Freezeday

[altivo]

Actually not bad at the moment, but there were areas of heavy frost this morning as I drove to work. Tonight we're supposed to get down to 30F, which will be the first real killing frost of the year for us. According to NOAA the first frost here is only this late in about one out of ten years. Normally it comes a week or two earlier.

Folks out in the DC area and north to New England are expecting winter storm conditions tomorrow, with accumulating snow. Here it is cold but clear, so we have nothing to complain about.

Gary pulled his inexpensive keyboard out of the barn loft for me, and I dusted it off and tested it this evening. It works, at least as well as can be expected for what it is. I was particularly pleased when I plugged in his USB MIDI adapter and found that Linux recognizes it and knows what to do with it. I don't think I've ever run MIDI IN/OUT from Linux, so I'm going to have to do some software evaluation and testing. However, I told Audacious to pump MIDI data out to the interface, and fed it a file. The MIDI OUT LED on the interface gadget was flashing, so it seems to have routed things correctly. I need more space to get the computer and keyboard all hooked up and running. Have to clean up some junk for that tomorrow.

Gas prices in Harvard jumped up by 20 cents today, for no apparent reason. This is after they dropped by a nickel on Wednesday. Marengo has been pretty stable for the past three weeks and so far hasn't budged, so there's a 20 cent per gallon spread between two towns just 15 miles apart, in the same state and county, with the same taxes. That's just plain fishy.

No urgent events scheduled this weekend either. Hopefully, some relaxation time.

Comments

[avon_deer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/markets/oil-drops-below-93-in-europe-pausing-octobers-huge-rally-driven-by-eu-debt-plan-hopes/2011/10/28/gIQAzcTyOM_story.html

That's unusual, given how prices for the raw material have gone DOWN.

[frith]

Keyboard & MIDI?! That means you could potentially use synths such as the shareware @ hotpotato colon slashes tweakbench dot com forwardslash peach and turn your midi into something out of a MOOG.

This is not quite MOOG, but this is why I'm enthused by MIDIs all of a sudden: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k16lGVyZtKk

[altivo]

Well, I dunno about "peach" as I suspect it is Windows based and I run Linux. But yes, there are Linux synthesizers such as Qsynth and Fluidsynth that accept MIDI input and play back sounds as specified.

I have two real physical MIDI keyboards here, though. The lightweight one Gary just produced from the barn (which is in fact an NES/Nintendo device itself, since it came with piano learning software originally marketed by Nintendo; and also an old SCI Six-Trak. SCI was so early in the MIDI game, their manufacturer ID is 01 as I recall. The Nintendo piano is actually a more powerful synth than the Six-Trak, which cost me about $750 back in the 1980s. Most often I've used the computer as a sequencer and editor, and the keyboard as a playback device, though I'm a fairly competent keyboardist myself.

[altivo]

Yeah, unfortunately it isn't that unusual at all. Gasoline is a commodity with a non-flexible demand. The price has to go really high before buyers start to reduce their purchasing, with the end result that sellers can manipulate prices as they wish to maximize the "gouge" as it were. So we commonly see price increases of 10 cents on a Friday and drops back to the prior level on Sunday evening, inspired not by supply and demand but just by the fact that weekend travellers will pay whatever is asked rather than curtail their plans. The best day to buy fuel around here is probably Wednesday. The worst day is usually Friday or Saturday.