Leaderboard

Had a run in with a stick today about 6 miles from home! It was too big to plug, so my friend cut off most of the stick and we road home. It didn't leak at all. I love running tubeless.

Just got Suzy's DNA results. She is 0% Jack Russel. However she is between 37-74% Parsons Russell. I tend to think it's closer to 74%, as she looks exactly like many of the photos. She's also between 10-20% Border Collie and between 10-20% Bulldog. Who knew? She's a Border Bull Russell.

Bianchi Oltre XR4: I have broken my piggy bank...

Don't mean to change the topic but I have moved my setup to the living room for the next three months and I'm excited. As you were. Better photo.

Been playing through Control now that it's available on Steam, and beat the base game tonight. Damn what a lot of fun that was. Amazing atmosphere, great story and characters, and unbelievably fun combat that gives you a lot of options for any situation. Typically with a game like this I'd find one gun, and maybe one special ability that I like the most, and then only use those ever. Not this time, I gave all the paranatural abilities a healthy amount of use. Things you can do beyond the typical rooty tooty point and shooty include but are not limited to: Telekinetically picking up anything not nailed down (that includes vending machines, tables, incoming explosives, and even corpses) and introducing it at high speed to the face of any poor soul you have a clear line of sight to. Taking control of weakened enemies' minds to fight for you and serve as brief distractions. Gathering up debris to use as a floating shield to stop incoming fire, and then go on the offensive with it and use it to dash through any nearby enemies, flattening most weaker ones in the process. And my personal favorite, leisurely floating high above most of your enemies, slowly drifting across the room as you rain hell down on them with your weapon or large object of choice (maniacal laughter optional). These sorts of mechanics have been done before, but here they combine so well and they made the controls for them actually work fluidly. Highly recommended, doubly so if you like weird stories about paranormal events, because there's weird shit galore in this place.

Here's to hoping that the negotiations are successful. I think I'm out of the bike buying game for a while, unless I see a screaming deal on a SuperSix EVO Disc. Then I might do bad things...

Staycation Ribs & Fried Chicken #notdissapoint

I wasn't sure about posting this but it kinda had to be done. Pic is from HF and the usual nonsense in the peanut gallery there: So this is the Sirrah V3 from high-amp.de...aka yet another slight twist on the Stax SRM-1 Mk2 or derivatives. For me it is just the build here and well... the total shitbox we have here. First off, what's up with all the hotglue? As somebody who has built hundreds of amps at this point... I don't even own a hotglue gun nor would I ever think of using this crap. Some other goodies, top of the transformer sanded for it to fit in the chassis, no insulation on the mains plug which means this would fail even the basic CE tests, nice bit of cloth underneath the pot there to presumably stop it from shorting something on the board and I just love all the transformer leads, not twisted in any way, coming really close to the input wiring. The hand cut heatpads on the output transistors are also nice and I very much doubt that tiny ballast resistor for the bias supply is rated to 600V.... On top of that, look up the design of this thing. Basically a SRM-212 with a full size power supply and some things changed. +/-200V rails, no CCS for the VAS stage and very little power.

I'm going to rewatch it again soon too.

The reaction of the woman behind him, even with mask, is pretty funny

I use Fusion 360 from Autodesk. There are free versions. It takes a little time to master the program, but once you do it’s quick and powerful.

Wife tried to get sympathy from the kids by saying "daddy made me go to the gym with him, isn't he mean to mommy" Girl #1 response "but mommy can I tell you something? You need to get stronger" In the parenting competition with the wife I'm pulling a big lead..

I watched the new Bill and Ted movie and of course it's utterly ridiculous twaddle but it did give me a little warm flush of nostalgia.

I'm pretty sure that I could do this for you on the Dremel Digilab that I have access to. Give me a dimensioned drawing of what you want and I might have some scrap plexy that we could try out first before. I should warn you, it might take me a while to get to it. I'm like Mikhail-levels of slow these days in getting projects. done. Speaking of project, COVID speaker project #2 is nearly complete.

Mango Crab Salad Bacon Cheeseburger & Garlic Fries

Soundtrack to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2. Jeez, this brings me back to the 90s. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX6F6y6vVLZ8H?si=-x7qkJkmRPWyz5L6T-tkjA

Ah, okay, I missed the part about “modulating from C ionian/major to C aeolian/minor. Thank you for clarifying. Part of it is you’re talking right at the cusp of my understanding, so I’m just barely keeping up. Up until just a couple years ago, my world revolved entirely around the harmonic minor scale. Derail away, it’s all music making. Also: noice! My setup should be so tidy and accommodating.

