Caught In The Whirlwind
Archive for March, 2010
Beethoven’s Last Night – Live
2783 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
So, I finally get a chance to actually write up my experiences with going to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra on their first ever non-winter tour. My parents and I went out to Syracuse on Sunday to catch the show at the Landmark Theater.
After a quick pit stop at Tully’s for dinner, we headed to the venue and began the search for parking, which we found in this little tiny lot with a guy who was walking car to car as they parked getting their money and handing out parking stubs which we were informed were to be placed “on your dash. Or else…” We were a bit worried if our car would still be in one piece when we returned from the venue, but he was offering reasonable rates so we left the car in his care and headed in.
Our seats ended up being a little more to the left of the theater than I was anticipating when I bought them, but still pretty darn good.
As for the show itself, they performed the entire Beethoven’s Last Night album from start to finish, including newly written passages of narration between almost every song, helping to explain the story as it went. The performances of the vocalists and the band were top notch. When I was at the show it sounded like the same vocalists from the album, but as it turns out, they were all different people, but they did an incredible job. Particularly the guy who played Beethoven and Jeff Scott Soto who did Mephistopheles as evily as one possibly could. They also played 3-4 more songs off of their new album, Nightcastle which was fine with me, as they hit the songs I liked and skipped a lot of the ungood ones that were on that particular album.
The production was very cool. They had 3 arches set up that they could project various things on, along with transparent LED screens inside each arch that they had various videos playing on through the show. The stage was stuffed with as many lights as one could possibly fit on a theater stage, and there were lasers galore. Sadly, no pyro, however this was expected as smaller theaters rarely allow it.
This video wasn’t from the show we went to but it’s the best video/sound I could find so far:
All in all, a very fun evening. My parents enjoyed it, as did I. TSO doesn’t disappoint!
A Realization
3795 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I know it’s been quite a while since I’ve updated, but I haven’t really felt like writing a full on blog post in a while.
I’ve come to the realization that I tend to use my twitter/facebook status updates to report on the small random stuff while leaving blog posts for bigger news/things that have images. I’ll probably keep using this split for the time being as it feels the most natural way of doing things.
Just wanted to make a quick post about why it’s been so quiet around here recently.
An Update On Happenings
0809 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Just an update-y sort of post today.
First off, school. The latest project in my Digital Imaging course was to recolor a black and white photograph and make it look like it was always color. I went over to my grandmother’s to look at some of our old family photos and she showed me the wedding picture of my great great great grandparents (maybe another great on there…not sure exactly). It was definitely old, but it was in really good shape, so I ended up doing that. Finished it this week in class, although I think it could have turned out better if I had more time to tweak it (only got two class periods to work on it and he doesn’t want us working on stuff outside of class). Turned out all right though. I’ll post it up here when I get my flash drive back.
Along those same lines, I decided it’s probably going to be a little bit before I manage to take some of the more theory oriented design courses, so I’ve got myself a textbook on design theory that I’m starting to get into. Not quite as good as taking a course, but the book is good and I’m learning a lot of interesting stuff (well, interesting to me anyway).
Moving away from learning and school stuff, I’ll be meeting up with my sister Saturday afternoon to hang out a bit and watch the Syracuse game. Looking forward to it, after the realization that we only really see each other on holidays anymore.
Book 8: The Windup Girl
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Title: The Windup Girl
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 300
Summary
The world after the oil bust is a grim place. Labor is provided by massive animals, expensive methane is the source of most light. Global warming has caused the seas to rise and engulf whole cities while genetically engineered and mutating diseases ravage those who were not drowned.
In this world, the city Bangkok is one of the few surviving population centers, the ocean held back by massive walls and pump systems. The surface calm betrays turbulence as the Environmental ministry and the Trade ministry war with each other over the best philosophy to use to continue survival.
Notes
Ok, first of all, I should mention this book has several fairly sexually expicit scenes in it so if that kind of thing bugs you this is not the book for you.
I almost gave up on this one. I was about 25% of the way through and I had no idea what was going on. There were so many characters, places and random words in different languages (mostly Thai and Chinese) which did a lot to provide flavor for the world, but ended up being really hard for me to get over and figure out what was going on. But I kept reading and right about 1/3rd of the way through everything started clicking and the book took off.
This is the author’s first real novel and I’m hoping it’s not his last. He did a wonderful job of (after the initial confusion and story setup) intertwining multiple threads of story into a single unit. It’s based around 4 sets of characters which have their own independent storylines which run parallel and eventually intersect.
A deep story that presents a realistic example of what might be in wonderfully written prose, I’d have to recommend this book to any fan of science fiction. Just don’t give up on it too early!
Next Book
For the next book, I’m reading Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass by none other than Lewis Carrol. Not only because I’ve never actually read the book before, but because this month’s City of Heroes FArt Competition challenge is based around Alice. So I’m trying to grab some ideas.
Adirondack Journey
0813 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Wassy and I have been eyeing a quick trip up to the Adirondack’s along some of the scenic roads for purposes of practicing photography and hopefully getting some cool landscape shots. The weather has been uncooperative recently, being totally overcast with lousy light. But yesterday, we lucked out and got a day with very changeable conditions. We got the sun peeking out from some clouds one minute and snow the next.
We decided to chance it and head north to see what we could see. And we ended up at Moose River which was a really cool area and had some great little spots to photograph, including a little nature trail thing (although kinda snowy at the moment). We think it’d be cool to, maybe next year outfit ourselves better for wandering through the wilderness in the winter and head down one of the trails for a bit to see what there is to be seen.
My shots turned out all right. I got a couple of good cloud type pictures. The clouds were really cool looking yesterday, so we lucked out on that one. Most of my shots, however, turned out a bit dark and I forgot to play with the white balance settings as I was shooting, which is something I’ll need to keep in mind in the future.
My favorite shot was totally accidental as it’s waaaaay darker than what I was actually trying to capture. But it turned a scene that was pretty cool looking into an ominous, foreboding scene, which turned out looking fairly cool all things considered:
That’s moose river, looking from the route 28 bridge, just before the apocalypse, apparently.
This one here is way more true to life (taken just north of Moose River) is probably my favorite of the cloud pictures I took:
The biggest thing I need to work on, I think, is trying to brighten things up a bit without getting them over exposed. I also need to figure out how to capture a very cool looking bright sky without totally drowning out the detail of the things on the ground.
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