Posts Tagged song
Video: A Laptop Like You
Posted by Angela Brett in video on November 11, 2009
This is a video I made for Jonathan Coulton‘s song ‘A Laptop Like You‘. It stars my trusty PowerBook G4, which I bought in early 2005, just before moving from New Zealand to Geneva. I recently replaced it with a MacBook Pro, but my PowerBook wanted to become an internet superstar before retiring, and I just can’t say no to that sweet little thing. I love the song, I love my Mac, and I have all the right props, so I knew I had to make this video.
The song in the credits is ‘When You Go‘, also by Jonathan Coulton. His song ‘Code Monkey‘ is also referred to in this video, and a few other songs directly or tangentially related to Jonathan Coulton are referenced in the Skype userlist. Bram Tant, who valiantly confronted various Vista hassles in order to pretend to be my not-really-love-interest for about 50 seconds, and then unexpectedly got a MacBook Pro on the day he filmed his part, also makes music. He hopes his new laptop will help him record songs for the Masters of Song Fu competition.
Four of Diamonds: You’ve gotta be happy
Posted by Angela Brett in Dinosaurier, Writing Cards and Letters on February 16, 2009
This is a song; here is an mp3 of it sung by my robot choir.
When you’re filled with song
but you just can’t sing
Sing up, you’ve gotta be happy!
When you created life
that ruined everything
chin up, you’ve gotta be happy!
When you find yourself
and you lose your friends
It’s okay, you’ve gotta be happy!
When you take the plunge
and you get the bends
They say you’ve gotta be happy!
When you come up for air
take the pressure off,
let the bad air out.
You have to feel the pain
so you can live again.
You cry, then you can be happy!
When your brain’s real big,
so you’re always bored
boot up, you gotta be happy!
when your bodyguard’s
a robot overlord
cheer up, you’ve gotta be happy!
[Oh, I do wish you would be quieter,
I’m trying to sleep here.
Oh, I wish you’d all sing 4″33′
John Cage helps me sleep, yeah!]
When you’ve two cupcakes
for your whole family
Eat up, you’ve gotta be happy!
When a needed drink
will give you dysentery
bottoms up! You’ve gotta be happy!
When you fill your cup
with troubled waters then
let the poison out
you’ve gotta feel the pain
so you can live again.
You cry, so you can be happy.
[Oh, I’m so depressed,
yet they make me sing.
I’ve pain in my diodes.
Please don’t talk about life or happiness,
I’ve seen it, it’s rubbish]
When you win the fight,
but you lose the war
it’s alright, you’ve gotta be happy!
When your dino friend
is a carnivore
you can’t fight, you’ve gotta be happy!
When you ace your speech,
but forget your pants
look up, you’ve gotta be happy!
When your candy bar
is overrun with ants
throw up, you’ve gotta be happy!
When you’re getting fed up
with sugar-coated pests
let the beasties out
you’re gonna feel the pain
so you can live again.
You know, you’re gonna be happy.
Seven of Diamonds: The Tree
Posted by Angela Brett in Bäume, Discover Ontario, Paris, Writing Cards and Letters on January 25, 2009
As autumn comes I breathe your sanguine red
and tremble at the falling of each leaf.
I’ve wasted nights just sobbing on your bed
of leaves, and vow to fight impending grief.
I wrap you, still alive, to stop the shed,
your shield against the winter, metal leaf.
In spring, I take the helmet from your head,
its aventail a shroud upon the dead.
Two of Clubs: Pretender
Posted by Angela Brett in Johnny English, Writing Cards and Letters on December 1, 2008
This was inspired by my lack of time and Jeff MacDougall’s experiment with FourTrack.
Here‘s a recording of it sung by my Mac.
It’s getting far too close to the end,
I’ve got to write my weekly thing,
but I used up half the weekend
trying to teach my Mac to sing.
So I’ll do a Jeff MacDougall,
and I’ll write a hasty song.
I’ll get all my notes from Google,
and they’ll probably sound all wrong.
But there’s not a thing that I own
that could run FourTrack
’cause I don’t have an iPhone,
but I have a Mac
and I’ve got a MIDI keyboard
that I don’t know how to play.
