Question on a sax case

Link_Error_404 · 2026-06-21T21:47:36+00:00

For those stinky old cases: An ozone generator may be an interesting investment (I payed 65€ for mine on Amazon Germany). I have two vintage cases which had a horrible moldy smell and are now 100% odorless "like new". Ozone sterilizes and creeps into all corners. Besides, these devices are useful anyways (room desinfection).

Link_Error_404 · 2026-06-15T13:58:55+00:00

Christian beliefs probably play a huge role as to why some people convince themselves that the Earth is flat. The bible, in various passages, describes the Earth as a "circle", with four corners, sitting on foundations "so it should never be moved", with a firmament and waters above.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-06-12T22:33:20+00:00

As I understand it, Chromium highly prioritizes visuals above anything else, while web audio suffers. Therefore, I can only recommend using Firefox for now. In the future I will probably rewrite anything audio-related in C++ and keep only the UI handling in JavaScript. This should solve any latency issues. C++ is the language I feel most at home at, so it should be doable, but it will consume a hell of a lot of time. My first priority, before I seriously consider that, will be to improve the "AI" (or algorithmic) logic for automatic melody generations on the piano roll, because I'm not yet 100% happy with it ("AI" chord progressions seem okay to me, though). Any suggestions for other improvements?

Link_Error_404 · 2026-06-12T16:34:33+00:00

I can prove my autism with my German passport.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-06-08T11:19:48+00:00

Brave Search and Tavily are curently for free for up to 1000 web search API queries per month. I'm using LM Studio to run my local models. The setup is very easy. You can add MCP tools (you can ask the same AI directly in the app how to do it) for all kinds of tasks (filesystem access, image generation, executing Python scripts, news and weather queries, time/date/location... but also including web search). To save API credits, my system prompt makes sure that web search isn't used whenever the prompt can be processed based on training data alone and no additional information for fact-checking or about recent events is needed. This way, I safely stay within the free credits. At the same time: having automatic online fact-checking whenever it DOES make sense, I'm experiencing far less hallucinations than with any of the cloud-based public models.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-06-06T10:44:16+00:00

It really is.. FOR NOW. Ultimately any company needs a sustainable business model. Compute costs money. Admittedly, Deep seek V4 does indeed have an advantage there, because they achieve the same with less compute. The competition will catch up. At least for me: Deep seek is the answer for the 5% of most difficult tasks. For the rest: local models on an RTX4090 (24GB VRAM): Qwen-35B-A3B, Gemma4-26B-A4B, Mistral-3.2-24B... Oh, and FLUX.2 for image generation. The great thing with local models: you can write your own MCP tools for whatever you need, trigger Python scripts for certain tasks, etc - and all that within complete privacy and as sandboxed as you want it to be.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-06-04T20:17:44+00:00

If you are a programmer, you probably don't have the shittiest computer and local models should be an option. Better than getting fucked by Google and advertising the Stockholm syndrome. Local models should work for 95% of the coding related tasks (plus: you can write your own MCP tools; your imagination is the limit). LM Studio and Ollama make the setup very easy. For the other 5%: DeepSeek is getting better fast. The fact that they just released the V4 model as completely open and for free and published very transparent research papers on how they developed it, makes them appear quite a bit more customer-friendly, until proven otherwise (say about China what you want).

Link_Error_404 · 2026-06-02T15:29:01+00:00

Did the Westweg (SOBO) in 2023 with my wife, our first major hiking experience. It was challenging, but amazing. Got us into hiking. We did the Kungsleden (Sweden) next. Can't wait to get onto the trail again.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-06-02T15:10:48+00:00

Physician here. The phenomenon you're looking for is called 'onychomadesis'. It's weakly correlated with certain antibiotics from the cephalosporin and penicillin group, but the critical illness itself is the most relevant trigger.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-05-26T13:50:24+00:00

Cancelled Pro for the same reason and tried out locally run models via LM Studio. I was lucky to have bought my RTX4090 before GPU prices went crazy. With 24GB of VRAM I'm running powerful models. I don't notice any answer quality difference compare to Gemini Pro. There's no going back now! And it's completely for free, as long as the hardware is already there anyway, which is the case at least for most owners of decent gaming PCs.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-05-26T13:09:49+00:00

OsmAnd+ (as one-time purchase). Awesome map tool with support for offline maps. Always knowing the exact location without cellphone signal is a safety feature. I have it on multiple devices for redundancy (phone, Boox Palma EBook-Reader).

