Just a note

This past day, I felt like doing something.  That was not how I felt the previous days, or really for that matter, previous weeks.  Sertraline is a good appetite suppressant for someone prone to stress eating, but in me it also largely shuts down the ambition to go beyond the bare necessities of day-to-day living.  In addition, I slept late and still ended up taking morning and afternoon naps.  That's no way for a person to live, even one of my advanced years.

I found interesting articles in English and others in French; I practiced beyond the daily seven-minute-long lesson in a simple short-form course; I walked more than a mile and more for fun than out of duty.  I like not being subject to stress eating, and while I'm taking it, the lethargy of sertraline feels perfectly good, but being out from under the influence makes me feel alive.  Ancora imparo, y'know?

Uncharted territory

What is it they say about being rich, that it reveals who a person really is?  Well, I can't speak for the part about being rich, but after years of being on-the-edge poor, I'm still thinking like someone without a dollar to spare.  I go into a supermarket and look not only for the sale items, but also the clearance and markdown products.  

I'll also admit that if I see a coin on the ground, I'll bend over and pick it up, even if it's only a penny.  Before Tabby's Place, I'd save any money I found throughout the year, and then at Christmas, put the entire sum in a Salvation Army kettle.  Of course, now everything goes into (you'll pardon the expression) the kitty.

But recently, this has led me down a road I never thought I'd travel.  To explain:  my loose plan for retirement involved (1) the cats at Tabby's Place, visiting them, socializing them, photographing them, and writing about them; (2) continuing to read French and understand the spoken language; and (3) music lessons, learning about drumming.  All three are time-tested, satisfactory ways to keep a person's mind active and keeping rust from forming.  

It was about a week ago that the online drum lesson group sent a request for me to complete a survey.  I think the questions had to do with how I feel I'm doing and whether these lessons are helping me meet whatever goals I set at the beginning.  But right after completing the survey, I got another note from the group, telling me I was now entitled to choose a free set of lessons from another part of the music education company's offerings.  Those consisted of piano, guitar, and voice.  None of them jumped out at me as something I'd always wanted to try and the chance to fulfill a lifetime goal.  

But gee whiz, it's free!  

I dismissed piano and guitar because I didn't want to buy an instrument.  That left (drum roll) "Sing Better in 30 Days!" (exclamation point included in the title)  At once the doubts began making themselves known -- you're going to sound like a fool!  You've gone so long without singing that your voice, which was never high-level in the first place, is rust-covered and hopeless!  At least I know that PG won't ridicule me, but doing something as an absolute beginner and doing it out loud where anyone else can hear it?  I'm a capital-I Introvert who would always rather learn a skill behind locked doors in a soundproof room, emerging only when I feel ready to perform at a high level.

But, but, y'know, it's free!  And hey, maybe I'll learn something.  Maybe it'll even be fun.  It's so unlike me, and so unexpected, so sudden, that I have no expectations.  

And today, I completed day 5 of the course.  The lessons are only 10 minutes long, so I watch them once and then repeat them with what I've learned.  I've shared one of the lessons with PG, so she understands why I'm making noises that don't appear to have anything to do with singing, and that has helped me relax and move away from the defenses of an Introvert.  This isn't going to turn me into Pavarotti, it'll just help me sound better than I did at the beginning.

But don't ask me to record myself singing alone!  Anything but that!

At the end of the day

   

The worm/caterpillar on the left was dangling at eye level over the sidewalk from an oak tree on the next door neighbor's property.  Between its size and its constant motion, I knew it would take a miracle to get a good focused image, and after four blurry tries, I settled for the one you see above.  What it is doesn't feel as useful to remember as just recording that it was there, and that I almost walked into it.

And now, what you've no doubt been waiting for:  Google Lens guessed that the thing in the photo above right is possibly an x-ray of a tibia, or else an image of paint peeling from a Ford F-150.  Guess I'll have to try something else.

Later:  Blue-tailed damselfly?  OK, I can accept that.

