catsittingstill (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
catsittingstill) wrote2011-01-10 11:14 am
catsittingstill) wrote2011-01-10 11:14 am
Home from GaFilk
In other news I am safely home from GaFilk.
I had a wonderful time, but pulled out early Sunday afternoon to make sure I beat the snow to Tennessee, which i did, handily. There is now three inches or so of snow on the ground here, and I gather the Atlanta airport is closed.
My best wishes go out to those who have to travel in this stuff. Safe flights, safe roads, safe, comfortable, inexpensive places to stay: may they all be yours.
The mimmoths came, but mostly stayed out of trouble, except that at one point I caught them using Alice's scarf to (lift? lower? They froze when I saw them so I don't know) move my new Zoom H4n onto or off off the bed. I don't know what they were up to.
My old Zoom H4 died a horrible death when a battery failed, and burped its contents all over the inside of the unit, in between Cons. Obviously I should not be storing it with batteries in it--an issue I suppose I should deal with soon with the new Zoom. I went through OVFF with my old mp3 recorder (need to pull those files off it and back them up, actually) then asked for a new Zoom for Christmas.
In between my getting the old Zoom and its horrible death, Zoom put out a new, nicer, unit that does things like 1) has a "stamina" setting that supposedly doubles battery life 2) can be put into a standby mode that records a 2 second buffer, first-in-first-out, so that the old stuff is dropped and new stuff recorded over it, until you push "record." The effect of this is that when you push record it starts the recording from two seconds before you pushed the record button. This saved at least one song beginning during the con.
3) Oh, and the new Zoom will record stereo with a compressor or a limiter applied. I think this will be great for concerts and circles, when you have the levels turned up to catch someone performing on the far side of the circle and then the person next to you opens a three ring binder. I don't know how many times I've had to go in and manually lower the volume on things like that so they don't blow my ears off. Here's hoping this new ability will mean less of that kind of futzing around!
4) unfortunately, unless I'm mis-reading the manual, you can't get this 2 second buffer state, or the compressor/limiter in stamina mode. Pity, because I went through 8 AA batteries at the con. It may be time to think about rechargables. Or apparently there's some sort of rechargable battery pack that can be plugged into a USB port (which the unit has) but I don't remember what that's called. If you know, prompt me in the comments, please?
I listened to some of the tracks in the evening before dropping off, and the Zoom does a lovely job of recording--but the old Zoom did a fine job too.
5) the new Zoom feels much more solid in the hand than the old one did. It also has more buttons on the front, which makes it easier to get to what you want without flipping through multiple menus, and its lcd screen is much bigger, meaning there's more info on the display, which I personally find very helpful.
6) the new Zoom puts its stereo recordings into folders, and it's pretty easy to change which folder it's recording into, which is great. This makes it easier to keep various concerts and evening circles separate.
7) supposedly it's possible to rename files, but this looks pretty clunky in actual application. I haven't tried it yet.
Antithesis (The Aunties Thesis?) gave a great concert that I enjoyed very much--especially the song about sensible armor. Howard Scrimgeour gave a great concert (though so far the song that strikes me most is one he did in circle Friday night that starts "Fifteen guns for the Jervis Bay" and made me think about Dunkirk, though it's actually about a different event during WWII--the Jervis Bay, badly outgunned, tied up a pocket destroyer long enough to allow the ships in the shipping convoy to scatter so the destroyer couldn't sink them all.
But wouldn't the evacuation of Dunkirk be a great subject for a song?
Anyway, Matt Leger gave a great concert--I *have* to play the evil overlord song for Kip, actually. Seanan McGuire's concert really rocked and I totally love "Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves" and her last song "My Story Is Not Done"? I'm not sure what it's called. Her backup band was excellent even before we consider they were all recruited at the last minute because Vixy and Tony couldn't come.
I skipped out on the 2 x 10s because they tend to cut in right about the time my ears are exhausted and my brain is full, and my stamina runs out. If I just had like an hour to rest in there somewhere I would go to the 2 x 10s too. But sideways-time isn't available yet.
