Get your own Mac to sing Happy Birthday to the London Science Museum

Somebody on YouTube asked where I got the file to make my Macs sing happy birthday to the London Science Museum. I realised I’d forgotten to upload it anywhere. Or perhaps I didn’t think people would be interested, since in general if they wanted their Macs to sing happy birthday, they’d want to customise the name. The software I wrote to do this (and other things) is really still a prototype unintuitively bolted onto an unrelated prototype, with the default CoreData interface, so I’d rather not release it yet. But just in case you do want your Mac to sing happy birthday to the London Science Museum, here’s the file. There are instructions in the file on how to get it to sing.

I also just made this file where you can put the name of your choice instead of the London Science Museum (just search for ‘your name here’ in the file, and change it.) with the name of your choice. It will just speak the name rather than singing it, since to get it to sing it you’d have to figure out how to write the name in MacInTalk phonemes.

Alternatively, if you want to personalise the song while still having the name sung, you could record your Mac singing to a sound file using the ‘Text to Audio File’ Automator action, and then open that in GarageBand and splice in a recording of yourself singing the appropriate name.

A birthday, a half-birthday, a video and an announcement

Yesterday was Jonathan Coulton’s birthday. Here is a collaborative video put together in about 14 days by 13 people (at least, 13 who contributed video; others contributed ideas) on his forums, as a birthday present. It’s a cover of Jonathan’s song ‘I’m Having a Party‘, with a few changes in the lyrics (and a title change to ‘We’re Having a Party’) to make it more suitable for a group of fans to sing to him. I’m posting it here because I did all the video editing (under the pseudonym Angelastic) except for the awesome tiling in the final chorus. See below for details on how this little idea blossomed into something scarily huge which was nonetheless sculpted into a less scary huge thing in the nick of time. You’ll also see why I’m a little too tired for fancy metaphors tonight.

Offshoots Readings

As I mentioned in my last post, Offshoots X will be launched after the workshop of the Geneva Writers’ Conference tomorrow. There will be readings from Offshoots from 17:00, and you’re welcome to come along and listen, or even come earlier for the workshop.

There will be two other readings: one at Payot from 18:00 to 20:00 on Thursday October 1, and one at BooksBooksBooks in Lausanne at 18.30 on Tuesday, November 24. I’ll be reading my poem at the Payot event. I would recommend going to all three if you can. I’m not sure if I can make it to the Lausanne one.

As I mentioned in my last post, Offshoots X will be launched at the Geneva Press Club after the workshop of the Geneva Writers’ Group tomorrow. There will be readings from Offshoots from 17:00, and you’re welcome to come along and listen, or even come earlier for the workshop or critiquing session.

There will be two other readings: one at Payot Chantepoulet from 18:00 to 20:00 on Thursday October 1, and one at BooksBooksBooks in Lausanne at 18.30 on Tuesday, November 24. I’ll be reading my poem at the Payot event, and I would recommend going to all three if you can. I’m not sure if I can make it to the Lausanne one.

Creative Output

I’ve mentioned a few times that ‘Writing Cards and Letters’ is no longer a relevant name for this blog now that the Writing Cards and Letters project is over. Not only am I not writing about cards and letters any more, I’m also publishing other creative things I’ve done which are not necessarily writing. Perhaps the least imaginative name for what this blog will become is ‘Creative Output’, and since I had a nice idea for an image to go with that phrase, it’s the least imaginative name that I went for.

Now, I’m no graphic artist, but sometimes I can take decent photos of beautiful things, and scribble on them in ways that I like. That’s what I did today, and here is my art to represent Creative Output.

The original is 4000×2878 pixels, and has quite a bit of detail, with bits of my writing, programming and maths mixed in. I’m not sure why I made it that big when the website will only get this small version, and the software I used often ran out of memory and crashed while trying to save it. Perhaps I’m destined to print it on a poster or something.

I’d like to change the theme of this blog so that I can better integrate this image into the header, but alas, this is the only theme on wordpress.com which has variable width and a customisable header.

