Maius Intra Qua Extra

I submitted my recordings for the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra today! The deadline is Sunday, but I won't have time tomorrow to work on them, so I made a schedule to get everything done by today (it's still Friday here). So it's off and away, and hopefully it's good enough. I did talk to the coordinator/conductor beforehand and he said that he accepts any skill level, but, well, I can't but worry. I've been watching the message boards and a lot of the participants are professional musicians, and I wonder how he's going to be able to mix professional performances with extremely amateur performances and make it sound good. Ah well, the important thing is that I had a lot of fun getting to perform DW music, and I learned a lot.

We had to use professional equipment to do the recording, for both fidelity and noise reduction, so I had to learn about music microphones and purchase a reasonable one. I didn't want to spend a lot on a microphone that I might only ever use once (not to mention, with us both being unemployed, my husband wasn't happy with me spending on this) so I purchased the most inexpensive acceptable microphone, a CAD U37. It seems pretty good except that it makes a weird staticky noise when I'm playing upper chalumeau (which is another thing I learned -- the words for the upper and lower register on a clarinet, "clarion" and "chalumeau"), but I figured as a clarinet in an orchestra, no one is going to hear me anyway, and thus, certainly they won't hear a tiny bit of static.

But I also learned a lot about my own playing. I've always been told this but never actually tested it: the best way to improve your own playing is to listen to a recording of yourself. When you're playing an instrument, what you think you sound like is nothing like what it actually sounds like. You can only hear what you're doing wrong if you listen to a recording of yourself.

My friend Tim has always said that I have this weird kind of bloaty sound when I'm trying to put an accent on a note, and I finally heard on the recording what he's been talking about. And then I figured out what the problem was: I've been putting the ligature too low on the mouthpiece. This gives the reed too much play and it over-vibrates. I moved the ligature up and now it sounds a lot better; further improvement will come with better embouchure, which I'm working on.

Another thing that I noticed on the recordings was that I've gotten lazy with lower clarion fingerings, such that I'm starting the note slightly before the fingers are all firmly in place, which causes a slight squeak. So, I'm now paying a lot more attention to how I do that.

As far as the actual music goes, after playing this ten-minute medley of DW music over and over and over again for the past few monhts, I noticed that the music is actually really repetitive. Note, of course, that it has to be, because the main purpose of the music is to be played behind scenes in the show and cannot run out before the scene is over. Murray Gold has to write the music to be long and repetitive so that he has a lot of of recorded music to splice and fit into the TV show. (He was at Gallifrey One a few years ago and demonstrated how he does that -- it was fascinating.) Fifteen's main theme, which is appropriately titled "Fifteen", is at least fast and fun, so the repetition isn't boring. But man, if I never hear "Joy to the World" (which I assume was the theme for the character Joy in the eponymous episode) again, it'll be too soon. (Of course, it's the one that still stuck in my head. Because it's repetitive. So it just repeats. Over and over again.)

The medley ends with the current version of the main theme, and that was brilliant to play. I'm not actually sure if I prefer this version to the series 1-2 version, which was my previous favorite of the modern versions. I think I have to rank them in this order: Fifteen, series 1-2, Thirteen, series 4, Twelve, Eleven. Actually, Eleven might have two versions -- series 5-7a and series 7b. Or he might even have had a different version for "The Day of the Doctor". Not sure; all I know is that I wasn't fond of his versions.

Anyway. Current main theme = awesome. Getting to play it = even more awesome.

Okay, at this point I'm rambling. I'm just happy I got this opportunity and it was brilliant. And I practiced more for this than for any other performance in my life! That's how much I enjoyed it.

It really feels like all my journal has talked about lately is bad news. Ah well, things are as they are. I know I don't need to say what I'm talking about.

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Amazon announced a couple of days ago that the new Stargate series has been canceled. They'd announced it back in November, that it would be continuation of the franchise rather than a reboot. For the past six months, then, it's been developed by some of the writers from the original SG-1 and supported by the original producers.

The announcement from Amazon came from whatever department head is in charge of those types of shows, and it said that they decided that the franchise doesn't have a broad appeal, that it only appeals to fans of the original series. The announcement also stated that they might choose to resume the project in the future, but if they do, it will be without anyone associated with the original three series.

Which tells me that what they really want to do is slap the "Stargate" name on a generic sci-fi property that they already have in the works. This may even be similar to the possibility that Doctor Who is changing formats, which I talked about in my last post. The rumor is that DW is changing from monster-of-the-week to a full-season story format, because that's what's popular now. Well, SG-1 and SGA were both planet-of-the-week series and the writers that were working on the series said that's what they were trying to preserve. So, it makes sense that the same thing would happen to the new SG show, that it would be shoehorned into the newer popular format, just like DW.

Anyway, time will tell. At this point, I'm mostly just living for Nathan Fillion's new Firefly cartoon. SG is just sad. DW will sort itself out and, as I said last time, I'll watch it and will turn back to the stuff I love if it isn't for me.

