my first classical guitar
I was sent a guitar recently for review, and it's interesting this happened because the universe really wanted me to own a guitar like this. I say that because a little over a year ago I tried out a few classical guitars. Then at one point I went to buy one, but passed on it because the ones I tried weren't to my liking. After that, I thought okay, I'll just get one whenever when I find something that works for me.
Then out of the blue comes Sonicake. They emailed me and ask if I wanted to review their Crossover model. I said yes, they sent it, I made a video review, and now I own the thing.
Until I got the Crossover (a.k.a. QGT-30 model), I didn't know this was actually the exact type of classical guitar I wanted. Instead of a chunky baseball bat neck with no truss rod, this one has a C shape neck with truss rod. It also has strap buttons that many classical guitars outright don't have. It's also electrified with a preamp, is super light in weight, and has a thin body that actually projects well.
In other words, the Crossover is basically a folk style electric-acoustic guitar with cutaway body, but uses classical nylon strings instead of steel. Think of it as a Yamaha NTX1 with a much nicer price.
Over the years I've owned a few steel string acoustic guitars, but could never get along with them; it was the strings that were always the problem.
Generally speaking, the softest and easiest-on-fingers steel acoustic strings are the silk & steel type. Specifically, D'Addario EJ40. True, D'Addario has the phosphor bronze .010 gauge EJ38 and even a super light .009 EJ23, but they simply won't be as easy on the fingers like the silk & steel type.
If even silk & steel doesn't cut the mustard, then it's time to go nylon. As far as I'm aware, that's as soft and comfy as it gets.
However, there are a few things to consider.
Playing with regular picks is absolute no-go because it will wreck the strings. No celluloid, no delrin or any of that. Wooden picks are required because they have the softest strike and will make nylon strings last longest.
You absolutely do not stretch nylon strings like steel. Common wisdom (or at least should be) is that when new strings are installed, tune up to F standard, let the guitar sit for an hour, then tune back down to E standard, and the strings will be mostly stretched. If you do that pull/stretch thing on nylon, it absolutely will create "dead spots" in the strings. Steel can handle the pull/stretch thing okay, but not nylon.
You have to know that with a nylon string set, on the wound strings (as in the bass strings), one end will be floppy and the other not. Tying the floppy end at bridge side is a bad idea. Any knot made won't be as stable and the string can break quicker.
With classical nylon string sets, for comfort you don't pay attention to thickness but rather tension. Some string manufacturers will state the total tension in pounds for all strings in the set combined when tuned to E standard, while others list tension on a per-string level. Things get a bit stupid because tensions are listed using a whole bunch of generic words. Super low, low, normal/medium (same thing?), hard/high (again, same thing?), and so on. I'll make it easy. Just get a D'Addario Pro Arte EJ43 set. If that happens to be too light, go normal tension EJ45. If that's still too light, try another brand "normal tension" set before going with hard/high.
Higher action is totally normal on a classical guitar. Some adjustment can be made if the guitar has a truss rod, and/or you can pull the bridge (as in the white thing the strings rest on) with pliers and shave the bottom with sandpaper, and/or you can use a file to shave the nut slots a little bit. However, it's always better to start with low tension strings first before shaving/filing anything.
Is the classical right for me? Too soon to tell, but I definitely get along with it better than a steel string acoustic. Even if it were a traditional classical build, I like the smaller bodies compared to a standard dreadnought shape. The classical is a much easier acoustic to get along with... after learning how nylon strings work, which is the only real hurdle. Once past that, it's pretty much all good from there.
i never liked summer
This year in particular has been one of the worst summers I've ever dealt with, heat wise. Is it the worst ever? I'm honestly not sure, because I've experienced some brutal ones over the years.
What I did was think back to when I was a kid, wondering if summers then were any better decades ago. Surely, they must have been.
Nope.
The #1 thing my kid self liked about summer was not having to go to school. Does that mean I went outside all the time? No. My family had a pool, and yeah, that was nice, but I didn't swim in it every day. Also, it was always better to go swimming at dusk or night, which made nasty hot summer evenings much better. I'll talk more about that in a minute.
While I did get outside a lot as a kid, I wasn't out there all that much in the day during summer aside from the pool stuff. Too hot to ride my bike. Too hot to go tromping through the woods. Too hot to do damned near anything.
So what did I do to pass the time? If it was just a typical summer day at the house, I stayed inside, played video games, and watched gobs and gobs of television. For games, it was either Atari 2600 or the Commodore 64, then later Nintendo when that came out. I would play the same games over and over again until I got bored with them. After that, watch TV. Usually PBS, because we didn't have cable, mom insisted on nothing but educational programming during the day, and we lived in an area where the cool UHF channels that had the awesome cartoons were barely in range. Oh, believe me, I tried to watch those cool cartoons and did everything I could think of to make those UHF stations come in better, but no such luck. The best I could get was a semi-snowy picture for that one station that broadcast Transformers. I watched what I could until the picture would fuzz out too much to figure out what was going on.
