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  13. <title>Communications From Elsewhere</title>
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  25. <title>Masa para tamales</title>
  26. <link>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/12/18/masa-para-tamales/</link>
  27. <comments>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/12/18/masa-para-tamales/#comments</comments>
  28. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh]]></dc:creator>
  29. <pubDate>Tue, 19 Dec 2023 01:02:18 +0000</pubDate>
  30. <category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
  31. <category><![CDATA[External Brain]]></category>
  32. <category><![CDATA[recipe]]></category>
  33. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/?p=3824</guid>
  34.  
  35. <description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m writing it down this time, because every time I make tamales it takes me a while to recreate the proportions and method, and every time I have a few early batches which are gummy or sticky or what have you. This is basically the recipe from the bag of masa harina, which I should &#8230; <a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/12/18/masa-para-tamales/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Masa para tamales"</span></a>]]></description>
  36. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  37. <p>I&#8217;m writing it down this time, because every time I make tamales it takes me a while to recreate the proportions and method, and every time I have a few early batches which are gummy or sticky or what have you. This is basically the recipe from the bag of masa harina, which I should have trusted instead of going to youtube to watch hours of home and professional cooks.</p>
  38.  
  39.  
  40.  
  41. <p>In the mixer with the flat paddle, put four cups of maseca for tamales, the Maseca brand in the brown bag with &#8220;Tamal&#8221; in big letters on it, not the white bag. This time I&#8217;m using three cups of the grind for tamales and one cup of the &#8220;nixtamasa&#8221; variety which is a finer grind (but not as fine as the one for tortillas) and which has some enzymes added to retain more of the corn flavor.</p>
  42.  
  43.  
  44.  
  45. <p>Prepare three and a half cups of chicken or vegetable broth with hot but not boiling water, and mix three of them at low speed into the masa harina in the bowl to reconstitute it. This shouldn&#8217;t take too long, maybe a minute. Once the dough is coming together a bit, scrape the paddle off, form the dough into a ball in the bowl, and let it sit for 10-15 minutes to continue hydrating.</p>
  46.  
  47.  
  48.  
  49. <p>Meanwhile, melt one cup of fat &#8212; preferably good lard, but Crisco shortening works, and I&#8217;m going to try avocado oil next to see if room temperature solidity makes a difference &#8212; on medium low heat in a small saucepan. Mix one tablespoon of baking powder and 1.5 to 2 teaspoons of salt in, and take off the heat to cool a bit.</p>
  50.  
  51.  
  52.  
  53. <p>When the dough is hydrated and the fat is still warm, switch to the dough hook on the mixer and incorporate the fat into the dough at low speed. Continue beating and scraping for 4-5 minutes.</p>
  54.  
  55.  
  56.  
  57. <p>Now you can slowly incorporate the rest of the broth, if the dough needs it. It should be loose but not sticky &#8212; if you slap it, your hand should come away pretty clean (if a bit oily), and it should slowly drop off a spoon, not run off it. This is where the videos are helpful to see the right consistency.</p>
  58.  
  59.  
  60.  
  61. <p>Now continue to make tamales as usual, with corn husks and fillings and steaming and such.</p>
  62.  
  63.  
  64.  
  65. <p>This should make enough dough for about three dozen tamales, so make two batches if you want to fill the big steamer. I don&#8217;t think the bowl of the mixer will fit a double batch, though. </p>
  66. ]]></content:encoded>
  67. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/12/18/masa-para-tamales/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  68. <slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
  69. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">3824</post-id> </item>
  70. <item>
  71. <title>Summer reading programs, SPL vs KCLS</title>
  72. <link>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/06/18/summer-reading-programs-spl-vs-kcls/</link>
  73. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh]]></dc:creator>
  74. <pubDate>Sun, 18 Jun 2023 22:55:31 +0000</pubDate>
  75. <category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
  76. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/?p=3817</guid>
  77.  
  78. <description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s just about summer, which means that the libraries are doing their summer reading promotions. There&#8217;s an interesting difference between Seattle&#8217;s program and King County&#8217;s program, but there&#8217;s also an interesting difference between Seattle&#8217;s program this year and its program for the previous five years. Seattle does &#8220;Book Bingo&#8221;, with a bingo card with a &#8230; <a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/06/18/summer-reading-programs-spl-vs-kcls/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Summer reading programs, SPL vs KCLS"</span></a>]]></description>
  79. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  80. <p>It&#8217;s just about summer, which means that the libraries are doing their summer reading promotions. There&#8217;s an interesting difference between Seattle&#8217;s program and King County&#8217;s program, but there&#8217;s also an interesting difference between Seattle&#8217;s program this year and its program for the previous five years.</p>
  81.  
  82.  
  83.  
  84. <span id="more-3817"></span>
  85.  
  86.  
  87.  
  88. <p>Seattle does &#8220;Book Bingo&#8221;, with a bingo card with a type of book to read in each square. In previous years they&#8217;ve had the same card and categories in both English and Spanish. This year they&#8217;ve got different cards for the two languages. English is a 5&#215;5 Bingo card and Spanish is a 4&#215;4 Loteria card, so clearly they can&#8217;t just translate the categories. Interestingly, though, the categories for the two languages are almost entirely different, with only three being represented in both languages.</p>
  89.  
  90.  
  91.  
  92. <p>Here&#8217;s the list of categories on the English card. Each category has one or more linked lists of recommendations, but none of the categories have explanations of why you might want to read a book from that category (italics indicate that it&#8217;s also in the Spanish list):</p>
  93.  
  94.  
  95.  
  96. <ul class="wp-block-list">
  97. <li>Joyful</li>
  98.  
  99.  
  100.  
  101. <li>Seattle Reads (past or present)</li>
  102.  
  103.  
  104.  
  105. <li><em>Local Author</em></li>
  106.  
  107.  
  108.  
  109. <li>Hip Hop</li>
  110.  
  111.  
  112.  
  113. <li>Includes a Recipe</li>
  114.  
  115.  
  116.  
  117. <li>Indigenous Author</li>
  118.  
  119.  
  120.  
  121. <li>Recommended by an Independent Bookseller</li>
  122.  
  123.  
  124.  
  125. <li><em>Translated</em></li>
  126.  
  127.  
  128.  
  129. <li>Sea Creatures</li>
  130.  
  131.  
  132.  
