Blood moon

Best expression I've seen in a long time, how could I pass the opportunity to have a post with this title? Could even have called it Super Blood Moon, but I already had cheese today.

I planned to go to bed at ~23, it became ~1, slept until 2.30 when my watch beeped at me, got up at 3.04, got dressed, went outside, and the umbra was already touching the moon. Walked out into a field and waited, while trying to remember the stars in the sky from my countless gazing sessions as a child. Not a single cloud anywhere, pretty much the perfect weather condition for this kind of event. And at last, at 4.11 exactly, the moon had been engulfed in the mighty shadow of our Earth. (Might as well add some flair, we all know what it is and how it works anyhow.) Waited a little bit to let the blood homogenize over the moon. Then I walked home, made some hot chocolate because it was really cold outside, and went to bed, again. And got to work way late. Ahh, the lovely life of a physicist who won't grow up :)

I took my violin to work on Saturday and tortured some cats in a remote place. Until my neck and left arm got a little sore. I never had a constant 1.5 hour training session without a break before, ever. I need to do this more often.

I only posted this for the title, so I don't have anything else to add...

EDIT 2015-09-29: Why is that Swedish journalists cannot write anymore? How can their bad work go through checks? Every article I read online from the big Swedish newspapers is riddled with colloqial sentences and so many missing/misplaced words and misspellings it makes my head hurts. "Muuh, content matters, not language, buuh." *sigh* (I injected this paragraph with bad for a giggle, calm down.) Btw, I recently watched Idiocracy, good movie...

Just random

I started reading about audiophilism (audioinsanity?) again lately, and of course the O2+ODAC topic delivers lots of joyful material to wallow through. Will probably buy a kit and board from head'n'hifi and enjoy zoning out a little, both from the building and the listening. And while the audioins-, uh, audiophiles spend yearly wages on equipment to reach for their consumption nirvana, I'll instead spend my time (money right?) on learning how to play lovely fleeting music on my violin for everybody to enjoy :p Ah, the power of dreaming...

Well actually, I have been looking for a second set of headphones with soundstage and clarity to complement my playful Denon's AH-D2000s, especially since I've started listening to violin concertos a whole lot.

Now to the point, the reason that this post exists: I found this gem in an O2+ODAC discussion:
About gear forums online.
Beautiful, made a local copy.

And to fill things out a bit: My violin intonation has gotten quite a bit better. I figured out my own way to practice while on vacation at my parent's place in July, which sounds pretty horrible to others I'm sure, but helped my intonation immensely within days. First, tune that sucker up. Then, pick a piece that you don't mind butchering and that's not too difficult, play it through while fingering every note, while at the same time playing the most reasonable open neighboring string. And of course play each note at least twice so you have time to apply corrections. We all know relative pitch (is that a technical term?) is much simpler than absolute pitch, and if you tuned your instrument properly, the open strings will give you your absolute references for the relative comparison.

And going to Japan again in a month or so, for three weeks. It's getting a bit much :p

EDIT (a few hours later): Could mention that I will most probably go to Japan one more time after the next. Four times in a year. That, is definitely too much. Wait, what am I saying, this is the perfect amount. I love the food!

EDIT (2015-09-18): Monkey Island turned 25 on the 5th of September. And nobody told me?! ... Now where do I have them...

EDIT (2015-09-22): Took 9 hours to play through, started very briefly with the 2nd game today, and listened to some of the commentary. And System Shock 1 Enhanced Edition from GoG, wat! Bought, started, couldn't figure out the mouselook, stopped :p I want to play through SS1 before I tackle the masterpiece, SS2.
Anyway, the real reason for this update is that I just did some frequency tests with my MSI laptop and Denon AH-D2000 headphones. Couldn't hear beyond 16.3 kHz, and I often heard a click or pop around that time. Getting old I thought. But I realized that in August, when I was in Tokyo (was it Ginza?), I heard the Mosquito in a bunch of places. Horrible noise. Now, these things run at ~17.4 kHz and it was within some margin of my hearing. So my ears are actually still pretty good (for being 30...), and my audio setup is rubbish.
Is the Mosquito a violation of human rights? Having teenagers running around is too, isn't it? :p But now that I can hear it, yes, it definitely is... Crank it up to 19 kHz so at least I won't have to hear it.