Baseball Is a Funny Game

Sep. 6th, 2025 10:12 pm
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[personal profile] billroper
The Cardinals just got the second-best walk-off win of the night against a team that used to be from New York.

This is because the Orioles (who *used* to be from St. Louis) got the best walk-off win of the night against a team that used to be from New York.

The Cardinals were trailing the Giants 2-0 going to the bottom of the ninth. Their offense all night had been an exercise in futility. They proceeded to load the bases with no one out, got a single to score one run, followed by a double to plate two more, and suddenly they had won the game by a final of 3-2.

Pretty good, no?

But the Orioles had them beat. They were trailing the Dodgers 3-0 going to the bottom of the ninth. Yamamoto was pitching a *no-hitter* against them. There were two outs -- one out away from the no-hitter -- when Jackson Holliday hit a solo shot to make the score 3-1 and end Yamamoto's night. The next pitcher gave up a double, a hit-by-pitch, and a walk to load the bases, followed by another walk to make the score 3-2. It was now time for yet another new pitcher who gave up a two-run single on his third pitch to the next batter. If you are counting, you realize that this makes the score 4-3 for an Orioles win.

Quick Pitch will be interesting tonight.

ETA: Apparently, the Associated Press had the story on Yamamoto's no-hitter ready to go, because here is the headline that just arrived from the Post-Dispatch:

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto throws third career no-hitter, first in MLB

Oops!

I hear that Dewey defeated Truman too.

Progress Report

Sep. 6th, 2025 10:01 pm
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[personal profile] billroper
I have now got remixes for half of the "Amy & Me" album.

I have also replaced eight of the seven vocal tracks that I intended to replace. This is because the amount of P-popping on the Chambanacon recording of "Counting Up" was about to make me insane. And since it turns out that we *also* went in direct on both guitar and fiddle for that concert, swapping out the vocal track was an option.

The Chambanacon tracks were the first ones that I mixed down when I started playing with this idea last year, so they require the most massaging to get them into the shape that the latest tracks are in. The good news is that I'm getting better at this as I go along.

And that's important, since I still have half the set to go!

Anyway, if you have picked up any of the original versions on Bandcamp, trust that the album will be different when released. :)

I was bored

Sep. 6th, 2025 02:04 pm
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
So I rolled up a bunch of Icons characters. Mostly boring, but this one is at least mildly amusing.

Doctor* Shawinigan**

Read more... )
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Five books new to me, at least four of which are fantasy (not sure about the El-Mohtar) and three instalments in series.

Books Received, August 30 — September 5


Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 33


Books Received, August 30 — September 5

View Answers

Lies Weeping by Glen Cook (November 2025)
15 (45.5%)

Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar (March 2026)
20 (60.6%)

The River and the Star By Gabriela Romero Lacruz (October 2025)
4 (12.1%)

The Bookshop Below by Georgia Summers (November 2025)
12 (36.4%)

The Burning Queen by Aparna Verma (November 2025)
7 (21.2%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
23 (69.7%)

Watching "Kpopped" on Apple TV.

Sep. 5th, 2025 02:49 pm
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[personal profile] brithistorian

Yesterday I started watching Kpopped, the new song competition show that blends K-pop and Western artists. I watched the first two episodes last night, and I'm really enjoying it. I think the format is really great — everyone has fun because the stakes are so low. Each episode follows the same format:

  1. A K-pop group is split in half.
  2. Each half of the group works with a Western artist to create and perform a "K-popified" version of one of that artist's songs.
  3. The in-studio audience votes on the winning group.
  4. Immediately after the winning group is announced, the two halves of the K-pop group are reunited to perform one of the group's songs along with the Western artists.

There are no penalties for losing, no prizes for winning. Just performance and comradery between musicians.

The two episodes I've watched so far are:

  1. Half of Billlie performs "Savage" with Megan Thee Stallion, the other half performs "Lady Marmalade" with Patti LaBelle.
  2. Both halves of Itzy perform with Emma Bunton and Mel B from the Spice Girls. One group performs "Wannabe" and the other performs "Be As One."

A recurring theme is the Western artists having trouble learning the K-pop choreography. (Except for Patti LaBelle — out of respect for her age, they had her stay still and everyone danced around her.)

Merge It

Sep. 5th, 2025 09:39 pm
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[personal profile] billroper
I have merged the "big" project that my coworker and I have been heads down on for the last several weeks into the "huge" project that we calved it off from. The code for a couple of subsystems has been substantially cleaned up and a number of new features added, as I kept proposing small bits of additional feature creep while we were in the area. These were features that our customers were asking for, so I don't feel bad about this particular creep.

The huge project is moving toward release and now our changes have joined this giant barge as we maneuver it towards the locks. This is a good feeling. :)

About riding a pegasus

Sep. 5th, 2025 01:47 pm
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[personal profile] brithistorian

I'm currently reading Dragons of the Autumn Twilight[^1] by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman and it's given me a question about riding pegasi. I had always pictured pegasus riders as sitting behind the wings, probably leaning forward and holding on the bases of the wings. But in chapter 12, when the characters have to ride pegasi, Weis and Hickman explicitly describe them as "sitting in front of the powerful wings." This seems to make sense, because it would put the riders in front of the flapping of the wings (and the powerful gusts of wind that the wings would create), but at the same time it seems problematic from a point of view of equine anatomy, because it doesn't seem like there would be room for a rider to be in front of the wings. And as I write this post, I find myself wondering if there's really something here, or if I've just been struck by an oddly chosen word that the authors wrote and then never looked back at.[^2]

When you think about humanoids riding on pegasi, where do you imagine them relative to the wings?

