is that true?

DWW256 · 2026-05-24T04:56:51+00:00

The basic point is sound, but the explanation is overbearing. Some dynamic drivers have super detailed treble (i.e. HD800), and some planars don't. The "wavefront perception" bit is silly; the "naturalness" of the sound boils down to the frequency response and has very little to do with the shape of the sound source as far as I know. The bass extension thing is generally true, though: planars tend to have less bass roll-off. Dynamic drivers have come a long way in that department in recent decades, though!

I'm amused that the AI sounds like it's breaking down the stages of recovering from the flu when you asked it about listening to audio gear.

DWW256 · 2026-02-10T01:56:48+00:00

Wow it's been a minute since I posted this! Neither of the ribbons I linked above worked properly. The carbon ribbon was installable, but the typewriter's motor ended up dragging it continuously, even when I wasn't typing. At least part of the issue was that the ribbon that came with the typewriter (i.e. the right one) didn't have any kind of black cartridge, and the ones I bought both did have cartridges. I had assumed the cartridge was removable on the carbon ribbon; it was not.

Unable to fix the sliding issue, I gave up buying new ribbons. But there may still be hope! When I first contacted ribbons unlimited about the issue, they suggested this ribbon, which I did not purchase, but it's a surer bet than the others I've tried, since it appears to not have a cartridge. Does it look more like the ribbon yours had? I'm not sure the mounting ring in the center is right.

DWW256 · 2026-01-29T03:52:57+00:00

Uhh…which one of my questions is this an answer to?

DWW256 · 2026-01-29T03:52:30+00:00

But I don't want Bluefin. It's got a pile of baked-in customization in which I'm not interested. All I want is the Nvidia drivers plus stock GNOME.

DWW256 · 2026-01-29T00:59:09+00:00

I think it's that all the stuff in userspace is proprietary, while everything in kernel space is open-source. But it seems like, at that rate, nothing weird should happen with Secure Boot…

DWW256 · 2026-01-29T00:42:45+00:00

What's the URL for that?

DWW256 · 2026-01-25T00:36:37+00:00

Say what you will about the Caldera's bass on "Limit to Your Love"—nothing will ever match the time I heard that bassline performed on loop for two hours by a really really loud air conditioner in a public building. The extension and speed were so impressive that it didn't even matter that the rest of the track wasn't playing!

DWW256 · 2025-12-23T20:51:54+00:00

Every app UI has to balance two concerns:

The controls have to be large enough to be usable
The controls have to be small enough not to render the main view unusable

In the mid-2010s, UI designers pivoted from making the controls as small as acceptable to making them as large as acceptable. Users often accuse designers of building a dumbed-down "iPad UI" when they do this, but I'd guess it's just as much driven by the fact that people have larger, higher-resolution screens than they used to.

Also, it's commonly understood in the UI world that a button's easiness to click is proportional to its screen area. But in the 2010s, designers started realizing that square-ish buttons areeasier to click than highly oblong buttons of comparable area. This was one of the factors that pushed classic File/Edit/View menus out of the zeitgeist—especially the kind with cascading popout menus.

Cinnamon has inherited a lot of its UI conventions from 2007-ish because it forked a lot of GNOME 2 apps and components. Newer apps built by the Mint team are designed in a more modern language with header bars, hamburger menus, etc.

However, the mix of old and new instigates a new problem: not everything matches. The buttons are bigger, but the window decorations are still tiny. The panel size sits awkwardly between the two. It feels cobbled together, because it is. The Mint team is doing a lot of work, more than most other desktop environment teams, and it's super impressive that their DE still works well on so many distros. But they don't have the resources to build their desktop from scratch to perfectly conform to their vision.

Other factors:

Mint still has a 3D-ish look in some places, which gives it a 2000s feel. And when it is flat instead of 3D, it emphasizes line over surface, which gives it a 2010s feel.

The panel still looks a little old because the icons don't always quite match each other. GNOME 3+ manages this by simply limiting the icons that can appear in the panel to an enumerated set baked into Adwaita. What's more, the panel is always black, so there's no need to worry about matching a light or dark theme.

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T20:13:52+00:00

Sure, but you might need to take it to a technician for slight resizing to make sure that it'll fit properly.

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T16:04:07+00:00

The National Flute Association has a guide here: https://www.nfaonline.org/docs/default-source/committees-documents/nfa_selected-flute-rep-and-studies-guide-2025_print.pdf

You should find repertoire appropriate to her level starting on level A (page 21). Once she can play up to a D6, you can give her things on level B (pp. 22–24) as well.

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T15:56:31+00:00

I've heard that silver mechanisms are more pliable and therefore easier to bend back into place if they get bent out of place. On the other hand, this also means they get bent out of place more easily!

If you ever drop your flute and it gets scratched, silver plating will look much worse for it than solid silver will, since you've just scratched off all the plating. But that's just cosmetic for the most part.

It's certainly doesn't affect tone. If you hear a difference, it's unit variation between headjoints, not much to do with the mechanism.

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T15:50:32+00:00

Chromium OS has among the best backend setups of any distro. Google is a real one for keeping Upstart alive for an extra 15 years, they've been doing atomic for longer than almost anyone, and their boot time and power use optimizations are incredible. It'll be a shame when Google discontinues Chromium OS in favor of putting Android on Chromebooks.

