Music to my Day

All my life I've enjoyed listening to things.  As a kid I could identify my dad's logging truck at about 2 miles - this in a town filled with logging trucks, and spent hours learning to mimic our cat and dog (though I usually don't admit to that).  Lately I've started paying attention to a few of the ways in which I use sound, and decided to share the following example.

I was driving over Hagwilget bridge today, and the sound wasn't quite right, so I carefully adjusted my speed till the sound of the tires going across the grating of the bridge hit the right frequency.  I don't know exactly which frequency, but it's the frequency of the note occupied by the word "it" in The Beatles' song "Hey Jude", when you listen to the line "don't make 'it' bad" - so think of it as a "don't make iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit" as you go across the bridge.

Now for a moment of truth - the sound that sounds "right" for me, is the sound my car makes going 60km/h.  I think it's a good speed, since it is the same note as the speed limit, just an octave higher.  If I am ever pulled over, my reply to the officer will be "it sounded like I was doing the right speed," but I'm not sure they'll buy it as a valid excuse. If I were to figure out which note it actually is, I could take the hertz, convert 60km/h into m/s, and determine how many bumps on the bridge, then time my transit time across it at a constant frequency and calculate how many total, but that sounds like a lot of work.

Were I to sit on the grass above the bridge and listen to the other vehicles I could use the sounds they made to estimate their speed.  An octave lower - 30km/h - a fifth higher, would be a ration of 3/2 over the lower note, or 45km/h.  A 4th higher, or 4/3, would be 40km/h.

This might seem like I'm focusing on pitch a lot, but I don't think that I'm out of the ordinary, I just took the time analyze one way in which I know that I rely on the sound something is making to tell if it is doing what I want it to be. I know that on the highway I rely almost entirely on the pitch of my car to know if I'm going the correct speed.  This is the main reason why it's initially difficult to drive somebody else's vehicle - the sound is wrong, so I have to constantly be correcting my speed, and glancing down at the speedometer.  Luckily most cars shift around the same rpm so I don't have to adjust for that.

I know that there must be dozens of other small everyday activities in which pitch plays an important role, but I can't think of any more of them at the moment, but I am trying to pay attention.  Are they any ways in which you use sound in your day to day lives that you find interesting?

Sauerkraut Soup

I took a break from studying to make some soup, so I thought I'd put the recipe here while I watch the Canucks trying not to end up down by three games.

4 potatoes

1 onion

2 carrots

Cut these up, and put them in a pot to steam, then throw some water in another pot and bring it to a boil. Put in the following:

1 quart home-made sauerkraut.

1 quart canned tomatoes

handful of dried pine-mushrooms

Season it with some taco seasoning, or curry seasoning, and garlic powder, but remember that the sauerkraut has salt in it. I threw in the juice of the canned beans as well, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil.

Once the veggies were steamed, I put them in the soup, and let it simmer for a bit, then sit for a bit so the potatoes could soak up some of the flavour, and then had with some bread, that I thought was the whitest looking brown bread I'd ever seen, until I double checked the bag, and apparently I'd gotten white bread instead of brown. The only downside was that I couldn't smell the pinemushrooms that much as the sauerkraut was pretty strong, however they still added a really nice texture!

When my mom makes sauerkraut soup she uses rice instead of other veggies, and veggie-burger instead of black beans and pine mushrooms for protein... I think I like the rice for potatoes, but I'd keep my other changes!

Now back to the game. Go Canucks Go! and I promise to get a lot of homework done after the game :-).

Podcast 11

Podcast 11 covers a little bit more of transitive animate verbs (conjunct for 1/2 > 3 direct and 3 > 4 direct) and dives into a little bit of "Clue". I think it gives a lot of information, so I'm probably going to plan podcast 12 a bit more and do another game of "Clue" with a few new words. In some ways, I think another couple dozen lessons and there'd be enough info to start learning from other sources or from a speaker - just the next lessons are going to be building slower for a while as there's a lot of info that needs to be solidified before I can move on a lot.

Lesson 11

There it is - enjoy!

A little bit more...

Here's three more lessons. Lessons 8 and 9 go over some vocabulary and a few fairly straightforward concepts. The recording is better, but it's a little less structured. Lesson 10 introduces transitive animate verbs and a couple ways of making them from transitive inanimate ones. Clearly fascinating! At least to me. I'll limit myself to making two tomorrow so as not to take too much time from homework.

Lesson 8

Lesson 9

Lesson 10

-dale-

Time to learn!

So, this afternoon after teaching two classes I decided that the time had come to just start making some podcasts - Michif audio lessons. However, rather than spending five hours designing each lesson, two hours recording, and another four hours editing, I decided to just wing it, do shorter lessons, make them a little more compact, and prep them on the fly. I'm happy to report it's working good so far, so here's the first seven lessons! I'm expecting plenty of questions about them, so feel free to ask away.

