Friday, July 24, 2020
Volunteer sunflower
I’m not sure where it came from, but we were amused to notice an unexpected sunflower blooming amidst the plants in the back bed earlier this week. Happy July.
Monday, July 20, 2020
Virtual Choir 6: Sing Gently
One of the virtual projects that I participated in last May has finally been put together — Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 6. Go here to see it or google "Virtual Choir 6" to learn a bit about the project. With over 17,000 singers, you won’t actually see me, but I’m in there somewhere and it is an interesting example of a large online collaborative choir.
I did take a screenshot of the “The choir” page right after I uploaded, when it was easy to find my picture. Something like 10,000 more videos were uploaded after this point. I was amused to get an email from a friend I sing with elsewhere mentioning that he thought he saw me when he perused the large array of singer photos.
The biggest challenge in my end was setting up the required plain white background for the video, given that there are no blank walls in the house. I ended up attaching a white piece of coroplast to a tripod to put behind me. I had to use a large bar of chocolate to clamp it properly (that's the orange thing you can see below the white backdrop; it came to hand when I was looking for something to use as a stabilizer), and then ruefully discovered when I went to eat it later that it had been crushed...
The little gray thing attached to the top of the music stand is a 3-D printed holder that Chad made to hold the phone while it was recording the video.
You may note that the music on the stand in that picture is not the Whitacre “Sing Gently”, but music from one of the other virtual music projects that I did that same week In May which are still pending: one with Collage, and two with my hardy gurdy with some others I occasionally sing with. Given that the people doing the post processing to compile videos have discovered that the process can be time consuming, I am not sure if or when those will ever be done, but I’ll pass them along as they arrive!
I did take a screenshot of the “The choir” page right after I uploaded, when it was easy to find my picture. Something like 10,000 more videos were uploaded after this point. I was amused to get an email from a friend I sing with elsewhere mentioning that he thought he saw me when he perused the large array of singer photos.
The biggest challenge in my end was setting up the required plain white background for the video, given that there are no blank walls in the house. I ended up attaching a white piece of coroplast to a tripod to put behind me. I had to use a large bar of chocolate to clamp it properly (that's the orange thing you can see below the white backdrop; it came to hand when I was looking for something to use as a stabilizer), and then ruefully discovered when I went to eat it later that it had been crushed...
The little gray thing attached to the top of the music stand is a 3-D printed holder that Chad made to hold the phone while it was recording the video.
You may note that the music on the stand in that picture is not the Whitacre “Sing Gently”, but music from one of the other virtual music projects that I did that same week In May which are still pending: one with Collage, and two with my hardy gurdy with some others I occasionally sing with. Given that the people doing the post processing to compile videos have discovered that the process can be time consuming, I am not sure if or when those will ever be done, but I’ll pass them along as they arrive!
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Delivery
One of Chad’s friends had a birthday; we made a surprise delivery to him on our bike ride this morning. I figured you’d be amused by the shot said friend snapped as we showed up.
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