Subfolders
Latest "Articles" Articles
Writing » Topical Writing » Mikesplaining—My Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions
Why are musical notes an octave apart considered to be the same note?

Infrequently Asked Questions: Why are musical notes an octave apart considered to be the same note?

Q. Why are musical notes an octave apart considered to be the same note? -Charlotte V., Seattle, WA

Notes an octave apart are the same note because of the mechanics of vibration. Consider a piano string that is hit by a hammer and vibrates 1000 vibrations per second. So in 1/1000th of a second, it does this: Starts at center, then is hit by hammer. Snaps upwards. Hits the upper limit of its vibration, when the tension pulls it back towards the center. Crosses the center but keeps moving because of the momentum. Hits the downward limit of its vibration. Snaps back towards the center. Crosses the center on its way upward again, completing one cycle.

The precise timing of this motion is:
0 Seconds - position center - hit by hammer
1/4000 of a second: hits upper limit of motion
2/4000 of a second: crosses center…

Writing » Topical Writing » Mikesplaining—My Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions
Do the odds of winning the lottery change if more people play? Is flipping tails more likely after four heads in a row?

Infrequently Asked Questions: Do the odds of winning the lottery change if more people play? Is flipping tails more likely after four heads in a row?

A.) Do the odds of winning the lottery change if more people play?

B.) What if 5 people each flipped a coin. If the first four all land on heads, the odds of the fifth coming up heads also is much lower, isn't it?

Answers:

A.) Do the odds of winning the lottery change if more people play?

OK. For starters, let's call the lottery what it is: it's a gamble.

For purposes of illustration, we'll consider another gamble: a coin toss.

Before we look at the question of more people betting changing the odds of winning, think about this: if you flip a coin a certain number of times, there's only a certain number of possible outcomes. For instance, if you have three flips, they can come out 8 different ways:

1.) Heads, Heads, Heads
2.) Heads, Heads, Tails
3.) Heads,…

Ideological Musings

Satire: “Traffic Lights” and the Left’s Destruction of American Mobility

(Satire, people. This is satire. I actually had someone not get that.)

If there's one thing I'm opposed to, which I think represents a very wrongheaded tendency in our society, it's this: traffic lights.

First off, just on basic principles: this nation was founded on an ideal of freedom, and yet somehow, we got to the point where the government is telling me when I can stop or go?!?

But it's not just the principle: My real concern is because it's a very practical issue. The ill effects of traffic lights are a prime example of how the unintended consequences of well-intentioned overregulation can result in broad negative effects for the very people they're supposed to be helping.

Traffic patterns should be determined by free competition between the traffic participants, so nothing stands in the way of the best drivers getting where they need to go.…

Writing » Anecdotal Evidence (True Stories) » Local Color: True Stories From Near And Far
How to Find Your Hotel if You’re Lost in Ghent

Local Color—Ghent, Belgium: How to Find Your Hotel if You’re Lost in Ghent

Long ago, back in my salad days, I once tricked the Belgian government into paying to fly me & two friends to give an arts lecture in Ghent under assumed names (long story, now recounted elsewhere on this site).

The Kunstencentrum Vooruit (Vooruit Arts Center), where we delivered our address, was an elegant old 1910 festival hall in Ghent, with galleries and lecture halls above and a bar in the basement, and which had once been used by the Nazis during the occupation.

The folks from Vooruit put us up in a gorgeous 300-year-old hotel where hotel owners' incredibly classy cafe on the first floor kept us both caffeinated and entertained, with live a cappella opera singers, and the hotel floors were reached by going through a door in the back of a closet and ascending a maze of stairways, leading up to elegant…

Visual Art » "Petit Art": Odds & Ends
Robyn Hitchcock fan club 50th Birthday Card

Digital Objets D’Art: Robyn Hitchcock fan club 50th Birthday Card

Robyn Hitchcock used to have an email fan club that I was pretty active in (hence his name coming up a bunch of places on this site; if you're familiar with his songs, it makes sense that he gives people ideas for art.)