Kathleen Sloan asked me to be her date for the banquet. I am very grateful, and I had a great time. I actually brought my Very Best Dress this time (cream silk--my wedding dress that was) and Alice loaned me a lovely silk scarf because my neck tends to get cold in that dress (until the dancing--the dancing always warms me up). Walking down the stairs I was teasing Mirav, who was wearing a lovely light silk cloak dyed in rippling jewel colors that her cloak would go perfectly with my dress--and she loaned it to me for the dancing because, she explained, I was tall enough to wear it. I had a wonderful time playing with it--it was like wearing rainbows and butterfly wings. I danced every dance and had a lovely time and worked off some of the banquet in the process.
The less said about my eating habits the better--there was lots of chocolate around, and while I didn't quite take full advantage, I didn't turn away either. However I seem to have not gained any significant weight. The hard part will be going back to eating regular food :-)
At Saturday's evening circle I heard a lovely song called Shadowchild, which makes me curious about the comic that inspired it, which is apparently called "Digger." I will have to check that out. Okay I'm 13 pages in and I already like it. I think I have found some reading material for the next while.
I hung out at the circle--only did one thing, I think, but that's fine; I don't have that much new stuff right now. I would have done "True To A Sixteenth" but I've mislaid my full copy of that song and didn't want to forget the words halfway through.
Speaking of new reading I picked up Nina Kiriki Hoffman's latest at the con and am already halfway through it, plus Donald loaned me two books, one of them about Agatha Heterodyne.
I had a wonderful time, and am looking forward to going through my files and working on a song inspired by the Ecumenifilk circle because I realized there are a lot of filk pagan songs (and just for balance I dragged in "I'll Fly Away" and "Brandy Tree" from _Rise Up Singing_) but we're kind of short of filk atheist songs. And the atheist world view has a lot of hope and potential that I think needs more expression. We'll see if I am up to the task--I made kind of a start on the way home and I'm very glad I had the Zoom sitting next to me.
So that's kind of disjointed; sorry, but all I have time for right now. I really need to see what data recovery got from my dead hard drive and make a start on the League of Women Voters stuff Real Soon Now.
I had a wonderful time, but pulled out early Sunday afternoon to make sure I beat the snow to Tennessee, which i did, handily. There is now three inches or so of snow on the ground here, and I gather the Atlanta airport is closed.
My best wishes go out to those who have to travel in this stuff. Safe flights, safe roads, safe, comfortable, inexpensive places to stay: may they all be yours.
The mimmoths came, but mostly stayed out of trouble, except that at one point I caught them using Alice's scarf to (lift? lower? They froze when I saw them so I don't know) move my new Zoom H4n onto or off off the bed. I don't know what they were up to.
My old Zoom H4 died a horrible death when a battery failed, and burped its contents all over the inside of the unit, in between Cons. Obviously I should not be storing it with batteries in it--an issue I suppose I should deal with soon with the new Zoom. I went through OVFF with my old mp3 recorder (need to pull those files off it and back them up, actually) then asked for a new Zoom for Christmas.
In between my getting the old Zoom and its horrible death, Zoom put out a new, nicer, unit that does things like 1) has a "stamina" setting that supposedly doubles battery life 2) can be put into a standby mode that records a 2 second buffer, first-in-first-out, so that the old stuff is dropped and new stuff recorded over it, until you push "record." The effect of this is that when you push record it starts the recording from two seconds before you pushed the record button. This saved at least one song beginning during the con.
3) Oh, and the new Zoom will record stereo with a compressor or a limiter applied. I think this will be great for concerts and circles, when you have the levels turned up to catch someone performing on the far side of the circle and then the person next to you opens a three ring binder. I don't know how many times I've had to go in and manually lower the volume on things like that so they don't blow my ears off. Here's hoping this new ability will mean less of that kind of futzing around!
4) unfortunately, unless I'm mis-reading the manual, you can't get this 2 second buffer state, or the compressor/limiter in stamina mode. Pity, because I went through 8 AA batteries at the con. It may be time to think about rechargables. Or apparently there's some sort of rechargable battery pack that can be plugged into a USB port (which the unit has) but I don't remember what that's called. If you know, prompt me in the comments, please?
I listened to some of the tracks in the evening before dropping off, and the Zoom does a lovely job of recording--but the old Zoom did a fine job too.
5) the new Zoom feels much more solid in the hand than the old one did. It also has more buttons on the front, which makes it easier to get to what you want without flipping through multiple menus, and its lcd screen is much bigger, meaning there's more info on the display, which I personally find very helpful.
6) the new Zoom puts its stereo recordings into folders, and it's pretty easy to change which folder it's recording into, which is great. This makes it easier to keep various concerts and evening circles separate.
