Posts Tagged Joey Marianer
Dumb Parody Ideas at FuMPFest 2024
Posted by Angela Brett in News on October 9, 2024
FuMPFest is a funny music festival put on by the Funny Music Project, which I had never attended in-person because it’s not worth travelling from Austria to the USA for just a weekend. But now that I live in the USA, I finally got to go! It was put on as part of Con on the Cob, and was quite similar to the comedy music track at MarsCon (also run by people from The FuMP), which I have been to a few times when it happened to be a week out from JoCo Cruise. Both are approximately the same friendly group of comedy musicians and comedy music fans, having a small comedy music festival while surrounded by a larger convention.
One thing that happens at FuMPFest is the Dumb Parody Ideas contest, where people sing a few lines (up to 90 seconds per idea) of dubious song parodies. I had a few ideas for this years ago (I have a note with the lyrics from 2021), but never had a chance to enter… until now! The first one is a parody of Losing My Religion, by REM, inspired by the six and a half years of regular FaceTime calls with Joey while we were still living on separate continents:
Lyrics:
That’s me in the corner.
That’s me in the FaceTime, losing my connection.
The background is a screenshot I took while losing my connection in a real FaceTime call with Joey. The me in the corner was added in post, a little larger than the actual size of the inset which would have me in it. Joey’s playing ukulele offscreen.
The other parody idea I had was of Enya’s ‘Only Time’, which (like most things), Joey sings better than I could. We recorded a video of it before FuMPFest, because the only Dumb Parody Ideas panel I’d seen was at an online-only version of the con in 2020, so I wasn’t sure whether people would be doing them live for this one. The first take was pretty hilariously bad, setting us up to laugh through some of the later takes, so here’s the video with out-takes.
Lyrics:
Who can say where the road goes?
Where the day flows?
Google Maps.
In the end Joey did perform it live, followed by another dumb parody idea that Joey came up with on the day. A few hours before this panel, Devo Spice showed a short horror film which featured the song (of anonymous authorship) ‘I Sh💩t More in the Summer’. Joey parodied it with the things we do more at FuMPFest, taking inspiration from the FuMPFest bingo cards we were given.
Lyrics:
We chant COG! more at FuMPFest
than we do at any other time of year.
We yell ‘moisture!’ [more] at FuMPFest
than we do at any other time of year.
Eat from a food truck
“Corned beef and Cabbage”
Tune a guitar on stage
We all stall more at FuMPFest
than we do at any other… …stalling for time of year!
Both Losing My Connection and Google Maps were finalists in the competition, though we didn’t win the coveted golden spatula. Surprisingly, Joey’s last-minute parody was not nominated, despite the more developed lyrics and clear pandering to that specific audience.
Overall, we had a great time at FuMPFest. It was all streamed live on The FuMP’s Twitch channel, and at least for now, there are archives of the shows available there.
The next big thing on my calendar, which also includes song parodies and can be attended virtually, is the MathsJam Annual Gathering.
As promised in my last post, I put my new macOS app on TestFlight, and have already fixed some issues that were pointed out. It’s the app that made the chart of days that Joey and I have been together in person. It could be used to chart anything where you can summarise each day with a few colours or emoji — long-distance relationships, travel, moods, daily progress towards goals, the timeline of a novel you’re writing, weather, etc. If you’re interested in trying it, let me know somehow and I’ll add you to the list of testers. Otherwise, watch this space and get it when I release it some day soon.
When I’m not going to conventions, working on apps, and trying to convince various internet companies that I live here, I am still looking for a day job. Let me know if you know anyone who would like to hire me.
I swam halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, and now I live in the USA
Posted by Angela Brett in Moving to the USA on September 19, 2024
I keep thinking I shouldn’t post here until I’ve processed more of my photos and videos, updated my apps so I’ll look better for potential future employers, etc, but if I did that, the post would be absurdly long and late. This situation is of course fractal — I keep thinking I shouldn’t release my apps until I’ve fixed all those bugs, got everything working in VoiceOver, etc., but if I did that (as I have, many times in the past) the apps would simply never get released.
