The Mandelbear's Musings

Hmm. Not too bad of a week, though I did spend much of it depressed. I got myself an early Father's Day present in the form of a refurb 10" Galaxy Tab 3. I also upgraded my netbook to Ubuntu 14.04. Both had glitches at first; the tablet is back to normal after I removed a couple of apps, one of which was apparently slowing it down to the point where the touchscreen became unresponsive.

Quick tip: if the touchscreen works fine for a little while after a reboot, then becomes unresponsive, blame an app that's hogging the CPU. Some of the apps out there are absolute crap.

Turns out dentists these days are making crowns by milling them out of a solid block of ceramic with a CNC mill. Cool!

Yesterday I had a pretty good session with my doctor -- or rather my doctor's substitute while my doctor is out on maternity leave. Labwork, advice, and a higher dose of antidepressant. Hopefully that will help.

Notable quotes of mine from elsenet: (wisdom from the middle-aged bear?) "Balm throwers as the opposite of bomb throwers." "#NotAllChristians sounds a lot like #NotAllMen." The latter sparked an interesting discussion on FB, with thoughtful people pointing out that whether it's meant as derailing or educational depends on the intended audience. Me, I'm not a Christian, so...

( raw notes, with links )

Monday was pretty good, except for a couple of red flags. Productive at work, for once, with a full afternoon of coding (writing a makefile that makes RSS feeds -- hee!). That was fun.

After sleeping on it, I ordered a TASCAM US-800, which Musician's Friend has on sale this month. Linux support is a little iffy, but at that price for a USB-powered interface with six mic preamps, I figure it's worth the risk.

And a short walk (it was cold and moisty), and some music practice.

And I forgot to mention it in Sunday's notes, but Colleen has actually started sewing! Cut out a set of PJ bottoms, all by herself on the scooter.

But.

At 11:30ish I had a major adrenaline spike. Out of the blue, as far as I could tell. In some people, I suppose it would have been a panic attack; fortunately there are some major advantages to being almost completely unaware of my emotions.

And sometime in the afternoon, I started getting neuropathy symptoms, specifically a burning sensation in the sole of my right foot when I walked on it. DO NOT LIKE!

There are good links in the notes; check them out. I should get to work soon.

( raw notes )

Yesterday I ordered an SM Pro Audio PR8E 8 Channel Mic Preamp from AMS. Got the last one in stock, and free shipping. It'll go perfectly with the line mixer I got a couple of weeks ago, and one of the 8-channel soundcards. Has combination XLR/phone jacks, so it'll work for an arbitrary mix of either mics or instruments.

It's unlikely to be here in time for Tres Gique's rehearsal session next weekend (!!), but that's OK because nothing else is ready, either. We are, however, pretty far along on getting the entertainment corner of the living room cleared out enough to practice in.

Went to Santana Row (the local very upscale shopping center) with the flower_cat and chaoswolf for their "first annual Pear Festival". No big deal -- basically just a couple of craft booths added to their usual Sunday farmer's market. Had a good lunch, though. Did a little window shopping, and some actual shopping in Borders. Not too fond of chain bookstores, but it's the one that's there. The Cat got a couple of cookbooks for the Wolfling, and I picked up a copy of The Children of Hurin, which for some reason I never got around to buying when it came out.

After that we swapped daughters and went to Sports Basement to see whether we could fit the two of them in shoes. Got a pair of New Balance for the Y.D.; the Cat's feet (high-arched, extra wide, and somewhat swollen) proved impossible to fit. But she's promised to look for shoes with real arch support -- I think it'll help with her knee, hip, and back problems. I got yet another pair of Superfeet arch supports, so now I have them for all three of the shoes I wear on a regular basis.

Unlike my first pair of Superfeet a couple of years ago, I don't seem to have had any trouble getting used to these.

My order from Musician's Friend arrived today; the main item was the Extrene Isolation headphones. (Browncoats will appreciate the URL: SerenityHeadphones.com. Unfortunately, it immediately redirects to ExtreneHeadphones.com, but it's the thought that counts.)

The product page on MF claims 28dB of isolation; I believe them. They're not only quiet, but comfortable -- big, deep, comfy cups that fit around your ears. They're tight, but I think they'd be OK for an hour or so. Comfortable even wearing glasses.

