annathepiper: (Minor Key Major Songs)

I’ve been total Scattershot Girl when it comes to blogging for some time–like many, I’ve found most of my day to day online communication shunted over to Twitter and Facebook. But that said, I’ve had several recent lovely things happen that are worth sharing with you all in longer, blog-based form. So! In no particular order:

  • Finally saw The King’s Speech, since userinfospazzkat got it via Netflix. That was a very satisfying film, and I’m not at all surprised that it’s spawned so much fanfic across my various Friends lists and such. Everyone in that film did an amazing job, and I have much increased respect for Mr. Colin Firth now. Also, mad love for the scene where the speech therapist’s wife comes home and discovers the King and Queen in her dining room. :D

  • Also, as of today, finally saw Source Code with userinfosolarbird. Mad, mad props to userinfomamishka for recommending that! It’s a nice, tight little SF flick, and if you like alternate-reality type plots, try to catch this before it vanishes entirely. If you’re local to Seattle, it’s still playing at the Meridian 16 downtown, and it’s running at the Crest as well.
  • I have finally found a way I might actually read more comic books: the Dark Horse comics app for the iPad. I installed this on the grounds that a couple weekends back, Dark Horse had a sale of all its digital versions of Serenity and Firefly comics. Since I didn’t have Shepherd’s Tale yet, I thought what the hey, I’d buy ‘em all. The iPad is definitely more suited to digital comics reading than the iPhone, that’s for sure, although the iPhone does actually talk to this app as well.
  • Also on the iPad, I have a shiny new app called TunePal, recommended to me by Marilyn, one of the fiddle players who attends the weekly session userinfosolarbird and I have been going to. Those of you who know the Shazam app will find the way this works familiar; it basically identifies songs. But in this case, it identifies traditional Irish tunes! You can play them at the app on an actual instrument, or, it’ll identify ‘em if you’re playing them in iTunes as well. Then it goes out and hits up a big ol’ database and yoinks back several guesses as to what it thinks you just played it. It’ll show you sheet music for its guesses, and it’ll play the sheet music for you as well. And, you can add tunes out of the database manually by searching for them as well. You can’t import your own tunes, which is my only complaint about the app, but it’s otherwise very, very cool. Any of my fellow music geeks out there who are interested in trad tunes, you should be checking this out.

  • Speaking of the iPhone, my coworker Joe pointed me at my new favorite iPhone game: Tiny Wings. You play a birdie with, of course, tiny tiny wings, and the object of the game is to get the birdie to fly as far as possible by tapping. It’s super-cute and only 99 cents, so check it out.
  • FOLKLIFE! Well, that deserves a whole separate post, but I’m noting it here anyway.
  • And while I am still technically on book buying hiatus, I’ve picked up a few freebies. And I will unrepentantly, UNREPENTANTLY I TELL YOU, break hiatus wide open to buy userinfoseanan_mcguire/Mira Grant’s Deadline this week. Because GIMME. Seriously.
  • My friend userinforavyngyngvar is sending me a Blu-Ray of a-ha’s last concert in Oslo! Thank you, Yngvar!
  • I am sorely behind on Doctor Who posts, and will shortly be doing a catchup post. It’s an indicator of how much I’ve not been paying attention to the net lately that I totally missed that BBC America did NOT air the second half of the two-parter on Saturday, to wit, bah. I did not however give enough of a damn about this to actually try to find and download the episode; it’ll air next week as far as I know, and I can wait that long. Especially given that we’re about to have the mid-season hiatus anyway. Just nobody spoil me, mmkay, those of you who’ve already caved and downloaded the ep anyway?
  • And because it’s always worth saying, mmmmm blackberries of my marketboys mmmmmm.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

annathepiper: (Wide Eyed and Waiting)
[livejournal.com profile] janne has very kindly grabbed me physical copies of both the recent Morten Harket album I wanted as well as the previous solo album he did and she's going to be sending them my way. So both of you are off the hook. Thanks though for speaking up on my previous post about this!

And stand by for when a-ha puts out their next album, I'll probably be wanting that too. ;)
annathepiper: (Minor Key Major Songs)
It has come to my attention that Mr. Morten Harket, best known as the lead singer of a-ha, came out with a new solo album last year. Which is not available in the US, either physically or digitally! Woe!

As I must have this album, anybody in Europe willing to do a swap with me? I'll purchase something over here for you of equivalent value and send it to you, cost of item plus shipping. Or if it's possible to gift something downloadable, I can reciprocate on that too. Drop a comment if you're interested!
annathepiper: (Wide Eyed and Waiting)
Y'all may notice I have a new icon on this post. That's because [livejournal.com profile] starfallz reminded me that even though my lads of Newfoundland do tend to dominate my musical attention, some lads over in Norway have had it a while longer. This here is an icon by [livejournal.com profile] sayuri_x. I've got another I've scarfed from her as well, from this post over here on [livejournal.com profile] aha. If you like this icon, go check out the others and compliment her work!

Meanwhile, for the sake of not making this a total GIP, this is your official announcement to Get Your Anna While Supplies Last. I go in for surgery at Stupid-o'Clock tomorrow morning. The plan is much like last time: nothing to eat or drink after midnight, check in at the hospital at 5:30am, surgery at 7am. They will keep me 1-3 days depending on how I do. Friday evening for release is a possibility but it may be more like Saturday, given that this is a more complex surgery than the mastectomy was. So there'll be more repair work that the Nanomechnical Anna will have to do.

