News from Great Castle Wilson

  • Music for Klingons (LotD)

    I’m pretty sure this is the geekiest music video I will see all year. It’s from a person named Levi McClain, whose YouTube channel has the tag line

    Microtonal music theory. Bargain brand musicology essays. Sometimes bass.

    He’s worth checking out minimally because he includes audio examples of the various esoteric topics he gets on about. Definitely a mind warp for a “12 tet” audience. (Hint: watch his videos for an explanation.)

    Anyway… In this case he’s got a video that combines two of my geeky interests, Star Trek and Music Theory:

  • Last concert of the season

    Divertimento has another great concert coming up April 25 and 26. The feeling is a little different from the last show. To give you some idea, here’s the poster:

    You can use the QR code to order tickets.

  • Unlocking a Mac with an Apple Watch

    Using my Apple Watch to unlock my Macs has worked well for me in the past, but it started failing consistently after a recent OS update. This post from the Apple Community Forums got things working again for me. Just so it doesn’t get lost, here is the fix:

    1. On the Mac go into Settings->Touch ID & Password and turn off the setting that allows the watch to unlock the Mac.
    2. Quit Settings, then put the Mac to sleep (close the lid, etc.). A shutdown or reboot should also work (though not tested).
    3. Restart your Apple Watch and let it come up and connect to the net. You should be able to check the weather, for example. You’ll need the full network stack up and running on the watch.
    4. Confirm that Bluetooth is turned on on your Apple Watch.
    5. Login to your Mac, go to Settings->Touch ID & Password and turn on the setting that allows the watch to unlock the Mac (i.e. reverse what you did in step 1).
    6. At this point you should be prompted for a password, then it will say, “syncing…” and will end with the slider showing that the setting is enabled.
    7. Test to see if it’s fixed

    Thanks @pars33ker.

  • A good concert.

    We had another fun concert — the music was hard, but the result was rewarding. We had a great turnout on Saturday.

    Now we’ve got to start practicing for the next show. Here’s what we’ll be playing:

    • Dvorak, The Wild Dove tone poem Op. 110 — I hadn’t heard this one before. It looks mostly ok for the cellos, but definitely has some fast bits.
    • Chaminade, Concertino for flute and orchestra — This looks particularly challenging for the first flute.
    • Brahms, Symphony no. 4 — I have played this one with Divertimento before. I remember having to take many shortcuts last time; we’ll see if I can do any better this time around. 🙂

  • Divertimento concert incoming

    It’s less than two weeks until the next Divertimento Orchestra concert. The program this time is incredible; it’s literally some of the hardest music we’ve ever played. Definitely worth seeing.

  • Not done, but live

    So I’m mostly done with the updates to GCW and related sites.

    The basic structure is:

    • A DokuWiki instance at the root, mostly so I have a way to post links to content that I want to make visible publicly.
    • A WordPress instance (i.e. what you are currently reading) to hold the long running “News from Great Castle Wilson” (since 2005(!)) content.
    • A NextCloud instance, mostly being used as an internet accessible file server.

    I’m sure there lot’s of rough edges still, and one glaring omission that is I have a *very* crappy backup strategy running. Nothing close to the elegant solution I had for my old site. Now if I could only remember how that worked…

  • Not again!

    Er… yes, I’m reworking the underlying structure of GCW again.

    This is my most drastic update yet, and things are currently in a complete shambles. I’ll be switching the public face back to the old site when I’m not working it.

    Lots of old content is currently not available on the new site, so if there’s something you need, let me know and I’ll get it for you.

    McQ.

  • Yikes! Mac mini $$$

    I can’t imagine spending this much on a Mac Mini, but I have to admit I’d love to own one.

    One expensive Mac mini

  • hedra

    imma just leave this here…

  • It’s here!

    Take a look:

    Yes, I’m typing this using it, although i expect the post will be short. 😉

    it’s got a RPi with 4 Gig of RAM, but it runs off of an SD card, so it’s a bit slower than I’m used to. It also normally runs off batteries, but it doesn’t include the 18650s it needs in the package, so I’ll have to go get some today.

    Overall, I really like it. The only thing I’ll say is *man* is that text small for my old eyes!