Thomas Dolby

Tonight kelsin (hi! your 18-year-old photo's so adorable!) went to see Thomas Dolby (of "She Blinded Me With Science" fame) at the Iron Horse. OMG, orgasmatastic! It was so amazing to see how he built the layers of sound: multiple layers of rhythm, keyboard sometimes saved sometimes real-time, voice on top either clean or with chorus or echo effects, occasional sound clips. I was blown away by the fact that he had just some simple sounds saved, and then was creating 90% of it right there as we watched. He was a one-man-band. Well, he had a guy behind the curtain doing the video mixing: prerecorded segements alternating with two cameras atop his keyboard and one head-mounted - developed for the US's War in Iraq, after which explanation he had a protest song with Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend sampling. At another point, he went on for fifteen minutes about SOHO, and while he mistakenly said it was located closer to the Sun than Earth, a minor detail really, I was clapping my hands with glee as he described the effects of solar flares on mankind, and how he tried to map images and flare data to his instruments but it sounded like crap. :-P He then had EIT images in the background during the next song - not real time, though. I don't doubt he could've done it, but the overhead wouldn't've been worth it for the dull pictures we'd get currently - we're just coming out of solar minimum. I was geeking out on two levels, it was awesome. Add the rockin', his slick aviator goggles, and awesome moves (man, for a 40-something he's got good hip thrusts!), and I was NOT creaming my pants, no sirree T$. :* I wish he had CDs for sale, I need to buy them ALL.

Cute Overload

While Cute Overload has some cute photos, I really wish they'd censor out the unsafe ones. They're just perpetuating it.

Name Search

I have an unusually spelled name. If you go to GoodSearch, Google, Yahoo, or MSN, or whatever search engine you prefer, and type in my name, without quotes even, 95% of the hits are me. The bottom of the second page you start to get some questionable ones, things about spaceships with my name on them and wikis and lesbians, but even then I suspect they may be me anyway. (This is why I discourage those of you in cyberland who know my full name from POSTING it, or even parts of it.)

Today I searched on my name, via Google and found an astronomy forum post - my name, astronomy, gotta be me. The original forum is down (at least right now), but Google archives everything. It read...

I've got Zandperl Lastname to thank for my love of astronomy- THANK YOU ZANDPERL!!! I was so lucky to get a teacher like her.

OMG. *blush* That's awesome! I want the forum to come back up so I can troll and see if I can figure out who this is. It's not clear what year it was posted, but the person joined the forums in March 2004, so it could've been from anywhere...

ETA:
The forum's back up. They're from Rochester - making it possibly when I TA'd as an undergrad though unlikely since I wasn't the only one in charge of the astro classes, or possibly one of the astrocamps I did back at my Alma Mater, but not guaranteed. Their LJ name is gefilte_ghoti, and they're on various "spacefem" -named things, making me think it's a Jewish girl.

ETAA
Their only LJ friend just posted a survey with all their biographical info. As that person is 19, it is likely that gefilte_ghoti is as well, making her an astrocamper, or a nerdcamper.

And with that, I'm stumped. A virtual cookie to the first person to identify gefilte_ghoti for me!