Mission Control Is On Line

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 08/16/2020 at 16:39 • Filed to: None

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Got my !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! set up and arranged a few toys for decoration. I love the Techni c Ferrari, but it will likely turn out to be too big for the space. I’ve got many more I could display. Maybe I’ll have to rotate the collection.

This is where I’ll be teaching from this fall. Not sure how many trumpet students I’ll have, but at least 18 have expressed interest. The trick will be finding time during this crazy schedule to fit them all in. We’ve done a lot of rearranging to find work spaces for everybody. I moved to the back bedroom (shown) a couple of months ago to make room for Mrs. Ttyymmnn at my desk in the living room. That required cleaning out and moving a large bookshelf into my oldest boy’s room, which made him happy because he can display all of his Legos on it. Finding space for my twin boys to work is also proving to be a challenge. I jury rigged a desk in the room they  share, but one of them will have to work at the kitchen table. I’m encouraging them to work out a trading schedule.

Ultimately, my house is one room short. But what’re you gonna do? I certainly can’t complain, since, despite the lack of space, we are still better positioned than many other families at this time.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 16:46

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I’m one garage short, or two

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 16:48

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When I first did school from home, I worked on the back porch but people always complained about the loud birds in the background of video meetings (when my mic was on) so I had to move. It is so tough to manage space in a house so that everyone has a place where they can work undisturbed and have a different place to spend time not doing schoolwork without overlap.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 16:50

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Most people go for multiple monitors, not keyboards. :)

Congratulations on getting it all set up and online. I just sent an email asking to delay my return to the office for another week. We want to minimize the risk for my daughter right before we deliver her into the cess pool that is the college dorm. She was planning a socially-distant goodbye with one of her friends this afternoon, but the friend came down with a fever. There’s no telling what she picked up, but it was good that she recognized the risk and cancelled the visit with our daughter. 

ttyymmnn > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 08/16/2020 at 16:53

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My boys have a computer table in the LR where they play their games most of the day. I don’t like the noise sometimes, but I also don’t have room for them to be in their room, and I like to monitor their behavior and language online. But, we didn’t want to use that same space as their school space. We bought them each a Chromebook (big brother got one his freshman year, too) and that’s what they will use for school. So the school environment will be separated from the game environment. Game computers will be locked during the day, and phones will be in a drawer during school. We’re also getting their backpacks out for them to keep school papers, band binders, etc in so they can “put school away” at the end of the day. We really want to keep school and home as separate as we can. 

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 16:56

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Great idea. School and leisure spaces and tools must remain separate to give a day structure. It does make it difficult to allow everyone two distinct spaces in a house that doesn’t overlap with someone who needs quiet to work.

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/16/2020 at 16:57

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The piano keyboard (technically a MIDI controller) is for typesetting music . I’ve got yet another KB tucked under the iMac. I use that one for typesetting music, because y ou really need a dedicated number pad for selecting note values. ( It’s a long story.) So there are actually three KBs in that photo.

My oldest’s girlfriend just left for Trinity U in San Antonio. She’s in a dorm room by herself, and the school is limiting freshman to three online classes this fall. I think she really wanted that “moving out of the house” experience, and I can’t say I blame her. However, she and my son were video chatting last night because she is just so bored, sitting around the dorm by herself. No parties, no gatherings, just an empty room. It’s really kind of sad. 

ttyymmnn > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 08/16/2020 at 16:59

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My wife can work through all of their Rainbow 6 rantings. She has the patience of Job. I can go to the back bedroom and shut the door and even turn on the noise machine if I have to. Things should quiet down a lot when school starts. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 17:33

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I didn’t even notice the piano keyboard. I saw the small keyboard on the desk and the bigger one under the monitor.

My daughter was accepted to Trinity and we visited the campus. It was a really nice place, but the tuition is unbeliev able. Even with the huge scholarship they offered, it would have cost us over $30k per year. My daughter doesn’t need to go to campus since all of her courses in the fall are online, but she really, really wants to go to campus. Her dorm is set up like a mini fourplex - a living room and mini kitchen, four lockable bedrooms, and two jack-and-jill bathrooms. They have also cleared out one dorm just for quarantining students who fall ill. We’re scared for her health, but she has a lot of local resources who have all said they would help. That includes my sister-in-law, two of my wife’s cousins, and my wife’s aunt and uncle. Somebody will be there for her if things go wrong.

The funniest thing is her roommates. My daughter is in the honor’s college, so she was assigned to the honors dorm with other like-minded students. One of the other girls opted for the online coursework option, so the school stuck a random student in with them. So far, this young lady hasn’t impressed the other girls. It sounds like she’ll be struggling to make it through college. This could be the best thing for this young lady, but my daughter is worried about how she’ll fit in. It was a group of nerds. Now they have a cheerleader moving in with them. It sounds like the elevator pitch  for a cheesy comedy.

subexpression > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 17:45

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Not long ago I read that the real estate market is seeing a shift because of exactly the situation you describe - people realize that where they’ve been living is n’t (or won’t be) large enough for the whole family to be at home all the time. The trend had been toward smaller houses, now buyers want more rooms . The open-concept floor plans are also increasingly undesirable because somebody’s always in the kitchen for a meal or snack and constant activity makes it hard to work in the dining/living area .

ttyymmnn > subexpression 08/16/2020 at 17:51

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Our house would be perfectly fine if we had had the two children we planned on having. I like to say, “We wanted two kids, but instead we got two more.” If we didn’t have twins, we’d be in the pound seats. What’s really insane is how much the price of our h ome has got up. We paid about 136 for it 18 years ago for 1400 sq ft , and the realtor who lives across the street said that similar homes in this neighborhood are now going for 400. 

