urban_photos

1) My partner injured yet another finger playing baseball last weekend and had to go to the emergency room. Luckily it was not broken, just dislocated. Since then we have gotten 3 phone calls from the hospital group asking for a survey response.

This is particularly irritating because this group has been buying up hospitals, clinics and medical practices in the area, and is currently the only emergency room in town and provider of certain services.

So what is the point of the survey? What choice to we have? How will any response actually do anything to improve care?

2) I've been warming to High Potential, and recently Keith Carradine guest starred. I knew I recognized him as soon as he appeared, but I couldn't place him. Instead I kept wondering why he made me think of Joel Kinnaman in For All Mankind. For sure they could play relatives.

3) I have not been reading any fic for the better part of a year now. Some months back I read about 4 or 5 that had probably been downloaded over a year earlier, but I haven't been doing offline reading for the first time in a very long time. And when it happened before it was because I didn't have access to material, whereas now I have dozens of commercial books and even more fic.

(I say "nothing" though this doesn't count the random drabble or ficlet someone recs.) ( Read more... )

4) The thing that really stood out to me about Amazon announcing they're discontinuing service to 2012 and earlier Kindles was to think that there's not many electronics that are still running after 15 years. ( Read more... )

5) The Pillowfort Anniversary festivities have ended and it was fun. Many (not even all!) of the activities could be summed up with the bingo card. ( Read more... )

I'd love to see someone else take this on in a few years' time.

Poll #34476 Kudos Footer-571

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

Want to leave a Kudos?

View Answers

Kudos!
6 (100.0%)

soemand

Cuban transmitter ran out of fuel. 292 is low, but attainable with ecss trick to pull in the music. It simply doesn’t get as low-fi as this.

soemand

Tuning to 11760 kHz, I caught a surreal scene: Radio Havana Cuba playing a percussion-heavy, jazz-infused Beatles cover. Despite Cuba's severe energy crisis, it’s surprising they’re still transmitting. Using ECSS smoothed the signal, though the announcer sounded "underwater"—a hauntingly beautiful, drum-driven bridge across the Florida Straits.

soemand

Shortwave handed me one of those magic moments tonight. WRMI was buried under harsh QRM, so I nursed an S1 ECSS signal from Channel 292 instead. Barely legible but emotionally clear — “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” by Elton John still made it through the noise.

ofearthandstars

Yesterday, a far-right authoritarian dictator was ousted from government, much to the relief of Europe and much of the rest of the world. This particular dictator is one whom the American administration has modeled many of its tactics after, including its targeting of transfolks and erasing of LGBTQIA+ individuals from public life, and so to see it ousted with such deafening victory gives a small sense of relief, even as the danger continues to lurk, there and elsewhere.

~o~

I either ate or came into contact with something I shouldn't have, as the last couple of days have yielded a fine but irritating rash all over my face/neck and arms, and some light difficulty getting a deep breath. I did do a little yard clean-up on Saturday, but I kept it minimal due to the dryness and the pollen. I scrutinized my meals and didn't find any different ingredients beyond what I expected, so, unless I am reacting more to bell peppers or peanuts while other allergens are in the air, I'm not sure it's that. I need to try to follow up on my injection meds today and I'm not looking forward to it given the attitude I received on Friday. But also... breathing and not having painful itchy skin constantly would be great. Thankfully, L. took on the mowing of weeds along the front of the house/road yesterday, and I decided to stay in.

I had moved the dormant trees that I received to water soak and then to pots, but with the complete lack of rain and extended drought, it is requiring a certain amount of vigilance to keep them happy. I also found a tulip popular seedling has landed right behind the house in my "to be" herb garden bed. I tried to measure off to confirm that it is at least 15 feet from the back porch, and it seems that it is, so I may well leave it where it is. Tulip poplars are one of my favorite natives, but they are also troublesome to have too close given that they grow more swiftly than other trees, and are known for more breakage. We have at least 3-4 others in the yard of various ages - the largest is along our property right between the two houses, and is quite tall, but I have yet to see it flower, so it is presumably still a tween.

