tammylee | Reading

Candle Arc #1, color version, at

candlearc just to keep it corralled. Note that it's viewer discretion advised on account of cuss words, violence, and hexarchate-typical awfulness.

UPDATED: Alternately: Candle Arc #1 on its own website at Candle Arc (candlearc.com).

I have the Ka-Blam setup in progress so fingers crossed I can make it available via print-on-demand at Indyplanet in the nebulous future, depending on how orchestration homework is going. /o\

Preview & update notifications at Buttondown. (This is an email newsletter, but it's archived online. You do not need to sign up.)

flemmings

Unusual to have this much thunder this late in the year but yeah: storms Sunday night, Monday morning, and Tuesday night, more rain forecast tonight and tomorrow. But the garbage is out and the leaf detritus got into a bag, and the downstairs is vacuumed even if I didn't get to the kitchen floor. Also have vodka and kahlua to see me through the muggy owies attendant on same. Ages back my cousin said the secret to losing weight was black Russians and cheese dreams (American cheese slices- ugh-, tomato slice, bacon if desired, on top of white sliced bread, under the broiler until cheese blisters-- cheese slices don't melt-- essence of non-food but still the comfort food of childhood.) The missing ingredient in that was was 'unhappy love affair' which in my case I have not got. But weighed myself this morning after chickening out for over a month and discovered that I'm five or six pounds down instead of up. Prudence suggests that the indulgence of last week simply hasn't registered yet on my slow metabolism, but gardening and housework counts as exercise and I've been doing both.

Finished only a Charles Lenox, Burial at Sea, and a mystery by that guy with four or five pseudonyms whose real last name was Street, though I think this one was under the John Rhodes moniker. Continue on with Terra Nostra, wondering how in heaven's name I read it not once but twice in my 30s; dip into Walpole occasionally; have another Lenox on the tablet and a hardcover mystery from the library; am close to getting the sequel to St. Death's Daughter and will drop everything when that comes in.

And will continue to sleep with the window AC because it's cool and dry and our overnight temps are nothing of the sort.

flemmings

Happy new year to those who celebrate.

Here the Jewish new year was ushered in by thunder and torrential rain. Which stopped somewhere after noon but was forecast to start again any time. Cab was called for 1:30 and at 1 I was thinking maybe go sit on the porch and wait for him? Sensible me said Why sit in the mug for half an hour, that time they came half an hour early was a one-off. Reader, it was not a one-off. He was half an hour early. Which meant waiting 45 minutes for my appointment. Got an iced latte from Tim's, opened phone to go on reading Charles Lenox being Jack Aubrey *and* Stephen Maturin, wondered why it wasn't showing on my Libby app. Maybe because I'm reading in hardback dead tree? This weather is death on the joints and the brain.

But I have my crown though no idea what it will cost me, because the insurance webpage was experiencing technical difficulties. Still can't reconcile 'we'll pay all of it' with 'and we need a $500 deposit.' However.

But the sun was shining (and the world was steaming like a jungle) so I transitted back home for economy's sake, got off at Bathurst and-- the elevator was still out of service. So hauled my walker up the escalators instead. But what a good thing this morning was a deluge. If it had been good weather I'd have tried to transit to the dentist and been stymied, because there are no down escalators at Bathurst or, I fancy, anywhere.

Will definitely run window A/C tonight because the lows will not get low enough until 6 a.m. Muggity mug, and all is mugginess.

flemmings

All weekend (cool and jacket weather yesterday, humid and warm today) there's been an autumnal tinge of woodsmoke to the air, either someone illegally burning leaves or the new Texas smokehouse at Christie and Dupont in the former and much-missed Starbucks building. Tempting, except for the lines out the door and down the street Friday. And closed Monday and Tuesday and at 4:30 on the days they're open.

Meanwhile have filled a garbage pail with linden seedlings and got it on the porch against the forecast rain. There's still lots more by the house but those can wait. Saturday I ran across J down the street and her two kids mowing the front yard of the house next door to them, which belonged to an Italian grandpa called Rafi. Rafi died recently aged 96 and quite ready to go; his grandkids have the house now, is why there's been stuff for the taking on the sidewalk these past few weeks. One of these was an ancient (ie about as old as I am) lawnmower which tiny O was using to decimate the weeds, which picked up a stone and flung it 15 ft/ 5 metres in my direction as I was coming up the street. Missed me by a bit but would have made an interesting obituary, as J said. But she also mentioned that she grinds the leaves to mulch and puts it on her own front yard, and I must ask her how. Rafi's house is detached, a downtown rarity, and probably in need of renovation if mine is anything to judge by, so not sure if the grandkids will in fact hold on to it. What amazes me more is that J and the kids were on close terms with him, because I always assumed he spoke no more English than Signora does, or my former next door neighbours the Pisanis. Which is why you shouldn't assume.

