After much deliberation I have at last decided to let Blogger host this site. I feel more comfortable working within some boundaries, I think. The volume of possibilities I had while hosting the site through http://www.asmallorange.com/ became as much a burden as anything. And Blogger's limitations are proving themselves just imposing enough to provide a challenge, while flexible enough to allow for the most cunning solutions.
I also take heart in the notion that this freely provided medium will most probably outlive my interest in it; will possibly even outlive my ability (or willingness) to continue breathing. Whereas any payed hosting solution surely fails to outlive even my bank account.
I won't say much more. I'm getting sick of "opening" the site, honestly. It's all pomp and circumstance. Besides, I've got a pile of articles that need written and more that need transferred from the other blogspot site I mean to deprecate. So, then...
'Twas a Good Day for Disc Golf
Today I finally got out to Bay Court Park's subtly remade disc golf course, what's been closed until some time two weeks ago. At the end of last season the parks and recreations peoples pulled the pins out of the ground. Earlier this month they finally resunk them and, for whatever reason, they moved them all to slightly different locations.
It's nice to see such a familiar course change and become something new. Especially when you shoot the kind of first-out games I did today.
Okay, the scores are less than impressive: +1 on my first round and -1 on my second. But I tell you those are high marks for a day like today. The wind was gusting intensely throughout the whole back half of the course. So much so, more than once I watched my disc parachute in the wind, rolling and bouncing a hundred and fifty feet off target and onto some other hole's fairway.
Despite the wind I was happy with my game and the new course. Hole 2 has been lengthened by about thirty feet, which was nice. It really showed me how much more distance I'm getting out of my drives this year, in comparison with last. Hole 3, though drastically relocated. still sits on the edge of a steep hillside, daring you to throw for the chains, miss, and find yourself forty feet overshot or rolled away.
In fact, during my first round I threw a pretty chip shot right at three's pin. It bounced off the ground at the pole and slid out of site, just over the hill's crest. I thought I had placed within five feet of the pin. But from atop the hill I found no disc. A sweeping gaze revealed my errant disc, some thirty feet rolled away from where I watched it first touch down, lying at the bottom of a ditch. From the bottom of that ditch, slightly perturbed, I made my shot for birdy. I threw at an angled pitch; a diving shot that guaranteed, if I missed, I wouldn't go rolling down the hill again. The disc went up six feet to the right of the chains, held in the air briefly by the gusting winds, and dived straight into the bottom of the basket.
I'll remember that shot for some time. Aside from being the kind of long-distance putt I rarely ever make, I have never felt a disc - mine or anyone's - go in the basket like that. It was so gentle. It grazed the chains, but sounded dainty as a wind chime. And when it touched down it didn't ping or bong when it connected with the basket either. It was as though the disc had given itself over to me, abiding my desire, unresisting. I hadn't so much thrown it at the pins as placed it atop my open palm and blown it where I wanted it to go. I felt this strange touchdown in my arm's bicep when the disc met the basket. And it was odd.
Hole 4 has been lengthened as well. Last year I could never quite drive to the pin. I could get within twenty feet, but I never overshot it and I never got within a comfortable putting distance. This year, thanks some to my 'longer arm' and thanks more to the wind at my back, I crushed a drive all the way to within twelve feet of the goal. On a hole listed as a par 4, no less! Unfortunately I didn't eagle, for the wind - fickle, she is - turned against me, conspiring with my timid short game to concoct an unlikely miss.
The last five holes were throwing into or against the cut of the wind, suddenly making par a worthy goal. It took me three holes and as many bogeys to realize that my heavier, 170 gram Valkyrie disc, which I had figured - for it's weight - all the better to play into the wind, is more or less helpless in the wind. And, in fact, it was my light-weight driver, the 150 gram Valkyrie Star, (I'm a Valkyrie whore - love 'em) that I only tried out of frustration, that somehow managed to pierce the wind without parachuting off course.
On the second go-round I had a better idea of how to shoot into the wind, which probably won me those two extra strokes. The only hole I recall being especially noteworthy was the ninth. Hole 9 has always been an intimidating hole. It plays about 150 feet straight between two lines of trees and it's a tight corridor. That first one-fifty is no more than 15 feet wide the whole way down, and then it empties to the left. I've always had something of a knack for the hole. Last year, more often than not, I managed to consistently thread the needle of hole 9 and skip right up to the basket. But that was last year, and this year they've moved the basket.
