Weekender #23

• Weekly Birb update: Over the past few days, Handsome myna has begun to investigate his old nook in the neighbor’s roof. He’s also been doing a lot of calling at the end of the day. I spend a lot of time watching what he’s up to. I would almost say he seems a bit sad/depressed. He’s had a rough year, with two baby myna birds to care for, losing his home to invading myna birds and apparently losing his mate as well.

  • In other birb news, there is a Red-Vented Bulbul that comes by each day (we call it Boo boo) that enjoys playing “catch” with me. I discovered this while I was attempting to feed Handsome a piece of bread by tossing it to him onto the pavement. Boo Boo swooped in from the roof and caught it before it hit the ground. It came back a few minutes later, and made noises so I noticed it was there. I threw a small rolled up piece of bread into the air and it caught it and then flew off. Boo Boo has been coming by everyday now.

• I’ve been on macOS 11 (Big Sur) for a few weeks now. So far, so good. I haven’t had any major issues so far. I do notice that I need to reboot every week or so when things go wacky. Wacky stuff like F-keys stop working properly, Airplay can’t connect to one of my HomePods, or network connectivity seems slow. Rebooting usually fixes it, but I’m not sure what the cause is. I’m hoping Monterey stabilizes these issues.

  • If you’re wondering why I’ve only updated to Big Sur in the last month, it’s because I know better. LOL! The truth is that I haven’t trusted Apple to release software that doesn’t have major issues for a while now. I feel like QA has been really rough for the past few major releases of macOS and iOS. It sometimes feels like no one in Cupertino actually tests anything they put out in a production environment. I simply don’t have time to troubleshoot issues for Apple. Big Sur was part 2 of a fairly large transition for macOS and from what I can tell, it had it’s fair share of issues and show stoppers. I’m glad I waited it out.

• One of my Twitter pals was very generous and offered to convert the font I rescued last week to TrueType and OpenType! I am so thankful that these fonts will survive to possibly be used on modern systems. I’m still thinking about how to present them, and whether or not I want to offer them for download again.

  • On a side note, I’m constantly amazed at the kindness and generosity of my social media friends, many of whom I have known online for years but have never met IRL.

• My summer projects have been coming along slowly. This past month (June) I was able to build two pedal clones from Aion: the Quantum, which is a clone of the Ibanez MT-10 Mostortion and the Delta, a clone of the Vertex Steel String. While Aion sells some of their projects in complete kit form, I’ve been wanting to get more adventurous by trying to build the pedal by ordering just the PC board and then purchasing the parts separately. Supposedly, building a pedal this way can save money compared to a kit, but I’m not so sure about that. Shipping anything to Hawaii is always expensive, and I’ve found that I need to order from three different suppliers to get all of the parts.

  • I kinda hate drilling the enclosures for my kits. Painting them is something I’d like to do, but it’s way too time consuming and I hate having cans of spray paint left over that I’ll never use again. That said, I am amazed that I can get a fully powder coated and drilled enclosure to my specifications for $10.50. For another $4, they will UV print any custom graphic you want on that same enclosure. I didn’t have any graphic design ideas for the effects I ordered, but decided to get the enclosures powder coated and drilled. Maybe when Audra has some spare time, she can help make some cool graphics for them.

  • So far, it’s been an enjoyable process. The finished result looks and sounds great! I enjoy taking my time and building things slowly and correctly. Maybe when Audra has some spare time, she can help make some cool graphics to go with it.

• This week, I enjoyed listening to Toto’s latest live concert album With A Little Help From My Friends. This is the latest incarnation of Toto, featuring members Steve Lukather and Joseph Williams as the core of the group. This was recorded as a streaming live concert in November 2020. I really enjoyed the set list with some deep cuts! Listen: Apple Music.