Sharkblog would like to issue the following retraction:

Dear Ryan Adams and The Streets,

We're sorry we doubted you. There was a time when we thought Rock and Roll sucked, and we wouldn't have listened to A Grand Don't Come For Free even if it was free. But we have seen the error of our ways. These are good records. Thanks for making them.

Furthermore, the bio of Ryan Adams at the "Rock and Roll" link sucks. There shall be no comparisons made to Courtney Love.

Sincerely,
Sharkblog

P.S. - Ocean's 12 owns you. Yes, we're talking to you, John Williams. (If you read the comments at this link, you'll note people criticizing the "plot holes" in this movie. We would agree, except the things they point out aren't plot holes. They just don't understand how the pieces fit. And Sharkblog will not bother explaining this to them.)

I found these strangely appropriate:



Which File Extension are You?


Which John Cusack Are You?

Yes, I realize what a hypocrite this makes me since I complained so often and loudly about those silly e-mail surveys back in the day. Frankly, I'm comfortable with paradoxes. Just take the stupid quizzes.

Ok. I'm going to try and say this nicely.

I'm tired of people dissing John Williams.

This is not a new thing. I know you've heard somebody do it. You might have even done it yourself. The typical argument runs something like this:

"John Williams is a thief. He steals all of his material from other (read: legitimate) composers. His music is all neo-romantic fluff. It's too bad that people think he is such a good composer."

Now, I'll be the first to say I'm no fanboy of Mr Williams, and I fully realize that the inspiration for much of his work comes from the classical and romantic canon. But there is NO WAY I'm going to let somebody sit there and put down one of the greatest composers in the history of music (yeah, you read that right). In case you aren't convinced, check the link above, and this one. And tell me you can't hum the music from 90% of the movies listed.

That is what every composer dreams of. Case closed.

There are some who like to point out that Williams only sketches the themes and other people under him do the orchestration. Well, that's the way the industry works, and every film composer does this - Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, everybody. You'll be glad to know that Williams paid his dues as a staff arranger and orchestrator for many years at Columbia and 20th Century Fox, while I've heard several times over the years that Danny Elfman can't even read music. (I don't know if it's true or not, and I don't think it makes any difference, but people who make fun of John Williams apparently do.) So although Williams doesn't score his own work anymore, you better believe he could if he wanted to.

Here are some statistics in case you still aren't convinced:

Oscar nominations = 41 (Wins = 5)
Gold and Platinum records = 20+
Grammy nominations = 26 (Wins = 18)
Emmy nominations = 4 (Wins = 2)
Golden Globe nominations = 21 (Wins = 3)

Remember, kids: John Williams owns you!

13272 MAK 5070 01 Graduate Composition Seminar (A)

48353 MAK 5210 03 Graduate Private Composition (A)

12899 MUN 5960 01 Ensemble Internship (A)

12932 MUS 5010 01 Intro to Music Research (A)

13119 MUT 5210 01 Pedagogy of Music Theory (A)

It's been a long time since anything like this has happened. Woot!

you are lightcyan #E0FFFF

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is very low - you have better things to do than jump headfirst into every little project. You make sure your actions are going to really accomplish something before you start because you hate wasting energy making everyone else think you're working. Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Thanks to Justin for this one. I didn't even really pay any attention to the results, but I figure it's one more thing to post for you to click on. What does it say? Smart ... check ... hate wasting energy ... check ... optimistic ... check. Eh. Man, light cyan is ugly.

My Commodore 64 taught me what cyan was. I always thought it was a weird name for a color. Things got even more confusing when Cyan showed up as a character in Final Fantasy III. He wore black.

This is funny. Honest.

The band of the week is The Skatalites.

One of the most influential ska groups ever. They have played on, or inspired - or both - tons and tons of recordings. Sadly, it is hard to find their music, but they do have an online store now with recent selections.

You can think of them as Jamaica's answer to the Motown house band. The website has some mp3's available to download, so check them out.

Well, my super awesome research paper is finally done. As noted by the timestamp, I have been up a very long time. Read and enjoy.

Cover Sheet (so pretty!)
Paper
Reference List (in case you care to check my work)

And now, sleep.

[EDIT: I can no longer endorse this site in good faith, as many of the "facts" posted are utter crap. You still might find it interesting if not factual.]

I've been looking for a website like this one for a long time. Who knows how accurate the information is, but at least it's a good read.

IT HAS BEEN FIXED

[*sigh* Ok, Blogger crashed and lost the first version of this post. I'll try and recreate it as best as I can ...]

