All New Old Style

I'm doing something I haven't done in a while tonight.
That something is trying to piece together a musical composition. Well, it's a composition of sorts but more on that at a later date. Hopefully by the end of the week.
The interesting thing is that for the first time I'm using native Linux music and audio tools. Last time I did this I just loaded FL Studio into Wine and worked that way. The thing is that FL Studio and Wine are uneasy bedfellows. I really could do with a dedicated Windows music PC just for FL Studio.
Because I don't own a Windows machine I thought I'd just work in Ubuntu and see how it went. Very well is the answer to that. Above is a work in progress inside Audacity. I bought a book about using Audacity and it has served me well. No more messing around, I'm nearly a power user, sort of.
There's a good chance I might get back to writing some music one of these days. I do have a lot to be getting on with but I'm sure there will be some spare time to get back to what I enjoy.
Fingers crossed.

A Slice Of Air

Last week I very nearly bought a Raspberry Pi3.
The reason I didn't was because I couldn't think of anything to do with it other than mess around a bit.
This week while installing some excellent cryptography tools on Ubuntu I realised the a Pi would make an excellent air gap computer. Of course there would be a bit of work to do, ie disabling wifi (why not buy a Pi2?) and finding a decent way of getting uncompromised software onto the board. The latter I'm still working on but making sure checksums are intact might be a good start.
If you're interested in what I've been playing with start at privacytools.
I'm also using VeraCrypt, Encryptpad and a useful web notepad called Protected Text.
I'm sure there's enough there you keep you occupied for a while.

Balancing Fruit

I've been trying to quit smoking, as a regular pursuit, for a while now.
I have no problem with my nicotine addiction, I don't want to give that up. There's no need to and I enjoy it.
I like the odd pipe bowl especially with a good coffee. What I don't like anymore is smoking roll-ups as my only nicotine source.
I started vaping a couple of years ago but it wasn't a satisfying experience and I went back to smoking again after a short time. In the last six months I've been getting into some nerdy vaping stuff. You really don't want to know the details but what can be achieved is more akin to the experience that is smoking.
Add to the above a pinch of snuff when I need a quick boost or top up and I really think that I can substitute the roll-ups for eliquids and powder.
I'm currently into fruit flavours. Strawberry eliquids and raspberry snuff.
It's all rather pleasant.

Silence For The Book Please

A long while ago when I still used Windows I used to edit all my audio in a piece of software called Cool Edit Pro. I knew exactly what I was doing with it and it did exactly what I wanted.
Fast forward a few years and I'm now a fully fledged Linux user and Audacity is what I use now. The thing is that I'm not as good with Audacity as I was with Cool Edit Pro. What to do? I've been through most of the tutorials on YouTube and they mostly cover what I already know and while there are a few tips I've learned along the way there hasn't been anything substantial.
The Book Of Audacity has had many good reviews so I bought myself a copy and my head will be buried deep inside its pages until I'm up to scratch.
What will the finished audio be?
You'll have to wait for that one.

Controlling Influence

Following on from Saturday's success with ADS-B I thought that I might try and go one better.
Satellites are a challenge mainly because of the Doppler shift in frequencies as they pass overhead. Having to manually change frequency is a pain and in some cases inaccurate. Today's challenge was to get the satellite tracking software GPredict to control my RTL-SDR via GQRX. Long story short is that it worked without too much faffing around. Result!
I tracked a couple of satellites without hearing anything which isn't unexpected as I'm using the wrong type of antenna. That's a challenge for another day. I have all the bits I need I just haven't got round to it yet.
This small success has just put that plan back to the top of the list.