Signal Wave

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Good morning to all!

My chest of drawers finally arrived off ebay, and it turns out it's over a hundred years old. I had a guy come in to refinish it, and he was a veritable fount of information. He looked at the bottom of the drawers and said that my chest had been made using the very first machine-cut dovetails, which dated it between 1870 and 1885. Whew! Blew my mind, given that I don't usually look for Victorian furniture. The people who sold it to me called it "early twentieth century," and that's what I thought it was: somewhere between the teens and the 1930's. Nope.

Holy moly.

So, I'm getting it refinished, getting the drawers waxed internally so they're a little smoother to pull out...and I may, by early next year, have a chest of drawers for my clothes for the first time since 2015.

I'd show you all a picture, but I can't get any available images to embed; more and more, over the past year, what happens when I load an image into the uploader and attempt to embed it is that it takes me to another page displaying the image rather than putting it into my essay. I assume this is due to some advance in the software for displaying images.

A dear friend visited yesterday, and told me that her partner (another dear friend) had contributed money from her inheritance to making Holst's The Planets available to all in a MIDI version. It's part of an ongoing effort to take famous classical music and put it in a form where schools and people generally can use it without having to pay for it. It's called OPENSCORE, and it's on Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/openscore/openscore-join-the-sheet-...

OpenScore aims to digitize and liberate all public domain sheet music, including the great classics of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. With the help of our community, we aim to transfer history’s most influential pieces from paper into interactive scores which you can listen to, edit and share.

One very cool outgrowth of this is that the following digital artist came up with software to render classical music visually. This is "Venus, Bringer of Peace:"

The only thing that made me want to take peyote, back in the day, was that I wanted to see what music looked like. I am too much of a scaredy-cat to take such rigorous hallucinogens (or entheogens, as some call them), so I never did, but the idea persisted: I wanted to see what my favorite classical music looked like. Turns out software can give me one version of that. Pretty cool.

Speaking of classical music, I recently dug up this blast from the (comparatively recent) past: the Pachelbel Rant. Please enjoy. Smile

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Lookout's picture

We once had a dog named Chester. He slept in an old drawer...Chester's drawer- true story. Glad you finally have one, and I bet you'll enjoy it!

We have some furniture built by my great-grandfather. He built all three of his girls a full set of furniture. We have some of my two great aunts pieces including two chest-of-drawers - cedar lined oak.

Many people do "see" music as colors...synesthesia. It's a condition in which one's sensory perceptions are involuntarily unified. Seeing colors and patterns based off music is one of the most common varieties, also called chromaesthesia.
https://mic.com/articles/120435/this-is-what-s-happening-in-the-brains-o...

Thanks for the OT and have a good one!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout all of the cabinets in his house, did the plaster, and built furniture, too. And he and my great grandfather built a log cabin in the mountains.

I wish I had learned those skills. No time or energy now.

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dfarrah

Lookout's picture

@dfarrah

to have your families past around you....cabinets, furniture, pictures, whatever...as links to our ancestors.

Sounds like you have a treasure.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@dfarrah My grandfather was not handy, so no such skills got handed down in my family.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lookout LOL! Go Chester!

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lookout Yeah, synaesthesia (artificially induced by drugs) was what I was going for.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

I've actually been dreading this. I really almost didn't request one this time. But here I am. I'm in Indianapolis, IN. We have a green for write in Sec. of State. I don't know much about him, but I like his platform.

Ok, easy one out of the way...

Sigh. Now the big one...

No way I can vote Joe Donnely for Senate. Dude is your classic Republican in Democrat's clothing. I really see no options here. Definitely can't vote for the Republican. There's an independent (James Johnson Jr.) who has been running since 2012 and I still can't find a single thing he stands for other than his church.

Ugh, I'll finish this later. Maybe.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

enhydra lutris's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter Those are the times when one needs some well orchestrated write-in campaigns for local stand-up comedians and the like.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter I feel the same way, sort of nasty. I hadn't been intending to vote, but I decided to vote on local referendums (referenda?). It still feels a bit gross.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Dr. John Carpenter

write in. Failing that, leave it blank. A lot of people say we need a "none of the above" option. How would that d different from leaving the ballot blank?

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enhydra lutris's picture

somewhat wakeful night and early morning hard sleep. Everything is pretty much as ever here except for some heavy fog outdoors. The temp is 49, so I hate to think what it would be if we had had cler skies all night. A lot to do today, but nothing critical.

Some time within the past 15 years or so I got the first New dresser I have owned, just basic "unfinished wood furniture" store product, but it is at least real wood. I finished it with some sort of penetrating oil. My wife did likewise, giving us "matching furniture", heh.

