drumcorps 2 Comments

Supersizus Interruptus

I had just sat down to write a review of Super Size Me, the documentary that I went to see yesterday with Mark and Aaron, when Kris Heath called. Turns out that he and Jamie happened upon the PBS broadcast of the 2004 DCI World Championship Finals, and he wanted to let me know it was on—which was good, because I hadn’t realized it would be broadcast so soon after Finals. Usually, it’s not broadcast until Thanksgiving weekend.

As always, watching Finals on PBS was an experience best shared with no one. If I can’t have fellow corps alumni with me, I’d rather not have anyone else watch me silently cheer the incredible drill moves, or tear up at the memory of aging out forever, or any of the other silly unexplainable things I do while watching the broadcast. Having been involved in the activity, these reactions make perfect sense; to someone looking from the outside in, I’m sure it seems… over the top?

Back when I was still marching Junior corps, I’d seen alumni from the 70’s bawl like babies when they saw the Troopers perform their signature starburst drill move, simply because no one does that anymore, and it was once a staple of drum corps repertoire. I only vaguely understood back then what they were feeling, even with the drum corps experience that I had. I can’t imagine what people with no drum corps experience whatsoever would make of this.

Even without the drum corps experience under your belt, though, the DCI PBS broadcast is a wonderful program. Back in high school, before I ever dreamed I could possibly age out of a Top 12 corps and play in The Night Show, I watched and admired the ability of these young people to perform with such intensity. All the corps put on a great show, and every last kid is giving it his or her best for that one final performance. Even without knowing it firsthand, you can see in their eyes their love for the activity and their corpsmates, and it can really move you if you let it. When I saw it back in high school, I wanted that feeling myself. I never thought I’d actually get it.

Even now, seven years later, it’s such a great memory.

site-related 2 Comments

Blogworthy?

Now that my page looks kind of like a “real” blog, I find myself torn between writing more and writing better. Ideally, I’d like to do both. Realistically, I know that if I want to put out high-quality entries like The Elite Members Of The Online Blogosphere (and their groupies know who they are), I would need to sit down and spend quality time on each and every entry. I would basically be writing mini-essays for actual publication, while trying to keep my informal style intact.

It’s harder than it seems. For me, anyway.

On the other hand—shit, no one new is reading this thing. My entire audience consists of Aaron, Amy, Sheryl, Eric, Beth, Dan, and sometimes Amanda, Donna, Kristen, Ellie from SomethingNormal, or a random wanderer following a link from my sig or my old Bosstones page (which, remarkably, still gets hits after at least two years of stagnation).

There’s nobody here to impress. Y’all know me too well. *smirk*

So, once I get used to being all loose and laid-back while typing in a new interface, I’m hoping I’ll be back to my normal blogging self—albeit with a narrower column of text, a different color scheme, and a new backend.

Huh-huh, she said, “back end.” Cool.

P.S. – All of my August 2004 LJ entries are now imported into MT. w00t!

test rolls 4 Comments

First Lomography Attempt

The roll of Lomo film I sent off to Snapfish has been developed, and the pics are up on their site. After seeing some of the crap other “lomographers” have produced, I was apprehensive about what my first roll was going to look like. But, as it turns out, I’m actually pretty pleased with the results.

To show you what the Lomo difference looks like, I’ve restrained myself from editing these photos at all—no color correction, no adjustments. I specifically requested that Snapfish make no color corrections to the prints, either. It goes against every digital instinct I have, letting these photos keep their flourescent green caste, but I’m doing it for the good of the order. Let me know what you think…

        
randomness 3 Comments

Radioactive Pee

From: Diana Schnuth
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 10:28 AM
To: ‘Aaron R. Schnuth’
Subject: hey

You may find this amusing… Yesterday evening, I had that headache, so I went to take some Meijer-brand Tylenol or whatever we had. Somewhere in my brain, I thought that since my girlie meds were downstairs in the kitchen, so was the tylenol. So I inadvertently took three vitamins instead of three tylenol. 🙂 Then I wondered why my pee was so bright yellow later on, when all I?d taken was Tylenol. It wasn?t until this morning when I thought to actually take a vitamin that I realized what I?d done. Heh. And, no, my headache didn?t go away last night for some time, and I wondered why.

geekspeak 2 Comments

Almost Functional

Well, this evening was spent messing with MT. And messing, and messing, and messing… until I realized that my problem lay in some simple configuration settings. Once MT knew where to generate my files, my MT tags magically started working; and once I realized how to make templates work, and how to recompile the site to show my changes, everything started coming together.

This is still going to take a lot of work and tweaking—and reformatting of generic templates when the need arises. If you choose to preview your comment, you’ll see what I mean… 😉