More stuff from my past, but it’s just cat stories.
I miss all those kitties. They’re long gone, obviously, I grew up in the 70s and 80s and cats don’t live that long.
But I still remember them all, their lovely fur patterns and little personalities and how much I loved petting a purring cat in my lap while I watched TV.
I had some very lovely Zen moments like that where I felt very cozy and content and like all was well when I had a happy lil cat in my lap.
I have way, way more cat stories to share, of course. The vid is barely an intro to them. Maybe the fact that the Internet loves cats will attract attention to today’s vid and that will encourage me to make more cat story videos.
Or maybe it’ll just be what I do when I can’t think of anything else. I dunno.
The cat thing was actually my plan B. I spent the first hour of my usual video making time trying to do a karaoke vid that I could live with.
No dice there. It’s weird, I actually sing better when there’s no musical accompaniment, just me acapella, than when I try to do a karaoke.
Part of that is performance pressure, no doubt, but I also think it’s because the music distracts me from my vocal performance.
When it’s just me, I’m not trying to read lyrics on a screen, I am not subconsciously straining to be heard over the music, I’m not being surprised by little things in the karaoke version of the song that I don’t remember from the original song.
It’s just me singing, and I can concentrate on my voice.
So maybe I should skip the karaoke part and just record acapella versions of the songs I like. Maybe put the lyrics on screen in a text format just to consult.
Heck, if I did that, I would even be able to edit the video properly. Right now, I don’t edit my karaoke vids (and it shows) because I don’t think I could get the music in the edits to line up properly and trust me, with my keen sense of timing, if it doesn’t line up perfectly I will know and it will loom large in my mind.
But if it’s just me singing solo, I could probably make that work. Do sane and normal things like using the best of multiple takes for each verse.
And maybe even figure out how to put the whole thing through autotune, or some other kind of filter that makes it sound like I can actually sing.
I’m not too proud to accept that kind of “help”.
I mean, I only sing because I like to sing anyhow. I shouldn’t be worrying about the quality at all.
My fault for making karaoke vids in the first place, I guess.
I can always let Riffusion do the singing for me, or something similar. I know there’s apps out there that let you write the lyrics right on the piano roll with the rest of the sample based music and it just sings it for you in whatever voice you like.
That kind of power could go to my head pretty fast!
I’m telling you, it’s a golden age for use creators who don’t have any manual artistic talents. I can’t play an instrument or sing, I can’t paint or draw, I’m too clumsy and crippled to dance, and so forth and so on.
But thanks to modern AI, I don’t have to be able to do those things. I can bypass my dyspraxia entirely and let the computer handle that part while I handle the design and creation and writing of things.
I swear I was born to do things top-down like that.
And thanks to AI, I don’t even need people skills to do it!
More after the break.
Today’s bit of adorableness from BlueSky comes in the form of dogs sitting weird.
Or otherwise assuming unusual postures.
One of the many charming things about our canine companions is their complete and total lack of self-consciousness.
They have no idea when they look stupid.
It’s quite refreshing, really.
I can hear clearly now
The hum is gone! Hallelujah.
See, many months ago, the device driver for the sound card on my motherboard spontaneously decided to uninstall itself.
For some reason, my system interpreted, “I lost connection with this device a few seconds ago” to mean “begone, foul contrivance, and never return!”
So I had to scramble for a new way to get sound on my computer.
Then I remembered there was an audio jack on the back of my monitor. And luckily, that worked. Going through the monitor meant my system could use THOSE drivers instead of the mysterious vanishing normal ones.
So yay, I had sound again. But boo because that jack on the monitor was apparently completely unshielded because my new audio came with a constant hum like you’d get from being too close to a power station.
You have, no doubt, heard it on my videos.
The human also made my speakers only able to do half the volume. This was particularly bothersome when I wanted to listen to a YouTube video while on the toilet or have music on while I showered.
Showering with my music on is another thing which makes me feel very Zen.
Well today the jack on the back of the monitor was acting up. So out of frustration, expecting nothing, I plugged my speakers back into the normal jack, and lo and behind suddenly it could find the drivers again.
So, phew. The hum is gone. My volume is back. It should be a lot easier to hear me in my videos now. Our long national nightmare is finally over.
I can’t help but wonder if I could have fixed the problem a long time ago if I had only thought to plug the speakers back into the proper place way back then.
But who does that kind of thing? Checks to see if something spontaneously fixed itself? It’s like when a doctor asks me if I have tried walking lately.
Why no, Doc. The way my legs feel after just walkering back forth from the kitchen tells me all I need to know.
Some people. I tell ya.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.