The gardening only got done thanks to a couple of Black Russians + cream, because back is not happy with me doing anything. I continue with my core-strengthening exercises but not with any noticeable effect.

flemmings

When I went to the laundromat the other day, I couldn't find the hot water detergent. I assumed I'd just put it in a safe place the time before instead of its usual place, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I had a vague memory of putting it on the table on the front porch before going off to do something else, meaning someone swiped it. Which is odd because porch pirates are rare on this street. Maybe I just forgot it at the laundromat, which also seems unlikely, though less unlikely than a porch pirate. Luckily I still had a box of Sunlight powder that I'd half considered throwing out because liquid works better. But anyway, I now have more scentless eco-friendly hot water detergent.

Cooler today but still muggy, so I sweat considerably when sweeping up seedlings this evening. But half the front path is done at least, and tomorrow is supposed to be actually cool, so I may get this finished before Monday's rain reduces it to muck. We need rain, I know, but Monday is also a dentist day and I wish it would rain some other time.

Finished The Lotus Palace and sent it off to the 'one person is waiting' so she can have it on the weekend. But if I'd realized it was a Harlequin I wouldn't have started it in the first place. I mean, perfectly respectable for what it was doing, but the ratio of mystery to romance was heavily in favour of the latter, and I wanted a lot more of the former.

yhlee

Ah, the art yarn of it all. :3

handspun yarn

2-ply from these singles:

flemmings

Summer returns for hopefully a brief interlude: high of 27, humidex of who knows what. Still cool enough at night that I'm not tempted to turn on the AC, though with the mug stink out there I may forego the window fan tonight.

Still trying to make Persian lima bean and dill rice. My preferred brand of frozen limas turns out to be American so I bought tinned instead. Large lima beans, it said, which was fine, whatever, until I got it open. Larger than fava, larger than broad beans: those suckers are huge. Am also seeing why the webpages say to use dried dill. I mean my dill is dried but it started fresh, and though nowhere near as gritty as some I've had, there was still something small and hard that started the Agh a tooth/ filling/ crown has crumbled!!!! panic reaction. But true dried dill doesn't taste like dill, is the problem. And yes I know I shouldn't be having rice at all, even resistant starch cooled rice, but my innards do badly with low-carb abd I can't afford to irritate them when they already want to take exception to my magnesium.

Beaver on through The Lotus Palace, my Tang dynasty mystery cum romance (alas). Am still waiting to find out who the female protagonist is supposed to be They Fight Crime!-ing with. Alas again, is probably not the dour constable of the court whom I favour, but the playboy (but is he *really?!*) dorky love interest. Dommage.

flemmings

Braved the cellar stairs and got a wash put through. Whether it will dry on the line is another matter given how the promised sun disappeared after an hour. Cloudy and humid does not conduce to Dry.

Have been cooking a russet potato for three days now. This because I do the 'bring to boil, put on lid, turn off heat' thing, which prevents the potato from going all soggy. But evidently it also prevents the potato from cooking. Finally got it soft enough to mash, though my potato masher has vanished who knows where. Very nice, but that was my allotment of butter and cream for the week.

Should put on a pair of long-legged trousers tucked into socks and sweep up the linden's sheddings out front, because doing so in my 'humidex of 27' summer pants will get me mosquito bites all over my legs. Doubt very much that I will, though.

Finished Point of Hearts, a very satisfying Astreiant novel, and nothing else. Have a Tang-set historical novel on the e-reader, which must read because it's one of those 'ten people are waiting' library books. Have also a dead tree Charles Lenox that I forgot I had a hold on. Beaver on through Terra Nostra which is better than The Tale of Genji only in that it has paragraphs that go on for pages, not Murasaki's sentences that do the same. Except that Genji translators break up the sentences and the TN translator did not. Have also The Portable Machiavelli off the shelf upstairs and would actually rather be reading that. Would help if I'd buckle down and read any of these instead of watching Tiktok videos.

flemmings

The macrocosm is a dumpster fire that's spread to the neighbouring houses, but on the microcosmic scale, I find that the city has forgiven me three months and change worth of property taxes. This means I am rich! if not beyond the dreams of avarice, at least to the point that I need fear no dentist bill, since the insurance company is getting persnickety in what it will cover. As in that crown, which was supposed to cost me three hundred dollars, wanted a deposit of five. Yes well. Insurance companies are like that.

There was no google when I first read Terra Nostra: indeed, there was no internet. I knew there was something A/U going on because Elizabeth Tudor never married a Spaniard of any description. But I only now discover that Felipe II's father was not Felipe the Fair, husband of Mad Joanna, but a very prognathous Carlos of some numeration. These Habsburgs who were kings and/or emperors of half a dozen countries are an historical PITA. Luckily it's not my period. And equally, Felipe II was quite a different type than the one in the book. So Terra Nostra is not so much historical A/U as magical realist history.

yhlee

A particularly hilarious example of low-effort spammer/scammer.

