I've Been A Busy Little Boy
Jul. 11th, 2012 08:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
banjoplayinnerdYesterday was quite a day and I feel like I actually accomplished something.
The Tooth Of The Matter
Sunday I was sitting in church waiting for services to start and Igor the Younger offered to share a couple of Mike&Ikes his grandma had given him. I took one, thanked him, praised him for sharing, bit down on it and immediately wished I hadn't. Bit down, not praise Igor the Younger. The candy knocked a crown loose off of one of my lower right molars. Luckily my dentist, who is a family friend and attends the same church, was sitting right behind us, took a look and arranged for me to come in yesterday. The bottom line is that he feels like I need a couple of posts in what remains of the molar to get the crown to stay on, but he cemented it on so it would stay in until he could bring me in for the full procedure. I'm grateful that he was able to take care of it quickly. I wasn't in pain - the tooth was root canaled long ago - but my tongue kept scraping against the sharp edge of the remnants of the tooth. It's healing up now but will probably still be a couple of days before the abrasions and lacerations go away.
Shopping For Tools
My daughter very kindly picked me up from the dentist with Igor the Younger in tow, and we stopped off at Walgreen's on the way home to pick up some Spider-Man Band-Aids to take care of some boo-boo or another he had gotten himself into. It was a fun experience as only shopping at Walgreen's with a four-year-old can be. We never got past the toy aisle, where he tried to use his Con Auntie And Grandpa skill. Luckily we both made our Resist Con Job From Four Year Old Who Wants You To Buy A Bag Of Water Balloons roll. We didn't get water balloons (although if the temperature stays up we might just have to), but on the way to the checkout I spotted a little $5 household tool kit with some jewelers' screwdrivers and a couple of other useful gadgets. The water balloons would have been cheaper, but Igor the Younger's is fascinated by tools and this looked like it would be a good addition to his collection. It wasn't until I got to the checkstand that I figured out that this toolkit had both a pair of scissors and a wire snipper, both of which can be very dangerous in a little boy's hands. Especially this little boy By then it was too late, though. He had already seen it and decided it was his. So we went home and he and his scissors helped me open a box that arrived in the mail, cut up some stray pieces of recycling and generally had a good time with the new toy.
Wireless Access Coming Soon!
Several years ago I bought a combination wireless access point and ethernet hub so I could share out our cable modem connection. It turned out to be not exactly what I wanted. Apparently Linksys makes several different kinds of WRT-54g WAP, and the one I bought wasn't the one that runs Linux natively and can be modified and improved. Even so, I put it to work, but it's showing its age and has some frustrating limitations, the lack of modability being one of them. Flakiness is another. Every so often it seems to drop connections or lose power or something, and I have to reset it.
I've wanted to replace it for a long time, but I wanted a specific replacement. I have an HP Vectra computer that's been around long enough to have a "Made For Windows 2000" sticker prominently displayed on the front. It's old and slow and would collapse under the weight of the software if you tried to put any modern GUI-based operating system on it (Linux included), but it's plenty fast enough for my mad scientific purposes.
The Linksys does have one thing going for it, though. It's a purpose-built machine that you can just plug in and go. There's a little configuration involved if you want to do anything fancy on your side of the network (meaning I did some configuration) but not much. Turning the Vectra in to a firewall/router/WAP/DHCP/DNS machine is a do-it-yourself project that involves scouring the Internet, discarding the stuff that was applicable to versions of Linux from six years ago that now would be known as The Hard Way, and making it all work and play nicely together.
I installed the latest version of Ubuntu Server onto the machine over the weekend (an adventure in paleocybernetics I won't bore you with here), gathered the software I needed and started configuring. Some of it was "by the book," er, website, some of it was trial-and-error-and-read-the-logs-and-try-again. Executive summary: Yesterday I turned on the access point package and got my cell phone to connect to the WAP and get an address. This means most of the configuration is done and everything is working the way it should for the packages installed so far. There's still some tweaking to be done, mostly involving security and making the Internet accessible to the machines behind the firewall, but the bulk of it – something I've wanted to do for over a year now – is done. I still have one piece of hardware on order before I can hook everything up, and my plan is to switch out the Linux machine for the Linksys router over the weekend, possibly after everyone has gone to bed Friday night. They'll all want their Internet access on Saturday, and I can't blame them. I would.
