Every time I couldn't breathe, it was my fault for being lazy, genetically inferior, or incompetent.
In conclusion:
Fuck you, childhood basketball coach. You were an asshole. Get bent.
Fuck you, my parents. Sleep is critical and telling your kids they're lazy while they struggle to stay awake is child abuse.
Lastly, fuck you [name redacted]. You don't know shit about bagpiping, and perpetuating "that's how it was done when I was learning" objectively makes you an immoral person.
/end
As an adult, a competent doctor diagnosed me with sports-induced asthma. The remedy: a cheap steroidal inhaler. Allergen therapy later reduced my asthma even more.
A sleep doctor diagnosed me with apnea. The fix: a medical device called a CPAP which has improved my life immeasurably. I no longer snore, and I sleep restfully.
A competent bagpipe instructor correctly diagnosed that my chanter reed was too hard. The solution: shave it down. Now I can play without panting.
/cont.
Since adolescence, it feels like there has been a conspiracy to prevent me from breathing.
As a youth, I was really bad at sports. I ran out of breath easily. Actual adults said: he's a nerd, he's just a wimp.
As a teenager, I needed a lot of sleep. Over nine hours at least to feel rested. Actual adults: he's lazy; wake him up.
A piper I was trying to get instruction from said my unsteady blowing was from lack of practice. I just had to suck it up and suffer more before I got good.
/cont.
The news out of the US and Ukraine are both terrible in different ways. Expect me to avoid those topics for a bit as they weigh too heavy on my heart right now. If my feed feels shallow, that's because serious subjects are difficult, infuriating, overwhelming, and strike me with incapacitating hopelessness.
More thoughts on band camp. The piping instruction was exceptional. The housing and food were approaching Boy Scout camp in the 80s levels of terrible. The beach was nice, but the "private" entrance for the Academy was bullshit and contrary to CA law.
Lastly, the casual misogyny, racism, and homophobia of too many of the bagpipe students makes me think I won't be attending again next year.
I'm back from bagpipe camp! It was held at the Army-Navy Academy in Carlsbad. The wifi wasn't great, and their routers were configured poorly. Worst of all, their firewall blocked Signal. (I have a screen cap of it, but is isn't interesting to look at "Error retrieving contacts, check your network connection".)
I was there to learn bagpipes, not disrupt the status quo, but if I were a student there, I'd hack their routers in a heartbeat.
US pol
At some point in the near future, the saner states are just going to have start ignoring the SCOTUS.
It's going to happen sooner than later at the rate the Roberts court is overturning a century of civil liberty protections.
Like, if CA just said fuck it, we're enforcing our gun laws regardless of the Supreme Court, what are they gonna do about it?
What's wrong with (modern) computing?
- Computers spy on us all the time
- Computers are insecure, while pretending not to to be.
- Computers enable new modes of rent seeking, further exasperated by shitty patents and worse laws
- Computers/the modern internet encourage behaviors which are bad for our mental health as individuals.
- Computers and the modern internet, in concert with modern capitalism have built a world essentially without public spaces.
You know, all that bullshit.
I am still a novice piper and there is so much more to learn and lots of my classmates are playing circles around me. BUT I can sightread the treble clef. So there.
#bagpipes
Donner Party
Why I thought of the Donner Party. Go read Robyn. She is always right.
Donner Party
When I was a youth, we were taught that the Donner Party was a tragedy. Humans eating humans out of desperation on a migration to CA gone awry.
My children learned a better version of the history. The Donner Party were monsters. Native Americans tried to help them. But the Donner Party was so racist that they instead hunted down, killed, then ATE these men who trying to help them.
So fuck 'em. We should rename Donner Pass to something that honors their victims.
Warning: someone is spamming cryptocurrency on Fedi
Just had someone try to "send" me cryptocurrency through a Fedi account without my knowledge or consent.
To "collect" what is "sent", people mentioned would have to sign up to their service. I did not do this, and never will.
I am not at all comfortable seeing my username on their list of recipients, it makes it look like I use cryptocurrency.
For the record: I don't use any form of cryptocurrency/token/NFT. I never have and never will, ever.
Please don't have anything to do with this, "sending" tokens like this is effectively just spamming people. I have reported it as spam.
This is not at all nice for those of us who want to stay as far away from cryptocurrency as possible.
How I am memorizing music: play a bar or two. Close my eyes and play it, peeking. Same, but no peeking. Repeat until comfortable.
Do the same for the next bar.
Add the bars together and repeat.
Continue looping until entire tune is muscle memory.
If you have suggestions for improving this process, do not hesitate to share.
#bagpipes
There are rubber bands on my drone reeds called bridles. Drone reeds are still called reeds for historical reasons even though they aren't made from cane reed anymore (usually), but plastic.
The bridles on reeds had slipped, so my drones weren't striking in at the right pressure. Aaron fixed this for me, I learned how to do it myself, and I learned how to strike in and cut off quickly. In-person instruction is amazing.
Silicon Valley smack talk | Atheism: still no gods, whatcha' gonna do about it? | Bagpipes are the best pipes | Writing (sometimes reading) | Cats | Anti-gun absolutist | Trans rights are human rights