New Archive: The Old Wooden Barn - Christmas Special 2025 (Part 1) hkc.im/TQhbmW w/ John Dowling, Jr.
New Archive: The Old Wooden Barn - Christmas 2024 Edition! hkc.im/TQhbmH w/ John Dowling, Jr.
Some really great reads for January. I had no idea Dennis E. Taylor's standalones were so good!
Not to mention a new Peter Cawdron and a couple of interesting fanfics.
Subscribers have had it already but here it is for the rest of you. :)
#bookstodon
buttondown.com/SeansShelf/arch…
Reading Roundup: January 2026
publish_date: 2026-02-01T06:00:00Z slug: reading-roundup-january-2026 status: scheduled subject: "Reading Roundup: January 2026" Reading Roundup: January...Sean Randall (Sean's Shelf)
if (frameExSharpness > 0.0) {
baseSharpness *= frameExSharpness;
baseSharpness = clampDouble(baseSharpness, 1.0, 15.0);
That way you can't break the sharpness slider. I think this can work well. AI was wanting to make negative sharpness. Oh fuck no.
baseSharpness *= frameExSharpness;
baseSharpness = clampDouble(baseSharpness, 1.0, 15.0);
That way you can't break the sharpness slider. I think this can work well. AI was wanting to make negative sharpness. Oh fuck no.
You can tell if someone is a computering supergenius if their solution to a difficult problem looks like nothing.
Lisp is six functions. Forth is 200 bytes. Unix is just tiny programs and text files. The original web is just a hacked SMTP server sending SGML files. And yet, it does *that*.
The huge, complex stuff--Windows, Java, the modern web--is all the work of mediocre thinkers with big budgets and too little time.
This entry was edited (5 hours ago)
I tried to build this small python tool on FreeBSD that uses the new uv thing but I couldn't figure out how to work uv
They really need to work on their UX
All I know is that it kept complaining that there wasn't any Python 3.13 but I couldn't get it to download or install one (into a virtual env I assume). Now I am aware that they probably don't have precompiled versions for FreeBSD, but it doesn't even seem to have an option to download the source and compile it by itself. So if that's the case, this tool is pretty worthless if you want to use it with a custom python version or on an unsupported platform?
Is that really how this thing works? Bizarro
It was easier to just hack it to work with my own venv and regular pip, build my own requirements.txt etc
Currently playing on repeat in my head: 'Sweetness,' by Jimmy Eat World.
youtube.com/watch?v=J7y0AG4PHJ…
youtube.com/watch?v=J7y0AG4PHJ…
@Scott I do still hear it (or spin it) from time to time, but I can't really account for it today. I did watch "Spider-Man: No Way Home' last night; maybe seeing Toby Maguire's Spidey again evoked the era?
I think we're going to add voice sharpness as a frame parameter for the new frame. this would allow a lot more things to happen. Emotional emphasis, Creaky → sharp transition (stød), Consonants sharper than vowels. If we make it a frame param, it can really be adjusted per utterance.
The mathematical relationship IS the sound. When we made a "clean" table with quadratic closure, we literally encoded sharpness ≈ 2 into it. The synth doesn't care if that curve comes from:
• pow(1-t, 2.0) computed live
• A lookup table with those same values
Same curve = same harmonics = same sound.
The sample rate scaling insight:
At higher sample rates, you need MORE harmonics to fill the spectrum. Lower sharpness = fewer harmonics = sounds "breathy" because there's less energy up high. That's why LF master scales sharpness UP with sample rate - to maintain consistent harmonic richness.
The downside to a fixed glottal table is that you would need a different glottal table for each sample rate, if you wanted to keep the smoothness alive. By making one single Glottal table, we are effectively baking in a sharpness 2.0 into all sample rates.
• pow(1-t, 2.0) computed live
• A lookup table with those same values
Same curve = same harmonics = same sound.