[livejournal.com profile] solarbird will of course be coming with me, as will my computer. I'll check in online when I'm awake and able.

In the meantime, I invite you all to amuse yourselves with the following poll!

[Poll #1262098]

Leave other suggestions in the comments!
annathepiper: (Sleepy)
... things haven't been all bad!

Got the new a-ha CD finally, thanks Janne! )

A veritable TARDISload of Doctor squee )

In non-Doctor-media news, we went and saw Ocean's Thirteen Friday night. I hadn't actually seen the first two movies to go with this, though I have seen the original Ocean's Eleven with Frank Sinatra and his boys. This new movie was full of pretty men doing swank, smooth things, and was generally quite enjoyable. Also, a very groovalicious soundtrack that makes you feel like you ought to be holding a drink and looking stylish.

More later, as I am still working on getting us a new and improved backup process in place. Thanks to the network crisis over the weekend I have totally missed a lot of recent LJ postings, so if anything entertaining happened that I need to know about, drop a comment!

Miles since the 9th: 28.3
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2095.5
Miles out of Isengard: 302.5
Miles to Minas Tirith: 483.5
annathepiper: (Default)
This morning I had the latest in a series of ongoing Great Big Dreams. As many of them do, this one featured me at a GBS concert. However, this one was distinctive for two reasons: 1) the lovely and talented [livejournal.com profile] mamishka was present, and 2) I distinctly remember that Séan McCann was chatting with both of us (either after the concert was officially over or between songs, I don't remember which), and then he gave Meems a flute. I remember thinking that it was a fantastic-looking instrument, and that I was horribly, horribly jealous that he hadn't given it to me. ;)

And bizarrely enough, there was neither hide nor hair of Alan The Doyle to be found in this particular Great Big Dream! Perhaps this means I should be rearranging my userpics now to slip in an icon of Séan. I'm sure that [livejournal.com profile] silme711 has some lovelies I could swipe (she asked hopefully)?

Meanwhile, I have learned this valuable lesson: when the weather is gray and gloomy-like in Seattle is not necessarily the best of times to go trolling through your entire a-ha playlist on your iPod. I mean, I loves me some Morten Harket; even as of the last a-ha album I own (which is Lifelines), he's still got some impressive pipes and can hit some stunning high notes. But the vast majority of a-ha's repetoire, I find, falls into the categories of "waaah, our relationship has fallen apart, I'm all miserable now, how the hell did this happen?" and "my life is really strange and weird and I'm going to get all broody and introspective about it". After a while, under gray Seattle skies, that starts getting to you. Heh.

I have also re-confirmed that so far, out of all the a-ha albums I own, my favorites are Scoundrel Days, Stay On These Roads, and East of the Sun, West of the Moon. I still need to get Analogue, though I have yet to actually see it in a store the few times I've looked. I may have to buy it on iTunes.

I took a second spin through the new Carbon Leaf album today as well, and liked it better the second time through. It's still not grabbing me as hard as Echo Echo and Indian Summer do, but I think "Love Loss Hope Repeat", "A Girl and Her Horse", and "International Airport" are coming to the fore as repeat plays for me off this album.

Friday through Wednesday miles: 15.75
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1483.85
Miles out of Rauros Falls: 174.85
Miles to Isengard: 309.15
annathepiper: (Default)
So yesterday in email [livejournal.com profile] starfallz said to me, "Since you are the a-Ha expert..... I'm wanting to find some more a-Ha
on CD." And she proceeded to ask me for recommendations about various and sundry later discs by those boys from Norway. I went blinkety-blink and admitted that while I owned copies of Minor Earth Major Sky and Lifelines, I'd barely given either album a proper listen. After I answered her email, though, I decided to correct this problem. I fired up iTunes and listened to Lifelines, Memorial Beach, and Minor Earth Major Sky in succession, so finally I HAVE listened to my later a-ha albums.

Lifelines strikes me as an album of a lighter tone than Minor Earth Major Sky--the former is sort of wistful and mellow, while the latter seems a bit more moody and a little melancholy. There are tracks on both I've rated for repeat play to get them onto my Favorites playlist, but I think that overall I still prefer earlier a-ha--Scoundrel Days and East of the Sun, West of the Moon remain my favorite a-ha albums.

Part of this, I think, is that Morten Harket's voice is slowly showing the effects of getting older. He seems less prone these days to get up into those upper registers--he can still make it up there, as evidenced on Lifelines, but there doesn't seem to be as much power and resonance in those notes for him as was there in his younger days. I haven't heard him hit those high notes in a faster song since "Rolling Thunder" on East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

Also, I just like the styles of the earlier albums better. A-ha's always been prone to moodiness in their songs--lots of songs about relationships going awry and suchlike--but the earlier albums just seem to have more vigor to them, which offsets the moodiness for me. The later albums seem to have this tendency to do this 'muting' thing on Morten's voice, such as in the title track on MEMS, and I'm not sure I care for that. It seems to remove something critical out of the equation for me. I haven't had an a-ha track grab me with its vigor and rhythm since "Move to Memphis" on Memorial Beach.

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Anna the Piper

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