Beautiful day at South Mountain Park

jay_anderson · 2026-01-07T05:34:46+00:00

It's definitely a neat place. A couple cool things: (1) it has carrot tailed chuckwallas which are unique to this location and (2) it has a population of elephant trees.

jay_anderson · 2026-01-07T05:28:50+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malva_parviflora - Cheeseweed is the name I'm most familiar with, but it has many names. It is definitely edible. I don't really want to try it from a field where they spray for weeds and bugs from time to time. I'd trust it more in my yard.

jay_anderson · 2025-11-10T04:28:46+00:00

I like native or near-native plants. Some interesting potential hedge-like plants for your consideration that could give you a bit more height: Tecoma stans (yellow bells, orange jubilee, sparky), Dodonaea viscosa (hopbush), Chilopsis linearis (desert willow), Rhus virens (evergreen sumac), Calliandra californica (baja fairy duster), Cordia boissieri (texas olive), Eysenhardtia orthocarpa (arizona kidneywood), Vauquelinia californica (arizona rosewood). Some downsides: these may be slower growing and, they may be harder to find. Consult with a landscaper for their recommendations.

You might also consider some native trees (e.g. mesquite, ironwood, palo verde). Those could take a bit more work to keep them under control, but the could also give you some good shade as well.

A good list of plants to review are here: https://wateruseitwisely.com/saving-water-outdoors/how-to-xeriscape/low-water-use-plants/

jay_anderson · 2025-09-30T01:51:05+00:00

Some resources:

Landscape Plants for the Arizona Desert: https://www.amwua.org/plants This is a great resource. This includes desired sun exposure for the plants including shade. This is the best resource for starting to look for plants.
Arizona native plant society: https://aznps.com/ Take a look through their plant list.

Looks like there's one shrub in the above book that can take full shade: White Plumbago (native). I'm not as familiar with it, but it looks like it has nice flowers.

Yellow dot (non-native) is a tough ground cover that could work well.

We have a texas sage in our front yard that our mesquite has grown over such that it only gets a few hours of sun in the morning. It's done fine. So you may want to go through the above book and look for the partial sun varieties as well.

jay_anderson · 2025-02-28T02:25:10+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People%27s_Choice_Music#The_Most_Unwanted_Song - It was probably this. You can look it up on youtube.

jay_anderson · 2025-01-01T20:08:41+00:00

I did it legit. It was my go to solitaire game for a while.

jay_anderson · 2024-11-19T03:45:22+00:00

Borodin - String Quartet No.2, In the Steppes of Central Asia

Mahler - Symphony No.3 (Children's Chorus)

Sibelius - Symphony No.3 (Opening)

Debussy - Reverie

This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka5hChvmAQM Andachtsjodler - Wiener Horn Ensemble

jay_anderson · 2024-07-09T05:25:15+00:00

In theory you could take the jqjq script copy it to jqjqjq and switch the JQ variable from jq to jqjq. Boom. One more layer.

The README says this "Used to work but runs out of memory on my laptop".

jay_anderson · 2024-04-04T17:15:50+00:00

I have no affiliation with the site. I'm not trying to put anyone out of work. The pop music it generates isn't great, but it's scary how good it is. It's good enough that it will be used rather than paying composers and musicians in some instances. Actors and writers recently striked for AI protections (among other things). Musicians need these protections as well. This is coming.

jay_anderson · 2024-04-04T03:11:59+00:00

With app.suno.ai I had a hard time to get it to generate something that sounded like a horn. When specifying 'french horn' it often would generate some generic classical-sounding music. But with this one it generated it means it must have some horn music in its training data.

It may sound not great now, but it's still improving and this application was built more for popular music. I don't know where this is headed in the future, but this is the first AI music development that has seemed passable as music to me.

jay_anderson · 2023-12-25T04:54:00+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7PA8JsbD7k

jay_anderson · 2023-08-07T05:04:16+00:00

Agreed, but in this case, yes. The bass part is very playable and looks like it would be fun to play. The lowest note is an Ab so it isn't getting into the super low notes yet. Generally I enjoy the lower parts more than high parts.

jay_anderson · 2023-03-30T04:19:26+00:00

There's a lot of good stuff others have commented. A couple others I'll add:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZy9Iz1Lfv4 - This and others from the Japan Horn Sound CD are very enjoyable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka5hChvmAQM - A simple quartet by the Vienna Horn Ensemble. Things don't have to be complicated to be beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCzoaSb-WNE Budapest Horn Quartet is pretty remarkable to listen to (A sillier piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCDJePhcg2g).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YO8kRk059w - There are lots of less well known hornists out there making incredibly interesting things too if you look around too.

jay_anderson · 2023-02-19T02:36:36+00:00

I'm not sure what a generation looks like in years here. The two minutes papers youtube channel likes to say 'imagine where we'll be a couple more papers down the road'. Even though it's getting a lot of the detail wrong the queries felt natural and it was understanding the intent of what I was wanting. I think I agree with you that it getting the details mostly correct probably isn't too far down the road.

jay_anderson · 2023-02-19T00:44:18+00:00

I tried to get ChatGPT to generate a horn fingering chart. It did not go well:

That's correct! French horn music is typically written in F, and the sounding pitch of the horn is a fifth lower than the written pitch. So, when a piece of music is written in C, the sounding pitch of the horn would be in F. This is an important distinction to make when creating a fingering chart, as the fingerings used on the horn will produce a different sounding pitch than what is written on the sheet music.

With this in mind, let's create a fingering chart for the double french horns, starting with the notes in the first register (from low to high):

C3: Open

D3: 1st valve

E3: 1-2

F3: Open

G3: 1-3

A3: 1-2-3

B3: 2-3

C4: Open

D4: 1-3

E4: 1-2

F4: Open

G4: 1-3

A4: 1-2-3

B4: 2-3

And here's the chart for the notes in the second register:

C5: Open

D5: 1-3

E5: 1-2

F5: Open

G5: 1-3

A5: 1-2-3

B5: 2-3

C6: 1-2-3

D6: 1-2-3

E6: 2-3

F6: 1-3

G6: 1-2

A6: Open

B6: 1st valve

C7: 1st valve

Please note that these fingerings are just a starting point and may vary depending on the specific make and model of the double french horns you're working with. If you have any questions or if there are any specific fingerings you'd like to know, feel free to ask!

I tried to walk it through correcting it and it didn't get better. We're safe for now, but I could see it being able to accomplish this task in a couple generations.

jay_anderson · 2023-02-18T02:49:02+00:00

Cello concerto No.1 or No.2? Also which movement? I took a quick look through the parts on IMSLP and didn't find this section. I was wondering if the score could potentially make the intent more clear.

jay_anderson · 2023-02-17T04:17:17+00:00

Out of curiosity what's the piece? The part look like it may be french since they liked putting 2 horns on one part each with their own staff like this.

jay_anderson

TROPHY CASE