are there lots of piano bits in the minister's cat thread?

lol, my bibliography will be:
serious physics book
thesis on pianos
a level textbook
fazioli website
.
.
.
Minister's cat thread, AB forums
I don't think that would go down too well! (although possibly better than a quote i found about harpsichords sounding like a toasting fork on a birdcage that my mum thinks i should put in )



erm

I do now, however, have all the books in front of me required for me to write the mechanism section...I think

At this rate, the Minister's Cat thread might be better than submitting nothing at all!

Press a key..hammer hits string...makes noise. Done! Next?

Oh frig! Wait 'til Mad Tom sees that....

Add in f=ma and a couple of pretty pictures,and you've pretty much got the gist of it

*weeds out no-hoper books*

We'll all be forced to go and do something more useful in a minute when the forum kicks us out I'll carry with my clarinet playing

He's too busy getting his place ready for Mrs Mad Tom!

*inserts earplugs*

I'll have you know, you young upstart you, that my teacher was very impressed with my tone at my last lesson

Was that during the rests?

[blows extra loudly in HG's ear ]












PS. I should have said "blows *my clarinet* extra loudly in HG's ear

You mean you've had a frustrating 35 minutes waiting for the forums to come back in order to post *that*???!

Thank goodness you added that edit! I was getting rather worried....

Actually, just to get back on topic I think I'll scream in your ear AARRRGGGGHHHHH

I've written a grand total of 550 words so far

Did you do all that while the forum was down

Calm down, dear, and have another vat of Baileys!



And all of those on the forums, no doubt!

At the beginning of a key stroke, the whippen to pivots upwards, meaning that the jack moves upwards, accelerating the hammer towards the string. As the key is pushed further down, the end of the capstan engages with the damper, raising it above the string and the end of the jack is stopped by the jack regulator, which rotates it upwards and away from the knuckle. The hammer rebounds off the string and the knuckle lands on the repetition lever with the hammer resting on the backcheck to stop it from striking twice. As the key is lifted, the backcheck releases the hammer and the jack slips back out to its original position. The damper is lowered, damping the vibrating string. The mechanism is now ready to reset, ready to repeat the note.

*hopes that someone doesn't come in and tell me that i've written a load of rubbish

Erm.....

Nah! It looks good, Sarah!

I wouldn't quibble with any of it Sarah

Best of luck with the rest of it, I'm going to get my beauty sleep now

Nite all!

Well done...I think that covers everything I said earlier.

'Nite skyers x

Your's was much more concise though

Yours is far more intilli inteli clever!

Mechanism section DONE (with the exception of the pretty pictures that I will draw some other time).

word count: 813

next: hammer-string collision, which should be a significantly shorter section than the last one

I'm tired.
I'm dehydrated (but working on it).
My feet hurt.
My shoulders ache.
I have no concentration whatsoever.

All because I had to work in stupid London yesterday. It's just as well I take the half day off in the afternoon, otherwise I'd have to come home in the rush hour and it'd be even worse.

*hugs* Maizie... Your post about travelling sounded very positive yesterday, and you said you'd probably feel like this. I hope you feel a bit better soon.

Thank you Miss Ross - getting properly hydrated has helped a lot in making me feel less...well, everything. Still very tired though.

And now my computer has broken. Working fabulously until 11.30 this morning. Then it went absolutely nuts. I rebooted, no help. I thought I'd uninstall the offending program and reinstall, but the thing where I go to uninstall didn't list the program.
So I contacted helpdesk. Who got back in touch almost immediately to tell me they don't support this program, that I have local support/experts to help me. So I contacted my local lead user for one of our programs that uses this base software, to say who is our local support, and it turns out we don't actually have one. But he did remind me of a sneaky workround that gets us in to the old version of where you install/uninstall software.
So I went there, uninstalled the software, reinstalled it. Fabulous.
Started it - and it said 'you don't have a 2009 license'. So I went to the installation thingy and it said I did have one. So I thought I'll do the same with that, uninstall, re-install. Only it won't let me uninstall the license at all, it just says "This component can not be uninstalled".

