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  1. Practice Notes 2014-09-25

    By chance, I have access to a piano in my apartment for the first time… ever, actually. Trying to work through sight-reading some of J.S. Bach’s two-part inventions (score, warning: PDF). Inventio 4 in D minor is a favourite, and I can get through either part on its own without too much trouble, or both together VERY slowly.

    Also put simple chords to De Montford and played along with a rather excellent video by Starymonetti, who I met half of in Vienna this summer:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVXgsgGT0gI

    Also: explained the inner workings of the hurdy gurdies’ mysterious buzzing sound to my roommate. It’s not actually effectively explained anywhere on the web as far as I can tell, so if you’re curious:

    One (or more) of the strings rest on bridges which are not adhered to the instrument but rather sit in a slot and can pivot. A string (the “tirant” en Français) applies force to the non-vibrating part of the string, pulling the pivoting bridge down firmly against the soundboard. The amount of tension on the tirant sets the threshold of energy with which the string must be vibrating in order to pivot the bridge, at which point a slip-stick cycle starts to happen, repeatedly pivoting the bridge before it slips back, hammering against the soundboard.

  16. ↪ Ben Werdmuller: Indieweb video test

    @benwerd nice one! I’m currently working on video post-by-email. It almost worked here, next time should work flawlessly.

    The nice thing about using email to post videos is that it’s asyncronous — I can send the email and then go do something else, instead of having to either wait for it to upload or do the “if I switch apps now will it stop uploading argh what do I do” dance.

  18. Some of my favourite humour comes from the dissonance created when maths and dry, scientific language is used to analyse creative license. This is a classic example:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muVfidujxRg

    I love trying to introspect humour, attempting to articulate exactly what it is about something which makes it so funny. In this case I think it stems from the fact that the source material was intended to be passively consumed. At first, the presenter defies this intention by deconstructing the physics involved — a form of intense seeing.

    This on its own might be moderately amusing, but instead of simply saying “this is not possible”, he actually acknowledges the original intention and assumes that it must be possible (“I saw it on TV, it must be true!”).

    I think the humour here comes from the fact that, despite clearly having the skills to debunk the animation, he barely even acknowledges that he has that choice, and instead changes his own understanding of the show to make it fit (e.g. the ponies are made of dark matter).

  20. Aaron Parecki woah, brilliant! Love the fact you're self hosting video too — what’s your workflow for that? I was thinking of building a mandrill-backed email inbox for photo and video upload so I can post from iOS really easily