Site update

A very belated Jam #38 is up, our first official practice session for what will hopefully become fruitful busking this summer. Also, just in case any of y’all out there happened to notice or care, I have a shiny new personal domain name, annathepiper.org. That’s the link over there on the side of this page; it goes to my personal web site, of which the TGM page is a part. This means you can now get to the TGM page with the shiny new URL of https://www.annathepiper.org/tgm — though of course the old one of http://www.murkworks.net/~anna/tgm will still work too. So update your bookmarks, or not.

Site update

Okay folks — it’s a whole year (or two, depending on who’s counting) too late to be my New Millennium webpage. But well hey. I got the urge to change things around here again, get rid of a lot of content I won’t be updating anymore, move some stuff up a level in order to make it easier to find, give the place a whole new graphical scheme, and fix a whole bunch of things that were broken.

In honor of all of these changes I have bought myself my very own shiny new domain name, which points to this place now: www.annathepiper.org. My usual address will still get here, of course, but I always rather wanted my own domain name, too. It’s up and running, everybody, so please feel free to use it in your bookmarks. Here’s the nitty gritty on everything I’ve changed around, though:

  • Almost all of my MUSH character pages have been removed, since I am no longer playing AetherMUSH. Instead, I have set up a directory for old characters in my MUSH section, and have pages summarizing my various alts on various MUSHes there that I’ve played over the years. The exception is old characters from Two Moons MUSH, which are still chronicled in detail in the Two Moons section of the site.
  • All my old logs are still up and available to be read, though. All logs not from Two Moons live in the MUSH section now, in the old logs section. I will still periodically update this part of my page as time and whim dictate, since I do still have a bunch of unedited logs I haven’t gotten around to posting, but the priority on this has gone down. Old logs pertaining to Two Moons MUSH as well as the set of logs for the only active roleplay I’m doing right now, which is for the Seafarers group of sailors on that game, can be found in the Two Moons section.
  • My small pages for Great Big Sea and 30 Odd Foot of Grunts have been moved up a level out of the Music section, to make finding them easier.
  • Speaking of music, I’ve also added a formal top-level link for the section of my site devoted to my jamming group, Three Good Measures.
  • Y’know those little blurbs on the main index, or up at the top of my sub-pages, that change when you roll your pointer over the menu graphics? Well, those weren’t ever centered right in Netscape, and they weren’t showing up at all on Opera, both of which rather drove me batty. So I did a lot of restructuring of stuff under the hood to eliminate those problems, and I should be looking okay on all three of those browsers now (or at least, up through IE 6, Opera 6, and Netscape 4.79; I haven’t tested against Netscape 6.x, because I haven’t bothered to actually install it on my personal machine. Anybody out there use Netscape 6.x and wanna tell me if I look okay on that browser, drop me a line).
  • Pretty much all the other top-level pages have been updated in some form or other, links checked for validity and such. And the Sitemap has been duly updated to reflect the overall changed status of the site. If you need to find something, that remains the best place to look.

I’ve tested the updated site on IE 5.5, Netscape 4.79, and Opera 6, at resolutions 1024×768, 800×600, and 640×480. If you’re using a different browser or a different resolution and see anything that looks broken, or, for that matter, if you see anything that looks broken in general, drop me a line and let me know!

And I hope y’all like the redecorating I’ve done around here!

EDITING TO ADD 11/3/2019: Removed the link off of 30 Odd Foot of Grunts in the third bullet point in the list in this post, because that page is no longer active.

Site update

Ladies and gentlemen, we have an ORIGINAL SONG. Dar’s written one! Well, actually, we have TWO ORIGINAL SONGS because Patrick’s written one, too. However, so far we’ve only actually done Dar’s in a jam! Check out what transpired with the attempt — and see us all get flaming bowling shirts courtesy of Fred — in Jam #35!

