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blogging,
personal

Monday Update 9-15-25

These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Photos: Fairy Garden Lantern Deconstruction
Birdfeeding
Candy Jar Terrarium Part 2: Plants
Candy Jar Terrarium Part 1: Setup
Wildlife
Birdfeeding
Safety
Philosophical Questions: Rights
Poem: "The Most Precious Heritage"
Today's Adventures
Birdfeeding
Low-Carb Meatloaf Recipes
Follow Friday 9-12-25: Iron Man
Sustainability
Recipe: "Edwards Family Meatloaf"
Poem: "But an Empty Shell"
Birdfeeding
Hobbies: Knitting
Today's Adventures
Music
Birdfeeding
Cuddle Party

Let's Boycott Mississippi has 55 comments. Affordable Housing has 46 comments. Robotics has 68 comments. Food has 37 comments.

"An Inkling of Things to Come" belongs to Polychrome: Shiv and needs $200 to be complete. Shiv attends the first session of his Worldbuilding class.

The weather is sweltering again. :P Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a male cardinal, and a fox squirrel. Lots of butterflies are out, and honeybees are draining the small metal birdbath. Currently blooming: dandelions, marigolds, petunias, red salvia, verbena, lantana, sweet alyssum, zinnias, snapdragons, blue lobelia, perennial pinks, oxalis, moss rose, yarrow, firecracker plant, tomatoes, tomatillos, yellow squash, zucchini, morning glory, purple echinacea, chicory, Queen Anne's lace, sunflowers, cup plant, firewheel, cypress vine, sunchokes, sedum. Tomatoes, ball carrots, cucumbers, and groundcherries are ripe.

(no subject)

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250914.html

How does your favorite planet spin?

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250914.html

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Just Create: Food poisoning edition

What are you working on? What have you finished? What do you need encouragement on?

Are there any cool events or challenges happening that you want to hype?

What do you just want to talk about?

What have you been watching or reading?

Chores and other not-fun things count!

Remember to encourage other commenters and we have a discord where we can do work-alongs and chat, linked in the sticky.

Current Mood: accomplished

Photos: Fairy Garden Lantern Deconstruction

Someone overheard that I'm working with terraria and gave me this fairy garden lantern so I could turn it into a terrarium. :D So today I deconstructed it and cleaned the container.

The lantern part has an open top with a hanging loop and a solid base. It has a hexagonal shape with a narrow top, widest part below the middle, and slightly narrower base. The panes appear to be rigid plastic. The frame seems to be metal. There's a bit of heft to the base, even when empty.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

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Photos: Fairy Garden Lantern Deconstruction

Transit

So, yesterday, the wheelchair ramp on the Rt 8 bus I was on developed a bug. Or the system that detects if it is deployed did. The ramp retracted correctly but the bus thought it had not, and would not move.

Ha ha! I pick my routes to maximize alternatives in case of break-downs. I just disembarked and talked over to the LRT. Which, I discovered, was having a minor service delay.

My contingency plans can handle two delays, but not three. Good for me there were just the two. It did mean I was only a little early for work.

On the way home, just after I disembarked from the LRT, an SUV cut the LRT off so the SUV could reach the parking lot ten seconds earlier. If the train had not stopped, I'd have had to stick around, both as a witness and because the accident would blocked the sidewalk between me and the stop I needed to get to.

Less than five minutes after the LRT near-miss, three SUVs tried to turn into the same lane at the same time. I don't think they hit each other but there was a short discussion between the drivers before they all left. I'd have had to stick around for that as well, because it would have blocked the route my bus uses.

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crafts: spinning

a 3-ply yarn

Current Mood: busy

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Safety

Scientists invent 'glue gun' filled with 3D-printed materials that heal broken bones 'in minutes'

Tested on rabbits, the device was able to quickly create complex bone implants using 3D printing technology, without prefabricating a metal or donor-bone graft in advance.

Placed directly on the area of impact, the 3D-printed grafts offer flexibility while also releasing anti-inflammatory antibiotics and promoting natural bone regrowth at the site, according to the research, published in the journal “Device.”

This really is closer to handheld 3D printing than a true bone glue. The former is useful when large parts of bone are missing. The latter is what you want for attaching the ends of a bone broken in half or to piece together many fragments. And while replacing lost sections or puzzling pieces together are invasive processes, just sealing one break doesn't have to be.