You'd think that growing up in the northeast would mean summers that were easier to deal with. No. Wrong. Very wrong. The only advantage to a northeast summer compared to other parts of the United States is that it's shorter, and not by all that much.
Also, that very old, very tired saying of "it's not the heat, it's the humidity" actually isn't bullshit. Northeast summer nights means two things. Hot, sticky air and mosquitoes. Tons and tons of mosquitoes.
Dad at one point had installed a large bug zapper. He decided to install it on a tree in the front yard and hang it off a large branch, which in all honesty was the best place he could have put it. Big ol' tall thing with two tubes that glowed purple, which to me looked magical.
That bug zapper was run every summer night for years, and was actually a source of entertainment. On a summer night, yeah, the air was still hot and sticky, but you could actually go sit outside since all those damned mosquitoes would go straight for the zapper instead of us. Watching the zapper was entertaining. Every time a bug hit it, said bug met its doom. A little spark of light with a *bzzt!*, dead. Every few seconds, here a little bzzt!, there a little bzzt! It was all a bit therapeutic in a way.
The most entertaining thing about the zapper was something that happened a few times a week when a moth would hit it.
In the way the zapper was made from the factory, it had metal fencing on all four sides, which serves three main purposes. First, to actually hold the thing together. Second, to prevent animals like birds and squirrels getting in there. Third, to prevent larger bugs from hitting it.
But even with that fencing there, a smaller moth would sometimes wriggle its way through it, hit the tube and bzzZzZzZzZZZZzzZZzzzz along with sparking/arcing and so on. Looked like one of those fourth-of-July sparkler things sorta/kinda. That dumbass moth would ride the lightning for so long that it literally started smoking until it finally fell to the tray below. I'd hear the sound from inside the house and go out the front door to actually watch this. If dad was nearby, he'd come out to watch it also. After that bug finally fell, yep, dumbass moth is dead, show's over, time to go back in the house.
I do remember a few hell-hot northeast summers from my teens. One that sticks out in particular is when I left a tape of ZZ Top's Eliminator on the dashboard of my first car - which by the way did not have air conditioning. Got home the previous night, parked, I had been flipping in/out tapes in my car stereo, put the ZZ Top tape on the dashboard and didn't think about it. The next day I go to the car at some time in the afternoon, and that tape got cooked so bad that the plastic warped. Totally ruined. Bummed me out, because I liked that tape, but oh well, lesson learned.
Another thing I remember is seeing radiating heat coming from the pavement while driving around. Specifically, when driving slow in parking lots, and when stopped at stop signs or traffic lights. I always got uneasy feelings whenever seeing that, as in, "This can't be good for my car... or me." I still get those feelings whenever I see that radiating heat.
And I remember that if a quick rainstorm passed through on a hell-hot day, that water would be literally steaming off the asphalt. Again, I'm still talking about in the northeast here.
The only true difference I've experienced when comparing northern vs. southern US summers is the length. In the northeast, hell-hot garbage was usually gone by early to mid September. Again, usually, but not always. In the south, add a few weeks. October is usually when the hell-hot crap stops.
In addition, for whatever temperature is considered comfortable in the north, add 10 degrees for the south. 72F to 75F is the just-right outdoor temperature for the northeast. 82F to 85F is just-right for where I've lived in the south. For example, 72F pretty much anywhere in New England is great, but that same temperature legitimately feels cold in Florida. And yes, that means 82F feels perfect in FL but crappy in New England.
And speaking of perfect when it comes to weather, New England gets only six weeks of that, or maybe eight if they're lucky. It's either mid-September and all of October, or for better years, mid-September to mid-November. In Texas, twice a year the weather is great. October to mid-December, then March to mid-May. Florida has the lion's share of fantastic weather. December all the way through to May. Six straight months. Hurricane season ends around mid-September, but the hot shit still takes a bit to shake off. After Christmas and all the way to Cinco de Mayo (more or less), glorious.
Speaking on Texas a little more, yeah those two perfect-weather periods depends what part you're in because it is a huge state. Corpus Christi for example is very Florida-like because it's aligned almost exactly on the same latitude with Tampa Bay Florida. But generally speaking, anywhere in the "Texas Triangle" (Dallas-Ft Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Houston) has October to mid-December and March to mid-May as the best weather times. You get six to seven months of great weather in TX, but it's split.