Site update

Now I’m fairly sure that this isn’t actually going to make anything entertaining happen in our email boxes, but in case anybody out there wants to prove us wrong — I’ve fixed a bug in our Contact form. If y’all got anything you want to say to us, whether it be pie recipes you’d like to share, haiku with which you’d like to dazzle us, feedback for our MP3’s, suggestions on stuff you’d like to hear us play, or just a general “Hi! I’m out here and listening to you!”, drop us a line, y’all. We’d love to hear from anybody out there who might actually be checking us out.

And just because we’re curious as how much traffic we’re actually getting, we have a counter up now on our main index. No fair hitting our index over and over, folks! It doesn’t change that fast, so go easy on it. ;)

Site update

Last week’s lateness habit has been busted, in honor of it being the Weekend Before Anna’s Birthday jam — and in honor of having a brand new public take to share with y’all. Check out our version of “You Woke Up My Neighborhood” and let us know what you think of Patrick’s ending, folks! And for details of the session that produced this, Jam #34 is now posted for your reading pleasure.

Sparky in Rochester, a reader from over on Greatbigsea.com, informs us that she never misses a Jam Report. To which we must saw, “Awwww gawrsh!”, while muttering to each other, “Whoa, somebody actually reads these things?” Sparky further requests of us that we should include a Piebook on our web page, to which I will note that this was in fact part of the original plan for our webpage. Watch this space for forthcoming recipes for Pies We Have Known and Loved.

Dana informs me that she has acquired a cello. She does not in fact know how to play the cello, but we are quite interested in seeing this new lovely of hers — and seeing whether we can work it into something pretty!

And lastly, because I have finally actually played my octave mandolin in a Jam, my bigger baby has been added to my roster of instruments. Just because. ;)

Site update

Apparently, the beginning of a new year has not yet broken me of my habit of writing jam reports late, folks — but I got a good excuse, honest, I’ve been learning all sorts of new chords! For the details, check out Jam #33 1/3!

We have in fact now commenced group discussion about busking at Folklife, which has become an official goal now. The folks at Folklife inform me in email that Seattle Center is in the middle of setting new policies for busking for this year’s festival, and once those are posted on their website, we’ll know what to do to actually be able to show up and make public nuisances of ourselves. We hope. In the meantime, it has also occurred to us that what we really need is to have a Kitchen Party, but we appear to have a sad dearth of Canadians in the immediate vicinity. Siiiiiigh!

The folks at CDKU do not remember us, sadly. Oh well, if we do in fact have a dozen fans in Halifax, we’ll have to find some other way of getting in touch with them!

And I must further gush about good news related to my brother Donnie’s band, Outspoken, who are almost done recording their album here in Seattle. Donnie has relayed to me that they had the great fortune of being able to hire Paul Buckmaster, who is evidently Extremely Famous(TM), to come in and write a string arrangement for them for one of their tracks. They also brought in a 24-piece string ensemble to perform his composition, and Donnie got the whole thing on his camcorder. I’m here to tell y’all, there are few things finer than hearing five cellos go to town on a piece of music.

Site update

A belated Jam #32 is up, folks, on account of I wanted to get this out before I vanish offline for the holidays. And in the meantime, I wanted to note a few small random things here for posterity, to wit:

Fred says that he got a Christmas card from one of the regulars on the Online Kitchen Party, who describes herself as a fan of Three Good Measures. To which we must go, ‘Eek, we have FANS?!’

The number of not-entirely-nonsense noises being made about us busking in actual public at the Folklife Festival this next May is escalating. More bulletins on this as events warrant.

I’m being leaned on to try to contact the radio stations in Halifax that played us, so I’m going to *gulp* try and find them in email if at all possible. More on this as events warrant as well.

And last, but at least so far as I am personally concerned not least, I am finally starting to bond with my guitar. Not quite ready to add it yet to the roster of instruments I play, though!

And in conclusion, since I won’t be updating this page again until the 30th if not later, everybody out there who might happen to read this, happy holidays to you all. :)