I'll be leaving this pair at work, because the office is pretty noisy. But I'll be getting another pair for home, for recording. A couple of times I noticed a little leakage from the headphones on overdubbed tracks. Not enough to be a problem, but I'd really like to be able to crank up the monitor volume without having to worry about it getting into the track.

The Zoom H2 I ordered two Saturdays ago arrived this afternoon, too late for me to show it off at our 2pm group meeting, but early enough to mostly destroy my productivity after that. It's pretty nice.

It has its limitations. The recording medium is an SD card (or up to a 4GB SDHD card); since it's DOS formatted the max file size is 2GB. At two channels x 24 bits x 44.1kHz a 2GB card will give me a shade over 2 hours (based on the fact that the display shows 32 minutes for an empty 512GB card). Easily enough for a typical concert set, but I'd have to swap cards if there were two hour-long concerts back-to-back. They're getting cheap. I get the same two hours recording 4 tracks onto a 4GB card.

Of course, if I want lots of recording time I can always switch it over to MP3 mode.

It takes line or microphone in, which of course resetricts it to 2 channels. For what I intend to do with it, it's fine. Making it pretend to be a USB drive isn't completely trivial, but it's close enough (plug it in with the power off, and press a button); fortunately card readers are ubiquitous (except that I can't seem to find mine at the moment...)

So far I've only tried a little hand-held, spoken word recording; it sounds fantastic, to my (distinctly non-golden) ears. It's nicely pocket-sized, and has a camera tripod mount (with a "mic clip adapter" -- basically a conical piece of plastic -- that screws into it). Has a 9vdc adapter, and runs on two AA batteries.

On the whole a fantastic little toy tool. I look forward to playing with using it in the near future. A review will be coming soon -- after I get done with the shipping!

Discussing the Zoom H4 in comments to this post by catsittingstill, I realized that the soon-to-be-shipped H2 was a lot closer to what I really need for field recording.

( I want this. [image] ) ( Technical trade-offs )

The fact that it's $100 cheaper than the H4 doesn't hurt. I'll probably wait for reviews, but I strongly suspect that there's a Zoom H2 in my future.

Aug. 22 14:38 It can only send 2 channels x 16 bits over USB, but it can be powered from USB, meaning you can use a MintyBoost to extend your battery life.

Took my new little UP3 ogg player out for my walk this morning. Five miles again (might actually be a little longer, or I may just be walking more slowly than I used to). Nice and clear. There was a nasty moment when I heard childrens' voices over "Paper Pings", but it wasn't there when I checked again on the way home. Not on the CD, which I was playing in the car, nor on the player when I pulled over by the Rose Garden and gave it a careful listen. Must have been in the background when I was walking.

Came home (after looking for whistles at Guitar Center and coming up empty, as expected) and looked online. Turns out A whistles are generally considered "low whistles" and are somewhat scarce, though I turned them up at Susato who seem to have a very complete and not terribly expensive line-up.

The best website I've found so far appears to be Chiff & Fipple: The Tinwhistle Internet Experience. From the FAQ:

Q: What is a tinwhistle?

A: Ok. The tinwhistle, also called a pennywhistle, a tin whistle, a penny whistle, or just plain "whistle," is an end-blown fipple flute which utilizes the 6-hole, "simple" flute fingering system. This is an old system that predates modern "Boehm" flutes. In popular usage, the word "fipple" often refers to the sound generating system in which air is blown through a channel, split by a blade--which causes turbulence in the area--which produces vibration--which produces sound. And so on. The 6-hole system consists of open, unkeyed holes, normally covered by your fingers and uncovered in various patterns to produce notes. The 6-hole system also appears on instruments such as fifes, bamboo flutes, 10-speed bicycles and many Tex-Mex chili dishes.

I started looking for an A whistle because I've been hearing a countermelody for "Someplace in the Net" that I think would work well on a whistle. But even if I'd found one, and even if I could play it straight off without practicing (HAH!), I don't think there's time to get it onto the CD, which is close enough to done that I'm actively looking for things not to fix. For example, the drum parts on "Guilty Pleasures" and "Wannabe" would benefit from fixing a couple of missed beats. Worthwhile? Probably not. If I started tweaking those I might not come up for air until next week sometime. That would be bad.

