The Millennium Shrimp

David Stutz’s Iolet: Music from the world of Anathem is now up on CDBaby.com! CDs are $20.00 and MP3 downloads are $10.00. Not sure how much shipping is. You can also listen to clips from the songs on the web page. My favorite so far is the Mascheroni Circles, although the Thousander Chant is pretty cool to hear. The album makes use of a wide range of vocal styles - there’s a lot that is reminiscent of medieval chanting, Mascheroni sounds much like a modern choir composition and the Thousander Chant uses throat singing to give it a very unworldly feel. I would love to sit in the Minster and listen to that sound eminating from the Thousander section.

According to the Beacon Journal, the Red Cross is opening temporary shelters at the Edgewood Community Center and Peace Evangelical Church in Plain and Canton Townships. Is this like the Red Cross’ standard response? I’m sure there are some people who need a place to sleep (four of them Tuesday evening according to the Beacon Journal report) and a warm meal, but ice, batteries, and candles would be more appreciated by most of the people who still don’t have power. I’m sure they mean well, but loosing a fridge or freezer full of food is going to hurt people a lot worse than not being able to cook for a week.

[XKCD]

Obviously what we need is a version of firefox that runs on typewriters!

Speaking of typewriters and other forms of “obsolete” technology, my electric is still off. They’re now telling us that power will be restored sometime between “now and Sunday.” Fortunately, mom and dad have always been relatively well prepared for power outages. Dad still has the lamp that hung in his mother’s kitchen when he was growing up. (There are advantages to growing up Amish!) It has an old Victorian-period cast iron arm that’s supposed to be mounted on the wall. Lehman’s Hardware in Kidron has reproductions of them, but they’re rather expensive. I’m thinking I might keep this one and mount it in the dining room. I’m thinking I’m going to hit Lehman’s in the coming weeks and get enough to light the rest of the house.
It’s been an interesting experience, living by lamp light. This morning I was taking a shower when I noticed the lamp in the bathroom was burning very dim. It had run out of oil and was just burning the wick. Not good! So I hit Walmart on the way in to work. Amazingly they actually do sell lamp oil, and they had it in stock. The Ace Hardware in Ellet was completely out when I checked yesterday. Well, back to 1899!

Neal Stephenson’s new novel, Anathem, was released on Tuesday. I stopped at Borders on the Strip in Canton and they had the book sitting on the new releases table right at the front of the store! In contrast to Stross’ Saturn’s Children which took me several minutes of hunting and asking for help from a store clerk to find.

So far, I have to say I really find the whole concept of the Avout really fascinating. They live in concens, monastic communities that are built around huge clocks. The clocks control the opening and shutting of various gates that allow people into the communities. One set of doors opens for ten days every year,  a second set opens every ten years, the third, every 100 years, and the fourth set only open every thousand years. The seperation of the communities behind the gates from the outside world is thus determined by how long the gates stay closed.
One thing that was mentioned extensively in online postings was a CD of music that accompanied the advanced reviewer’s copy. It turns out that this is not actually sold with the book, it’s a seperate project by David Stutz. Stutz is a former Microsoftie who, in addition to other things, has an interest in acapella vocal music. It’s being sold to support the Long Now Foundation, which is also tied in with Anathem novel.

If you’re interested in getting a copy of the CD (called IOLET:: Music from the world of Anathem), it should be up on CDBaby in a few days.
Anathem [Wikipedia]

Anathem [Amazon]
Neal Stephenson [homepage]