A little note on Thunderbird configuration.

Thunderbird does not allow manual drag-drop of accounts in the folders/accounts pane, which is inconvenient if you have many accounts with clear priorities. There is a module to address this but it didn’t work for me.

As it turns out this can be done by editing in about:config. There is a setting mail.accountmanager.accounts which holds the display order (based on the order of account creation in the Thunderbird instance). By default the accounts are called account1, account2 . . .  which isn’t tremendously useful, but a look in the Profiles/<uuid>.default/prefs.js file shows a series of settings for identities like:

user_pref("mail.identity.id1.archive_folder", "mailbox://<user email & server>/Archives");

user_pref("mail.account.account<n>.identities", "id<n>");

ac3    id2    uname1@dom1.tld
ac4    id3    uname2@dom1.tld
ac10   id9    uname1@dom2.tld
ac11   id10   uname2@dom2.tld

account3,account4,account10,account11

Occasionally it’s not quite there yet, as Thunderbird displays the default account at the top of the list no matter what you do to the order. This is independent of the order setting.

Shall I say that DX7s need no introduction? Well there are more web pages than I’d try to count about them, so if you need an introduction, go get it.

The original DX7 to me was that sleek thing with membrane keys which, in 1984, someone I knew got hold of, praised the capabilities of effusively, and left me with unattended for a few minutes. Being sort of used to simple analogue synths, I thought, well, let’s see? And pressed a few membranes, managing to change what it was doing out of all recognition in a few short seconds, with no idea how to change it back. Up DX7 creek without a manual, nor any clue how I got there. I thought it would be best to just leave it rather than make things worse. Leave it at speed, before its owner returned. I never saw it again.

Clearly this memory has stayed with me. In fact it’s probably the exact reason why I prefer proper synthesisers, i.e. ones with a control for each parameter, that you can see, adjust, and then put back where you found it. Nevertheless, I’ve always thought that one day I would like to find out how to use the thing. One of my own, without the risk of wrecking someone else’s setup again.

So, here we have one of the DX7 updates, a DX7S, from 1987 I think, and in need of some attention. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it, but battery replacement is apparently wanted. Hopefully not much more than that.

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Rumex obtusifolius

Doing well this year. Or at least, doing red.

I’m trying to work out what happened to someone’s disk. This is one of a rotating pair of external drives used to backup an Ubuntu laptop. One of the pair, Backup 2, failed to mount the other day. I confirmed the problem and ran a backup to Backup 1. I now think that may have been a mistake, but we’ll see.

I tried fsck from the administrator account with no result, but noticed along the way that Backup 2 is seen as a single exFAT partition, which seems a little odd as I’d have expected ext3 or ext4.

Switching over to an OSX laptop where I have a better range of tools to hand, I can confirm that it reads as GUID/exFAT. But a look at it with a sector editor is puzzling. I see nothing in sector 0. Moving on to the sector 1 I have what looks like an EFI header so that should be fine. Sector 2 seems to be part of the same system. And I went back to 0 but this time scrolled down. That helps.

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A summary of investigations into Hohner analogue electronic pianos and string machines. (To date. Not planning any updates at this point, but you never know.)

HIPs and Strings

Ephemeral photos of most of these instruments turn up occasionally in online sales; longer-term linkable references are given below. Different branding seems to have been used by Hohner in different national markets, however, so even if this list is comprehensive technically (which I can’t guarantee), there may be alternative names in some parts.

Drawings below are sketches intended to highlight the distinguishing characteristics of the instruments, rather than be exhaustively accurate. Or get the perspective right or anything. Slider caps in particular may vary even in the same model; so I’m not trying too hard to represent the exact types found — where they haven’t all vanished or been replaced.

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The Russ’s children are a wild bunch. We knew that all along. They’ve never been easy neighbours, though sometimes their parents were our friends. But yesterday we heard a scream from the little sister and wondered what it was now. Turned out that the biggest brother was dragging her into a cage he’d built. She’d been trying to get out and meet people, and the brothers didn’t like that. The littlest of them was always too small to dare to do anything himself, and too scared to talk to anyone or to disobey. So he’d helped build the cage and kept quiet.

We wondered what to do. Could we, should we, do anything? Sometimes everyone knows what’s going on, but no-one says anything. This wasn’t the first time she’d been dragged into the house and tied down, while Big Brother did whatever he wanted with her, and the Little Brother sat and watched, giggling to himself about the things he’d do when he grew up. How she got over that and still had enough nerve to talk to anyone, I don’t know. Perhaps she wants to believe that it’s good to be friendly, so long as people are friendly to you.

But this time I don’t know. I’m afraid. I’ve heard of it happening before in other villages. Maybe they’ll just tie her to the bed again and Big Brother can use her like before. Or maybe he’s so crazy about her, so mad that he’s not the only thing in her world. Maybe it’ll happen this time. Maybe he’ll say, it was an honour killing. And all the people looking for excuses will just say, well, honour. Yes, that’s important, isn’t it. It’s traditional. It’s their family business, after all.

Stop looking at me like that. You’re not helping.