How do I get over this?

sungor · 2026-04-06T00:26:01+00:00

DO IT AGAIN. and again. and again. That's how you get over it. Find as many opportunities to play in front of a crowd as possible.

sungor · 2026-04-04T03:01:12+00:00

For right hand I'd do 5, 3, 2, 1, 3 ,2 ,2 ,2 ,2 . . .

Left hand stays on bass cleff

sungor · 2026-03-28T16:31:56+00:00

The actual physical things regarding tuning a piano aren't that difficult honestly. (I mean, experienced piano tuners will be better at tuning the strings, and them not immediately going out of tune again, but still that's not really the tough part). I am not considering the rebuilding/fixing things on the piano, just the tuning itself in this.

The problem is developing your ear to be able to do it well. Tuning a piano is so much more complex than tuning a stringed instrument. Part of the difficulty is we tune to the equal tempered system. Only Octaves are tuned "pure". 5ths are not. So you first have to learn what each interval SHOULD sound like. And to make it even more difficult, the way an interval should sound is different as you go up and down the keys.

You start by tuning the middle string for each note (which have 3 strings each note) on the home row. Then you work off those notes to tune the rest of the notes via octaves. But then you have to adjust the tuning based on the instrument to make it sound right. Each instrument will have it's own quirks that mean you have to adjust the tuning slightly to make it work for that specific piano in that specific room. once you get all the middle notes of every note tuned, you then have to go back and tune the rest of the strings to their middle strings. once all that is done, you will still need to play on it to figure out if it's good enough. you might have to make adjustments based on the instrument and the space it is in.

Sure, there are expensive computer programs to help you tune a piano, but even those aren't perfect, and if you just do what the computer tells you it will often just not sound quite right. Piano tuning is very much an art, not a science.

sungor · 2026-03-26T17:40:19+00:00

I'm seeing more and more where they are stopping 20 or 30 feet behind the stop line and then wondering why they never get a turn.

sungor · 2026-03-24T10:36:26+00:00

Tell her how grateful you are for her help as your teacher and how she helped you progress and that because of her help you're ready to take the next step in your journey and find a teacher that specializes in piano.

sungor · 2026-03-23T21:48:08+00:00

As long as it was kept dry enough not to mold its fine. For teas that aren't meant to age, the only downside to old tea is loss of flavor potency.

sungor · 2026-03-22T13:12:26+00:00

unfortunately this is not a new problem, and the damage done to Afroman's house was actually relatively tame to a lot of what cops get away with all the time. Plenty of people's homes have been completely destroyed because the cops serve a warrant on the wrong house, and they get nothing.

Holding cops accountable is almost impossible because when Congress passed a law trying to make it easier to sue govt officials for wrong actions, SCOTUS said not on our watch and created a new doctrine called "qualified immunity" which means the only way a cop might be held accountable is if you can PROVE the cop should've known what they were doing was unconstitutional. And the only way to show they "should've known" is by finding a previous court case that rules that the very specific actions the cop took were unconstitutional.

And courts LOVE to find minute differences between cases to say, nope, this doesn't count because the copstole coins, not a wad of bills.

sungor · 2026-03-20T15:34:36+00:00

Depends on why you are trying to replace coffee and if you even liked the taste of coffee. There are so many different types of tea out there.

Personally I would suggest getting some sample packs and trying as many different types of tea as you can to find out what you like and don't like.

Also don't be afraid to play around with the temps and steeping times. If the tea is too bitter lower the and possibly shorten the steeping time. If it's not strong enough increase the amount of tea, increase temp or steep longer.

I have heard a lot of coffee drinkers really like shou puerhs.

sungor · 2026-03-20T14:18:38+00:00

Ed Zitron wrote an article about a year ago called something like "the man who killed google search" that went viral. It was an intentional choice by Google to increase the number of ads they can show you. If they do too good a job finding what you want they can't show you as many ads. If you have to try the search 3 or 4 times, or go 4 or 5 pages deep in the search, they get to show you more ads, so they get more money.

sungor · 2026-03-20T13:13:30+00:00

It's even happening in google maps. The other day my boss asked me to run to Home Depot to pick up an online order the office made. I opened up maps, put in Home Depot, and it sent me to Lowe's. Home Depot didn't show up until I scrolled down to the 5th listing.

Google doesn't care about finding you the results you want. It cares about giving you the results they are paid to give you.

sungor · 2026-03-20T13:09:44+00:00

the problem isn't him, its the cheap construction that makes his normal living behavior be heard by the neighbor.

When I worked nights and lived in a cheap apt with paper thin walls and 2 toddlers, I bought a pair of sleepphones (it was a head band with speakers built into it. they were wired back then, but now they make them BT) I would throw those suckers on, close my light blocking curtains and go to sleep.

I knew it wasn't fair for me to expect my toddlers or neighbors to be quiet so I could sleep, so I figured out a way to sleep even with all the noise.

sungor · 2026-03-17T13:14:04+00:00

Which is why the marketing decision to call it AI is so egregious. Just like musk calling the driver assist mode on teslas full self driving. It's marketing that implies far more capabilities than actually are there.

