Some Blog Site

A while back I posted some information about Tree Climbers Guild, although they might not appreciate that I capitalized their band name here.

I’m taking this opportunity to point out that their songs are now on YouTube. Feel free to enjoy some of the sounds of my college days.

Tree Climbers Guild album

One upside to being sheltered in place is that there are now some new accents on the Accenterator.com site. You can now train yourself how to sound like Elmer Fudd, Scooby Doo, or Mark Wahlberg. Oh, and there’s Beaker.

And it seems the German accent code went missing. I’ll have to re-write that one, as the only other place a backup might be is on a laptop that’s in a building that is closed due to fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Officially it’s closed because it has been deemed a non-essential business, but I’m thinking liability is a factor too.

Anyway, Elmer Fudd was the easiest to write. It took longer to find a decent picture of him than to code his accent. And the Boston accent (“smaht pahk”) took much longer to write than I expected. It was supposed to be just replace the Rs with Hs but it turns out to be more complicated than that.

My kids like to tease me by playing Christmas music before Thanksgiving, even though I am trying to raise them in the truth that the Christmas season does not start until after Thanksgiving. But we got snow here on Halloween, so it’s easy to see why they felt like it.

Anyway, Christmas is a very popular time for Pachelbel’s Canon in D. If only he were around today to collect royalties…

I figured I might as well add a contribution into the mix. Here are some links to the song in various file formats, as I didn’t want to go through the hassle of setting up an audio player within this blog. I’m assuming your device will know at least one of these formats and can play it. Note: the MIDI format is the worst of this lot, at least on my computer.

Pachelbel and Soul in MP3 format
Pachelbel and Soul in WAV format
Pachelbel and Soul in MIDI format

And here’s the score, in case you’re, umm, keeping score.
Pachelbel and Soul in PDF format

I started trying other parts of the song too, and everything worked well together. I just didn’t feel like spending more time on it, but there’s a lot one could do with this combination.

As a bonus, I finally have an ending to Heart and Soul that I like. I’ve heard a couple different endings and I never could remember what the official ending to the tune was. Now I’m going to stick with this amalgamation.

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2018 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2018 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It was just Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2018. Last year’s champion, Jackson is again the most popular boy’s name in the US. Aiden is losing popularity fast – if it were a stock I would say sell now (or rather, you should have sold last year).
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again.

Some Stats

• The top 6 names for the boys are the same, but Noah and Aiden switched spots in #3 and 4.
• The top 6 names for the girls are the same as 2017, it’s just that Amelia jumped 2 spots from #6 to 4.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 2.
• Again, Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 3.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (275/1000 vs. 186/1000 alternates)
• Kason once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 8 (and Kayson overtook Kason as the more popular variant). And Aiden lost a variation so now it has only 6.
• For the girls, Adaline lost a variation so it is now tied with Madalyn, Layla, and Amaya at 6.
• Sophia is still the runaway favorite for the girls, but the gap is closing. Sophia is on the decline. In fact, all the top names, other than Amelia, are on the decline.

2018 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2017 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2017 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It was just Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2017. Last year’s champion, Jackson is again the most popular boy’s name in the US. And it is widening the gap over Aiden – Jackson’s count is going up and Aiden’s count is going down. So much so, in fact, that Liam has jumped above Aiden.

No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again.

Some Stats

• The top 4 names for the boys are the same, in mostly the same order except for Liam jumped up to #2.
• The top 5 names for the girls are the same as 2016, it’s just Ava and Isabella swapped spots at 4 and 5.
• Liam has taken the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 2. Noah previously held the record
• Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 3.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (275/1000 vs. 190/1000 alternates)
• Kason once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 8. And only Aiden had 7 variations.
• For the girls, Adaline once again claimed the title of most variations – still at 7.
• Sophia is still the runaway favorite for the girls, but the gap is closing. Sophia is on the decline.

2017 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

I was looking at fire pit designs. There’s no shortage of ideas out there in internetland if you want examples.

But the examples fall into one of two categories: designed to look good (impressive/sleek/rustic/etc.) or DIY for cheap.

The examples that make it into the blogs or websites with the title of “42 Awesome Fire Pit Ideas” (or similar) are not designed to function well.

Caveat: this applies to fire pits meant to burn wood. Gas-burning fire pits are a different matter.

The common theme I noticed with the vast majority of the fire pits is that their designs are bad for combustion. Good combustion requires fresh air. The designs I saw had no fresh air inlet.

“But it’s outside – there’s fresh air all around! You don’t need an air inlet,” you may object.

I’d agree if the fire pit were wide enough. But most of these fancy-looking designs are smallish boxes that don’t leave much room around the outside for new air to filter in.

Think of the fire pit as a very short chimney. What would happen to a normal fireplace if it was closed except for at the top of the chimney? Something like that is happening on these fire pits with solid walls and floor. The hot air is going out the top. The only way for replacement air to get in is to fight against the exhaust air by coming down the sides of the fire pit.

For best results (better fire, less smoke, more complete combustion), a fire pit needs to have a way for fresh air to get at the bottom of the fire.

My suggestion is to space some holes in the fire pit walls near the bottom and to have the logs up on a grate.

In case you are wondering, all our fires so far have just been logs on the ground – no grate, but no walls either.

In our Chrysler minivan (5th generation, model years 2008-2017), I had one of the rear brake calipers seize about a year ago. It turned out to be the lower slide pin that wouldn’t move.

In that design, the slide pin and boot are part of the fixed bracket, not the actual caliper. I couldn’t figure out a quick and easy way to fix it. Can’t replace a slide pin if it won’t slide.

At least they thought ahead and put a hex head on the end of the slide pin. So the pin wouldn’t slide back and forth, but I could put a wrench on it and wiggle it a little bit.

The rubber boot surrounds the slide pin and protects it from water/dust/dirt/salt/etc. In this case, it also prevented me from lubricating the pin so that it would move again. So I went against standard practice and cut a small slit in the boot. I then was able to stick the straw from the can of WD-40 inside the boot and put some WD-40 in there.

I then used the wrench to work the WD-40 throughout the slide pin and I could eventually move the pin fully again.

That was supposed to be a temporary measure. Mainly because I had the caliper off in order to replace the brake pads, and I couldn’t get the caliper back on with the pin stuck. Cutting a hole in the protective boot is not a good long-term measure. Lubricating the slide pin with WD-40 instead of brake grease is not a good long-term measure.

But that was several months ago and I actually forgot about it, probably because it has been working well.

Then this last weekend I noticed that particular brake that I fixed last year was noticeably cooler than the brake on the other side. I figured that meant it wasn’t working anymore, so I investigated. It turns out that it was working fine, it was the other side was running hot because its caliper was seized, causing the brake to drag all the time. Of course, it was the lower pin of the rear caliper, so it seems that’s a trouble spot for that caliper design.

At least I knew what to do this time – nick a spot in the boot, put some WD-40 in there, and work the pin loose with a wrench. It went rather well. We will see how long this side keeps working – the other side is still going strong.