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HeavyMetalSunshineSister

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Blog Entries posted by HeavyMetalSunshineSister

  1. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    It may or may not be a well-known fact that I despise rather a lot of Christmas music. Songs about Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Commie-Faced Reindeer, and all the rest never really did much for me. Maybe it's because I've heard the same batch of songs performed by either dead people or dead careers for my entire life, but the whole thing seems tired, unartistic, and, oh my I finally get to use this word, hackneyed.
     
    This is not to say that I hate all Christmas music - not by a long shot. No, it's just that there are three ways to do good Christmas music. The first is an old, truly traditional piece, faithfully played by an orchestra, string quartet, whatever - tunes like the Carol of the Bells, Greensleeves, We Three Kings, all good choices. If you want to put an orchestra in, knock yourself out - better an orchestra than whatever pop "star" thinks we don't look at them often enough lately - but I'm quite happy with instrumental versions, because a good composer can convey any intended feeling through instruments.
     
    Way number two is to take a traditional Christmas song - and I mean real traditional, not baby-boomers-grew-up-with-it-so-that-makes-it-a-tradtion - and interpret it in your own way to make a piece of music that's still good and doesn't sound like exactly the same thing but with a different voice doing it. Look up Jethro Tull's version of Greensleeves if you need an example.
     
    The third, final, and perhaps best, is to just write something new. Now, to do this, you have to be a good composer already, so don't all of you tweeny-boppers and dead-beat crooners go running off to hack something into the corpse of your genre. It's got to be two things. The first is a good song. It has to be something someone could justify listening to any time of the year. The second is, and if you didn't predict this go jump in a lake, a Christmas song. It has to have some undeniable relation to whatever you think Christmas is. Two very different examples have been done by Jethro Tull (Christmas Song and Another Christmas Song), but if you want examples that have not a bloody thing to do with Ian Anderson, try John Lennon's shot at a Christmas song (Happy X-Mas War Is Over).
     
    There's my little rant for the night over and done with. Back to inexplicably pumpkin-flavored egg nog (seriously? pumpkin? who thought of that and are they still alive enough for me to hug them?) and avoiding "Christmas traditions" like Frosty the Red Snowman.
  2. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    I have recently procured a Black Pegasus in Minecraft, via the breeding of a Pegasus and a Unicorn.
     
    Now, the Black Pegasus being the best of all horses, this one needs a name. I can't pick which.
     
    Your options are either Sleipnir or Shadowfax (I named one of my other horses Stybba, and still another Snowmane, so LOTR-based names are perfectly valid).
     
    Other options may be suggested, but nothing to do with MLP or I'll sic the Hounds of Tindalos on you.
  3. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Here's a beautiful thing that seriously just happened in Starscape.
     
    ->Discover a Ragnarok-proofed bunker on a recently-defeated enemy's planet.
    ->Manage to break into the bunker.
    ->Tick off heavily armored security drones, who start shooting at you.
    ->Throw a grenade at them. You're in the bunker. They're in the bunker. The grenade's in the bunker.
     

    This is now you.
  5. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So, yesterday, everyone's favourite guitar-playing undead penguin released a new album - his third, if you don't count the EP released under his metal side project, the name of which I can't even type right because Windows refuses to believe that you can put an Ümläüt over a t. You can follow the link above to the album's Bandcamp page, where you can pick up this shiny new album for a very reasonable seven bucks - not bad for 45:18 of instrumental rock. The cover art might be a bit sketchy, and there are no actual grenade launchers included with the album, but that doesn't change the quality of the music within.
     
    I could take the time to review the album in detail, but that would be time you're not spending checking it out yourselves - so go have a listen, buy the album, and pay special attention to the tracks Underwater, The Snake Charmer, and Hitchhiker.
  6. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Let's just take a moment to reflect on the fact that the Green Hornet got a movie before Wonder Woman got to appear in one.
     
    Okay? Had your flashbacks to how awful that movie was yet?
     
    Great.
     
    Wonder Woman's going to be played by a cardboard actress in a movie directed by Zack Snyder.
     
    Let me put it this way - given the choice between not eating, and eating a muffin made of broken glass, I'd go ahead and not eat.
     
    Zack Snyder movies tend to be muffins made of broken glass - very shiny, no real substance, and it leaves kind of an unpleasant, metallic taste in your mouth.
  7. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So, I liked X-Men Apocalypse. Haven't had more than a few hours for it to sink in yet, but, you know, so far so good.
     
    I like how the main villain's early actions make it understandable how someone could choose to follow him without personally desiring the end of the world. I mean... nuclear disarmament? Good start, buddy!
     
    But
     
    What if
     
    What if there were a story where some mighty immortal, trapped under rocks for literally thousands of years, woke up, got to see the world
     
    And had an overall positive reaction at first? Like,
     
    They saw cars, and were impressed with the speed at which a machine, unaided by any beasts of burden, could move
     
    And they saw trains, and got excited about trains, because trains are exciting
     
    And then planes. Wow, planes. Planes! If I were that old, and had been asleep that long, planes would blow my mind.
     
    And then someone tells them that smallpox isn't a thing anymore, and oh my good golly gumdrops, smallpox isn't a thing anymore! Again, coming from that far back in history, I'd be blown away.
     
    So they're impressed by that, and by the scale on which people live now (because Cairo ca. 1984 is much, much bigger than Cairo back when there were still working out the issues in pyramid-building), and at first this mighty, immortal ruler, this ancient world-ruler, is just walking around, taking in the sights, and they're thinking, y'know, this is good. I like what you've done with the place. A+ work, kids.
     
    And where they go from there kind of depends on the tone you want to set. Do they remain impressed? Do they decide that humanity, while it has progressed, still needs them at the helm for some reason? Do they see something, some darker side to this advancement, that convinces them that they need to do something big to change things?
     
    Can't really get into that last one without discussing what it is that would convince them that the world needs re-making, and I'm not in the mood to make it something ridiculous like Adam Sandler movies (though, to be fair, "burn the world" is a perfectly understandable reaction to Adam Sandler's financial success), so... yeah. Fun thing to think about.
  8. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Yes, yes, I know. I'm a lazy sod and should be shot on sight for so terribly neglecting the Spotlight for this month. I know.
     
    On the plus side, I have great (if stupidly delayed news) for you all.
     
    On April 2nd (3rd in the States, aka where I'm at), Ian Anderson, frontman for Jethro Tull (you might recognize them as the legendary band behind albums like Aqualung, Thick As A Brick, and Stormwatch) released a sequel to Thick As A Brick, forty years after the release of the original. Owing to, from what I've heard from a couple ill-remembered sources*, a certain disinterest on the part of guitarist Martin Barre (who is doing his own solo tour and album, so fret not about him!), this album was released as an Ian Anderson solo album, but, with a full cast of other musicians assisting him, including a couple of full-time Tull members, Ian has managed to produce an album that is every bit as powerful as the original, if a little bit less nostalgic.
     
    Unlike the original Brick, TAAB2 is split into multiple tracks, each one outlining a different possible past for Gerald Bostock, whom you might remember as the fictional boy credited, on the mock-newspaper album sleeve of the original, with writing the lyrics to Thick As A Brick. The premise of this sequel album is, essentially, a musing on what might have become of the 10-year old boy, forty years later. It's an interesting question, and one that is answered in four different ways - he either ended up homeless, a corrupt banker, a preacher, a soldier wounded in action, or a shopkeeper with a fondness for model trains.
     