Ancora Imparo:  (1) learned that the WIN/Shift/S combination that does screen grabs also records videos, the way Dropbox used to do.  Used it to save a clip from a post on Xitter that showed a dog jumping ropes being twirled by a human and two other dogs.  (2) learned that FastStone accesses the latitude and longitude recorded on pictures taken with my Samsung Galaxy, and it can place them on a screen in Google Maps (Windows 11).  The grab below shows where I saw the insect on the right above.

Lots of unnecessary eating today, so I needed a walk late this afternoon.  The timeline on Google Maps (Android) isn't as detailed as it used to be, so when it told me just now that I'd only walked half a mile, I had my doubts.  (There should be an app for that.  A free one would be best for my budget.)

EDIT:  Did some searching and eventually settled on MapMyWalk.  Yesterday's walks totaled a bit over a mile and a half.  

A better day

About a month ago, I was learning how to use Handbrake to convert video files on a DVD to something that could be viewed standalone.  Today, I picked up some more family videos that had been transferred from 8MM videotape to DVD, and ran one of them through Handbrake.  Here's what happened:

Some time later today, before seeing the responses, I figured out a way that would work.  The initial screen "Source Selection" presents three choices:  Folder (Batch Scan), File (Open video file(s)) and E:\DVD Video Recording.  I'd been using Folder and File without success, and so looked into DVD, which is where the answer was.  It shows the full time on the DVD under Title at left, but allows you to select a Range of consecutive Chapters which add up to the Duration time at far right.  

Now to hope that the DVD drive holds up through all the discs to be processed.  

You can observe a lot...

Just another old movie on TCM, Johnny Angel, not a classic no matter what the channel says.  One scene with George Raft and Claire Trevor together at a table, I realized that there were sharp dark shadows on Raft's face, but in Trevor's shots, the shadows were softer and greyer.  Not the first time it's been done, I'm sure, but it's the first time I ever noticed it.  

My New Year's Day

No football, no parades.  I made a peach streusel cake for PG, and she made a pot of potato-ham soup for us.  She approved of the cake, and I had a second cup of soup.  

We had cats on our laps at various times.  She watched some BritBox and some Acorn TV.  I watched instructional videos on the laptop, and learned a little more along the way.  

All that, and the usual chores.

Wait, one more thing.  With info from HQ, I wrote a first and second draft of my monthly assignment.  The photos are already uploaded, and I'm waiting for one more piece of information before turning it in.

I have felt like getting out of bed to download and process photos.  When I have enough information, writing is not difficult.  I feel in control.  Photography and writing are good skills to have in my volunteer role.

Decades ago, drawing was difficult and not much fun.  I might draw a line and then decide to erase it - what a waste of time.  I didn't have the skills to achieve what I felt the drawing task required.

With a text editor, I write what I want, and if I decide to remove it, I just shift it elsewhere in the file, because I might change my mind or decide those words would fit perfectly well in another part of the document, or maybe in another version in another month.  

Translation, please?

Awhile back, I had a local camera shop make a DVD of a 25-year-old 8mm home video.  I fiddled with it, tried to edit it, failed.  Speccy said that the CPU (Intel Core i7 10700 @ 2.90 GHz) had zoomed up to 98 degrees Celsius.  I put the DVD aside for 3 years. 

Now, as a recent retiree with more time to educate myself, it's time to try again.  After a couple of hours of trying, I still don't feel like I have a handle on it yet, although I have learned a couple of things that don't work.  

Find VOB files on the DVD: check

Import a VOB file into OpenShot:  check

Preview VOB file in OpenShot:  appears on timeline, but with blank screen and no audio

Try again.  Google some more.

Convert VOB file to MP4 with VLC media player:  Good picture, audio sounds like a chainsaw cutting down a tree

Try again.  Google some more.  Someone on Reddit advised to "Remux VOB to MP4 with Handbrake", which is another language altogether.  

Next - read and learn about using HandBrake, and remux it, don't convert it.  I think that's what next, anyway.  But not tonight, though.

Anyway, I learned something.  