So, today I’ll write a blog post, and tomorrow I’ll either put my new macOS app on TestFlight, or submit new versions of NastyWriter and NiceWriter (which don’t work very well in the latest iOS, and also will fail to show ads because I’m halfway through moving my ad accounts to a new country.) Bug me if I don’t, and let me know if you want to test the apps. I should decide which one to release already so that I can focus on one thing at a time, but right now I’m focussing on writing this blog post, not on deciding which apps I can realistically get ready. See what I did there?
First things third: I made it to my new home in the Seattle area! I’m busy se(a)ttling in, changing all my online accounts to the new country (I’ll write a separate post about which hoops have to be jumped through for which accounts), and casually looking for work.
My lovely husband Joey Marianer came to Vienna to help with the moving, and many of my friends helped by taking my furniture and other things I didn’t need to keep. Then Joey and I took a train to Hamburg, the Queen Mary 2 ocean liner to New York City, and a road trip to our home in the Seattle area. It was of course in a pool on the Queen Mary 2 that I swam while we were halfway across the ocean.
Here’s a chart of all the days Joey and I have known each other, with appropriate emojis for the days we were together in person, and black squares for the days we weren’t. It was made by the aforementioned new app, which I started writing in an airport lounge one time when Joey’s flight left several hours before mine. This chart ends on September 6, 2024, because that way it would make a nice 49×56 rectangle. It also shows our first 256 days together, which is a nice round number in binary.
I’d never been to New York City before, so (after the no-longer-obligatory trip to Ellis Island the day I immigrated) we stayed for a few days before continuing. High on our list was visiting MoMath, the National Museum of Mathematics. I have a few videos from that, but here’s the one I’ve uploaded, of Joey riding a square-wheeled tricycle on a circular track made of inverted catenary curves:
Also in New York, we visited Liberty Island, Central Park, the Oculus, a few Sabrett’s hot dog stands, an annex of the Transit Museum, and the Apple Store on 5th avenue. I tried a rainbow bagel, some poorly-configured hot dogs (a friend from New York had recommended a particular combination of toppings, which neither stand gave us), and an Apple Vision Pro — I’d tried a friend’s one before, but without corrective lenses.
On the way home we stopped to meet friends in Toledo, Chicago, and Minneapolis. We visited Tony Packo’s (which has a large collection of autographed hot dog buns), Portillo’s (which has trays with deep recesses for cups, making it much easier to carry drinks around), American Science and Surplus (which has amusing signs and muzak) and the Minnesota State Fair (which has food on a stick).
Here’s a playlist of videos and podcasts that Joey and I showed each other because of things we saw during the trip:
There’s obviously a lot more to say and show about all of this, but I have to go finish some apps, so here’s a picture of the Statue of Liberty that I took from the Queen Mary 2 (previously posted on X and mathstodon).
My year is only going to get weirder, so I’d better fill you in.
Posted by Angela Brett in News on August 2, 2024
A lot has happened so far this year, and a lot more is about to happen. I have pics, so it did happen. TL; DR: I saw K’s Choice again, went to CERN again, went on the JoCo Cruise again, and will be moving to the USA in August. Just read the blue ‘Visa news’ section and the August part if you want to know how the US visa process went.
January: K’s Choice in Gent
🇺🇸Visa news
In mid-January, I got an email that began ‘Thank you for being a valued U.S. Consular Electronic Application Center (CEAC) customer.’ indicating that I’d finally got past step 1 of the 12-step program for me to quit Austria and go move in with the lovely Joey Marianer in the USA. Thus began a new phase of filling in forms and collecting documents.
On January 26, I went to Gent to see K’s Choice, one of the bands I have seen a fair bit at various places in Europe. I hadn’t them them since they were last in Vienna in 2017, so I missed them. A friend I know from JoCo fandom had suggested we go together. Unfortunately, she was too sick to go, but I did reconnect with someone I met at my very first K’s Choice concert, in Hamont-Achel in 2009.