Back in, geez, 2003 or 4, I think, he turned 50 so we got together and all contributed a bunch of art to give to him on a CD-rom. This was my contribution, about 12 pages of scanner art (including the somewhat difficult task of getting a good digital scan of a lit candle!) Use the skull, suitcase, and bottle of wine on the right to navigate through the panels.

(Note: at narrower window widths, the navigation icons on the right side of each page below might get cut off and you will need to either widen your browser window, or scroll to the right to see…

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals
27 Photos from Burning Man 1997

Good Day at Black Rock: 27 Photos from Burning Man 1997

Introduction, 2023:

Back when I first got to San Francisco in the mid-90s, full of youthful idealism, the first thing I did was seek out the San Francisco Cacophony Society and their best-known offspring, the Burning Man festival and the nascent subculture that surrounded it. Well, no, the first thing I did was spend 3 years of my late 20s cocooned at the Green Tortoise Adventure Travel office & youth hostel, where I lived and worked, venturing out only to cavort in the surrounding North Beach neighborhood with the poets and the blues musicians. But after three years of that—straight out to explore what San Francisco's modern counterculture had to offer, without delay.

But well prior to that, in September 1997, a bunch of us Tortoise employees borrowed a bus from them—great perk of working for an adventure tour bus operator—and went out for a long…

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals
Battery Dynamite — Subterranean Bunker Urban Exploration

Beneath the Bay Area: Battery Dynamite — Subterranean Bunker Urban Exploration

somewhere beneath the Bay Area, Aug 6 2004

Last July, my late* trubbamaking companion was trying to find a shortcut down to the beach when he noticed a hole in a fence across the road, where someone had cut it away to allow a tree limb to grow through. Characteristically unable to resist, he climbed through it to explore, and, in a fantastic piece of luck, deep in the woods behind this fence he stumbled onto the surface entrances of what we only later learned was Battery Dynamite, a sprawling underground military facility dating back to World War 2. Several weeks later he brought me there, camera in hand, to explore the corridors of this creepy subterranean relic...

*Repeat visitors to this gallery will notice the change in epithet. In summer 2005, my former intrepid trubbamaking companion was killed in a freak dating accident. Don't mourn for him. He knew…

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals
UC Santa Cruz Porter Caves & the Hell Hole

Subterranean Serendipity: UC Santa Cruz Porter Caves & the Hell Hole

9/30/2005

I was wandering the trails through the woods by UC Santa Cruz, taking some pictures of trees and stuff and trying to shake off a cold, when fate brought me by sheer happenstance onto this intriguing tableau:

 

Click any image to enlarge

Hmmm... a bunch of college students out in the middle of the woods... a hole with a ladder into the ground... me coincidentally carrying a camera... what to do... what to do?

The last in line down the hole invited me to follow them and in a moment I was here... this is the Porter Caves, right there on UCSC's campus.

 

The kids loaned me a spare flashlight, were astoundingly good-natured about the constant firing of my flash, and led me through room after muddy room of this....

While we were down there, one of the guys asked if anyone had been to…

Visual Art » Adventure Photojournals
A Visit to Pearl Fryar’s Topiary — photojournal

Back To The Garden: A Visit to Pearl Fryar’s Topiary — photojournal

In August 2018 my mom and I decided to take a road trip from my sister's home in an un-named southern city, where I was crashing for a few months, to visit Pearl Fryar's Topiary Garden, in Bishopville, SC.

Pearl Fryar is a folk artist, famous for, in the 1980s, having cleared a three-acre cornfield next to his home and, with no training and using "throwaway" plants salvaged from a local nursery's discards, created a fantastic topiary garden, incorporating his own whimsical found-object assemblage sculptures in places, which has become a regional tourist attraction of sorts. As late as 2018, he was still maintaining it himself as he rounded the corner into his 80s.

