InVisible

My friend and colleague Alvaro (who is responsible for the wonderful Mobino iOS and Android apps) has been working on an application of his own. Talking Stick launched today. It is a really simple app - that simulates a talking stick - the token that gives one power to speak. The app allows you to select number of participants, a mode for a discussion (several talk modes available) and then tracks the speaking time of everybody (and it also records what was said) ...

I finished week 3 of the Coursera songwriting course. This weeks assignment was to write a verse and chorus that confirms to certain specifications (stable verse, unstable chorus). The effect has to be achieved by using certain rhyme schemes or rhymes. For non-native english speakers like myself this was really difficult - as I have learnt last week, english is actually a rhyme poor language. There are very few “perfect” rhymes (love / above). Much rhyming is thus done with “family rhymes” (where similar sounds t/d, p/b, k/g, m/n/ng are rhymed like cut / mud) or even worse additive / subtractive rhymes ( cry / ride), assonance rhymes ( fool / rude ) and consonance rhymes (friend / wind). ...

Feed reading on my tiny tiny RSS instance is quite nice. I had to change a few CSS properties (make the font bigger for my old eyes) and I installed another (more Google Reader like CSS). I have started to look at the options, learnt how to enable the digest plugin (edit config.php to enable it) and actually read through the descriptions of the different features on the TT-RSS home page. Today I also got a mail from TheOldReader that my feeds had been imported - just around a week after I uploaded the OPML file to them. I think I’ll pass :) ...

In my quest to “own my own data” I spent the last few days to get an alternative to Google Reader going. I decided on trying Tiny Tiny RSS instead of Fever mainly because TT-RSS is supported and in active development, while Fever (while looking more interesting) has been on hold for a few years and Shaun Inman basically hinted that he will not update or support it in the near future at least. Also, Ràmon has endorsed it… ...

The one thing that my scientific mind likes about having a terrible cold is to experimentally find out, which sort of herbal tea goes together with which kind of schnapps. Tonights experiment: Mint tea with Raki

I have been ill the last few days, which has given me time to oscillate between reading and sleeping. I have been going through the first 400 pages of “How Music Really Works” that can be read for free. The book is - shall we say - quite peculiar, with long passages about evolution, but it has given me a totally new understanding of music theory. There is a lot of thought that has gone into the description of the components of music, and the last free chapter has an impressive analysis of chord progressions. ...