  133. <li>Trans or Nonbinary Author</li>
  134.  
  135.  
  136.  
  137. <li><em>Library Book List or Display</em></li>
  138.  
  139.  
  140.  
  141. <li>True Crime or Crime Fiction</li>
  142.  
  143.  
  144.  
  145. <li>FREE SPACE</li>
  146.  
  147.  
  148.  
  149. <li>A SAL Speaker (past or present)</li>
  150.  
  151.  
  152.  
  153. <li>Worker&#8217;s Rights</li>
  154.  
  155.  
  156.  
  157. <li>Debut Essays or Short Stories</li>
  158.  
  159.  
  160.  
  161. <li>Older Protagonist</li>
  162.  
  163.  
  164.  
  165. <li>Chosen by the Cover</li>
  166.  
  167.  
  168.  
  169. <li>BIPOC Poetry Collection</li>
  170.  
  171.  
  172.  
  173. <li>Manga or Graphic Novel</li>
  174.  
  175.  
  176.  
  177. <li>Read With a Friend</li>
  178.  
  179.  
  180.  
  181. <li>BIPOC or LGBTQIA+ Horror</li>
  182.  
  183.  
  184.  
  185. <li>Audiobook or E-book</li>
  186.  
  187.  
  188.  
  189. <li>Same Author, Different Genre #1</li>
  190.  
  191.  
  192.  
  193. <li>Same Author, Different Genre #2</li>
  194. </ul>
  195.  
  196.  
  197.  
  198. <p>And here&#8217;s the list of categories in Spanish (mostly translated by Google) with the descriptions or reasons for each category:</p>
  199.  
  200.  
  201.  
  202. <ul class="wp-block-list">
  203. <li><strong>A classic book :</strong> A list of the best classic novels published in Spanish in the 20th century and available in the library.</li>
  204.  
  205.  
  206.  
  207. <li><strong>Science Fiction :</strong> A list of science fiction books, old and new. Choose one that best suits your taste or discover a new author. Why not?</li>
  208.  
  209.  
  210.  
  211. <li><strong>Stories :</strong> The stories are easy to read, and many times they leave us thinking and trying to find a different ending. Here&#8217;s a very interesting collection.</li>
  212.  
  213.  
  214.  
  215. <li><strong>Award Winner :</strong> The authors of these novels have won an award for their writing. Maybe you&#8217;ll find an author you don&#8217;t know yet.</li>
  216.  
  217.  
  218.  
  219. <li><strong>A banned book :</strong> The hot topic right now, banning books. We already know that when something is forbidden to us, that is what we want to do. A list of books that have been banned in some states of the country.</li>
  220.  
  221.  
  222.  
  223. <li><strong>Recommended by library staff:</strong>&nbsp;A very easy box to fill out.&nbsp;Go to your nearest branch and ask your favorite librarian what books she would recommend for you to read this summer.</li>
  224.  
  225.  
  226.  
  227. <li><strong>Biographies :</strong> Biographies have their fans and sometimes we find people who don&#8217;t read biographies. Which side are you on? Perhaps some of the following biographies will be to your liking.</li>
  228.  
  229.  
  230.  
  231. <li><strong>A translated book :</strong> Who wouldn&#8217;t like to read in many languages? Sometimes a book gets lost in translation, but there are many great books in translation like the list below.</li>
  232.  
  233.  
  234.  
  235. <li><strong>A Latino author :</strong> A very easy box to fill in, who doesn&#8217;t know a Latino author? There is a lot to choose from, don&#8217;t you think, here is a summarized list.</li>
  236.  
  237.  
  238.  
  239. <li><strong>I have intended to read:</strong> There are many books that we would like to read, and sometimes with work and the commitments of daily life we ​​do not have time for that. Now it&#8217;s time to read that book you&#8217;ve been putting off for a long time. Good reading!</li>
  240.  
  241.  
  242.  
  243. <li><strong>Poetry</strong> : The poems of well-known and not so well-known authors. Poetry is a literary genre that many readers like; do you have a favorite poet?</li>
  244.  
  245.  
  246.  
  247. <li><strong>A children&#8217;s book :</strong> Children&#8217;s books are beautiful, especially if we read them to children. Do you remember the books you read as children? If you don&#8217;t remember some of them, here is a list of contemporary authors.</li>
  248.  
  249.  
  250.  
  251. <li><strong>Read outdoors:</strong>&nbsp;Summer is the time of year when we can read outdoors to our heart&#8217;s content, near the beach, in the patio of our houses, on the porch, etc.&nbsp;Or maybe on our vacations, enjoying the beautiful weather.</li>
  252.  
  253.  
  254.  
  255. <li><strong>Mystery :</strong> Good mystery books keep us on edge and fascinated until the very end. Here a mystery collection for you.</li>
  256.  
  257.  
  258.  
  259. <li><strong>Romance :</strong> Love stories are always welcome in bad times, like we have been going through. Let&#8217;s read a nice love story to lift our spirits. We deserve them!</li>
  260.  
  261.  
  262.  
  263. <li><strong>A local author :</strong> To finish our lottery, let&#8217;s include our local authors; they are few, but here they are.</li>
  264. </ul>
  265.  
  266.  
  267.  
  268. <p>I don&#8217;t know about you, but it seems to me that these two lists have different goals. English speakers don&#8217;t get Poetry, they get BIPOC Poetry. They don&#8217;t get Horror, they get LGBTQIA+ Horror. It&#8217;s not all like that, but it sure feels like the Seattle Public Library wants to encourage Spanish speakers to read broadly and English speakers to read broadly and for self-improvement. </p>
  269.  
  270.  
  271.  
  272. <p>And the prizes are different for the two, as well. English speakers who complete their card are entered to win gift certificates to bookstores and a subscription to the Seattle Arts and Lectures series. Spanish speakers are entered to win Safeway gift cards. Which, uh. </p>
  273.  
  274.  
  275.  
  276. <p>The King County Library System&#8217;s summer reading program, by contrast, has no categories at all. Read whatever you want for 20 minutes per day, or set your own reading goal. At the halfway point, you get a patch and your name on your library&#8217;s community board; when you complete it you get a journal and a sticker on your name on the board. And their summer reading recommendations are the kind of fun book you might read at the beach on vacation. You know, &#8220;summer reading&#8221;.</p>
  277.  
  278.  
  279.  
