You got their number from a web site.
They never answer the phone. But they might answer a text.
If they do answer, they might sound quite enthusiastic about what you have in mind.
You send them over a couple of photographs and your address.
Then....
(crickets)
They never call back.
It feels like stalking if you chase them.
They never say why they don't want to do what they sounded so enthusiastic about back then.
Yep.
Tradesmen.
And you thought I meant girls on dates.
I would rather spend my time on some BS work-related phone call than call a tradesman. I swear the moment they realise I live in a postcode that they know only has small houses, they lose interest. They are all after the three sixes:
Six-bedroom house
Six-day job
Six-grand payment
Gardeners seem okay. They stand to make a decent amount on any garden.
Carpenters, plumbers, handymen, gas fitters, roofers, and electricians are awful. They are always busy. They have families in terrible health that require a last-minute cancellation. I can tell they would rather be working on a nice detached house in Woking than my modest mid-terrace.
Calling tradesmen is an endless stream of rejection. Nothing is ever worth them returning the call with a quote.
I shave. I wash. My house is clean. It has electricity and running water and gas.
Tradesmen these days just don't want ordinary decent customers who want to pay them a fair price for a fair job. Now. They want glamour, big money, fancy postcodes. All so they can take impressive photographs for their social media.
Huh!
Monday, 4 January 2021
Friday, 1 January 2021
Happy New Year - Yeah Right
Who am I kidding?
While there's the virus it's not a New Year, it's just more of the Long Year of The Virus (2020 - 2023?). The Long Year of The Virus will take in all of 2021.
If you thought 2020 was bad, just wait until 2021 gets going.
All flu viruses mutate. So there is an endless stream of new versions of The Virus for the public health people to pretend might overwhelm us.
This only stops when the Government tells them that there's no more money to pay for the party.
There is a lot of ruin in a great nation.
So the money will hold up for this year and a lot of 2022.
Monday, 28 December 2020
Thoughts on 2020 and 2021
Wash your hands.
Don't touch your face.
Stay away from other people.
Wear a mask.
Stay two metres away from everyone.
Open the windows.
One hundred years of research since the Spanish flu, thousands of PhD's and untold millions in research grants, and that's it? That's all they got? Your grandmother's advice? When a real, Spanish Flu killer-pandemic comes along, that's what the public health officials are going to tell us to do, as we watch others dying in front of us?
It's a good thing this virus is not serious. (Look at the excess death rate. That's all that matters. Infections without symptoms are meaningless.)
The virus is not a medical problem. It's a flu. It's going to mutate, it's going to stay with us. There will be another one along later. Get over it.
The virus is a political problem. The politicians, punch-drunk from the continuing fall-out of 2008, and the shocking events of 2016, were faced with a public health lobby that was looking for its next panic, a media that was looking for something to beat the politicians with, and a sense that they were losing control over their countries. One by one, terrified by the prospect of being wrong and having the press hounding them, they looked around for something to do.
They were desperate. Desperate people do things that barely make sense to them. And make no sense to anyone else.
Lock healthy people inside their homes.
Shut businesses and shops. Make them spend thousands on virus paraphernalia.
If anyone is found to be infected, lock them up with their families for a fortnight.
Policies that are ridiculous on their face, and required fear-based propaganda to spread.
They did not do it to save lives. None of those measures will save lives.
They did it to stop the papers, television and social media showing photographs of patients lying on trolleys in corridors.
Public relations, not public health.
Never try to understand what desperate people do. By definition, it has no justification.
Never underestimate what weak, mean-spirited, small-souled people can do if they get into a position of influence. We are seeing it now.
Never underestimate how unscrupulous people will try to benefit from a crisis. See the "experts" lining up for their fifteen minutes of fame.
Never underestimate how much people who believe they are right will force their views on the rest of us.
There is nothing to understand here. To record, to document, to cost - yes. To understand - NO.
And never try to understand why your fellow citizens scuttled so willingly into their homes on 23 March 2020, and continue to go along with mendacious Government propaganda, and follow ridiculous advice. (Some do it, like me, to access what we need. But who wears a mask on the street?)
I will try in 2021 to focus on what I can do to maintain and improve the quality of my life, and of the few people left who mean something to me.
I will...
... exercise
... read
... continue at the day job until this s**t-show is over.
... listen to music
... try to eat well (but remember that chocolate is medicinal)
... keep myself and my digs clean
... experiment with all sorts of little things
... keep my head away from the crazy
One day at a time.