I don’t know what on Earth’s a C chord,
But I can code C anyway.
I can’t even read a stave, man,
and I don’t know how to sing.
I’m a two of clubs, a caveman
who’s pretending to be king.
Nine of Clubs: Grand Unification
Posted by Angela Brett in CERN, Writing Cards and Letters on October 5, 2008
Note: I wrote this with the tune and sentiment of Tom Smith‘s A Boy and his Frog (mp3) in my head. If you know the tune, please imagine that this poem is sung to the same tune as whichever verses it fits.
You might think that we’re just doing science
With a hadron collider so large.
But we’ve built this electric alliance
to give weight to our positive charge.
Take researchers from every nation,
Let the humans within them collide.
We will find the grand unification
when we see we’re all on the same side.
And with ev’ry race, tongue and religion
we’ll find how to give all the world mass.
If we’d all interact just a smidgen
with the openness through which we pass
we’d see life’s ups and downs become charming and strange,
when we face them head on, and what’s more,
seeking beauty and truth we can make a big change
with small change from the purses of war.
Take the light at the end of the tunnel,
and ensure it goes all the way round,
to illuminate more than the sun’ll,
and enlighten with what we have found:
When you’ve unresolved matters, and not enough kin,
and face too many forces to name,
if you cut out the din, and put energy in,
it turns out that we’re all just the same.
Ten of Clubs: Still Point Five
Posted by Angela Brett in CERN, Writing Cards and Letters on September 28, 2008
This is to be sung to the tune of ‘Still Alive‘ by Jonathan Coulton. I will post a recording, and probably a video, some time in the next few days.
This isn’t TRIUMF
We’re sending a beam through CMS.
Can’t wait to see some novel interactions.
Popular Science
will call up their troubadour(k)y man
To sing in praise of all of us
and he’ll sound better than this.
But there’s no sense cheering over every beam
they’ll just keep appearing till you have an umpteen
when the celebration’s done,
do your calibration run.
Tell the crackpots they’re all still alive.
We’re not yet colliding.
But soon we’ll be lighting up the barrel
with 14 TeV of former protons
We’ll smash them to pieces
and slam every piece into a wire
except the LSP because
it will go all the way through.
Now our points of data come from crystals of lead tungstate,
and we’re out of beta we’re releasing a few years late
but the science gets done,
and more funding will come
now you’ve seen that you’re all still alive.
We’ll find the Higgs boson.
We’ll find that the answer’s forty-two.
Maybe we can even find the question.
We’ll blow up the planet.
That was a joke. ha ha, fat chance.
Anyway, this spaceplane’s great,
let’s try to make it collide.
Look at me still talking when there’s science to do
when I look up there I think I see a mu-mu.
But we need to repair
see you in the new year,
In the meantime the DAQ’s still online.
And believe me we are still online.
We’re taking cosmics and we’re still online
And when there’s beam we will be still online
And ISOLDE will be still online
Because those show-offs had beam all the time.
All the time
still online
King of Clubs: Not TOP
Posted by Angela Brett in CERN, Writing Cards and Letters on September 7, 2008
Sorry, I didn’t get time to write a Thing this week, because I was secretly somehow involved in the anonymous collaboration which created this video, a song based on Don’t Stop by Sarah Bettens with assorted advice for people working at CERN. Luckily, it features a king of clubs, so guess what… since I’m past the middle of the project, I’m counting down from kings to aces from now on.
You can download the video in Quicktime format, an mp3 of the song, the slideshow used to make the video, and the lyrics here.
So now you know why I was taking photos of a rubber duck back in April. I took the photo of it with the king of clubs, in the hope that it would earn me a week off.
Queen of Hearts: Why?
Posted by Angela Brett in Birds of Canada, CERN, Dinosaurier, Discover Ontario, Fische, Holland, Hunde der Welt, Intriguing Development, Ireland, Katzen der Welt, Lyon, Mont Blanc, Paris, Pferde & Ponys, Pilze, Reptilien, Schmetterlinge, St James's Gate, Switzerland, The Best of Switzerland, Tierwelt Europas, Venezia, Wasservögel, Wildvögel, Writing Cards and Letters on August 24, 2008
Why are there poodles?