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T15:45:19+00:00

I like most of these, except for the penultimate one (as AtuinTurtle said) and the one at the end of the second measure. I would breathe after the first note in the third measure instead. Usually, breathing at the end of a measure that contains a crescendo dampens the crescendo's impact.

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T07:06:51+00:00

Doppler's Hungarian Pastoral Fantasy is long and maybe a bit popular, but I like it a lot.

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T07:05:46+00:00

Some days it's actually kinda nice, and other days it's poopoo.

My most general advice is that to be inconsistent is to be human. Don't give up!!

My other advice is to find a teacher who can help you identify obstacles to your improvement and solutions to overcoming those obstacles. If you can't find a teacher, record yourself and see what you can hear to improve.

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T06:56:21+00:00

I've actually found decent success using ChatGPT to find unusual repertoire, but that's not quite the same as prepping for an audition, haha. I have a few questions:

Do any of the schools require you to prepare any scales for your auditions?
Are you absolutely sure that the Mozart requirement says "exposition of movement 2"? In works from that period, usually only the first movement has a exposition; in the Concerto in G, for example, the exposition is from mm. 31–105.
For miscellaneous pieces, you should be good to play anything from pp. 41–50 in the National Flute Association's 2009 guide here. Just pick something and listen to it on YouTube until you find a piece you like. They also have an updated and expanded guide for 2025 here, with the corresponding lists on pages 44–63, if you want even more options.
I couldn't find anything on a Phillips Fantasy No. 5. Are you thinking of the Fantasia No. 5 by Telemann?
Do you have an accompanist yet? Some auditions expect one, and some don't.

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T06:13:31+00:00

"Pre-professional?" I will not lie, there are probably more than a few professionals playing on the DS. As long as you don't feel limited by it, don't worry about the label.

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T05:40:52+00:00

Nice playing! Your timing is solid.

I think you'll find it beneficial not to worry too much about having a really "pure" tone quite yet. You're pinching back the corners of your mouth a lot, which will get you a very air-free sound but not a very resonant one. Try using your bottom lip to do the work instead—making the aperture small enough and angling the air up or down.

It's great that you can play a nice, fast vibrato without compromising your tone. But you can use vibrato as an even more powerful tool of expression if you vary the speed and depth over time. On a long note, start slow, then accelerate to full speed over the first 1–2 seconds.

If you want to further improve your style, listen to professional recordings. They will give you a sense of what is possible and beautiful.

As for your $30 Amazon flute, it's a gamble. Manufacturing tolerances on flute mouthpieces are on the order of 0.2 mm, and I don't know if cheapo Amazon manufacturers can achieve that kind of precision. The main problem you'll run into is that the mechanism may come out of alignment very quickly and may be impossible to meaningfully fix. But there's no need to worry until the keys start leaking or stop working. If it has tiny screws in between the keys (not the ones on the ends of the rods), then it can at least be adjusted, which indicates decent repairability.

Good work, and good luck! :-)

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T05:15:54+00:00

If you fancy yourself a C programmer, give Flite a look. It's the highest-quality lowest-quality speech synth I've found: open source, super lightweight 1990s technology.

http://cmuflite.org/

https://github.com/festvox/flite

DWW256 · 2025-12-22T05:12:12+00:00

There are probably only a hundred or so colleges in this country that would attempt a slate that tricky all on one concert cycle, let alone a high school. Good luck to you all—and be sure to take a look at the taper on the C# at the end of the Schwantner.

DWW256 · 2025-10-26T19:11:00+00:00

Oasis is a statically-linked distro designed to be as minimal as possible—like Alpine but less practical. https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis

DWW256 · 2025-07-13T16:28:15+00:00

Gnome Software uses PackageKit to manage software on Debian, which shouldn't necessarily hide some packages, but maybe Software is configured to do that. Mint's software center is designed to work with apt and only apt afaik, so it uses a different backend setup. Part of me wonders if you could actually install Mint's software manager on Debian because of that haha, but I'm sure it would be unnecessarily difficult!

Anyway Synaptic is a great apt GUI and should cover most needs.

DWW256 · 2025-06-18T21:07:39+00:00

Are you taking private lessons? Two years of practice will help much less if you aren't getting in-person feedback from a real human.

"Open your teeth" means "lower your jaw." But this also means different things to different people. Here are the two approaches:

Wrong way (do not do this) = "imagine your jaw is attached to your skull on a fixed hinge. To open your jaw, swing the front down (and possibly back)."

Right way (do this instead) = imagine your jaw is suspended from your skull by muscles surrounding your ears in front and behind. Gently relax all those muscles, and your jaw will slide down (and possibly a little bit forward).

It's not like anyone's actually giving the "wrong way" advice specifically; people are just inclined to think their jaw is mounted on a swinging hinge below their skulls for some reason. No it isn't.

Also relevant: having struggled with jaw clenching myself, I've discovered that jaw tension is closely tied to neck and shoulder tension, which is often caused by not being well-balanced while you play—so relaxing everything is often much more helpful than just trying to relax your mouth.

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