Which is mostly what I do every year. Because I've pretty much had this living thing down for a while now.
Don't touch your face.
Stay away from other people.
Wear a mask.
Stay two metres away from everyone.
Open the windows.
One hundred years of research since the Spanish flu, thousands of PhD's and untold millions in research grants, and that's it? That's all they got? Your grandmother's advice? When a real, Spanish Flu killer-pandemic comes along, that's what the public health officials are going to tell us to do, as we watch others dying in front of us?
It's a good thing this virus is not serious. (Look at the excess death rate. That's all that matters. Infections without symptoms are meaningless.)
The virus is not a medical problem. It's a flu. It's going to mutate, it's going to stay with us. There will be another one along later. Get over it.
The virus is a political problem. The politicians, punch-drunk from the continuing fall-out of 2008, and the shocking events of 2016, were faced with a public health lobby that was looking for its next panic, a media that was looking for something to beat the politicians with, and a sense that they were losing control over their countries. One by one, terrified by the prospect of being wrong and having the press hounding them, they looked around for something to do.
They were desperate. Desperate people do things that barely make sense to them. And make no sense to anyone else.
Lock healthy people inside their homes.
Shut businesses and shops. Make them spend thousands on virus paraphernalia.
If anyone is found to be infected, lock them up with their families for a fortnight.
Policies that are ridiculous on their face, and required fear-based propaganda to spread.
They did not do it to save lives. None of those measures will save lives.
They did it to stop the papers, television and social media showing photographs of patients lying on trolleys in corridors.
Public relations, not public health.
Never try to understand what desperate people do. By definition, it has no justification.
Never underestimate what weak, mean-spirited, small-souled people can do if they get into a position of influence. We are seeing it now.
Never underestimate how unscrupulous people will try to benefit from a crisis. See the "experts" lining up for their fifteen minutes of fame.
Never underestimate how much people who believe they are right will force their views on the rest of us.
There is nothing to understand here. To record, to document, to cost - yes. To understand - NO.
And never try to understand why your fellow citizens scuttled so willingly into their homes on 23 March 2020, and continue to go along with mendacious Government propaganda, and follow ridiculous advice. (Some do it, like me, to access what we need. But who wears a mask on the street?)
I will try in 2021 to focus on what I can do to maintain and improve the quality of my life, and of the few people left who mean something to me.
I will...
... exercise
... read
... continue at the day job until this s**t-show is over.
... listen to music
... try to eat well (but remember that chocolate is medicinal)
... keep myself and my digs clean
... experiment with all sorts of little things
... keep my head away from the crazy
One day at a time.
Which is mostly what I do every year. Because I've pretty much had this living thing down for a while now.
Friday, 25 December 2020
Happy Christmas - and a Sovereign New Year
I will never entirely trust Boris again. Not after Tier 4. How difficult is it to say NO to a bunch of professors whose grants, by way of another Cabinet Minister, you control?
Perhaps he had other things on his mind? What could that have been?
On Brexit the lad came through. Leaving Ursula von Leyden-Jar to mutter the most incomprehensible things about sovereignty ever spoken, and which would result in her failing any course of political philosophy.
How much of the negociations was theatre we may never know. And why it wasn't done three years ago? Well, because and bluntly, the EU is not staffed with the first class of politician or administrator. It is where the second-rate go when their career stalls in their home countries.
I was suprised at how emotional Remainers were at the time. As if what the UK did mattered. We're a bunch of rougues, bankers, eccentrics, and ineffectual twats who can't even deport a murderer. We're the slightly loud, coarse guest at your party who made a pass at your friend's undergraduate daughter. Who could possibly get upset if that person left?
I have no idea, aside from the loss of all that money, why the EU might have got so upset. Ah. ****ocks. Of course I do. It was the money. It was losing the sixth largest economy on the planet. It was knowing that the Germans would be paying for everything. It was losing the aura of economic, moral and political respectability that the UK gave the whole project. (I know, how the UK manages to retain an aura of respectability, I have no idea. But it does.)
Anyway. That's the first fight.
Now we have to get out lives back from those frauds on SAGE, NERVTAG, the Guardian and all those other Believers in the One True Virus, bringer of death and furlough, of fame to the justly obscure and power to the properly ignored.
Happy Christmas.
Monday, 21 December 2020
That Audiophile Sound
Listen or read enough audiophile reviews and you will notice something missing.
Classical music.
In the non-technical sense of the phrase. With a small 'c'.