And Whaddaya Get? Another Day Older
After I finished up with the WAP, we ate supper and the grandkids settled in to watch a movie with Auntie. I was in the bedroom winding down and getting ready to go to bed, and as I often do I had the banjo in my lap as I did my computer stuff. I was just kind of idly picking at the strings, sounding an open chord, not playing anything in particular, when I hit upon the pattern 5-1-2-3-4. Hmmm. That sounds almost familiar. I tuned the second string down a half step to a B♭, did the pattern again, and yep, it was the opening riff to Tennessee Ernie Ford's version of "Sixteen Tons."
So of course I had to work out the song, which involved figuring out the chords on a banjo that's not tuned the way I usually play it. Luckily the way I remember the song it's only three chords. Rise Up Singing says four, but I usually go with what I hear when I can figure out what it is. Makes it sound "folkier," in my humble opinion. Anyway the base G minor chord was now an open strum and the other two just involved moving the finger fretting the second string up a fret.
There was something missing, though. I mean, I followed Ford's version pretty closely, but as it sometimes does, my ear was telling me to do something different. So just before the last verse ("If you see me comin'") I shifted the key up from G minor to A♭ minor by barring the first fret. That's something I don't often do on a banjo because the fifth string becomes discordant (G against an A♭ chord), but as it turns out I was able to solve that fairly easily. I had been ending each verse by doing a quick attack with a D7 chord on "owe" and then doing "my soul to the company store" a capella, following it up with the "5-1-2-3" riff. Since I have "railroad spikes" on my banjo (a capoing system where you put actual model railroad spikes into the fretboard and capo the fifth string by slipping the string under the spike) I figured out I could hit the chord for "owe", then while singing "my soul to the company store" quickly spike the fifth string at the sixth fret so it would sound an A♭ and be in accord with the new key. Then I did the riff, played a couple of Gm chords, and moved up to A♭m. I think it sounds pretty good.
Anyway that was my day yesterday. Hope you had a good one too.
The Tooth Of The Matter
Sunday I was sitting in church waiting for services to start and Igor the Younger offered to share a couple of Mike&Ikes his grandma had given him. I took one, thanked him, praised him for sharing, bit down on it and immediately wished I hadn't. Bit down, not praise Igor the Younger. The candy knocked a crown loose off of one of my lower right molars. Luckily my dentist, who is a family friend and attends the same church, was sitting right behind us, took a look and arranged for me to come in yesterday. The bottom line is that he feels like I need a couple of posts in what remains of the molar to get the crown to stay on, but he cemented it on so it would stay in until he could bring me in for the full procedure. I'm grateful that he was able to take care of it quickly. I wasn't in pain - the tooth was root canaled long ago - but my tongue kept scraping against the sharp edge of the remnants of the tooth. It's healing up now but will probably still be a couple of days before the abrasions and lacerations go away.
Shopping For Tools
My daughter very kindly picked me up from the dentist with Igor the Younger in tow, and we stopped off at Walgreen's on the way home to pick up some Spider-Man Band-Aids to take care of some boo-boo or another he had gotten himself into. It was a fun experience as only shopping at Walgreen's with a four-year-old can be. We never got past the toy aisle, where he tried to use his Con Auntie And Grandpa skill. Luckily we both made our Resist Con Job From Four Year Old Who Wants You To Buy A Bag Of Water Balloons roll. We didn't get water balloons (although if the temperature stays up we might just have to), but on the way to the checkout I spotted a little $5 household tool kit with some jewelers' screwdrivers and a couple of other useful gadgets. The water balloons would have been cheaper, but Igor the Younger's is fascinated by tools and this looked like it would be a good addition to his collection. It wasn't until I got to the checkstand that I figured out that this toolkit had both a pair of scissors and a wire snipper, both of which can be very dangerous in a little boy's hands. Especially this little boy By then it was too late, though. He had already seen it and decided it was his. So we went home and he and his scissors helped me open a box that arrived in the mail, cut up some stray pieces of recycling and generally had a good time with the new toy.