We have a camera mounted on the wall above the front door so that we get alerts on our phones when a package is delivered and when someone knocks on the door. Well, to be honest, it's an alert on my husband's phone, because frankly, I don't care. If there's a package coming, I already know about it and are probably checking the Amazon listing every fifteen minutes to see if it's been delivered yet. If there's a knock on the door, we won't answer it because we know it's a solicitor; we never have anyone come over, and if we did, we'd know about it beforehand, so any unexpected knock is nothing we want to interact with. However, my husband likes to know about anything going on out there. I'm quite happy to not get extra useless notifications.

But I digress.

Interestingly, no one ever notices the camera. It's up in the corner above the door, quite above anyone's head but not hidden in any way, and when it detects motion and it starts recording, a blue light on its face turns on. I guess people haven't quite realized that door cameras are now very common, so they don't look for them. Yet.

Now that it's spring, though, my husband has been getting tons of notifications of motion detection from that camera. We get year-round visits from the neighborhood cats (they are adorable; we have tons of clips of cats wandering up, scratching on the welcome mat, and often curling up and going to sleep on it) and the occasional fly-by by a bird. We got a bat for the first time a few nights ago, and we once saw a waddling blob that we could only guess was a nutria. But, with spring, the vast majority of interruptions are bees.

It's not a constant thing, mind you. We were getting probably five to ten notifications a day, usually clumped together in a fifteen-minute period. Thing is, my husband is deathly afraid of bees. Well, mostly deathly afraid of wasps, hornets, and yellowjackets, but he'll still also panic at bees. So, of course, he wanted to get rid of them.

He thought that the appearance of the bees meant that there was a hive behind the camera or in the hole above it where the two walls meet the awning. I didn't think so, because if there was a hive, we'd be getting constant motion detections, not just a few. But he wanted to kill it, so we sprayed poison into the hole a couple of times, and of course, nothing really changed.

Then he actually did some research and discovered that to detect motion, the camera emits IR, which bees can see and think is a flower. Thus, they approach the camera as bees do, flying in and out trying to figure out what's going on and triggering the camera repeatedly. The best thing to do in this case is to get bee repellent.

So, we ordered a bottle of bee repellent from Amazon. It's non-toxic, a mix of essences from various plants that has a smell that bees don't like. Luckily, it actually smells rather nice. The instructions were what you'd expect: saturate the area well with the spray the first time, then follow it up every couple days to keep the aroma steady. That's what we did, and it worked nicely, no bee notifications for the next two days.

Then, as it happens with Amazon sellers, I received an email from the retailer with instructions on how to use the repellent and a note to please be sure to contact them if I had any questions. Okay, that's odd, as the bottle already has instructions on it, but that's nice customer service at least. Then I read the email's instructions, which started like this:

On the first day, be sure to spray the whole area liberally to show the bees you mean business.

And that's now my husband's mantra. He has stepped outside with the bottle and yelled, "I mean business!" as he sprayed. He has gotten up from his desk and said to me, "I am going to show them I mean business," before going downstairs to spray. He has casually commented to me in the middle of conversations, "You know, I mean business."

So, I guess, if you're a bee, now you know to stay away from our front door, because my husband means business.

Okay, we finally got a chance to rewatch Good Omens 3 and I've decided that I really like it.

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Title: "Masters and Ceremonies"
Fandom(s): Original fiction
Characters: Mike, Chris, Amanda, Don, and Rick -- members of a software development team
Rating: G
Genre: General
Word Count: 464

Summary: A software development team's reaction to new Agile processes and ceremonies

Read it on AO3.

Author's Notes: fandomweekly's current prompt is "ceremony" and that word is only going to make me think of ceremonies in Agile methodology, because it's always struck me as odd that we use that word for a non-ritualistic process. In fact, many would argue that the whole point of Agile is to not get stuck in a codified, calcified way of thinking.

This was a fun little write and it made my husband laugh out loud (as we both have been on both sides of this, as both ICs and scrum masters). And that alone made it worth it.

Also, apparently I have invented the "software development" and "Agile methodology" tags on AO3.

Easter egg: All the characters are named after the main actors in Stargate SG-1.

My husband is currently doing a run in "Kingdom of Loathing" (a totally weird webgame that he's been playing for over two decades now; I played it as well and loved it, but didn't care to invest the time that it needs to be played well and stopped playing it after about four years) and he sent me an item description over Slack, with this exchange:

Him: Gabagool is not the most delicious member of the salumi-like meat family, but it is the most fun to say.
Me: That is so true. Sounds like a Doctor Who monster.

And then I thought for a moment about why it sounded like a DW monster, and I realized I was thinking about the Interstellar Song Contest's performer Dugga Doo. So, of course, I pulled up the video on YouTube.