    If you enjoy progressive rock, or just liked the original Brick, I suggest you buy this album, as its feel is much more like classic Jethro Tull than Ian Anderson's solo albums in recent decades.
  10. HeavyMetalSunshineSister

    Clue

    By HeavyMetalSunshineSister,

    Rather a big fan of the movie Clue, but I've got strong opinions on the endings shown. Now, I understand it's meant to be truly ambiguous and, really, impossible to discern which is really the ending (the bit where it says one of them really is the real ending can be safely placed in the same category as communism, they're all equally right and wrong), but the third one, while entertaining, didn't convince me. For one thing, "Mr. Body"s motive for bringing them all there if he really is Mr. Body and not, in fact, Wadsworth, is suspect. Were he truly Mr. Body, and wishing to eliminate his spies, he would be more likely to take the option least likely to put himself at risk - not, as we see in the third ending, the one most likely to put himself at risk. Furthermore, what motive would "Mr. Body" if he really is the butler and not Mr. Body as he was shown to be in the unambiguous portions of the film, have to pretend to be Mr. Body, considering he was in a room full of people with perfect motive to kill him? No amount of money from his employer could be enough for that kind of suicide.
     
    Also, I firmly believe that only the true blackmailer could be that much of a sleazeball. He simply didn't have the personality for a butler - not deferential in the least, not polite, certainly not formal in any way. He did, however, have the personality of someone used to pulling the strings.
     
    I will reserve statement on whether I believe the first or second to be more likely. My goal here is simply to state that I believe the third ending to be the least probable (oh, and also to make sure my blog still works).
  11. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    As I sit here, listening through The Whirlwind for the first time in a couple of years, it strikes me that the vocals on this album compare rather unfavourably to those on Thick As A Brick 2, Ian Anderson's follow-up to Jethro Tull's legendary single-song album, released forty years late.
     
    It's not so much anything about the quality of the voices involved - years of smoking certainly were not kind to the pipes of Ian Anderson - but the technique of the singing. With Transatlantic's 70+ minute outing, while the voices don't sound bad, the phrasing and inflections leave much to be desired, lacking, for the most part, the confidence and impact heard from the very first track of TaaB 2. When the 1:37 mark of an old dinosaur's follow-up project is, vocally, stronger than the first fifteen minutes of a prog rock supergroup's intended magnum opus, someone hasn't done their job right.
     
    I have, thus far, enjoyed The Whirlwind, but if what I've heard so far is any indication, I rather doubt that my reward for reaching the end will be anything like as powerful as the pairing of Confessional and Kismet in Suburbia. Anderson's vocal work on TaaB 2 may not come close to the original album, but it's still miles ahead of Transatlantic so far.
     
     
    EDIT: I was going to cut this album so much more slack before they started padding the length with mindless repetition. I can only hear "Is it really happening" so many times before I conclude that you've run out of ideas.
     
    EDIT 2: I was right. In summation, The Whirlwind is an instrumentally fun/kind of impressive album/song with merely okay lyrics and mediocre delivery of those lyrics.
  12. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So here I am, hiding, terrified, in a shack I hollowed out of a rubber tree, when I see some dude with really long, thin legs marching around in diamond armor, carrying a diamond sword, and kind of walking like a chicken. It's night, so I figure he'd probably stab me if I went outside, so I just watch him through one of the windows.
     
    This goes on for five minutes, until I realize that the only piece he's missing from a full set of diamond armor is the pants.
     
    This disturbs me greatly, until I realize that that's exactly what I'm missing from my iron armor.
     
    Ladies and gentlemen, I have started a fashion trend among creepy tall people.
  13. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So today I took my shiny new diamond pickaxe down into a cavern to mine some obsidian (and maybe more diamonds, because hey, I'm an optimist like that).
     
    Instead, a group of skeletons decided it was high time for me to take a good long time-out in a column of lava, beginning today's adventures in messy death.
     
    Next, I went back into the cave, recovered what I could (which did not include the diamond pick, because of course it didn't) and set out to mine some more - this ended with me using water to pillar up to a lava source and get shot into it by a skeleton. Dead again.
     
    So I set off on another rescue mission, climbed near where I died, lagged out, and logged back in. Dead again.
     
    So I dropped back into the cavern with no tools at all, ran past a bomb-shop quartet, and finished climbing to where I died and lost the rest of everything.
     