The dog-leg left that hole 9 always featured is now a much sharper cut. The trick to nine's corridor used to be throwing a flat, well-aimed shot that broke very gently left at the end. Keeping the disc low - say eight feet off the ground - used to work out well for me. But now that the pin has been brought in, exiting the corridor has become more of a sudden 60 degree cut to the left.
On my first attempt at hole 9 the wind got under my disk, keeping it too flat, and I threaded the corridor, but without any break left at the end. The disc slammed into the tree line and I ended up taking my second shot from the forest's edge. And it cost me. I ended up bogeying the last hole, going positive on my otherwise even round. So on my second go I opted for a 30 degree release, with a lot of power behind it to keep it between the trees until the end. I hit it perfectly; didn't so much as graze a single branch on my way out of the corridor and put myself into a very nice birdie position. Again, the wind foiled my birdie but this time I was able to save par.
Yes, 'twas a good day for disc golf at the Andersonville Rd., Bay Court Park. A good day made even better when, between rounds, I put down a towel on the beach at the lake's edge and sunbathed while reading Kafka's 'Amerika.' 'Twas a good day for disc golf.
'Twas a good day for Roy.
It's nice to see such a familiar course change and become something new. Especially when you shoot the kind of first-out games I did today.
Okay, the scores are less than impressive: +1 on my first round and -1 on my second. But I tell you those are high marks for a day like today. The wind was gusting intensely throughout the whole back half of the course. So much so, more than once I watched my disc parachute in the wind, rolling and bouncing a hundred and fifty feet off target and onto some other hole's fairway.
Despite the wind I was happy with my game and the new course. Hole 2 has been lengthened by about thirty feet, which was nice. It really showed me how much more distance I'm getting out of my drives this year, in comparison with last. Hole 3, though drastically relocated. still sits on the edge of a steep hillside, daring you to throw for the chains, miss, and find yourself forty feet overshot or rolled away.
In fact, during my first round I threw a pretty chip shot right at three's pin. It bounced off the ground at the pole and slid out of site, just over the hill's crest. I thought I had placed within five feet of the pin. But from atop the hill I found no disc. A sweeping gaze revealed my errant disc, some thirty feet rolled away from where I watched it first touch down, lying at the bottom of a ditch. From the bottom of that ditch, slightly perturbed, I made my shot for birdy. I threw at an angled pitch; a diving shot that guaranteed, if I missed, I wouldn't go rolling down the hill again. The disc went up six feet to the right of the chains, held in the air briefly by the gusting winds, and dived straight into the bottom of the basket.
I'll remember that shot for some time. Aside from being the kind of long-distance putt I rarely ever make, I have never felt a disc - mine or anyone's - go in the basket like that. It was so gentle. It grazed the chains, but sounded dainty as a wind chime. And when it touched down it didn't ping or bong when it connected with the basket either. It was as though the disc had given itself over to me, abiding my desire, unresisting. I hadn't so much thrown it at the pins as placed it atop my open palm and blown it where I wanted it to go. I felt this strange touchdown in my arm's bicep when the disc met the basket. And it was odd.
Hole 4 has been lengthened as well. Last year I could never quite drive to the pin. I could get within twenty feet, but I never overshot it and I never got within a comfortable putting distance. This year, thanks some to my 'longer arm' and thanks more to the wind at my back, I crushed a drive all the way to within twelve feet of the goal. On a hole listed as a par 4, no less! Unfortunately I didn't eagle, for the wind - fickle, she is - turned against me, conspiring with my timid short game to concoct an unlikely miss.
The last five holes were throwing into or against the cut of the wind, suddenly making par a worthy goal. It took me three holes and as many bogeys to realize that my heavier, 170 gram Valkyrie disc, which I had figured - for it's weight - all the better to play into the wind, is more or less helpless in the wind. And, in fact, it was my light-weight driver, the 150 gram Valkyrie Star, (I'm a Valkyrie whore - love 'em) that I only tried out of frustration, that somehow managed to pierce the wind without parachuting off course.
On the second go-round I had a better idea of how to shoot into the wind, which probably won me those two extra strokes. The only hole I recall being especially noteworthy was the ninth. Hole 9 has always been an intimidating hole. It plays about 150 feet straight between two lines of trees and it's a tight corridor. That first one-fifty is no more than 15 feet wide the whole way down, and then it empties to the left. I've always had something of a knack for the hole. Last year, more often than not, I managed to consistently thread the needle of hole 9 and skip right up to the basket. But that was last year, and this year they've moved the basket.