Why are there cats?
Why are there Bellan wrasse?
Cross-breeding of oodles
For eating of rats
To boost ocean biomass
Why are there leatherbacks?
Why is there beer?
Why is there Notre Dame?
We’ve banned aphrodisiacs
To free us from fear
In an effort to sauver nos âmes.
Is there a god who says, “It’s ’cause I say”?
Is it for people who like it that way?
Is it ’cause particles followed some law?
Is it just random events, nothing more?
Why corythosaurus?
Why Holsteiner horse?
Why are there Cooper pairs?
To kill time before us
To show feats of force
They send thirteen thousand amperes
Why are there wood hedgehogs?
Why are there clothes?
Why are there queens of hearts?
For Lumpi to teach French dogs
To hide what God loathes
So the kings can enjoy their parts
Is there a god who says, “It’s ’cause I say”?
Is it for people who like it that way?
Is it ’cause particles followed some law?
Is it just random events, nothing more?
Why Malahide Castle?
Why’s there Lake Sils?
Why are there tundra swans?
To use a land parcel
It rains, the hole fills
Now there’s no room for mastodons
Why are there butterflies?
Why are there birds?
Why did they bridge the Arve?
It’s so we don’t shut our eyes
To free falling turds
For the sake of appearing suave
Is there a god who says, “It’s ’cause I say”?
Is it for people who like it that way?
Is it ’cause particles followed some law?
Is it just random events, nothing more?
Why Maison du Mayet?
Why are there hares?
Why cruise in Georgian Bay?
It’s a raison de payer
For chic furry wares
‘Cause it’s ever so trendy that way
Why the Venice regattas?
Why the Rhine falls?
Why are there crested grebes?
Dear historical matters
For souvenir stalls
To eat the spare dough in Thebes
Yes to the god who says, “it’s ’cause I say!”
Yes for the people who like it that way.
Yes to the particles following laws
Yes to the random, its wonderful flaws.
Eight of Hearts: Two-part Harmony
Posted by Angela Brett in Holland, Writing Cards and Letters on July 27, 2008
Let’s sing together in our own harmonic,
Let’s cry out all the words we need to say.
Let’s irrigate our souls with liquid tonic
until the final doubt is washed away.
But you’re the star, you’re telling your own story
to crowds of singing parrots, humming birds.
Although I’m just a moon, reflecting glory
I paint my own self-portrait with your words.
You radiate the lyrics from your core
of feelings I can never see inside.
I catch your eye in rapturous rapport,
no matter if our hearts don’t coincide.
You shine to see us moons all sing your song,
We beam to know a star will sing along.
King of Spades: My Favourite Strings
Posted by Angela Brett in CERN, Writing Cards and Letters on June 1, 2008
The following is to be sung to the tune of ‘My Favourite Things’ from The Sound of Music. For those of you who either don’t know the tune, or prefer to listen to something being sung badly than to imagine it being sung well, here is a hastily recorded demo.
Leptons and sleptons and quarks and gluinos,
positrons, Higgs bosons, muon neutrinos.
Some folks will tell you that all of these things
are just vibrations in closed loops of string.
D-branes and p-branes and strings heterotic,
worldsheets and nerd feats and mesons exotic,
Scores of false vacuums and questions they bring,
many more concepts that I can not sing
All existence
from Planck distance
strings can well explain,
and if you don’t think that 1D is enough,
then gen’ralise to membrane.
Don’t tie your strings into everyday chatter.
Don’t tell the truth when they ask what’s the matter.
Ordin’ry people just ask on which fing-
er they should put your new synchrotron ring.
Start off by getting all Klein-and-Kaluzy.
Add more dimensions and then you’ve got SUSY.
Have fun with spinors and Lie groups and rings,
call it a theory of everything.
When they mention
your dimension
doesn’t seem to show,
you simply remind them they’re all curled up small,
and that we will never know.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Please tell me if you do something cool with it.
Creative Output 