Neither Bruckner nor Corelli, nor Beamish nor Cage; not a mention of Debussy, Handel, Palestrina or John Taverner; not one wag of the stick from von Karajan, Simon Rattle, or Joanne Falletta. As for finding that a piece of gear reveals even more of Solti's Ring Cycle? Not going to happen.
This may be because a lot of them don't listen classical music. A lot of people don't. Even though Tidal and Spotify has all sorts of it.
It may also be because big orchestras just don't provide that audiophile sound, and one of the things the audiophile guys want is, well, that audiophile sound.
Audiophile-sounding music is made by a small number of people whose instruments can be individually recorded, recorded in a reasonably dry studio through very good mics and with top-notch digital transfer to the final media. It will be carefully constructed to have easily-separated parts that can be placed on a stereo soundstage with precision. Jazz from any era except big-band; any music made on a Mac (dance, ambient, rap, electronica etc); most classical music before about 1780, and period performances of anything up to about 1830; plainchant, but not four-part masses by Palestrina and others of that ilk; contemporary classical music, especially the minimalists and their disciples; and some pop, rock and soul.
That kind of music creates a well-defined soundstage, has lots of details that good gear can pick out, and also has a narrower dynamic range than Wagner at his best. There is enough going on to be interesting and engaging, but not more than you can handle at once.
Whereas I defy anyone to tell the difference between Shostakovich's 12th on CD or Naxos 192kps streaming. There's so much sheer volume of sound the idea of 'details' is just silly. You're not supposed to be able to pick out the horns from the oboes and the violins: it's supposed to be one glorious uplifting <>sound. It was written to sound good in concert halls that were not designed by acoustics engineers. Rather like chart music today is mixed to sound good on headphones via a mobile phone.
Orchestral music does not provide the same opportunity for talking about, or even identifying in the first place, the very subtle differences between one bit of hi-fi kit and another. Those would simply get lost in the horns. There are even piano-cello pieces that are so thumpy and loud that they would browbeat any piece of kit into sounding like a boombox.
If you don't believe me, reflect on the fact that nobody has ever tested hi-fi using Canadian post-rockers Broken Social Scene. Get the eponymous Broken Social Scene album. Any track will do, but Shoreline (7/4) is worth hearing because it is the only piece of music in 7/4 that swings. Play it over whatever set-up you like, it is never going to sound tight, spacious, and well-defined. It sounds messier on CD through speakers than it does on AAC over headphones for heaven's sake.
What I think I'm suggesting is that a) audiophiles listen to a certain kind of music for the same reason that people with racing cars like to drive on closed circuits: it brings out the best in their equipment; b) a lot of orchestral music simply is not recorded well enough to benefit from higher-end gear; and maybe c) a system that plays orchestral music well may not bring out the best in a Nils Frahm piece.
And it may mean that the Solti recording with the Chicago Symphony of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, which is an audiophile dream, is a rebuke to a lot of lazily-recorded or badly sound-designed (and sound-design is part of composing) orchestral music. (Edit 5/1/21: Hans Beekhuysen lists some hefty orchestral music amongst his test tracks. So he's one.)
Classical music.
In the non-technical sense of the phrase. With a small 'c'.
Neither Bruckner nor Corelli, nor Beamish nor Cage; not a mention of Debussy, Handel, Palestrina or John Taverner; not one wag of the stick from von Karajan, Simon Rattle, or Joanne Falletta. As for finding that a piece of gear reveals even more of Solti's Ring Cycle? Not going to happen.
This may be because a lot of them don't listen classical music. A lot of people don't. Even though Tidal and Spotify has all sorts of it.
It may also be because big orchestras just don't provide that audiophile sound, and one of the things the audiophile guys want is, well, that audiophile sound.
Audiophile-sounding music is made by a small number of people whose instruments can be individually recorded, recorded in a reasonably dry studio through very good mics and with top-notch digital transfer to the final media. It will be carefully constructed to have easily-separated parts that can be placed on a stereo soundstage with precision. Jazz from any era except big-band; any music made on a Mac (dance, ambient, rap, electronica etc); most classical music before about 1780, and period performances of anything up to about 1830; plainchant, but not four-part masses by Palestrina and others of that ilk; contemporary classical music, especially the minimalists and their disciples; and some pop, rock and soul.
That kind of music creates a well-defined soundstage, has lots of details that good gear can pick out, and also has a narrower dynamic range than Wagner at his best. There is enough going on to be interesting and engaging, but not more than you can handle at once.
