Posts
Tagging Ogg Vorbis music files for classical music
#Android#Linux#Music#Ruby#Software
Fifteen years ago, I started ripping my CD collection into digital form using the patent-free file formats FLAC and Ogg Vorbis. I used FLAC for the first stage of ripping, because it is lossless. But FLAC is also quite bulky, which is a problem when using the files on space-limited portable devices. So the next stage was to convert FLAC to Ogg Vorbis, which is compressed, lossy format similar to MP3, but free of patents and royalties.
August 7, 2023
Artificial Stupidity
What with all the excitement and alarm about artificial intelligence these days, I thought I would fight back with a plea for Artificial Stupidity. Specifically, I believe we can do better than the stupidity of the writing on most mainstream media by using computer-generated stupidity.
July 13, 2023
Mozart Trauma
I often joke with friends that I gave up the piano at age 13 due to Mozart Trauma. There were other factors, but this was actually the big one.
May 13, 2023
Replacing VW MK7 GTI Spark Plugs
The last cars I did serious maintenance work on were pretty ancient by today’s standards: a first generation VW Golf (‘78 Scirocco) and several Volvo 240 models. These were all very simple to work on compared to the 2016 VW GTI. When it came time to replace the spark plugs in the GTI, the job looked scary at first. The plugs are buried deep within the engine, and you have to remove the ignition coil packs to get at the plugs. Forum posts talk about the difficulty in removing the electrical connectors for the coil packs, and also removing the coil packs themselves.
May 7, 2023
La Cathédrale engloutie
(Sarcasm is OFF for this post.) In the comments for my post about Chopin’s Barcarolle, I mentioned Debussy’s Prelude Bk. 1 No. X, “La Cathédrale engloutie”, or “The Sunken Cathedral” in English. This Prelude is not as difficult as others in the two books of Debussy’s Preludes, and will impress your friends when you learn to play it. But there is a problem with most (all?) printed editions of this Prelude: the music seems to be asking for measures 7 to 12 and 22 to 83 to be played a half speed. This is a serious problem, because it makes those measures sound ponderously slow and out of character with the rest of the piece.
March 22, 2023
More on the Hunter Biden Emails
#Biden#Ukraine#Software#Notmuch
Earlier I described a procedure for importing the Hunter Biden emails into Notmuch, an excellent email search engine. Now that I’ve been playing around with these emails for a while, I wanted to share some random thoughts and ideas about them. Nothing I’m going to write here is a bombshell; all of the juiciest tidbits have been reported by various news sites.
March 1, 2023
Alt+SysRq on a newer ThinkPad
#Linux#Linux Mint#Thinkpad#Ubuntu
In Linux, the magic Alt+SysRq+X keyboard combination can perform emergency system tasks, like unmounting the disk(s) and rebooting the system, even if the operating system appears dead or hung. As an example, here are the SysRq key combos that I’ve used to cleanly reboot a hung system (in this order): Alt+SysRq+S: sync the filesystems Alt+SysRq+U: unmount the filesystems Alt+SysRq+B: reboot Unfortunately, recent ThinkPads eliminated the top keyboard row, where the SysRq key resided. But there is a workaround, described in this post. Here is the procedure:
December 6, 2022
Language Puzzles
I’m an old fart now, so the inevitable changes happening to the English language are puzzling me.
November 28, 2022
Fixing HP P1006 Printer Out of Paper Error
#Linux#Linux Mint#Ubuntu#Printers
On my Linux Mint 19 system, when the HP P1006 printer runs out of paper, the printing system (CUPS) refuses to print even after loading paper into the printer, power-cycling the printer, and disconnecting and reconnecting the USB cable. In the end, restarting CUPS seems to be the only way to eliminate the “out of paper” indicator: sudo systemctl restart cups
November 9, 2022
Setting up scan to email in HP Color LaserJet printer
Our library has a relatively new HP multi-function laser printer that has scanning and copying functions. Recently a patron tried unsuccessfully to use the printer’s “scan to email” feature, and I realized we had never configured the printer to enable this feature. Here are the steps I had to take to get this work.
October 31, 2022