    I recovered nothing but 19 redstone, a stick, and a bucket.
     
    So, at this point, I'm sitting in a cave with 21 melon slices, and I'm pretty angry. I'd just used most of my iron reserve trying to save my own precious behind, and I had exactly nothing to show for it.
     
    So I start dismantling the planks of the mineshaft I'm in, and I make a wooden sword and a wooden pickaxe, and I declare to the server at large my intention to maul every living thing underground.
     
    An hour and a half later I bob to the surface of a river, hauling 3 stacks of rails, 2 stacks of iron, a stack of coal, 16-ish gold, a bit of redstone, some lapis, and various other odds and ends.
  15. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So, umm... In some alternate universe, a lot of people are wondering why I'm a spoon now. They're also wondering why and how I developed the technology for gazing through the void, into the living rooms of people living an another universe.
     
    The answer is not available to you at this time, alternate-universe commies. Instead, I leave you with the greatest question ever asked. Why aren't you a spoon instead of some antennae-faced alien hippie?
  16. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    This is it.
     
    The thing absolutely none of you were waiting for. The thing even I wasn't waiting for.
     
    Because I had no idea it was happening until literally five minutes ago.
     
    Also because I'm a little slow up top.
     
    But yeah.
     

    The First Ever Madman-With-A-Box Drawing Contest,



    to be held from this point onward at no specific time interval.


     

    Basic Idea: Combine two animals that should never be combined, in a way that makes it clear that yes, they totally should be combined. For example, a turtle that is also an osprey. Don't use that one, that would be cheating.


     

    Entry Period: Until the end of the year. Seriously, go nuts. I'm in college and you're lazy, so I'm giving you plenty of time.


     

    Entry Limit: One per person, and each person has to have a unique idea - I would suggest that you announce your idea in the comments for this before you actually submit it, so no-one steals your idea.


     

    Rules:



    -All entries must be your own work.



    -All entries must combine two (2) animals that either really exist, really used to exist, or is part of an established mythos. This means that, if you truly feel like it, you could combine, say, a creature from H. P. Lovecraft's works and something from Doctor Who.



    -Entries may be drawn, and, in fact, probably should be drawn, but if you think you're slick, I guess you can try to Photoshop - just know that a sloppy job won't win. You have to convince me that this thing really is a turtle-osprey or whatever.



    -Concepts should be announced in the comments for this. It's not my fault if you get a great idea, never announce it, and then somebody else takes the idea.



    -All entries should be awesome.


  17. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Found myself in a Deep Ocean biome for the first time, and it's honestly kind of scary, swimming at the surface, looking down, and not being able to see the bottom.
     
    They need to add ocean-going hostile mobs now, just so you can get the experience of having a great white shark come rushing out of the depths, or even just see a faint hint of movement down there, and start fearing for your life.
     
    And once they add hostile ocean-going mobs, they need to give you an update or two to wait and be afraid of the water..
     
    ...and then they need to add a bigger boat.
     
    Anyway, great whites, giant squid, and maybe a couple of other nasties would really make the oceans more fun.
  18. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    For a personal project, I find myself needing to know what ships of the medieval Chola Navy looked like - my particular interest rests with the Thirisadai and Vajara classes. My own searches on the topic have come up empty, for the most part. Accordingly, I am asking you to assist in this search, in the hopes that you might have better luck finding good sources than I have.
     
    To be useful, pictures of these ships should show them from the side, front, back or top. A view of the ship from beneath is unlikely but would be nice. Colour images are preferred, but black and white is acceptable as long as there is enough detail. Photographs are probably more than we could hope for, but don't ignore the possibility.
     