Sam Bettens, the lead singer of K’s Choice, recently published a book which described (among many other things) his experience of moving to the USA to be with a spouse, as I am about to do. Even though the marriage didn’t work out, living in the USA did, so that was comforting to read about, as I mentioned to him after the show. I had too many things I wanted to say in a short time, and was a little flustered, so I forgot to ask for permission to post videos of the show, but they’ve always given it in the past, so here you go:
February: CERN Third Collisions
🇺🇸Visa news
In early February, I was notified that my Immigrant Visa Case had become Documentarily Qualified, meaning I’d completed step 9 of the process and just had to wait for my interview to be scheduled.
From 9–11 February, CERN had an event called Third Collisions, where CERN alumni could socialise, see some talks, and visit the new Science Gateway exhibits and the LHC experiments underground. I visited ALICE, because it was the only one of the four main detectors that I wasn’t 100% sure I’d seen before.
I haven’t put too much from the CERN visit online yet, but here’s a playlist where I will add videos:
Among other things, the Science Gateway had this tactile model of a particle detector, with an audio description to guide the visitor in feeling around the different parts of it. The various parts of the detector were differentiated with high-contrast colours and textures. Before visiting the Science Gateway, I happened to talk to someone who was involved in developing this; they had many ideas and prototypes for ways to explain particle detectors to blind and low-vision folk, and a lot of feedback from such people, and this is the only finished product that ended up in the exhibit.
Ironically, since I’m editing this post on my iPad, I can’t figure how to add alt text to this picture, but I think the audio description does a better job than I would have.
When I arrived in Vienna ten years ago, I assumed that I would soon forget French to learn German, so I did the DALF C1 exam to have proof that I once knew French. When I arrived in Geneva and had a conversation with a stranger at a bus stop, I realised I neither forgot French nor learned German — it was still so much easier to communicate in French. I did not make the most of this opportunity to learn German. This is partially because of circumstances (having to stop in the middle of four different B1-level German courses for different reasons, spending most of a year in NZ, and another few years hardly going outside due to the pandemic) but mostly because I didn’t put as much effort in. Or at least I didn’t listen to as many podcasts or read as many books in the language. Oh well; my level of German might still impress people in America.
March: JoCo Cruise (and a little MarsCon)
I shouldn’t need to tell you what JoCo Cruise is again. It’s where I met Joey, and thus, ultimately the reason I’m moving to the States. Joey and I stayed in Minnesota for a bit before this year’s cruise, because the flights from there to the cruise were more convenient, and it also gave us a chance to hang out with people we know from the MarsCon Comedy Music Track. As is often the case, MarsCon was on the same weekend as the start of the cruise, so we didn’t get to go, but at least we got to see people who arrived early.
We also saw a Jonathan Coulton and Aimee Mann concert with some friends from MarsCon and the cruise. At the show they mentioned, but did not play, a song Aimee Mann wrote based on a ChatGPT-generated title of a typical Jonathan Coulton song, ‘The Ballad of Captain Quark’. As someone who’s quite interested in quarks, I mentioned to JoCo on the cruise that I’d like to see it, and Aimee sang it at the final concert. Simalot posted video from the red team show and b$ shot this video of it on my camera in the gold team show.
Here is a playlist of the 25 hours, 5 minutes, and 17 seconds of unique JoCo Cruise 2024 footage captured by my cameras (some filmed by Joey on my second camera while I was at other events, some filmed by b$ while I was isolating in the cabin.)
🇺🇸Visa news
On the second-to-last day of JoCo Cruise, while Joey and I were holed up in our cabin getting over whatever lurgy we had caught (Joey tested negative for COVID, but it was an antigen test that didn’t come with instructions, so who knows?) we heard that my immigrant visa interview had been scheduled, which is to say, we’d reached step 10 of the immigration process.
April: US Visa Issued
Okay, I don’t have a video of this, but unless you’re an immigration officer working at the Port of New York and New Jersey in August, you’re not the people I have to prove it to. I heard that my visa was granted almost exactly 24 hours after leaving the visa interview (where they’d already told me I met the requirements, so it was not an agonising wait.) I then picked up my passport with the visa in it during my lunch break the next day.