Podcast: Things To Listen To

 

Things To Listen To: Not to be taken orally

I said a while ago that I’d make a podcast of the various songs and poems I’ve recorded. Well, I finally got around to working around the bugs of the podcast hosting system I planned to use, and I now have a working podcast. It’s called Things To Listen To, with each word beginning with a capital letter, because it  looked funny with one ‘To’ and one ‘to’, and it didn’t seem right to make half a phrasal verb lowercase. As the name implies, Things To Listen To is an audio-only podcast. I might create a separate video podcast later, but I will not add video to this podcast.

For now Things To Listen To has the three recordings I made during the Writing Cards and Letters project: Pretender, You’ve Gotta Be Happy, and Fork and Tongs. Let’s pretend the recording of me singing My Favourite Strings never existed, shall we? Perhaps I’ll add Code Monkey Like though.

The Writing Cards and Letters project, by the way, is what used to be known as Thing A Week. I will soon change this blog title to something more general.

The podcast will also turn into something more general. Here are some things it is likely to contain:

• Robot choir recordings of the poems from Writing Cards and Letters which have tunes.
• Robot choir covers and remixes of other people’s songs, most likely Jonathan Coulton’s because the licensing and availability of source tracks makes it easier.
• More recordings of me reading my poems and prose.
• Any recordings I manage to obtain of actual singers or voice actors performing my work. Feel free to volunteer.
• Things not covered by this list.

You can subscribe to the podcast here. If you find any technical problems with it, or even just details which could be improved, let me know. Although I’ve listened to tens of thousands of podcasts, this is the first one I’ve made, and I’m sure to have done something wrong.

Geneva Writers’ Group Readings

Yesterday was the annual evening of readings of the Geneva Writers’ Group. I really enjoyed listening to the pieces people read. You can read some of their blogs and other works if you want to know what you missed.

I also read a few poems of my own. I had the welcome problem of having written too much, and not knowing which poems to read. In the end I went with Grand Unification and Love Letters. I was a little unsure about the former, since some parts would be enjoyed more by physicists, but by the time it was my turn, a few poems about the LHC had already been read, so I decided to continue the theme. People seemed to like it.

A few people came up to me afterwards asking if they could have copies, so I pointed them to my blog. This post should make it easier for them to find those two poems.

When a poem rights a person

A while ago I asked you which Things I should submit to Offshoots, the biennial anthology of the Geneva Writers’ Group. Then, rather than deciding what to submit based on the results, I submitted the two poems which my printer had managed to print before succumbing to persistent paper jams. I guess it’s official enough now that I can announce that ɘloЯ was accepted. However, the editors thought the last line could be more interesting, and wanted a title which was unlikely to cause typographic problems. So I renamed it to ‘Role Reversal’ and changed the last stanza. This is the new version of the poem:

One ev’’ning I went to the pub for a beer
and later went home to my bed.
As I went off to sleep I was feeling quite queer,
and the world turned around in my head.

The pieces of bread dipped us humans in cheese,
the cheese made by cows from our milk.
Early worms got the birds, while they made their pongees
from our swaddling, and christened it silk.

As letters sent men they would each seal a kiss,
which itself stole a beau, what a turnoff.
And Soviet Russia was in all of this,
poking fun at our man Yakov Smirnoff.

The horses on knightback were chased by the steeple,
convinced they should set the truth free.
And wars fought in soldiers then started the people,
till their shoes walked a mile in me.

Then science was checked by remains prehistoric:
the reptiles who warmed up the air
and caused the extinction of things meteoric
while the common were sought by the rare.

At some point, I think I awoke my alarm,
but I don’t know quite when in the tale,
for certain events have a true-to-life charm,
for a man who is drunk by his ale.

I’m not sure when this volume of Offshoots will be published, but I hope you’ll all rush out to buy them when they do, and then come home disappointed because unless you live in Geneva, you’re unlikely to find any. I’ll probably send some copies to friends. I’ve read previous volumes and they’re full of interesting writing. I probably shouldn’t compliment it too much, though, since my poem is apparently just as good, and one kind of poetic conceit is enough for me.