After the album is in the can, I'm going to get back to flute, recorder, and whistle. Really. Meanwhile, I have verified that my Yamaha recorder can be tuned a quarter-tone flat. Evil is possible. OK, it's not as potentially evil as what you could do with a 12-string.

Tracks worked on this afternoon: "Little Computing Machine": pulled up the guitar part a little. "Vampire Megabyte": pulled up a too-quiet word at the start of the last verse. Decided that "Daddy's World" is just fine without a percussion part. So I can stick a fork in that one, too.

I am not going to be recording with a laptop anymore if I can avoid it. Having to fuss with mic and power cables, recording software that doesn't remember what input device you prefer, filenames, folders and all the rest, I'm going to go simple. Not entirely clear whether I can get away with just a text UI, 4-line LCD, and an ARM-based SBC, but it should be possible.

It's also not entirely clear how long I can run the UA25 and a laptop hard drive on a battery; I'll see what I can do with a 7.2V drill battery. For air travel... Probably ok if I don't carry it on. The whole thing should fit in a 1U rack-mountable box, or pretty nearly depending on how thick the UA25 is..

I've been coughing all day, mostly with the feeling that I have a lump of crud stuck in my throat. At this point I have a headache and a scratchy throat, and feel as though something has eaten half of my brain. Zombie cold, definitely.

Went in to work for a short day this morning, and managed a reasonable walk. Left out the hill, though -- last thing I wanted was to be breathing hard.

Didn't do much actual work. Got into a couple of good discussions, though, and ripped some pretty good tracks off hvideo's video recording of my Baycon 2006 concert. (The link may eventually lead to a directory, but right now it's just dangling out in the breeze.) I'll use the ones taken off the soundboard -- they're mono, but much cleaner than the ones recorded out in the audience with a handheld videocam. The gig bag for my Vagabond travel guitar arrived -- it looks slightly less weapon-like than the original one, though only slightly, but seems more solidly built. And it's black, with a red lining. So I'm happy.

Ripping DVDs and splitting half-gigabyte audio files is a heck of a lot faster and smoother at work on my Pentium D machine with 2GB of RAM. Especially now that I'm using an 800MHz C3. Sure, it's quiet, but... I think I see a dual-core 64-bit CPU in my future. Next year.

Just got a tracking number for my Vagabond gig bag! It should be here by the end of next week.

So I'll have a bag for my travel guitar that hopefully does not look like it contains an assault weapon. Since I'm travelling by air to GAFilk, this is a Good Thing.

instructables : Jackhammer Headphones

These home-made hifi headphones work as well or better than Bose noise-cancelling headphones.
Cost: $20
Time to make: one minute.
Difficulty: none.
Unlike the Bose model, these block outside noise instead of cancelling it.

Basically you just buy good hearing protectors, and install the speakers from cheap phones in them. Not as good-sounding as my $99 pair of Sennheiser HD280Pro's, but 1/5 the price and probably better blocking.

A Clockwork Guitar - The Steampunk Stratocaster -- basically a strat with the pickguard replaced with a sheet of brass etched with an image of clockwork. Extremely cool-looking, though of course not nearly as cool as it would have been with actual gears. Hmm.

(from Make: Blog)

After my walk (which I needed, having missed yesterday) I went to Guitar Showcase, as I often do. It's not quite on the way home, but it's close, and, um, the car was already pointed in that direction. Yeah, that's it.

Upstairs in the pro audio section I found the display box for the Edirol UA25, which was at the top of my list for a portable recording gear based on my work's Mac laptop. So I chatted with the friendly salespeople, made sure that it had drivers for the new Intel Macs (it does), gave the thing a heft to see how it compares with the Tascam US122 (which was also on the list). And thought for a while.

I could have gone home, thought about it for a couple more weeks, and ordered it online for the same price (and saved myself tax and shipping). But, y'know, I already had the thing in my hands, and I already knew it was what I wanted. So I bought it.

( the techie details for those who care, cut for those who don't )

The other piece of gear that I'm considering is a new gig bag for Plink, my Vagabond travel guitar. They've apparently redesigned it since I bought mine -- it's described as "Heavy duty black nylon shell, plush red interior, heavy padding, zippered pocket with Vagabond logo, shoulder strap." Black... red plush... strap... (\me wipes drool off keyboard) We're talking serious gadget lust here, folks. Wish I could find a picture, but... Guitar Showcase also had a lightweight polyfoam combination gig bag/hardshell case that would work for my Ovation, but with Plink I can carry it on and have one less thing to worry about. It'll wait.