Seconded

I think that's what I said but probably wrongly worded. C natural minor (C aeolian) is the 6th degree of Eb major. Both tonalities are siblings, Eb is the ascending parallel of C, so C is the descending parallel of Eb. When playing C ionian and shifting to C aeolian (what most would say going from C major to C minor) you're "false modulating" from C to Eb. You can improvise on both chord changes (any chord of any of both "tonalities") just going from C major to C minor pentatonic, or even just playing C major pentatonic. Boring but effective. Once you learn to look at single note changes from ona tonality and its modes to another, improvising and harmonizing gets a lot easier and quicker if you pretend to improvise on the fly. A minor (A aeolian) is just the 6th degree of C major (ionian) so both are into the very same scale and tonality without any note change. You're right, A is the relative minor to C and C is the relative minor to Eb, which is why they're intertwined tonalities. If you assume that A minor (aeolian) is just a mode of C major, both are the very same tonality which is C. Now think of A major (ionian), this tonality despite having very different notes to C major, is its descending parallel. This leads us to another interesting finding, A and Eb are also connected and while not politonal tonalities (sharing the very same pentatonic scale) they share chords and dominants, which is useful to suggest without playing.

The chainings or concatenations (encadenamientos) refer to the groups of modes that derive from the main (root) scale building the whole family. So in the most basic form, which is the diatonic chaining, you start from the diatonic scale (ionian mode) that has seven notes following the pattern of intervals (1 is a whole tone, ½ obviously a half tone) 1-1-½-1-1-1-½-1 (C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C) take into account that the sixth mode of that chaining is the aeolian mode which also happens to be the "natural minor" scale. This is important because when we speak of minor tonality we're not really speaking of a different thing than the diatonic chaining but starting on a different note. For C diatonic major the starting note to make it natural (or diatonic) minor would be starting on Eb. This makes that the Eb tonality is the ascending parallel of C. Both tonalities are siblings and when moving from one into the other, you're not actually modulating but "false modulating". This is one of the relationships that make tonalities not being separate entities but groups or families that spread a lot the range of chords and modes that you can use in your playing/composing/improvising. This kinship is important because it would allow you to play the same pentatonic scale on all the modes of all the tonalities within the family (politonal) but one. Harmonic chaining derives from the idea of the harmonic minor scale which is a natural minor (aeolian) replacing the 7b for a 7. This note swap transposed to the first degree of the chaining (ionian mode) leaves us with the harmonic major scale. For C it would have the C-D-E-F-G#-A-B notes which is the interval sequence of 1-1-½-1&½-½-1-½. If you develop all the modes derived from that ionian scale you'll see that the 1&½ interval moves to a different degree of each mode, which makes that the chords (triads and 7th ones) in every mode are different from the ones in the diatonic chaining. This opens a new whole spectrum of secondary dominants, symmetric chords, inversions and tensions that you can use to produce sensations and moods, for instance that the 3rd degree (phrygian mode) instead of being a minor one as it is in diatonic, becomes a major mode, with a major chord that is dominant and that includes alterations (9b, 9# and 6b). Depending on the mode you use, harmonic chaining melodies sound flamencoish, arabic or manouche with a slight modification. That modification leads us to the next chaining family which is Neapolitan chaining. It derives from the concept of using a "blue note" and/or a major 7th in the 3rd degree (phrygian mode) of the harmonic scale. This produces the funny effect of the chords in that chaining moving around a dominant chord instead of a ionian chord, so the rest position of the tonality shifts to a different degree without a real modulation if you play those notes as color notes of the minor chords involved. These three chainings, diatonic, harmonic and neapolitan are all considered a part of the diatonic conception of western music and have produced most of the harmony that we can hear on classical music up to Beethoven. The other two chainings derive from the melodic scales. The melodic major is kind of complementary of the harmonic minor, both include a 1&½ intervals at some position of their modes and offers a couple of very interesting features, they being that the phrygian mode is major (hence a dominant) but has not a 4th note so it doesn't ask for resolution, and that we have a minor subdominant (minor lydian mode). The melodic minor chaining is pretty complex because it doesn't have a ionian (rest) mode, it's mostly comprised of dominant chords having tensions in unusual degrees, very interesting ones as in semi-altered chords (dominants with a 2 and a 6b or 2b with a 6). On classical (Berklee) harmony most of its modes aren't contemplated as a part of a whole sequence of modes into a chaining but as separate scales that you could use when certain dominant chords are in the harmonic progression. So what I see as an aeolian major they name it as a 6b mixolydian. The difference is huge because knowing the chaining and the degree that the mode you're into (or leading to) is into the "whole", allows you for a quicker and easier chords substitution or location in the fretboard of the mode that is convenient to play. It also allows you to understand why you can use tritone substitution on dominant chords, and also the most interesting thing of all, implying without playing, which is suggesting with your melodies something in the harmony that isn't really sounding, and vice-versa. That's something that Stevie Wonder absolutely masters. This conception makes an easier learning of the secondary dominants and the scales you'd be able to use when they're in the progression, also makes a lot easier modal modulation, and helps much more to understand and use voice movements since the change of a single note into a chord, takes you to a new and different set of harmonic and melodic possibilities. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that the bass rules. You could be playing on your guitar a wonderful second inversion of FMaj7 (FMaj7/A which on guitar is also Am7/6b) that if the bassist is playing F it will pass unnoticed, so what would be in your arrangement a movement into the harmonic area of the dominant, would clearly remain in the harmonic area of the tonic.