Whereas I defy anyone to tell the difference between Shostakovich's 12th on CD or Naxos 192kps streaming. There's so much sheer volume of sound the idea of 'details' is just silly. You're not supposed to be able to pick out the horns from the oboes and the violins: it's supposed to be one glorious uplifting <>sound. It was written to sound good in concert halls that were not designed by acoustics engineers. Rather like chart music today is mixed to sound good on headphones via a mobile phone.
Orchestral music does not provide the same opportunity for talking about, or even identifying in the first place, the very subtle differences between one bit of hi-fi kit and another. Those would simply get lost in the horns. There are even piano-cello pieces that are so thumpy and loud that they would browbeat any piece of kit into sounding like a boombox.
If you don't believe me, reflect on the fact that nobody has ever tested hi-fi using Canadian post-rockers Broken Social Scene. Get the eponymous Broken Social Scene album. Any track will do, but Shoreline (7/4) is worth hearing because it is the only piece of music in 7/4 that swings. Play it over whatever set-up you like, it is never going to sound tight, spacious, and well-defined. It sounds messier on CD through speakers than it does on AAC over headphones for heaven's sake.
What I think I'm suggesting is that a) audiophiles listen to a certain kind of music for the same reason that people with racing cars like to drive on closed circuits: it brings out the best in their equipment; b) a lot of orchestral music simply is not recorded well enough to benefit from higher-end gear; and maybe c) a system that plays orchestral music well may not bring out the best in a Nils Frahm piece.
And it may mean that the Solti recording with the Chicago Symphony of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, which is an audiophile dream, is a rebuke to a lot of lazily-recorded or badly sound-designed (and sound-design is part of composing) orchestral music. (Edit 5/1/21: Hans Beekhuysen lists some hefty orchestral music amongst his test tracks. So he's one.)
Thursday, 17 December 2020
My Brief Roon Trial
It's a terrific piece of software. You get 14 days free trial and then they zap you for the full $119.88 (if I read right).
I tested it with an MP3 file of Annabel Lamb's Backwards Through The Looking Glass, which is unjustly not available on CD. Even Spotify knows not of her. You Tube does, and the track you need to hear is lined up for you
Notice the fierce attack of the piano, the echo around the drums. Every note and drum stroke is clear, isolated, percussive. And that echo makes the whole thing sound slightly spooky. And that's over my Mac Air speakers via You Tube. You can only imagine what the original vinyl sounded like. Or what the rips I found on the internet sound like.
So with huge anticipation, I played it through Roon onto my Sonos Connect and out through the amp.
It was like a veil had been put over the whole thing. The attack wasn't there. The echo was not as clear. Roon told me it had chopped off the last 8 bits to get a 16-bit signal to send to the Sonos Connect.
So I played it through File Explorer on my iPod Touch and out through a Jitterbug and black Dragonfly into the amp.
Oh yes. That's it. That's how I remember it.
It is tempting to conclude this only proves that the Sonos DAC is not as good as the black Dragonfly, and perhaps that the Mac Air isn't as good a source as a more recent Pod Touch(?!). Those things may or may not be true. It doesn't matter. Because it shows that with my current set-up Roon doesn't play as nice as my current file-streaming method.
And Roon had to fit in to my current set-up. Not start me off buying new DACs and other gear.
Everything else about Roon is as advertised. It wailed through my 1,000 directory collection in less than ten minutes. It found album art all over the place. It had some interesting things to say about some of the discs and artists. It found every device in my house in the blink of an eye. (But then so does Windows Explorer on my Windows Machine, and my Air finds all my Sonos speakers and presents them in the menu of the loudspeaker). It found Air Play and Sonos, though it didn't find my iDevices.
If I want to know about the artist and album, there's a little thing called... oh, what is it?.... Wikipedia. If I want lyrics, those are available on a dozen sites. If I want my AAC rips cataloged I use Apple Music. Because I've downloaded a lot of commuter music my AACs are a superset of my CDs, so that Music "Library" is the entire collection.
I prefer to listen to CDs when I can. Streaming services are useful for background music, or checking out an artist or composer. At those prices Roon needs to be a daily driver, and it won't be for me.
Finally, Roon is a resource hog. I watched it ease its way up to 1GB of RAM, and it prefers to be the exclusive user of whatever machine it is running on.
I tested it with an MP3 file of Annabel Lamb's Backwards Through The Looking Glass, which is unjustly not available on CD. Even Spotify knows not of her. You Tube does, and the track you need to hear is lined up for you
Notice the fierce attack of the piano, the echo around the drums. Every note and drum stroke is clear, isolated, percussive. And that echo makes the whole thing sound slightly spooky. And that's over my Mac Air speakers via You Tube. You can only imagine what the original vinyl sounded like. Or what the rips I found on the internet sound like.