[^1] I missed reading the Dragonlance books back when they were new, but I was recently able to grab a huge mob of them as ebooks from Humble Bundle and I'm enjoying them. It's brutally obvious (at least in the first book, which this is) that they're the result of someone recording their D&D campaign as a novel, but they're still fun to read. [^2] It doesn't help matters that the pegasi use magical/psychic powers to put the characters to sleep as soon as they take off, in order to keep them from freaking out during the course of the ride.[^3] [^3] Which then opens up the question of how unconscious humanoids stay on the pegasi's backs. Do the pegasi have magic for that as well?

First Class

Sep. 4th, 2025 09:19 pm
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[personal profile] billroper
Calvin the Dog went to his first puppy class today with Julie acting as his primary handler. Some progress was made there and tactics provided, so that was all good.

Then we got home and Calvin promptly peed on the floor once and pooped on the floor twice.

*sigh*

Win some, lose some.
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The malevolent Hierarchs are dead. The only way to learn about them is archaeology. The only thing worse than archaeologists not finding the relics of evil sorcerers is finding relics of evil sorcerers.

Queen Demon (The Rising World, volume by Martha Wells
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[personal profile] brithistorian

When I read about the Ndlovu Youth Choir translating "Bohemian Rhapsody" into Zulu, of course I had to go check it out right away. I was absolutely blown away. Listening to the song is amazing, but then watching the video is just a whole other level. It's like a song that doesn't even belong in our universe somehow crossed over from its home to show us an alternate world we could have.

Direct link to Youtube (in case the embedding goes bad) is here

Two Down, One to Go

Sep. 3rd, 2025 09:51 pm
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[personal profile] billroper
I recorded replacement vocals for two of the three tracks for "Amy & Me" tonight, leaving one to go. Yay, me!

Recording the final track won't happen tomorrow night, because the priority mission is taking Calvin the Dog to his first puppy obedience training lesson. I have my fingers crossed, recognizing that no miracle will happen in one lesson. Right now, I just need the puppy to stop terrorizing my younger child...

One of the other things I did this evening was to remove the X-Touch Extender that refused to power up at all when I was in the studio on Monday and replace it with an open-box X-Touch Extender that arrived today. Happily, it has powered up correctly and is doing the things that a working piece of gear does.

I am still not sure what part inside the older piece of gear went wonky, but it is surely not something that I have time to look into right now, because I have an album to finish. :)

And then there's this

Sep. 3rd, 2025 04:20 pm
twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
[personal profile] twistedchick
I sent copies of my exchanges with my former aunt to my cousin Susan, the only one on that side of the family whom I'm in contact with. She told me in response that she nearly snorted her coffee when reading them. She hasn't gotten along with that aunt for decades, and manages to avoid dealing with her by being the youngest of her sibs (the aunt likes the two older ones.)

She and I are now the Two Black Sheep of the family, which makes me happy.
twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
[personal profile] twistedchick
I seem to live between odd dichotomies these days.

It's hard to go to sleep, in part because of lack of noise. I have just enough tinitis that when I can't hear the traffic it's hard to sleep; think of permanent mosquito in your ear. I found a technique in FB reels for tapping hard on the bone behind the ear that gets rid of the worst of it, but it doesn't always work. So I use an app called Calm, which has 'soundscapes' including things like six different kinds of rainfall, waterfalls, forests of various kinds and white, pink and brown noises, find whatever works for me that night and leave it on all night. That helps. Or I could stay awake till nearly 4, when the noise from the Capital Beltway a quarter mile south of me cranks up to its general daily roar.

A friend suggested that I get a night light for the bathroom in the shape of a capybara, or in her words, 'an imperturbable capybara'. So I did get it, and have it set to the lowest level of light, but I am not yet used to any light there. Normally I have my Kindle nearby, and when I need to get to the bathroom I flip the cover open and use it as a night light. Last night, the capybara was sitting imperturbably on my toothbrush holder, but its light shone out on a wall that I'm not used to having lit, so I had to remind myself that I had a friendly and non-aggressive critter there shining the light (I need reminders when I'm almost asleep but my body discerns something different.)

That meant that I slept on my left side last night, with my face away from the lit wall. Which, for most other people, would not be a problem, but I have all my life had a slightly curved spine, leaning to the left. (During the 2000s, I was doing deepwater running twice a week and the supported floating combined with gravity straightened my spine out, but I have not done it in several years now bcC (because Covid) and it is leaning a little. When I sleep on that side it leans more. As a remedy my husband put up a bar in one of the doorways that I can reach up and grab and dangle myself from, and my own weight straightens my back out painlessly. A side effect of the bar is that my grip strength has increased a bit, so I could do better at pulling out vines yesterday.

Much more of this balancing and I may start thinking of Philippe Petit balancing on the rope between the Two Towers, long ago.

QOTD: On the 1950s

Sep. 3rd, 2025 10:56 am
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[personal profile] brithistorian

"Much of the Fifties existed in order to edit out of history the freedoms of wartime: a renewed McCarthyite puritanism drove homosexuality further underground with the inevitable psychic consequences. By the mid-to-late Sixties, there were all sorts of exposé! books, but not then: just a few coded, discreet novels (like James Barr's Quatrefoil), which would usually end in suicide or death."

Jon Savage (quoted in Loaded, by Dylan Jones)

Good news

Sep. 3rd, 2025 10:23 am
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Both of Premee's cats have been found and returned.

Books read, September 2025

Sep. 3rd, 2025 08:13 am
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[personal profile] brithistorian
  • 3 September
    • Komi Can't Communicate, vol. 26 (Tomohito Oda)
  • 6 September
    • I'm in Love with the Villainess (manga), vol. 5 (Inori)

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Chaz Boston Baden

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