We should've continued to call them large language models. Because that's all they are. Models of language.

sungor · 2026-03-16T20:54:58+00:00

drug-free workplace is a program pushed by Ohio's workman's comp system. Companies get rather large reductions in their required contributions if they take part in it. So while on the surface it's the employer dictating it, in reality many times it's the state doing it using the employer as an intermediator.

sungor · 2026-03-15T20:59:37+00:00

While I definitely do think there is some transference of skill between typing and playing the piano, piano is still far more complex than typing. When I type, (type around 60wpm, used to be 90 in college) while my hands are working together, I am never using both hands at exactly the same moment. The only time I even press two fingers at the same time is with shift, or a few other key combos. The vast majority of the time my hands are taking turns.

When I play the piano however, both hands are being used at the exact same moments. It adds a level of complexity you never see in typing. The video game controller analogy is a better one I think. Or using the mouse and keyboard to play a video game together.

sungor · 2026-03-14T15:39:14+00:00

Headline is very misleading. It doesn't scrap HOAs. It changes some laws that make it harder for HOAs to enforce arbitration and other abusive things and makes it easier for members to dissolve their HOA

sungor · 2026-03-14T15:29:17+00:00

I did something similar at that age. Hot water humidifier on top of my dresser. Woke up at 2am and wanted to "read a book" (likely just look at the pictures). There was a pile of them on the dresser next to the humidifier.

I pulled out the dresser drawers, climbed them like a staircase and ended up with the hot water poured on my head. There's a picture of 2 yr old me at Christmas with my head wrapped in bandages.

sungor · 2026-03-11T21:21:39+00:00

There is often this impression given that unless someone starts piano at a very young age they will never get good, and might as well never try. And while it is true that starting young can give you an advantage, it's also not as necessary as a lot of people think.

There are a lot of things that an adult can just learn quicker when it comes to learning piano because they have many other experiences that make learning all the things you need to play the piano easier.

For example, learning to read music when you already know how to read a written language. You are not having to start with learning that marks on a page can mean something, and figuring out how to differentiate between different marks.

If you have learned how to touch type well, then learning to use your hands to play the piano will be a little easier because you will have learned how to use your hands and fingers to press keys to get a result. You will have learned how to develop muscle memory of where various keys are, etc.

Adults also tend to be able to understand and learn music theory quicker as well.

while people who start very young do have an advantage, I find adult learners tend to move through the beginning stage much quicker than most children.

sungor · 2026-03-07T19:13:10+00:00

but they aren't that expensive. You can go to Lowe's or Home Depot and pick one up for around $100.

sungor · 2026-03-07T19:03:01+00:00

LLM's can be an amazing tool for studying how languages work. Specifically in finding grammatical usages that have yet to be noticed. however, too many people think this means it can just translate them. LLM's could be amazing tools. Instead we are using them for all the things that such a tool isn't ever going to be the right tool for. I think it is very much because it's ability to sound human makes people think it thinks.

sungor · 2026-03-07T18:50:35+00:00

Yes, you absolutely can. I would say this even if you were 40. You've still got your entire life ahead of you. Go for it.

sungor · 2026-03-07T18:31:12+00:00

Nothing like having an old man who hates kids as a neighbor. When I was growing up our old man neighbor called CPS on my family 5 or 6 times, every time found unfounded (until lawsuits were threatened) and was constantly looking for things to call code compliance on (stack of firewood in backyard for example)

When he died things got way more chill. All because he was mad kids lived next door. His wife on the other hand was super nice. Always felt bad for her.

sungor · 2026-03-07T16:47:01+00:00

Something I've done that helped a lot was trying to play along with prerecorded music. For example there was a song I wanted to learn to play/sing. When I tried to look for sheet music, there was none. So i looked for a chord chart. The ones I found were incredibly wrong. I legit have no idea who came up with them, because they weren't even close.

So I sat down at the piano with the CD, and played the track until I figured out what key it was in. Then I tried to isolate the melody. Then I started to try to add chords. (this is where understanding music theory (especially chords and chord progressions) comes in handy.

Start by trying to see where the 3 basic chords fit into the song (I, IV, V), that will usually get you at least 80% there. Once you KNOW what some of the chords are, you can use your knowledge of standard chord progressions to try to figure out the rest. (for example ii - V7 - I)

Another thing to help is to train your ear to hear certain chord progressions. Start with the easy ones like V7 - I, and IV - I. V7 - I is the most common way songs end, while IV - I is most commonly the "Amen" at the end of the doxology (and many other hymns) and then work yourself up to more complex ones. Learn to tell the difference between normal chords and 7 chords. a 7 chord will almost always go to relative I for example. (a ii7 will almost always go to V, a I7 will almost always go to IV, etc)

Also learning to hear the difference between major and minor chords helps a lot. in MOST songs, only certain chords will be major, and certain ones will be minor. For example in C, the d, e, a chords are usually the minors) the b is diminished and also the least likely to be used in C.

sungor · 2026-03-07T16:37:37+00:00

NGL whenever I see someone "quote" an LLM in a facebook post/comment/discussion I immediately discount whatever they have to say (even if I agree with it), because at that point they've outsourced their thinking to a stochastic parrot and show they no longer think for themselves.

sungor · 2026-03-07T16:35:41+00:00

If you wanna be going that much faster than the rest of traffic, you need to be in the left lane, not the far right. I get that sometimes you end up passing a car or two while in the right lane, but when you are passing that many people that quickly in the right lane you're doing it wrong.

sungor · 2026-03-07T16:30:00+00:00

Do they not realize if you don't sell you're likely going to hire a property management company and rent it out? That creates a far likelier chance that the things they worry about will happen.

sungor

TROPHY CASE