Monday  23 Mar 2020           comment?

Some music I found recently:

• People Will Always Need Coal by Public Service Broadcasting
• Centrifuge by Todd Reynolds

Sunday  22 Mar 2020           1 comment

Many professional sports have cancelled games but a major chess tournament is in progress: the 2020 Candidates Tournament to decide who will challenge Magnus Carlsen later this year. Some contestants have doubts as to whether they will be able to return to their home countries.

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The control tower at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas has not operated since Thursday when a controller tested positive for coronavirus. For now, arriving and departing planes talk to each other directly on a common frequency when they're close to the airport, as is done at small airports without control towers. This arrangement can't handle the usual traffic load at LAS; many flights are cancelled or delayed at their origin airports. I don't know why it's taking so many days to disinfect and reopen the control tower.

From earlier today, a sample announcement from an arriving flight:

Las Vegas traffic: Southwest 3284 is approaching 11 mile final, 26 left, 5000 feet. Anybody closer in than 10 miles?

And this exchange from a day or so ago:

Now, Aeroenlaces 112, long final, 26 left, 8 miles.

Hey guys, don't forget to cancel, we're right behind you, we can't land 'til you cancel.

Not that I'm planning to fly anywhere soon, but Las Vegas is one of the airports I leave from when I do.

Saturday  21 Mar 2020           comment?

Monday  16 Mar 2020           comment?

Whereas grocery stores in some areas of California are selling out of many goods, supplies are close to normal in my area so far. And I'm not under a shelter in place order like the one imposed today in the San Francisco bay area. Who knows whether my valley will be spared the worst hardships or if we're just behind the rest of the state. The future is mysterious.

It's raining now but I got to climb some while it was still dry.

Sunday  15 Mar 2020           1 comment

Vehicle by The Ides of March is 50 years old this year. On March 15 of 2004 and 2006, I posted notation for a riff from the song, without explanation (except for a comment in the HTML for the 2004 posting).

Below, the riff. The key signature comes from a pic of a friend's tattoo.

Saturday  14 Mar 2020           1 comment

As much as I wish the USA had adopted the metric system back when most of the world did, I like the ¼×20 thread size. The comparable metric thread is M6×1 which has too fine a pitch for my taste.

Most consumer cameras have ¼×20 tripod socket threads.

Monday  09 Mar 2020           comment?

Monday  02 Mar 2020           1 comment

A YouTube channel I watch got hacked. The creator of the channel can't get it back. When he contacts YouTube, they direct him to their account recovery page, which doesn't work because the hacker who has commandeered his account has changed all the contact info. When the creator of the channel points this out to YouTube, they give him the same stock response (use the account recovery page).

A blog I read used to be hosted by Blogger. Back in 2013, Google disabled the blog, saying it was in violation of their Terms of Service. They didn't tell the author where or how his blog had violated their terms in its over one million words of content.

I have a Gmail address I give to merchants I buy stuff from. I got into that habit that because Gmail is pretty good at spam filtering. It would be a lot of effort to move all those contacts to a different email address but I'm starting to think it's worth the trouble. I have no confidence I'd get decent service from Google if I ever lost access to my Gmail account. I say "service" rather than "customer service" because I'm not their customer.