Landscape Lights
Sunday, January 7th, 2024 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
34F this afternoon, but we still have yesterday's snow on the ground.
I'm happy to report that we now have six more garden lights out there, and all of them, on both the north and south sides will be going on at dusk and off at dawn in perpetuity!
Our story begins last night around 5PM, when I set up the new WiFi extender down in the basement.
Being directly under the main WiFi router it had no problem connecting, and it now broadcasts a strong 2G signal to the whole front of the house, even up on the 2nd floor!
I then configured my smart plug to connect to that signal and turn itself off sunrise, and back on at sunset... and plugged in the transformer for my north & west landscape lights.
But it was already dark out, so I had to wait until morning to be sure it was working properly.
When I got up today, around 11:30AM, I checked to see the status of the smart plug and the app said it was off.
Great!.. but when did it turn off?..
The switch log showed that it turned off at 7:20AM.
And a quick check on a weather app showed that sunrise today was at 7:19AM!
FABULOUS!
I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to finally have these lights working this way!
For five years they've been on a timer, that I had to go down and screw with, three times a year, to get them to kinda sort of go on around dark, and off... sometime after sunrise.
I knew putting them on a photo sensor would be a huge pain in the ass, so I just lived with it... but it's always bugged me, because I want them to just be correct without any intervention.
Okay, so waking up to that good news gave me the motivation to go ahead and install the path lights by the side door.
Yesterday I was thinking maybe I would just wait until spring.
But anyway, here's my 12V transformer wired into the junction box of the light over the door, which in turn is wired up to the photo sensor on the outside.
The wire runs straight down the door jamb post, with simple staples.
And then goes through a hole in the floor to get under the porch.
Then it just comes out by the stoop and goes to the first lamp.
I had some stakes with eye holes in them, which were perfect for running the wire around the front of the stoop, securely.
And here is our first glimpse of them in action.
The photo sensor is designed to turn on for about five seconds when the circuit is energized... to show you that it's working.
And indeed, when I flipped the porch disconnect switch back on... the path lights came on, with the lights over the door... for five seconds... letting me know they not only work, but are indeed controlled by the photo sensor!
FABULOUS!
The yard floods off the back room, and the front porch light have dawn to dusk bulbs in them, so... now all outdoor lighting around the house will be turnign on at sunset, and back off at sunrise... year round... without my having to ever think about it!
And I just LOVE that!
For like 65 years, DAD was the dusk to dawn agent who turned on the outdoor lights at night, and off in the morning... just by going around and hitting the three switches.
Front porch... side porch... back yard... his twice daily ritual.
And I always took it for granted, until he started taking ambulances to the hospital... and I'd return home after dark without him and see the whole house completely dark inside and out!
But even when the lights were on... a lot of the yard was in shadow anyway.
The side porch only had a single bulb inside, which didn't do anything really for out by the steps and the driveway.
The back room lights only lit up the dog yard a little bit.
And there was absolutely nothing on the north & west sides.
I ran the landscape lights on the north & west in 2019, when I turned the basement into a shop and installed HatchDoor 1.0... so that I could see back there to go in and out at night.
I brought proper electric to the porch in 2020, which is when I installed the bulkhead light outside above that door, on a photo sensor.
I bought that extended for the back room lights in 2022, and put in the dusk to dawn flood bulbs, to really illuminate the back yard.
In 2023, I added two garden lights behind the back room, near the foundation.
And now, finally I have path lights in front.
And finally... all of it works in concert!
Well, the new path lights were pretty glorious while they lasted!
But a few hours after taking the above photo, the transformer died!
I forgot to check the wattage rating before I bought the transformer... and I was a little worried about it last week, after it was on the way.
But the lights run 3 Watts a piece, for a total of 18 Watts, so I figured it'd be fine...
But it wasn't!
I still don't know the watt rating of the transformer, because it's not listed on Amazon, and it came with no paperwork whatsoever.
But, all the install work's been done now, so all I need to do is buy another transformer and make sure it's good for like 30 watts... and they'll be fine.
Won't be too hard to switch it out.
Meanwhile, in the studio, I did manage to get a lot done.
Last night I worked on, NYC Gargoyles, and, Never Rains.
I transposed NYC Gargoyles down a step, so that I can sing it decently... and it turns out transposing a whole song is pretty fast and easy.
Then I worked for several hours on Never Rains... adding more space for verses and bridges and whatnot.
And I slowed it down a bit.
But I also created full drums for it... which is what took most of the time.