---------------------------

The Good TImes are Here and Now

Last night, I was looking around YouTube for songs to learn with reasonably simple beats.  I called up John Hiatt's I Don't Even Try and soon found myself playing air drums and singing (if you can call it that) along.  Then I opened my eyes and saw Pat walking past me into the kitchen.  Usually even with my eyes closed I'll see the hall light come on before she walks downstairs.  Musta really been into the beat.

This morning, as I collected the stuff for breakfast (cereal, milk, juice, seltzer, spoon) I was softly singing (IYCCIT) Walter Becker's Down in the Bottom.  That's another song with a reasonably simple beat, as far as I could tell last night.  I'm sure that the beat doesn't get lost in the music, unlike some other songs that are on the Beginner list at Drumeo.  

Pat commented that I must be happier these days, since I'm singing more.  Interesting observation, and a true one.  Work is going well, home life is great, and I have plenty of absorbing (and useful) things to do in my spare time.  

Visiting shelter cats and loving them, either socializing the frightened ones or giving the social ones a lap and some petting.  Writing, about one cat in particular, and taking pictures when I see something interesting.  At the very least, the good images get posted to a blog where at least a lot of Singaporeans see it, and the best ones are used by the shelter for promotional purposes.

Sometime in the past year, I believe, French got a whole lot easier.  Although I had re-started learning the language in 2002 with the help of Champs-Elysees -- after a couple of decades of inaction -- it was hard to read anything without numerous consults of a dictionary, either the Larousse in the office or the one online.  As recently as during the Covid pandemic, I remember just giving up and not trying anymore.  After one of my credit cards was used by someone with bad intents, the credit card company issued a new one with a different number.  I tried to change the card number on file with Le Monde, but three months later I was no longer able to log in for subscriber-only articles, and I took that as a sign to stop struggling.

Then last year, I found that it was now possible to use Google Pay to subscribe to publications outside the U.S.  Even better, I'd been away long enough that it was possible to take advantage of a lower-cost subscription offer.  And suddenly, and counter-intuitively, after weeks without trying to learn anything, I could read French comfortably.  I still use Google Translate for an individual word, and now and then I do a search when a phrase makes no literal sense and I strongly suspect an idiom.  But now I look at the Times, the Post, and Le Monde equally as much for news.  It's a mystery, but it's also a sense of accomplishment.  I've read the articles that say learning a language helps keep the brain from rusting out.  And hey, you never know when you might need another language in case Trump gets re-elected. 

So there's (1) Tabby's Place, with all the useful things it provides, (2) French, which I can understand in spoken form (as long as it's spoken reasonably clearly) and now can read (with occasional help from Translate).  And recently, adding (3) drumming to the list.  All things I don't have to stop as long as my brain and body hold up.  Maybe I'll never do any drumming except in this house, but it's a pleasant experience to learn.  

And as if on cue, a big brown truck stopped in front of the house, and its driver carried a good-sized brown box and set it down just to the side of the front door.  That would be the new drum throne.

One last thing:  I take care to choose songs sung by humans with imperfect singing voices.  Whatever it takes to keep from sounding pitiful!

A Meandering Path

First, Twitter:  a tweet that China has been waging economic warfare to gain power and influence in Asia and Africa.  

Next, a comment on the tweet:  "Did they not read Confessions of an Economic Hitman?"

Next, a search for more information about that book.  According to its author, the US has used that same kind of strategy to gain power and influence in South America.  Decided to side with the reviewers who said the book was long on accusations and short on proof.  

Next, the Wikipedia entry for that book also contained a link to Gen. Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" on the HathiTrust site.  

While on HathiTrust, I searched for other collections and found a recently updated one devoted to Cats.  One of the books is Walter Chandoha's Book of Kittens and Cats, copyright date 1963.  The black-and-white photos aren't as useful as the author's advice for wannabe cat photographers.  While some of it is no longer relevant since film gave way to digital, other parts may be more impervious to time.  

He recommends a shutter of 1/250 or even 1/500, an aperture of f/16 or f/22, and the absolute need for flash or a speedlight.  But most important, beyond the equipment and the usefulness of an assistant, is "lots of patience."  

