Sunday, November 28, 2010

Whedonverse Ornament Swap 2010

My Whedonverse Ornaments for the Third Annual Buffyfest Ornament Swap were mailed out right before Thanksgiving. They should be received some time this coming week.

If you recall, I posted about working with shrinky dinks and posted some hint pictures. Here are some more.

These are the printed ornaments before shrinkage,


and here they are after.





I also shrunk some stakes and Buffy "B's."



As an added bonus, I had some extra small bits of carving material and I carved everyone a Buffy "B" stamp.

I hope everyone enjoys them, and I can't wait to see what I receive!

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

All County Choir 2010-2011

My son made the All County Choir for the second year in a row. The best of the best in our county, high school and middle school, met at Mainland High School in Daytona Beach Saturday night, after weeks of practice, and performed some beautiful music. Each group sand 4-5 songs. Here are a few that were uploaded to YouTube by me and other people.



Here is "Dance Today"

My favorite, "Elijah Rock."



Then the Middle School and High School group combined to sing "May the Music Live On."



The 2010-2011 Middle & High School All County Choir:



The kids from Jacob's school, with their choral director, Mr. Greg Lefils, and guest conductor for the evening, Dr. Norton Christeson


Sunday, November 21, 2010

Sci-Fi Hoedown: Being Human Season 1

This review is for the BBC's "Being Human." The Sy-Fy Channel has their new series "Being Human" starting, calling it a "Sy-Fy Original." I'm not sure how that works as the BBC version already finished season 2 and is working on season 3.



Photobucket


The premise of the show is that three supes, a vampire named Mitchell, a werewolf named George and a ghost named Annie, who all share a flat and have a go at being human.

Mitchell fights against his bloodlust. He wants to forsake his vampire self and be good, but his past keeps dragging him down. George was attacked and turns into a werewolf once a month. A super-goofy intelligent guy, George detests what he is. He and Mitchell met, knowing what they each were, and moved into an apartment haunted by Annie, a very hyper girl with the self-confidence the size of a flea. She just wants to be with her boyfriend, whom she left behind when she died.

They each deal with their own problems separately, and sometimes the problems merge.

Annie tries to remember how she died, and with the help of her flat mates, she tries to exact revenge on the culprit. The local vampire regime wants Mitchell back in the fold. This affects all the flat mates as they work together to save Mitchell, and humanity, for the regime's evil plot to take over.

Overall, it's just six quick episodes. George, and his high-pitched squeal cracks me up and he gets the best lines. When he and Annie try to rescue Mitchell from the vampire regime, George yells "I'm looking for something to defend myself with. So far I have a whisk and I have my mobile phone recharger. What do we take, some crosses and garlic? I know, we should have watched more films. " Annie & George have a fight with the vamps that rivals the Xander/Harmony hair-pull-athon. After winning, George squeals "We're like the world's gayest ninjas!"

Mitchell is your typical torn dark vampire.

Annie...Annie needs to be smacked. I pretty much hated her character. She has NO backbone. She's a ghost and she gets intimidated by her murderer, who figures out she's trying to haunt him. Ugh. She's too hyper, she talks to much, her eye color alternated from blue to brown with no rhyme or reason and she won't stop making tea, although she can't drink it.

All in all, an enjoyable quick series, if you can get past the Annie character.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Little Big Planet Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Isabel, the huge Little Big Planet Fan, searched online while playing LBP and found an Islands of Adventure/Universal Studios level. She found a fun level where the creator made the park exactly as it is set up. It was a great level.

Here I filmed the "Wizarding World of Harry Potter" section of the Islands of Adventure level. If you've been there, you can see it's quite accurate.

What a talented person! I'll need to find the user name who created this level.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Star Wars Geek Girls Rock

Dear Katie,

I ROCKED my Princess Leia hair back in 1978. Rock on with your backpack and water bottle!


Love,

Kaaren in Florida


(If you all want, leave comments for Katie over at Epbot. )

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Little Damn Heroes

TFAW has these adorable Firefly Maquettes for pre-order. Aren't they SHINY?