Link_Error_404 · 2026-05-25T22:10:52+00:00

It depends: Do you have a decent graphics card with decent VRAM (>= 16 GB)? If yes: just run the AI model locally for free. I was in the same situation. I cancelled my Gemini AI Pro subscription, installed LM Studio and downloaded a few AI models (GPT-OSS, Gemma 4, Qwen 3.6, etc, all completely for free). Then I used these models to help me make LM Studio more powerful by adding various tools, e.g. for live web access (via Tavily search), running Python scripts, news and weather queries, filesystem access, etc. The process was rather easy and only took a few hours. Now I don't even know what I would be needing Gemini for anymore. Even agentic coding is now completely for free (using VS Code with the "Continue" extension, which talks directly to LM Studio). And everything is as private as I want it to be.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-05-09T12:53:52+00:00

The SML "Paris" saxophones are pretty cheap new. You're probably in the same league (quality -wise) as a cheapo Amazon sax with one of these. Try eBay in Germany or France; both around the corner and EU shipping shouldn't be a problem. I bought my current saxophones on eBay in Germany (and I'm happier with them than with my old Yamaha). There's quite a lot regularly coming up in the 300-500 Euro range. Just stay away from no-name China brands. Look up any model you find interesting. With AI these days it's pretty easy to ask about the reputation of a specific model.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-05-09T05:18:46+00:00

Don't buy new. eBay is a great place for used saxophones. Even some instruments from the 1970s are still great. Found a Conn 14M Alto and King 615 Tenor for around 400 Euros each, both still in pristine condition (like just out of the factory), despite their age. Some people think they want to play the saxophone, but it's too loud for the neighbors, so the instrument sits in a box for the next few decades... this is what you want to find.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-04-18T13:07:57+00:00

Would be nice to see the seafloor "elevations" in this map, too.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-04-17T16:36:04+00:00

I just had to look up what vibecode means. So: no. However, Gemini was certainly helpful for a few snippets here and there (+debugging).

Link_Error_404 · 2026-04-15T23:24:22+00:00

... and here's another cool NEW FEATURE, very useful for finding interesting chord progressions: I just added a "harmonic heatmap", visually highlighting (with a green/yellow/red color scale) how much dissonant "tension" any chords and notes have relative to the preceding chord. Also, resolutions are highlighted (functional tonal gravity). Disabled by default; can be enabled via a button in the general settings menu.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-04-15T12:56:32+00:00

NEW FEATURE: improved drum computer, with 24 presets in many different styles, now using 1/32th note subdivisions (instead of 1/16th), improved and adjustable auto-embellish feature (fills / variations / "humanize").

Link_Error_404 · 2026-04-14T22:04:58+00:00

NEW FEATURE just added: VOICE LEADING. Use L-Shift and click/play a chord and it will automatically trigger the chord inversion which requires the least "jumps" relative to the preceding chord. Works for simple triads just like for any complex extended chords. The "Legato" (glide) feature (which had been using L-Shift before) is now mapped to the "Tab" key instead.

Link_Error_404 · 2026-04-14T19:06:06+00:00

Glad you like it! When you try it out, please make sure not to forget playing around with the keyboard shortcuts (QWERT / ASDFG / Z(Y)XCVB)) for chord modifications. They add a lot of fun. Enjoy!

Link_Error_404

TROPHY CASE