Update for 4/1/2018

Music

🙄

To continue from last time, I was able to record from my MIDI keyboard to LMMS. But LMMS doesn’t have a way to export MIDI files. Something about the trickiness of the bass loops. But there is an external tool for converting LMMS files to MIDI, and since I didn’t find another free MIDI sequencer I liked better than LMMS, I’ll just record that way for now.

Ways I want to use MIDI recordings:

  • To easily study what I’m playing wrong when I practice a piano piece. I can do this with a regular audio recording, but a MIDI sequence might make it slightly easier to see what I played.
  • To easily make use of passages I come up with while improvising. Without a recording I have to try to remember what I came up with. With an audio recording I have to transcribe it.
  • To record performances so I can preserve their nuances while letting me manipulate the results, such as to fix mistakes, substitute instruments, or add effects.

Life maintenance

🙂

The first half of last week was getting ready for my siblings to visit. I didn’t get much actual cleaning done, but I boxed up the clutter, took stuff to Goodwill, and vacuumed. I was proud of myself. I’m going to try to develop new habits for keeping things organized.

Socializing

🙂

Wednesday night I took a break from housekeeping to drop in on an open house for my friend from work who’s leaving the state to work at an amazing new job and join an interesting church plant. Fortunately they’ll only be a couple of hours away. I intended to stay for an hour at most. I left about three hours later.

One highlight was learning about the hand game Chopsticks from their third-grade son. It seems more sophisticated than the games we played at that age. Looking that up led me to this interesting study of Australian children’s playlore. I’ve wondered about how children’s traditions got passed along. I didn’t know people actually studied it.

Easter

🙂

Thursday my brother and sister arrived. My sister was passing through on her way to visit a friend. My brother was staying for the weekend. Visiting Chicago requires deep dish pizza, so that was dinner.

Felt Easter bunnies my sister made for my brother and me.

A post shared by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on

Friday after breakfast we looked through a local history museum, where my brother picked up some postcards. Then we took a walk through a park featured on one of the postcards and then sat at a picnic table and wrote the postcard together. Afterward Abbie went on her way, and Michael and I attended church service #1, a Taizé-themed Good Friday service. After dinner at Nando’s I dropped Michael off at a second Good Friday service and waited for him at home while working on a project.

Saturday afternoon we met with Tim and Jeremy at Barnes and Noble for a while and then joined the rest of Jeremy’s family for dinner at a Mongolian barbecue. Finally, a repeat of the night before–I dropped Michael off at church and headed home for another project.

Thinking

😐

What were these projects? Bibliographies. Who wouldn’t skip church for that? I added a bibliography of potential sources for the analysis project.

Beliefs report

😐

I also added a potential sources section for this one. This week I’ll create one for the current spirituality essay, and then I’ll probably put this project on hold again. I’ll come back to it after I’ve gotten more done on analysis and rationality.

This entry was posted in Beliefs report, Holidays, Housekeeping, Music, People, Thinking, Weeknotes. Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Update for 4/1/2018

  1. Linda W. says:

    Your sister’s felt Easter bunnies are great! I might have to make those next year.

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