And now, to go to Tabby's Place and try to put some of that knowledge into practice.  

My day

Dot dot dot... took down the chicken wire and screen door that turned the living room into an enclosed area for cats.  First it was used when Nelson was recovering without surgery from a luxating patella, and later it was used to help Nora get used to the Pooshkateers and vice versa.  Inertia kept it in place for years after it was no longer necessary...  

Mallard pair again sighted in the back yard, Still not sure whether their nest is on our property or whether they're coming here to join the other birds who are feeding here.  The hen was determined to keep smaller birds away from the dish of water we'd set out for all...

Rain in the forecast tomorrow between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.  Just ducky...

Well, I believe it's been decided.  We're going to go for the lower-cost landscaping and save the big-ticket flooring installation/roof replacement/deck repair/window replacement and the driveway re-do for another time.  With a house, it's not (just) the cost, it's the upkeep...

Finished reading Much Ado About Me... watched Nebraska volleyball spring game, the Wheat Shockers vs. the Cornhuskers... and I dinked around with the drumsticks from time to time.  Still improvising surfaces to tap upon; mouse pads are good sound deadeners.  Keeping time is interesting, making lots of loud noise is what I want to avoid.  

The Myth of Talent

 This is one of the things I thought about before buying that set of drum sticks.  

“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of ‘getting to know you,’ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, ‘

‘Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: ‘ I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.’

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could ‘Win’ at them.”

-- Kurt Vonnegut

Still learning, a little better than yesterday.  This afternoon, YouTube's algorithm suggested The Humpty Dance by Digital Underground, and a few seconds into it, I picked up the sticks and tried to play along.  

What is he doing?

Just for the record:

 -  Did my job for a full 8 hours today.  In addition:

 -  Walked around the neighborhood before sunset and saw two cottontails along the way.

 -  Looked up a recent paycheck to see what I'm paying for medical insurance, and compared that figure to the amount I might be paying for Medicare Part A, Part B, and Part D, along with the cost of Medigap coverage (everything Medicare doesn't cover).  I have multiple college degrees, and it's hard for me to keep it all straight.  Just imagine what someone else would have to understand.

 -  I read some more of Fred Allen's unfinished autobiography, "Much Ado About Me".  Kindle tells me I'm 85% finished, and I already know there's an index after the last chapter that is probably good for 5% right there.  

 -  After months of watching YouTube videos of Japanese pre-teen Yoyoka and German teen Sina, I'm interested in learning more about drumming.  I found a few absolute beginner instructional videos and can compare and contrast where they differ and where they are the same.  Right Foot/Bass Drum/on 1 and 3; Left Hand/Snare Drum on 2 and 4; Right Hand/Hi-Hat for 1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and.  If I start slowly enough, I can duplicate that pattern.  One beginner video started with the bass drum, another with the dominant hand and the constant pattern.  

After the Drumming 101 lessons, I re-watched Sina drum along with Home At Last and recognized the Purdie Shuffle variations on the basic pattern.  The right foot does a little more than hit on one and three, and the high-hat is a shuffle instead of a simple straight eighth-note pattern.  Not saying I'll ever be able to play it myself, and I'm positive I'll never try duplicating Steve Gadd's work on Aja.  I wasn't born with that kind of talent.  If I had been, it would have appeared long before age 66.  

Funny thing, though; in the comments of the videos, not just once, but several times, the writer would admit to being 45, or 61, or 64, and only now starting to learn now to play, just like me.  

In my early 20's, a lady I was dating taught me the moves to juggle three balls.  I kept trying, and eventually got a good grip on the technique.  And that's where my juggling education ended.  No desire to learn five balls, or a cascade, or bouncing the balls instead of tossing them up in the air.  That's how I'm looking at drumming now.  On Sunday I should receive two pairs of Chinese-made maple drumsticks, and I'll substitute them for the pencils I've been using to tap on the legal pads atop my desk.  I'm not going to eat, drink, or sleep this thing, but just have fun with it.

