September 29th, 2007 11:36am
Melinda Weathers
My violin teacher recommended Naxos Classical Music to me last week as a place where I could listen to recordings of the pieces I am working on. It looks like for US$19.95 (or EUR€19.95 ?? Was someone too lazy to do the currency conversion? Or do the intertubes cost more in Europe?) you can get a year’s subscription to them where you can download all the classical music you want to listen to. It sounds like they also have Historical, Film Music, Jazz/Blues, Nostalgia, and World/New Age, but I’m not sure to what extent. You can also get a free subscription where you hear 25% of each track. I’m thinking of doing that to see what kind of selection they have. I think it would be great for someone like me who has a very limited classical and jazz cd collection, but would like to start listening to more without spending hundreds of dollars.
[Update: I don’t know if it will work on my MacBook, and the search capability is a little crummy. Also, maybe the service is cheaper in the US since it apparently does not include the Jazz Legends recordings, which is a bummer.]
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September 28th, 2007 07:03pm
Melinda Weathers
Just a quick update on Mr. Fish (aka Shadow). Apparently he felt his little fishy life was complete after such a great song was written for him. He has left us to swim the fishy heavens. And for the record, I cleaned his tank last weekend just like I said I would.
Tagged: fish, music
September 25th, 2007 01:35pm
Melinda Weathers
I thought this was an interesting article about how germs that were taken into space come back stronger than germs that were not taken into space.
So are we more susceptible to germs while we’re in space than we are here? Does our gravity actually help keep germs weaker than they would be in low-grav environments? Should astronauts be quarantined when they come back? Is our entire civilization going to one day be destroyed by… SPACE BUGS??? (Or have I been reading too much sci-fi?)
Tagged: bugs, space
September 24th, 2007 08:05pm
Melinda Weathers
As I always mention, I’m very happy with my MacBook. Also, I know of at least 2 people in my office other than me (and I only hear from about 30 people or so) that have recently puchased Macs. So I predict that the market share for Mac is going to start going up and up and everyone realizes how cool it is and how they really don’t need to run Microsoft Word (and that they actually could if they really wanted to. Infact, Excel for Mac seems even better for Excel for Windows according to my husband.)
So now is the time to become a Mac Programmer! Everything seems to be prettier on the Mac, actually. Even websites that look kind of crummy by themselves look nicer on the Mac since each window has a drop shadow, and it makes the website look a little 3d. Apparently, the reason everything looks nice and consistent is the Cocoa toolkit. I did a tutorial with xcode when I installed xcode in order to get gcc. It was fun, and I created a Hello World window in Cocoa, but I didn’t really understand what was going on, especially since I had never even seen Objective C before.
Anyways, I recently came across this article from someone who made the switch, and it seems like a pretty interesting thing to try out! Maybe in all my spare time 
Tagged: cocoa, hello_world, macbook
September 23rd, 2007 01:46pm
Melinda Weathers
I’ve recently completed a project for a friend of my mom’s. I knew years of my mom’s bragging about me would eventually come back to haunt me, and here it was — my mom’s friend, Robin, a science teacher, who had heard all about my genius, super-incredible, awesome musical talent, asked me to help her finish up some science songs she had been recording. I had just bought my new MacBook and had played with Garage Band a bit, but I was wanting a reason to play with it some more, so I agreed to help out.
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Tagged: garage_band, macbook, music
September 22nd, 2007 07:32pm
Melinda Weathers
Someone mentioned to me that they liked my day-glo blog, and I thought to myself. Hmmm, they’re color blind. And then I looked at it on a regular monitor (rather than my laptop which I tilt in an odd way when I sit on the couch) and I thought Augh! it *is* day-glo. Anyways, these are closer to the colors that I thought I was choosing before. (I still can’t get it quite right, and that gray rectangle is still there, of course.) The moral of the story is not to use your laptop to pick colors. (My first attempt was apparently a hideous bright green against rusty orange. John walked downstairs and looked at me funny and then tilted my laptop to the proper angle. But then I guess it un-tilted as I re-selected the colors.)
Tagged: colors, macbook
September 20th, 2007 09:27pm
Melinda Weathers
Last year around May, my husband and I purchased a 2007 Honda Fit. We were among the very first Fit owners — I signed up for the mailing list, and we emailed the dealer as soon as we saw they were available. We got the lowest email quote (by a good bit) from Ed Voyles Honda, and wound up buying there. We are very happy with it. We love the blue color (which was decided because I was the winner of a round of mini-golf — John wanted red at first, but now he likes the blue.) We love the way the seats fold up and down and how much space there is. We love how it handles and feels and everything. We love the plug-in for our MP3 player. Etc, etc, etc.
Anyways, people always ask what kind of gas mileage it gets. And I always make up some number between about 25 and 50 mpg depending on how good of a mood I’m in. But now we’re going to find out what gas mileage it reeeealllly gets!
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Tagged: Fit, mini-golf, mpg
September 10th, 2007 11:02am
Melinda Weathers
I just wanted to point out that until very recently, “Melinthropy” was an Antegooglewhackblatt. I think that’s cool mainly because I didn’t know there was a word for that
As of the time of this posting, we have a googlewhack with “wrathful melinthropy” (but not for long!)
Tagged: google, weblog
September 9th, 2007 10:01pm
Melinda Weathers
I’ve already sent this out to a bunch of people, but I wanted to post it here because I find it so amusing. I’m afraid I identify with quite a bit of it!
Weird Al’s White and Nerdy video
(This is higher res than the youtube version. I got it off Weird Al’s official site.)
Tagged: music, nerdy, youtube
September 9th, 2007 09:53pm
Melinda Weathers
I was just writing my “About” page and talking about how I like languages — I’ve tried to learn French, Japanese, Irish Gaelic, Cantonese and German at various times through various means with varying levels of success. I will probably add Italian, Esperanto, Latin, and who knows what else to my list in the future.
But the most recent one is Spanish. Living in Smyrna, I have a lot of need for it, really. I’ve actually had two particular instances that stand out in my mind when it would have come in handy. It would have been good to be able to say “You can activate the gas pump by pressing the green button” and “Oh my god, why is your car sticking out of my neighbor’s house? Do you need an ambulance?”. These were separate occasions, by the way. Also, I would like to be able to understand the zany dj’s on the Spanish radio station (Viva! 105.3 Tan Latina Como Tu!).
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Tagged: languages, spanish
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