Oh wait, you mean you are having difficulty figuring something like that out? Yeah, it’s tough isn’t it.

Anyway, thought you might like to know that I do have some app ideas, I’m just not sharing them because I’m hoping to find the time to develop them myself.

If you are looking for some of what I’ve been tinkering around with, check out fictionalities.com — I haven’t worked on it lately (in all honestly), but I thought you might find it interesting, especially if you are interested in seeing some fun, artsy things you can do with just JavaScript.

Artist Jorge Colombo drew that on his iPhone in about an hour. Wow.

[via Gizmodo]

• Violinist Itzhak Perlman
• Cellist Yo-Yo Ma
• Clarinetist Anthony McGill
• Pianist Gabriela Montero

The piece pulls in a great American song called “Simple Gifts” — a nineteenth century Shaker melody that was popularized by perhaps the greatest of American composers, Aaron Copeland (a favorite of the newly inaugurated President).

You can watch and listen to the performance courtesy of Hulu, below. I have also provided the unsung lyrics to the clear melody. The melody comes out a little ways into the song with the clarinet — after the initial violin-led “Air” opening, an opening that keeps the song from being disjointed from the not-so-rosy-times America finds herself in. These lyrics and their “Simple Gifts” theme, however, remind us that our circumstances need not define us, nor are they what is important in life:

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
    ’Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
    ’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

I appreciate the way she appreciates Narnia and find it interesting to consider Christmas as a conglomeration of various traditions from over the years. Given C.S. Lewis’s appreciation for the ways in which the literature he studied did similiar things, that does make some sense, and seems apparent given the various literary and mythical traditions he pulls into his Narnia novels.

Of course, as a Christian, I necessarily see Christmas as primarily a time to remember how God came to the earth like even the least of us, to show us how much he loves us. When I read the Chronicles of Narnia, I similarly cannot help but find the often beautiful ideas of a creator who would give his life for even the worst of us children. I look forward to giving my children Narnia one day, soon!

[Disclaimer: a click on most of the links in this post will cause your browser to try to open the iTunes program on your computer in order to access the requested page.]

All of the music is older, in other words from pre-2007, going back to 2004 (and occasionally, 1973, when Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon was released). The selection is also not unlimited: I count ninety-two albums for sale — each at a cost of $7.99.

So if you were waiting for something cheaper than Justin Timberlake to come along, now you don’t have to wait – you can get the real thing!

Here’s what the iTunes store has to say about their sale:

As the iTunes catalog expands daily, we’re faced with a massive amount of music that might feel a bit daunting to some. We’ve decided to shuffle some things around and have a sale — and you’re all invited. We handpicked some of the biggest-selling iTunes albums of all time, and dropped the price to $7.99. Enjoy.

I’m not quite sure how discounting their “biggest-selling” albums is going to do anything to make the volume of music in their catalog less daunting, but I certainly ain’t going to complain about the discounts!

[Disclaimer Numero Dos: I in no way want you to support the music of Justin Timberlake. Please do NOT buy his music. Get something like this instead.]

Of course, if you click on the Photos link, in the site navigation, you can look at all of them. If you’re looking to burn a few hours, I highly recommend it.

The pictures, while displayed here, are actually hosted on a site called Flickr. I use the site because I can put a lot of pictures up, I can easily use a plug-in to show them here, Flickr allows me to organize them, tag them, label them, etc.

Now, my main purpose here is not to say, “oooh, it’s such a great thing.” My designs are more selfish — the site allows you to sign up for free, and I was thinking, gosh, it would be great for other people to put their pictures on Flickr, then we could all be friends and share our pictures!

It’s quite simple. If you’d like to view my photos, just go to flickr.com/photos/schellack. If you want to view others’, particularly others’ interesting pics, try going to flickr.com/explore. Lastly, if you want to see how Flickr works, what it does, how to sign up, etc., just go to flickr.com/tour.

Should you want to sign up and find some more photos of mine that aren’t displayed elsewhere, I just might add you to my friends list, which would allow you to see those photos that I don’t particularly like to show to the whole world, namely those of my friends and family.

Happy Mother’s Day as well, in advance. I’m planning to post some more this weekend on what Mother’s Day has in store for this year, but in the mean time, check out the “Celebrating Motherhood” post on Flickr’s Blog. It’s got a link to a pool of pictures on moms.

The songs sound like Derek Webb, which is a good thing if you like the acoustic guitar. The title track, Mockingbird, does sound like other songs either Webb or his former band, Caedmon’s Call, have done, which is ironic given the song’s lyric, “I am like a mockingbird. I’ve got no new song to sing.” The point is not meant to be taken literally, of course — the idea is that Webb is not saying anything new, which harks to Ecclesiastes 1:9: “…there is nothing new under the sun.”

Many of the songs are more political in nature, such as In God We Trust. I particularly like the line, “In God we trust, even though he favors the nation-state.” The song Love Is Not Against the Law begins with the lyric, “Politics are love.” That song in particular takes an unpolitical view of politics.

Visit www.freederekwebb.com for more info and to get the download.

If anyone might happen to know a pianist, bassist, and cello player (cellist?) that could play something like this, I’d love to be able to make a real recording of the piece one day to actually hear what I wrote. I in no way am a skilled enough musician to be able to play this piece, and it is pretty difficult even for an experienced player (on each of the three aforementioned instruments). I still have the sheet music and would love to be able to share it!