7) supposedly it's possible to rename files, but this looks pretty clunky in actual application. I haven't tried it yet.
Antithesis (The Aunties Thesis?) gave a great concert that I enjoyed very much--especially the song about sensible armor. Howard Scrimgeour gave a great concert (though so far the song that strikes me most is one he did in circle Friday night that starts "Fifteen guns for the Jervis Bay" and made me think about Dunkirk, though it's actually about a different event during WWII--the Jervis Bay, badly outgunned, tied up a pocket destroyer long enough to allow the ships in the shipping convoy to scatter so the destroyer couldn't sink them all.
But wouldn't the evacuation of Dunkirk be a great subject for a song?
Anyway, Matt Leger gave a great concert--I *have* to play the evil overlord song for Kip, actually. Seanan McGuire's concert really rocked and I totally love "Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves" and her last song "My Story Is Not Done"? I'm not sure what it's called. Her backup band was excellent even before we consider they were all recruited at the last minute because Vixy and Tony couldn't come.
I skipped out on the 2 x 10s because they tend to cut in right about the time my ears are exhausted and my brain is full, and my stamina runs out. If I just had like an hour to rest in there somewhere I would go to the 2 x 10s too. But sideways-time isn't available yet.
Kathleen Sloan asked me to be her date for the banquet. I am very grateful, and I had a great time. I actually brought my Very Best Dress this time (cream silk--my wedding dress that was) and Alice loaned me a lovely silk scarf because my neck tends to get cold in that dress (until the dancing--the dancing always warms me up). Walking down the stairs I was teasing Mirav, who was wearing a lovely light silk cloak dyed in rippling jewel colors that her cloak would go perfectly with my dress--and she loaned it to me for the dancing because, she explained, I was tall enough to wear it. I had a wonderful time playing with it--it was like wearing rainbows and butterfly wings. I danced every dance and had a lovely time and worked off some of the banquet in the process.
The less said about my eating habits the better--there was lots of chocolate around, and while I didn't quite take full advantage, I didn't turn away either. However I seem to have not gained any significant weight. The hard part will be going back to eating regular food :-)
At Saturday's evening circle I heard a lovely song called Shadowchild, which makes me curious about the comic that inspired it, which is apparently called "Digger." I will have to check that out. Okay I'm 13 pages in and I already like it. I think I have found some reading material for the next while.
I hung out at the circle--only did one thing, I think, but that's fine; I don't have that much new stuff right now. I would have done "True To A Sixteenth" but I've mislaid my full copy of that song and didn't want to forget the words halfway through.
Speaking of new reading I picked up Nina Kiriki Hoffman's latest at the con and am already halfway through it, plus Donald loaned me two books, one of them about Agatha Heterodyne.
I had a wonderful time, and am looking forward to going through my files and working on a song inspired by the Ecumenifilk circle because I realized there are a lot of filk pagan songs (and just for balance I dragged in "I'll Fly Away" and "Brandy Tree" from _Rise Up Singing_) but we're kind of short of filk atheist songs. And the atheist world view has a lot of hope and potential that I think needs more expression. We'll see if I am up to the task--I made kind of a start on the way home and I'm very glad I had the Zoom sitting next to me.
So that's kind of disjointed; sorry, but all I have time for right now. I really need to see what data recovery got from my dead hard drive and make a start on the League of Women Voters stuff Real Soon Now.
no subject
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)
no subject
I'm glad you had a great time and more so arrived home safely. Wish I could have joined you in GAFilk - have been planning to for a few years but need 2 things, money and time and until now it's been no time, now it's no money lol
maybe next year...
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
Pause to dig into my old filk cassette stash...
Re: Pause to dig into my old filk cassette stash...
Re: Pause to dig into my old filk cassette stash...
no subject
(no subject)
no subject
Google James Keelaghan, "Fires of Calais". A most excellent song indeed.
You did get invoked at the 2x10's -- by me, introducing "Change the World". 8-)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
GaFilk sounds like it was fun - maybe I'll make it there someday.
(no subject)
no subject
We're still talking to the Conduit people to see if it makes sense to bring Tempered Glass there this year. They don't know enough about room availability to tell us whether they can let us perform or not yet, and if they don't, it runs into competition from a few other cons the same weekend. But I am hopeful.
no subject
Wesley and I are home safely too.
no subject
(no subject)
(no subject)