Black Mage

I've played the Irish whistle for about three years now, if I recall. My favorite two are my Tony Dixon high and low D whistles. The high D has an aluminum body with a delrin fipple and a brass tuning slide. It's not super loud and can get drowned out in a large session, but she sings in the second octave; bright and clear, with little chiff. My Dixon low D plays one octave lower than the high D and is made completely of polymer. It's sound is quite a bit more mellow, and also quieter. There's a woody hiss in the sound, like it's breathing. It's actually very useless in a session because I can't hear a thing I'm playing. It's nice to play solo, though, especially when I want to play more meditative music. It even does alright with Native American-style music.

We have a Belkin wireless router in our house, but multiple times throughout the day my connection to our DSL via the router dies out. My wireless card in my compy is still receiving the router at "very good" or "excellent" but there's no data being transmitted. The only answer is to go out and unplug then replug the power cable to the router. Then the connection is re-established and I can continue to be connected. It's not a major issue, but it is very much an annoyance I'd rather do without and would like to fix. Is this possibly a problem with the router just getting too warm and needing to be reset? Any other hypotheses?

Nothing artistic, today, just a couple of snap-shots of our neighbor's pooch.

Thanks, nook. I took a glance at your site, you got some kick-ass work there! Here's some more of my past "Holgagraphy."

For those of you who are fortunate to own a DSLR (it's ironic that I work at a camera store, yet don't have one, myself) I want to make one huge lens recommendation. Get yourself a good 50mm (or 55mm) lens. Something that's around f/1.2 to f/1.8. No zoom, please. Trust me, this is the one lens that everyone needs, but one one buys. With one of those lenses you can shoot pretty close, lightning fast, and you can get an awesomely shallow depth of field. They start at $99 for a Canon 50mm f/1.8 and $129 for a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8. Trust me, they may not zoom, but they're the best value you can get in a lense.

I actually got my bachelors in photography. Right now I'm working for Ritz camera, so in terms of equipment, I get to use whatever we have in the store. From the Canon A570 to the Nikon D300. Here's a few on my pictures. An installation piece on mine, composed of 48 individual cyanotypes.

I used to read it religiously, but when they battled the Litch King things really became...less funny. I would go back and find where I left off, but that comic was published so often that I must be hundreds of episodes behind by now. The flash movies were great, though.

I've recently discovered musette and manouche music (gypsy swing/jazz), they're perfect for chilling and drinking some wine or a good beer. Gypsy Jazz has become a new favorite in my playlist!

I've known about Twitter for some time. Leo Laporte is always talking about it on TWiT. I do have an account, but I know of no one else who does, so it's kind of pointless for me. Though seeing the OCR Twitter, I may have to give it another chance. http://twitter.com/Black_Mage

I would love to see Golden Sun DS. I really got into both games on GBA. They didn't really break much in the way of new ground for RPGs, but they were fun and enjoyable. Personally, though, I think I'd like to see a greater emphasis on alchemy in any new games, and less on the Djinn. Having to collect ingredients to transmutate elements to make and upgrade weapons, making precious gems from rocks and turning beavers into gold...yeah, it'd kick ass.

It's cool that Jim Davis actually likes the comic. Like the site says, he could have hit G-G with a C&D order, but he didn't. Rather, he tkaes enjoyment from it. Too bad more artists can't be so light hearted as Davis when someone reinterprets their work.

Heh, I just popped in Animal Crossing after 10 months of hibernation...my town is full of weeds and my house is the abode of many a roach.

...*A'hem*... http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01313/ Though I am actually more fond of the original album version.

Check out Vanessa-Mae's 2nd classical album, China Girl. She plays a awesome rendition of the Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto and an original piece called Happy Valley (not to be confused with Utah Valley).

+$5 to you DJP! Now I get to wear one of the fancy badges.

Playing the Irish whistle, I came to find that learning by ear is actually the traditional method by which one player passes along a song to another. Sure, there is plenty of sheet music covering the likes of the Silver Spear, Lark in the Morning, Garrett Barrys, The Foggy Dew, and The Kesh, but each person who plays those songs, plays them differently. One player adds their own crans or taps or other flourishes, and those changes and habits are passed along to the next player. We all stick to a basic framework, which may be provided by sheet music (or the dots, as we call them), but learning by ear gives a song greater life, as it breaths and greows and changes over time.

I would be inclined to agree. Either that, or it's is Sci-Fi Original Production.

Likewise:

Hows about some Homer?

Can you just imagine the frightened children if they can make him look that that in future games? Hell, I'd be disturbed and mind-fucked if I had to play as that!

Looks right to me, almost natural really, in a freakish sorta way. Brings to my mind the Mario of the SMB Super Show, with a rougher stereotypical Brooklyn accent, verses the stereotypical Italian accent of N64 Mario. Actually, this is one of the better examples of cartoon-to-reality renders I've seen. From http://comunicadoresdeplantao.blogspot.com/2008/03/real-face-do-mrio.html

The muffled voice in the some reminds me of The Protomen.

Okay, I've come to the inevitable conclusion that when an Orc Lord, through the swap of a single jewel, executes a 7-move cascade, not once, but TWICE in a row, that there is some chicanery about within the circuitry of PuzzleQuest! God f%ckit, and I was about to crush that bastard's skull in!

This past month I finished The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, a story about an ex-nun who looses her lover to a gangster's bullet as he tries to save her from him, takes up the robes of a priest who dies in a flood, and poses as Father Damien Modeste at a reservation in North Dakota. I read The Hobbitt (finally), no explanation needed here, I'm sure, and have been making my way through a book of the essays and poem of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Though that one is slow going. Next I want to read Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. It's about how our western society has lost it's sense of communal celebration and the spontaneous expression of joy. I also want to read more works from Paulo Coelho. After having read The Alchemist I want to know more of his works. All the while I've been reading and re-reading The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

I'll try that next.