  280. <p>KCLS is encouraging people to read because reading qua reading is the goal. SPL wants you to read to better yourself. KCLS might get people who don&#8217;t read much to read more. I don&#8217;t see how SPL&#8217;s program can do anything but get people who are already readers to read, well, &#8220;better&#8221;.</p>
  281.  
  282.  
  283.  
  284. <p>I know which program sounds more fun to me.</p>
  285.  
  286.  
  287.  
  288. <p>(I should note that KCLS only has the one summer reading program, while SPL has different programs for adults and kids. The SPL one for kids also looks to be a pedagogical tool, though.)</p>
  289.  
  290.  
  291.  
  292. <p>Links: <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.spl.org/programs-and-services/authors-and-books/book-bingo" target="_blank">https://www.spl.org/programs-and-services/authors-and-books/book-bingo</a>, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://kcls.org/summer/" target="_blank">https://kcls.org/summer/</a>, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.spl.org/programs-and-services/learning/summer-of-learning/2023-summer-of-learning" target="_blank">https://www.spl.org/programs-and-services/learning/summer-of-learning/2023-summer-of-learning</a></p>
  293. ]]></content:encoded>
  294. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">3817</post-id> </item>
  295. <item>
  296. <title>SharePoint, WTF Are You Doing?</title>
  297. <link>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/03/14/sharepoint-wtf-are-you-doing/</link>
  298. <comments>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/03/14/sharepoint-wtf-are-you-doing/#comments</comments>
  299. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh]]></dc:creator>
  300. <pubDate>Wed, 15 Mar 2023 03:19:11 +0000</pubDate>
  301. <category><![CDATA[Uhh...]]></category>
  302. <category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
  303. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/?p=3809</guid>
  304.  
  305. <description><![CDATA[Backgrond: I&#8217;m helping migrate a bunch of files from Google Drive into SharePoint, because the licensing of Google Workspace for Education changed and it&#8217;s probably not going to be feasible for us to continue using Google as our main email/calendar/storage solution at work. In the process of setting up a tool (rclone) to perform these &#8230; <a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/03/14/sharepoint-wtf-are-you-doing/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "SharePoint, WTF Are You Doing?"</span></a>]]></description>
  306. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  307. <p>Backgrond: I&#8217;m helping migrate a bunch of files from Google Drive into SharePoint, because the licensing of Google Workspace for Education changed and it&#8217;s probably not going to be feasible for us to continue using Google as our main email/calendar/storage solution at work. In the process of setting up a tool (<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://rclone.org/" target="_blank">rclone</a>) to perform these migrations, I found that some files weren&#8217;t being transferred properly, with the rclone complaining that they&#8217;d been corrupted in transit. Apparently this isn&#8217;t a new problem; there&#8217;s a <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://forum.rclone.org/t/onedrive-size-hash-differs/11869" target="_blank">support forum post</a> about it from 2019. The answer there was to use options in rclone to ignore the fact that the file has changed size in transit, and just trust that it&#8217;s doing the right thing.</p>
  308.  
  309.  
  310.  
  311. <span id="more-3809"></span>
  312.  
  313.  
  314.  
  315. <p>What&#8217;s new to me, and something I can&#8217;t find much other evidence of by searching for other people having the problem, is that SharePoint is actually making changes to the <em>content</em> of certain types of files. That support post said it was just happening to Office documents, and I&#8217;m seeing that, but I&#8217;m also seeing changes made to html, css, and jpeg files. And I can see what it&#8217;s changing in the html and css files.</p>
  316.  
  317.  
  318.  
  319. <p>Here&#8217;s a minimal html file I put together to test the issue:</p>
  320.  
  321.  
  322.  
  323. <pre class="wp-block-code"><code>&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
  324. &lt;html&gt;
  325.  &lt;head&gt;
  326.    &lt;title&gt;Sample&lt;/title&gt;
  327.  &lt;/head&gt;
  328.  &lt;body&gt;
  329.    &lt;p&gt;Sample document.&lt;/p&gt;
  330.    &lt;img src="//protocolless.url/image.jpg" /&gt;
  331.    &lt;img src="https://protocolful.url/image.jpg" /&gt;
  332.  &lt;/body&gt;
  333. &lt;/html&gt;</code></pre>
  334.  
  335.  
  336.  
  337. <p>And here&#8217;s what it gets converted to when I upload it to SharePoint using rclone:</p>
  338.  
  339.  
  340.  
  341. <pre class="wp-block-code"><code>&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
  342. &lt;html <span style="background:yellow;">xmlns:mso="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:msdt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882"</span>&gt;
  343.  &lt;head&gt;
  344.    &lt;title&gt;Sample&lt;/title&gt;
  345.  
  346. <span style="background:yellow;">&lt;!--&#91;if gte mso 9]&gt;&lt;xml&gt;
  347. &lt;mso:CustomDocumentProperties&gt;
  348. &lt;/mso:CustomDocumentProperties&gt;
  349. &lt;/xml&gt;&lt;!&#91;endif]--&gt;</span>
  350. &lt;/head&gt;
  351.  &lt;body&gt;
  352.    &lt;p&gt;Sample document.&lt;/p&gt;
  353.    &lt;img src="<span style="background:yellow;">//uwnetid.sharepoint.com/</span>//protocolless.url/image.jpg" /&gt;
  354.    &lt;img src="https://protocolful.url/image.jpg" /&gt;
  355.  &lt;/body&gt;
  356. &lt;/html&gt;</code></pre>
  357.  
  358.  
  359.  
  360. <p>I could live with some of that, although I hate it. But that last line, where it added its own hostname? That&#8217;s just wrong. That is not the correct behavior. If I am using SharePoint to back up a site&#8217;s html and I restore from that, it&#8217;s going to break something. And it&#8217;s doing the same thing in css files.</p>
  361.  
  362.  
  363.  
  364. <p>I don&#8217;t know what it&#8217;s doing to jpegs &#8212; the one I tested had something changed in its exif metadata, but I don&#8217;t know exactly what. There&#8217;s a whole new directory added to the compressed contents of docx/xlsx files, probably to make it more compatible with the online editing features in Office 365.</p>
  365.  
  366.  
  367.  