All of the sixties era "light shows" were a form of visualization of music, though very different music. Some of us independently dabbled in making music visible with everything from manually manipulated illumination in the dark to various analogue systems manipulting colored lights or using interference (think moving moires) and transducers applied to liquid crystals, etc. It was simple home entertainment grade stuff, and not at all representational in the sense that some of the digital stuff one sees today is.

Have a great day.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@enhydra lutris I have heard of "laser Zeppelin" shows, but have never seen one.

You guys were mondo cool when it came to music and art. And mind expansion. Smile

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@enhydra lutris they filmed some from way back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW733Ut5zE0 and there was the Pig Light show, both before lasers.

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there is a canned spray silicone that works pretty good on sticky drawers. You have to find the right kind, some come out sort of liquid/foamy. The one that comes out like spray deodorant and leaves no residue is the one to use.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Snode @Snode Thanks, Snode! That is really helpful, as I don't know squat about most of this stuff...except that I'll be damned if I pay a high price for sawdust and glue.

EDIT: It occurred to me that this comment might not be easily comprehensible...what I mean is, I buy antiques, or at least "vintage," because I don't want to buy particle board crap or other poorly made stuff. I want furniture to last the rest of my life. Unfortunately, when you try to buy good stuff new, it's insanely expensive...and I just heard that sometimes they sort of smuggle some particle board in there anyway.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal buy much new. There used to be a guy, Earl Proulx, who used to write for Yankee Magazine
https://newengland.com/yankee-magazine/living/profiles/earlkneweverything/ who wrote about solutions to problems around the house and farm. A lot of then were what people did in the day to keep what are now our antiques going. Can probably find some of his books around....library maybe?

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Deja's picture

We used to wax our kitchen drawers when I was a kid. Thinking back, was that Gulf Wax really wax, or some type of petroleum product? It had the orange Gulf Oil logo on it.

Gotta vent, so move on if you'd rather not read it. My stepbrother lives next door. He has a giant dog that he either leaves in a fenced yard behind our houses, or locks in a cage inside his house. He's neglected and never gets enough food or water. So, when he's let outside to pee/poop and roam free, he always ends up on my porch. I have a water bowl for him, and feed him scraps when I have them. However, I returned home yesterday morning to find that he had knocked a potted plant off a tall work bench thing I have on the porch where I also have food and water bowls for my indoor/outdoor cat (and opposums, skunks, whatever critters who can get up there).

There are big scratch marks on the bench. My ceramic frog is broken. The plant was beaten to hell. My succulent, though it didn't get knocked off is beaten to hell. The cat food bowl was out in the yard where the dog always takes his scraps to eat them.

Though his owner is a relative by marriage, every single text to him in the last 2 years has been about his fucking dog. None of this ever happens when the county is open. Plus, the dog would suffer more if taken to the pound. I wish I could force him to screen in my porch so his destructive ass dog would stay off it, but somehow still allow the cat and her skunk friend to get in and eat/drink. And yes, I know, I should never have put water out or fed the dog scraps. Ugh!

Step bro called me a cunt last night when I told him to either keep his destructive and neglected dog off my porch or screen in my porch. What he doesn't know is that was my best friend in high school's nickname for me. It actually made me laugh and wonder what my old friend was up to. Wink

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Deja a naturally occurring waxy substance that occurs in petroleum. Hence, it is extracted from petroleum, but isn't really made of petroleum. It is still sold, even though Gulf Oil Company was swallowed up by and merged into Chevron (now Chevron-Texaco) long ago.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@enhydra lutris I'm confused. Does paraffin come from petroleum?

My main referent for paraffin is, of course, candles.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

enhydra lutris's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
veggies, water, spices, etc. You let it cool and there is a layer of fat on top to be skimmed off. Think of that fat as the paraffin and the rest as the oil ("petroleum").

That's way oversimplified, but ye average petroleum "deposit" isn't all "petroleum". Also, Petroleum isn't exactly oil. The internet will tell you that petroleum is

"a liquid mixture of hydrocarbons that is present in certain rock strata and can be extracted and refined to produce fuels including gasoline, kerosene, and diesel oil; oil".

If you dive into an oil dome you'll find natural gas above water above "stuff". Thanks to the pressure, some gas is "dissolved" in both the water and stuff and some water is in the gas and stuff. The stuff contains crude oil, sand, I dunno what else and paraffin. Like water and sand, paraffin is a contaminant, but unlike water and sand, it is a hydrocarbon, just like oil and petroleum.