And speaking on Florida a little more, does that mean mid-May to December weather sucks? Yes and no. Yes, in that for summer in particular, in Tampa Bay there's that thing where a torrential half-hour rainstorm happens almost every day, typically with lightning and a lot of it. And if there's any threat of hurricane, it will most likely happen during that time. But at least with that daily storm crap you can literally see it coming while driving on the highway. If up ahead you see a gray blur, that's a wall of rain. Slow down a lot and just power through it, or find a bridge and park underneath until it passes by (which motorcyclists and convertible owners do routinely).
When I do become a millionaire, because, y'know, I have goals, would I hop around the country only staying in places where the weather is perfect? No, because that means I'd have to own or rent multiple properties, and possibly have to manage multiple cars with multiple registrations for insurance, tags and whatnot. I don't want to juggle that mess.
It's better to know now that I never liked summer. Didn't like it when I was a kid, and have never truly enjoyed it at any time in my adult life. It's hot, it sucks, and I'm always glad when it's over. Do I hate summer? No. But I do hold some hatred for winter, and I'd be lying if I said otherwise. Not a lot. Just some.
Regardless of where I am, summer is very unlikely ever to be a thing where I think, "Oh, joy! It's summer!" That's not happening. And hopping around the country would be a fool's errand trying to escape summer heat, because it sucks everywhere.
As a kid, I spent most of the summer inside. As an adult, same, but I can go out more since I can drive at night (driving with the windows rolled down and feeling only wind with no A/C running is nice).
There are a few memories I have of actually having fun, as in real fun, during summer as a kid in the northeast. Many of them revolve around amusement parks. One of them was Rocky Point. Others were Aquaboggan in Maine and Water Country in New Hampshire (both of which are still running today). I even did Riverside back in the day, which is now Six Flags New England. Aside from that, dad took me to see races at Thompson Speedway and the fireworks shows local towns would put on for the Fourth of July. So yes, I did have some actual good summer times in the past.
These days, being my middle aged self knows all too well that summer heat sucks no matter where I am, I plan for it.
If Thing is an event I can drive to and enjoy without too much hassle at night, okay, good. If Thing is something I drive to during the day, can I park the car in shade or in a parking garage? If yes, okay, good. If no, I make sure to have my sunshade ready.
I even plan for sucky summer heat for normal errand running. Attention is given to whether I can do Thing during day or night, the routes I'm going to take, what traffic I may encounter, whether where I'm going has parking OUT of the sun or not, and so on.
For parking specifically, if Thing is something that for whatever reason is done during a hell-hot summer afternoon, I will purposely park in shade even if that means an extra minute or two of walking is required across the parking lot to get to the building. It is absolutely and totally worth it to sweat a little on that walk so I don't have to deal with that stupid shade. Yeah, I'm glad to have the shade, but if I can avoid using it, I will, every time.
I've lived in enough places to understand there is nowhere in the United States that has 100% perfect weather year round. But I have learned to pay attention to sunrise and sunset times.
In order, this is how light works over the course of a day:
Night, Astrological Twilight, Nautical Twilight, Civil Twilight, Daylight, Civil Twilight, Nautical Twilight, Astrological Twilight, back to Night.
Civil Twilight is by far the best time of the day during summer. It is the time of the day where daylight is visible but the sun cannot be seen. In other words, it's visible daylight before sunrise, and visible daylight after sunset. Not exactly dawn and dusk, but very close to it.
Both of these periods are about a half-hour each. Even on the nastiest hottest summer days, the weather usually feels pretty nice during those times. It is especially good when driving on a Sunday. And if near the ocean, the beginning or tail end (depending on time of day) of nautical twilight is visible to add in another 15 minutes or so.
These are times of the day when not only does summer weather feel nice (usually), but there is also the least eye strain just looking around at things outside.
Pity that these times of the day are so short, but hey, it is something to look forward to every day, so there's that.
The sunrise/sunset stuff was important to recognize because I can enjoy it anywhere during summer no matter where I am. No need to take a big vacation or anything like that. Just pick where you are, set an alarm on your watch or phone for when civil twilight begins and enjoy the half-hour when it comes.
I know I do.
casio w221h, one month later
A little over a month ago, I bought a W221H, still have it, and it's still on my wrist.
It's interesting what has happened in the month's time that I've owned it.
The price online for one of these has thankfully dropped significantly, but only for the white one. The black version is definitely more popular.
I've bounced back and forth between the W221H, WS1600H and W735H. The WS1600H has the best date display, no question. The W735H has the best night light, also with no question. But the huge time display on the W221H... wow.
It's not that I can't read the time on the other two watches, as I totally can. But the time digits on the W221H absolutely dwarf those on almost any other Casio digital model. Yes, almost. More on that in a moment.
With the W735H for example, the time digits are literally half the size of the digits on the W221H. And bear in mind the W735H is physically larger than the W221H is.