~o~

It seems fitting to oust an old-world mindset at the beginning of spring. Here's hoping that what buds in its place can be nurtured into a more democratic and just world. Here's hoping its tendrils spread and grow and provide bravery and strength for the rest of those that need it.

soemand

My wife’s 1990s Rockhopper finally showed its age once she began commuting. The Exage shifters and derailleurs were beyond tired—more museum piece than drivetrain. An Amazon order of fresh components is now inbound, vetted by an LLM for her intense 5 km commute. Soon, the old bike gets a new life.

soemand

I’ve been putting together a “clean” C-54 tape side from The Velvet Underground & Nico — keeping the mood, skipping the screech-viola chaos tracks, and reshaping the flow into a tight 27-minute side. Here’s the final sequence.

**Custom Tape Side A – The Velvet Underground & Nico (Alt Clean Cut)**
Track #	Title	Artist	Album	Length
1	Sunday Morning	The Velvet Underground & Nico	The Velvet Underground & Nico	2:53
2	Femme Fatale	The Velvet Underground & Nico	The Velvet Underground & Nico	2:35
3	All Tomorrow’s Parties	The Velvet Underground & Nico	The Velvet Underground & Nico	5:55
4	I’ll Be Your Mirror	The Velvet Underground & Nico	The Velvet Underground & Nico	2:01
5	Run Run Run	The Velvet Underground & Nico	The Velvet Underground & Nico	4:18
6	There She Goes Again	The Velvet Underground & Nico	The Velvet Underground & Nico	2:30
7	I’m Waiting for the Man	The Velvet Underground & Nico	The Velvet Underground & Nico	4:37
Total runtime				26:48

This cut removes the three chaos tracks (“Heroin”, “The Black Angel’s Death Song”, “European Son”) but keeps the album’s emotional arc intact. It plays like a parallel-universe Side A — same atmosphere, less abrasion.

ofearthandstars

From this week's

thefridayfive:

1. What was the last book you read (or are currently reading)?
Still working my way through The Urban Bestiary (Lyanda Lynn Haupt), Hidden Potential (Adam Grant), and Silent Spring (Rachel Carson).

2. What was the last movie you watched?
Project Hail Mary, which we enjoyed immensely.

3. What television series are you currently watching?
The Pitt (HBO Max), Paradise (Hulu), Hacks (HBO Max), Reservation Dogs (Hulu)

4. What are some of your favorite blogs or communities online?
Argh, I don't have a good answer for this one, my blog reading is limited to blogs of personal friends, and I do not have a lot of specific communities that I follow, but I do love my Reading Page/DW Network! I have also crafted a nifty BlueSky feed of climate scientists, renewable energy/energy efficiency experts, biologists/ecologist, historians, and astronomy/astrophysics accounts that is pretty affirming. Which reminds me, someone created a feed of cats watching the Artemis II splashdown last night that was pretty fun to scroll.

5. What social media do you belong to and check often?
Dreamwidth and BlueSky are the only places I check regularly. I have a FB account to maintain contact with some folks that I can't otherwise see elsewhere, but I largely keep it deactivated and check in only here and there. The platform is largely unusable to me these days and mostly foists AI slop, communities/personalities I don't follow or care for, or ads...not to mention the issues of maintaining an account tied to your government name while trying to exist as a person part of communities that are being actively attacked by the U.S. government. For the people in those communities that do feel comfortable enough to still post there, you are very brave, I am not. Other than that, I do occasionally read through some communities/book clubs on Fable.

soemand

Still chuffed after tuning in to 292 last night. The ionosphere can be so fickle, but every now and then it lines up just right. Hearing a song I love drift in from a low‑power station nearly 5,000 km away felt unreal — that perfect mix of luck, timing, and atmospheric magic. Moments like that remind me why I keep listening: the thrill of catching a distant signal whispering across the night.

ofearthandstars

Artemis II. Amaze Amaze Amaze. 💚💙💜

soemand

Channel 292 surprised me twice tonight. After Iggy Pop drifted through the static, I switched to ECSS and the signal nudged up to a fragile S1—just enough for the audio to hold together. Then, out of nowhere, Paul Simon’s Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard came through clean, bright, and unmistakably alive. It’s the strange joy of weak‑signal listening: a European transmitter barely clinging to the band, yet somehow delivering a perfect slice of melody across the Atlantic. ECSS didn’t just help; it transformed the signal into something musical.

