Paul ⁽³³⁶⁾

I'm still not a grandmaster on the theremin. Okay, let's face it: the chances of me becoming one are probably as large as anything coming from Mars, but I'll keep trying. Kip Rosser told me that it's a good practice to try following random tones and play those on the theremin. I tried several ways but with only two arms and one theremin, that's tricky. So I got creative: It doesn't get more random than…

Yes, here I am again, with the theremin(i) No, I didn't buy that one. It's out of my price range; I know my wallet's limits. (Open to donations though! :D ) I just did an amazing exercise for the theremin. Random pitches. That doesn't mean "just wave your hands around and make some sound" (although it feels like it at times ;) ). The lesson consisted of a series of random pitches that you try…

Maybe you notice that there's "Theremin" in the title, not "theremini", just like in my previous post. Even though I own a Moog Theremini, I don't intend to use it as that, but as a practice-theremin. Something I discovered on the fifth day of owning the device is that I despise the pitch correction. This is one of the biggest sales pitches (pun intended) for the theremini. It makes it nearly impossible to miss a…

What is a theremin? It's, as far as I found, the oldest electronic musical instrument. Invented around 1920 by the Russian Leon Theremin as he was trying to find a way to audible detect the changes in gas density (which was his actual work around that time). A theremin is the only instrument that's played without touching it. It's sound is generated through 2 electro-magnetic antennae on either side: 1 controlling the pitch and one…

Lupus is a cruel mystery. It is an unpredictable and misunderstood autoimmune disease. It is difficult to diagnose, hard to live with, and a challenge to treat. There is a range of symptoms, and strikes without warning. Lupus is a chronic (long-term) disease that can cause inflammation and pain in any part of your body. It’s an autoimmune disease, which means that your immune system — the body system that usually fights infections — attacks…

I am following this series on Netflix. It is scary to see how the American justice system works. They want a confession. It's clear, from various statements in the series, that this is what counts. If the person confessing actually did the crime, great, otherwise we have a confession and that's it. In several interviews of detectives with Brendan Dassey, it's overly clear that they were leading him into admitting things. Brendan isn't the brightest…

Note upfront: this could be considered an #NSFW post depending on your work, so be aware of that. Right. We all know about aliens, be it from close encounters of the third kind, or from films like Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. (These are the up-close, personal ones, in case you don't know.) Imagine you have the opportunity to visit their planet (and you can actually live there. Air is important, as is food,…

I have registered one of my domains at register.com. Usually that's nothing special, but there is something peculiar about their system that keeps annoying me. Even though I've switched "Auto-Renew" on since forever, their mailing system keeps bombing me with mails about the domain being close to deactivation because the expiration date of the registration comes closer. That's not needed of course, because auto-renew is on. The past few weeks I got those mails again.

Yesterday I saw this film (movie) on Amazon Prime. I was in the mood for something fun and decided on this one. Bill Murray usually is good for laughs and this film didn't disappoint me. The start was a bit overdone perhaps but things got better so quickly that I laughed a LOT! It is clearly an older film, seeing working phone boxes and a total absence of smartphones and even Nokia 3310s. Add to…

Something surprising happened to me a few days ago. It started with what looked like a spam mail that somehow had made it through the entanglements of the filtering. It was from "Bernie Jones" (name altered for privacy reasons) who had a question. I thought I had something of an answer so I wrote back to him, starting my reply with "Dear Mr Jones..." There we had it. Mr Jones, a.k.a. Bernie, took a LONG…