Monthly Archives: January 2010

Piano Tuning using Circle of Fifth and Perfect 8

Two days ago, I was at home and enjoying the night before the New Year’s Day. I was sitting in front of the piano and decided to play some chords. But, the piano has not been play for over 2 years; and, it sounded quite out of tunes. New Year is for fresh start. I decided to tune my upright-piano (see the attached pictures). I need the following tuning gears:

  1. Piano Tuning Wrench
  2. Pitch tube
  3. A pencil with eraser – I found that it is often easier to mute the strings with an eraser on the back of a pencil than a felt. On the higher notes, each key has 3 strings to keep the harmonics. The lower keys have either 1<really low> or 2 <medium low> strings. The tuning technic involves first tuning each note using either the perfect 5 or perfect 8 harmonics. Then, sync all 3 strings for each notes.)
  4. And, optional Chromatic Tuner for check up.

As violin is my first instrument, naturally, I tune the whole piano starting from middle A. I then tune the piano using the natural resonances of Perfect 5 and Perfect 8, because their harmonics are really easy to hear.

  1. Find Middle A
  2. Tune using the Circle of Fifth (-5->) and Perfect 8 (-8->), #note: 2 methods exists. One goes up (A -> E). One goes down (A -> D).
  • (Down method) A -5-> D -8-> high D -5-> G -5-> C -8-> high C -5-> F -8-> high F -5-> A # -5-> D# -8-> high D# -5-> G# -5-> C# -8-> high C# -5-> F# -5-> B -8-> low B -5-> E
  • (Up method) A -5-> high E -8-> E -5-> B -8-> low B -5-> F# -5-> high C# -8-> C# -5-> G# -5-> high D# -8-> D# -5-> A# -8-> low A# -5-> F -5-> high C -8-> C  -5-> G -5-> high D -8-> D

Upgrading rails 2.2.2 to rails 2.3.5

Today, I upgrade my dev and staging environment from Rails 2.2.2 to rails 2.3.5

The steps are:

$ sudo gem update rails

$ sudo gem update

$ <go into the project folder>

$ rake rails:update   <this updates several js files.>

$ <rename application.rb file to application_controller.rb>

$ sudo gem install system_timer

$ script/plugin install git://github.com/rails/irs_process_scripts.git

This is according to Tadatoshi’s blog

However, I found that changing the environment.rb file, from 2.2.2 to 2.3.5 unnecessary. In fact, it caused a problem with tunnlr plugin.

RAILS_GEM_VERSION = ’2.2.2′ unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION

Additional, the socket for mysql was changed in the process by the gem. Therefore it was necessary to create a new symbolic link.

$ ln -s /tmp/mysql.sock /opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysql.sock

As long as both rails 2.2.2 and rails 2.3.5 gem exist on the same machine, you can run both type of applications.

Rail spikes says there are 10 cool things about Rails 2.3.x

How to make money with Jim Cramer

I am thinking about investing in stocks. I saw this funny character on CNBS, who screams and yells. Who is that idiot? Who else, it is Jim Cramer. After plugging in his recommendations over the past 3 years and running through the SAS, I came up with the following conclusion.

When Cramer tells you to buy, SELL. When Cramer tells you to sell, BUY. Why? Cramer is a paid mouth piece for Wall Street crooks. He gets paid for pump stock. As soon as suckers buy, the WS crooks will steal their money. He is a favorite among contrarians. Cramer is my hero.

Just do the opposite of what he tells you.