So I'm reading, taking pictures of cats and preparing them for publication, socializing cats, and now teaching myself basic drumming.  Doesn't leave time for TV, does it?  And when all that is done, I sometimes write about it. 

In the meantime

This afternoon, a van stopped in front of the house and a man got out and came to the door carrying a package about the size of a King James bible.  

As predicted yesterday, my phone is here.  SmartSwitch worked really well, transferring everything from old device to new in minutes.  That was the part I was concerned about.  I guess I'm showing my age, remembering the rigmarole that was necessary after purchasing a new PC.

Now, I have a nifty container for accessing all my online stuff, but until Verizon transfers the number, it's useless as a phone.

They tried to talk me into a charger, but I parried that by telling them I have a wireless charger, which is true.  But it wasn't until the phone arrived that I checked the shoebox in the office closet, the one that holds all manner of spare parts accumulated from prior hardware purchases.  

The first thing I pulled out was a short wire with USB at one end and USB-C at the other.  Just the thing I needed; I must have been thinking if I held onto it, it would be useful for something someday.  

Car Shopping

PTO today and the start of a 3-day weekend. What to do with that time?  Several chores around the house that had been nagging; taking some docs to the credit union to put in the safe deposit box; taking Nora to the vet for treatment of her URI.  Her weight has dropped from 15 to 13.4 pounds, which is encouraging.  Give a homeless, starving cat access to food, and it tends to eat like there's no tomorrow.  Now that she's 8, we really need to get that excess weight off her, for her joints, for her blood sugar.  

And, around 3:00, we drove to a car dealer to look at 2023 models now, with the intention of buying one later in summer as a leftover when the 2024 models are released.  Well, I was under a misapprehension, and I was quickly disabused of that old-fashioned notion by Joe, the old-school salesman who spotted us gaping at the showroom with a puzzled expression, wondering why there were no cars in it.

Remember the pandemic, and how hard it was at times to find products?  (Flour, sugar, pasta were especially in short supply at the beginning.  For us, for a longer period, it was cat food.)  Now, think about something much more complicated with a much-more-involved supply chain.  

There's demand, but hardly any supply, Joe told us.  You order a car and you wait for months until the company has all the parts -- particularly the chips -- to build it.  One company is giving its customers only one keyless fob.  The chip that would go in the backup fob is instead going into someone else's primary fob. 

Here's where it's good not to be young.  Experience says that after a shortage comes a glut.  The meat shortage in the 70's, the oil embargo by OPEC, and about any other shortage you can name.  For awhile earlier in the decade, houses were selling for 10-20% more than the realtor's price, but that's not happening anymore. In a free market, after nothing comes the deluge.  

So my car's paid off and I have no intention of paying $10,000 over sticker price just to drive away in a new car.  Let's wait a while and see how things play out. 

How does he do it?

With little to do at work, I went into the Google Books repository of Life magazine and chose one at random.  It was the edition from April 25, 1955, and along with a feature on the Davy Crockett craze and an update on the Salk polio vaccine, there was a two-page remembrance of the photographer Ylla.  

Soon, I was searching for more information and looking for her photographs of animals, particularly (of course) cats.  

A magazine article from 1950 called her the "world's greatest photographer of animals" and notes that "Ylla finds that kittens are co-operative subjects but mature cats are bored by noises and toys, blasé about food, must be handled patiently.  She... is resigned to wasting a lot of film until she gets the right pose."  Some things never change.   

The wrong 3rd out

So anyway, I learned something, specifically about Official Baseball Rule 5.09(c).  One out, runners on 2nd and 3rd.  Batter lines to the 1st baseman (2 outs) and throws to 3rd to try to get the 3rd out.  

The throw was offline and the 3rd baseman had to take a step or two off the base to catch it.  While that was happening, the runner on 3rd crossed home plate.  

Then the 3rd baseman got up and tagged the man in front of him (3rd out) and then touched 3rd base, because the guy there left early.  And that's where the "Fourth Out" part of 5.09(c) came in.

