Several awesome things make a post

I’ve been total Scattershot Girl when it comes to blogging for some time–like many, I’ve found most of my day to day online communication shunted over to Twitter and Facebook. But that said, I’ve had several recent lovely things happen that are worth sharing with you all in longer, blog-based form. So! In no particular order:

  • Finally saw The King’s Speech, since userinfospazzkat got it via Netflix. That was a very satisfying film, and I’m not at all surprised that it’s spawned so much fanfic across my various Friends lists and such. Everyone in that film did an amazing job, and I have much increased respect for Mr. Colin Firth now. Also, mad love for the scene where the speech therapist’s wife comes home and discovers the King and Queen in her dining room. :D

  • Also, as of today, finally saw Source Code with userinfosolarbird. Mad, mad props to userinfomamishka for recommending that! It’s a nice, tight little SF flick, and if you like alternate-reality type plots, try to catch this before it vanishes entirely. If you’re local to Seattle, it’s still playing at the Meridian 16 downtown, and it’s running at the Crest as well.

  • I have finally found a way I might actually read more comic books: the Dark Horse comics app for the iPad. I installed this on the grounds that a couple weekends back, Dark Horse had a sale of all its digital versions of Serenity and Firefly comics. Since I didn’t have Shepherd’s Tale yet, I thought what the hey, I’d buy ’em all. The iPad is definitely more suited to digital comics reading than the iPhone, that’s for sure, although the iPhone does actually talk to this app as well.

    Also on the iPad, I have a shiny new app called TunePal, recommended to me by Marilyn, one of the fiddle players who attends the weekly session userinfosolarbird and I have been going to. Those of you who know the Shazam app will find the way this works familiar; it basically identifies songs. But in this case, it identifies traditional Irish tunes! You can play them at the app on an actual instrument, or, it’ll identify ’em if you’re playing them in iTunes as well. Then it goes out and hits up a big ol’ database and yoinks back several guesses as to what it thinks you just played it. It’ll show you sheet music for its guesses, and it’ll play the sheet music for you as well. And, you can add tunes out of the database manually by searching for them as well. You can’t import your own tunes, which is my only complaint about the app, but it’s otherwise very, very cool. Any of my fellow music geeks out there who are interested in trad tunes, you should be checking this out.

  • Speaking of the iPhone, my coworker Joe pointed me at my new favorite iPhone game: Tiny Wings. You play a birdie with, of course, tiny tiny wings, and the object of the game is to get the birdie to fly as far as possible by tapping. It’s super-cute and only 99 cents, so check it out.

  • FOLKLIFE! Well, that deserves a whole separate post, but I’m noting it here anyway.

  • And while I am still technically on book buying hiatus, I’ve picked up a few freebies. And I will unrepentantly, UNREPENTANTLY I TELL YOU, break hiatus wide open to buy userinfoseanan_mcguire/Mira Grant’s Deadline this week. Because GIMME. Seriously.

  • My friend userinforavyngyngvar is sending me a Blu-Ray of a-ha’s last concert in Oslo! Thank you, Yngvar!

  • I am sorely behind on Doctor Who posts, and will shortly be doing a catchup post. It’s an indicator of how much I’ve not been paying attention to the net lately that I totally missed that BBC America did NOT air the second half of the two-parter on Saturday, to wit, bah. I did not however give enough of a damn about this to actually try to find and download the episode; it’ll air next week as far as I know, and I can wait that long. Especially given that we’re about to have the mid-season hiatus anyway. Just nobody spoil me, mmkay, those of you who’ve already caved and downloaded the ep anyway?

  • And because it’s always worth saying, mmmmm blackberries of my marketboys mmmmmm.

Beatles, Browncoats, and yet more books

Friday night userinfomamishka, userinfojennygriffee, userinfokathrynt, userinfollachglin, and Q & Erik’s little girl Lillian all came over to the Murk to play Beatles Rock Band. This was great fun, and I can say this even despite the fact that I never actually participated–since Lillian kept me busy babywrangling. I had enough of a delightful time just periodically popping to see what everyone else was doing, and I gotta admit, the music was awesome. Meanwhile, as always, Lily was a delight. This time around the kid pulled every object in her mother’s backpack out and explained to me very earnestly what each thing was and what it was for. She made particular note of how the “special drink” had strawberries in it, and the juice boxes had apples. Good choices, kid. ;)

I am in fact thoroughly songvirused now by various Beatles songs, and expressed my interest in not only checking out the game but in giving Beatles albums a proper listen. This amused userinfospazzkat, who pointed out that, as an Elvis fan, am I not contractually obligated to dislike the Beatles? I replied that he had invited them to be the second, third, fourth, and fifth Elvises, after they’d offered to make him the honorary fifth Beatle. ;> (And apparently they actually visited him at Graceland, back in the day, and they hung out and jammed for about an hour. God, if only recordings had been made of what they were doing. Those recordings could be worth the price of a small country!)

More seriously, though–I actually haven’t ever given a proper listen to any Beatles albums. I know of various songs of theirs, sure; you can’t have grown up in the Western hemisphere and not know of most Beatles songs. But I’ve got to rectify this deficit in my musical experience. Commentary on favorite albums is therefore welcome.

Saturday evening, userinfosolarbird and I ambled over to the Wayward to listen to userinfovixyish, userinfotfabris, and userinfosolcita perform for the Sereniversary, and that was fun. I actually had to sit at the front of the cafe and couldn’t see anything from back there, but it was all good; I could still hear plenty well, and I had the opportunity for some lovely conversation about phones and other portable devices, not to mention Patricia Briggs’ books. Bonus points as well for getting a chance to make Sunnie squeal at the picture of The Doyle With Beard on my iPhone.

Sunday by comparison was comparatively quiet, aside from the whole getting a sneak peek of the cover art for the forthcoming anthology I’m going to be in (and I did I mention, AWESOME?). And it’ll probably surprise none of you that I picked up quite a few more ebooks. It’s all Fictionwise’s fault! This is what happens when they offer me a big ol’ rebate on a book that pretty much means I get four books for the price of a hardcover. And then they go and extend a coupon I’d previously used. They keep this up, they’re definitely going to keep on getting my business.

And here’s what I’ve picked up from them now, bringing my total purchased books for the year up to 95:

  • Dead and Gone, by Charlaine Harris, pre-empting my need to read it as a library book
  • Staying Dead, by userinfosuricattus, replacing the paperback I’d re-sold to Third Place
  • First Truth, by Dawn Cook, ditto
  • Norse Code, by Greg Van Eekhout, since I’d heard a lot of good things about this
  • Folly, by Laurie King, since I’d wanted to read this for a while
  • Touchstone, by Laurie King, since I like her work in general

And last but not least, pre-ordered to be downloaded tomorrow, Heat Wave. By Richard Castle. Because I am still laughing and laughing and laughing that ABC is actually putting out a book with Castle’s name on it, and doubly so that whoever’s writing the Twitter feed has urged followers to help the book beat Dan Brown on the bestseller list.

For that cause alone, they could have written 400 pages of “badger badger badger badger mushroom”, and I’d have leapt right on it! I’m going to look forward to reviewing this one, entirely in-character. They’re going to pull this joke, I’m going to play along!