Lilypond 2.24 was finally released after several years in beta. This update includes a stricter way of representing repeats with alternatives which changes the look of the rendered music a bit. All the scores on https://github.com/svenax/bagpipemusic have been updated and reformatted accordingly.
Category Archives: Information
All sheetmusic updated again
I have finally switched from my custom bagpipe.ly to the one included in the Lilypond distribution. This meant moving some stuff from bagpipe_new.ly to bagpipe_extra.ly in https://github.com/svenax/bagpipemusic. It didn’t really affect any of the tunes in the archive but I regenerated all the scores anyways to be sure everything worked as intended.
I think this is a good change since it will keep my scores from diverging too much from the standard notation. It may also work as an incentive to send updates to the Lilypond project more often.
All sheetmusic updated
All sheetmusic PDFs have been rebuilt (again) using slightly bolder beams and stems. It is a subtle change, but I think it looks better this way.
Time for another vanity domain name
I have had a few vanity domain names before, but I let them expire since I really had no use for them. But this one I may keep! It’s axelsson.expert how about that? The web address redirects here, and that will not change, but you can (and should) now email me at sven@axelsson.expert. Nice – and not at all pretentious😁.
No more aleph.se
I have let my vanity domain א.se expire. It was fun while it lasted, but I never really used the name for anything. My other vanity domain, piobaireachd.ninja, is still active and redirecting here (to svenax.net). It has been payed for two more years, so I have plenty of time to decide what to to with it.
I am aleph dot se
This morning nic.se released single letter domain names for the .se domain. They all got snatched up immediately of course, and many are supposed to be sold at Tradera.se tomorrow, most likely for a lot more than 125 SEK, which is the normal price.
But just for the heck of it, I got myself the name א.se, seeing that all western letter names got taken. Anyways, it is short and sweet and looks like it could stand for Axelsson, so maybe I’ll keep it.
I am the piobaireachd.ninja
Just for fun, I got myself a domain name under one of the new vanity top domains. I am now the http://piobaireachd.ninja! Is that cool or what? The domain just redirects to http://svenax.net for now. Maybe I’ll use it for something else later on.
Pebble Steel unboxing
Not a year later, another Pebble watch. This time it looks less like it was put together in someone’s garage, and more like a cheap watch from your local discount store 🙂 No, really, it is very nice. It shipped free of charge with DHL Express this time. Incredibly efficient – it took about 30 hours for the full trip from Hong Kong to my doorstep in Göteborg, with brief stops in Leipzig, Germany and København, Denmark. Impressive.
Here are the obligatory unboxing pics. Enjoy – I know I will.
Pebble, a month later
So, I’ve had my Pebble for a while now, and I still like it. The vibration works great for waking me up. I never had a wrist watch that could do that with sound. More exciting though, is that things are finally happening at the apps front. The watch face SDK was released a few weeks ago, and boy was there a pent up need to produce watch faces!
Most are crap of course, but some are really good. I am currently using Revolution, which is a excellent. Huge display of hours and minutes, so even I can see it. But it also shows seconds and date. Also, some user written apps are showing up – still far fewer that watch faces though. I am using Timer occasionally. It is a simple but useful countdown timer that really should have been built-in. And to show what is possible, we have a Hex Editor no less! Yes, it allows you to totally screw up the watch OS and other apps. Weird, but why not.
And of course, the RunKeeper app has finally appeared! Woot! This was announced already when the Kickstarter project was set up, and was probably the main reason why many decided to get a Pebble. The current version only displays distance/speed in miles. Hoping for a fix to that asap …
Pebble impressions
I have had my pebble for a few weeks now, and I actually like it a lot, even with it’s current limitations. There is a small uproar going on in the Pebble community because all the promised watch apps and the developer SDK has failed to appear yet. And I agree – I too would like to try writing cool apps for the watch. However, I do believe that will be available at a later point, and the watch is actually quite usable even as it is.
My favorite function is a very simple one. The motion sensor in the watch turns the backlight on at a flick of the wrist. This is so useful that all electronic watches should have it.
The main functions the watch has right now (apart from telling time) is SMS and mail notifications. SMS is flawless, mail works most of the time but not always. This is apparently a problem with the iOS API and the Pebble guys are working on it – or so they say. The watch also works fine as an iTunes controller.
A big drawback is unfortunately a severely diminished battery life on the iPhone due to the increased Bluetooth traffic. I used to get at least two days out of my iPhone before Pebble, and now I get barely one day. Irritating, but not really Pebble’s fault.