I have six months from the date of issue to enter the country, at which point they will validate the visa and it will be good for a year, during which time I will receive an actual green card in the mail which will be valid for longer.
I then gave notice at my job and my apartment and figured out a moving company. Joey flew to Vienna not long ago, to help me with moving and then take me home. I am not keeping any of my furniture, so if you’re in Vienna and want some tables, bookcases, or other kinds of shelving or storage, let me know. Most of it has been claimed by now, though.
August: Moving to the USA
Joey and I will take the Queen Mary 2 from Hamburg to New York City, because that seemed like a sufficiently ridiculous way for me to immigrate. In NYC we plan to at least visit Ellis Island (it seems appropriate to do that after immigrating by sea) MoMath, Central Park (mainly because I love the Apple TV+ show by that name), 826NYC, and maybe Club Cumming, if JoCo Cruise 2024 and 2025 guest Daphne Always will be performing there. If you have any other suggestions on what to see in NYC, let me know! We haven’t decided yet when or how we’ll get from there to Joey’s place in the Seattle area.
After that, we’ll likely go to FuMPFest at Con on the Cob in October and MathsJam Annual Gathering (back on this side of the pond) in November, but the future hasn’t been written yet!
We did a Christmas
Posted by Angela Brett in Holiday Highlights on December 26, 2023
I’m visiting Joey Marianer for Christmas, so we sang a slowed-down cover of a Worm Quartet song, as Joey is wont to do.
Worm Quartet is also known as Timothy F. Crist, so we wished everyone a merry Timothy F. Cristmas at the end. I hope you had one of those, whatever it means. I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t celebrate such a talented comedy musician.
I did actually try some of that eggnog (‘milk that have a alcohol and then we put a egg’ except that this one didn’t have a alcohol.) The few times I’ve had eggnog before, I’ve thought that the alcohol ruined what could have been a very nice drink, so I was excited to try some non-alcoholic eggnog. Not only that, but I tried it mixed with orange soda, as recommended on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I really like it both ways! It’s also good with orange juice.
In unrelated news, we went to the MathsJam Annual Gathering, where Joey gave a talk on the true prisoner’s dilemma, and at MathsJam Jam we sang Symmetry and Seven Bridges (of Königsberg) Road. Ben Sparks taught everyone the harmonies for the Eagles version of Seven Bridges Road to sing Seven Bridges (of Königsberg) Road, and it was fantastic.
We didn’t sing This Tiling Never Repeats, because nobody (not even me) knew the music well enough. But on the Saturday of MathsJam, Joey and I wore Cirque du So What ‘I Want TILE!’ shirts, and I did in fact come away with a few handfuls of 3D-printed spectre aperiodic monotiles. Surprisingly, there were no aperiodic monotile shaped baked goods in the MathsJam BakeOff.
This Tiling Never Repeats (Split Enz parody)
Posted by Angela Brett in News on October 29, 2023
I mentioned in a previous post that I was working on a parody of History Never Repeats, by Split Enz, about the aperiodic monotiles that have been found recently. I’ve finished it, so here are the lyrics:
This tiling never repeats
Unending plane the kite and dart complete
We wish to show we can improve
We may assume, there’s always more to prove
It was the best we used to know
From David Smith, a savage blow
Penrose is great, but now we sing
A monotile beats his tiling!
This tiling never repeats
But some might say, reflected tiles are cheats
We wish to show we can improve
We may assume, there’s always more to prove
You say we’ve all been played for fools
We can’t reflect, if that’s the rule
Better to work than make dispute
They made a change and now it’s moot
This tiling never repeats
There’s not a need the Spectre doesn’t meet
And there’s a way to make more and more
Leading us to a space we can explore
This tiling never repeats, this tiling never repeats
Infinite shapes, just turn the dials
Aperiodic monotiles
Pick one and all the plane is spanned
We think at last we understand
This tiling never repeats
A manifold with manifold defeats
And there’s a way to make more and more
Leading us to a space we can explore
Never repeats!
Never repeats!
Never repeats!
This joins Symmetry and Seven Bridges (of Königsberg) Road in Joey’s and my submissions for this year’s MathsJamJam. Joey Marianer (yes, the one that I’ve somehow ended up married to!) also sang (and sent for inclusion in the Jam) Polygon Pam, a parody of The Beatles’ Polythene Pam written by Chella Quint:
I look forward to seeing Joey at MathsJam (and then Chella afterwards) and singing them together! I also look forward to eating some aperiodic monotile confections which will inevitably be baked for the MathsJam BakeOff.
I mentioned in a different post that Joey had been working on some cover songs which I was excited to share. The one I was most excited about is a slow cover of Entire Dog by Worm Quartet. It lasts almost twice as long as the rather frenetic original, and Joey initially sang it this way completely off-the-cuff one day over FaceTime. After a few slight revisions, I declared it was so good it should be stolen and used on Glee. But Joey kept singing it to me and making it even better.
If you think Joey made a mistake with some SI prefixes, read the video description. To really tie the post together, here’s a slow cover of a frenetic Worm Quartet song that also mentions math — and other kinds of multiplication… let’s just say it’s NSFW — Tired Of Not:
Both of these songs are on Worm Quartet’s new album, Carpe Tedium, which I highly recommend. Joey has been practising genre-benring covers of several more tracks from it, too.
The “The Captain’s Wife’s Lament” Lament, and Seven Bridges (of Königsberg) Road
Posted by Angela Brett in News, video on September 25, 2023
About a week ago, me hearty Joey Marianer recorded three songs (two of which I wrote) while I slept! I meant to post about them on Talk Like a Pirate Day, but ended up not being home all day. Nonetheless, I’ll start with the pirate shanty. This might not make much sense to you if you’re not familiar with Paul and Storm; it’s a parody of one of their songs, about the lengthy live performances of another of their songs, which would be less than three minutes if they had a few other singers keeping them in line.
Storm DiCostanzo, please sing, and sing faster!
You’re not going to get any younger, you know.
Hey, Paul Sabourin, we’re growing impatient,
And you’ve still got most of the song left to go,
so come on Storm, spit it out.
I curse the day that these guys ever wrote this —
a joke about seamen that’s not hard to get.
How could I know that their seed would get into
my hair and my craw and two thirds of the set
Now three lines in, and I arrr with the masses,
Dejected, excited, and counting to pi.
And I have to admit, if you’d ask to continue
my bladder says ‘no’ but my mouth says ‘aye-aye!’
Why does every new verse of your song
Keep taking you so goddamn long?
Storm DiCostanzo, please sing, and sing faster!
Enough with the jokes that we don’t understand.
I need to pee and it’s no longer funny.
Yes, that’s your R Kelly goddamn cover band.
So come on Paul, spit it out.
Eighty-six seconds for all Lehrer’s Elements,
One Week’s three minutes and Yesterday’s two.
Cohen wrote hundreds of draft Hallelujahs
but won’t subject crowds to much more than a few.
You’re not our bitches, you’re not the CD,
and we don’t mean to tell you you do your job wrong,
but please bear in mind, in the time that you’ve had
Mister Boggia churned out thirty-five Beatles songs. [actually 25]
And if you keep singing so slow,
you’ll hold up the closing band’s show!
[extract from Nobody Loves You Like Me, by Paul and Storm’s usual closing band, Jonathan Coulton]
Here at the bar who cares what I do
I’m all alone but I’m drinking for two
Drowning the man that I used to be
Nobody loves you like me
Hey, Paul Sabourin, please sing, and sing faster,
though we won’t stop arrring till long past the show.
Crap out the verses, and Storm, while he’s at it,
your G-string is tuned half a Boggia too low.
So come, yes come…
Hey Paul and Storm, please just sing, and sing faster
Don’t hold back your seamen, please spit it all out.
Mister Boggia is Jim Boggia, who is known not only for his original songs and Beatles covers, but also for having perfect pitch and being very good at tuning. The ‘Boggia’ mentioned at the end is a unit of measurement defined on JoCo Cruise 2015 as “the smallest unit of tuning perceptible only to Jim Boggia”.
The other song of mine that Joey sang is Seven Bridges (of Königsberg) Road, which I mentioned in my last post:
Joey sang it based on Steve Young’s original version, rather than the Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm, and Sara Watkins version that I’m familiar with. Joey is wearing a T-shirt printed with the cover of my poetry album Wake Up Gasping. The album cover is by CamannWordsmith, who makes several of the major art food groups.
The other song Joey recorded that night was a parody of ‘You’ll be back’ from the musical Hamilton, from the perspective of GlaDOS from the game Portal. It was written by Brian Young, whom I knew from the olden days of the JoCo forums (which I am surprised to see are still up), and we both know from the JoCo Cruise.
The wardrobe and impetus to learn the tune was provided by our friend Chella Quint (who is usually more into menarche than monarchy) for an unrelated project which will forever be a mystery to you, but you should check out her work on menstruation (which should not be a mystery) because it’s bloody good.
That’s all for now, but Joey is working on some incredible cover versions of songs which I look forward to sharing.
∎
A few mathematical numbers
Posted by Angela Brett in News on August 14, 2023
My last post had Joey Marianer (to whom I was flabbergasted to be married) singing some lyrics I wrote, and mentioned that we would soon be at the MathsJam Annual Gathering, and that I’d uploaded all my JoCo Cruise footage for that year. Well, in my aperiodic compiling of blog entries, I have reached a familiar local pattern. Joey (to whom I am still gobsmacked to be married) has sung more lyrics I wrote, we are once again planning to go to the MathsJam Annual Gathering, and I have uploaded all my JoCo Cruise footage for 2023.
A Cake of Sets
At my first MathsJam Annual Gathering, I gave a talk involving one poem I wrote and several that I found. At the 2019 Gathering, Joey and I participated in the competition competition with a Hallelujah competition. At last year’s Gathering, we added some set theory to the Bakeoff with this (cheese(cheesecake)cake) Venn diagram:
It was mentioned in this excellent summary TikTok by Ayliean!
We assembled it on-site from store-bought cheese, cake, and cheesecake. What with travelling internationally to MathsJam, it would have been impractical to (cheesemake(cheesebake)bake) it ourselves.
A Set of Songs
At this year’s MathsJam, we will add to the set list of the MathsJam Jam.
Symmetry
To start with, we noted an existing theme of symmetric relations in the lyrics of The Beatles’ song ‘All You Need is Love’ and made it explicit. Here’s Joey singing our parody, Symmetry:
Here are the lyrics:
Symmetry!
Symmetry!
Symmetry!There’s nothing that is x that x is not
No ex where you’re not an ex they’ve got
The symmetry says that the relation goes both ways
It’s easy!If you’re my sibling, I’m your sibling too
You’re married to me and I to you
Each of these relations is the same as its converse
It’s easy!x relates to y
x relates to y
x relates to y, why? ’cause y relates to xIf one real number’s greater than the other
Or maybe I’m your son and you’re my mother
Such relations exist, but symmetric ones top our list
They’re easierWhen x relates to y
x relates to y
x relates to y and y relates to xx relates to y
x relates to y
x relates to y, why? ’cause y relates to x
Seven Bridges (of Königsberg) Road
I’ve also written a first draft of a parody of the Steve Young song ‘Seven Bridges Road‘ about the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. Joey hasn’t sung this one, but I intend to enter it into the MathsJam Jam songbook (where there is already a parody of ‘Lola’ about the same topic.) Here are the lyrics:
There are rivers in Königsberg
Cross them as you go
Don’t forget one and don’t you repeat
On the Seven Bridges Road
Now each land mass must have odd or even
Bridges to and fro
Arrive but don’t leave in the same way
And Euler’s work did show
Sometimes there’s an odd one out
How to turn from there and go?
No way for a path with these few rules
Down the Seven Bridges Road
There are rivers in Königsberg
And if ever you decide you should go
There is a way by backtracking only
Down the Seven Bridges Road
Note, this is purely based on the way Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm sing Seven Bridges Road when they’re not pretending to be tone-deaf. If other artists sing it differently, the prosody might not work out as well.
