Opining Online

I’ve been doing more reading than posting lately. And now I’m getting ready to take a trip. Arizona is nice this time of year.

There will be a new baby to cuddle soon and a three-year-old that needs some serious grandma spoiling, so I’ll be far too busy to blog.

There might be a cute baby photo now and then, otherwise check back mid-May.

This DIY IQ quiz from Popular Mechanics is really horrible. After completing it, it informed I had some skills and could work unsupervised.

Fools!

(via Instapundit, who must be thrilled I’ve linked to him)

Margaret Shepherd, artist, calligrapher, author, is trying to bring civilization back with the stroke of a pen.

Being essentially uncivilized myself, is anyone surprised that I hadn’t heard of her before now? Writing thank you notes fills me with dread and anxiety. I can count the number of personal letters I’ve written in my life on one hand easily. Complaint letters are my forte, but I’ve stopped writing them too.

I have been on the receiving end of notes and letters that thrill me when I picked them out of the mailbox, so that makes my not returning that joy even more egregious. I’m a bit ashamed of myself right now. Blogging and short emails make up for this not one bit.

Margaret Shepherd’s Amazon Page. You can view more of her calligraphy art (bigger images) at Neatorama. I’m especially fond of what I think of as the “childbirth series” at the bottom of that page. I found this artist thanks to a civilized man who writes The Fire Ant Gazette.

Call the Nestle Hot line at 1-800-295-0051.

I was complaining over at Amba’s place a few days ago how some videos/visuals distract and subtract from the songs they are trying to illustrate rather than add value.

Well… since then, Jim at My Bossier opened my eyes to how it could be worse. But much funnier. Literally.

My Momma used to say that all the music I listened to sounded like just noise. Now I say to my kids that the music they listen to all sounds alike… which makes it similar to just noise.

What will my grandchildren hear? Chances are it will pretty close to the same thing I heard and their parents heard. Both the complaints and the music will likely have this sameness in common.

Though the video below is fairly constrained on an historical time scale, there’s bait in there for several decades. I have to admit, I’m not familiar with a lot of the artists… but doesn’t all the music sound familiar and familial?

Via Megan McArdle, here’s Slate’s In Search of Lost Sounds: Why you’ve never really heard the “Moonlight” Sonata.

Because a lot of people my age grew up hearing more of the old, out of tune upright pianos prominently featuring chipped ivories and a funky smell… than we did well-made, well-cared for, and thus rare, older pianos, it’s easy to understand why we preferred the new.

The story is about the Frederick Historic Piano Collection – 24 pianos made from 1790 to 1928. They are housed in a small Victorian library building in Ashburnham MA and they are featured in a yearly concert series. Hearing one of those concerts and seeing the pianos is one of the most appealing reasons I can think of to visit Massachusetts.

There are several clips in the article comparing compositions by Beethoven, Brahms, and Debussy played on a Steinway to them played on pianos the composers might have actually used. I checked YouTube for more recordings by the pianists playing the old instruments, but didn’t find any. That’s a void begging to be filled.

Fascinating… and somewhat of an indictment of standardization. Heed this, autotune.