Using an analog comparison, this is like comparing a Seiko Presage to a Seiko Prospex PADI. Both tell the time just fine, but the PADI with its thick hands and the hour hand being an arrow (on most PADI models) will always be more legible.
The W221H is the only Casio digital with huge time digits in a smaller case. Otherwise, you have to go with one of two physically large models, AE1500 or AE1600.
I'm aware of the AE1700 also, but that one is just weird. A digital with a timer bezel? Makes no sense. But the time digits are huge.
I did own the AE1500 briefly, but didn't care for that model and returned it, and I know why. I forgot that I prefer square or rectangle with digital. Momentary brain fart there.
Yes, this means I may pick up the AE1600 at some point. While very blocky looking, so is the W221H, and I like that just fine.
The only functional complaint I have about the W221H is that it loses 1 to 2 seconds a week, which for a quartz digital isn't bad at all.
why does new york have a paywall around half of new england?
Given I'm a navigation nerd, I sometimes do map study. One thing that's amazing to me is how the entire southern half of New England, that being Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, is literally paywalled by New York.
How?
The Hudson River, that's how.
To get into Connecticut or Massachusetts from New York, you have to cross over a Hudson River bridge. This lumps in Rhode Island as well, since that's directly adjacent to the east of Connecticut.
I was experimenting with route calculations on my Garmin DriveSmart 76, and notice that on a route coming up into New England from the southwest, a toll road was used even though I specifically instructed the DriveSmart to avoid toll roads. The toll road in question was the Bear Mountain Bridge.
Error on the part of the DriveSmart? No. The DriveSmart will sometimes use a toll road if the alternative toll-free route is something so out of the way and adds so much time that it won't offer it. Fair enough.
This of course led me down a rabbit hole trying to figure out if there was any way to get into CT or MA from NY without paying a NY toll.
Nope.
Here are the bridges from south to north that "ride alongside" New England. Most of these have tolls for eastbound traffic only, which of course is the required direction to get to Connecticut or Massachusetts.
- Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge a.k.a. Tappan Zee Bridge, toll.
- Bear Mountain Bridge, toll.
- Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, toll.
- Mid-Hudson Bridge, toll.
- Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, toll.
- Rip Van Winkle Bridge, toll.
- Castleton Bridge, toll.
It is not until the Dunn Memorial Bridge where you finally get to something that's toll-free.
Where are you in relation to New England at that point? You're in Albany NY, which is due west of frickin' Adams Massachusetts at the extreme northwest corner of that state. Adams is where Mount Greylock is. Holy crap.
This means you have to go into Massachusetts using slow roads until you pick up I-91, then head south through basically the entire north-south length of MA, and then you're finally in Connecticut, starting in Enfield. Again, holy crap.
Yeah, it's no wonder the Garmin didn't offer that route as an alternative to taking Bear Mountain Bridge. Were you to look at the route on a map, the toll-free way more or less results in this giant horseshoe where you have to go north to go south just to get around New York Hudson River bridge toll roads.
New England is a giant spaghetti tangled mess of roads in cities and pretty much anywhere off-interstate. A ton of those roads used to originally be horse trails many moons ago, after all. And if you want the free way to New England, you have to deal with that mess. You're going to have to take one of those achingly slow twisty turny roads until you finally get to I-91. No way around it.
Ridiculous.
the coffee water conditioning experiment
I do not know if this qualifies me as a coffee snob or not, but I do grind my own beans and use a very specific amount of water to brew a mug's worth with. The coffee I use is not any highfalutin stuff by any means. All I use is Community whole bean Breakfast Blend. The coffee maker I use is a cheap drip coffee maker thing from Walmart. I don't even know who made the coffee maker as it has no branding on it. Very not-fancy.
Over the years I've learned the water used matters a lot. Never use distilled water because that causes the coffee grounds to swell, and results in nearly tasteless coffee. Bad idea.
Professional coffee brewers use conditioned water, which is a fancy way of saying water with a specific amount of mineral content in it.
The cheap way to get water like this is to either:
- Buy a gallon jug labeled "Spring Water" at the grocery store.
- Use tap water.
- Boil tap water for 10 minutes first, then brew.
- Filter tap water first, then brew.
I decided to try an experiment with the last option, filtering, just to see what would happen.
What I did was throw a filter in the coffee maker, then ran tap water through it into the carafe.
After that, I put coffee grounds in the filter, then used the same water and ran it through the coffee maker again. Doing this is effectively using double-filtered water.
The end result?
The coffee tasted a little bit darker, and the aftertaste notably improved.
Aftertaste is a big deal with coffee, as it should have some bitterness to it. Not a whack-you-over-the-head bitterness. Just a nice little note left behind. I definitely got that with double-filtering.
Will I brew coffee this way from now on? Maybe. I'll have to brew a few more mug's worth to see if that improved aftertaste is consistent.