THE SITE ~ I've finally gotten around to re-doing this site. It's somewhat inspired by all the really pretty Buffy sites I've been visiting recently. I'm just so tired of doing sedate corporate sites, I thought I'd go for something really casual this time. I have all these shots of flowers (2 of them were grown from seed on my balcony garden, the white rose is from a picture I took at the Norfolk Botanical Garden) so I thought I might as well use them for something. And since it is afterall my site, I thought I'd work a heavily air-brushed and manipulated image of me in there too. The virtual me, if you will, as opposed to the regular every day me...The purple leafy background should look familiar if you visit the virtual quilt page, as it came from a scan of some fabric. It was originally brown and gold, but I played with the colors and did some other manipulations to get it into it's current state. Oh, and to answer the obvious question, yes, I was bored!
THE VIDEO *.WMV files ~ I taped the Hindenburg special (The Hindenburg Disaster: Probable Cause) off the discovery channel when it was on last week (or was it the week before?) and using my new computer was able to capture the video from VHS to digital. The clip runs a little over 3 minutes long; it's the bit at the beginning talking about Grandpa and with the Grandma interview... I also digitized a snippet of grandpa I happened to have on tape (about a minute). I'm posting the files in *.wmv (Windows Media) format versions on the site because they are the smallest. You'll need the new Windows Media player (available for free on-line, or comes standard with Windows ME) to play them. If you're having problems, or would like another format, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
THE SOUND FILES ~ The first clip is me playing my bamboo flute. I bought it about 6 months ago (from sunreed.com), and while it is of course much more limited than the regular flute I'm used to (it only has 6 holes!) it is still pretty fun. Plus it has this burnt-wood-and-varnish kinda smell to it when you play it. The recording here is done with a regular microphone attached to my computer's sound card, with a bit of resonance added. I think it's a song I made up, though it's entirely possible that it's just made up of bits and pieces of songs I've forgotten I heard. The other 2 flute clips are me playing my Native American style flute ($20 with shipping at bearpawflutes.com, a pretty good deal). The first is what it sounds like in person, and then for the second I added a bunch of reverb with my sound-card. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out! Again, I think I made up the song, but who knows? The other 2 clips are from "A Prairie Home Companion". Just liked them a lot so taped them to cassette, and then later transferred to MP3.
PERSONAL NEWS ~ Not much to report. Still living in Charlottesville while John works on his Econ Phd. Still working as a web-developer for the same company (though since the Charlottesville move, from my snug little home office). New computer back in July with video equipment, so I've been having a lot of fun capturing video, playing with screen shots, and all sorts of assorted audio/video fun. I've been busy with my Buffy web-site, also been reading a fair bit recently, (House of Seven Gables, O Pioneers!, The Color Purple, Emma, Villette, etc) My balcony garden's starting to look bedraggled with the fall weather, but my avacodo tree (started from a pit last March) troops on -- it's as tall as me now!
