2009.09.12 23:47 - Entertainment, Music, Internet Stupidity, Miscellanea, Whining
My iPod came with a default playlist called 'Classical Music'. Intuitively, it contains anything in my music library that has been classified as belonging to the 'classical' genre.
There are currently twelve composers represented in this list.
- J. S. Bach is from the Baroque period.
- Anton Bruckner, Georges Bizet, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Franz Schubert are all Romantics.
- Fritz Kreisler and Gustav Holst are Moderns (though I'm using that term rather more broadly than the music geeks in the audience probably like).
- Sergei Rachmaninov and Gustav Mahler are arguably Romantic and Modern.
- John Williams is late enough that I'm not sure he isn't post-Modern, but I don't know that he's Post-Modern, either.
- 'Traditional' is not a composer. And "The Star Spangled Banner" isn't classical, even if Sergei Rachmaninov is playing it on the piano.
And, for the record, that's about as music-geeky as I get. I can't particularly tell the difference by listening, but it turns out that I still remember a little of the music education I got in elementary/middle school.
Related: apparently, Frederic Chopin looked a bit like David Carradine (or so it seems to me). I had no idea.
[Edited: After much fixing of syntax, a terrible and over-used pun occurred to me, so I updated the title.]
[Edited again: Fixed some syntax.]
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2009.08.31 09:26 - Guns, M1 Garand
Pole not included.
Seen over at SayUncle is a pictorial guide to field-stripping the M1 Garand, doing a partial detail strip of the receiver assembly, including a detail strip of the bolt.
I've done this a couple times myself, but I used the instructions over at the CMP's website. Short of disassembling the rear sights, I've had the rifle completely apart. It's fairly straightforward, but I do recommend having one or the other of the Garand combo tools. (I like the one that comes with the steel cleaning rod kit best, but the rod and other bits are useless and a half.)
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2009.08.28 16:54 - Meatspace Stupidity
... and I suspect somebody's done this at some point, but I'm debating about the feasibility of a combat system for a pen-and-paper RPG that rates weapons based on how tactical and generally cool they are (or appear to be). The general idea being that, say, an accessory rail would automatically make a gun more effective, even if it has nothing on it or is attached to a gun where one would never bother to modify normally. Sawed-off shotguns with a rail-mounted bipod and 4xACOG, let's say, would be somehow better than the same gun without either of those useless bits on it.
I think I'd have to assign additional bonuses for paint jobs, though.
Seems like it would play kinda weirdly. Pistols are probably cooler than rifles, for instance, and
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2009.08.20 13:14 - Entertainment, Movies, Television, Internet Stupidity, Meatspace Stupidity
The Rifftrax guys are taking the piss out of "Plan 9 From Outer Space" this evening, and you may be able to watch at a local movie theater.
Admittedly, this seems like a target-rich environment, but, hey, they're working live.
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2009.08.13 21:40 - Meatspace Stupidity
Just saw an Army ad that listed CEOs, astronauts and ... software engineers as the sort of people that come out of the Army.
While not, technically, wrong (more than one of my coworkers is some variety of ex-military), that seems like an odd grouping.
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