Which means I probably have to go back to helpdesk again, because while they don't support this software, they do support the installation tools, and if they're not working then I can probably badger them in to helping me. In the meantime, I might just try uninstalling everything again, rebooting, then reinstalling, while hoping for the best.

Obviously, have done no actual work since 11.30am - annoyingly, I was probably about half an hour away from fixing our final problem. But it's all gone a bit 'Friday the 13th' on us now...

I've been up 32 hours and really want to go to bed, but can't because I have to sign for a parcel thats supposed to be coming at some point in the next hour and a half.

Curl up on the doormat and sleep there. That way when the parcel deliverer calls, you're bound to hear it

I could, but I'd probably be curled up on top of by our labrador or licked to death.

I don't really want to scream, but I have had a bad week. I accidentally put my phone in the washing machine, and then whilst looking around my room for it stood on my straighteners, burning my foot, and snapping them in half.

Then I did various ill-advised things due to the demon drink, incurring extreme humiliation.

Plus, I might be having both a spiritual crisis and a romantic one... All at once.
I can't trust my motives for doing anything at the moment! Even my essay topics seem suspiciously orientated around themes that I shouldn't be this interested in...

I still don't want to scream though... I'm more sort of maudlin, and periodically miserable. For a few days I was even inexplicably happy. It's odd.

Thanks, yes, I did, it's not a very good one, but I only usually text and phone people anyway. I'll just have to get used to no camera!

Hah!
At last! Saturday!
I was so frustrated after facing 3 exams in friday! (biology, chemistry and physics)

m_b_s

Hope the foot isn't too badly burned


I had my mock results yesterday. They weren't bad but the RE one wasn't as good as I would have got in year 10 becuase the teacher changed and marks it differently even if it's the same board! I don't have a clue what I might get for the real exam. the teacher in year 10 used to be an RE examiner so should be accurate when marking.

So, Friday, as I screamed above, my key piece of software went a bit nuts. I reported it to helpdesk, who told me they don't support it. So I played about with it myself a bit (with 'local support', i.e. help from the person next to me!). We uninstalled it, reinstalled it, added a 2009 license, with no joy. Uninstalled the license and reinstalled, no joy. Unistalled the license and the program, reinstalled the program and the license, no joy. Same but with restarts at every point, no joy.

So I've come in this morning, given it one more chance (I've no idea why), and it didn't work. So I phoned helpdesk, on the grounds that this is an installation problem - which they do support - not a problem with this particular bit of software they don't support.

So the helpdesk guy took control of my computer and...proceeded to uninstall, reinstall, uninstall-restart-reinstall and basically spend about an hour and a half doing stuff I did on Friday. I know he has to do it for himself. Part of me just wanted it to work, forget the embarrassment to me for having to say 'it didn't do that last time', but no, it didn't.

After all this playing around, he said 'Hmm, OK, not sure what's going on here, I'll refer it on to our group who support this software'.

Um, hello? Helpdesk doesn't support this software - at least, they didn't on Friday when it went mad! Now I've checked the ticket, and it appears that there is a top-secret support group for this software!!!

So now I am working from print outs kindly provided by a colleague, and writing my code in notepad in the hope that when I do get my software back, it'll nicely copy back in and work...!

ARGH!!!!

Not only is my software STILL not working, but Helpdesk haven't even looked at the ticket that the first-helpdesk-guy put in for me - 48 hours ago!!! Really not impressed...but at least there is some other stuff I can be getting on with today, for a while, at least. They've got until 8am EST (i.e. 1pm UK time) and then I'm phoning them up for a grump (I'm not phoning before then because if I phone before then I'm as likely to get India as Canada pick up the phone...waiting until UK afternoon means I'm more likely to get Canada who are in my experience more helpful!)

Are the local helpdesk actually located anywhere near you?

In the organisation I work for I tend to find that getting a ticket logged, then going down in person and pleading speeds things up no end. I have a friend who swears by home-baked cakes. On one occasion I found that being on the verge of tears (after a very stressful weekend working to meet a deadline when my laptop started playing up) took me right to the top of the queue.

