pedanther

1. Best thing that's happened to me recently: waking up to a flurry of Teaspoon notifications and the news that one of my fanfics has been recced on calufrax. Made my day.


2. All that emceeing I did at Toastmasters in July and August stood me in good stead in the first weekend of September. I was volunteering at the annual performing arts festival this year, and I ended up emceeing most of it because none of the other volunteers were comfortable in that role. One of the sections I didn't emcee was the evening they did bands, ensembles, etc., because I was performing; the brass band did the usual, and this year several groups of band members also entered as ensembles (the ensemble I was in was beaten by the ensemble I wasn't in). The Character Vocal section was once again free of the scourge of Those Same Three Disney Songs; I'm pretty sure now that that was the work of one particular singing teacher who has now left town, though I kept forgetting to ask the more senior volunteers if they knew for sure. Being a volunteer, I saw all the parts of the festival I often don't bother with, which I think was a net plus; if I'd skipped the piano sections as I usually do, I'd have missed out on this year's trophy winner, who played a Clementi sonatina, a Beethoven eccosaise, and a piano solo version of the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean which featured lots of fancy fingerwork and ended with a dramatic chord that he played by leaping up and sitting on the piano.


3. My Re-Reading Liad project progresses. Tomorrow will see the conclusion of Crystal Dragon, then there's a week of short stories (mostly Tales of Moonhawk and Lute, slightly complicated by the authors recently releasing a new one) before beginning on Balance of Trade.

It's been interesting re-reading these books. I've been noticing details, and having reactions, that I didn't the first time I read them. Having to find something to say about each chapter, I'm paying more attention to details, and spreading them out over two months (the first time, I bolted them in something more like two days) makes a difference to how some things affect me. Although I often do notice new details and have new experiences the first time I re-read a book, even when I bolt it again, so it'll be interesting to see if anything changes when I get up to the books in the series that I've already re-read several times.

(In the mean time, I'm learning new things, and not just about things in the books: for instance, a passing remark led to me learning about the idea that a galaxy's spiral arms aren't rigid collections of stars, but standing waves that individual stars move into and out of over time. Wikipedia's article has some nifty animations.)


4. Another nifty thing involving spirals: Akiyoshi Kitaoka's blue-green spiral illusion.


5. The Hidden Almanac is what happens when an award-winning dark fantasy writer and cartoonist (namely Ursula Vernon, author of Digger and Dragonbreath and co-host of the podcast Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap) hears too many people describing Welcome to Night Vale as "A Prairie Home Companion meets H. P. Lovecraft" and starts wondering what would have happened if Lovecraft had met Garrison Keillor's other radio show, The Writer's Almanac, instead.

There are new episodes three times a week, written by Ursula Vernon and performed by Kevin Sonney, the other half of Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap; in each five minute episode, Reverend Mord describes a couple of events that occurred on this date in history, profiles a saint whose feast day it is, and offers some seasonal gardening tips. (The events are strange and the saints eccentric. The gardening tips, at this time of year, largely revolve around Ways of Getting Rid of All That Zucchini; even in a world where people spontaneously explode into swarms of butterflies, some things never change.)