The sample rate scaling insight:
At higher sample rates, you need MORE harmonics to fill the spectrum. Lower sharpness = fewer harmonics = sounds "breathy" because there's less energy up high. That's why LF master scales sharpness UP with sample rate - to maintain consistent harmonic richness.
The downside to a fixed glottal table is that you would need a different glottal table for each sample rate, if you wanted to keep the smoothness alive. By making one single Glottal table, we are effectively baking in a sharpness 2.0 into all sample rates.
This entry was edited (49 minutes ago)
I do wonder if folks liked it when the voice was smoother at 16000/22050 or 44100, or when it now has more sharpness. The sharpness is actually what Eloquence also has, when you think about it. It's voice isn't smoother. So now, with the recent SpeechPlayer, it's a bit like how the original sharpness was with it, when before we changed to the new Cosign waveform. It made 11025 sound very similar to 16000 and 22050 which is why I changed it. I didn't get any revolts, or like, "eww, where's the smoothness?" if anything one person told me that the voice sounds more "whole" at 44100. So I'm very conflicted on this, and I suspect people have their own preference. But now I am closer to understanding what gives Eloquence that classic Eloquence sharpness, they too probably also use an LF-type waveform.
many blind users who grew up on DECtalk/Eloquence found the softer voices harder to understand at speed, not easier. The softer voice can make consonants stick out more and not sound like it's part of the voice's bandwidth itself.
many blind users who grew up on DECtalk/Eloquence found the softer voices harder to understand at speed, not easier. The softer voice can make consonants stick out more and not sound like it's part of the voice's bandwidth itself.
Sensitive content
I think I'm going to add a new "patrick" voice to Speech Player though, modeled after the other parameters, like F3 multipliers, extracted from the voice. It's not all lost. It's just that Glottal shape mostly impacts smoothness, hollowness, and ringyness of the voice or whether it's metallic or not. Badly tuned glottal tables get you a mess, well tuned ones should sound closer to what the synth used to sound like in the first place.
Is your Mastodon timeline too empty or too full? Are you seeing too much of one thing while missing important posts? Is your timeline overwhelmed by someone who shares too many posts?
These and lots more timeline problems are solved in the "How to customise your Mastodon timeline" guide:
➡️ fedi.tips/does-mastodon-and-th…
Does Mastodon and the Fediverse use algorithms? How do I customise what’s in my timeline if there’s no algorithm? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediversefedi.tips
So, huge thanks to @BorrisInABox for sitting down and making silly sounds for like 25 minutes for me. This is a recording of SpeechPlayer using his Glottl tables. Notice how much better it came out compared to my own, no sharpness, no boxy sound. It's a perfect glottal source. But also, this tells me that the math-derived LF glottal source with tunable sharpness could get us almost this same voice, although there's a richness in the bass harmonics I can't quite explain, so the real-source Glottal tables still do a better job at making it sound a bit more natural.
RE: mastodon.social/@islamjamal/11…
I appeal to you again on humanitarian grounds 💔
Any help, no matter how small, will contribute to easing my father's pain and speeding up his recovery. Please be a reason for his healing 🙏
chuffed.org/project/154105-isl…
#freepalestine #fuckisrael #genocide #savegaza #savegazachildren #Gaza #palestine #gazaverified #gazagenocide #GazaMutualAid #MutualAidRequest #StandWithGaza #GazaNeedsHelp
#education #europe #Resistenza
IslamJamal (@islamjamal@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image My father was hospitalized due to a severe drop in blood sugar, and my heart aches for him. We are going through a difficult time and need your support to secure his treatment and medications.IslamJamal (Mastodon)
It snew. It has snown. The ground is snawn upon. ❄️❄️ This ties a record for the fourth heaviest snowfall we've gotten here. The tie for this happened in 1880. I think a couple people in the neighborhood are trying to repurpose leafblowers as snowblowers. I have no idea if that'll work or not but even if it does and they can get their cars out, the roads are not magically clear of snow.
Borris
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Borris • • •Flybot was more of a Scalzi-feeling, Roadkil a bit more young adult space adventure.