Whew. That sucked. There I was, stuck without a clue and trying to fix my poor broken website. So what did I do? I used my newfound TF powers, of course! I posted a TF discussion (basically a link that goes nowhere just to open a comments thread) and asked for help. Several people jumped in and offered advice, which led to more research and testing. After about an hour, Fnord found the marble in the oatmeal. It turns out the problem was (drumroll please):

< !-- Originallänken -->

That's right. I couldn't believe it. After all the time spent parsing code and trying to change/remove tags, the actual problem was A FRIGGING COMMENT IN THE STYLE SHEET!! Apparently, style sheets are supposed to use C-style comments

/* like this */

and my style sheet contained HTML-style comments, which caused Firefox to go berserk and render my website incorrectly. It only sweetens the deal that the comments were written in a foreign language by the original coder and therefore serve absolutely no purpose to me. But I guess that's what I get for using a template.

Anyway, I'm glad it's fixed. Big props go out to Farkers mrCasual, Phlogiston2312, Saria, and tulsapro for their help. Super extra big props goes to Fnord for correctly identifying the source of my misery, and for being a flippin' genius. He also writes Firefox extensions for Fark which you can view here.

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to bed now. Finally!

I've been trying unsuccessfully to debug the Sharkdog Records website - in Firefox, links that haven't been visited are showing up as a terrible blue color, instead of the light gray specified in the style sheet. But once you click on a link, it shows up like it should. I just took a crash course in style sheets which was very informative but did not help solve the problem, since everything in the style sheet and HTML is correct.

Is it just Firefox? I was looking around for a way to tinker with display options, but it doesn't seem to have that many. Maybe I'll check around for a relevant extension.

Here's the .css code for those who know what I'm talking about:

A:LINK {
color: #CCCCCC;
text-decoration : none;
font : verdana;
}
A:VISITED {
color: #CCCCCC;
text-decoration : none;
font : verdana;
}
A:ACTIVE {
color: #CCCCCC;
text-decoration : none;
font : verdana;
}
A:HOVER {
color: #E5C52A;
text-decoration : none;
font : verdana;
}


A.nyheter:LINK {
color: #FF9900;
text-decoration : none;
font : verdana;
}
A.nyheter:VISITED {
color: #FF9900;
text-decoration : none;
font : verdana;
}
A.nyheter:ACTIVE {
color: #FF9900;
text-decoration : none;
font : verdana;
}
A.nyheter:HOVER {
color: #FFFFFF;
text-decoration : none;
font : verdana;
}

body {
scrollbar-face-color: #FFFFFF;
scrollbar-highlight-color: #FFFFFF;
scrollbar-shadow-color: #333333;
scrollbar-3dlight-color: #FFFFFF;
scrollbar-arrow-color: #333333;
scrollbar-track-color: #FFFFFF;
scrollbar-darkshadow-color: #FFFFFF;
}

INPUT, TEXTAREA {
background : #223057;
background-color : #223057;
border : 1px solid #000000;
color: #CCCCCC;
font : 10px Verdana;
font-family : Verdana;
font-size : 10px;
}

TABLE, TD, TH, TR {
font : 10px Verdana;
font-family : Verdana;
font-size : 10px;
}

td.welcome {
font : 14px Verdana;
font-family : Verdana;
font-size : 14px;
}

You can view the SDR website here. If you have Firefox installed, take a look at it and let me know how the links look, ok?

For all of you that were gripping the edge of your seat in anticipation:

After all the antics last night, I buckled down and did some great compo-writing. I brought it to my teacher and had a pretty good lesson. I wish I could have done more, of course, but what can you do?

I have an excellent system for getting things done. It's called "necessity is the mother of invention." If something needs to get done, it gets done, and therefore I don't need to sweat about when or how. It's very stress-relieving, but only if you're willing to accept the fact that things may not always turn out the way you want them to. The only constant in this method is the things that need to get done will somehow always get done.

I highly recommend this method to anyone.

I'm fine, how are you?

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Low
Schizoid:	Low
Schizotypal:	Moderate
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	High
Narcissistic:	Low
Avoidant:	High
Dependent:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Moderate
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --

In case you were wondering ... nope ... no compositioning for me yet tonight.

I've got one word for you:

FIREFOX

I'm not one to jump on the "browser bandwagon" so to speak, but this is a really great browser. It knocks IE right on its butt, and it automatically imports all your bookmarks and settings so installation is a snap.

After you've installed it, check this link for really cool extensions. (All that weird code that lhaeh posted can be entered into the Adblock extension to keep annoying Internet ads at bay).

The only downside is the Sharkdog Records site doesn't look quite the same anymore. Now I've got to figure out whether it's my browser settings, or the website code, or both.

And I'm still not any closer to being prepared for that comp lesson.

I happened to be browsing the Fark forums tonight when I came across this thread. Immediately, my "hobo sense" kicked in and I was driven to beg for a sweet sweet morsel of TotalFark.

First, I told a joke. Next, I devised a plan: I would offer my services as a composer for anyone who sponsored me. It worked - I've got a 6-month sponsorship thanks to a kind TotalFarkette by the name of Kelbel.

Anyway, I'm trying to sort out the madness now. TF is a ton of junk! Meanwhile, I've wasted a couple of hours already and am not anywhere closer to having something decent to bring in to my composition lesson tomorrow.