soemand

Tonight’s bandscan delivered one of those tiny, perfect DX surprises. Channel 292 on 9670 kHz drifted in at S0—just static, a faint pulse under the noise—until Iggy Pop’s The Passenger suddenly surfaced like a ghost with a beat. Europe was barely hanging on over the Atlantic, but the melody cut through anyway, steady enough to ride in USB with a bit of fine‑tuning. It’s the kind of reception that reminds me why weak signals are addictive: nothing on the meter, everything in the headphones. A whisper from Germany, carried across an ocean of noise.

soemand

Last night, perched 100m above the Bay of Fundy with a clear 100km view southward, I decided to try a new trick on my Shortwave radio. I've always stuck to standard AM, but at 23:08 UTC on 9455 kHz; the fading was starting to pull a relay of NHK World into the mud.

For the first time, I experimented with ECSS—using the radio's SSB mode to manually exalt the carrier. It was a revelation. Even with the signal hovering at a modest S3 on the meter, zero-beating the frequency stabilized the audio instantly. The "tearing" distortion of the fades vanished. A solo Japanese singer with a koto emerged from the noise; the percussive, sharp plucking of the strings stayed crisp and defined against the Atlantic breeze. It wasn't quite "studio quality," but it was a massive leap in clarity. I'm definitely adding this technique to my permanent DX toolkit.

soemand

Good Day Sunshine caught me off guard yesterday. I’d somehow never heard the full, uncompressed mix, and those first six bars of piano—percussive, almost drum‑like, with that deep left‑hand thump—jumped out like a brand‑new song. On the radio, those low notes always seemed to vanish. I went hunting for a “radio edit,” only to learn there isn’t one. It’s just the alchemy of broadcast compression reshaping the mix, boosting some frequencies and burying others. Add in the differences between the stereo and mono versions—AM stations favoured the mono mix of my childhood—and suddenly the mystery makes perfect sense.

adafrog

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

soemand

Staring at the wall of C‑54 tapes today, I found myself drifting into the possibilities for the next mixtape. With only 27 minutes per side, the format forces a kind of creative discipline—but it also opens a door I’d forgotten about. A lot of late‑’60s albums side surprisingly close to that limit. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Green River, for example, clocks in around 29 minutes. Trim a track or two, and suddenly the whole album fits neatly onto one side of a humble C‑54.

That realization shifted my thinking. Even with these shorter tapes, the old-school “album per side” experience isn’t off the table. It just takes a bit of curation, a bit of editing, and a willingness to treat the cassette as a canvas rather than a constraint.

Now I’m scanning the shelves again, imagining which classic will get the honour next.

soemand

It’s municipal election season, and the local candidate lineup is a fascinating study in human nature. With 24 candidates vying for 11 seats across the mayor's office, wards, and at-large positions, the energy is high—but the strategies are a mixed bag.

The irony is thick this year. We have incumbents campaigning on "change" despite holding office for two terms. Then there are the career hopefuls, leaning heavily on their past provincial or federal party ties and working Facebook like it's their full-time job.

On the fringes, we see the perennial candidates—the ones who've faced ten rejections and yet still show up to pay their deposit, hoping the eleventh time is the charm.

The ground game varies just as much. I've been impressed by a younger gentleman who took the time to knock on my door, while others seem to be living out a Jethro Tull song—firmly "living in the past" with their platforms.

Election day will bring its usual mix of triumph and heartbreak.
Until then, grab the popcorn; local democracy is many things, but it's never boring.

yourlibrarian

There's a party going on at Pillowfort from April 3-13 to celebrate its 10th anniversary. It's hard for me to believe I've been there for 8 of those years already.

Like Dreamwidth, Pillowfort is a small owner-run site with responsive staff that stays afloat via premium services. It functions like a combination of Tumblr and Dreamwidth. For those using Dreamwidth, two advantages I've found enormously helpful are the easy photo hosting/posts and the fact that improved reblogging exists, thus making it very easy to share content to communities. In practice, I find these two sites complement one another.