So, paraffin was originally discovered in and isolated/extracted from wood tar, coal tar and mineral oil. In its manufacture from petroleum it is first separated from the oil, and then the residual oil is removed from the wax to get a pure wax. From that point of view,, as an identifiable contaminant that needs to be removed from the oil and an independent multi-source hydrocarbon that needs to be purified of any contaminating oil, it is not "made from petroleum". Even today some is made from coal/coal tar.

OTOH, the removal from the "Oil" is done by use of fractional distillation towers, just like kerosene, octane and all of the other tanes that go into gasoline, lubricating oil and asphalt. It, in fact, comes from low down in the tower, in between the lighter lubricating oils and the heavier asphalt. In that sense, it is made from petroleum.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Deja's picture

@enhydra lutris
Even when it's from pine/pine tar, it doesn't sound like something you'd want touching food. Yet, it's what the maternal family side women used to help seal off the cherry and plum jellies they made yearly. It's sold in the canning section of the stores that still sell canning supplies.

Very interesting, though. Like most things I use or have used, I had no idea where it came from, just what it was used for, and where to find it.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Deja
aren't necessarily harmful to life. They are chemicals that consist solely of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Carotenes are hydrocarbons. Some can be pretty inert. Paraffin, as marketed has been modified so as to be seriously inert, which is why it can be used for canning. There used to be sweets consisting of paraffin containers filled with sweetened liquids, which were accessed by biting off the ends. There are a whole lot of "food grade" paraffin wax products out there, believe it or not. I definitely recall flavored, chewable wax moustaches, buck teeth and such.

It's also really good for waxing surfboards. Wink

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

lotlizard's picture

@enhydra lutris  
that chemists call alkanes — chemical formula CnH2n+2

The Wikipedia article about petroleum says

At the heavier end of the range, paraffin wax is an alkane with approximately 25 carbon atoms

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Deja Damn it. I hate it when people neglect their animals. I feel bad for the dog.

On the other hand, a couple days ago, I was at the point of tears because a plant I care about (and had nurtured from a sprout) had been entirely up-ended and was half crushed under an upside-down pot because three hefty puppies (two standard poodle mixes and one australian shepherd/pit bull mix) tore through there and upended them all. All the dogs in my case are well looked-after and it's all just the result of Very Large and Very Young Dogs. Smile

But I totally get why you're upset. What a shithead, to treat the dog and the neighborhood that way.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

magiamma's picture

we used a bar of ivory soap to 'wax' the runners on the bottom of drawers. Cheap and effective.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@magiamma and even wood screws. I keep a bar of it out in the shop in one of those plastic soap boxes with the hinged lid.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@magiamma What a great idea.

I should have you all over to my house as advisors!

Wish I could.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

or a font?

I thought fount, but now I think font is right.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Big Al's picture

an interesting situation occurring now with the news about the deficit and republican plans to cut social programs including SS and Medicare. The dems are pretending that they are the road block for those cuts yet they're the biggest cheerleaders at this point for the huge imperialism budget. And of course without addressing imperialism, and assuming they are going to take the deficit and debt seriously, that means the dems are going to have to be on board for cuts to domestic and social programs.
This is a very bad situation imo with a large number of factors converging.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Big Al This has been pretty much the way it goes since the late 80s. What's weird now is that it doesn't seem to matter how many times the Democrats do the same thing...doesn't matter what they do at all, actually. No matter what they do, they can always snap right back to being the saviors of the masses.

Frames trump facts, I guess is all it is.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Deja's picture

Why can they sometimes perch on an electric line without dying, and other times get fried?

There's a beautiful hawk (I think) that is dead on the ground, under the wire that's across the road from my house. Usually it's buzzards or Mexican Eagles, but this is either a hawk or an owl. Gorgeous feathers. Though it's illegal, I'm tempted to go snatch some feathers for smudging.

And that brings up another question. If it's illegal for me to possess feathers of a bird I didn't even kill, why is it okay for electric lines to so easily kill them? So, why do some die, and others live touching the same thing?

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Deja
taught to keep one hand in their pocket and wear rubber soled shoes. Except for extreme voltages or frequencies, you can safely make single point contact with a live wire. In fact, you can make two or three point contact with the same identical wire so long as there is no resistance or reluctance element between the contact points. If there is no voltage difference, no current can flow.

Accordingly, a bird can perch on a single wire safely. They get killed when they come into contact with a second wire, or an insulator, or power pole crossbar with a wing or momentarily free leg. Some companies have installed grounded perching loops across the cross bar area to minimize the risk of such accidents. So those who simply sit on one wire away from other wires or anything with lower voltage are ok, the rest get zapped.

As to the legality, I think you can guess the answer. They are issued "incidental take permits", allowing them to kill a certain number because they are wealthy and powerful and also provide infrastructure and power for both the masses and other powerful companies.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --