Photodump

If you don't already, I highly recommend you follow our friend Britt Dietz' Moments Capture photography on Facebook. He does amazing aviation photography...

Catholic Humor

I made some memes!

Let the beheadings commence!

Down the Rabbit Hole: Addendum

So, after some encouragement from Dave, I revisited Gregorio. After messing around a bit more, I discovered the reason it hadn't properly loaded and connected itself with TeX Live was that, when the installer was finished, I checked the "display readme.txt" option, which was causing the error message about not finding the TeX Live files (???). When I unchecked that option before completing the install, it appeared to connect up properly and I was able to get Gregorio and TeX Live to compile.

The process is a little tricky, but so, so, so much faster than my other option, which was to use the now-"free" copy of Adobe InDesign CS2 with the font Caeciliae. While that method produced very pretty scores,  it took an ungodly amount of time. Using Gregorio, I was able to produce sharp-looking scores in about 15 minutes.

Check them out:

Facebook Miscellany 1/13 - 1/26

The most important news on the internet: J.J. Abrams to direct Star Wars VII. To me, this is wonderfully good news, as I have enjoyed all the Abrams films I've seen. According to IMDB, "'Argo' director Ben Affleck was also in contention [to direct]." (Insert huge gasp of relief here.)

I think the funniest response I've seen so far has been this one:

Star Wars Episode VII: Revenge of the Lens Flair

A note on why I like him: of the first three Mission Impossible movies, (the ones I've seen), #3 (directed by Abrams) was my favorite, while #2 (directed by John Woo) was an abomination that ought to be fed to the ravenous bug-bladder beast. What is interesting is that, in M:I2, the villain threatened to release a virus that would kill billions, and yet I could not motivate myself to care if the hero succeeded (I was hoping he wouldn't, so the heroine would be forced to throw herself off a cliff). In M:I3, we are never told what  plot the villain is attempting. There is no on-screen threat beyond the hero and his new bride. And yet I cared intensely.

And getting me to care about Tom Cruise is a feat in itself.

The Boys Update

The Boys both had half-birthdays this week. Anthony turned 1½ and Damien 3½.

18! Does that mean he can vote?

42. The ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything poopy.

President Obama, the Closet Pro-Lifer

Wedding Photos

The complete wedding photo album is now online! It only took nine years!

From the FB Archives

Just a little thing the "boys" did on Facebook some time ago.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Being of unsound mind, I decided to investigate that dark and frightening world known as Gregorian Chant notation software. Consider this your official warning: that way lies madness.

So far as I could determine, there are six options:

1. Chanter
2. Gregoire
3. GregEdit
4. Caeciliae
5. Gregorio
6. Build a time machine, go back to the sixth century, teach Pope Gregory the Great modern music notation, then come back to the present and use MuseScore, because Gregorian notation will never have existed.

So far as I can determine, option 6 is the simplest and least frustrating method.

What brought this on was a desire to be able to make fresh copies of the chant I use in choir. Sometimes, a chant will be photocopied to illegibility. Sometimes, I swear that we're using the original copies written by Brother McShakyhands of the Order of Blind Friars as he was dying of bubonic plague in the 13th century. Either way, sometimes it's nice to be able to fix up a score.

As our test case, I'll see which software can best duplicate the Alleluia Tone VIII that I've been using:

Week in Review

For the imaginary reader who isn't also Facebook friends with me, I'm going to start archiving some of my statuses and links from Facebook here.

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The Bad Catholic drinking game.

It will be hilarious when Marc's readers die of catastrophic liver failure.

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On Monday:

What is wrong with me?!?! While driving today, I noticed the shadow of the car in front of me rotating about the car as it made the sharp turn through the cloverleaf on-ramp to the freeway. My thought, "Oh, real-time
rendered shadows!"

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Pick a random patron saint for the new year!

I got Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, patron against arthritis and scrupulosity and for final perseverance. I wonder what's in store for me this year?

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So, after hearing from all my Facebook friends with South Bend/Notre Dame connections about how awesome the football team was, I decided to tune into the game on Monday and they got demolished. They must be seriously overrated.