Tickenest commented:  ...Stepping on third before tagging R2 would have prevented the run from scoring, because touching the base before tagging the runner makes it unmistakable that the fielder is appealing R3 because that's how you retire R3 in this situation. By tagging R2 first and then touching the base, the fielder does not demonstrate that he is intentionally appealing R3.

Winning

The last two times I lost at Wordle, I had four of the 5 letters, but there were multiple possibilities for the final letter and I guessed wrong.  

The same situation came up today.  After 3 guesses, I knew two letters and had a pretty good idea that the answer would be _OUND.  But would it be BOUND, FOUND, MOUND, POUND, or WOUND?

Three more guesses, five more possibilities.  A statistician would be able to tell you the exact probability that I'd guess correctly.  All I knew is that I didn't like my chances.

Different tactic:  put together a wrong guess containing as many of the possible letters as... um... possible.  

After guess #1, I'm positive that the last letter is a D, and that B and M are out.

After guess #2, I'm positive that P and W are out.

Leaving just one possibility.  And there's the answer.

Only works in standard mode, of course.   Hard mode won't allow guesses that don't contain the already-established letters.

What comes after "son of no coincidences"?

Chrome's history page tells me that at 4:50 this afternoon, I was reading Christopher Buckley's guest essay, "P.J. O’Rourke and the Death of Conservative Humor".   

Two minutes later, I read, "Humorlessness has crept in its petty pace to the right, where it is conducted with North Korean-level solemnity by the bellowing myrmidons of MAGAdom."  (I guess Chris Buckley didn't fall far from dear old dad's tree.) 

Immediately I Google the mysterious "myrmidon" and satisfy my thirst for knowledge.

Learning a new word, and at my age, too. 

Zoom ahead to 8:15 or so, "later that same day"; the film "Twentieth Century," and this bit of dialogue:

I ran it back several times, and I don't know what he's saying at the "inaudible" point, either.  Sounds sort of like Pearl Atomics, which I doubt.

- - - - - - - - - -

Minutes later:  Why guess when you can Google?  "..bath tubs, slews of Myrmidons" brought up this article from AV Club:  

“That’s not a contract,” he tells Lily. “It’s a coronation. Barrels of rubies. Enormous carpets for your pretty feet. Pearl and onyx bathtubs. Slews of Myrmidons at your beck and call.”

Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who wrote the screenplay (based on their own stage play), didn’t fret about whether audiences knew that Myrmidons were Achilles’ soldiers in The Iliad. Like many scribes of Hollywood’s Golden Age (or, say, the Coen brothers today), they valued historical and cultural literacy for its own sake, weaving it into even the goofiest of material.

Son of "There are no coincidences"

Pat and I did pretty well with today's NYT Spelling Bee.  We came up with 61 of 63 words, well past Genius level.  Not surprisingly, the word "valentine" was a pangram, although not the only one.  

I looked up the last two words, one of which was "villanelle".  We both griped that we don't even know what the word means, and what are they doing putting that kind of thing in the puzzle, and then I looked up the word.  In Wikipedia, a "villanelle... is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately at the end of each subsequent stanza until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines."  

At which point that 19-line thing rang a bell, and I looked up the 2017 New Yorker article on Elizabeth Bishop that I had read recently.  Sure enough:

[She wrote] seventeen quickly successive drafts of an exactingly structured villanelle, a form with origins in the French Baroque... a fixed form of nineteen lines: five tercets, a concluding quatrain, and a rhyme scheme tight enough to keep any feeling from spilling over the borders. 

Do you have any secrets to longevity and staying in shape?

 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/sports/julia-hawkins-running.html

To stay in shape, just keep active. Keep your weight down and exercise. Have a lot of passions, things that you are interested in. Keep interested in a lot of things to keep you busy and keep your mind busy.

And look for magic moments. That is something that I have done in my life — think of the things that are magic moments that happen to you, like sunsets and sunrises, rainbows, beautiful birds, music and people’s lovely comments to you. All of those are magic moments and they are free for all. Be sure to keep your eye open for them.