The lessons are sequential, and are slowly working through a scope and sequence that I developed some time ago with a more ambitious plan in mind, but I've decided that if I don't do it now it might be years before I ever get the time or resources to do it professionally, so I'm just diving right in.

For those of you who are wondering, I'm not a native speaker, though I am fairly fluent. I know the grammar quite well, which is what I'm focusing on outlining here for you.

With that in mind - here we go:

Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3

Lesson 4

Lesson 5

Lesson 6
Lesson 7

More lessons to follow - and slightly better quality probably!

Getting the most out of an experience

I just got back from spending two days on the harder half of the Juan de Fuca trail (pictures to follow), and what an adventure! My legs hurt, my feet hurt, my shoulders hurt, even my eyes are a little sore, clearly I had a good time.

About 10km in I started thinking about how doing this trip compared to picking mushrooms. Strange how every time I'm hiking the first thing I think about is mushrooms. Anyways - I was trying to compare the two activities - hiking in a straight line vs hiking while hunting for something, and I came up with the following contrasts.

One: they're both tough. While we were hiking I argued that picking mushrooms was harder, but in reality, they're both tough. The terrain we were hiking was all up and down (same picking mushrooms) and we were carrying packs (lighter than when I'm picking mushrooms) but generally I stash my pack and run areas up and down with a lighter bucket. Hunting I'm off trails, over and under logs, but then I don't have to walk through mud. I do however have to push my way through trees. If I'm stuck out after dark while hiking I just keep following the trail, but if I'm picking mushrooms I have to find my way with no trail in the dark. Looking at this hike in particular, it's almost always a lot colder outside while I'm hunting mushrooms - but then I'm a lot warmer when I'm sleeping at home! Definitely a sleeping bag is something I need to take with me next time (my own was in Alberta). After thinking it all through though, I have to go with hunting mushrooms. Don't get me wrong, I loved the hike - it was great time with friends, and I do enjoy pushing myself to the max, but it was different some how...

After looking at all these differences, I really just came up with one difference that actually matters to me, and that is my frame of mind while doing each one. While I'm walking a ridge hunting mushrooms, I'm constantly looking left, right, ahead, behind, searching for spots of white, needle-beds, bumps in the moss that weren't there before or that look like they might be young. I'm looking for signs that someone else was in my patch, I'm watching for animals, listening for things that don't sound right (especially while I'm alone!) or don't look right. I'm scouting, keeping track of the area I've covered, deciding on the best route to cover all of the territory without running out of energy. When I'm hiking a trail, it feels like all I'm thinking about is putting one foot in front of the other.

Not that I'm not thinking about other things, but it's not the same. I look at a hillside while hiking, I'm not looking for anything in particular. Sure I try to "appreciate" it for it's natural beauty, but my mind flashes over it without really registering anything. I see a beach, sure it's beautiful, but I just don't interact with the environment in the same way as I do when I'm there with a purpose.

I'm sure with time I could learn to appreciate just walking, and to some extent I do, and perhaps if I had never done either before I might enjoy (or hate) both picking mushrooms and hiking equally... but for that to be the case I would have to find a reason for me to study the location with the same intensity I use when hiking through a patch, and so far I can't think of what that might be.

And, I think that this train of thought might apply to other aspects of my life as well. So there's some more food for thought.

-dale-

Supper Soup

For supper - and breakfast, and lunch, and possibly supper again.

Take two pots, one for broth, one for steaming. Into the one for steaming put three giant carrots cut up, a big turnip (cut up), half a cabbage, and a couple potatoes (add the potatoes later on).

Into the broth pot add a bunch of water, then mung beans, cook for a while, then add half a can of leftover blackbeans, a half quart of canned tomatoes, leftover tomato sauce, an onion cut up, some onion powder, italian seasoning, tumeric, salt, a scoop of peanut butter, some pepper of some sort, a bit of brewer's yeast, and then bring it to a boil for a while. Also add a little bit of oil - I used some canola and peanut oil, but not much since the peanut butter is already pretty oily.

Dump the veggies into the broth, and serves ten, at a minimum! as it is three of us had a good meal, and I'm eating leftovers for breakfast, and freezing the rest to use as a base for the next soup I make.

What I'd do differently.... maybe use frozen peas to cool it down instead of frozen corn. Gotta use one though cuz i'm just too impatient to wait for it to cool down! also... maybe add some spinach to the broth at the end, or some grated zucchini...

Served with sourdough bread, toasted, and fresh cauliflower and broccoli with some dip.