Of course, that's if hospitals can be arsed to provide this type of care. They probably won't.

Current Mood: busy

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Birdfeeding

Today is mostly sunny and sweltering. It is 90°F in mid-September. Fuck climate change. >_<

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds. The metal birdbath was empty again.

EDIT 9/14/25 -- I set up 9 crabapple seeds in a baggie of damp sand to cold-stratify in the refrigerator.

EDIT 9/14/25 -- I disassembled the fairy garden so I can use its lantern container as a terrarium.

EDIT 9/14/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/14/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

9/'14/25 -- I watered the irises, old picnic table, new picnic table, septic garden, telephone pole garden, and a few seedlings in the savanna. *goflopnow*

Cicadas and crickets are singing. I've seen a lot of butterflies today -- cabbage, painted ladies, and monarchs. :D

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

So, the way I grew up I'm actually shockingly good at deep cleaning

I'm even not bad at decluttering, so long as it's okay to literally throw everything out. (They'll sooner or later send another copy of that late bill, don't worry! And you can always order another birth certificate, probably.)

But I'm not so good at routine maintenance. Does anybody have any already set up daily/weekly/monthly/periodically checklists for various areas of the house that they can recommend?

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The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency, volume 2) by Frank Herbert

Bureau of Sabotage agent Jorj X. McKie is assigned a legal and ethical trap: a planet of victims, who, whether rescued or left to their impending doom, present a danger to the ConSentiency.

The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency, volume 2) by Frank Herbert

Entry tags:

music: composition

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

(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

Marking another

I'm struck by how bad I seem to be at making one-on-one plans nowadays. So reliant on being in the same place at the same time with people when I'm much more likely to have an evening free and not know what to do with it.

Tara and Liam are off to Amsterdam or close to it. I hadn't seen them in ages and hadn't been all that much in touch. I haven't been going to the physical therapist in columbia.

I feel like I have much less excuse with pluckedkiwi and Girlinpink. It was only 23 minutes to get home. They leave to move to New Zealand in the extremely near future. Or open house today and I'm only ended at 9:00 but they told me to still show up. I kept noting that they were yawning and they kept saying it was good to see me. I left 2 hours ago but somehow I'm still up.

Others who have left or cathy and Gary to Scotland and my high school friend Faisal and his wife to Portugal.

I spent a bunch of time the other night talking with a lifeguard in Spanish who was from ecuador, which reminds me that Dan is moving to ecuador. But he was planning that long before this election.

(Trying to explain trumpism and Reaganomics in Spanish was an experience. I eventually had to leave to English.)

I find myself wondering how stupid I am that I'm not looking to get out.

Unfortunately it's not particularly any better for Jews anywhere else.

In other news, it was really really good to see people at Simon's party, which is part of why I got there so late to p&g. So it would have been good to catch up with barchan once he got there but I was on my way out

I have to be at Glen Echo in less than 12 hours for a wedding
And I'm still wide awake and I still don't know what I'm wearing. And I would have liked to have time to go swimming beforehand especially since I won't be going to Acro first

Speaking of acro, I fell yesterday, and many kudos to my partner who managed to keep me safe. No biscuit to either of us for not making sure a specific person was identified to spot..

(no subject)

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250913.html

The steerable 60 foot diameter dish antenna of the

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250913.html

Current Mood: accomplished

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Candy Jar Terrarium Part 2: Plants

This post covers planting the candy jar terrarium. Begin with Part 1: Setup.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

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how to,
terraria

Candy Jar Terrarium Part 1: Setup

Today I assembled the large candy jar terrarium. Continue with Part 2: Plants.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

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Candy Jar Terrarium Part 2: Plants

This post covers planting the candy jar terrarium. Begin with Part 1: Setup.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

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Candy Jar Terrarium Part 1: Setup

Today I assembled the large candy jar terrarium. Continue with Part 2: Plants.

( Read more... )

a few notes on ratelimiting

https://dotat.at/@/2025-09-14-ratelimit.html

Last year I wrote a pair of articles about ratelimiting:

Recently, Chris "cks" Siebenmann has been working on ratelimiting HTTP bots that are hammering his blog. His articles prompted me to write some clarifications, plus a few practical anecdotes about ratelimiting email.

( Read more... )

I saw a whole family of deer the other day!

I'll try to remember to upload the pic later. It's not a very good picture, but then, I was wary of trying to get too close.

****************

( Read more... )