This Tiling Never Repeats (in progress)
I’m also working on a parody of History Never Repeats by Split Enz called This Tiling Never Repeats, about the recently discovered aperiodic monotiles, which I am sure will be a big feature of this year’s MathsJam. I expect there to be at least three sets of aperiodic monotile cookies entered in the Bakeoff. I’ve only just started with this parody, but figured I’d mention it in case anyone wants to give me ideas for it, encourage me to finish it, or even write their own. I don’t mind who writes it as long as it exists and is sung at MathsJam.
A Song of Cakes
This section title is just for completeness, and because I needed something to separate the last song from the outro. I know too many songs about cakes to pick one.
As many people contemplate the value of X, I’ve created an account at what is obviously the best-named Mastodon server, Mathstodon. Feel free to follow me there! I don’t know yet how frequently I will post on it and/or my Twitter profile, but at least now you know where to find me if you’re on those networks.
∎
Joey sang some more parody lyrics I wrote, and another Hallelujah
Posted by Angela Brett in News, video on October 6, 2022
Joey Marianer (to whom, and I cannot stress this enough, I am 💖married❣️) was asked to sing some computer-related songs at a company all-hands meeting, and chose The Bad Coder’s Favourite Things (one of several parodies I’ve written of ‘My Favourite Things’) as one of them. It’s the third one, after Joey’s own ‘Inbox Zero’ (a new addition to our growing list of Hallelujah parodies) and Les Barker’s ‘Reinstalling Windows’ (a parody of ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’.)
Enjoy!
In other news, we’ll be at MathsJam Annual Gathering in November, which will be a hybrid in-person (in the UK) and virtual event this year. If you like maths, or if you think you don’t like maths but want to find out why people do, or even if you just like parody songs about maths, and the time zone and/or location work for you, I highly recommend joining.
Also, surprise! I thought I’d uploaded all my JoCo Cruise 2022 footage, but I’d somehow missed the Monday concert, with Jim Boggia and Paul and Storm. You can watch it as a single video or a playlist of songs. This means I’ve uploaded more than 22 hours from that cruise, all-up.
And, double surprise (which I of course remembered a minute after publishing this post) Joseph Camann made a musical version of my performance of ‘The Duel‘ on JoCo (virtual) Cruise 2021. I love it!
We got married (to each other) and then did cute couple things on a boat!
Posted by Angela Brett in News, Performances on April 15, 2022
Remember that time that Joey Marianer and I got engaged (to each other)? Well, a while after that, we also got married, as is typical for engaged couples. It was just a small ceremony in a courthouse, followed by a small gathering with two large cheesecakes. Here’s a very short video synopsis of the wedding:
I just edited the closed captions, and noticed that YouTube’s autocaptions thought the judge said, ‘congratulations youtube and you guys get a blog it’s okay’ when in fact he said, ‘Congratulations, you two. And you guys can applaud; it’s okay!’ Anyway, that video has been gathering congratulations on YouTube for a while, so now you guys get a blog about it.
Then we ate cheesecake with a few friends, and Joey did this:
If you don’t understand what just happened, here’s a video that will explain it.
A few days and two negative COVID tests later, we boarded the JoCo Cruise. On cosplay day we cosplayed each other:
This was mainly to facilitate changing into our pants for the Fancy Pants Parade. I haven’t found a video that shows us in the parade itself, but here’s one of us practising last year, when we thought the cruise might be virtual again so we’d need a video:
Then two days later, all decked out for formal night, we did a show, which was also quite geared towards things we could only do while physically together. I structured the setlist to tell the story of how our relationship developed through collaborating on songs.
If you prefer, there’s also a playlist of individual pieces. I even made a playlist of the videos mentioned in the show, complete with the comments in which I might have been flirting with Joey. Some of the poems and songs are on my album, one is on our album of SpinTunes entries, some are on the playlist of Hallelujahs, but three of them have never been published anywhere before.
