An account of my Musical Keys session on Saturday and a meme that I created.
INTRODUCTION
Saturday was a Musical Keys day in King’s Lynn. This post shows you what I did during that session.
RETURN TO REAPER
Those who read my post about the session on January 6th will recall that in that session I was on a keyboard, which when you add Christmas in to the equation meant six weeks since I had used Reaper, so I was particularly pleased to get back to using Reaper. Once I had re-acquainted myself with what I had already done I moved on and created another major piece. I will met some photographs of my Reaper screens tell the rest of the tale:
The first five pictures are from the first half of the session.
These last five shots deal with my new big piece.
THE MEME
A number of recent posts on this site have been about or have touched on the themed of “autism acceptance months” (here,here and here). During the weekend I created an #autismacceptancemonths meme for sharing on social media which has had some success, and for the benefit of those of my readers not on social media I reproduce it below:
An excellent piece from a blogger who is going through the process of diagnosis – it is in keeping with the theme of #autismacceptancemonths brought to my attention by Jennifer Lisi. Please read it in full and post comments on the original.
Sharing a wonderful post on the theme of autism accpetance from Luke Beardon. As this is a pure sharing post comments are closed – please comment on the original.
INTRODUCTION
Yesterday I was inspired by a wonderful piece of work done by Jennifer Lisi to create a blog post titled “Autism Acceptance Months“. Well I was not alone in being inspired by it, and I now share with you a post created by Luke Beardon titled “Inspired by Jennifer Lisi“. Because this is a pure sharing post I am closing it for comments – to comment please visit Luke’s post, linked to above and in the next section.
INSPIRED BY JENNIFER LISI
Below is the opening of the post, and a screenshot showing a bit more of it:
Some stuff about the ODI at the MCG, a neurodiversity quote, a mathematical puzzle and some photographs
INTRODUCTION
After the horrors of the Ashes test series it makes a change to write about a winning performance from an England cricket team in Australia. I also have a few other things to share of course, including more of my photos.
RECORDS GALORE AT THE MCG
The pitch at the MCG for the first of five One Day Internationals (50 overs per side) was a vast improvement of the strip they had produced for the test match, and the players produced a match worthy of the occasion. England won the toss and chose to field. England;s improvement in this form of the game since their horror show at the 2015 World Cup has been such that even before they started batting an Australia tally of 304 seemed inadequate.
England got away to a quick start, although Jonny Bairstow did a ‘Vince’ – looking very impressive for 20-odd and then giving it away. Alex Hales also fell cheaply, but Joe Root came out and played excellently, while Jason Roy produced the major innings that England needed from one of their top order. When his score reached 124 Roy had an England ODI record for the MCG, and that soon became an all-comers MCG record, to match Cook’s all-comers test record score for the MCG. When he went from 171 to 175 Roy establish a new England ODI individual scoring record. His dismissal for 180, with 200 just a possibility was a disappointment but by then the result was not in doubt, and even the loss of a couple more wickets in the dying overs served only to reduce the final margin. England won by five wickets with seven deliveries to spare, and it was a much more conclusive victory than those figures suggest because three of the wickets came with the outcome already settled courtesy of Roy. Joe Root also deserves credit for his support role to Roy’s pyrotechnics, a selfless display that saw him finish just short of his own hundred when the winning runs were scored. The Test squad has a lengthy shopping list of new players needed (two openers given Cook’s age, at least one new batsman for the middle order, a couple of genuine quicks and a serious spinner at minimum), but the ODI squad is in splendid fettle.
A CLASSIC NEURODIVERSITY COMMENT
This comes courtesy of twitter:
PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERLUDE
A PUZZLE
Those of you who have read Alison’s response to my nominating her for a Blogger Recognition Award will have noticed that she specifically mentioned enjoying the puzzles that sometimes feature here. Here courtesy of the mathematical website brilliantis another:
PHOTOGRAPHS
The colony of muscovy ducks that I first saw in late 2017 are still in residence along a section of the Gaywood River that is close to where it enters The Walks en route to becoming the Millfleet, in which guise it flows into the Great Ouse…
First of all, I’d like to tell you all how pleased and surprised I am to have been nominated for a Blogger Recognition Award by Thomas of Aspiblog! I always see people doing these, and now that I’ve been given the opportunity, I feel so included! One of my favorite parts of blogging is getting to participate in my community, and the fact that I’ve connected with enough people to be included in something like this, well, it makes me feel like I’m doing something right.
