It has now been 2 weeks working from home. Normally I like working from home when I need to concentrate on writing a report. But with the rest of the family around it is a bit chaotic, and I need to keep pushing Alexander to do some homework instead of sitting on the playstaion all day. It is the way he keeps in contact with his friends though.
Luckily, before the virus hit I found a great Trumpet and Woodwind store in Copenhagen called I.K.Gottfried and took my old Getzen 300 silver-plated trumpet to have some maintenance. Unfortunately, the leadpipe was showing signs of corrosion and they were worried it would not survive an ultrasonic clean. So I bought a second-hand Yamaha YTR-2330 lacquered trumpet whilst their technician took a closer look at the Getzen. Apart from a few spazmodic attempts in the basement over the years, I have not seriously played the trumpet for nearly 20 years. At first I could not play for any longer than about 5 minutes, and only in the middle register. But now after playing daily for 2 weeks, my lips are improving. I can play for half and hour or more, and my range is nearly back to what it used to be, although some days I stuggle in the lower register. It has been great getting back to one of my old loves. It is so soothing playing music when everything outside of the house is a crazy mess!
At first when the lock-in started, I was looking forward to the start of the AFL season and watching my beloved Bombers. I did manage to watch a slightly delayed streaming of them winning the first game of the season (without spectators). Unfortunately, the AFL season was put on hold after this, and there is no live sport (of interest to me) that I can watch anymore.
Every now and then, I also do a little work on my Gammon One-Name Study. I am still cross-checking names between my indexes and the ROAK Family Group. I am also entering the faux marriage certificates that I received from the Barnstaple Marriage Challenge into a new tree to see if I get any matches with other trees, or can extract a family of two out of it.
For Debian, I sponsored an upload of a new version of Parlatype, and the brand new Libre Office extension for it. If you ever need to transcibe some speech to text, take a look at Parlatype.
Before the coronavirus hit all public events around the world, I had booked flights to Ireland to see Crowded Hose in the summer. This weekend I went onto the Neil Finn website to see if there was any news about concerts being cancelled. Unfortunatley, the first few dates on their upcoming tour have been cancelled. Whilst there I noticed that Neil Finn was broadcasting daily shows on his Fangradio to give some joy in these strange days. I am really enjoying listening to the backlog that he uploaded over the last week. It is great to hear this music legend playing some of his fantastic songs, sometimes alone, and sometimes with his sons. He also does some great covers including some Beatles songs. I am listening to “Fall At Your Feet” as I type this.
This week I will hopefully have time to take part in the Beta Testing for the next release of Ubuntu Studio. If you want to take part too, there are instructions on the ISO QA Tracker website where you can also download the images.
Ross Gammon's Blog 