Wulf's Webden

The Webden on WordPress

10 January 2025
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Twinkle

One of the main things I’ve done today is a bit of solo bass recording. The track, based on the widely-used melody I know best as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, will be used by a friend for the toddlers group she runs with some different lyrics. I’ve also recorded those but I don’t know who wrote them so, for now, I’ve just uploaded what I can lay claim to as my own original work.

There are three layers of instrumentation – the melody, with some additional ornamentation, a lower “bass part” and, more in the background, some texture with a shimmer reverb effect. All are just different combinations effects on the main patch I’ve been using on my Helix LT in recent months. Meanwhile, the image was quickly generated using stablediffusion – it is a decent picture although it failed to use the requested element of a floating bass clef (and I quickly rejected the one with a floating double bass superimposed on a similar background).

9 January 2025
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Loco Beer Tasting

Looking back, I see it was mid-October when I bottled my Loco beer and I’m now a few bottles into drinking it. I’d have to say that it is one of my best brews to date. If you take care with pouring so as to avoid the small amount of sediment in the bottom it would sit quite happily alongside most commercial beers for taste, clarity and carbonation. I think I can mark the revised bottling method I used as a success and it is about time I figured out what my next few brews will be. The first couple of bottles I had were okay but it has improved and that indicates a period of about 3 months from brewing to consuming. There’s probably an upper limit on how long it can be kept too but I’ve got a feeling that won’t be a problem with this batch!

7 January 2025
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High Water

The water is down in the garden but as high as we’ve seen it in the canal at the end of the garden. There’s still another foot or so before it would even begin to top the towpath or the low bit at the end of our garden but it is the highest I’ve seen it. That seems to be the theme round the area. Plenty of people are remarking on ‘the highest I’ve seen it’ and I saw some footage of the nearby Stonebow area where the old bridge was almost submerged (fortunately receded today without any apparent damage to the structure):

I think we’re past the peak of wetness this time round but there is still some more extreme cold to come.

6 January 2025
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Bailing Out the Garden

We’ve still not had that much snow but we did get a lot of rain last night and, looking out the back this morning, had an unexpected pond in the back garden! Some of it was the volume of water (quite a few areas round Loughborough have suffered various degrees of flooding), some of it was the ground not being in a good state to soak it up (saturation and also probably frozen layers) and some was not helped because my water collection system wasn’t diverting excess water fast enough to keep up with the input level.

I’ve now set the feedpipe from the roof so most rainwater will go straight into the regular gutter rather than being diverted but we also manually bailed out quite a few buckets of water to bring the level down. It wasn’t across the whole garden but just the area at the bottom of the steps from the patio, which is lower than other areas. I’ll have to think about whether I can put some kind of drain in but, unless we get more heavy rain in the next day or two (Met Office says probably not – quite sunny but cold), it should be alright for now.

5 January 2025
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Rehearsals Resume

In a couple of hours time I’ll be setting up for the first CSWO rehearsal of the New Year. Fortunately the snow and ice around this part of the East Midlands haven’t been too bad so it hasn’t ended up being called off. We’ve only got a small amount left of the slush that greeted us this morning and the Met Office is suggesting temperatures will actually climb to about 7°C in the middle of the night (although it is also going to be raining hard so I think I’ll stay wrapped up in bed!).

What songs will we be playing? I’m not sure. We’ve got a large selection of ‘TV themes’ that were gathered together last autumn and never ended up as a concert so it could be some of those but I’d better pack my sight-reading head as it could be pretty much anything else except perhaps songs from our Christmas pad!

4 January 2025
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Woodwork and Books

Not woodworking books but woodwork and books. Today has mainly been about tidying up the house after Christmas. We’ve been putting things like the last of the spare beds back up in the loft and getting other bits and pieces down. In the latter category were some IKEA wardrobe drawers that came with some of the furniture we found and disassembled when we moved in and which, after the best part of five years, I am fairly sure I am not going to use again for their original purpose.

I’ve used a couple of them to expand the space behind where my (music) keyboard and (computer) monitor sit in my studio room. Those are fairly undamaged but a third one has been cannibalised to make a riser to support the back of the keyboard.

If I keep this layout, I’ll need to do a bit more woodworking. For now though I’ve pressed in some books I’m unlikely to want to refer to any time soon to create a temporary additional riser to support the monitor. Arguably that isn’t the best use of books but they do serve well as a stand in and I’ll be happy to find a more suitable wood derivative to take their place if I stick with the way things are set up.

