Monthly Archive for May, 2004

Enormo Mod

Just finished polishing off the mammoth mod I did last night. It all went swimmingly after I realised that the multiple SQL queries I ran only processed the first command, which makes me wonder now if the reason I could never get the Personal Profile Panel to work was because of the same thing. I’m not overly sure I want to include that anyway, it seems like modding for the sake of it. We’re not really busy enough to warrant Buddy & Ignore lists and all the malarky that goes with it.

Long story short – better smiley management, a tip box for url entry, and also the rather spiffy addition of sub-forums; which means I have shaved a little of the dross off the front page. I have removed the News Fader as I was getting stumped for things to put it in, and I rarely get time to rememeber to rewrite the javascript to change the song lyrics I usually put in. It’s also enabled me to attach icons to forums, which is rarrrrther nice.

Related Links:

phpBB.com

RPGnet.ClanMcKeen.com

area51 @ phpBB.com

Howard Shore at The Royal Festival Hall

tickets

This Sunday just passed, Darcy and I were very lucky to be in possession of two tickets to see Howard Shore conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of The Lord of the Rings Symphony. We booked the tickets when they first went on sale, and they sold out very quickly.

There’s no doubt the Royal Festival Hall is not the most inspiring work of architecture I’ve ever been in. A leftover from the Festival of Britain; it has dated badly and even the interior seems not to have had much attention since the day it was built. There seems to have been more effort put in to making sure there innumerable over-priced eating and drinking spots rather than making the concert hall the best it could be. But that’s not important really.

Howard Shore walked on to riotous applause, I’ve read in other places that reaction from the audience was more “fannish” than one would generally expect in a classical performance. I suspect that is probably true, I’m no music buff and this was my first ever orchestral concert so I’ll defer to Darcy the Muso on that one. He concurs.

photo

Our seats were quite far back but we still had a pretty decent view, although I wouldn’t have complained about a better one! Howard Shore was clearly enjoying himself, his almost Presley-like shaking left leg was highly entertaining, although I had to crane left a bit to watch properly.

The symphony itself was 6 movements, with the majority of material coming from The Fellowship of the Ring. Very little was left out of that over its two movements (I’m comparing it to the CD version here though) and it was hard not to mentally check the various parts of the film off. A large screen was utilised to project concept work from Alan Lee and John Howe onto, which gave a visual frame of reference, if it were needed, for which parts of the film the score was from. It was a beautiful touch, and a real treat to watch such great work unfolding in front of us, but then I am biased about concept work anyway. The interval came after the first two movements, which together were around the same length as the four that came after, understandable really as TFotR contains most of the main themes of the piece.

I can’t really comment on the technical quality of the performance, to my untrained ear it was beautiful; particularly the boy’s choir. A friend remarked that the male voice choir could have been bigger and I tend to agree, they didn’t seem to have quite as much weight as I expected them to have, but to complain about that feels like hair-splitting. There might have been the odd bum note, but I can’t say I spotted any, and the solos were quite heartbreaking; particularly those sung in Elvish. The female soloist, Sisselle, seemed a little strident in ‘Gollum’s Song’ and ‘Into the West’, she has a strong clear voice but I must say I still prefer the recorded versions of both.

photo

Shore received a riotous standing ovation at the end, which seemed to go on forever, during which I legged it down the stairs and took the above photo… cut me some slack my hands were tired!

Of course the highlight of the day had to be after we came out, and met up with a bunch of friends we’ve made online from here at the Tangent Universe, and previously over on the BBCi message boards. Despite my utter fear of meeting anyone new and my complete lack of social skills we managed to say hello and hang around for a short while with a truly lovely bunch of people. It’s a shame that the London trains, and trains from MK are so flipping unreliable at the moment, otherwise we might have stayed longer. As it was we didn’t have a clue whether we’d be able to get a train back to Luton; which we’d had to make a dash for and leave the car there at the last minute thanks to the Trainline.com not bothering to inform people that the trains they were advertising were nonexistent.

Wonderful day, wonderful music and lovely company. Shame I’m such a stress monkey really.

Related Links:

Royal Festival Hall on Wikipedia

Howard Shore.com

Lord of the Rings.net

Choice

Important isn’t it? It’s one of the things that defines who we are. I don’t like having choices made for me.

So that’s why, if someone writes an entry in their blog, I think it’s reasonable for people to make a suitable warning about the content that they’re linking to. I’ve just been reading a blog that made a referral linking to a site that was making (frankly pathetic) claims about Nick Berg’s beheading being fake. I clicked on it, perhaps foolishly, but I’ve seldom come across people who don’t give warnings about their links. What did I get almost immediately? An amnimated gif constructed from the frames of the execution video. Now I don’t use words lightly, especially the one I’m about to as I can’t stand it.

You irresponsible little idiot. Have you any idea of how much that could upset people who don’t want to watch it? You have deliberately linked, with no warning, to something that isn’t much more than a snuff video. I have read your blog, and your rather feeble posts asking for link exchanges and quite honestly I wouldn’t touch your site with a barge pole until you learn some common sense.

Freedom of information isn’t about throwing it in someone’s face, no matter what the content. If people want to choose to watch this video, they only have to web search and there’s more than enough morons out there who will oblige. I could choose to watch the video, I chose not to. Now I’ve had that choice made for me.

I could link to your site, so that peope could choose to follow your link with at least a bit of forewarning from me, but you know, I’m not giving you the satisfaction of it generating more web traffic. Let people find their own way to it, if they’re really that desperate.