Rick's b.log - entry 2024/12/07

SimpleSeq v0.24

Well, here is the result of that programming, to hopefully improve the using.

• Various visual tweaks, in particular to improve clarity in light mode.
• When you perform a sound test (right-click on an instrument name in the instrument menu) it will sound for slightly less time and you can press Shift to play an octave over middle C, or Ctrl to play two octaves higher. This is better for some instruments such as violins.
• When loading a music file, the associated voice map file (if you aren't using General MIDI) will also be loaded.
  To set this up, load a music file. Then load the correct voice mapping afterwards, and then save the music file.
• There is now a configuration option "Changing note places a note" which means that you do not have to press Space to create a note and then press C for a crotchet (quarter note), M for a minim (half note) and so on. Instead you can simply press C, M, etc and if there is no note, one will be automatically created. This makes music entry less fiddly, but it is a configuration option so you can choose whether you prefer that or the original method.
• There was a problem with Copy/Paste, Replicate, and Transcribe in that they didn't work correctly when in Quaver mode. This is because they needed to know how many bars to a beat, and this is fudged in Quaver mode to squeeze more onto the screen. This has been fixed and these functions now work as expected, even in Quaver mode.
• Changed the little "what's in this cell" report (upper left of the screen) to specifically handle the Sustain pedal. Instead of saying it is "Sustain, value 127" it will now say "Sustain pedal ON" (or OFF as applicable).
  I am using ON and OFF as this is, literally, what the MIDI values mean. Do you think it would be better to say PRESS and RELEASE (literally, what the performer does) instead? Let me know in the comments.
• Added a three-second run-out to playback so the end of a piece isn't clipped by the tidy-up, silencing notes, etc.

Here's the update for you:

Here is the updated user guide for SimpleSeq v0.24.

Tea v0.18

Here's what's new:

• Improved performance.
• Bug fix relating to the use of AutoDST (was misreading the AutoDST flag as "DST time in use").
• Fixed iconbar redraws by recreating the icon plotting routine to cater for the wider than usual icon. One day I'll tweak DeskLib to actually look at the icon presented instead of assuming.
• Added idents for "U&Eden" and "Must Have Ideas", new-ish channels.
• Sometimes, and very infrequently, the programme-finished expiry routine would get its panties in a twist and expire everything. I needed to have Tea running a trace build for nearly a month before this happened, so I could read the logging and fix it.
• The search has been modified so that if a search returns more results than can fit into the 64K buffer, you will be warned and shown what did fit into the buffer (instead of the previous behaviour where it would say too much and give up).
• If the programme title ends with three periods and the programme description begins with three periods, then this will be taken as being a continuation of the programme name.
  Which means title "The Girl, the Ghost..." and description "...and the Gravestone. 4/4. Can Sian find the [etc]" will be changed to title "The Girl, the Ghost and the Gravestone." with the description "4/4. Can Sian find the [etc]".

Here it is then. It is not on Store, because that's giving me an "Internal Server Error" message.

Pushy collectors

I said "hello" in sign language and she just stared at me. Granted, it's the only thing I know how to say in French sign, but you'd have thought... Call this red flag number one.

By the way, she was not wearing any form of identification nor did she try to show any. All I got was what was printed on the top of the paper she was holding, something I could put together in a couple of minutes. Red flag two.

She pointed to the column on the right and gestured to me to say how much I would donate. Not knowing whether or not she was deaf, I didn't speak at all, I gestured back to her. I indicated ten euros. She gave a thumbs down and pointed to the numbers already marked on her paper of which the lowest was €30 and the largest was €80. Red flag three, there was no amount like people actually have in their pockets.

I indicated, again, ten. She wrote down thirty (red flag four). I then went to the cash machine, not certain that she was entirely legit, but I did see another (prettier, friendlier) woman also collecting. Now, I had decided that I was going to take out twenty and give her ten. If she tried to push any button on the cash machine or take any more than the ten I offered, the supermarket information desk was right behind me. I'd ask them to call the gendarmes. I also got my phone ready to quietly record what was going on.

But, alas, the machine was out of service. It said this in English and French. She tried pushing various buttons, but, you know, that ain't gonna fix it.

She gave a gesture that I interpreted as "why the hell don't you carry cash?" and walked away looking annoyed (red flag five).

