Mizuiro Jidai

I've just finished watching the first episode of Mizuiro Jidai. If the first episode and the AnimeNFO entry are anything to go by, it seems like one of those slice of life/high-school school/drama/romance shows. It was OK (for something drawn in 1996), but I'm not sure I'm willing to download the next 46 episodes (forty-seven!).

Animesuki | BT Tracker

Tags: Watching Anime

Interactive and Media Programming

As I've mentioned a few times, I'm hoping to work on some materials for computer science education this semester. The gist of my current plans is a core of basic computer science material (very basic data structures and algorithms) backed up by a range of individual and small group projects. I hope to provide a wide enough range of projects to ensure that most students will find something engaging enough that they learn (even in spite of their wanting only to use the Internet).

I'm currently anticipate designing projects using some, if not all, of the following pieces of software:

Haskore

A computer music system based on Haskell.

Pan (or Pan# or one of the several variations on the theme)

A functional graphical processing language similar to Haskell.

Pivotal

A document centred presentation of Haskell.

FunWorlds

An interactive 3D animation package in, you guessed it, Haskell.

You may have noticed a trend in the projects above: they all use, or are closely related to, the Haskell programming language. This is for a number of reasons:

1. I like functional programming, in general, and Haskell, in particular.
2. I don't like the languages usually taught to students (Java, VisualBasic, etc.)
3. I think that a different, more fundamental, approach might help (supported, I think, by the experiences of teachers using SICP in high schools in the U.S.).

We'll see how things pan out. If possible, I'd like to integrate some of the above packages into a single whole. Haskore and one of the portable Haskell variants of Pan, for example, might be integrated with Pivotal to give a relatively simple environment for interactive, multi-media Haskell programming. Haskore, in particular, could benefit extraordinarily from such an integration: the student be able to "code", visualise and listen to their musical compositions from the same program.

Tags: Teaching Programming Projects

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Once More, With Feeling

Still on a musical note (sorry), I just bought Once More, With Feeling the cast album of the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It really demonstrates the versatility of the Buffy cast -- most of the tracks would, in my opinion, be releasable as commercial music. They sing really well for a bunch of actors and Josh Whedon did a really good job on the songs. If you're at all fond of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I recommend you get it.

Tags: Listening Buffy Sountrack Music

Classical-y Music

I've been looking around on iTunes Music Store today and managed to spend more than $20, mainly on classical-y songs.

I started off looking for a good recording of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, my favourite Andrew Loyd Webber musical. A few track from the musical, and another also by Linzi Hateley (who sings the part of the narrator in the London Palladium cast), I moved on to that other staple of the musical genre (or, at least, my taste in musicals): Gilbert & Sullivan. After a few track from a number of renditions of The Pirates of Penzance (The Mastersingers track The Pirates of Penzance is particularly good, I'll have to look at more of their music), I moved on to classical music proper.

I only wound up buying a couple of tracks from the album Enchantment by Charlotte Church (of whom I'll have to buy more) and Ode II Joy (From Symphony No. 9) by OperaBabes (whom I'm also going to have to get more of).

For some reason, I've also been interested in Russian music lately — probably as an outgrowth of the interest in choral works — so I also bought Kalinka from the Alexandrov Red Army Choir.

If anyone has any suggestions of good music in similar vein to the above mentioned track and artists, please leave a comment so that I can chase them up!

Tags: Opera Classical Music Musicals

Suzuka

I've been watching fansubs of the anime series Suzuka lately. Suzuka is about a boy (Yamato Akitsuki), a girl (Suzuka Asahina), their friends and the track team of an athletics oriented high school in Tokyo. It's been a while, but Suzuka reminds me a little of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (another sport-related dramatic romance).

Hopefully, I'll get around to downloading and watching the rest of the series (I've watched 12 of 26) soon.

Animesuki | A.N.N.

Tags: Watching Anime

David and Leigh Eddings

I've just begun rereading that masterpiece of epic fantasy, David and Leigh Eddings' series: The Belgariad. I was given The Pawn of Prophecy as a gift one birthday and it became my "gateway drug" to the realm of fantasy. I've since read it so many times that it has quite literally fallen to pieces (annoyingly as that cover is no longer in print). Even after these ten or so years and probably near three or four times that many readings, it is still able to capture me more completely than nearly any other book I've read.

If you haven't read the Eddings' work yet, you don't know what you're missing. Get thee to a bookshop and grab The Pawn of Prophecy or The Diamond Throne (book one in the Eddings' other great pair of series: The Elenium and The Tamuli).

Tags: Reading Epic Fantasy Novels Books