May 5, 2006
Beards, Music, Catfish
Hup, two, three, four,
I declare Kitten War!
Or if kittens don't tickle your fancy, I daresay that the stoic denizens of the World Beard & Moustache Championships may be more your speed. Speaking as someone who has grown a beard, I don't know how they stand them -- the feeling when you shift when lying down, pulling the hair on your face the wrong way... bluergh. All power to those who choose to spend the extra effort to grow them, though.
And MakeTeaNotWar pointed at a singing deer's head, which reminded me of a project someone did to use the "Big Mouth Billy Bass" as a display tool, with the fish talking to you about emails arriving and what-not. As toys get more complicated, hacking them to create nifty tools (that would be uneconomical to create from scratch) will almost certainly become more common.
(Unfortunately, a cursory Google finds lots of references to the project, but no copies of the actual page. If I cared enough, I guess I'd use the Wayback machine... but come on, I've got a day job. ;) )
***
I'd pretty much finished up the superhero musical script in the weekend; it took about three hours, though they were a little interrupted. Unfortunately, finding the ten minutes to finish the first draft is proving a lot more difficult than I imagined it would be. Who knows, though -- it may be up this Saturday! I wouldn't hold your breath, though.
I've pretty much convinced myself to buy Band in a Box, especially if I can manage to find an old version for cheap/free -- I'm hoping that Dad will find that he's got a complete (old) version sitting on a coverdisk somewhere, which would reduce the price of the "with everything" version of the software. So if someone has an old copy lying around, or has seen an old version sitting in some computer shop for ultra-cheap gathering dust, I'd be very interested.
[EDIT: I rang Mum & Dad last night; Dad said that he'd bought it, but he didn't know where it was; Mum saw the box almost immediately, but the disk isn't in it. So... maybe I'll get lucky.]
(After all, even if what it produces is decidely average, we can always use it to produce something as a suggestion/backing for actual live musicians with actual taste to perform against.)
By the way -- if anyone has music to which they can give us the right to use in the 48 Hour Film competition, I'd be very grateful if you'd throw a comment or email my way. :)
***
The problem with "sports" like noodling is that it's not really fair, I think. (Quick summary -- noodlers wiggle their fingers inside holes in muddy banks to get giant catfish to bite them, and then wrestle the catfish to the surface.) If the catfish were as dangerous as, say, sharks, or even wild pigs, then I'd have some sypathy for it as a sport, though it'd still be pretty stupid. But as it stands, it's like stealing mobility scooters from the elderly: not easy, and you might get a bruised, but it's not like they're actively dangerous.
Uh, not that I advocate the theft of mobility scooters. And some of the people on those scooters are vicious. Er, so I've heard.
Okay, uh... look over there! runs away...
Posted by svend at May 5, 2006 5:06 PM