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Stardate: 20200403.1636 | |
Location: Garage | |
Input Device: Tree of Song | |
Software: nano | |
Audio: Pump It Up (PSP video game music) | |
Visual: The Tree of Song + MinervaX Med Cart + PSP | |
Emotional State: Bleh...need a nap or coffee. | |
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I took today off as a vacation day since I just finished being on | |
call and I usually need some downtime afterwards. I want to do | |
stuff, like work on projects or something, but I think my body wants | |
me to rest. Maybe later. | |
Since I have been in my garage working, I have had time to organize | |
things. The cable management was pretty unmangeable so I was able | |
to run appropriate length of cables and tidy things up. I even put | |
my work equipment in brief cases so when Monday comes around, it | |
will be easier to set up and tear down. Prior to this, I kept having | |
to go in and out of the house for random cables or whatever every | |
day. | |
Sometimes when I go to the thrift stores, I end up getting used | |
brief cases. I find them to be very useful for storing some of my | |
tools and for keeping projects in one place and protected until | |
they're finished. Sometimes, they're good enough to be a project | |
case in itself. I used one for a portable battery recharging | |
station. I think I might have at least 10 brief cases now. | |
With my time in the garage, I have made some upgrades to the Tree of | |
Song. It now has my cheap Chinese LED keyboard being suspended by | |
a repurposed second-hand tablet stand. I also included a USB LED | |
display that I put in a glass mason jar mug (diffuser) and attached | |
to the Tree's Raspberry Pi, which I currently have displaying the | |
time.[1] Still on the fence about having it show UTC for anonradio. | |
To go along with the Tree of Song, I have retooled my Stinger | |
Levitator Med Cart that I got from a local ham swap meet a few | |
years ago. The laptop I used to have in there had a 4:3 | |
screen and it finally died...it was an Acer Travelmate 290 that ran | |
Debian. In its place, I have mounted a repurposed monitor arm (trash | |
from work) and a 15" MAG LCD monitor(4:3) with built in speakers. | |
I was hoping that I would be able to stuff it in the old monitor | |
housing on the cart, but it did not fit and I did not feel like | |
getting too creative with it so I just used the monitor arm. [2] | |
For the PC, I used a repurposed Dell Inspiron 3050 micro PC which now | |
has a 4GB RAM upgrade and runs Ubuntu MATE. It was a cheap refurb | |
that had Windows/2GB RAM that my kids used, but they have moved on to | |
other devices. I now call this the MinervaX Med Cart. Nice thing | |
about this setup with the Tree of Song is that they both have wheels | |
so I can push them to the side when I park my car or whatever in | |
the garage. | |
Right now, I have been extracting the audio from a music video game | |
on my PSP over to Audacity and converting it to mp3s. The game is | |
called Pump It Up:Exceed and there is an arcade version. I don't | |
play the game as much as I used to and when I do, sometimes I can't | |
even finish the whole song. Good thing they have a music video | |
section of the game where I can play the whole song without playing | |
the game. Since I don't usually take the PSP out, I figure that I | |
can still enjoy the music as mp3s. | |
Some of those tracks really bring back memories. I think a lot of | |
video game music is under appreciated. I have other music rhythm | |
games that I want to extract the music from that I'll probably | |
get to later on. I could probably try to find the music online, | |
but eh, this is good enough. | |
[1] mason jar clock mug with USB LED display | |
[2] MinervaX and Tree of Song | |
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