Wireless Access Coming Soon!
Several years ago I bought a combination wireless access point and ethernet hub so I could share out our cable modem connection. It turned out to be not exactly what I wanted. Apparently Linksys makes several different kinds of WRT-54g WAP, and the one I bought wasn't the one that runs Linux natively and can be modified and improved. Even so, I put it to work, but it's showing its age and has some frustrating limitations, the lack of modability being one of them. Flakiness is another. Every so often it seems to drop connections or lose power or something, and I have to reset it.
I've wanted to replace it for a long time, but I wanted a specific replacement. I have an HP Vectra computer that's been around long enough to have a "Made For Windows 2000" sticker prominently displayed on the front. It's old and slow and would collapse under the weight of the software if you tried to put any modern GUI-based operating system on it (Linux included), but it's plenty fast enough for my mad scientific purposes.
The Linksys does have one thing going for it, though. It's a purpose-built machine that you can just plug in and go. There's a little configuration involved if you want to do anything fancy on your side of the network (meaning I did some configuration) but not much. Turning the Vectra in to a firewall/router/WAP/DHCP/DNS machine is a do-it-yourself project that involves scouring the Internet, discarding the stuff that was applicable to versions of Linux from six years ago that now would be known as The Hard Way, and making it all work and play nicely together.
I installed the latest version of Ubuntu Server onto the machine over the weekend (an adventure in paleocybernetics I won't bore you with here), gathered the software I needed and started configuring. Some of it was "by the book," er, website, some of it was trial-and-error-and-read-the-logs-and-try-again. Executive summary: Yesterday I turned on the access point package and got my cell phone to connect to the WAP and get an address. This means most of the configuration is done and everything is working the way it should for the packages installed so far. There's still some tweaking to be done, mostly involving security and making the Internet accessible to the machines behind the firewall, but the bulk of it – something I've wanted to do for over a year now – is done. I still have one piece of hardware on order before I can hook everything up, and my plan is to switch out the Linux machine for the Linksys router over the weekend, possibly after everyone has gone to bed Friday night. They'll all want their Internet access on Saturday, and I can't blame them. I would.
And Whaddaya Get? Another Day Older
After I finished up with the WAP, we ate supper and the grandkids settled in to watch a movie with Auntie. I was in the bedroom winding down and getting ready to go to bed, and as I often do I had the banjo in my lap as I did my computer stuff. I was just kind of idly picking at the strings, sounding an open chord, not playing anything in particular, when I hit upon the pattern 5-1-2-3-4. Hmmm. That sounds almost familiar. I tuned the second string down a half step to a B♭, did the pattern again, and yep, it was the opening riff to Tennessee Ernie Ford's version of "Sixteen Tons."
So of course I had to work out the song, which involved figuring out the chords on a banjo that's not tuned the way I usually play it. Luckily the way I remember the song it's only three chords. Rise Up Singing says four, but I usually go with what I hear when I can figure out what it is. Makes it sound "folkier," in my humble opinion. Anyway the base G minor chord was now an open strum and the other two just involved moving the finger fretting the second string up a fret.
There was something missing, though. I mean, I followed Ford's version pretty closely, but as it sometimes does, my ear was telling me to do something different. So just before the last verse ("If you see me comin'") I shifted the key up from G minor to A♭ minor by barring the first fret. That's something I don't often do on a banjo because the fifth string becomes discordant (G against an A♭ chord), but as it turns out I was able to solve that fairly easily. I had been ending each verse by doing a quick attack with a D7 chord on "owe" and then doing "my soul to the company store" a capella, following it up with the "5-1-2-3" riff. Since I have "railroad spikes" on my banjo (a capoing system where you put actual model railroad spikes into the fretboard and capo the fifth string by slipping the string under the spike) I figured out I could hit the chord for "owe", then while singing "my soul to the company store" quickly spike the fifth string at the sixth fret so it would sound an A♭ and be in accord with the new key. Then I did the riff, played a couple of Gm chords, and moved up to A♭m. I think it sounds pretty good.
Anyway that was my day yesterday. Hope you had a good one too.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-13 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-19 08:35 pm (UTC)Oh well, that's why we practice.