I had my first song practice while recording the audio in Audacity. I just checked on a piece of it and it seems to have recorded clean and loud enough. I video-recorded the first half-hour, so if I didn’t screw up one or two songs I’ll combine the Audacity audio with the camera audio and publish the video on YouTube. My plan is to record twenty more sessions and then look through them to see if there are any keepers.
I’ll have a listen later on today to hear if the pop blocker worked.
I weighed 84.4 kilos before breakfast.
At noon I took an early bike ride to Yonge and Bloor because on the way back, at Queen and Peter I was going to meet my friend Brian Haddon at the Black Bull. I was there fifteen minutes early and took a booth on the patio. Brian was ten minutes late. His beard is fully white now. He’s on his pension but he continues to work as an artist’s model although he says he’s deliberately working a lot less. I told him I’m very glad to not be working at all. I suggested he apply for the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
Brian is still working on his music projects and says he recently composed a wind quartet on the computer. I asked him what audio editing software he uses and he said he’s got Reaper. It costs money but the price is a lot less for people with low income and it’s on the honour system.
I said I’d still like to return to working with him musically. As usual, he didn’t say he wouldn’t but told me his fingers are very much out of practice for playing a keyboard.
I told him about the video I’m making for the recording we’d made of my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”, and he was impressed with how much work I’m putting into it.
We talked about TV series we’ve mutually liked in the past. He said he gave up on Star Trek Discovery after the second season, but he’s really enjoying Star Trek Strange New Worlds. I told him the second season of Star Trek Picard is pretty good but there are some slow moments in the penultimate episode.
We disagreed on the current Doctor Who. He doesn’t like Jodie Whitaker as the Doctor, while I do.
We each had the beer-battered fish and chips. I had two pints of Creemore and he had two of Barking Squirrel. After we’d been there for an hour we were told that debit was down across North America and so we’d have to pay cash. I told him I’d brought enough for us both but later debit came back up again.
We enjoyed seeing one another and he suggested we get together again in the summer before covid returns in the fall. We agreed to meet sometime around the middle of July.
When I got home I took a late siesta and got up at 17:42.
I weighed 84.2 kilos at 17:45.
I got caught up on my journal at 19:30.
I looked at the video of this morning’s song practice, and the pop filter is obscuring the lower part of my face. I think the camera could stand to be a little higher. I listened to the audio I’d recorded with Audacity and there was no popping.
In my Movie Maker project of creating a music video for the studio recording of my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy”, I inserted the 1940s video clip of the turning of the shock machine dial to correspond with the line, “rotate the dial to choose the voltage you want.” The next line is “serve another cold meal in the restaurant of shock therapy” but it’s hard to know if I can synchronize the concert video with that line because the concert audio is not there. I opened the original concert video to try to hear where “rotate the dial to choose the voltage you want ends” so I can delete it. I almost pinned it down but I need to tackle it when I have more time. I’ll try it tomorrow.
I rubbed a pork loin sirloin-half with olive oil, salt, garlic, and rosemary and roasted it. I had a delicious slice with a potato and gravy while watching the second season finale of Star Trek Picard.
Picard and his team are now trying to make sure that the Europa mission launches. Tallinn, as the astronaut Renée Picard’s Watcher, has dedicated her life to protecting her. She teleports to the launch site to continue that goal but Picard steps in to teleport with her. The Borg Queen-Agnes’s message before she left Earth was that for the Europa mission to succeed there must be two Renée Picards: one who lives and one who dies. Picard knows that Tallinn plans to sacrifice herself to save Renée and he tries to stop her. She convinces him that this is what she wants.
Tallinn, disguised as an astronaut, enters the room where Renée is waiting to board the ship. She shares intimate details of Rene’s life that only someone who has been watching over her could know and tells her she’s trying to save her now.
Meanwhile, Adam Soong gains access to mission control because of a generous donation. He asks for five minutes with the astronauts and is granted it. As he approaches the room where Renée and Tallinn are, Renée exits the room and asks for his help because of the crazy woman who is in there. Soong comfortingly tells her to come with him but then he injects her with a neurotoxin, tells her it’s fatal, and walks away. Picard finds Renée and we know she’s really Tallinn in a holographic disguise.
Seven, Raffi, and Rios beam into Soong’s lab and discover that his backup plan is four explosive drones. Raffi tries to disable them but they launch, heading to destroy the Europa rocket. But Rios gains manual control over each drone and causes them to destroy each other.
Tallinn is able to watch the Europa mission launch before she dies in Picard’s arms.
The defeated Soong returns to his lab only to face one more defeat. Kore, the clone that he created and raised as a daughter, hacks into his system and destroys all of his research. But then Soong picks up the hard copy of a file folder with the title, “Project Khan.” Khan!
On Kore’s laptop screen there is suddenly a message that reads, “Curious what’s next? Watch and observe” followed by an address. She goes there where she meets Wesley Crusher, who we last saw many years ago when he became a Traveler. He tells her that the Travelers are Watchers or Supervisors, and he invites her to join them, so she does.
Seven, Raffi, and Rios are gathering all the future tech so none of it changes the timeline. Then out of the blue, Seven kisses Raffi. It seems a bit contrived since up to this point there had been no indication that there was an attraction between them.
In his family chateau, Picard returns to the hiding place in the wall the key that he will find as a boy in the future to unlock the door that leads to his mother’s suicide. He then finds Q in the conservatory who tells him this was all about his own forgiveness of himself. Picard asks Q why he has always come to him. Q explains that it is because he is his favourite human and now that he is dying he wants to give Picard a parting gift.
When the rest of the team sees Q, Raffi attacks, but Q tells her she doesn’t need to kill him because sending them all home with his final thread of power is going to do that for her. Rios says he is going to stay in the 21st Century with Teresa and Ricardo. Picard puts up a weak argument about the timeline but it doesn’t stick. Q says that because there is one less person to transport through time, there may be surplus energy for a gift. Picard gives Q a hug and they say goodbye.
Q snaps his fingers and they are back on the Stargazer just after Picard had ordered the self-destruct sequence in the first episode. But this time Picard stops the sequence because he knows the Borg queen that has boarded the ship is Agnes. She is there to save the quadrant from a galactic event. She has taken control of the fleet to harmonize their shields with those of the Borg. But the Excelsior’s shields are off and Raffi contacts it only to see Elnor alive on board, and that is the gift that Q hinted at. They are able to block the energy and save billions of lives. After the energy burst, there is a trans warp conduit. Agnes explains that it is tied to an unknown threat. Agnes asks for the Borg to be given membership in the Federation so they can guard the gates against that threat.
Picard goes home to stop Laris from leaving. The show closes with him having expressed something that makes her want to stay. It seems odd that they are not shown kissing, since that’s what Picard had held back from so dramatically in the first episode.
Rios was played by Chilean actor Santiago Cabrera, whose father was a diplomat and so the family lived in many places, including Venezuela, Romania, Canada, Spain, and England. Because of this, he is fluent in Spanish, English, French, and Italian. He studied for three years at the Drama Centre London. He worked in British theatre and then in supporting roles on British television before playing Lancelot in the BBC series “Merlin”. He played Isaac Mendez on “Heroes”. He played Darius Tanz on “Salvation”.
For the eighth night in a row I was happy to not find any bedbugs before bedtime.
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