So with huge anticipation, I played it through Roon onto my Sonos Connect and out through the amp.
It was like a veil had been put over the whole thing. The attack wasn't there. The echo was not as clear. Roon told me it had chopped off the last 8 bits to get a 16-bit signal to send to the Sonos Connect.
So I played it through File Explorer on my iPod Touch and out through a Jitterbug and black Dragonfly into the amp.
Oh yes. That's it. That's how I remember it.
It is tempting to conclude this only proves that the Sonos DAC is not as good as the black Dragonfly, and perhaps that the Mac Air isn't as good a source as a more recent Pod Touch(?!). Those things may or may not be true. It doesn't matter. Because it shows that with my current set-up Roon doesn't play as nice as my current file-streaming method.
And Roon had to fit in to my current set-up. Not start me off buying new DACs and other gear.
Everything else about Roon is as advertised. It wailed through my 1,000 directory collection in less than ten minutes. It found album art all over the place. It had some interesting things to say about some of the discs and artists. It found every device in my house in the blink of an eye. (But then so does Windows Explorer on my Windows Machine, and my Air finds all my Sonos speakers and presents them in the menu of the loudspeaker). It found Air Play and Sonos, though it didn't find my iDevices.
If I want to know about the artist and album, there's a little thing called... oh, what is it?.... Wikipedia. If I want lyrics, those are available on a dozen sites. If I want my AAC rips cataloged I use Apple Music. Because I've downloaded a lot of commuter music my AACs are a superset of my CDs, so that Music "Library" is the entire collection.
I prefer to listen to CDs when I can. Streaming services are useful for background music, or checking out an artist or composer. At those prices Roon needs to be a daily driver, and it won't be for me.
Finally, Roon is a resource hog. I watched it ease its way up to 1GB of RAM, and it prefers to be the exclusive user of whatever machine it is running on.
Monday, 14 December 2020
Medium Format is about the Square
I made a remark about "seeing in medium-format" recently. I took it to mean that, of course, I needed a medium-format camera to get the shots I was really seeing. (Because the cure for photography problems is mo' gear, of course.) Since medium-format cameras are more expensive than a fully-kitted out Macbook Pro, I wondered about second-hand ones. Those were mostly film, or as expensive as settling for a 512GB SSD card instead of the full 1TB. Plus there's the whole thing where medium-format cameras can be used as dumb-bells if you can't get to the gym, and need a trolley to carry them around.
OK. Slight exaggeration.
For some reason I looked at the entry in Wikipedia on medium-format cameras. it told me that most of them were 6cm x 6cm, and some later ones were 6cm x 4.5 cm. Wait, what? Square? Like Instagram?
I hauled out my Panasonic DMZ-40TY-H4562 or whatever silly name it has, and clicked through the menus. Aspect Ratio: 3:2 (35mm), 4:3 (HDTV), 16:9 (widescreen), 1:1 (square). Whoa. The sun was out. I nipped into the park and took some photographs.
So here's a piece of fence in 16:9
OK. Slight exaggeration.
For some reason I looked at the entry in Wikipedia on medium-format cameras. it told me that most of them were 6cm x 6cm, and some later ones were 6cm x 4.5 cm. Wait, what? Square? Like Instagram?
I hauled out my Panasonic DMZ-40TY-H4562 or whatever silly name it has, and clicked through the menus. Aspect Ratio: 3:2 (35mm), 4:3 (HDTV), 16:9 (widescreen), 1:1 (square). Whoa. The sun was out. I nipped into the park and took some photographs.
So here's a piece of fence in 16:9
and again in 4:3
and again in 3:2
and this is what it should look like.....
Doesn't that feel more solid? The wider formats just go on about how much fence there is, but somehow, to my eyes, the square format gives a better sense of how the fence relates to the ground and open sky as well. There's no open sky in the 16:9.
The next one is just plain perfect. Ordinary, but perfect.
If that had been a 35mm shot I would have made a 'meh' and moved on. But that bank of gorse is so much more impressive when you can't see lots of open ground to the right. Here's a 16:9
and here's what it should look like
The photograph is about the water and the stream. We only need to see one post-war semi to understand that this is in a suburb somewhere. The top picture gives us too much detail we don't need.
Medium-format, yes. But it was about the Square, not the film or sensor size.
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