Lorindól

I did this with my friends when we went to Thailand. We were enjoying the delicious taste on a beach, two Australian guys were wanted to try it. They both spat it out instantly and the other one got so mad we thought he’s actually going to attack us.

After he calmed down a bit he demanded to see us drink it to be sure we hadn’t tricked him to drink poison. So we downed the entire 1 litre bottle to appease him. It was the start of a great day that lasted for few days.

I tried American chocolate once. It tasted like vomit aftertaste.

Never again.

Lemmy only. I quit Reddit when the third party apps fell.

I do miss some of the niche hobby subreddits, but fuck Spez. If I need to find some info, I can access it via search engines.

Otherwise I’m perfectly happy with Lemmy, people are generally much nicer and there’s more than enough content. Reddit was so overbloated that this smaller universe is quite enough for me.

I assume it was a generalization, just few weeks ago I installed 32-bit Linux Mint to two laptops from 2007 or 2008, now my kids have their very own and fully functional computers. They do lag a bit sometimes, but learning patience is just good for the kids.

It would not hurt to try. Using your phone to record your singing may not be the best idea, the microphone is so small that singing even with normal volume gets the recording easily distorted.

USB-connected microphones are pretty cheap and will perform much better, just hook one to a laptop and use any simple recording software.

And I recommend starting small with children’s songs. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with it’s straightforward ascending and descending melody is a great starter, or at least for me it was.

That is the reason I practiced the first two years in my room at lullaby volume.

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Practice. A lot.

In my teens I wasn’t able to carry a tune at all. Our music teacher marked me as “hopeless” after hearing a me singing a few lines.

This pissed me off royally. I had no desire or illusions of becoming a great singer, but I would not accept being “hopeless”. So I started practicing with simple children’s song melodies and recorded my singing with an old cassette recorder. It was indeed pretty awful at first, but I slowly got better. Then I got my driver’s license and could sing along the songs from the radio and my cassettes while driving alone, it was a big step up from singing quietly in my room.

I also started playing the guitar to get a better understanding of musical theory, which was helpful. After I had learned the basics of playing rhythm guitar firmly I learned to play the piano. I believe that singing the melodies while playing them on the piano was essential to my development, since I could instantly hear if I did not hit the correct note.

By my mid-twenties I could already carry tunes easily and even got a complements about my singing voice. Key changes and modulations were still pretty challenging, but I kept on practising whenever I found the time.

Now in my forties I can repeat a melody correctly after hearing it once or twice and I consider myself a decent singer. I don’t sing karaoke or any solo performances, but I do love singing backup or as part of a group.

If my music teacher hadn’t embarrassed me publicly all those years ago, I most likely would have never put any effort in getting better at singing or learning to play instruments. I started this lifelong project purely out of spite, but it became a major and very dear part of my life. I even owe my marriage to music, while we were still dating my wife confessed to me that she most likely wouldn’t have even noticed me if I hadn’t been playing the guitar at that one summer party. Thankfully I wasn’t too hammered at that time ;)

I had this before my hearing was damaged in my mid-thirties. I could hear if any electrical device with large filter capasitors was turned on, even from another room. I discovered by accident that the high pitch noise was emitted by the capasitors when I was fixing old audio gear, I guess they vibrate while doing their job or something like that.

I talked about this with my friend who was specializing to be an ear/hearing doctor, his theory was that my upper hearing range was a bit higher than average. He also talked about how brains filter sensory data and it could just be that my filters weren’t blocking these frequencies.

It was also impossible for me to sleep in a room if there were any mosquitoes. The whining of their wings even in the far side of a room was maddening, so I had to kill them all every night before hitting the bed. The one good thing that came out of the damage to my hearing was that the mosquitoes bother me no more, unless they fly right in front of my ears.

Yeah, “Time Enough For Love” ended up on that list mostly because it’s so different. That made an impression on me when I read it in high school, in the way of “Huh, I guess it’s actually possible to write a book like this”. It had a lot of interesting ideas but the narrative sprawls around pretty wildly.

