This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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September 2020
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Curmudgeon’s Corner: Fundamental Functioning

On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner, Sam and Ivan’s main topics are the COVID pandemic, SCOTUS developments and their political ramifications, and of course Election 2020. Really, what else would they talk about this week? Oh. Yeah. Headphones. They also talked about headphones. Because of course they did.

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Show Details:

Recorded 2020-09-26

Length this week – 2:16:02

  • (0:00:23-0:15:16) But First
    • Headphone choices
    • Podcast audio quality
  • (0:15:57-0:51:07) Pandemic
    • Florida is done
    • Schools
    • Data-driven decisions
    • Retail collapse
    • The recovery
  • (0:53:09-1:30:11) SCOTUS
    • Vote timing
    • The downward spiral of failing democracy
    • Delaying tactics?
    • Election cases?
  • (1:30:58-2:15:40) Election 2020
    • Possible election results shenanigans?
    • The interregnum if Biden wins
    • Election Graphs’ odds
    • The interregnum if Trump wins
    • Scenario if Biden wins, but Republicans keep the Senate
    • The election is close now
The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch. Our intro is “The Oh of Pleasure” (Amazon MP3 link) Our outro is “Celestial Soda Pop” (Amazon MP3 link) Both are from the album “Deep Breakfast” (iTunes link) Please buy his music and support his GoFundMe.

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Complacency Factor

This week on Curmudgeon’s Corner, Sam and Ivan start the show with a special reaction to the news of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death recorded right after the news broke on Friday. Then you get the show that was already in the can before that upended everything. In that show from the before times, they talked about Election 2020 and the pandemic, fantasized a bit about vacations once the pandemic recedes, and Sam plugged a live stream.

Click below to listen and subscribe!

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Show Details:

Recorded 2020-09-18

Length this week – 2:21:38

  • (0:00:01-0:33:16) RBG Special Report
  • (0:33:39-0:57:25) But First
    • Livestream of CC editing
    • Post-pandemic vacations
  • (0:59:23-1:43:39) Election 2020
    • Election Graphs update
    • Biden advantages compared to Clinton
    • Trump campaign
    • Biden campaign
    • What can still change?
  • (1:44:17-2:21:15) Pandemic
    • Current trends
    • Careless people
    • Trusting CDC and FDA
    • Schooling situation
The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch. Our intro is “The Oh of Pleasure” (Amazon MP3 link) Our outro is “Celestial Soda Pop” (Amazon MP3 link) Both are from the album “Deep Breakfast” (iTunes link) Please buy his music and support his GoFundMe.

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Into the Zeitgeist

On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner, Sam and Ivan’s big topics are Election 2020 and the concentric circles of corruption surrounding Donald Trump. But they also talk a little bit about the pandemic, the fire and smoke on the West Coast, gender reveal parties, and a foundation run by Ivan and his wife. So buckle in and listen!

 

Click below to listen and subscribe!

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View Podcast in iTunes
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Show Details:

Recorded 2020-09-12
Length this week – 2:17:20

  • (0:00:22-0:29:44) But First
    • Pandemic feedback
    • Manu for Inclusion
    • West Coast fires
    • Gender reveal parties
  • (0:30:30-1:31:37) Trump Related Corruption
    • Expensive microwaves
    • Trump minions
    • Blackmail?
    • DoJ defending Trump?
    • Slow justice
    • DHS whistleblower
    • Trump admits downplaying pandemic
  • (1:32:19-2:16:59) Election 2020
    • Durham report
    • Squashing investigations
    • Polling predictions
    • Russian hacking
    • Trump campaign low on cash
    • Disinformation campaigns
    • Voter suppression

The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.

Our intro is “The Oh of Pleasure” (Amazon MP3 link)

Our outro is “Celestial Soda Pop” (Amazon MP3 link)

Both are from the album “Deep Breakfast” (iTunes link)

Please buy his music and support his GoFundMe.

Alex is Eleven!!!

As of 8:40 UTC this morning (1:40 AM Pacific, 4:40 AM Eastern) Alex was exactly 11 years old according to my calculations that include time zones, leap years, the fact that years are not an even number of days, etc.

We’re not going to have an “interview” like we have had every other year. Alex doesn’t like them and hasn’t cooperated in the last few years. So instead, to get an idea of what Alex is like when he is nice and casual and interacting actively, here is the last full live stream he did. Right around when we did this live stream, YouTube started being fussy and sometimes deciding his live streams and videos were not appropriate for YouTube, shutting them down or removing them. Of course, there was NOTHING actually wrong with them. Sigh.

Anyway, here is Alex working on editing one of the old videos he recorded when he was six years old in Final Cut Pro, talking about what he is doing as he works. No face cam of 10-year-old Alex, just audio. And I’m annoyingly distracting in the background doing another live stream trying to edit a separate episode at the same time. Because that is what Alex wanted. But you get the idea.

What new things has Alex been up to this year?

Well, as mentioned above, YouTube has been screwing with his channel, removing the first 64 videos he ever published back when he was six. Plus they blocked some of his live streams and prohibited him from live streaming for a couple of months. That restriction has been lifted, but because things just sometimes get declared not OK even though they are no different than everything else we have done for the last nearly five years, we’ve not really put much new up since that started happening. Very frustrating. We still have eight hard drives full of videos from the last five years that have been recorded and are waiting for editing and publishing. But Alex is unsure how much effort he wants to put into it if he has to worry about things being taken down without us understanding why, or really being able to do much about it.

Anyway, what else. On the video editing front, Alex continues to increase his proficiency with Final Cut Pro X. We also spent some time earlier this year learning Motion for creating animated title sequences and such.

He has grown from playing Minecraft, where his creations are increasingly detailed and elaborate, to building mods for Minecraft. He has been using MCreator for building the mods themselves, and BlockBench for doing 3D modeling of new items and mobs. In some cases he’s even started looking at the Java code underlying some of this stuff to try to figure out what it is doing and to see if he can add functionality not built into MCreator by copying and modifying code people have used in other mods and made available publicly, or by searching the internet for discussions or tutorials about how people have done similar things in the past. He hasn’t actually published any of his work live so other people can use it yet, but he intends to. He just has this problem that he keeps thinking of new things he wants to add, so is never happy publishing the things he has already finished.

For both the editing and the mods, Alex’s vision for what he wants to create often exceeds his current knowledge and abilities. On the one hand, that means he can often be frustrated, but on the other, it is driving him to keep expanding what he knows how to do. At first, I was learning just enough about all of these tools to keep slightly ahead of him and help him figure out the next step toward what he wanted to do. At this point, while in a few cases I may have a better idea where to look to find where to start something, his actual skill at using all of these tools has far exceeded my own. He’ll still try to get me to do some of the more tedious work for him, but he has to show me how to do what he wants, and he can do it much faster than I can myself. (In most cases anyway.)

Aside from that he still does like to play Minecraft and a variety of other video games. He has YouTube channels he likes to watch and a variety of TV shows he keeps rewatching. This year he added watching the entire 2005-Present run of the modern era of Doctor Who. Then we more recently went back and started watching the classic era of the show starting with the beginning of the show from 1963. He doesn’t so much enjoy the actual stories of those old episodes. In comparison to the new ones, they are slow and clunky, and unsophisticated. But he very much enjoys mocking them for the bad acting and special effects, in many cases deconstructing it and talking about how he could easily do much better himself at this point. He has yet to actually try that though. It would be fun to watch if he does of course.

Oh. And that remote school pandemic thing?

Well, Alex has been absolutely thrilled to be at home rather than school. He has used that time for all of the kinds of things mentioned above, and more.

The actual remote school though?

Yeah. That was the first Zoom of 5th grade. Alex is not thrilled by this. I guess we’ll see how it goes and do our best, like everybody else.

Anything else?

Alex still loves his dogs Miley and Jetski.

Even with the pandemic, we’ve managed to expand our “bubble” to include his friend Kaylin, so she comes over to visit for about one weekend a month. (We thank her parents very much for letting us “borrow” her so often… she is here right now for his birthday.)

Although he still rarely speaks to outsiders, at home he is a constant stream of exciting ideas, thoughts, and opinions, strongly expressed.

All and all… eleven. Very much a tween at this point, with signs of teen starting to show occasionally.

Anyway, happy birthday Alex! Love you!

 

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Your Own Eyes

This week on Cumrudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan discuss Election 2020, including all the latest Trump scandals. They also discuss pandemic misinformation, and the challenges of the new school year. But first, they discuss some feedback, some numerical patterns, and frustrations with Facebook notifications and streaming television.

Click below to listen and subscribe!

1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
View Podcast in iTunes
View Raw Podcast Feed
Download MP3 File
Follow the podcast on Facebook
patreon-30x30 Support us on Patreon

Show Details:

Recorded 2020-09-05
Length this week – 2:14:31

  • (0:00:22-0:49:21) But First
    • 3-2-1
    • Feedback
    • Facebook notifications
    • Streaming TV
  • (0:51:50-1:43:17) Election 2020
    • Early voting
    • Polling stability
    • Trump and the military
    • Violence in the cities
    • Additional Trump scandals
    • Should Biden investigate Trump?
  • (1:43:55-2:14:10) Pandemic
    • Covid misinformation
    • New school year
    • Sports approaches

The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.

Our intro is “The Oh of Pleasure” (Amazon MP3 link)

Our outro is “Celestial Soda Pop” (Amazon MP3 link)

Both are from the album “Deep Breakfast” (iTunes link)

Please buy his music and support his GoFundMe.