Rick's b.log - 2023/09/13
It is the 19th of May 2024 You are 3.16.158.3, pleased to meet you!

SimpleSeq v0.05

Software is more useful if you
can use its files elsewhere.

This was an interesting exercise. There's a lot of bollocks online - some sites are under the impression that channel 0 is "special" and only for timing, effects, etc. I think they're getting confused with track zero in format 1 MIDI files.
Because, think about it. If the command &91 is to send a Note On event (&9x) to channel 1 (&x1), and &9A is to send a command to track 10... well, exactly what happens if you add 16 to refer to track 16? Well, the result is &A0 and if you notice the leftmost digit is now 'A' and not '9'... which is an entirely different command!

Plus, channel 10 (or '9' when counting from zero) is special. It's the percussion/drum kit channel. So if your pounding drums sound like hammering a piano, well, there's your problem. You're on the wrong channel. ☺

And in case you need it given the lack of user guide...

• An introduction to my Simple Sequencer (v0.01)
• Updates for version 0.02
• Updates for version 0.03
• Updates for version 0.04

Some light gardening

So I did some gardening.

Before.

A few hours later...

After.

Here's a different angle.

After (alternative view).

I'm glad I did it, but I kind of wish I hadn't due to the amount of dust and stuff. I came in and took a shower, and I've only just stopped sneezing, but I don't feel right.

One Piece

Some more backdrops

I was on a hunt for some additional backdrops (remember, I wrote some software to pick a different one each day).

Here are the 15 I found after lots of Googlage.

Fifteen new backdrops.

There were a few more, but they didn't scale to 5:4 to fit my Pi's monitor so I couldn't use them. I'm noticing more and more backdrops being formatted 9:16 for mobile phones. Some of these were, but the important parts were able to be retained after cropping, which I did using the Google Photos app.

Okay, top left, working down each column. I started looking for gothic/horror/creepy and the first image looks like a scene from something like Fatale Frame.
The next image is a pleasant looking place to pitch a tent and camp for the night.
The middle picture there is what London will look like by the time the British wise up and kick the Tories out, and the damage won't be an environmental catastrophe, it'll just be twenty-odd years of Tory mismanagement. They had to drain the Thames because it had turned deadly with all the effluent. And the ruins are thanks to the Civil War.
It doesn't really show up in the thumbnail, but the girl is giving the cat a sideways glance, like she's quite aware that the cat is Trouble, and 💩's about to get real.
I had nights like that when I was little. Now I embrace my nightmares. They're much more interesting. Especially the ones I don't survive.

Middle column. Top row. Cute, isn't she? Can't argue with a pretty nicely dressed psycho.
The next one is broken but still around.
The middle one is not broken, she's satisfied. Just be sure not to be on her bad side.
Zombie apocalypse, girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
The bottom one, I'm not sure what that is, but I really like the colours and contrasts there. It's just a really pleasing picture.

Rightmost column - bow to the intellectual superiority of the bookworm. I've said in the past that I think my ideal girlfriend would be a librarian. Especially if she's an introvert. We could sit in silence for hours. Wouldn't that be nice?
The next picture, I just liked the ambience.
Ditto for the next one. It looks like she's walking alongside racks of plants. A biodome? Taken from an animé?
There's a bit of a theme of girls with cats, so here's another to add to the list.
And finally, an animesque picture with nice visuals.

It's a lot less creepy than I was aiming for. I thought I was on the right track when I started turning up pictures of Amy Lee, but sadly it went to a collection of ghost girls, demons, skulls, and grim reapers.
Sorry, I just don't find those things scary. Every living thing leaves a skeleton - that's all that remains of mom, and soon it'll be all that remains of me. Believing in demons and the grim reaper requires a leap of faith that my scientific mind isn't able to achieve. And I'd love to hang out with a ghost girl. Nearly half a century and still waiting...

So it looks like while I was looking for creepy stuff, I instead settled for interesting visuals.
I did come across some scenery porn in the style of Makoto Shinkai, but I left it because although it was quite lovely, it was too damn perky. But, hey, if you want your eyeballs blown away, see if anything of his is on your favourite streaming service: Your Name, Weathering with You, The Garden of Words, Journey to Agartha, The Place Promised in Our Early Days... There's also Suzume but I've not watched it yet, though the trailer is pretty impressive.
Mom was quite taken with Your Name and Journey to Agartha - and both feature astonishing visuals. It's no surprise he's been hailed as the next Miyazaki (Ghibli).

Your comments:

John, 13th September 2023, 22:17

I learnt many years ago whilst working at Irene's school - well, I came out in a strawberry coloured rash with no explanation which spread and spread until it covered me all over more-or-less - that the pharmacist's suggestion of allergy/hay fever tablets was actually very sensible.    Since then they they have formed a staple of our first-aid kit.    When we were in France the last time we were taking one a day to stop the mosquito bites causing us too much bother.    I suspect that they might help your situation.    Best to try during a weekend or holiday in case they send you to sleep.    We use cetirizene hydrochloride or loratidine, one a day when required.    Irene also gets pollen problems, and I sometimes go runny or sneezy, so a single dose usually sorts us out.    You could also wear a recently-popular sort of mask whilst "gardening", as you seem to call battering nature into submission!    HTH,    John

J.G.Harston, 14th September 2023, 16:33

"There's a lot of bollocks online" I found the same when trying to work out ANSI *input* sequences. 99% of search results give ANSI *output* sequences, but I already know that, WTH does the *keyboard* generate?    It took months of tracking down and experimentation, and even now I still do occasional tweeks to the documentation and demo code I've written up to fill the gap. At some point I need to rewrite the Wikipedia articles to include the information in a manner that won't get it reverted for inappropriateness.

Rick, 14th September 2023, 16:59

JGH: I eventually came across this: https://vt100.net/docs/vt100-ug/chapter3.html (I do love the use of octal!), but when I was doing things with a VT220, I was lucky enough to have one at the time so I just hooked it to a serial port and pressed random keys to see what it sent.    John: Most of the over the counter anti allergy things are based on antihistamines, so I'd need to Red Bull myself into oblivion to be functional.  I'm better now. I think I just have a low tolerance for ivy, specifically that awful ivy "dust".

J.G.Harston, 15th September 2023, 21:45

As useful as the vt100 site is, it demonstrates another part of the frustration. Did it occur to anybody to put all the information in ONE SINGLE TABLE? No, you have to trawl through page after page after page after page to compile it into something you can actually code for, eg: mdfs.net/Docs/Comp/Comms/ANSIKeys