The dog-leg left that hole 9 always featured is now a much sharper cut. The trick to nine's corridor used to be throwing a flat, well-aimed shot that broke very gently left at the end. Keeping the disc low - say eight feet off the ground - used to work out well for me. But now that the pin has been brought in, exiting the corridor has become more of a sudden 60 degree cut to the left.
On my first attempt at hole 9 the wind got under my disk, keeping it too flat, and I threaded the corridor, but without any break left at the end. The disc slammed into the tree line and I ended up taking my second shot from the forest's edge. And it cost me. I ended up bogeying the last hole, going positive on my otherwise even round. So on my second go I opted for a 30 degree release, with a lot of power behind it to keep it between the trees until the end. I hit it perfectly; didn't so much as graze a single branch on my way out of the corridor and put myself into a very nice birdie position. Again, the wind foiled my birdie but this time I was able to save par.
Yes, 'twas a good day for disc golf at the Andersonville Rd., Bay Court Park. A good day made even better when, between rounds, I put down a towel on the beach at the lake's edge and sunbathed while reading Kafka's 'Amerika.' 'Twas a good day for disc golf.
'Twas a good day for Roy.
Dual Fists of Inspiration
Wouldn't you just know it. I came home from work yesterday with a song stuck in my head: 'Distance' by Long Shot Party. "Who and/or what the fuck is that," you ask? It's a J-Pop song featured in OP2 of Naruto Shippuden. For the unitiated, "OP" means Opening - as in the opening credits of a show. (think Cheers: "...where everybody knows your name...") In anime, the opening sequence tends to change as episodes and story arcs progress, reflecting the story to come and the mood the writers want to present in this batch of episodes. So OP2 means the second opening sequence / song in the whole Naruto Shippuden library.
Sigh... Anyway, I came home with that song stuck in my head and I wanted to learn to play it. I looked up the tab with romaji lyrics and three hours later I had a recording I was so uniquely and overwhelmingly satisfied with that I would go on to listen to it at least fifty times -- giddily dancing like a five year old who's having too much fun to stop and take a pee.
So proud was I of what my audio workings had rendered that I felt the dire need to share it with the world. Usually I'd just upload it to muh' myspace music page, but suddenly that seemed silly. "I've got my own website now," I thought, "why should I rely on Rupert Murdoch to host my singing sensations?"
Thus began the unyielding attempt to shoe-horn an mp3 player into that minimalist site design I first published just hours earlier.
But inspiration was about to strike twice! For as I pondered the task before me an image popped into my head. It was a logo for the website. I won't bother describing it. (Scroll up and look left, dummy.) And once I had that logo in place, well the rest of the design finally started coming into focus.
So here we are. A website that damn-near looks like a website! I just might-could build on this one. Here's hoping I don't throw it away in the next 24 hours, like its predecessor.
P.S.: You damn well better listen to that song I put up!
Distance
This is a cover of a Japanese punk rock song 'Distance' by Long Shot Party. I first heard this tune in Naruto Shippuuden's OP2 theme and this is purely a cover of that minute and a half, thematic version.
At time of posting I consider this to be my most enjoyable solo recording project ever. It's just a trifle, sure, but it's exactly as I want it, and that's rare.
Inaugural Address
After much too much deliberation and a whole slew of site designs thrown arbitrarily 'gainst the cupboards only to peel away and splatter, flaccid, on linoleum, I have finally found the perfect graphical backdrop for this website: None. My genius astounds even me.
Instead of placing the overlapping thickness of my many desperations on display by laboring, any longer than I sadly already have, at the reinvention of wheels web site-rical I will, instead, leave the content to the shaping of the page. You know: necessity; invention. As of now I have only this text and the video you may or may not see wasting space to stage left. Thus the chosen format. It serves this content purely and unceremoniously.
You do remember content don't you? It's that stuff art used to be made of before the advent of 3d graphics and alpha layered, chroma-keyed explosions; Before Roget was forced to list "vapid ratings whore" as a synonym of "journalist;" Before comfort and entertainment were canonized as virtues and "sin" came to mean "fiscal irresponsibility;" Before the pursuit of the dollar and broad social acceptance were recognized as ends of sacrificial worth, to be pursued in and of themselves.
...Oh who am I kidding. There was never a "before" that stuff. I should tell you to repent, and I will, many, many times - but for now revel in your debaucheries if it pleases you. Soon you will know a pain no comfort can unjoin.
So, yeah... Something about web graphics? Cool, cool.
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