Thinking I dodged a bullet, I loaded the stuff into my car and got in. Guess who turns up and gestured to me that she wanted me to drive her someplace. Now there have been enough red flags that there was absolutely no way in hell I was letting this pushy woman I have only just had the displeasure of meeting get into my car. Actually, the first thing that went through my mind was to wonder how far I'd get before she threw herself out of the car and claimed I had abducted her or something. Maybe that's a twisted way to look at things, but given that at least one other person was collecting in the car park at the time, I really wouldn't expect this woman to want to ditch her collegue and go off with some unknown man. To even ask was extremely bizarre.

But, alas, I gestured for her to go away.

I am also thinking that I'll translate this text into French (well, automatically) and hand a copy to the supermarket next time I go in. I understand that collecting for anything is a thankless task, especially if one has a disability...but to be brutally honest, people like her are the reason people tell those who are collecting to get stuffed.

I'm not a cruel person, I have fairly recently donated some ten euros worth of food to a local food bank who was in the supermarket handing out leaflets. I believe that if a person can help, even a little, then they should. I guess that makes me a leftie socialist, but then, I'm a Guardian reader so that's not exactly a surprise now, is it? ☺

As a neurodivergent introvert, I like to do my shopping in peace. I wear headphones to cancel out the noises, and I often wear sunglasses (yes, indoors) to reduce all the bright lights.

I really, absolutely, did not appreciate being harassed in such a manner.

The next time somebody approaches me with a clipboard or piece of paper, sorry, it's a hard and firm no. I found the experience to be deeply troubling, and I wonder if the supermarket knows what sort of demon they let prowl their car park.

Actually, to be honest, I wonder if they even knew, or if these women just turned up? Either way, her behaviour was really unsettling, enough to make me wary of any collectors. I don't want to go through that sort of thing again.
Just leave me alone...

Fascinating corona

The lamp on my letter box.

The lamp is so bright that it's hard to tell if the tree decorations are illuminated (yes) or if it's just something reflected in the light (no). You can also see a sort of aura around the lamp.

But... as the storm was approaching, the air was heavy with moisture. Couple that with some scientific principles from a bright light source and...

A strong aura around a Tilley lamp.

...diffraction within fairly uniformly-sized water droplets in the air have managed to produce an astonishing corona, which resembles an airy disc although it happens for a different reason.
The most fascinating thing for me is how wrong the colour bands are. There's a big band of red on the outside, leading to a narrow band of orange. In between orange and yellow is violet! That's just wrong, violet shouldn't be there.
If we ignore the innermost orange glow, as that's probably an optical effect of the brightness of the mantle, the corona would otherwise be following the traditional pattern of having a violet or blue inner ring and a red outer ring, with other colours appearing depending upon the characteristics of the light source. The smudged brownish outer ring is the aureole...except, as mentioned, violet seems to have stuck itself in the wrong place.

Either way, it's a pretty impressive photo and given that atmospheric effects can create this sort of thing from light sources, you can see where the religious symbolism may have originated.
This isn't just a generic Tilley lamp, this is the magical lamp that grants entry into the realm of Sombralyssia.

Sombralyssia and the Tilley Lamp

Sombralyssia and the Tilley Lamp
Copyright © 2024 Richard Murray
All rights reserved. For private and personal use only. Do not copy.

It is said that Sombralyssia is a place where dreams come alive, churn, and fade away. That it is a realm that exists in the gloaming, where shadows are not just the absences of light but entities with their own stories to tell. It is also said that the only way to find this place is with the golden glow of a Tilley lamp, a special sort of lantern that is capable of keeping the dream's darkness at bay without extinguishing its mystery.

I would like to say "It was a dark and stormy night" but alas it was just a chilly fog-drenched late autumn evening that made the world feel heavy, the dampness allowing the cold to permeate layers of clothing. I had come across a lamp in an old shop of peculiar curiosities, its metal body painted red at the bottom and black on top, like some sort of metal mushroom. What attracted me to it was that it invoked a sense of a time that seemed just out of reach. This sturdy looking object provided light in a day before batteries and LEDs, and may even have done so in a day before houses were wired up to electricity.
The shopkeeper, a pale and thin man with dirty oily fingers looked up at me from the mechanical clock that he was in the process of repairing. "Sombralyssia calls to some", he murmured as if talking to himself, "but only the Tilley lamp can light the way".
He motioned for me to leave. I held up the lamp and some banknotes and he repeated the motion. I slowly backed out of the shop, expecting him to shout for me to come and pay for the lamp, but instead he resumed his delicate work with the clockwork mechanism and mumbled "The lamp will show you the way, but never let it go out".

