American music, the recent documentary, “Awake, My Soul: The Story Of The Sacred Harp” is streaming online at pitchfork.tv here.
It’s only up until the end of the week, though, so watch it soon…
Spam Comments...
Our poor infrequently-updated site has gotten some spam comments lately, so I’ve started requiring an email address for comments. I know that probably won’t help much, but I’m not going to have a chance to do anything more comprehensive for a while.
So if you see bizarre comments using words like paleontology, pay no attention to them.
(Unless they’re from a known big word-user known-big-word user, like Ryan Miller.)
I suffer from this sometimes...
( from http://xkcd.com/ )
Update: There are some weird comics on that site, but this one just made Andrea and me laugh out loud…
New Music Player...
So, over my lunch hour today I tidied up the sidebar a little bit and added a music player in the upper right hand corner over there.
I don’t know how often we’ll update or add music, but for now there’s one song by Fleet Foxes for your enjoyment. Their MySpace page has more, and they’re all worth a listen.