While visiting, we had the good fortune to meet and chat briefly with Mr. Fryar himself, who came out to tend to the grounds while we were there. Nice fellow.…

Writing » Topical Writing » Reviews & Criticism
“Peaks Island Ferry” by Dan Sonenberg — album review

I Like To Listen: “Peaks Island Ferry” by Dan Sonenberg — album review

Finally giving a listen to the prerelease of old friend Dan Sonenberg’s return to solo singer-songwriting, "Peaks Island Ferry". Rather than set down & give him feedback after it’s over, I’m gonna liveblog it here.

(For those who wade through all the below and/or are curious to hear the album, it's at https://dansonenberg.bandcamp.com/releases.)

Track 1: "Turn it over" Given that the baseline quality of even the bottom rung of Dan’s songs is somewhere north of "totally listenable", I’d say this is middle of the road for him, a solid B or B+. Not particularly adventurous in terms of songwriting, and slightly familiar to anyone who knows his influences, but literate and full of enough unique and vivid imagery to stand out from the pack. It also continues Dan's lifelong trajectory of finding ways to sneak weirder and weirder musical flourishes into conventional-on-the-surface songs in ways that…

Code & Algorithms » Finance
TradingView Pine Script Indicators, Algos & Experiments

Trading Tools: TradingView Pine Script Indicators, Algos & Experiments

Here's a collection of trading tools I wrote & shared on TradingView, a finance markets charting site, in their native Pine script. These were originally published on my old crypto trading site, ApopheniaPays.com.

These will only be of use to traders who have an account (free or paid) on TradingView.com.

Code & Algorithms » Finance
An Excel-based DeFi Uniswap Liquidity Pool/Automated Market Maker Simulator

Untangling Uniswap? Demystifying DeFi? You Tell Me: An Excel-based DeFi Uniswap Liquidity Pool/Automated Market Maker Simulator

For a few years I was in cryptocurrency trading. Eventually, this led me to the wild west of decentralized finance tokens ("DeFi"), an exciting area that I feel has strong potential to be on the cutting edge of technology's potential to fundamentally reshape our society.

Decentralized Finance concept: The "Automated Market Maker"

Among the odd beasts you'll encounter on the frontiers of DeFi is the "Automated Market Maker" (AMM) managing a "liquidity pool", of which the most prominent current example is Uniswap. This is a decentralized algorithm running on the Etheruem network that serves the same purpose in DeFi markets as the large "market makers" and financial houses that retail traders are buying and selling from in the traditional stock market. In DeFi, instead of being privately run, these are open and communal, and operate by strict rules set up in "smart contracts" on the…

Writing » I Can't Believe It's Not Poetry!
“The Radish Is The Noisy’st Root…”

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Poetry!: “The Radish Is The Noisy’st Root…”

The radish is the noisy'st root,
Its vocal tack beyond dispute,
effusive in expounding truth—
so talkative, this verbal fruit.

In ages prior and aeons hence,
have poets, lost in reverence,
e'er had their solemn thoughts disturbed
in comp'ny of this verbal herb,

As, spicy, doth it bide its time
concocting tales in verse and rhyme,
and platitudes, as is its bent,
propounding truth, without relent.

O! Indiscrete and loose-lip'd mustard!
With secrets should it not be trustered,
lest ev'ry private thought and plan,
reverb'rate loud from your garden.

The carrot dreams in quietude,
The yam's indifference seems rude.
The leek a mute, and soon you'll learn,
The 'tato downright taciturn.

Confronted, then, by veggie basket
Minds inquis'tive may well ask it,
"Does none among ye speak…

Writing » Topical Writing
About Sexism In The AI Images On This Site

Hey, You Got Your Social Awareness In My AI!: About Sexism In The AI Images On This Site

A number of the AI-generated images on this site contain artistic depictions of nudity, presented in a way that might seem to reasonably suggest some confusion between real artistic or aesthetic value, and what gives some people, perhaps including myself, some level of simple va-va-va-voom visual jollies.

Put simply: there's a lot of images of naked, topless, or scantily-dressed women in some of the image galleries here, but not so many men. Almost none, in fact.