  368. <p>It&#8217;s interesting to me that this doesn&#8217;t happen if I upload the files using the web interface of SharePoint or using the OneDrive desktop client. It only happens when I use rclone, which uses the OneDrive API. But if I use one of the non-corrupting methods to upload my sample file, confirm that it is uncorrupted, and then move that file to a different folder in the SharePoint site using just the web client (so rclone isn&#8217;t in the picture any more), it gets corrupted again. Differently. Only that last type of change is made, where it adds its own site name to a protocol-less URL.</p>
  369.  
  370.  
  371.  
  372. <p>And it doesn&#8217;t happen in my personal OneDrive storage space, which uses the same API, as far as I can tell, and which has the same SharePoint web interface when I open it in a browser. Rclone can upoad the sample file to <em>that</em> SharePoint site just fine. And moving it around within that site doesn&#8217;t corrupt it. But if I use the web interface to move it from my personal OneDrive to one of the Teams or Communications SharePoint sites, it gets modified.</p>
  373.  
  374.  
  375.  
  376. <p>WTAF is going on there? And how do I stop it? (And, a thought I just had: does the fact that SharePoint is potentially silently modifying files as they get uploaded or organized have any implications for forensic discovery?)</p>
  377. ]]></content:encoded>
  378. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/03/14/sharepoint-wtf-are-you-doing/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  379. <slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
  380. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">3809</post-id> </item>
  381. <item>
  382. <title>#Squarch 2023, day 5: Fine Times at Our House</title>
  383. <link>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/03/05/squarch-2023-day-5-fine-times-at-our-house/</link>
  384. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh]]></dc:creator>
  385. <pubDate>Mon, 06 Mar 2023 07:55:15 +0000</pubDate>
  386. <category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
  387. <category><![CDATA[fiddle tunes]]></category>
  388. <category><![CDATA[Squarch]]></category>
  389. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/?p=3805</guid>
  390.  
  391. <description><![CDATA[Coming in just under the wire, a fiddle tune not really suitable for a square dance, since it&#8217;s crooked in a way that would put the emphasis on a different foot the second time through the first part. The mix here is terrible, but the point isn&#8217;t perfection, it&#8217;s doing something.]]></description>
  392. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  393. <p>Coming in just under the wire, a fiddle tune not really suitable for a square dance, since it&#8217;s crooked in a way that would put the emphasis on a different foot the second time through the first part. </p>
  394.  
  395.  
  396.  
  397. <p>The mix here is terrible, but the point isn&#8217;t perfection, it&#8217;s doing something. </p>
  398.  
  399.  
  400.  
  401. <figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Squarch2305-Fine-Times-at-Our-House.mp3"></audio><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Fine Times at Our House</figcaption></figure>
  402. ]]></content:encoded>
  403. <enclosure url="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Squarch2305-Fine-Times-at-Our-House.mp3" length="3196766" type="audio/mpeg" />
  404.  
  405. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">3805</post-id> </item>
  406. <item>
  407. <title>#Squarch 2023, day 4: Meadowhawk</title>
  408. <link>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/03/04/squarch-2023-day-4-meadowhawk/</link>
  409. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh]]></dc:creator>
  410. <pubDate>Sun, 05 Mar 2023 06:05:23 +0000</pubDate>
  411. <category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
  412. <category><![CDATA[fiddle tunes]]></category>
  413. <category><![CDATA[Squarch]]></category>
  414. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/?p=3801</guid>
  415.  
  416. <description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m participating in #Squarch again this year, but I&#8217;m not going to try to record a fiddle tune every day again &#8212; that was hard! (Also there will probably be some other projects which make that even more difficult. But they will probably involve square things, so I can take photos of them.) I am &#8230; <a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2023/03/04/squarch-2023-day-4-meadowhawk/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "#Squarch 2023, day 4: Meadowhawk"</span></a>]]></description>
  417. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  418. <p>I&#8217;m participating in #Squarch again this year, but I&#8217;m not going to try to record a fiddle tune every day again &#8212; that was hard! (Also there will probably be some other projects which make that even more difficult. But they will probably involve square things, so I can take photos of them.)</p>
  419.  
  420.  
  421.  
  422. <p>I am going to try to post something square or square-related every day, though. I&#8217;ll probably mostly be doing it over at <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://oulipo.social/@rjl20" target="_blank">my account on oulipo.social</a>, the lipogrammatic Mastodon instance which does not let its users post the letter &#8220;e&#8221;. So far I&#8217;ve got a couple photos of food and a square I constructed using a compass and straight edge. And now this, a fiddle tune that you might hear at a square dance, in keeping with the &#8220;something square&#8221; theme, or at least kind of in its spirit.</p>
  423.  
  424.  
  425.  
  426. <p>This is Meadowhawk, a somewhat recent composition by <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://jimchildress.weebly.com/about.html" target="_blank">Jim Childress</a>. As is normal, I&#8217;m backed up by <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://strummachine.com/" target="_blank">Strum Machine.</a> If you use Strum Machine, you can get the chords (as I heard them) <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://strummachine.com/app/songs/bXQ7TReKdKG6Rzk3v" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
  427.  
  428.  
  429.  
  430. <figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Squarch2304-Meadowhawk.mp3"></audio><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Meadowhawk</figcaption></figure>
  431. ]]></content:encoded>
  432. <enclosure url="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Squarch2304-Meadowhawk.mp3" length="3160278" type="audio/mpeg" />
  433.  
  434. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">3801</post-id> </item>
  435. <item>
  436. <title>Streaming and fair pay</title>
  437. <link>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/10/22/streaming-and-fair-pay/</link>
  438. <comments>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/10/22/streaming-and-fair-pay/#comments</comments>
  439. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh]]></dc:creator>
  440. <pubDate>Sun, 23 Oct 2022 03:43:42 +0000</pubDate>
  441. <category><![CDATA[Copyright]]></category>
  442. <category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
  443. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/?p=3789</guid>
  444.  
  445. <description><![CDATA[Everyone&#8217;s arguing about streaming royalties again or still, apparently. I wrote about the disconnect between what people think artists should get and how much they&#8217;re willing to pay for the streaming model a few months ago, but I&#8217;ve had another thought since then, so I might as well write it down too. Flat rate streaming &#8230; <a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/10/22/streaming-and-fair-pay/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Streaming and fair pay"</span></a>]]></description>
  446. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  447. <p>Everyone&#8217;s arguing about streaming royalties again or still, apparently. I wrote about the disconnect between what people think artists should get and how much they&#8217;re willing to pay for the streaming model <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/08/07/streaming-and-corporate-greed/" target="_blank">a few months ago</a>, but I&#8217;ve had another thought since then, so I might as well write it down too.</p>
  448.  