Seriously considering how much spam I could effortlessly screen out if I set up my email to automatically delete ANYTHING with the word "Amazon" in it that isn't on a very small (like, a half-dozen people small) whitelist of family and close friends.

ETA #1 (2025-09-23): Ah, more spammers. Let's now add automatic deletion of ANYTHING with the word "Goodreads" in it as well! Blissful quiet.

flemmings

Ah, so The Magic Flute is playing at the Elgin. The candlelight concert is The Four Seasons, but equally it's not at my local church but also somewhere downtown. So no, probably won't be going to either, sigh.

Warm September continues rather pleasantly, aside from the sweatiness going anywhere. Anywhere was the laundromat this morning so towels and pillowcases and my threadbare hoodie are now clean. I'd been wearing the hoodie alone the past couple of nights quite happily, but the lows aren't getting low enough early enough for that. Sleep shirt it is for now. I should also take my down duvet into the dry cleaners but am afraid temps will nosedive to the point where my fibre duvet and wool blankets won't be enough. OTOH my duvet is over 20 years old and never been cleaned, so kind of overdue.

yhlee

(cross-posted:

communal_creators)

earlier:
- part 0: preliminaries
- part 1: brief demo: engraving software (Dorico)

Watch on YouTube

Brief walkthrough of the start of a fake piano sketch in Cubase Pro that I'll build into a hybrid orchestral piece using MIDI and VSTs. I don't claim this is good music, just something for demonstration purposes and to talk through some of the technical details. This is musically unexciting but covering DAW basics will make the later hybrid orchestra bits easier to understand, hypothetically.

(Sorry, the audio recorded in mono; I will look at my audio interface settings again.)

For those curious about my usual style(s) of music, my music reel.

flemmings

Googling around for discussions of Boneland gets me a reminder of Cocteau's Orphée, a forgotten fave from my 20s. Probably seen in that same Film Odyssey series that introduced me to Kurosawa that was another 'opposite of nail in coffin' (unconscious impetus?) that led me almost twenty years later to go to Japan. Seventeen years is nothing now but then it was several lifetimes. Anyway, Orphée. Brief clips on YouTube suggest I might find it reeeally overdone now, and Jean Marais is entirely Too Much. But. But. I would like to see it again.

Equally I would like to go to some upcoming concerts hereabouts. Ballets Trocadero, or a candlelight and surely truncated Magic Flute. The latter is at a local church where I could enquire about how disabled seating works with first come, first served. The former is way down Yonge St and pricey, and I have these dental bills still piling up. But I'd like to be out and about again because this crippled mindset is getting me down.

Will I read Boneland? Am disinclined, especially if I'm supposed to think that all of the preceding books is Colin's dying hallucination, or Colin refusing to remember being raped, or something equally unpleasant.

yhlee

(cross-posted to

communal_creators)

Earlier:
- part 0: preliminaries (includes partial glossary of terms)

Watch on YouTube

I know there are a lot of people who haaaaaate being forced to sit through video but since audio playback is inherent to the enterprise...This is under a minute, promise.

This is a brief demonstration of the opening of one of my compositions partially engraved (~sheet music typesetting) in Dorico. The two industry-standard engraving apps in media composition scoring are Dorico and Sibelius; Finale used to be a third but was sunsetted to much consternation.

If you come from classical music (especially classical orchestral music), you may be ??? about the score formatting. This is because scores for session orchestra and concert/classical orchestra have different formatting! (See part 0: preliminaries for more detail as to why). Differences for session orchestra you see here include:

- Score is in C (NOT a transposing score for the conductor - nota bene, transposing is "allowed" for octaves), but we won't have e.g. horn in F or trumpet in Bb. ( Read more... )

As for playback:

- Guess what, Dorico and Sibelius at the level of orchestral scores are spendy. :]

- I'm using NotePerformer, which is the standard higher-quality playback engine, especially if you don't have time to mock it up in the DAW (or you're an art/concert composer for whom a mockup is not part of your workflow). But that's also money (~$130 USD).

NotePerformer is pretty credible with a lot of orchestral instruments. You still have to massage its output. For example, in Sibelius [not shown] you can set playback to molto espressivo (LOTS OF FEELING) vs. senza espressivo (NO FEELINGS EVER!!!) (etc). My experience is that particular instruments can be less "real"-sounding and the "vocalists" (both SATB choir and associated "solo" voices) are absolutely terrible, as in "my vacuum cleaner sings more credibly than this" terrible.