Although it's in several galleries, this is most evident in, say, "Previsions of Johanna", where the many female figures, and only the female figures, all came out either nude, topless, or wearing a low-cut dress, while the male figures are always fully clothed from neck to wrists and ankles. In fact, the lone arguably male figure in that entire set that is wearing a loose tank top, rather than some kind…

Visual Art » Generative Illustrations » Interesting Leftovers & Bonus Galleries
Previsions of Johanna — preliminary experiments

Work-In-Progress Postview: Previsions of Johanna — preliminary experiments

As I worked on my "Revisions Of Johanna" project, I generated a lot of images I really liked, but which didn't fit into the final project. I decided the best of them deserved their own gallery.

This page is a work in progress, I just kind of threw it up to get me started. I have plenty more images to sort through from this, plus I need to pare down these already posted ones to just the most interesting ones. But, still, you can get a good sense of what went on behind the scenes here, and hopefully, an understanding of why I didn't just want these putative rejects to sit unused forever on my hard drive.

One additional note about the content of these images in the context of social awareness: For anyone interested, I addressed some thoughts about sexism and bias in…

Writing » Topical Writing
Critical Reading of a Flawed Information Source

Watch Your Intelligence: Critical Reading of a Flawed Information Source

Oct. 7, 2023

I had an interesting talk with my father yesterday. He had a 2-for-1 subscription offer to Mother Jones, and we got into a discussion when I told him I didn't like that magazine. Since then, I've been doing some thinking about how I pick my news sources, something I do very carefully, but have never thought about trying to explain. What I told him was, essentially, that Mother Jones is too biased, I don't feel like I can trust them to give the sides of a story that may not agree with their basic worldview, and I wind up feeling like have to do my own research into anything they say to verify I'm getting something like an accurate picture, and it takes a lot of time that I could be spending just reading better commentary.

Unlike a lot of people, I'm not terribly partisan about my…

Code & Algorithms » Web
How to make a completely unusable homepage in CSS3 and <strike>jQuery</strike>Javascript

Usability Hell: How to make a completely unusable homepage in CSS3 and jQueryJavascript

One of my favorite bits of code I've ever written is on the front page of my jiggy, ancient, perpetually-under-construction, virtually-never-viewed old personal website, Life In A Mikeycosm. Eager to make my front page "pop" a little more back in days gone by, I came up with a clever CSS3/javascript hack that caused the page text and logo to slip and slide in three dimensions in response to your mouse movements, rendering the page somewhere between difficult and totally unusable for actually navigating the content of the site. I've always been inordinately fond of this.

I've embedded it below so you can experience the source of my amusement. Actually, if you click through the above link to the real site, at the bottom left there's a "Stop this crazy thing" link that stops the animation and moves the links into rows so they're readable and clickable. I…

Code & Algorithms » MacOS & Desktop

Thunderbird Customization: a FiltaQuilla “open mail folder on receiving mail” Javascript Action script

Among the many things the late, lamented Eudora email client spoiled me for was, when I checked my mail, opening all the mailboxes that had received mail in new windows. That way I could click through, looking at each mail window and closing it when I was done, and be sure I had seen all my new mail.

This is a javascript you can paste into the FiltaQuilla addon's "Javascript Action" filter action which brings this behavior to Thunderbird.

Following are the explanatory README, the script code, and license, embedded from my repo on Github at https://github.com/kupietools/filtaquilla-open-mail-folder-on-receiving-mail.

.emgithub-file pre {white-space:normal !important;} .emgithub-file tr, .emgithub-file td, .emgithub-file th, .emgithub-file span {min-width:32px !important;text-align: left !important; margin:2px 4px 0 0 !important;padding:2px !important;line-height:1.5em !important;}

Writing » I Can't Believe It's Not Poetry!
Ode to “Ode To A Croaking Man”

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Meta-Poetry!: Ode to “Ode To A Croaking Man”

O! Poem that spoke of a man who croaks,
were you not my own, I would quote you!
I would think that whomever composed you smokes dope,
but I know it ain't so, 'cause I wrote you.