I’ve wanted to do a poetry show on the cruise for a while, but was always afraid of having to miss out on other events that were scheduled at the same time as it. I did a show on the 2021 virtual cruise where that wasn’t so much of a concern, and people seemed to like it, so an in-person sequel seemed like a good idea. Only, with Joey’s help, it was not merely a poetry show, but also a musical show!
My fears were somewhat realised; this show was scheduled opposite the reception for frequent cruisers, which most of the people who know me well enough to attend my show were eligible to go to. But the other thing those people know is that I film every event I’m at (so far I’ve uploaded 12 hours, 48 minutes of video from the 2022 cruise, and I’m only up to Wednesday afternoon), so they could safely miss the show and watch it now! We got through the setlist with a little time to spare, so we even got to attend the reception briefly.
A successful ploy to increase engagement
Posted by Angela Brett in News on January 2, 2022
Well, in 2021, among other things, I released an iOS app and a poetry album, wrote an article about accessibility, tech edited three articles about iOS development, won my second Fancy Pants Parade, did a poetry show, wrote a macOS app to find words that look or sound like they’re related but aren’t and a script to make etymological family trees, found a job, lost a job, found a job again, and finally buried a job in soft peat for three months and recycled it as firelighters (that last bit is an exaggeration. Burning jobs to keep warm is not advisable.)
Here’s another exciting thing that happened that I didn’t mention on this blog. During a brief lull in the apocalypse, Joey Marianer came to visit, and we got engaged… to each other! We had of course already discussed this previously, and I wasn’t expecting a song and dance to be made about it, but there was nevertheless a song, as follows:
It’s a parody of the “Weird Al” Yankovic original, “Good Enough for Now“. I find metal rings uncomfortable and a bit dangerous, so Joey got me a silicone engagement ring with a ring on it. This is a much cooler idea than the off-the-shelf ring I got Joey which has flowers on it and no explicit mathematical concepts.
The pretense for recording that was that immediately beforehand, we’d sung some words I’d written to a tune that came to Joey in a dream:
Joey happened to be here while my friend Phil got married (a year later than planned) and joined a group of Phil’s vaccinated and tested friends to celebrate in Tenerife. So here we are walking along the beach looking all couple-y.
I’ll eventually put up videos of some things we saw in Tenerife. After we got back from Tenerife but before Joey went home, we recorded a few short videos in which we are exceedingly cute at each other while demonstrating some linguistic concepts. Here we explore the differences in our accents:
And here we demonstrate how personal deixis can change the meaning of a sentence depending on context:
So, plague willing, we’ll get married in February, have multiple wedding-adjacent cake-eating parties in various real and virtual places over the next several years, and at some point during that time I’ll get the appropriate visa so we can move in together and hopefully only get on each other’s c-tactile nerves.
And now for some unrelated things to look forward to on my YouTube channel. The above videos were shot on my iPhone, which was my first experience with 4K HDR. I’m not sure if editing that on my mid-2014 MacBook Pro did the HDR justice.
However, I bought a new camera recently which can do 4K, and also has several other features which will make recording concerts (and indeed, entire cruises full of concerts) easier — no more stopping to get around a 4GB file size limit, or change batteries, or change SD cards. I won’t generally film entire concerts in 4K due to the space requirements and likelihood of the camera overheating and shutting down, but it’s a nice feature to have for other things. I’ve also ordered the new MacBook Pro, which will have a better display for viewing and editing such video.
I planned to film as much as possible of a concert here in Vienna in 4K, just to see how long I could film continuously in 4K if I took all the measures I knew about to prevent overheating. The concert had to be cancelled due to lockdown, so instead, I recorded myself talking about how I got to work at CERN, as a sequel to the video about getting a laptop from Woz and going to a concert with him. I recorded in 4K for 36 minutes nonstop (which is longer than my old camera can record nonstop even in 1080p) before I ran out of things to say, so I’d call that a successful test. When the new MacBook arrives, I’ll edit that video and hopefully put it online before flying away to get married and (insert SARS-CaVeat here) record an entire cruise full of concerts. I hope I remember how to record and process an entire cruise full of concerts after a year off, and don’t make too many mistakes with the new camera.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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Creative Output 