Tom – Page 176 – Random Connections

21 Accents

May 20, 2008 Tom 3 Comments

Via BoingBoing, I found this YouTube clip of actress Amy Walker saying the same sentence in 21 different accents. I listened to it with amazement. In my mind, she nailed every one of them with one notable exception – her Southern accent from Charleston, SC, sounded like the contrived, overdone version that Hollywood tends to … Read More “21 Accents” »

Online Tools for Digital Storytelling

May 19, 2008 Tom No Comments

EdTech, Internet, Photography, Uncategorized

Via Wes Fryer’s blog, I came upon a list created by Alan Levine which describes 50+ tools for digital storytelling. Alan has broken these down into Slideshow Tools which primarily use images with or without music background, Mixer Tools which include video as well as photos, Timeline tools, Comic Tools, Scrapbook Tools, Audio Tools, Video … Read More “Online Tools for Digital Storytelling” »

A Day of Festivals

May 18, 2008 Tom 1 Comment

Local, Photography

Saturday was an absolutely stunning day. The air was dry and clear, and the sky was so blue that even cerulean doesn’t do it justice. There was no way that I was going to waste this on the huge stack of chores and yard work I had waiting for me at home. So, I decided a photo drive was needed. Several communities in the Upstate were having festivals this weekend, so I decided to check out a couple of them. I was actually able to hit four festivals – the Issaqueena Festival in Six Mile, the Banjo Bonanza at Hagood Mill in Pickens, the Strawberry Festival in Slater, and finally the Greek Festival at St. George Orthodox in Greenville.

Wild Roses

May 16, 2008 Tom No Comments

Uncategorized

I’m not a botanist. I know nothing about horticulture. I even flunked a test on leaf identification in high school biology. Apart from pruning, spreading mulch, and heavy lifting, I tend to leave the gardening to Laura. However, we both made a discovery this past week. Shortly after we moved to this house I was … Read More “Wild Roses” »

Precis de Vie

May 16, 2008 Tom No Comments

Miscellaneous

How does one summarize twenty years of life in two paragraphs? It’s an interesting exercise. I guess for some its easier than others, especially if your life has been relatively stable – staying in pretty much the same career and location for that amount of time. For others, a couple of paragraphs would hardly suffice. … Read More “Precis de Vie” »

Adventures in Audi-Land

May 16, 2008 Tom 2 Comments

Rants

I want a car where we’re not on a first-name basis with the service people. Thus said Laura as we drove to pick up her Audi, which had been in the shop for the past week. Both of our cars are plagued with problems. Both are Volkswagen products. We have owned Subaru’s in the past, … Read More “Adventures in Audi-Land” »

High Key Portraiture

May 15, 2008 Tom 1 Comment

Photography, Uncategorized

I had seen a couple of posts from a couple of my Flickr contacts that use use a high key lighting effect. I’d never heard of the term before this week, but I find the effect intriguing. Therefore, I had to give it a shot. I decided to use a tutorial I had found after … Read More “High Key Portraiture” »

To Tweet or Not To Tweet

May 13, 2008 Tom No Comments

Internet

OK, so the phrase is hardly original. Apparently I’m not the only one to wonder why in the world I would want to use Twitter. I mean, do I really want the entire world to know that I’m watching “Evan Almighty” as I’m typing this? Do I really need to micro-document my entire life? I … Read More “To Tweet or Not To Tweet” »

Seero – Geospatially Aware Video

May 12, 2008 Tom No Comments

Geocaching and Maps

In my discussions about geotagging, one of the questions that always arises is the issue what location should be tagged. If you’re tagging photographs, should you tag the location where you took the shot, or should you tag the location of the subject. For example, if you were standing on an overlook on the Blue … Read More “Seero – Geospatially Aware Video” »

Shape Note Singing at Furman

May 11, 2008January 28, 2024 Tom 1 Comment

Local, Music

Saturday morning I skipped out on a bunch of gardening chores that Laura had lined up for me and went to a shape note singing at Furman. When I arrived, there were about thirty singers already in their open square configuration, singing away.

Unlike the William Walker Memorial Singing at Wofford a couple of months ago, this event was held in a room designed for singing. The sound in Herring Hall (where the Greenville Chorale rehearses) was much more resonant, and the tunes sounded much better than they did in the dead room at Wofford.

The group started singing from the Southern Harmony, which has the more traditional do-re-mi scale. Even so, I struggled with the note names on the initial sing-through, and wound up singing “la” for most of the notes. For the second hour of the morning, they switched to the Sacred Harp, which uses the four-shape fa-so-la scale. It was much harder, and I never really got the hang of the note names. There was a break when we switched from one tune book to the other, and I had a chance to talk with several of the singers. I was told that Southern Harmony tends to be a bit more subdued, whereas Sacred Harp singing is always more raucous. Even though the notes were more difficult for me, I was up for high-energy raucous singing.