Want! :)

Friday, November 12, 2010

Padlock, You Da Man!!

Remember my son's Electronica performance at the 2010 Deland Music Festival? Of course you do, it was just this past Saturday .

Today, as he is walking to class, one of his teachers stops him to say "Jacob, you made the paper." She hands him the Daytona Beach News Journal for Wednesday November 10, and sure enough, there's his name.

I was also able to find it online.


I am not sure how long that link will work, so I scanned the newspaper article.






"Back on the boulevard, you could hear Padlock, a group that consisted of Deltona teen Jacob Frisenda, a laptop computer, keyboard, mixers connected with a spaghetti pile of wires and all worked with a lot of frantic motion at the controls. He played amazing ambient-breakcore-electronica."


Congratulations Jacob! We are SO PROUD!!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Making Ornaments & SHRINKY DINKS!

It is that time again. The 3rd Annual Buffyfest Ornament Swap.

Last year was my first year participating. I made some fun ornaments and received some cool ones too (except for that one girl. You know who you are, chicky. You got all our ornaments and then never mailed yours out. Boooooo!) I received a cool mini comic book, Buffy the Vampire Slaying Penguin, a creepy clay gentleman and stake, a Dollhouse ornament and also Mr. Gordo.

What to do this year? What to do, what to do. I didn't want to be a one-trick pony; stamps again? Naaah.

I was surfing the web and for no apparent reason whatsover, I was looking at Shrinky Dinks. I love the idea of these! I went ahead and ordered the sheets that can be used with ink jet printers. Squeeee!

I've never made a Shrinky Dink before, can you believe it?? It really was so cool watching them shrink in the oven.

Here's a sneak peak of the ornaments!










That's all you get for now.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Contemporary Chamber Music and Breakcore

It was a crazy music-filled weekend, centered around our son.

First, he performed with the Florida 2010 ACDA High School Honor Choir. Tryouts were done by submitting audio tapes of the performances. Not many people from his school tried out, but he was the only one representing his high school.

They performed Jonathan Dove's "The Passing of the Year," a composition involving a double chorus, two pianos and percussion. It was a crazy-hard performance, and they did wonderfully.

UNFORTUNATELY, our video camera is not digital, and until I can take the cassette somewhere to be converted onto a dvd, I have nothing to show you. I am hoping SOME parent uploads their copy to YouTube soon.

Rehearsals

Rehearsals



He was the only kid from his school, but his school's choral director still showed up, on a Saturday, to watch him! I was so impressed and happy.


We drove home to have a late lunch and then get ready for his live musical performance debut at the 2010 Deland Music Festival.

Jacob, (performer name Padlock), has been creating breakcore/electronica music for over a year. He has a lot of his creations on Soundcloud.

It's not for everyone, I know. He likes it and some of them are really cool. These are two of my favorites:









He was on stage 6 of over 25 stages laid out across downtown Deland. He had such a good time.




At one point, people started dancing. He had a steady crowd, but I could not capture it on video because it was too dark. There was also a young lady taking pictures of all the performers up and down the street. She stopped and stayed the entire set, taking his pictures and crowd shots.

And like I said, I don't have a digital video camera. I used my point and shoot, which only holds a few minutes of video, so I took random small clips of the night.


Saturday, November 6, 2010

Thank You Card

Do I thank someone for a "Thank You" card? Then, do they thank me back? When does the thanking stop? :)






Tuesday, November 2, 2010

I Voted

I am proud to say I voted.

You can't please all the people all the time.

When a Democrat wins, people say that a liberal loon won.
When a Republican wins, people call them self-serving thugs.

(I'm quoting grown people on Facebook.)

It's sad how polarized we are.

You won't convince me by yelling at me. I won't convince you by yelling at you. Really. Have you ever been swayed to the "other" parties views?

You vote what you know and believe, and that's that.

I am happy with the wins I wanted and saddened at the ones who I wanted to win but lost. You don't see me calling people names.

Act your age. Treat each other with respect.