Which poet is it, that constructed you, Ode?
'Twas myself! Though I scant deserve credit.
For a poem's not a poem 'less it stands on its o'en
through my 50 neurotic edits.

And forget let us not, the post-poem note!
Doleful lament upon poem just wrote,
pensively telling of muse that had flo'en.
Though reader, perhaps, was just glad poem was do'en.

NOTE:
The poet wishes it to be kno'en:
It's not his intent to promote or condo'en
the writing of poems about one's other poems.
Do as I say, not as I've do'en.
Writing » Fun & Humor
Misinformation Visualization

Fudging The Facts: Misinformation Visualization

Among my many inconsequential but fondly-remembered ideas was about 10 years ago, when for a brief time, I had a blog called "Misinformation Visualization" (subtitle: "Bringing a world of misinformation to your fingertips"). My goal was to present, with a straight face, the kinds of fallacies and illogic masquerading as science and reason I saw all over the web, and to use the best charts and logical-sounding arguments I could think of to come to ridiculous conclusions.

Like a lot of my best ideas, it was timely, and like many of my ideas of any quality, it almost immediately became more work than the joke was worth, and when the novelty had worn off the next morning, I moved on to other things.

However, I've always been fond of the idea, and wish I had the kind of free time that would have enabled me to give such a silly…

Code & Algorithms » Web

Take The Edge Off Your Web Browsing: WebCooler userscript

If you're like me, you care passionately about certain subjects; the natural flip side of this is being viscerally revulsed by certain things. As a matter of mental hygiene I'm fairly picky as to who and what I let into my world, but unfortunately, on the world wide web, it can be tough to avoid being forced to give some of your mindshare to things that are just plain not productive to pay attention to.

With this in mind, I created a browser userscript I call the "WebCooler". WebCooler sits in your browser, hosted by a free userscript manager plugin like GreaseMonkey or TamperMonkey. You supply it with lists of words and topics you don't care to see, and it cleanly and invisibly removes those matching terms from the web, not by erasing just those words, but by silently and invisibly…

Writing » I Can't Believe It's Not Poetry!
Admonishment To A Bad Poet

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Poetry!: Admonishment To A Bad Poet

#badpoet, #badpoet tbody, #badpoet tr, #badpoet td {width:auto !important;white-space:nowrap;padding:0 12px !important;border:0 solid rgba(255,255,255,0) !important;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,1) !important}
#badpoet {margin: 0 auto !important;}
Bad
poems
give just cause
to critics who
revel in finding
ways to rag on others' flaws.   When
upon
poorly set,
is personal
whose hearts cherish pride,
and, gorging upon regret, pen
paper's
the offense
to eyes of those
who thrive on defeat,
hunger to impose the sense.   Though this condemnation is
against the vain brutes,
their point's not lost.
Pray you, don't
feed those
maws.
Code & Algorithms » MacOS & Desktop
Terminal-Notifier Bridge For Thunderbird Email Client

Thunderbird Customization: Terminal-Notifier Bridge For Thunderbird Email Client

Hot off the presses. Direct from my Github, a MacOS BASH script to allow customized per-mailbox notifications in the Mozilla Thunderbird email client. Following is the README containing full information and instructions, and then the code and license, embedded live from my
terminal-notifier-bridge-for-thunderbird repo on GitHub.

.emgithub-file pre {white-space:normal !important;} .emgithub-file tr, .emgithub-file td, .emgithub-file th, .emgithub-file span {min-width:32px !important;text-align: left !important; margin:2px 4px 0 0 !important;padding:2px !important;line-height:1.5em !important;}

Writing » Topical Writing

Health & Lifestyle: How I Deal With Insomnia

I'm going to flesh this out at some point, but it was lost in a pile of old notes and I wanted it up on the site as a reminder, because it's a conversation I've had a number of times in my life.