I looked on the internet for Sombralyssia, and found nothing. So the following night, under a fuzzy crescent moon, I ventured out to a crumbling cemetery on the edge of town. I figured that if this lamp was supposed to light the way to another... what, world? realm? What exactly was Sombralyssia supposed to be? Anyway, I figured that a graveyard was as good a place as any to start.

I saw a little plunger on the side of the base of the lamp, and a knob just above the base. I had shaken the lamp and there was some sort of liquid inside. So I turned the knob to be on, I lit a match, and then I started to pump the little plunger in and out. Nothing happened. So I turned off the knob and pushed the plunger about twenty times. A new match was lit and the knob turned. There was a brief hissing noise followed by flames erupting from the top of the lamp. I leapt back, cursing myself as I landed in what may have been the only muddy patch in the entire cemetery. I carefully turned the knob off and waited for the fire to burn out, which took longer than I thought it should.

Back at home I went on the internet again, this time for instructions on how to actually light a Tilley lamp. And this time I found results. That odd little brass basket thing with the cord inside needed to be soaked in an alcohol solution, burning alcohol rather than the drinkable kind, and then it needed to be lit and left to burn for at least two minutes in order to get the lamp up to temperature. If it isn't hot enough, the fuel inside the lamp won't vapourise and instead of making light it'll just spew flames from the top.

The next night, now with some idea of how to get the lamp running, I set up my mobile phone to give me light. The sky was blackness, the fog had returned. And here I was in a graveyard in the dark surrounded by a thick swirling fog. Stories like that don't usually end well for the protagonist, do they?
I took the brass thing out of a jam jar that I had half filled with ethanol. I clipped it on and then lit it with a lighter that I had purchased because I figured it would be more reliable than matches. So far so good. I counted to a hundred, figuring that I was probably inaccurate enough that it would have been more like two minutes.
I carefully turned the knob and began to pump the plunger. Again nothing happened. I could see the flames from the brass preheater thing starting to recede. So in desperation I turned the knob off, pumped a dozen times, and cranked the knob on while saying out loud the magic phrase "goddamn it, work!". With a pop, the lamp lit and cash a bright white light into the fog and the shadows.
Immediately the light began to pulsate and flicker. It was okay, it wasn't possessed by the spirits of the graveyard, it just needed to be pumped up to pressure.
A lot.

A hundred pumps of the plunger later, the light was bright and steady and... now what? I looked around and it was still the same foggy graveyard and I was still standing over the corpses of former people. Okay, this was actually starting to get a little bit creepy.

I stood there for a good five minutes like a bell half struck expecting something to happen. The lamp's gentle hiss and warm glow illuminated the swirling fog, but little else was visible because of the fog. It would be dangerous on the roads tonight.

Thinking myself a complete numpty, I turned and walked away. I'll use the lamp to see me home, at least it'll make me visible in the fog.

I froze as the shadows shifted. I didn't move, they moved. I heard a creaking and turned to see the gates of the cemetery slowly opening by themselves. Being more than startled, but glad to have been set on the right path as I was going the wrong way, I headed straight for the gates to leave the cemetery.

As I crossed the threshold under the gate I felt a swoosh. It was like something pushing on all sides. I yelped and jumped. And then I realised that there was no longer any fog. I looked down at my wet shoes and saw that the ground was a patchwork of cobblestones glistening with dew that reflected the moonlight. Trees stood bare and spectral. Withered vines snaked around black iron lampposts, though the lights from the lamps had long since died out.
That was when I realised that I was in Sombralyssia and not a boring English market town that had seen better days. Though, to be honest, I think Sombralyssia had seen better days as well.

In the distance a castle loomed. It was hard to see in the moonlight, but I could make out that it was a proper imposing castle, its walls veiled in mist. There was something about it, though, that gave me the impression that it was more regal than scary, and that it was extremely old. It was then that I looked up and realised that the light that I thought was the moon wasn't the moon, it was a vast ethereal tapestry of indigo and violet, an aurora, hanging in the air. I have never seen one before, and I certainly didn't expect it to be so bright and so colourful.