It’s been a while since I’ve had anything published; indeed, it had been a while since I’d written anything. I plan to submit a few more of my favourite Things to various appropriate publications. I’m also working on a few other spinoffs from this project, so there should be more updates soon. This has certainly worked; I keep coming up with ideas for things to write, and then not writing them because I have no deadline.

It’s only Sunday evening in your imagination (and in my time zone)

I had a full day of meetings at work today, so I doubt I’ll have a Thing published by midnight. Jonathan Coulton had a whole week without a day job to finish each of his Things, and I at least need a whole weekend to do mine. So I’ll probably publish it if and when I take some time off in lieu of today, or when it’s finished, whichever comes first.

‘Publish what?’ you don’t ask because you’re too busy reading this sentence. ‘You’ve already published a Thing for each of the 52 cards plus a joker! Go play, and eat cake, and celebrate, and sleep!’ your thoughts, fed by this blog post, continue. Well, I did say I’d publish another ace of diamonds, an original piece rather than a recording of an old one. And it wasn’t a lie. I’ve written 1276 words of it already. I might even finish it tonight, but I don’t feel obliged to, because I didn’t have a proper weekend, and, as you so rightly pointed out, I’ve already published more than 52 Things on-time and under-budget.

And after that second, bonus Thing, I will write another, for the second joker. And this is where you can participate. If you follow me on Twitter, you can send me one sentence by direct message, which will have some influence on the Joker. If you already follow me on Twitter and you don’t send me a sentence, one will be taken from you by force. You have been warned.

Two poems shot off to Offshoots

Poll over. In the end, I submitted the two poems which had made it out of the printer before I started getting too many paper jams. They were ɘloЯ, which got one vote and one second-choice vote from a Countdown voter (I like Countdown, but I was a little reluctant to submit it by itself in the place of two other poems), and Fork and Tongs, which only got one vote but was very well-received when I read it at the Geneva Writers’ Group’s mid-year evening of readings. I would have liked to have sent something more serious as one of the poems, but in the end my printer made the decision. I will try to get the other poems people voted for published elsewhere.

So, thanks a lot to everyone who took the time to read the poems and give an opinion; without you I would probably have printed different poems before the printer jammed. Yannick, Mark, Grace and my printer each get a photograph of a chocolate fish, and may contact me to claim their other awesome prize. That is, give me a topic and a style (short story, poem, song, country-western sonnet etc… not novel) and I’ll write something using them after Thing a Week is over. Maybe I’ll even name one a character after you, and you’ll be internet famous!

Alternatively, propose your own awesome prize and maybe I’ll agree to it. Note that only awesome prizes requiring approximately the same or less investment of time and materials will be considered.

One more thing: For my second Joker, I’m going to need at least 52 followers on Twitter. So if you don’t already, please follow me. Be warned: for historical reasons, I only use Twitter to make remarks about pants and reply to other people’s tweets.

Right, now to write the two of diamonds.

Poll: What should I submit to Offshoots 10?

As I explained in this post, I need to choose either two short poems, one long poem, or a prose piece to submit to Offshoots, the biennial showcase of the Geneva Writers’ Group. After removing everything that was too long, too context-dependent, too geeky, too terrible, too weird, too misunderstood when read to the writers’ group, or too much like a song or video, I came up with a list of 12 poems, most of which are short enough that two of them could be submitted. The problem is, now I only have until the post offices close on Saturday (let’s say about 30 hours from now, to be safe) to choose and submit them. So there’s not much time to consult the great hive mind that is the internet, or even just the two or three people who actually read this blog regularly. But I’m going to do it anyway.

Here is a poll. Please vote for the two poems you think I should submit, and add any comments you feel like making. I realise that if you haven’t already read any of them, then that’s a lot to read in a short time. But to make it easier for you, and also make the poll a better judgment of which poems make sense to the general public without much explanation, please vote without reading the blurb that follows each poem. I’ll do what I can to reward voters in some way, perhaps with a photograph of a chocolate fish, perhaps with a personalised Thing, who knows?

Incidentally, the deadline for submitting to Offshoots is about as close as you can get to being exactly a year after I started Thing a Week. That is, I started on February 29, the deadline is March 1, but that’s a Sunday, so in order to get my submission postmarked early enough I’d actually need to submit it on February 28.