Aside: There are some good vocal VST libraries for specific use cases. I hate that I am often able to straight-up identify "Oh yeah, XYZ floating ethereal ~Celtic Twilight vibes soprano 'ahhh' ululation in this trailer/score/whatever was $SPECIFIC_VST_LIBRARY" because, apparently, I have no life; but this is not unusual in this field.

I know at least one full-time composer/orchestrator/musician who straight-up bounces NotePerformer output and then processes that in the DAW (reverb etc) and, you know, this person makes a living doing this. So that's one route one can take.

Why, you ask, can't we just export this score-stuff into a DAW with all the fancy (...spendy) VST instruments and "paste in" nicer/more individualized instruments? Dorico (and Sibelius) do in fact export to MIDI and MusicXML. [1] This is a very reasonable question that will be the topic of the next walkthrough (part 2), mainly because it's a surprisingly (annoying) complicated topic as to why this is rarely straightforward. (Let me tell you all about negative track delay...)

[1] Missed these glossary items earlier! ( brief explanations of MIDI and MusicXML )

Happy to answer questions, although I have no idea if anyone else finds this interesting. :p

yhlee

Watch on YouTube

Dreaming Robots' Electric Eel Wheel 6.1 e-spinner with some sacrificial Rambouillet/Gotland wool blend. Sorry about the mess; too hot to go outside with this. I don't claim this is good spinning, just a brief demonstration of Getting The E-Spinner To Do A Thing.

white_aster

At NIH, Political Appointees Get More Say in Grant Decisions
In a shift from longstanding precedent, political priorities may now override peer review in research funding decisions.

:head in hands: This is the exact opposite of the way that current peer review works. Yes, science agencies have always had priorities and shifted funding toward initiatives that might be priorities of the current administration, but not at this nitty gritty grant level. Before, you might fund, say, the BRAIN initiative because it's something the president backs. But you would then let the peer review process (ie, actual brain experts) figure out who should get the funding. Now? Now a political appointee could decide they don't like a project for apparently literally any reason, and even though it's actual, non-sarcastic "gold-standard science", it could be passed over.

This opens up all kinds of corruption influences. Who is going to be watching the watchers? What criteria are appointees allowed to use to thumbs-down these grants...or can they do it for any reason at all? Are they just looking for a keyword? Are they looking at the PI's internet history? The Institution, to see who the administration is fighting with now? Are they relying on their unscientific opinion of what "sounds important"? Are they open to bumping up funding for PIs or institutions that are friendly to them or their higher-ups. regardless of the science involved?

And the anecdotes at the end from how all this is affecting the peer review process--how scientists are starting to nope out of this onerous and increasingly apparently thankless task--are the predictable signs of a scientific funding process in absolute crisis. Scientific review runs on volunteers, and people stop wanting to volunteer if they feel they're just going to be ignored, jerked around, and wronged.

yhlee

Watch on YouTube

Ashford Traveller (single treadle although you can see that, Scotch tension). Spinning mulberry (bombyx) silk from combed top.

flemmings

Well, that was A Day. Starting with A Night. Bed early because alarm set for 9 and then couldn't sleep and then leg cramps (more magnesium!) and then mosquito bites itched and then recurring nightmare of stabbing to death not only my HS best buddy but her brother-in-law as well. And then it was 7:30 and I knew if I went back to sleep the alarm would rip me awake and I'd feel exhausted for the rest of the day. So I did an hour of stretch and strengthen instead, got up and had breakfast etc etc, brushed teeth and waited for cab. Who arrived early and even with traffic got me to the dentist in 25 minutes. Wasted time in Shoppers and then had a 90+ minute appointment where she sawed off my crown and cleaned the cavity under it and put a temporary crown on it and told me not to drink anything hot until the freezing wore off and to chew on the other side.

I had a vague notion of maybe walking up to Canadian Tire and looking at tree loppers, or taking the subway up to Yonge and walking from there, or something. But warm humid September, that sleep-deprived night, and 90 minutes in a dentist's chair meant everything hurt, and what didn't hurt was stiff. So went over to University to get the subway up to St George, and thence to Bathurst for sushi. But the sign said the Bathurst elevators weren't working. OK, I'll have sushi at Spadina then. But the sign said the Spadina elevators weren't working either. Which meant going to Ossington and walking back. And if I have to go to Ossington, by god I'm going to have my yearly Big Mac there, and damn both the calories and the boycott. Which did, but it was still a weary walk home, and the whole thing got me a bare 5000 steps.

I trust I will sleep well tonight.

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Reading

Candle Arc #1: watercolor version (web)

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latest spinning

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lolnope

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sampled orchestral mockups + music production: part 2: demo of a simple piano sketch in Cubase (DAW)

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a 3-ply yarn

sampled orchestral mockups + music production: part 1: brief demo of engraving software + playback

not good spinning demo: EEW 6.1

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not-good spinning: demo of spinning silk on a treadle wheel

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January 2022

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