Wulf's Webden

The Webden on WordPress

19 January 2023
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A Quail is Born

I haven’t done a lot of creative video editing recently. I’m still producing weekly online service for church but, by and large, that follows a routine pattern so that we can keep providing the material without it taking too much time. I did get to do a little bit this week, with a piece for the Toddlers’ group:

A Quail is Born

I had some (slightly shaky) camera phone footage to work with but at least it was in quite high resolution. I managed to chop together an edit for a quick segment for yesterday morning’s session including a couple of excerpts from tracks I’ve composed in the past few years.

17 January 2023
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Ima

Another thumbs up from me for a Scary Pockets video:

I’m a Believer

This is a great example of taking a song that has been done to death and spinning it off into an entirely different place. My favourite kind of cover!

16 January 2023
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Falling Snail?

Is what is coming down outside at the moment snow or hail? It’s small white chunks which sometimes bounce a bit on impact but quickly melt away. Perhaps ‘snail’ would be an appropriate term although ‘down’ doesn’t quite match up to the angled path of descent!

Anyway, in the time it has taken me to type this much, it has definitely turned into a wettish but settling snow flurry. The joys of winter! Time to report it on the UK snow map.

15 January 2023
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Out with the Big Fiddle

Recently there has been a fortnightly Saturday afternoon sing-around session at the local hostelry, The Plough Inn. Up until yesterday, I’d manage to miss all of them because of clashes in my diary but I was free at last so able to make it along with my double bass.

It’s an informal session and most people are happy or even pleased to have others join in on their tracks. The ones I led (noted mainly for my own reference) were:

  • Proud Mary
  • Bring Me Sunshine
  • Ye Mariners All

I’ve got a vague feeling there might have been a fourth one but, with about ten contributors, it took a while to go round and I skipped my first go because I’d only just arrived. Next one due on 28 January from 2-4pm.

14 January 2023
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Covers on

Not the polytunnel covers (that’s a little way off still) but I went out and bought some horticultural fleece today to cover the crops I planted last month. The weather is due to turn cold again tomorrow and persist that way for a few weeks. Hopefully this extra blanket will give a little extra protection and stop them being knocked too far back or even killed off.

13 January 2023
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Standing up

My polytunnel project has passed the next significant marker. I finished getting the foundation poles in and was able to mount the four hoops and main stabilisers. That’s an important step forward for a couple of reasons.

Practically, it means the soil moving is done for a few days. Since tomorrow is due to be wet again and then the temperature will plummet to a level where the earth may well freeze overnight, it means I don’t have to worry about digging in frozen ground and can press on with truing up and reinforcing the metal structure.

The other is psychological; keeping up momentum is important. There’s still a fair way to go and I’d ideally like to have the tunnel in operation by the end of next month, assuming we don’t have a freezing early spring. There are still lots of steps to go but having the hoops standing up is a good place to have reached.

11 January 2023
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Shortest Day Taste Test

The first bottle I tried of my Shortest Day beer was a bit of a disaster. It was the end of the line and, with a lot of sediment in the bottom, I wasn’t surprised when it frothed up on opening. I didn’t get a fair chance to taste that one. However, I opened another bottle yesterday and I’d say it has turned out to be a decent brew along the lines of a stout although a little less dark than most stouts would be. Tasty!

9 January 2023
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Squaring up

Today I managed to put in a grand total of one more of the foundation posts for the polytunnel. One is better than none though and it does put me over half-way through the process. For the first four, I just had to keep them in a straight line with regular spaces between them. I also had the top of the existing beds to use as a height gauge. In effect, I mainly just had to worry about the length dimension, although there was a certain amount of care needed to ensure the posts were vertical and at the right points along the line.

This afternoon’s one required me to also deal with width and depth. I think I got a pretty good result, although number six (out of eight) might be trickier still, as it has all the challenges of today’s one and needs to be in a straight line with it.

One of the things which helps is that, although the parts are specified in metric, the basic design is still built around imperial dimensions. The polytunnel will be 6′ wide and 12′ long with 4′ between each of the side posts. That means the Pythagorean method for calculating a square is very straightforward. If I work on a triangle 6′ wide and 8′ long, that means the hypotenuse will be the square root of the sum of the squares on those two sides. It doesn’t take much to do the maths in your head – 36 + 64 = 100 and the square root of 100 is a nice round 10. I think I’d be breaking out the calculator if I was working on 1.83m and 2.44m (the result should end up at about 3.05m).

A natively metric design could be made to work with neater numbers but all the lengths would have to be redesigned. It wouldn’t be enough to design in feet but label with metres and there is a benefit to sums you can do in your head.

8 January 2023
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Back to the Bands

First rehearsal for CSWO this evening… hopefully a chance to check the pieces I rewrote from tuba to electric bass (ie. moved an octave up).

7 January 2023
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Monitor support

In my original plan, the touch screen monitor for the new mixer would be stored in the box where the current mixer lives and just be stood up when the box was opened. The minor flaw with that plan is that the base of the monitor is too wide to fit. What’s the solution?

For me, the obvious answer was a bit of woodwork. Metal or plastic might be more suitable but my tools, materials and skills are more geared to wood. I managed to find some suitable lumber to hold the neck of the monitor support securely but keeping the whole thing more towards a horizontal orientation. That, I think, is what will be most comfortable for operating it in any case.

I’ve got everything fitted together so I’ll be able to see if it fits when we take the old mixer out on Monday. If it does, then I’ll probably want to come back and apply a neater looking finish. It’s ready at least to move from first prototype and into testing.