  449.  
  450.  
  451. <p>Flat rate streaming services are never going to be fair. $10/month for all you can eat music is either going to overcharge you if you aren&#8217;t using it much or underpay the artists if you are, no matter what the split between the service and the artists is. That model has to die.</p>
  452.  
  453.  
  454.  
  455. <p>Here&#8217;s what I think would be fair for an interactive service like Spotify:</p>
  456.  
  457.  
  458.  
  459. <span id="more-3789"></span>
  460.  
  461.  
  462.  
  463. <p>The statutory royalty rate for streaming is currently a percentage of the streaming service&#8217;s revenue. That doesn&#8217;t work, because for a lot of the streams, their revenue is nothing &#8212; free trials and the like &#8212; and for the rest it&#8217;s probably too low. $10/month for all the music I care to listen to is not going to break down to a fair amount of money paid to artists no matter how little the streaming service takes. So, do away with that and set a flat streaming royalty rate like the mechanical royalty rate. The mechanical rate is currently $0.091 per song per unit (physical object or download) or $0.0175 per minute per unit, whichever is larger. </p>
  464.  
  465.  
  466.  
  467. <p>For algorithmically generated plays &#8212; playlists which are not hand-assembled by a human &#8212; charge the subscriber the already existing non-interactive streaming royalty for each track they listen to. I think that&#8217;s currently $0.0028 per stream. For plays that the subscriber has specifically requested, by searching for a song/album, or by playing a human-assembled playlist, charge the subscriber the mechanical and new flat streaming royalty the first time they play any given track. By requesting a specific track to be played, the subscriber has essentially purchased a download good for that service only, like buying a track on Bandcamp. But since there&#8217;s no actual download, just streaming (and just on that one streaming service, lost if you stop your subscription), it would make sense for the amount they pay to be less than the cost of buying the track on Bandcamp. How much less, I don&#8217;t know; that&#8217;s where &#8220;congress sets it by statute&#8221; does a lot of the work.</p>
  468.  
  469.  
  470.  
  471. <p>In any case, having been charged the royalties for the album the subscriber just told the streaming service they want to hear, any time any of those tracks come up in an algorithmic playlist in the future, the subscriber is not charged any royalty for them. They can make their own playlists which include those tracks and play them whenever they want without owing any additional royalties. The streaming service can track additional plays for charting or suggestion services, but only the first requested play incurs a cost to the subscriber and is recorded as revenue to the artist/publisher. </p>
  472.  
  473.  
  474.  
  475. <p>Free trials would have to only include non-interactive plays, and then only as much as the service can recoup from advertisements or subsidizing the statutory non-interactive royalty payments during the trial. I suppose the service could also subsidize interactive plays during a free trial through advertisements or eating the costs of the royalties owed for non-interactive plays, but I doubt they&#8217;d want to.</p>
  476.  
  477.  
  478.  
  479. <p>The streaming service still has to make money, so they&#8217;d want to charge a monthly fee, obviously. So you&#8217;d wind up with a fee structure like $10 plus royalties dependent on use. How much might that be? Well, let&#8217;s say I listen to three hours of music per day but I treat it like radio and let it pick what I listen to. That works out to around 1,250 tracks per month, or about $3.50 in non-interactive royalties. $13.50/month seems like a reasonable fee for that, although the part where artists (well, publishers) are getting $3.50 and the service is getting $10 doesn&#8217;t feel quite right. Maybe the subscription fee could come with $3.50 of non-interactive usage built in, and the service could keep the extra if you didn&#8217;t use it that much. So if I pay $10/month and listen 3 hours a day non-interactively, the service gets $6.50 of that and the artists get $3.50.</p>
  480.  
  481.  
  482.  
  483. <p>If I want to listen to music I pick, I expect it&#8217;s going to be quite a lot more expensive. Not as much as if I were buying downloads of everything I listen to, but it feels like paying the artists $20/month and the streaming service $10/month wouldn&#8217;t be unreasonable. Of course, if I have a Vulfpeck phase, say, and the only thing I want to listen to is Vulfpeck for a few months, it&#8217;d only be the first month that was expensive. After that I&#8217;d just be paying the base subscription rate. (And the service would be keeping the extra $3.50 I&#8217;m not paying in non-interactive royalties out of the $10.)</p>
  484.  
  485.  
  486.  
  487. <p>This isn&#8217;t particularly well thought out, but I think as a starting point it&#8217;s better than what we&#8217;ve got right now for everyone except consumers, in the short term. (In the long term it&#8217;s better for consumers because what we&#8217;ve got right now is going to kill music as a career, and I think consumers would like to have new music in the future.) Mostly, it&#8217;s a response to the idea implicit in most arguments I see against streaming services that customers are paying a fair amount and artists aren&#8217;t receiving a fair amount, so the services are taking too much. I agree that services are taking too much, but I disagree that subscribers are paying enough to begin with. </p>
  488.  
  489.  
  490.  
  491. <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  492. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I think it&#39;s not just the platform, but what they&#39;re willing to pay. My back of the envelope math says a Spotify subscription should be around $30/month in order to pay artists more fairly, but who&#39;s willing to pay that? (I do, but as 2-3 CDs or downloads/month, not streaming.)</p>&mdash; Josh Larios (@rjl20) <a href="https://twitter.com/rjl20/status/1583942598481580032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
  493. </div></figure>
  494.  
  495.  
  496.  
  497. <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  498. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Artist/Exec payout ratio is definitely a problem, but the average subscriber listens to ~1250 tracks/month and pays $10, for 0.8¢/stream. Average artist pay is 0.4¢/stream, so best artists could do with platform taking nothing is double current rate. Would that be good enough?</p>&mdash; Josh Larios (@rjl20) <a href="https://twitter.com/rjl20/status/1583944756346097664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
  499. </div></figure>
  500.  
  501.  
  502.  
  503. <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  504. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">That suggests that &quot;The money is going somewhere, just not to creators.&quot; contains a mistaken assumption that the service is taking in an amount of money which would be sufficient to pay the artists fairly, if distributed fairly. Which was my starting point, I think.</p>&mdash; Josh Larios (@rjl20) <a href="https://twitter.com/rjl20/status/1583951652629118977?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
  505. </div></figure>
  506.  
