Inter densas

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Currently listening to Inter Densas Deserti Meditans, a motet from the Chantilly codex. It’s rare that I’m actually able to enjoy a piece which is relatively dissonant for its genre, as compared to other polyphonic music from that period. Of course, some dissonance is to be expected, as the “diplum” and “triplum” voices in these early motets were often based on settings of completely different texts sung simultaneously, but Inter densas is something else, almost cosmic in its atonality — which is a rare effect for a 14th-Century motet.

Text and translation of the motet here. I’m listening to it on the “Gothic Music” CD by the Early Music Consort of London. Apparently Van Nevel’s Huelgas Ensemble has a more recent recording; I must get my hands on that. The Huelgas Ensemble’s renditions of early renaissance works are absolutely sublime.

Cancelling AOL

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Note: I AM NOT WITH AOL. This is a personal weblog post about me, Paulo, cancelling my AOL subscription following unsavory experiences with their software and service. If you arrived here via a search for instructions on how to do it, go here:

Cancelling AOL.

I just cancelled my AOL, and none of the infamous horror stories came to pass. The guy on the line was courteous and thorough, even through the usual AOL service sales pitches. I’m wondering if this means that, when my service expires, I will lose my pre-existing AIM screen name which I used to sign up. No great loss, I suppose. I have others.

McChurch

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Hey, why don’t we all go visit our local McBaptist for worship and window shopping? (link from Jim)

I can see the advantages of having these megachurches around in terms of community and employment, but remember: there’s a reason Jesus visited the Temple with a cord whip and not a purse full of silver pieces: “Make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise!”

Manila Paper

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One of the questions I’m asked most when people find out I’m from Manila is, “Is that where Manila paper comes from?”

I never really thought of it, so I did some info-hunting, and found this: Manila paper is made from Manila hemp, which is indeed grown mainly in the Philippines; not the city of Manila strictly, but yes, from our country. It is not really hemp, but a fiber from a tree of the banana family, which we know more familiarly as “abaca.”

“Manila Hemp” in the Columbia Encylopedia.

Me as an Array()

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$paulo = array(

'head' => 'hurts',

'stomach' => 'making weird noises',

'fingers' => 'hangnails',

'mind' => 'sleepy',

'thinking' => 'Why does Mozilla carry inline text properties over into table cells?'

);

Pinning OOP in a death-grip

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I still didn’t understand OOP for PHP this morning, but I decided to take the plunge and start writing a class for a website navigation interface, using a series of arrays to print out a tabbed multilevel menu. And as I went along, suddenly all the concepts fell into place, and I understood! Learning by doing really is the way to go.

Onward, then, to the next struggle: making practical use of multidimensional associative arrays without losing the very essence of my being in the convoluted, obfuscated mazes of nested values and variables.