Riftwar Saga basically takes Tolkien’s Middle-earth setting and mixes it with our own world’s Middle age cultures, plus magical stargates and an invasion from an another world. It’s not a ripoff in any way, it carries it own story proudly but the similarities with names from Tolkien’s works was a bit distracting at first. These were the first books I was able to read entirely in original English in my early teens.

There are so many, but here are a few from the top of my head:

The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein.

Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein.

Don Quijote, Miguel de Cervantes.

Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri.

Dune, Frank Herbert.

Paradise Lost, John Milton.

Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke.

The Riftwar Saga, Raymond E. Feist.

Few years ago I did a full rebuild of a top-of-the-line tube radio from 1958 and use it daily in my living room. My stereo tube amp is from 1963 or 1964. Both sound astonishing.

My binoculars are from WW II - era. I had to realign the prisms when I got them but the optics are about as good as you can get.

I also use an iPod Nano 2Gen almost daily, I think I bought it in 2008 and the original battery can still hold enough charge for 4-5 hours of continous play. Incredible device with a neat perfect UI. The physical jogwheel can be operated through pocket fabric, so I can switch songs or adjust volume while running without even having to remove the iPod from my pocket.

I’d go for a continuation instead of remake. And I just checked, just last year there have been discussions with Jim Henson Company and Rockne O’Bannon (Farscape’s co-creator) about continuing the story. Nothing solid, but there is hope…

Farscape.

Modern visuals, Muppets, a team of good writers and the core cast returning could be really good. Black and Browder wouldn’t be too old yet to make the characters work.

That chaotic universe could provide so many posibilities to explore if done right.

All hail the Gerbil King!

The intranet at my work is a near-useless dumpster fire. Everything is disorganized, all the important documents and instructions are hidden behind completely chaotic branches and layers of creatively named folders.

I have used the wretched thing only once. I instantly downloaded everything I thought I would ever need to an encrypted USB stick, so I would never have to use it again. This was 7-8 years ago. Everything important is always delivered by email and apparently stored to the intranet afterwards. The intranet has been hacked at least twice, but the real number is most likely much higher. For “reasons”, all the personnel info has also been kept stored on the intranet, despite the successful hacks.

Perfumes or scented products are not a problem for me at all, unless of course someone uses way too much. Like I said, I kind of block all the unpleasant stuff unconsciously and focus on the good ones.

It’s kind of like listening to radio, all the channels are broadcasting all the time, simultaneously, but you still tune in to listen only one at a time.

And when I’m intoxicated, theyre all blaring at the same time and cannot be silenced :(

I don’t usually bring this “gift” of mine up in real life, it tends to create pretty awkward and unpleasant situations.

“Oh, if you have such sharp sense of smell, then tell me what deodorant/lotion/perfume I’m using?” How the hell could I know the names of every hygienic/cosmetic product, especially when the reek of detergent, fabric softener and sweat is mixed with the scent I’m supposed to recognize?

Or people just laugh at me and call me a liar.

But my friends are aware of my talent, when someone is considering to buy an apartment they often ask me to accompany them for a presentation. I can tell almost instantly if there’s water damage or mold. When I was buying my own apartment I found one spot under the stairs that had a very faint but odd smell, like wet cement mixed with the smell of a wet dog. There were no water pipes or sewers even near that wall, nor were there any signs of leaks from above. I called the seller to ask about this and he started laughing. The spot was their old dog’s favourite place to curl up for a sleep after a walk in the rain. And it was years since the dog had passed away, they had even painted the wall once and renewed the floor laminate after that. So no worries, I bought the place.

Yeah, Covid was a freaky experience. I got off easy, no fever or other symptoms, I just realized one day that I was unable to smell freshly cut grass. Then I realized that I did not smell anything at all.

My sense of smell started coming slowly back after a few days and I can’t tell if it’s diminished or not. But after Covid every brand of whiskey smells and tastes like vomit to me, so there was a price to pay. Also the smell of someone eating rice cakes became utterly disgusting, as well as yogurt. Before Covid I barely registered these two.

I do not know. I have never actively tried to smell ants nor had them inside any apartments I’ve lived in. I shall test this when summer returns one day. But I do remember that the ant guy wrote about having some genetic quirk that ables him to register some compound that’s out normal human range of smell.