Shallow Thoughts : : misc

Akkana's Musings on Open Source Computing and Technology, Science, and Nature.

Tue, 27 Feb 2024

Transposing a Song in Audacity

I've been learning guitar. I've tried several times in the past without much success, concluding that although I love music, making it is just not where my talents lie. But this time I'm following a course (Justin Guitar), doing things more or less in the recommended order rather than jumping around randomly. It's fun, and I'm practicing regularly and feel like I'm making progress.

So far I know about five chords, and surprisingly, there are a lot of good songs you can play with only three to five chords. But if you want to play along with a record, some songs need a capo (one of those little dinguses you can clamp around the guitar's neck) to map the chords to ones that are easy for beginners to play.

I don't have a capo. Justin Guitar has a phone app that supposedly can transpose songs, but I wouldn't know about that, because it doesn't work on my phone, just spins forever any time I try to load a song. But I do have a computer; can't I just take a recording and transpose it?

Yes! It's easy in Audacity.

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[ 14:06 Feb 27, 2024    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]

Mon, 01 Jan 2024

Best Books I Read in 2023

2023 was a good year for books, especially nonfiction.

I only finished twenty books this year. I think that's mostly because I read a lot more nonfiction than usual (tending toward long books and slower reading), and I had no re-reads. Still, quite a bit lower than past years. I guess I've been pretty busy with other things, and tired and zonking out early instead of reading well into the night.

Here are some of the books I enjoyed most this year.

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[ 12:34 Jan 01, 2024    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]

Thu, 14 Dec 2023

New Hobby: Crochet Earmuffs

[Akkana modeling a crochet earmuff] With the cold weather upon us, I've been cranking out a lot of crochet earmuffs.

I'd made a few knitted earmuffs back when I was learning to knit a few years ago. I liked the way they felt and worked — no pressure on my head or ears like with the kind of earmuffs that have a band that goes over the head — but they're tricky to knit, requiring circular knitting with small double-pointed needles and a lot of increasing and decreasing. I'm still not that good at knitting and have a hard time with increases.

It turns out earmuffs are much easier in crochet.

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[ 15:35 Dec 14, 2023    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]

Sat, 12 Aug 2023

Appreciation for Running Water

We were visiting relatives in Colorado when Dave's phone rang. Someone from county utilities, letting us know we had a major water leak at the house, it had been happening for more than a month, and this month's water bill was going to be over $700. Yikes! And ... gee, thanks, for waiting a month to let us know about it.

(Aside: the county recently force-upgraded everyone to new "smart meters" which are supposed to send alerts for problems like this. However, that only works if you can log in and set up an email address — and we'd been going back and forth with the county for months about why the system wouldn't let us set up an account, but nobody in the utilities department seemed to know much about how the online access worked.)

We had them send someone to turn off the water to the house. When we returned home a few days later, we called again to have the water turned back on briefly so we could see what was going on. The leak was somewhere between the meter and the house, making it our responsibility (natch). The county said they had no way of telling precisely where: it could be somewhere under the driveway, or under the garage (ouch!)

It was Friday, so of course there was no chance of persuading anyone to come out and take a look.

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[ 18:00 Aug 12, 2023    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]

Fri, 09 Jun 2023

Painting the Water Tower

[Preparations for Painting the Water Tower] I saw a notice in the paper that they're planning to paint the Barranca school water tower, something it has badly needed for some years. It made me wonder, though, how they did that.

Today I happened to be in the neighborhood and saw the preparations. It's quite an elaborate rig, with a crown of long poles from which hang separate lines that go all the way to the ground. Do the painters rappel down the lines and paint while hanging? What do they do once they get below the "golf ball" and need to paint the ball's underside or the stem?

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[ 18:39 Jun 09, 2023    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]

Sat, 20 May 2023

White Rock Kite Festival

[Big snake kite]

The weather is great for this year's Kite Festival, going on right now at Overlook Park. It's a little hazy, but there's a good wind, plenty to keep the kids' small kits aloft, though the big, fancy kites were struggling a little.

Continuing through Sunday night; if you're in the area, go take a look!

A few photos: White Rock Kite Festival 2023.

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[ 15:43 May 20, 2023    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]

Fri, 10 Feb 2023

Fun with InstaMorph Plastic

Like many cyclists, I always carry a small tire pump on my mountain bike. I've had the pump for many years, and it still works, but the plastic holder that screws into the water bottle cage holder has gotten brittle over the years, and broke a few months ago.

As a stopgap, I lashed the pump to the bike frame with velcro strips, but I was never very happy with that. But you can't buy just the mount for a bike pump; you're supposed to buy a whole new pump.

But you know me: I hate throwing things away, especially plastic things, if I don't have to. And I found the perfect solution.

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[ 13:28 Feb 10, 2023    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]

Sat, 31 Dec 2022

Best Books Read in 2022

It's the last day of 2022, so I guess it's time for a "Best Books" list for 2022.

Note that these are books I read in 2022, not books published in 2022.

2022 was actually a disappointing year, book-wise. I only finished 36 books, about half of my usual number (though only one was a re-read). I'm not sure why the number came out so low. Worse, none of them really excited me or was in the running for an all-time best list. But there were a few worth recommending, plus a couple I want to mention for other reasons, even if they don't really deserve a "best" label.

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[ 15:47 Dec 31, 2022    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]