The lamp's glow faintly pulsed with a steady rhythm and I noticed how the shadows at its edges seemed alive. Not threatening, but curious. They stretched and flickered, creating momentary shapes that hinted at stories long forgotten by the waking world. I didn't feel fear watching them, more a sort of bittersweet awe as though these were those fragments of dreams that I could never quite remember once I had woken up.

The cobblestone path led me away from the castle and down to a garden by a river unlike anything I had ever seen. Roses of all sorts of colours climbed twisted silver trellises, their petals shimmering as if dusted with frost. I tried to rationalise, tell myself that the blue and green ones were really just white reflecting the aurora above, but any attempt to rationalise came to a screeching halt when I saw the pools. Surrounded by brick, by stone, by wood. All a little unkempt but not overgrown. Pools of mirror-like water reflected not me or the garden but other places. Places distant, serene, and even stranger than this place. A single crow perched silently on the back of a wrought iron bench, its obsidian feathers matching the metalwork. It was regarding me with an almost knowing gaze.

As I wandered deeper, I came across a small pavilion. I guessed this was the centre of the garden. In the middle of the pavilion was a grand candelabra in an art deco style. Its candles were about halfway burned, but unlit, and yet shadows danced and flickered as if the light was coming from the candles. My Tilley brightened as I approached, and the shadows in the pavilion seemed to gather closer gathering into something that seemed almost human.

Without words but with elegant flowing gestures, the shadows beckoned me to light the candalabra. I approached, fumbling in my pockets for the lighter. I finally found it and held the Tilley aloft to see what I was doing and how many candles I was going to have to light. As I did that, a flame leapt from the mantle of the lamp, curled around the glass shield, and drifted over to the wicks of the candles as if carried by some unfelt wind. I dropped the lighter, and very nearly dropped the Tilley.

The garden shimmered around me, and for a moment it was as if the air was filled with music. Haunting, yet beautiful, the sort of music that wraps itself around your very soul.

I watched in silent awe as the shadows started to dance, movements as graceful as they were joyous, their forms blurring and shifting and recombining. I stood amid them, the powerful glow of the lamp casting long shifting silhouettes across the garden.

For the first time, I understood the shadows, not as warnings but as stories of longing. Stories of beauty found and lost. Stories of love that remained through time's decay, the entropy that eventually brings everything else to an end.

As the music faded, the pavilion began to dissolve, its wooden pillars melting into the mist. The shadows retreated, all being careful to bow to me as they faded into the darkness. The ornate candalabra whisped away like steam from a boiling kettle leaving only the points of light from the candles. One by one these, too, faded.

I awoke in the cemetery, the lamp still burning softly but sputtering, its body as wet as my clothes from the fog. I sat up and pumped the lamp to restore proper operation. Slowly I pulled myself up and sighed, long and hard, and then began my journey homewards.

I checked my pockets. My keys were there, so I opened the door and entered my home, kicking it closed behind me. And then opening it again to retrieve the keys from the lock.
I had the jam jar too, but the lighter wasn't anywhere to be found. In its place was a single black rose petal. It felt cold to touch, yet somehow it seemed alive. I stared at it for a few moments, and then placed it carefully into an empty jar in the kitchen before flicking the kettle on.

Sombralyssia was gone, but its mark lingered in my mind - a reminder that light and shadow are not opposites, but partners in the peculiar eternal dance of dreams.

Every now and then I light my Tilley lamp on quiet nights. I catch glimpses of Sombralyssia in the corners of my vision - a garden of roses and shadows, waiting just beyond the edge of wakefulness. Perhaps one day I'll be lucky enough to visit again.

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A tree-dwelling mammal, 9th December 2024, 08:59

"Chuggers" (charity muggers) are a pain in the arse.    Not quite as bad as the $ky sales droids that keep pestering when you walk through the shopping centre. "No, I have Freesat, I don't watch any subscription channels."    Or trying to get some sense out of the staff in the BT/EE shop about when we might be getting full fibre (BT Openreach referred me to my 'local BT store' for more information). Firstly they were asking for my EE details - "no, this is a BT enquiry, I've been signposted here by the Openreach web site". Then they tried to persuade me to migrate my home broadband to EE (not happening). Finally they told me the service wasn't available in my area (well duh, I know it isn't yet, that's why I came in) and I should consider FTTC as an interim measure (I already have FTTC, I'd explained that to them already).    Not quite sure what kind of muppets they're employing here, but I thought you had to know something about telecoms to work for a telco.

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