3 January 2025
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Goodbye Vera

Yesterday and today Jane and I caught up with the last two episodes of ITV’s series Vera. That is “last two” as in the end of the show as well as in “the most recent two”. That’s probably not a bad thing. Fourteen series is a good run and, although I haven’t seen all of them, they seem to have kept to a high standard including the ones that weren’t directly based on the original Ann Cleeves novels. I can think of quite a few shows that would have been better off with a deliberate ending rather than either petering out or taking various run ups to try and jump the shark.

Will it actually be the end? I think the lead actress, Brenda Blethyn, is pretty set on retiring from the role. It isn’t inconceivable that someone will attempt a reboot with a different lead as the stories are good and there is more than could be wrung from the books but that probably won’t be for a while yet. Other possibilities are either a follow-up with one of the supporting characters taking the main role or some kind of prequel series. Both of those happened with Inspector Morse, with Lewis (actor Kevin Whately had a small part in Vera 14:1) and Endeavour. Perhaps we’ll see Ashworth (her main DS) promoted into the role and there is a ream of blank pages and very partial sketches which could inform some kind of prequel where Vera is still a brilliant investigator but not yet the boss.

We don’t need those things though and, this year, I’ll probably get round to digging back into some of the episodes I haven’t seen or haven’t watched for a long while and perhaps even manage to track down the last couple of novels I need to complete the reading series.

2 January 2025
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A Cold Start

Frosty Window

Looking outside this morning (or up through the slightly dirty skylight in our dining room) it was clear that the weather forecast was right about the temperatures descending to freezing and below as we start to move into 2025. It’s a good job I got up to the allotment yesterday to recover all the plants that I uncovered to make the most of last week’s mildness! Cold is like to continue until at least the early part of this week and possibly for much of January although it is, after all, winter.

I took the opportunity to take this photo, using the iPad which I had to hand. I’ve left it unprocessed as it is the kind of image I might want to use for something like a texture in future and that gives me more options for how to pull it one way or another.

1 January 2025
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Happy New Year 2025

Who knows what 2025 will bring? According to the radio programme I listened to yesterday (‘Future Thinking’ from Radio 4’s All in the Mind show), there are benefits to being generally optimistic and looking for what is good. Perhaps the Bible got there first with Paul’s exhortation to think on “whatever is good, lovely and true” (paraphrased from Philippians 4:8)?

They also suggested that the best time to start a resolution is not the turn of the year but as soon as it has occurred to you and you’ve had time to think it through. Resolutions were seen as good but putting them off until the New Year or only coming up with them because of the New Year has a high probability of failing to keep them.

I haven’t made New Year resolutions for years but I am kicking off a new year of Bible study, following a 49 week plan on the YouVersion Bible app which (if I understand it correctly) will give me a daily dose of chronological New Testament readings backed up by Old Testament readings (linked where suitable) that will cover the whole Bible. So far I’ve just done the day 1 reading but my plan is to try and gradually draw ahead. That is the strategy that has helped me in past runs through the Bible – keeping at least a little way ahead helps avoid falling behind and being tempted to give up.

31 December 2024
by wpAdmin
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Dumb Roads

Travelling to the western edge of London and back yesterday took us along several stretches of “smart motorway”. These forgo the traditional hard shoulder (emergency lane on the left) in favour of frequent ‘refuge’ bays and use overhead gantries to actively manage traffic.

Data shows that, to date, these are measurably safer than traditional motorways but they aren’t perceived as such by most drivers and, in 2023, the Government declared that no new smart motorways would be built. Is this a ‘head in the sand’ attitude that holds us back from better, safer driving? Having seen several of the control gantries switched off and one or two clearly malfunctioning (flickering with nonsensical patterns of light), I’m inclined to think not. What about situations where the sign showing the removal of a lower speed limit doesn’t show, causing many drivers to have a delayed journey and creating hazards as some start to decide to speed up? What about if a warning to slow down instead displays as an all clear? And, sign issues aside, what about if you break down and your car isn’t able to safely get you to a refuge point?

I don’t mind the thought that motorways are under heavy surveillance and that does seem to have brought down the overall level of speeding but keeping the active management simple seems like a better course because crashes could literally kill.