  507.  
  508.  
  509. <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  510. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">If Spotify giving 100% of the subscription money it takes in to artists still wouldn&#39;t be compensating artists fairly, where specifically is the money that&#39;s not going to whoever labored for it going instead?</p>&mdash; Josh Larios (@rjl20) <a href="https://twitter.com/rjl20/status/1583992092858396672?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 23, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
  511. </div></figure>
  512.  
  513.  
  514.  
  515. <p>I might have to be more direct here. I don&#8217;t know. But they keep starting out with the idea that there&#8217;s a big pile of money on one side and artists on the other, with streaming services in the middle, and I just don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s the case. There isn&#8217;t a big pile of money, because that money is still in the pockets of the subscribers of the streaming services. Except it&#8217;s probably not there, either, because everyone&#8217;s broke and that&#8217;s why they want a streaming service that costs $10/month and gives them all the music they want, rather than buying one album every other month with that same money, which is how it worked until recently. By which I mean pre-mp3.</p>
  516. ]]></content:encoded>
  517. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/10/22/streaming-and-fair-pay/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  518. <slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
  519. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">3789</post-id> </item>
  520. <item>
  521. <title>3D Printed Coffee Grinder Funnel</title>
  522. <link>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/09/20/3d-printed-coffee-grinder-funnel/</link>
  523. <comments>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/09/20/3d-printed-coffee-grinder-funnel/#comments</comments>
  524. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh]]></dc:creator>
  525. <pubDate>Wed, 21 Sep 2022 04:42:14 +0000</pubDate>
  526. <category><![CDATA[3D Printing]]></category>
  527. <category><![CDATA[coffee]]></category>
  528. <category><![CDATA[funnel]]></category>
  529. <category><![CDATA[parametric]]></category>
  530. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/?p=3772</guid>
  531.  
  532. <description><![CDATA[Well, this is very satisfying. Our motorized coffee grinder is broken right now, so until I can take it apart and see what&#8217;s going on, Cam&#8217;s been grinding beans for her morning coffee with a hand-crank model: It&#8217;s a great little grinder, but the opening for getting beans into the hopper is small, and getting &#8230; <a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/09/20/3d-printed-coffee-grinder-funnel/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "3D Printed Coffee Grinder Funnel"</span></a>]]></description>
  533. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  534. <p>Well, this is very satisfying.</p>
  535.  
  536.  
  537.  
  538. <p>Our motorized coffee grinder is broken right now, so until I can take it apart and see what&#8217;s going on, Cam&#8217;s been grinding beans for her morning coffee with a hand-crank model:</p>
  539.  
  540.  
  541.  
  542. <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  543. <iframe title="Zassenhaus Kaffeemühle SANTIAGO - 040098" width="840" height="473" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/91d3jFYVjHE?start=21&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  544. </div><figcaption>This one, I think.</figcaption></figure>
  545.  
  546.  
  547.  
  548. <p>It&#8217;s a great little grinder, but the opening for getting beans into the hopper is small, and getting beans in there without spilling any when you haven&#8217;t had your morning coffee yet is tough. So I was tasked with making a funnel, which was something I was more likely to do successfully than fix the motorized grinder. (Although that&#8217;s still on the list. And the task was at least partly driven by looking for something useful to do with the printer.)</p>
  549.  
  550.  
  551.  
  552. <span id="more-3772"></span>
  553.  
  554.  
  555.  
  556. <p>This evening I taught myself how to use <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://openscad.org/" data-type="URL" data-id="https://openscad.org/" target="_blank">OpenSCAD</a> enough to make a simple design:</p>
  557.  
  558.  
  559.  
  560. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="1024" height="640" src="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-20-at-9.10.44-PM-1024x640.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3773" srcset="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-20-at-9.10.44-PM-1024x640.png 1024w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-20-at-9.10.44-PM-300x188.png 300w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-20-at-9.10.44-PM-768x480.png 768w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-20-at-9.10.44-PM-1536x960.png 1536w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-20-at-9.10.44-PM-2048x1280.png 2048w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-20-at-9.10.44-PM-1200x750.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px" /><figcaption>Code on the left, model in the middle, parameters on the right.</figcaption></figure>
  561.  
  562.  
  563.  
  564. <p>The constraints were that it had to fit into the opening of the bean chamber on the grinder, have a flat surface on one side so that it wouldn&#8217;t run into the lid of the chamber when inserted, and it should have an opening big enough to pour beans into straight from the Costco bag. And a hole to hang it from a nail would be nice.</p>
  565.  
  566.  
  567.  
  568. <p>It took me an hour or two to figure out how to make this, but given that I was starting from never having launched the program before, I think I did ok. There&#8217;s probably a better way to make an object like this than to make two solids, one slightly smaller than the other in two dimensions, and subtract the smaller one to get walls, but if there is I couldn&#8217;t find it in my brief googling. </p>
  569.  
  570.  
  571.  
  572. <p>The first version almost worked &#8212; the bean chamber in the grinder has a little bit of metal extending from the back that I hadn&#8217;t noticed, so I couldn&#8217;t get the bottom end into the hopper, and the angle of the ramp between the two ends was steep enough that it printed as a bunch of strings rather than a solid surface. After tweaking the parameters a bit (I made it parametric because I was pretty sure it wouldn&#8217;t work the first time), the second version works great.</p>
  573.  
  574.  
  575.  
  576. <figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
  577. <figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1930-Large.jpeg" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-3772];player=img;"><img decoding="async" width="300" height="225" data-id="3776" src="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1930-Large-300x225.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-3776" srcset="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1930-Large-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1930-Large-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1930-Large-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1930-Large-1200x900.jpeg 1200w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1930-Large.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px" /></a></figure>
  578.  
  579.  
  580.  
  581. <figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1931-Large.jpeg" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-3772];player=img;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="225" height="300" data-id="3774" src="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1931-Large-225x300.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-3774" srcset="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1931-Large-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1931-Large-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1931-Large.jpeg 960w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 225px) 85vw, 225px" /></a></figure>
  582.  
  583.  
  584.  
  585. <figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1932-Large.jpeg" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-3772];player=img;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="225" data-id="3777" src="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1932-Large-300x225.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-3777" srcset="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1932-Large-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1932-Large-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1932-Large-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1932-Large-1200x900.jpeg 1200w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1932-Large.jpeg 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px" /></a></figure>
  586.  