What does Stim the Line mean anyway?
Stim the Line began as a compromise. My therapist, who is an autism specialist, get it into her head that I needed to write a book. She insisted that I was self aware, good at explaining things (especially to neurotypical people), and that people empathize with me. I pointed out that I’d never written anything, ever…
My official response to being nominated for a blogger recognition award.
INTRODUCTION
My thanks to thetshirtblogger for nominating for a blogger recognition award. This post is my official response to that nomination. This is the tshirtblogger’s own description of what they do:
The Tee Shirt Blogger focuses on diversity in the main, and rather the celebration of diversity, in many ways it is no different to my other blogs, l love the intrinsic rawness and freshness that eclecticism offers us in life for all the good, bad and of course downright ugly.
ABOUT ASPI.BLOG
I blog about a wide range of stuff, with my principal interests being cricket, public transport, nature, science, politics, autism and photography. Nearly all the posts that I produce feature some of my photographs, and this one will be no exception. As branch secretary of the National Autistic Society West Norfolk and an autistic person I have strong opinions on autism and they way in which autistic people are treated, and this frequently comes into the blog. When I share something from another source I will always acknowledge that fact, and link to my original source. If I make an error in a blog post I will correct it, and give the correction at least as much prominence as the initial error had (for an example of me calling myself out go here). For more detail please visit my page “About Aspiblog“.
PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERLUDE – BIRDS
These were taken on Monday:
ADVICE FOR NEW BLOGGERS
Your blog is yours – blog the way you want to.
Visit lots of other blogs and leave likes and comments – this helps you get noticed and increases the number of people who read your blog.
MY NOMINEES
I could just list my 10 nominees, but I actually going to say something about each of them as well.
Fargaregardsanna. Anna’s pet subjects include nature, her home town of Trosa and her artwork. As a sample of her work I give this recent post titled “Save Trosa nature – Behåll och stärk Trosas natur“, which features a picture she created based on a comment of mine:
Cindy Knoke. Cindy is a photographer with a great interest in nature. Her most recent post is titled “Punto Tombo~“.
Ioinvaggio. An Italian blog which regularly features lovely pictures. I give you a link to a post titled “Io sono Volpina Blu”
The remaining nominees all have some connection to autism, starting with stimtheline, and by way of an introduction I give you “8FavoriteQuotes About Autism“
Yarn and Pencil. This blog covers autism, sensory issues, knitting and various other stuff. As an introduction I offer you “Dunster Castle“.
Autism Mom. An excellent blog about one family’s experience with autism. I have an additional reason for including this one – to show that autistic people do not object in principle to neurotypical parents of autistic children writing about their children – we object to neurotypical parents of autistic children writing in a way that contributes to the ‘othering’ of autistic people. Thus the post to which I link to introduce you to this blog is the self-explanatory titled “I Want to be Called Autistic“.
International Badass Activists. This was American Badass Advocates, run by Eve Hinson, when I started following. It has since become first American Badass Activists and then International Badass Activists, while Eve Hinson has become Eve Reiland. I have been introduced to many interesting and important stories by this blog. As an introduction here is her Autistic Union Pledge.
Finally, we come to thesilentwaveblog. This splendid blog is run by Laina, who also has blog specifically for sharing aspergian/autistic writing called Laina’s Collection. As an introduction to thesilentwaveblog I give you my all-time favourite from that site, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Neurotypicality“.