HoustonRunner > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 18:25

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We are also starting to get setup for school. There will be all six of us doing w ork from home at the same time.  We are fortunate to have enough space, just trying to figure out how to use it.  I have the office, my wife has the guest bedroom, we will have one kid in the dining room, one in the game room, and the other two in their bedrooms.  I still need to get some sort of monitoring software for all the laptops (we only do laptops in my house, old habit).

MiniGTI - now with XJ6 > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 18:34

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Haha Finale FTW. I prefer the full size USB Apple keyboard anyway, but once you’re used to a Bluetooth mouse (I love the Magic Mouse for the things I do) there’s no going back to corded.

ttyymmnn > MiniGTI - now with XJ6 08/16/2020 at 18:44

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I am a hardcore track padder. However, i f I’m entering notes without a MIDI keyboard, then a mouse is preferable. I will say, though, that in the 20 years I’ve used Finale there has not been a single session where I haven’t wanted to throw the computer out the window at least once. It’s an amazing program, but it can also be amazingly stupid sometimes.

WRXforScience > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 19:27

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We’ve got one more week until in person teaching, I get to find out on Monday how much trouble I’m still in after calling out the admin for their lack or preparation and absence of concern for the health and safety of the teachers. I’ve got a little bit of a sore throat and feel like if I took deep breaths I’d cough.

If I cough on the Principal and then test positive, we’d both have to stay home for at least 14 days. 

MiniGTI - now with XJ6 > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 22:15

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Haha completely agree. I haven’t used it much in the last 10 years, in fact Allegro 2001 is the most recent version I’ve really used. I didn’t use it a ton, but I feel like I was pretty proficient.

And the 2001 CD I have is win/ OS9 so I drag out my old G4 Cube on the extremely rare occasions I need it.

After I transitioned to all Mac about 2008 I noticed some subtle differences in the keyboard commands from windows, like using  CLEAR (same key as Num Lock in windows) instead of backspace to remove notes.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ttyymmnn 08/16/2020 at 23:06

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Great setup! The only problem I see is the Mac.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/16/2020 at 23:06

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It’s an Apple thing; you wouldn’t understand.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ttyymmnn 08/17/2020 at 14:31

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Do you have (or are you getting) a higher quality external mic? Might do a full-range and -volume test of the onboard mic to see if it’s up to the task.

ttyymmnn > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/17/2020 at 16:16

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I have a Blue Snowball USB mic. It’s kind of hard to see in the photo. I have no idea how I sound to other people, but I’ve used it to make some recordings of myself and my kids through my MacBook, and it sounds quite good. This new generation of iMac has a “ studio-quality microphone array” which sounds impressive, but I have no idea how good it is. The good thing about having a standalone mic is that I can move it around for better levels. I generally have it sitting about 90 degrees off the end of the bell so I’m not playing directly into it. 

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ttyymmnn 08/17/2020 at 16:25

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Ah, nice. I’m not surprised you already have one.

This might be interesting (I assume the actual components are similar):

ttyymmnn > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/17/2020 at 16:37

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TAX DEDUCTION, BABY! I’m deducting the mic, the studio lamp on the table, and the iMac. 

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ttyymmnn 08/17/2020 at 16:40

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Nicely done.

ttyymmnn > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/17/2020 at 16:44

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Jesus, how can she afford anything after being all those MacBooks?? I’ve never done any studio stuff with layers and all that. I just record myself acoustically and call it done. Here’s a recording I made for my students from my bathroom using the Blue Snowball and my MacBook.

And here’s one from my garage, same setup.  I think it sounds a bit better in the garage. Too damned hot to play out there now.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ttyymmnn 08/17/2020 at 16:51

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Very nice! Yeah, I think it’s “cleaner” sounding in the garage, too.

ttyymmnn > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/17/2020 at 17:37

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Here’s an interesting experiment. I recorded an etude with the iMac’s internal mic, then recorded the same thing with the Blue Snowball.

Honestly, wrong notes and chips aside, I think the internal mic sound better. I do need to experiment with mic levels and placement, but I can’t place the mic across the room since I’ll also have to talk into it. I also need to experiment and see how the two sound over Zoom or Skype.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ttyymmnn 08/17/2020 at 18:00

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Nice. I listened to the external first. There’s definitely more “noise” in the line that you can hear before you play the first note (might be able to be fixed by a better cable?), but it might do a better job of handling some notes (listen to the internal around :43 - the external has a purer sound through this section. Maybe something’s vibrating on your desktop that the internal is picking up?).

Either way, nice to know the internal’s quality is quite good.

ttyymmnn > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/17/2020 at 18:05

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Thanks. I’ll check that out. I did a Zoom with RustyVandura this morning and there was lots of audible noise in the call. No idea whose end it was on, or in the transmission itself, I don’t know, I’m not a techie. Are there higher quality USB cables for things such as this?

The internal recording is definitely at a higher level, and that can easily be adjusted in the sound settings. Clearly, more experimentation is in order.

Thanks for listening.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ttyymmnn 08/18/2020 at 10:02

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Sure thing!