Midday Musings
I’ve been experimenting with grow lights. I have been growing peppers for several years, and each year is an improvement over the way I had done things previously. This year, I decided to start the pepper species that are not capsicum annuum very early, since they seem to need a longer growing season. Then, almost on impulse, I decided to set up some grow lights. I did a little research, and I chose some made by GE which were well-reviewed. My research suggested that one of the benefits would be that my seedlings would be less “leggy”. Indeed, my oldest seedlings are only six days old, perhaps an inch tall, but they’re already starting to grow true leaves. I am eager to see how this continues.
I was thinking about making another attempt to learn how to sight read bass music. I understand the theory, of course, but I am very slow. I thought about developing a flash card app that lets me answer by playing the note on my bass and detects, through the microphone, which note I’ve played. I did a little research on algorithms for detecting notes, a so-called pitch detection algorithm. Not to mention thinking about whether I should learn Kotlin now. Then I thought maybe it was worth checking again whether anyone already make such an app (there hadn’t been a few years ago when I thought about this before). I have found two so far. They seem to be oriented toward the piano, and it’s unclear how well they will work for the bass. (The bass lives in a different range, and it is a transposing instrument.)
While research all that, I discovered that there is a surprising amount of disagreement about where Middle C is located on a bass. There are at least three valid answers. The most technically correct is that it is on the 17th fret of the G string (C4). However, because the bass is a transposing instrument, a Middle C as written on a staff for piano music would end up being played on the 5th fret of the G string (C3). And then there are people who believe that “Middle C” refers to the C in the middle of any given instrument’s normal range, which would be the 3rd fret on the A string (C2). Also, I realized for the first time that I can’t even play A440 on any bass I own (because I don’t have a six-string bass), which is the reference note used to define standard pitches.
Then I stumbled across meantone temperament, which means, among other things, that “enharmonic notes, such as A♯ and B♭, are a different pitch.” That broke my brain, and I don’t want to think about anything more complicated than that the rest of today.
I am beginning an effort to do a bunch of reading about building and construction. Initially, I am limiting my focus to knowledge needed to build a shed. Today, I’m reading one of three books I’ve selected regarding concrete. I’m only a few chapters in, and already I’ve learned that there is a lot more to it than I imagined.
Yesterday, I had a fairly simple idea for a murder mystery. Simple is good, because I need to practice creative writing. I keep getting caught up in planning (“research”), and I want to plan in layers of deception and plot twists. I need to set that aside for now and just write, which means I need to choose a simple story I can get started with, and then just write it. It doesn’t need to be a perfect idea, and I should write with the intention of never publishing (or producing, in the case of screenplays). I should try to make it my goal to work on this a little bit every day. Today’s goal should be to create my murder victim and a bunch of reasons for murdering him.
One of my FB friends made a post complaining about all the “noise” in the world, and whether it is possible to be a “free thinker” with so much noise. I responded with the obvious solution of turning off television and social media. However, by “free thinker”, they mean antivaxxer, which is a phenomenon created by social media and less scrupulous media. I doubt they’ll see the irony.
