ResearchBuzz

I get back after two weeks and have a huge mailbox full of site suggestions and an even fuller RSS feed reader. Where to start — where to start — oh, what the heck, let’s start with Mozart. Mozart’s works are now available in an online catalog at http://dme.mozarteum.at/mambo/index.php .

There’s not much to the front page except a couple of news bits and a terms of service that you must agree to in order to search the catalog. Once done, you’ll be taken to a German search form — look for the “english” link to find the English version. You can search through ten catalogs of work, searching by category, musical key, editor, or keyword.

A keyword search for Apollo found three results, one from theatre music and two from orchestral works. Results include both music and commentary; bear and mind that a lot of the information is in German. Looking at Apollo and Hyacinthos, I found two information links. One, an i icon, provided information on the music. The other icon, a musical note, provided what appeared to be background an commentary on the musical pieces (my German is pretty limited) and then the written out — handwritten — music. I must say that the music looks more appealing to me scribbled out in someone’s handwriting than printing.

If I had more background in music I would probably appreciate this more. If I remembered more of my high school German I’d probably appreciate it more as well.

Okay, I was tagged by Danny, so I guess I’ll play. Warning: I am a very dull person.

1) I am a DDR freak. I bought the game when it first came out and have purchased every version for the Playstation and PS2. Occasionally I will go to the mall and be That Old Lady Who Plays DDR.

2) I used to write fiction when I was younger but haven’t done it for ages. I want to get back to writing fiction but I’m not sure how (been writing nonfiction for too long.)

3) When I was a kid, my parents owned several of Bill Cosby’s albums from the late 1960s and early 1970s. I listened to them so many times that I got letter-perfect on some of the routines. However there were many routines and punchlines that I didn’t understand until I was much, much older (like the one about Midol…)

4) I have a cat whom I have taught to drop back for a pass, fetch, lay down flat, stand up, and kill bugs on request. (”On Command” is way overstating it.) When we first got her (she was a stray) our house was not kittenproofed so she had to live in our bedroom for a couple of weeks. I figured she would want company while I was at work so I left the TV on. The only channel I could think of that wouldn’t have loud or disturbing noises was the Home Shopping Network. Because of that (I think) our cat does not meow; she murmurs, grumbles, chuffs, and occasionally gurgles, constantly frustrated in her attempts to sell us something for $49.99….

5) I read westerns. Isn’t that weird? I’m the only person I know who reads westerns. It started when I really wanted something to read and there was NOTHING available. I gave in to a Louis L’Amour book that was lying around — I think it was Fallon. Anyway, I’ve read almost all the L’Amour books. I also love Elmer Kelton (he’s an amazing writer) and Elmore Leonard. I generally don’t read series, though I did read Kelton’s “Badger Boy” books. Currently I’m reading a lot of Robert Conley, a Cherokee who writes some funny, funny Westerns. Look for the Kid Parmlee books if you like screwball comedy.

The best part about this is that now I get to tag other people. Okay, I will tag Jessamyn, Steven, the mysterious Librarian in Black, Karen, the Free Range Librarian, and, to go off in a completely different direction, Bill Harris.

I noticed when I was going through my RSS feeds that the Daypop Top 40 was once again generating entries (the feed was last updated in my reader on May 2.)

I went to Daypop and apparently the search engine is back — the top 40 looks great, very low spam, though the Word Bursts are generating very odd results (”mattered”?)There’s also a top news link.

Of course Daypop still has a search engine. I went and ran a few searches and it looks like Daypop has been indexing for a while — the results are fresh and recent. Unfortunately Daypop suffers from indexing entire pages instead of RSS feeds — there are many times when you get results that are nothing but mentions in link lists (full-page indexing also means that sorting by date doesn’t really work.) There also don’t appear to be too many blogs indexed at this point. On the other hand the results that you get are pretty spam-free, though certain trigger words (drugs) will get some gunk in your search results.

When I first noticed that Daypop was back, I went to the site and then went to the weblog to find out what happened. Unfortunately the most recent entry on the blog is over a year old, so your guess is as good as mine.

Whatever the case, I’m glad Daypop appears to be on the scene again. Welcome back Dan!