Better living through Beowulf ✶

A blog by an English teacher about how great literature can change your life, or save a society from tearing itself apart.

Thursday, 30 October 2025

Hi, it’s me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology ✶

McSweeney’s on point.

Thursday, 23 October 2025

Song stretcher ✶

Slow down or speed up any audio file. Useful for learning fast passages, or sequences of notes, like Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar licks.

Saturday, 11 October 2025

Songs I like in each key

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Songs I like in each key to help practice piano chords and scales during livestreams. Nota bene: Verify and transpose chords as needed. Use ears. Eventually write or print the score of each song, or at least note down the chord progressions.

Major Key Song
C Imagine (chords), Allegro in C major, K.5a
C# Db I Just Called to Say I Love You, Sweet Child O’ Mine
D Planet Hunter, Carry On, Harvest Moon
D# Eb Pain (chords), Heathens, Superstition, Stay Faraway So Close (D for 🎸)
E My Favorite Things (chords) E Dorian & Ionian, One More Kiss, Dear, What About That Day
F Love, Try Not To Let Go (chords), Bird Hits Its Head Against The Wall
F# Gb Music is Mine, Undone - The Sweater Song, Girls Just Want To Have Fun
G All Blues, Pais e Filhos, Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay, Mississippi Goddam
G# Ab I Wanted To Leave, The Man Who Sold The World
A Three Little Birds, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, Over Everything (chords)
A# Bb Purple Rain, Chameleon
B The Boxer, Africa, Prelude Op. 28 No. 11 in B major
Minor Key Song
Cm All Along The Watchtower, Blues in C Minor
C#m Dbm Suspirium (chords), Echoes (chords), So Did We, 18 and Life
Dm Istanbul, Sultans of Swing, Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565, Hear The Bells, Reindeer King, Like Exploding Stones, Killing In The Name
D#m Ebm Étude in D-sharp minor, Society is My Friend, Earthbound
Em Peace Trail, Come As You Are, In The Moment, Sara, Planet Caravan, Sin City
Fm Before (chords), Yes, It’s Me, The Goldfish!, In The End
F#m Gbm Blade Runner Blues F#m7 & D (D6/9) F#m scale, Baltimore, Electrical Storm, Bang
Gm Shine On You Crazy Diamond, The Upper Peninsula, Überlin, G Song, Downbound Train, Pyramid
G#m Abm First Light (backing track), New Year’s Day (Am for 🎸)
Am Carbon, Love Theme from Spartacus, Thirteen Days, Exodus, Cadillac Assembly Line
A#m Bbm 29 Years, Nocturne op. 9 no. 1 in B flat minor, Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 35 (Cho)
Bm Walking in the Air, Pass the Mic, Dreams 
˚　✦　.　　.  ˚　.　　. ✦　 
  . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　.  ˚ ˚　　 *　　
　✦　 .　✶　.　✦　˚ 　✦˚　˚　　　　
    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Saturday, 4 October 2025

One Battle After Another ✶

Watched this in the cinema yesterday. Excellent film.

My favorite line was Benicio del Toro’s, channeling Nina Simone:

“You know what freedom is? No fear.”

Friday, 3 October 2025

C2PA Investigations ✶

Tim Bray looks into the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, or C2PA technical standard “…for publishers, creators and consumers to establish the origin and edits of digital content.”

So for me, it’s the P and A in C2PA that matter – provenance and authenticity. I think the technology has the potential to change the global Internet conversation for the better, by making it harder for liars to lie and easier for truth-tellers to be believed. I think the first steps that have been taken so far are broadly correct and the path forward is reasonably clear. All the little things that are broken, we can fix ’em.

And there aren’t that many things that matter more than promoting truth and discouraging lies.

Thursday, 14 August 2025

The Listening Book by W.A. Mathieu ✶

Recommended to anyone remotely interested in sound and music, reading this book is like discovering an unexplored and beautiful region of a world you thought you knew. Added to my list of books for thinking and learning.

New Kodak camera idea ✶

People who find this working at Kodak, please consider making a camera that has:

  1. 35mm-equivalent basic plastic lens, 6 megapixel sensor with big pixels, autofocus, center-weighted metering.

  2. No screen to see photos. Only a tiny LCD for basic settings like remaining pictures and remaining battery power.

  3. Pictures saved to replaceable built-in SD card, downloadable to computers via USB-C to USB-C connector.

  4. Long battery life (one whole day of shooting). Powered by rechargeable AA batteries.

  5. Splash proof.

  6. Sensor that adds grain to blown highlights and lost shadows.

  7. Less than $100.

  8. Bonus: Open source firmware.

Basically a competitor to the Camp Snap, but better.

Thank you!

Thursday, 7 August 2025

Lie flat is justice ✶

Via a post by Harvey Lederman on Scott Aaronson’s blog, where I left a comment. Everyone needs to play more and work less. A universal basic income is needed to make this happen.

See also, 躺平 Tang ping.

♫ The Sofa ✶

Beautiful new song by Wolf Alice, along with White Horses.

Friday, 1 August 2025

Improvisational space tune with special guest Yootsvik ✶

And amateur radio traffic, in the Elite: Dangerous holodeck program.

Tuesday, 29 July 2025

Who is (music) theory for? ✶

From an excerpt of William Allaudin Mathieu’s book about music, Harmonic Experience:

The question cannot help but arise, “Don’t some people get music naturally, without all of the discipline and commitment and analysis?” The answer is yes, some people do and so do you. We all do to some degree. Every action is partly intuitive and partly rational; the proportions change from action to action and from individual to individual. No one is entirely analytical in the process of learning music, and no one is entirely intuitive (although I’ve seen some serious contenders at both extremes). There is even a part of the psyche that actively seeks to not know. It wants sensual saturation and intuitive wholeness, the pure being of childhood, the animal self.

Richard Feynman lecture: hardware, software and heuristics ✶

One of the miseries of life is that everybody names things a little bit wrong, and so it makes a little bit harder to understand things than it would have been if they had been named differently.

One of his multitude of quotes.

Saturday, 26 July 2025

Modern font stacks ✶

System font stack CSS organized by typeface classification for every modern OS.

The fastest fonts available. No downloading, no layout shifts, no flashes — just instant renders.

Nice resource with the first chapter of Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll as example text.

Thursday, 24 July 2025

Wrist Mounted CD Launcher ✶

As an engineer – and, most importantly, a male – I’ve always had the strong urge to build things that shoot.

Amazing work, beautifully presented. Aaed Musa is like a real-life Geordi LaForge.

See also his CARA high precision robot driven by capstan drives.

Wednesday, 23 July 2025

Warbird clocks ✶

Found master clockmaker Dewey Clark’s wonderful old-school site while researching time keeping devices.

The factory service instructions for many of these non US clocks are simply not available. However, physics knows no nationality. The lubrication and adjustment of parts for correct function follow industry accepted practices.

Indeed. Maybe one day we’ll overcome our tribal tendencies and head to the stars.

Tuesday, 22 July 2025

♫ Planet Caravan ✶

We sail
Through endless skies
Stars shine like eyes
The black night sighs

The moon
In silver dreams
Pours down in beams
Light of the night

The Earth
A purple blaze
Of sapphire haze
In orbit always

While down
Below the trees
Bathed in cool breeze
Silver starlight
Breaks dawn from night

And so
We pass on by
The crimson eye
Of great god Mars
As we travel the universe

Goodbye, Ozzy 😔 💖 🌌

Monaspace type system ✶

Monospace coding font with five variable axis typefaces.

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