Tonight, I worked on, Bed in the Suburbs.
This was another one that needed to be expanded for more verses and bridge measures... quite a bit!
And then I did full drums for it, as well... which got pretty involved!
I also transposed it down two steps... which caused the lowest Es of the bass line to become Ds... which is a no-no, because the bass guitar can't play low D.
So I had to manually bump all the low D4s up to D5s.
And then lastly, I sped it up a bit.
But the result of all that work is pretty great!
On SoundCloud, I replaced these three songs with their newer versions, so this week in the car I'll be able to review them and practice singing along.
So, in addition to draft proofing a bunch of windows, and improving my landscape light game, I did learn a few tricks in FL studio, like transposing, and also how to cut and paste large sections of music.
And I also developed my rhythm track technique further.
I already had a nice drum & percussion kit put together for this project when it started.
And over the past three weekends, because I don't like the built-in metronome, and because the metronome doesn't export to the FLAC files... I started pasting every measure with my own metronome... of just the high hat pedal... calling that pattern, "metro."
But soon I was adding the kick (or bass drum) in a pattern called, "metro bass"
But you know... to flesh things out a little bit, I'd created, "metro bass crash," and, "metro bass out," for the start and end of different blocks.
And of course, I had to create, "metro ride," for the chorus parts, with the ride cymbal going.
And all seven newer songs had this metronome skeleton together before this weekend... with, Archeology being the only one with full drums.
But with that skeleton in place, I found it was easy to add snare drums and create other variations with tom rolls and so forth... to get full drums going.
Full drums are still time consuming?.. but not nearly as time consuming as they used to be, thanks to the whole, metro-skeleton technique.
So the goal for my upcoming three-day weekend is to not only piano-roll the final two songs, but get full drums on all of them, if possible... and make sure all 10 songs are the right speed, and in the right key.
Once that's done, the next steps should be a lot easier.
So on Friday night, I talked to Brian and I texted him a link to a playlist on my SoundCloud that has seven of his songs... which we'd collaborated on back in 2002.
And I was shocked to hear that SoundCloud was making Brian watch an AD before he could hear them!
Because, goddammit!.. I pay SoundCloud to host my shit!
And on Saturday night, I complained about it to Colleen & Tim, who suggested I put my music on YouTube instead.
And I think that's a good idea.
I'll still have my shit on SoundCloud, because I've been there forever, and it does have it's advantages.
But putting it all on YouTube would be pretty simple... and would be a good second home for the stuff... that's easier to embed or share via SMS.
And if I created a new TikTok for Twincat Productions, to document this album project, then I could also put those TikToks on the YouTube.
And if I link them all back to this blog... and embed that stuff in the pages of this blog... then it's all... ya know... SEO... and could generate a tiny bit of engagement.
As I told Colleen & Tim last night, I'm not looking to make money or be popular with this stuff, but I DO want my music to be freely available to anybody who's curious to hear it... now, or in the future... after I'm dead.
I think about Bill, my peer from DeKalb who died unexpectedly last spring... and also about my nephew Dylan.
Very little of Bill's material ever got recorded.
Only random songs of his were ever captured... probably not his best... and not recorded very well... stuck on Spotify with adds all over them.
Dylan meanwhile has been produced in the past, always by some other party, with all his stuff being kept offline, so as not to spoil it's money making potential...
And then he lost it all!
He claims his computer was hacked, and all the files were destroyed.
And assuming that's true (for the sake of argument), that's a HUGE lesson in... back your shit up!
So yeah!.. I think it'll be good to have all my stuff on multiple platforms out there... as long as most of them are free... like TikTok, YouTube, and even BandCamp.
But I also have everything on multiple hard drives at home... some of which are being backed up, either by Microsoft, or BackBlaze.
I have four PCs at the moment, two large external drives, and multiple thumb drives, where all this stuff exists.
And for the current project, at the end of every session, I copy the FL-Studio files, and the exported FLACs to an external drive, which I bring back here and copy again onto the back room computer.
So there are always three copies of my newest material... in addition to what's uploaded to SoundCloud privately.
And if that reminds you of Volemort with his horcruxes... that's kind of an apt metaphor!
These are pieces of my soul, afterall... and my goal very much is for them to survive me after my death!
So... yeah.
I'd say it was a pretty full weekend!
And I'm all clean & shiny, with my clothes in the dryer.
Talk to you tomorrow, when normal life for 2024 officially gets going.
°¦}