  587.  
  588.  
  589. <figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1933-Large.jpeg" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-3772];player=img;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="225" height="300" data-id="3775" src="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1933-Large-225x300.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-3775" srcset="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1933-Large-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1933-Large-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1933-Large.jpeg 960w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 225px) 85vw, 225px" /></a></figure>
  590.  
  591.  
  592.  
  593. <figure class="wp-block-image size-medium"><a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1935-Large.jpeg" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-3772];player=img;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="274" height="300" data-id="3778" src="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1935-Large-274x300.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-3778" srcset="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1935-Large-274x300.jpeg 274w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1935-Large-934x1024.jpeg 934w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1935-Large-768x842.jpeg 768w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/IMG_1935-Large.jpeg 1168w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 274px) 85vw, 274px" /></a></figure>
  594. <figcaption class="blocks-gallery-caption">Fits in the grinder and hangs on the wall. Fulfills the brief.</figcaption></figure>
  595.  
  596.  
  597.  
  598. <p>It took about an hour and a half to print, up from 45 minutes for the one that didn&#8217;t work, but that&#8217;s because I increased the wall thickness and height of the ramp in order to get a slope that would print it as a solid surface.</p>
  599.  
  600.  
  601.  
  602. <p>It&#8217;s only now that I&#8217;m thinking I should put the design on Thingiverse that I see <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4084552" target="_blank">someone beat me to it</a> by two years, with almost exactly the same design. Well, there&#8217;s only so many ways it could go. And <a href="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5523772" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">mine</a> has a hole for hanging it on the wall. </p>
  603. ]]></content:encoded>
  604. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/09/20/3d-printed-coffee-grinder-funnel/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  605. <slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
  606. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">3772</post-id> </item>
  607. <item>
  608. <title>Streaming and corporate greed</title>
  609. <link>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/08/07/streaming-and-corporate-greed/</link>
  610. <comments>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/08/07/streaming-and-corporate-greed/#comments</comments>
  611. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh]]></dc:creator>
  612. <pubDate>Mon, 08 Aug 2022 01:23:52 +0000</pubDate>
  613. <category><![CDATA[Copyright]]></category>
  614. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/?p=3767</guid>
  615.  
  616. <description><![CDATA[Let&#8217;s say I listen to music three hours per day, five days per week. Fifteen hours. A song is maybe three and a half minutes long, so let&#8217;s say that&#8217;s 257 tracks per week I listen to. In a month, that&#8217;d be around 1,029 tracks. Even if I&#8217;m paying $10/month for the service and the &#8230; <a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/08/07/streaming-and-corporate-greed/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Streaming and corporate greed"</span></a>]]></description>
  617. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  618. <p>Let&#8217;s say I listen to music three hours per day, five days per week. Fifteen hours. A song is maybe three and a half minutes long, so let&#8217;s say that&#8217;s 257 tracks per week I listen to. In a month, that&#8217;d be around 1,029 tracks. Even if I&#8217;m paying $10/month for the service and the service passes 100% of my subscription fee to the artists, that&#8217;s less than a penny per stream. And that&#8217;s with me listening a little less than average &#8212; the average Spotify user listens to 148 minutes of music per day, or around 1,269 tracks per month. That&#8217;s .787 cents per stream. Spotify apparently pays royalties of .318 cents per stream, which means that they&#8217;re paying 40% of what they take in as royalties. There&#8217;s certainly an argument to be made that they could be taking less, but even if they were taking nothing, artists woudn&#8217;t be making much more than twice what they do now.</p>
  619.  
  620.  
  621.  
  622. <p>What would be a fair price? I don&#8217;t even really know how to calculate that. But I buy CDs, so let&#8217;s say those are priced fairly and work from there. Beyonce&#8217;s latest album has 16 tracks and a retail price of $13. How many times will I listen to that album before I get sick of it, lose it, buy it in a new format, or whatever else makes me stop using the physical object I bought? Fifty? A hundred? Let&#8217;s say fifty. $13 / (50 * 16) =  1.625 cents per play. So, around five times what they&#8217;re currently getting. At 1.625 cents per stream, the average Spotify user should be paying artists $20.62 per month, plus a reasonable fee to Spotify for the service. Is $30/month a reasonable subscription price for Spotify?</p>
  623.  
  624.  
  625.  
  626. <p>Corporate greed is part of the problem here. But the bigger problem is that the service shouldn&#8217;t exist at that price level at all. Maybe at $30 to $40 per month, but I don&#8217;t think anybody wants to pay that, not even the people who argue that Spotify should pay artists more.</p>
  627.  
  628.  
  629.  
  630. <p>(NB: I&#8217;m not arguing that artists should take the crappy pay they&#8217;re getting, here. I will argue that Spotify and other streaming services shouldn&#8217;t exist at all. Neither should radio, though, if we&#8217;re going down that line of thinking.)</p>
  631. ]]></content:encoded>
  632. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/08/07/streaming-and-corporate-greed/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  633. <slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
  634. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">3767</post-id> </item>
  635. <item>
  636. <title>Multi-Zoom, Multi-OBS virtual jam</title>
  637. <link>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/07/30/multi-zoom-multi-obs-virtual-jam/</link>
  638. <comments>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/07/30/multi-zoom-multi-obs-virtual-jam/#comments</comments>
  639. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh]]></dc:creator>
  640. <pubDate>Sun, 31 Jul 2022 00:24:29 +0000</pubDate>
  641. <category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
  642. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/?p=3757</guid>
  643.  
  644. <description><![CDATA[I gave the laptop a workout with the slower than dirt jam today. I was curious to see if I could run everything off it, and not have to involve multiple devices, and it turns out I can. The setup: Install the virtual camera pluigin for OBS. Yes, I know that&#8217;s built in now, but &#8230; <a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/07/30/multi-zoom-multi-obs-virtual-jam/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Multi-Zoom, Multi-OBS virtual jam"</span></a>]]></description>
  645. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  646. <p>I gave the laptop a workout with the slower than dirt jam today. I was curious to see if I could run everything off it, and not have to involve multiple devices, and it turns out I can. The setup:</p>
  647.  
  648.  
  649.  