The atmosphere there is both welcoming and helpful. In my time I've had the occasional unpleasant encounter, but have found it quite chill. Apparently I'm not the only one, as this recent Tumblr refugee reported.: "Signed up yesterday. Decided this morning that I was gonna hang out on here and see what it was like. And... I've had the best time? (I don't mean to sound surprised; I'm just used to the normal horrible state of the modern internet.)..Where has this corner of the internet been for the last several years??? I'm so happy I've found y'all."

Given the "state of the modern internet", we definitely need more boutique social media site alternatives, not fewer. Pillowforter DoktorHobo has been tracking signups to Pillowfort for several years and noted that it has maintained a steady average of around 50 new people per week. I've never taken much notice of total accounts on a site because the vast majority are always inactive, and many more are sporadically active. But steady growth does tell a story.

For anyone interested in trying Pillowfort out, here are some starting points: ( Read more... )

If those don't answer your questions, feel free to ask away here about the site or its workings. There is also a community there for Dreamwidth users. It's been very inactive but I know that a number of people on Pillowfort do have DW accounts or have used it before. And if you just want to see what's going on with anniversary stuff there's a community collating it.

Poll #34447 Kudos Footer-570

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

Want to leave a Kudos?

View Answers

Kudos!
10 (100.0%)

ofearthandstars

Yesterday was very full of chores - the house was cleaned, the yard cleared of the last storm remnants and pollen pods (spoiler alert: new storms today), and then I worked on some sketching and reading before making a curried tofu dish for supper. I caught up on 4 more back episodes of WTNV,

Today we sorted out the menu planning and grocery shopping. I have managed to get chapters covered in each of the three books I am reading (Hidden Potential, The Urban Bestiary, and Silent Spring). I worked more on filling out the sketching (not really pleased with the outcome, but it's okay - you never get good at anything by avoiding it, so I am learning to settle for "good enough for what I was going for").

I also managed to secure my mom's banana bread recipe from my sister, and then reproduced it with some minor tweaks to get it vegan (all hail the flaxseed egg!). This was a little bit of fun because my sister only had a photo of the top side of the recipe card, and not the back - so I had the ingredients, but not all the instructions. But I made some deductions and it came out good! It is not very healthy, unfortunately. And alas, I swear my mother put raisins in everything. It has pecans, too. Anyway, childhood flavors unlocked. ♥

I finally took the time to unbundle the trees/plants I'd acquired (white dogwood, eastern redbuds, washington hawthorns, crabapples, and crape myrtles) and begin soaking them, and have acquired some temp soil to give them places to rest while I figure out their permanent placement according to light/shade needs.

I have managed to flesh out my weekly planner, and took time to feel out my March reflections and adjust my April goals. I am feeling moderately hopeful that this will be a good month.

I don't know that I have it in me to do NaPoeWriMo this year, but lhe local writer's group is hosting an April poetry contest. I placed 2nd the last time I entered, but I'll need to think on the topic and guidelines provided to see if I can get anything of merit together for this year's submissions.

May your week be pleasant (don't look at the news, don't look at the news, don't look at the news). ♥

soemand

Shortwave behaves differently as the Sun changes, and 9395 kHz is a perfect example. During the last solar minimum, the D‑layer was weak and MUF values were lower, which made 9 MHz a reliable daytime workhorse. Signals from Florida reached Atlantic Canada with surprising strength. Now, with higher solar activity, the D‑layer is far more aggressive. Fifteen megahertz fades; nine megahertz nearly disappears. WRMI’s beam hasn’t necessarily changed—the ionosphere has. What once boomed now struggles, not because the station is weaker, but because the sky is louder.

( Glossary: MUF, D-layer, WRMI )

Profile

urban_photos

December 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Apr. 16th, 2026 07:42 am

Member Posts

Pillowfest Ends

202 and Radio Havana

Radio Havana

📻

Good morning world.

🚵🏻

(no subject)

Friday Five: Entertainment Edition

🎶

Splashdown - Moments of Joy

Channel 292 again.

Channel 292

Mastering the "Magic" over the Bay

How Radio Hid the Piano in ‘Good Day Sunshine’

Wednesday in Easter Week

Short Tapes, Big Possibilities

24 candidates,11 seats, and plenty of irony.

Pillowfort Anniversary Festival

Weekend Update #2,430.

Why WRMI’s 9395 kHz Isn’t What It Used To Be

Profile

December 2025

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags