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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.
(IMG) [1] mason jar clock mug with USB LED display
(IMG) [2] MinervaX and Tree of Song
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