  650. <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/image.png" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-3757];player=img;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/image-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3762" srcset="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/image-1024x576.png 1024w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/image-300x169.png 300w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/image-768x432.png 768w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/image-1536x864.png 1536w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/image-1200x675.png 1200w, https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/image.png 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px" /></a><figcaption>This is insane.</figcaption></figure>
  651.  
  652.  
  653.  
  654. <p>Install the virtual camera pluigin for OBS. Yes, I know that&#8217;s built in now, but the plugin version provides multiple virtual cameras and allows you to pick which one you&#8217;re sending to, while the built in version only has one. Now launch obs twice, using the argument &#8220;&#8211;multi warn&#8221; each time. (Not sure how to do this on a Mac, but window capture is so laggy on a Mac that I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;d want to run it from one anyway.) In one of the instances, make a scene capturing the window of a browser with Strum Machine loaded, and in the other have a scene capturing a PDF reader with the tunes loaded up. Open the virtual camera plugin in each and send one to camera 1 and the other to camera 2. All of these windows can be safely put in the background, but don&#8217;t minimize the browser or pdf reader, or put them on a different workspace, because that interferes with the capture.</p>
  655.  
  656.  
  657.  
  658. <p>Open your audio settings and change the sytem audio to something that doesn&#8217;t make any noise. I&#8217;ve got VoiceMeeter installed here, so I&#8217;m using one of its virtual inputs. Open the per-application audio settings and change the output for the strum machine browser to the cheaper of your two USB audio interfaces. (I&#8217;m using a $15ish USB headphone dongle for this.) Connect the headphone out of that to one of the inputs of your better audio interface (a Behringer UMC204HD in my case). Make sure that you&#8217;re monitoring a mix of direct input and return from the computer on the headphones plugged into that interface. Plug your mic into the other input.</p>
  659.  
  660.  
  661.  
  662. <p>Now go into the directory where Zoom is installed (it&#8217;s in c:\users\myuser\appdata\roaming\zoom\ on this machine) and make two copies of the zoom.exe, naming them zoom2.exe and zoom3.exe. Launch all three. In one of them, log in to the account thamt the jam session is running under, and start the session. Set your good audio interface as the audio in/out, and use your real camera. In the other two, connect as guests to your session and use the two virtual cameras with no audio connection.</p>
  663.  
  664.  
  665.  
  666. <p>Et voila: there are now three participants in your jam. One is you, with audio from your microphone mixed with audio from strum machine. That&#8217;s who other participants will see as the active speaker during tunes. (Don&#8217;t forget to enable original audio.) The other is a live view of strum machine, and the third is the sheet music for the tune you&#8217;re playing. Make sure to pop over to your pdf reader and load that up before each tune.</p>
  667.  
  668.  
  669.  
  670. <p>You hear strum machine through direct monitoring on your good interface, so you&#8217;re playing in time with it, and everyone else in the session hears the combination. They can choose to pin the sheet music or strum machine participants&#8217; videos if they want to make those bigger, or they can stay in gallery view and see everyone.</p>
  671.  
  672.  
  673.  
  674. <p><s>I&#8217;ll upload the recording of today&#8217;s jam to youtube soon so you can see a demo if you&#8217;re interested.</s> Unfortunately, I had not set the cloud recording options on my account correctly, so today&#8217;s recording is just of me, not the gallery view I thought it would be. (I could have sworn the recording used to be whatever view the person who hit record was seeing, but apparently it&#8217;s a setting in your profile, not editable from the Zoom app itself, now.)</p>
  675.  
  676.  
  677.  
  678. <p> The main benefit here is that people can choose to view the chords or sheet music if they want, but don&#8217;t have to. Previous configurations I&#8217;d tried either made it difficult to lay out the music, chords, and me on the same screen, or used screen sharing mode to make it higher resolution at the expense of much higher bandwidth and people reporting stutters and lags. So I&#8217;m pretty happy with this, overkill that it is.</p>
  679. ]]></content:encoded>
  680. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/07/30/multi-zoom-multi-obs-virtual-jam/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  681. <slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
  682. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">3757</post-id> </item>
  683. <item>
  684. <title>#Squarch 25: Old-Time Billy in the Lowground</title>
  685. <link>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/03/27/squarch-25-old-time-billy-in-the-lowground/</link>
  686. <comments>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/03/27/squarch-25-old-time-billy-in-the-lowground/#comments</comments>
  687. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh]]></dc:creator>
  688. <pubDate>Mon, 28 Mar 2022 06:59:43 +0000</pubDate>
  689. <category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
  690. <category><![CDATA[fiddle tunes]]></category>
  691. <category><![CDATA[Squarch]]></category>
  692. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/?p=3752</guid>
  693.  
  694. <description><![CDATA[I played this in my jam with Dave and Paul on Wednesday, and it&#8217;s been popping back into my head occasionally ever since. I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;ve played it before, although I picked it up pretty quickly on Wednesday, so maybe I have. It&#8217;s funny how, listening to what I just played a few minutes &#8230; <a href="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/03/27/squarch-25-old-time-billy-in-the-lowground/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "#Squarch 25: Old-Time Billy in the Lowground"</span></a>]]></description>
  695. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  696. <figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Squarch2227-Old-Time-Billy-In-The-Lowground.mp3"></audio><figcaption>Old-Time Billy in the Lowground</figcaption></figure>
  697.  
  698.  
  699.  
  700. <p>I played this in my jam with Dave and Paul on Wednesday, and it&#8217;s been popping back into my head occasionally ever since. I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;ve played it before, although I picked it up pretty quickly on Wednesday, so maybe I have.</p>
  701.  
  702.  
  703.  
  704. <p>It&#8217;s funny how, listening to what I just played a few minutes ago, I&#8217;m hearing myself doing something I didn&#8217;t think I was doing while playing it. (A particular rhythmic pattern in a couple of places that I&#8217;m pretty sure isn&#8217;t in the recording of the Canotes I listened to to refresh my memory right before recording this.) I guess if your mistakes are your style, that thing is part of mine. </p>
  705. ]]></content:encoded>
  706. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2022/03/27/squarch-25-old-time-billy-in-the-lowground/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  707. <slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
  708. <enclosure url="https://www.elsewhere.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Squarch2227-Old-Time-Billy-In-The-Lowground.mp3" length="3025909" type="audio/mpeg" />
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  710. <post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">3752</post-id> </item>
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