And THEN I remembered Gallifrey One. You see, at the end of every Gally, the penultimate event is "The Year in Review", which is an hour-long video montage of things that happened during the past year -- usually clips of news events and interviews and such with the actors that played the Doctor or the companions.

This year, however, started with the entire Dugga Doo video, which everyone loved and we were all singing along. And then the video said:

"And now! One full hour of Dugga Doo!"

Best "Year in Review" ever!!

(No, it really wasn't a full hour of Dugga Doo. But it was hilarious.)

Mother's Day is coming up, so my husband and I were talking this morning about ordering something to send to his mother, and he told me something that I still can't get over.

Mom-in-law loves decorative items. I'd say tchotchkes, but it's more than just cheap little things. Her house is filled with all kinds of things, from crystal vases to Faberge eggs (not real ones, just enameled eggs), a collection of ceramic houses from Europe, glass perfume bottles, and much more. She also loves cats, so her TV room is decorated entirely with cat figurines, prints, cross-stitches, throw pillows, etc.

Note, all of this stuff was store-bought or received as gifts. MIL is not a creative type, preferring to spend her time reading, gardening, and watching TV. Most of the handmade items, like the cross-stitch cats and the framed drawings and paintings, came from her sister (who is a huge creative -- her Christmas cards are always handmade and beautiful) or her aunt.

Most of the gifts we send her are either decorative items or jewelry (she loves her jewelry), but last October, when we got home from visiting her, I suggested that I make a sparkly diamond art cat for her to put up in her TV room and send it to her for Christmas, in addition to the usual gift. My husband thought it was a great idea, so I ordered the kit (this one in specific) and spent a few hours (three or four sessions of one to two hours apiece) to make it. I sent it off, and then my husband ordered an enamel egg off Amazon for her real gift.

So today, as we were talking about what to get for Mother's Day, my husband told me that MIL, when she'd called to thank us for it, had said that the diamond art cat was pretty but she was upset that I had made it for her instead of sending her the kit for her to put together herself. Then, she received the egg a couple of days later and was happy with that.

And I'm still just going "What???" about it. Frankly, I'm insulted. She actually values the kit itself more than she appreciates the time and effort I put into making something for her.

And who looks at something that someone's made for them and thinks, "They shouldn't have done that. They should have let me do it." It reminded me of a beaded box that her sister made and sent us for Christmas about ten years ago. It was gorgeous, but I didn't think, "I could do that myself -- she should have just sent us the beads and instructions." What I actually did was put the box in the display case and then go buy a book on beaded boxes to learn how to do it myself.

Anyway, my husband has decided to send her a diamond art kit for Mother's Day. And you know, I bet she will never put it together. As I said, she's not a creative type, and the only creative endeavor we've ever seen her attempt -- adult coloring books -- she abandoned after an hour and sent the book and the pencils to me.

Urgh, I'm more upset about this than I really should be. I should go off and practice for the DWFO. But I'll tell you what I won't be doing, ever: making another thing for my MIL.

Title: "Gunge"
Fandom(s): Doctor Who
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones
Rating: G
Genre: General
Word Count: 296

Summary: The Doctor and Martha work to prevent a calamity of epic proportions ... widespread bio-disaster ... All right, all right, it's just going to be really gross, okay?

Read it on AO3.

Author's Notes: So here's the deal. I've been working on a story, and it's 1730 words of pure dross so far. Then I was looking back at another story of mine and thought, "I should write *this* idea instead," but you know, that's going to take two weeks.

Then I remembered I'd written this earlier this month, as just a practice adaptation of another fic I saw, and I thought, "Hey, I can clean that up in ten minutes and get it posted!"

So yeah, this is just crap that I'm posting to not miss a month. Just keep scrolling down your feed and forget this ever happened.

Title: "Cyberman"
Fandom(s): Doctor Who
Characters: Amy Pond, Rory Wiliams
Rating: T
Genre: General
Word Count: 406

Summary: In a graveyard in London, Missy is presenting the Doctor with the gift of an army. Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond....

Read it on AO3.

Author's Notes: I started this one just after "Dark Water"/"Death in Heaven" aired but never finished it because I thought, no one wants to think about this. But yesterday, romanajo123 showed me Big Finish's announcement of a Torchwood audio with Cyber-Ianto on the cover. Now, who knows what BF actually did (it's probably just Ianto having to dress up as a Cyberman; they've done this kind of thing before), but it got me thinking about how Ianto actually was cyberized and reminded me of this story. Modern Shivver has no qualms about offending people with her stories, so I finished it up and here it is!

But think about it, this is entirely canon: the Cyber-pollen hit every cemetery in the world, so every beloved character who died before this episode was cyberized: not just the Brigadier but Amy, Rory, Sarah Jane, Ianto, to name a few. So, here's the story of two of them.

And just saying, I love it when I get to put "Major Character Death" on a fic. Plus, this also has the F/M relationship tag. 400 words and it hits both ends of the spectrum.