Update: (7:48pm) microphones and case on order.

...and tuna fish, and sings.

Altogether a good couple of days. Finished off the little logging utility I've been working on at work (little Perl script; each log entry is an RFC822-format file that contains its serial number and the hash of the previous entry in its headers). After dinner, had another good practice session with Joyce. It's going to work.

Today, after a good walk (about an hour and a quarter, ~4mi) I stopped in at Guitar Showcase and bought a couple of mic stand drink holders (coiled, black-vinyl-coated wire -- very cool-looking) and a very respectably solid music holder that clamps onto a mic stand. Both were items I've been looking for for months; I'd first seen the drink holders in a catalog, forgot which one, and couldn't find them again when I wanted to order a couple. Both were on sale. Had leftover chili for lunch; by this time the chaoswolf had already left for a Furcon picnic.

Then the flower_cat and I went out for a drive. Up Saratoga Ave.; 236 (IIRC) through Big Basin Park (I'd last driven it over 30 years ago with my parents; not nearly as scary now that I've driven the highway to Hana on Maui), then up State Highway 1 to Half Moon Bay, 92 to I280, and home. The route takes us past a produce stand on Highway 1, and a fish market just past the corner of 92.

Which brings us to dinner. The fish market had some gorgeous Dungeness crabs, cooked and cold (cleaned at no extra cost), at a very reasonable price ($6/lb), and some beautiful-looking Ahi tuna at $13/lb. We got three crabs, half a pound of Ahi, and a sourdough baguette. Crabs are usually about 1.5 lbs, and three or four is plenty for a meal. These were something over 2.5. Nobody complained (though my wallet was heard to mutter under its breath); there will be crab-stuffed chili peppers tomorrow for lunch. The tuna, BTW, was sashimi quality, so that's how we ate it; all but the flower_cat, who's allergic to fish but not molluscs or crustaceans. The baguette became garlic bread. The wine was Kriter, a German Méthode Champagnoise.

I learned something, too: super_star_girl and I eat our crab as soon as we get it out of the shell, while the chaoswolf and flower_cat start by making a big pile of crabmeat on their plate and then eat it with a fork. Weird. Something else: Ahi tuna should be cut in one direction using a long, very sharp knife. If you saw back and forth, it comes apart in flakes. Fortunately, we have a long, very sharp knife, part of the set we bought ourselves for our anniversary last year. edit: Oh, and a traditional woodcarver's mallet does a pretty good job cracking crab legs, though there's a slight tendency to spatter out the sides.

Can I go to sleep now? (No, it's too early.)

HHB FlashMic Is World's First Digital Recording Microphone

Portable recording specialist HHB Communications has developed the FlashMic DRM85 - the world's first professional Digital Recording Microphone. Perfect for all voice recording applications, in particular broadcast and press interviewing, the FlashMic combines a high quality Sennheiser omni-directional condenser capsule with 1GB of flash recording memory to create a convenient, durable and portable recording device that's extremely easy to operate.

Click here for the Brochure

(from Electronic Musician [dead tree edition, which came in the mail this morning])

Hmm... not much activity to report, but there's some news. As it turned out, the chaoswolf spent Friday night on the cot downstairs, since she was still a little shaky on the stairs. Over the weekend she slept in her new loft bed and pronounced it "comfy". The swelling over her eye was pretty-much gone this morning and her sunglasses cover most of the bruising, which is going down nicely. Tough little wolf. Apparently her assailants have been linked to at least three other attacks in the neighborhood, including a rape and a murder. Things could have been much worse.

Saturday after my walk I stopped in at Guitar Showcase's used/consignment shop specifically looking for a headphone amplifier. They had two Ghost TB202's, one for $50 and one for $60. Easy choice. It will be used for field recording with the M-Audio USB Quattro.

Yesterday afternoon the flower_cat and I went out in search of an olive tree (non-fruiting) for the front yard. No success, so we have two different nurseries looking for them. The non-fruiting olives appear to get about 15 feet (~5m) high, which is about right for something in that position -- we'll be able to see it from the house.