Chernobyl again. So good and unfortunately relevant in whole new ways.

I would perhaps see what Torus Audio can do here. Regardless, find someone that uses the Plitron LO-NO transformers - I imagine there is a step-down version.

Does say something about residual value though, doesn't it?

All transformers hum. The less they are taxed, the less audible it is. So oversized is your best bet.

I just preordered Cyberpunk from GOG for like $30. It’s some kind of Polish patriotic deal, and we win big time. If you haven’t bought it yet I’d suggest taking a look.

I´m a gentleman !!!!!! ... after, of course Good input Brent. My intention is to change everything (including the new components) from the Stevens to Bianchi. I can't afford a complete Bianchi as I want (Ultegra / Dura Ace DI2, DT Swiss, etc.) Later, when my wallet recovers, I´ll buy an inexpensive groupset (like Sora or 105) and use the Stevens for my Tacx Flux. By the way, now I just repaired the carbon on the damaged pod. At the end of the trip, maybe I will spend a little more but at this moment for me it is more comfortable.

I would agree that laser is the way to go with cutting paper. Marking, just thinking out loud here, you would need pretty fine control over the laser power level to ensure you didn't also burn through the paper. You could also probably rig up a fine pen to do the lines too. I think a hobby-grade machine could achieve the precision you need. Below is my experiments with a diamond drag bit on brass and that emblem is less than 1.5" tall. There's definitely some artifacts from inaccurate steps but this is straight out of the box, no tuning.

I don't know what you mean by ink, but I'd tend to do this sort of thing on a laser over a CNC. https://www.ponoko.com/ also, probably vellum, not velum

Finally watching Mad Men.

Done. Thanks HBO Max!

from the SIP monochrome matinee's / previously unwatched classics etc "Those nice people on the internet" HBO MAX AMAZON PRIME

Second coat of finish. I still have rack rails to install, to hold the gear. The holes are vents, which will get black mesh behind them.

I assembled some 170Wx1 ICE amplifiers, that will power a pair of passive tapped horns for subwoofer duty Channel 2 (XLR input, 8 ohm load) Channel 2 (RCA Input, 8 ohm load) Channel 1 (XLR Input, 8 ohm load) Channel 1 (RCA Input, 8 ohm load)

David Graeber. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/03/david-graeber-anthropologist-and-author-of-bullshit-jobs-dies-aged-59 Edit: A favorite Graeber article: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun

RIP Tom Seaver, apparently had Dementia (the same type Robin Williams had) and COVID.....fuck both of those diseases! https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/obituaries/tom-seaver-dead.html

That is awful. I have two friends in their 50s that are living through this. One has been through hell and back and is still here. The other went into remission for it to come back to the extent he has to wear a bag permanently. If ever there was a case for extending screening to those younger than 60, all these horrible examples would stand a much better fighting chance.

One of the best professors I ever had, who went on to become president of Cornell, died from colon cancer at 52, literally weeks after being diagnosed.