    If you choose to help with this, thank you. If you do not, it is not your project and you had no obligation to do so.
  19. HeavyMetalSunshineSister

    Hoo Boy

    By HeavyMetalSunshineSister,

    So, a few months ago, I tried to find some reference on the medieval Chola naval vessel known as the Thirisadai - essentially the equivalent of a battleship. At this time, I posted a blog entry, requesting aid in finding these references - the request was unsuccessful, which is hardly shocking; BZPower is not exactly a community built upon a shared fondness for naval history, nor is a high proportion of the site's population comprised of historians.
     
    Anyway, I let that project rest for a while, as I tried to find the pictures I needed. Other ideas came up, I wrote some music, bought a didgeridoo, and the idea slid to the back of my mind, resurfacing earlier today.
     
    So, feeling lucky, I tried Google again.
     
    This was the top result.

     
    That's how little relevant material there is on this.
  20. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So
     
    It's been a while. Things have gotten... kind of weird, since the last time I made a blog entry.
     
    I haven't composed a new piece of music in more than a year, thanks to my computer's speakers and headphone jack breaking - followed, back in May, by the computer itself. About to go ahead and install a couple of programs for that on this borrowed computer, once I can verify that the owner is cool with that.
     
    In less aggravating (but probably more important) news, some of you might have noticed I've flipped the gender marker on my profile. Not joking about that one, in case you were wondering. To be honest, I should have figured it out a bit before I did, but hey, I was busy.
     
    Lastly, to leave things on a light note, finally bought and played through The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Ghirahim's a pushover, Demise is a filthy cheater, the game itself honestly talks too much, and the whole thing leaves me yearning for Skyrim's world design - not heavily-modded Skyrim, either. Pure vanilla, with all of its failings and, as I judged it at the time, emptiness.
  21. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    So I've got a piece of music that's been sitting unfinished on my computer for something like two years. The current list of instruments is as follows-
     
    -Flute
    -Alto Saxophone
    -Electric Guitar (Jazz)
    -Electric Bass (Fingered)
    -Drumkit
    -Timpani
     
    The first section went along fairly smoothly, with a four-measure ostinato primarily played by the flute and saxophone... the only problem is that, at this time, there isn't actually a lead instrument. Nothing's actually playing a melody over this, which is a big problem that kind of needs to be fixed before I go forward with this.
     
    I'm going to experiment with various instruments to see what works well here. Suggestions are encouraged, as they might make my work here a little bit easier.
  22. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Gets a whole lot less intimidating when you realize that, with a quick enough draw, Gilderoy Lockhart could have won a duel against him.
     
    What's that? Most powerful Dark wizard in living memory? That's impressive. Shame he can't remember which way is up.
  23. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    Some of you are probably aware of the Minecraft server that caters, in part, to BZP members. Most of you who are aware of that probably frequent the Minecraft topic in COT, and thus may be aware of the recent server crash.
     
    What you might not be fully aware of is the reason for this crash.
     
    A small group of players, led by Madufruit42 (The Invisible Noob) with some assistance from myself, MTMerrick (thoron) and a handful of others, were working on building a railway from Ga-Koro (not an exact reproduction of the Koro, mind - just a village based on it) to a planned train station that would connect Ga-Koro, Ta-Koro, and Ko-Koro. A moderator on that server - a non-BZP member - showed up, and began helping hollowing out the mountain for the train station. The problem has its roots in this - he decided, or so he told us, to use the World-Edit power-tools to hollow out the mountain faster, and warned us that this would cause some lag.
     
    We agreed to this, thinking that the lag would be moderate, and the net result would be beneficial.
     
    The server promptly crashed.
     
    A couple of hours later, the admin (Nav3taX) got the server back online, but with extreme lag. I happened to be in the right place to see what exactly had been done by the moderator "helping" with the railway.
     
    A giant ball of mushrooms had been placed in the air near the track. No hollowed-out mountain, just a great, pointless ball of mushrooms, which, being rather more difficult to render than, say, stone, lagged the server out and pretty much perma-broke it.
     
    The end result? The entire world had to be wiped, and a build-team is now being assembled to restore some sort of order.
     