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Quote of the Year/Century/Millenium:

‎"The essence of modernity is the death of the spiritual. A modernist is someone who is more concerned about air pollution than soul pollution. A modernist is someone who wants clean air so he can breathe dirty words. 

"A modernist cares about big things, like whales, more than little things, like fetuses; big things like governments, more than little things like families and neighborhoods; big things like states, which last hundreds of years, more than little things like souls, which last forever." —Peter Kreeft

 Good ol' Peter Kreeft, channeling the ghost of GK Chesterton, it appears.

Christmas Letter 2012

I think everyone I love/care about should have this by now, so I'll post this for the rest of you peons.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx_r0Pcz6kTkZFdFNGhkZGdmSHM/edit

This letter kept escalating. What was supposed to be a quick thing to write the day after Christmas and mail out by that Friday became an increasingly big project, with multiple trips to Office Max for toner, paper, and  more cards (after we ran out!), and to the post office. We finally did mail them before Epiphany, if only just.

Anniversary {phfr}

Pretty

Happy

Funny

Real

Movie Synopsis of the Day/Week/Month

(Spoilers abound)

(The Terminator/Looper) is a movie about an unstoppable killing machine played by action movie star (Arnold Schwarzenegger/Bruce Willis) who is sent back in time (45/30) years. His mission is to change the past by stopping a boy named (John Connor/Cid "Rainmaker") from growing up, because the boy is going to (save the world/destroy the world). Due to a lack of information in the future, there are three people who the killer must hunt down and destroy. He is opposed in his mission by the time-traveling protagonist who is (the boy's father from the future/the killer's younger self from the past), and by the boy's mother who is one tough cookie and willing to sacrifice herself to protect her child. Along the way, the protagonist gets to know the boy's mother and (sleeps with her/sleeps with her). In the end, the protagonist sacrifices his life to destroy the killing machine and save the life of the boy and his mother.

Article of the Day/Week/Month

This article on io9 (slightly NSFW picture at the top of it) hits up some of the points I was getting at here.

In particular, the last paragraph was killer:

But the modern Irene Adlers are morally bankrupt puppets deploying their sexual wiles to lead men into the power of an infernal master - and are justly punished for it. That goes all the way back to Eve. These are deeply, deeply old-fashioned women in deeply old-fashioned stories. Letting them throw a punch or carry a whip doesn't update that archetype. It takes something stronger. But why bother with that when Irene Adler can get naked on camera, bat her eyes at Sherlock Holmes, and be rescued at the end?

In response to one of the comments, "I'm at a loss as to why a woman can't use her sexuality to get what she wants":

The problem with this is that it's about as boring, original, and unstrong as "a man beats up someone to get what he wants." To make a strong character implies taking the hard way. "Strength" is the ability to overcome an obstacle or opposing force—physical, emotional, spiritual, etc. Taking the easy way out is not strong. A woman selling herself short to get what she wants is not as strong as a woman who gets while she wants while maintaining the moral high road. A man just beating up the bad guy isn't as strong as a man who defeats the bad guy without falling to his level (see: "why doesn't Superman just put his fist through Lex Luthor's skull").

Video of the Day/Week/Month

Please watch the following video. I'm sure you will agree with me that it is, without a doubt, the most brilliantly insightful satire of the wymyn's ordynatyon myvemynt ever created. The way they so keenly point out what, exactly, is necessary for women's ordination—such as the requirement to ignore St. Paul and the view of the vicar of Christ and successor to Peter as an obstacle—to pointing out that wymyn's yrdynytyn requires a certain glibness about separating oneself from the mystical body of Christ through excommunication, to demonstrating what is, at its heart, a self-centered desire to conform the Church to myself, rather than conforming myself to Christ, that lays at the foundation of the yyyyn's yryyyyyyn myvymyny, is nothing short of divinely-inspired.

(Think I could separate the subject and verb of that last sentence anymore?)



It wasn't until I was about two-thirds of the way through the video that it occurred to me that the makers of the video might possibly be unaware that they were making the 21st century's most brilliant work of apologetics for a male-only priesthood. Oh well, the Holy Spirit moves in interesting ways.