Daughter of the Midnight Sun

If I'm using LJ again, at least it's time I took another online personality test and posted the results. This one seems to land pretty solid on me. Of course, I suspect all the personality types would read as a good fit. Much like horoscopes, it's part of how it works. Still. Giving me some stuff to think about.

https://www.16personalities.com/enfj-personality

A two week vacation with a clean home and time to exercise and study seems to have helped a lot with my stress levels. Got a lot of things done but did not make getting things done my #1 priority. I haven't done a lot of that in my adult life so I think it was kind of useful.

At the very least, a rested and a relaxed state seems to have paid off with my study time. I began reading 'The Art of Computer Programming', which means I read about a dozen pages and then detoured into 'Concrete Mathematics' (which is a supplement to TAOCP) and then further let myself derail into really understanding some of the underlying mathematics.

Sometime last night, the concepts of mathematical induction really clicked for me, as did understanding and solving more complex multivariable problems, numeric sequences, and a bunch of other things. In school, I learned how to memorize formula and plug in numbers. What I am learning now is the why and how of those formula and to be honest, it's all the fun and exploration. Understanding the proofs to various shortcuts and how the proofing mechanism itself works has made those shortcuts make more sense and made the idea of working future problems exciting. It also meshes nicely with programming concepts and unit testing.

At work, the painful project is slain and I am on to a new project. One which, not entirely coincidentally, is all about mathematics and problem analysis. I haven't yet gotten into the deeper aspects of the new project of course but I feel like it is a project I get to approach in a much more scientific manner and in that, it is way more enjoyable.

Well. I've been playing for a whole weekend now so I'm going to declare success on my amp surgery! :)

A few weeks ago I found a used Blackstar HT5R really cheap and got it. It's a big step up from my digital practice amp. Though at the volumes I like to practice at, the gain knob was still really fiddly without a lot of range. I'd already read that I could swap out the pre-amp tube and take away some of the top end crunch and give me more space at the bottom end, so I replaced the tube with a JJ 12AT7.

I started getting a buzzing noise at low gain when I turned it back on, so I swapped back to the other tube and tried again. Same issue. Next I tried reseating the power tube. Like a pro I managed to fold a pin on the power tube. This made the amp make a thumpy tremolo sound when I turned it back on (basically one side of the push pull was no longer getting power) It also made the tube fantastically hot. So I shut it down, let the tube cool and pulled it, discovered the folded pin aaaaand snapped it off.

Called frantically and found a shop still open at 6PM on a Friday that had two old tubes that would work in place of the one I broke and amazingly only wanted $6 each for them. Got them, biased the power tube (measured a voltage and adjusted a pot) and... No more buzz and a much more warm and bluesy sort of sound. Hurray! And what's more, the combination of the JJ pre-amp tube and an old Westinghouse 12BH7A ended up sounding really good together. Granted, I'm only at about 10hrs of play time so far but nothing is unduly hot or changing tone in undesired ways.

Also, I have to say. While this is the first amp I've ever taken apart, I really really like the construction. It was made to be monkeyed with. The head is a completely discrete unit inside the combo box. You could lift it out, add a cover to it, and have a head and separate cabinet with no other modifications. The board layouts and wiring are all beautifully clean.

Last night really helps demonstrate why science is important. There was an eclipse. The moon turned red. We knew this was going to happen, knew its cause, and so it was a cool and beautiful rare treat to behold.

In another time and place, this would be the sign to go to war and slaughter your neighbors or sacrifice some children to your angry God or that the end times were upon you. Imagine what an eclipse would be like to you if you didn't know what it was, had never seen one, had no electric lights, depended on the moon to help you keep the time to know when to plant and when to harvest, travel at night, predict the tides, and now, for the first time in your life that you could remember, the moon was suddenly dying, being eaten away, soaking red with blood. A god being murdered before your eyes. Would the Sun even be there tomorrow or has Fenris come to stay?

Even when we figured out how to predict an eclipse, it was centuries before us common people knew that the moon would return. Religions and governments used them to control the masses. Here is but one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1504_lunar_eclipse

The time has come for me to reluctantly free up some space, and I figured I'd post here before FreeCycle. If any of you guys happen to know someone who does on paper 2D animation, and they are perhaps in need of a animation stand, I have a 1960's Neilson Hordell that I no longer use. I've moved to working digitally.

The composite has 3 axis of movement, X, Y, and orbit plus the top and bottom peg bars can move in Y independent of the composite.

It's all manual. No electronics, just hand cranks (and the handles are broken off some of those, though easily replaced with a screw, a couple washers, and a bit of tubing) and a manual platten. When I got it, its camera head had also gone missing which is why it sits inside a Bessler copy stand. This isn't a perfect marriage. The lights on the Bessler (when attached) prevent more than about 10 degrees of rotation of the composite. However, they can be removed and attached to the ceiling to give a full range of motion.

In addition, only the top pegbar has ACME style pegs (ones that I somewhat crudely hand made) though both top and bottom bars have lots of screw down points for pegs and it uses the screw-type pegs. If I knew it was going to a good home, I'd be happy to make some more pegs for it to send it off well. I also have a thin gauge metal ACME and a similar round punch pegbar that I used to use taped to the deck for additional pegs.

The composite weighs about 80lbs, the rest of it is pretty light and it's pretty easy to disassemble and reassemble.

Here's a film a made on this stand:



So.. If you know anyone who might want it, let me know. Otherwise, I'll be listing it on FreeCycle next week.

Watched this on Netflix last night. If you've ever wondered what ego death is like, it does a paints a pretty decent picture.

Warning: Contains some violence including rape also hermaphroditic rubber fetish.

Hm. After hearing me talk passionately about the singularity, my co-worker recommended a cult for me.

http://www.internetismyreligion.com/

I dunno... A cult seems like a lot of commitment... But they seem nice and I bet they have free koolaid.

Am I parent of the singularity?

Years ago I did this animation and uploaded it to youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRqLFQq-ct8

When I did that, the music was straight up acoustic music some friends performed. No flangers or digital effects.

Thanks to being recompressed however many times youtube has found a better format, it has begun to transform. Around the 3 minute mark, there's some seriously good electronica that the guitar is floating on top of. Lots of really awesome little digital flourishes, warbles, and trills. It's pretty cool! I another 10 or 20 years as it's hashed again and again, it will likely continue to change and evolve.

Seriously! How cool is that? It has truly taken on a life of its own and in turn it must also be feeding into the hash of those other videos that it is mingling with. It's alive!

Grounds for a great near-future novel here. The memes of today feeding into the compression of the memes of tomorrow.

Well... I guess there's no point to making psychedelic art anymore.
Humans, you are obsolete.
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2015/06/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-neural.html

http://laughingsquid.com/friendship-is-maddness-a-cthulhu-themed-my-little-pony/