    There are two possible explanations for why this happened - either the moderator was ignorant of the difficulties with rendering mushrooms, and was trying to be funny, or the goal was exactly what happened - the complete self-destruction of the server.
  24. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    One of my friends recently showed me a video of a song from a live performance Metallica did in San Francisco in December of 2011, citing it as evidence that Metallica has "a breakthrough on the way". Intrigued, I listened to the song, and found myself gravely disappointed.
     
    From the beginning, the song failed to sound noticeably different from other songs Metallica has done. Now, I'm not expecting them to suddenly become an entirely different sort of band, or for James Hetfield to pull a flute out of his pocket, but some innovation would have been nice - anything present in the song to suggest that Metallica still has new ideas would have refuted some of what I've said for years about the band.
     
    Instead, what I heard was the same performance in the same old way, and in a world that has Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Buckethead and Joe Satriani, I have no time for Metallica's stale, recycled riffs, simplistic, unchanging basslines, and disappointingly unsubtle lyrics. The only good thing I can say about this song is that Lou Reed was nowhere to be seen.
     
    RIP Metallica
    1981-1988
  25. HeavyMetalSunshineSister
    As of today, I'm starting a little diary detailing odd moments in my Minecrafting experience, from my character's point of view. The first of these will come in a batch, while the rest are likely to come one at a time.
     
     
    ---Entry 1, January 16th
     
    It is now a week since I became sick of the sight of snow, and, in a fit either of brilliance or madness, abandoned the mainland in my small wooden boat - a boat I had not built, much less used, until about an hour before I pushed off from the shore. Fortunately for me, I appear to be a reasonably good shipbuilder, as I have yet to sink beneath the waves and meet my demise in the no-doubt-sincerely-sympathetic embrace of one of the many squid that seem to infest these waters.
     
    I sailed three days before I came across anything remarkable - an island! Sailing towards the little spit of rock protruding from the waves, I very nearly wrecked my precious boat upon the shore of what turned out, in fact, to be a wholly unremarkable island, but when I came upon it, the fact that it wasn't either snow, ice, water or lava had me jumping for joy.
     
    The night after I landed upon this little rock, I realized that I was in need of somewhere other than that rock upon which to sleep. Taking advantage of what is either a hole in the concept of sanity or the fact that I am apparently a wizzard, I eschewed the idea of building a house upon that miserable rock in favor of building a series of ice domes beneath the waves, and making my home there. It is from my house in the smallest of these domes that I write this diary now, though I am thinking that I may soon depart to further explore my world.
     
    ---Entry 2, January 21st
     
    Given the difficulty of locating my home beneath the waves by the light of the single candle that, at the moment, isn't even lit, I have shaped the island that first led me to this place into a pair of perfect triangles, the smaller of which points directly to my home. On the opposite side of my sunken villa is another of these island signposts, built up from the seafloor using either crazy-powers or wizzardry, as I have yet to decide which is responsible for the apparent viability of ice as a submarine building material. With these signposts in place, I am now prepared to sail into the east, sailing after adventure, the sun, and maybe something that isn't either a bloody barren rock or a river of fire carving its way through a snowy valley.
     
    P.S. - Why did I decide on ice, of all things? Glass is transparent too. I suspect shenanigans. Whether it is wizzardry or crazy that drives these shenanigans, only time and perhaps an errant luck-dragon will tell.
     
    ---Entry 3, January 25th
     
    I am now a few days out from my home, and no significant landmasses have been sighted, though various miserable spires of rock have greeted me. Very nearly wrecked the boat on the head of one of those blasted friendly squid. Nearly ready to call an end to this whole adventure thing.
     
    On the second day after leaving my home, I began to worry that I may not find it again. To this end, I have, using whatever breach in the laws of something or other (leaning towards wizzardry today), constructed two obelisks since then - one of obsidian, because I thought it would look cool, the other from the Glowstone I gathered the last time I got ideas of "adventure" into my head, because I'm relatively certain that a glowing pillar of rock would be hard to miss.
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