Good grief, no!
I'm in the UK, and my helpdesk people are in India or Canada. The only local support I can get from central helpdesk is for hardware.
I'm with the central helpdesk as they've deigned to call it an installation problem; if they decide it's a problem with this piece of software then I'm done for (as they will tell me to go away and use the departmental support mechanism, whatever that is; and we don't actually have one for our department, apparently [and even if we did have departmental support, it would be in the US. Or if I'm very very very lucky indeed, on the other side of London to me. But not on the same site as me )

But now I've just been given a chunk of work to do which means I can spend a couple of days not using this software - so at least I'm not completely lost (but it would have been nice to finish up where I was...)

Our helpdesk are in India too, but if you manage to get the problem escalated far enough you can get it put through to "real" people who you can talk to in person.

Argh! For the past couple of weeks when bad stuff was actually happening all the time, I was in a ridiculously good mood, and couldn't get worked up about it. Now I'm suddenly sad all the time, but I can't talk to anyone about it because it's old news, and everyone thinks I'm dealing with it miraculously well!
Plus I seem to be having a terrible run of bad luck, nothing worth too much angst in itself, but it's all piling up, the amount of cuts, burns and bruises I have now is ridiculous, and my broken stuff is piling up.
As well as all this, there's a lot of what, in a film or book, would be considered foreshadowing, from a couple of my flatmates, which implies that they're going to make a decision soon that will really screw me over, so it looks like the bad luck is not going to go away.
ARGH

Aaaaaaaaaaaargggggggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Husbands, ... and daughters ............and their fathers ............. grrrrrrrrr. And me caught in the middle.

Been there, got t shirt, and jumper, and bag with logo.
Hugs and tea and sympathy.
Bev

Argh. That was a little scream
Reading all your bad weeks has made me feel happier That makes me sound like a sadist...

No, it makes me realise that my week has been quite the opposite of bad

Sorry, you don't have to read this. I'm just having a mini rant
I was just in a bad mood, because a friend keeps moaning about being bad at music. Grr. I hate it when people moan. You never know what to say. Then she goes on about how much better people are then her. So I made comforting noises and said "they're not better. You're great!" Then she has a go at me for being irritating. Then we chat a bit more. She starting talking about how great it is that she never practises and her teacher never makes a fuss. So I said "Maybe you should try practising. Make your teacher happy." She said she "hates the cello. And never wants to practise because she sounds awful and just hates practising". I told her she should give it a go, and just to try practising every day this week, and that the cello is beautiful and she'll like it more the more time she spends with it.
Then she swore at me and told me that I'm annoying and sound like her mum. And swore at me some more. So then I said "Ok, fine" and walked off.

Anywho. Tomorrow I've got a day off school. So I can spend it with my instruments
Ooh, and now I'm happy, because my mum says she needs a hobby, and something to focus and work towards.

I told her she should learn an instrument. And went on and on about how great it is, and stress relieving, and constructive, and you get a sense of achievement. And I've persuaded her to get a little self-teach book on piano, or another instrument and rent one and then possibly a teacher

Aaargh...why do good things always come with a correspondingly bad one?!?!?

My phone appears to be DEAD... I don't think it liked getting snowy and cold

Probably just need to recharge the battery - my phone used to go completely flat if it was left in a jacket in the porch.

and it might be worth simply taking out the battery and putting it back - if you haven't already tried that.

Mine 'dies' sometimes and that usually does the trick.

I hate my PhD.

Aaw, Flossie, sorry to hear that - how far through it are you? A phase of fear and loathing seems to be a necessary part of completing a PhD (not that I can speak from experience, but have witnessed a few crises....)

I'm roughly half-way through writing up, but I'm bored with what I'm doing and can't write the next (more interesting) chapter until I've written this one because the one chapter builds on the other.

And I want a lectureship, but there's just no jobs coming up in my area at all.
If I knew I had a job to go to which I wanted to do then it'd be much easier to do the writing.

At least the end is in sight....hmmm, the academic life is not an easy one, I fear. So how long until you are Dr Flossie? Have a virtual stroke of one of my pussy-cats