I've always been an insomniac. When I was younger, I'd often get to bed at a reasonable hour, only to very frequently wake up three hours later and not be able to get back to sleep. In college I'd often get up in the not-so-small hours and go for walks in the woods and watch the sun come up, then grab a few more hours of sleep.

As an adult, it's been more an issue of never getting to sleep... the brain just never slows down, and suddenly, the sun is up. (See "Day Nights".) The problem then becomes, either I sleep through the…

Writing » Topical Writing » Mikesplaining—My Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions
A Young Person’s Guide To Common Time Signatures, and what they mean in real life

Infrequently Asked Questions: A Young Person’s Guide To Common Time Signatures, and what they mean in real life

I have some time to kill so I thought I would write a brief overview of the concept of time signature in response to some questions that arose recently from non-musicians.

Just a word, this post was originally submitted to a long-ago fan club email list for an older musician, hence many uses of music from the '60s and '70s as examples, most especially The Beatles, who often kept things both simple enough to be clear, but interesting enough to be useful and well-known examples. That's just how it is.

PART 1: A Young Person's Guide To Common Time Signatures, and what they mean in real life

Ok. When you listen to a song, it has a beat. This is what you tap your feet to, or maybe drum your fingers on a desk.

The most common beat in rock and roll might be written something like this. "boom-boom-BOMP-bum, boom-boom-BOMP-bum,…

Writing » Topical Writing » Mikesplaining—My Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions
IAQs—More Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions

Knowledg Is Poweh: IAQs—More Answers to Infrequently Asked Questions

1. What's the difference between a sauce and a condiment? - Susan W., Tallahassee, FL

A condiment enhances the flavor of food and is used sparingly. A sauce adds an additional flavor or richness of its own to the dish, and may be used generously.

2. Is there a name for that special credit where at the end of a bunch of TV or movie credits you get one that's like "and WILLIAM P. DINWIDDIE as LORD HALFANDHALF?" - Jim S., San Francisco, CA

I'm glad you asked that, Jim. Frequently as part of the negotiations involved in taking a part in a TV show or movie, an agent will include a stipulation that the actor gets a certain special credit in the opening credits or, in the case of a movie, on the poster. They may strike a deal for a…

Writing » Fun & Humor
Anti-Plague Flyer

Hoax ‘Em If You Got ‘Em: Anti-Plague Flyer

Waaaaay back during the dot-com boom in San Francisco, in my carefree 20s (a much different time of my life than my carefree '50s) I used to put this up around town.

Like most of my best jokes, this was timely, and poked fun at the problems caused by the influx of dot-commers. It was done in the style of an old snake-oil remedy flyer, claiming to advertise a tonic that would solve your various economic and housing difficulties.

Look at the bottom... I was using Yahoo for email! That's how long ago this was.

Visual Art » "Petit Art": Odds & Ends
Old Sketches And Stuff

Old Sketches And Stuff

I don't draw as much as I used to, these are a couple of things I salvaged from my ancient other site. I'll add more as I run across them.

 

Workshop » Works In Progress » Visual Works In Progress
Revisions of Johanna — AI-Assisted lyrical illumination

Gallery: Revisions of Johanna — AI-Assisted lyrical illumination

I have to be honest. I don't know about this one.

I set out to do another set of AI-assisted lyric illustrations, this time all of one song in its entirety... Bob Dylan's "Visions Of Johanna".

I got a little ways into it, and it was going well, when a few times in a row the generative algorithm overemphasized cats I had added as incidental background elements in the prompt, to interesting effect. So I had the brilliant idea: let's illustrate the whole song with cats. I backtracked and started over again.

It was an instructive lesson, one that didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.

It's just hard to get a lot of variety out of the Stable Diffusion XL algorithm when the main subject is cats. Turns out, visually, cats are really not a very expressive medium. And especially…

Writing » I Can't Believe It's Not Poetry!

The Measure Of A Poet: A Lyrical Explication Upon Substantive Empirical Qualification of Authorial Poesy in Three Lines

What better a measure of man as a poet
Is there, b'sides seeing some poems he's wroet?
If better exists, I sure do not knoet.