PHOTOGRAPHIC INTERLUDE TWO: MUSCOVY DUCKS
PARTCIPATION IN THE BLOGGER RECOGNITION AWARD
These are the requirements for those who wish to participate in the Blogger Recognition Award:
1. Show your gratitude to the person who nominated you and provide a link back to the person’s blog. 2. Give a brief story on your blog. 3. Share two or more pieces of advice for beginner bloggers. 4. Choose 10 other bloggers to nominate. 5. Comment on each blog, letting them know they’ve been nominated and provide a link to your award post.
An account of the first Musical Keys session of the new year and some autism related links.
INTRODUCTION
This post comprises two elements – one an account of the first Musical Keys session of 2018 and the other sharing some excellent recent stuff about autism. Because it is an autism themed post I am using #RedInstead text (scarlet for headings and links, maroon for body text).
MUSICAL KEYS
Musical Keys is an activity run for autistic people who enjoy music. Generally speaking it is run fortnightly, with a session for youngsters between 3PM and 3:45PM and a session for older participants from 4PM to 5PM. I had initially been expecting to renew my acquaintance with Reaper (a computer program for composing music – see here for more details) but circumstances dictated otherwise, and I actually ended up on a…
KEYBOARD
This machine can function as a wide range of instruments/voices and in a wide range of styles, and I explored a lot of the instruments in the course of the time I spent on it.
John, one of the two people who run these sessions, showed me how to play chords as opposed to single notes, and I experimented with playing varying numbers of notes simultaneously, and using the whole range of the keyboard.
I created a few chords where the notes played could also form words, such as face/cafe, cabbage etc. I enjoyed making the acquaintance of this keyboard and learning something of its capacities.
These notes could form the word ‘cabbage’ (there being 2 as, 2 bs, 1c, 1e and 1g. Kirsten Murray, who helps John to run the sessions, took this picture with my camera.Here you can see the notes – I played this with my left hand, while photographing with my right.A close up the central screen.The screen with more of its surrounds, including detail about the ‘voice’ settings.
AUTISM RELATED LINKS
This section starts with a post from Rhi that I regard as being the last word on “mild autism”, published under the title “Autscriptic: Mild Autism“.
I have linked to a number of reviews of Judith Newman’s book “To Siri With Love”, although since I have not read the book I can offer no direct comment about it, and here are a few more pieces about that book:
AN ANTI-AUTISTIC HATE GROUP
MASQUERADING AS AN AUTISM CHARITY
The organisation who are the subject of this little section go by the name of Autism Speaks, who you will also see referred to as Autism $peaks, Auti$m $peak$ and A$ in various places.
If you interact at all with social media, you’ll know that quotes are everywhere. They’re usually posted on top of images on mountains or sunsets, and are more often than not credited to ‘anonymous’. Not to say there aren’t some good quotes out there, especially ones that describe experiences, instead of forcing vague positivity on the reader. It can be hard to sort through Autism quotes, because a large percentage of them are made about Autistic children by Neurotypical adults. These often border on inspiration porn- and they infuriate me.
So, in order to combat these, I’d like to share some quotes about Autism that I enjoy.
So here they are! If I had to pick one, I think that the square peg one is my favorite, but there’s some may quotes out there, that I’ve probably missed some great ones! So, dear reader, if you’ve got a quote you…
Happy new year everyone. This post will give you a few hints as to what you can look forward to in 2018 on aspi.blog.
ASPI.BLOG STYLE GUIDE
Headings will generally be in a cycle that runs red/green’purple, although this is subject to variation in certain circumstances.
Body text will always be in black unless I am writing about autism, in which case I will use #RedInstead.
When sharing content from another site I will always link to the host site and the specific post and where possible will mention the author by name – such links will be a different colour from regular body text and will be both bold and underlined.
It will be a very rare post that does not congtain photographs.
LIKELY SUBJECTS FOR 2018
Autism
Public Transport
Nature
Science
Religion
Cricket
Books
Photography
I will also probably find other things to blog about in 2018.
PHOTOGRAPHS
A COUPLE OF CLOSING QUESTIONS
Please feel free to use the comments to answer the questions below?
aspiblog 