I was wondering how to set up yt-dlp to download an audio track from Youtube as an Mp3, then play it in vlc once it was finally downloaded. After a bit of playing I found this command works well with yt-dlp.
After the big long drop from what feels like the sky on Bald Eagle Mountain and several miles of down grade, it feels like the bottom of the world is dropping out with that steep decline over the Little Juanita River in Tyrone. Big Speed Trap too but mad fun to drive with the 70 mph speed zone but watch for the Tyrone cops 👮 🚨.
Every time I hear this song, I am reminded of listening to it as I was cruising down Bald Eagle Mountain with the final steep drop on Interstate 99 over the Little Juinta Run and the Tyrone Exit. Big speed trap, the speed limit is 70 mph but I was doing a few miles over that, and while I didn't pass a cop, I certainly was singing along as ol' Big Red creaked and groaned over the bumps and walloped along that expressway. As I was heading down to good ol' West Virginia past the mill towns and farms of Pennsylvania with their cows and hogs, and smoldering ol' burn barrels.
Truth is that song takes me back to a time that was, back what next year will be 25 years since I was in High School when they played music like that on school bus with ol' Fly 92. That and Country-Western Music. Wasn't into the hick thing when I was in High School, and if anything my taste where the oldies. But it still brings back memories, on music which is now probably considered oldies. The lead singer of Smash Mouth has been dead now for over a decade I'm told, and I keep watching as more people I know from High School come and go. Ransom Wickoff passed I saw in the news. I guess only the good die young. And it's just us crazies and now hillbilly wantabees who are left. I do want to get to West VIrigina. Next year.
Riding in this morning once I shower, tested the heat last night and even set it at 46 degrees to make sure it didn’t get too cold but things were good, a few degrees below 50 inside but the heat didn’t kick on except when I tested to long enough to feel the radiator get warm.
Truth is that I like the cold or at least tolerate it. ❄️ It makes it feel a lot more less cold when I ride my bike to work, as I’m used to cold. It also makes those nights up in wilderness feel less cold. But those hot cups of coffee ☕ and Johnny cakes with all the onions, garlic, spinach are so good. Winter is coming and I’m glad the heat works when I want it to, because I don’t want to have issues with things freezing, not that I really care that much about the heat. After the long commute home on the bike then yokel local bus that stops every three feet, 🚲 👉 🚌 I just want to have dinner, head to bed and sleep. 🛏️ Then get up at 4 or 5 AM to make breakfast and read.
Last night was a long one with the public meetings with Save the Pine Bush. 🌲 The Guilderland Town Meeting dragged on and on for hours and hours, after the Colonie Planning Meeting to start the evening. We got some good things in the Comphrensive Plan for the Pine Bush, and maybe the Solar Farm will be defeated in the Pine Bush. ☀️ That said, I’ve become very defensive of industrial solar in most places, especially ordinary but often marginal agricultural lands, because it seems like a rural use, just like cows and corn fields. We need energy ⚡, especially low-carbon energy more then more milk. Solar doesn’t have cow shit and herbicides running off into the creeks, no matter how careful farms are some is inevitable. 🐮 And it’s not like solar is a permanent development, as all solar farms include bonds to remove the panels at the end of the typical 40-year lease to the farmer-owner of the land. Compaction is limited, 🚜 and large parcels of land remain together, so if we want to sling cow shit again in 2060s, then it’s ready to do that. 🌲 Or maybe if timber demand is high, then it can planted as hardwoods or some other crop. And solar doesn’t complain about your burn barrel smoke or hog manure piles. 🛢️ Truth is I don’t want to necessarily smell my neighbor’s trash burning or their guinea fowl noise, but I want the right to do both things. But it’s not really right to build solar in the remaining acres of an ecologically unique ecosystem. Didn’t get to bed until around 10 PM and then didn’t get asleep for a while up after being jacked up from public meetings, 😜 but I slept into six AM.
I got listening to Joni Mitchell’s River. 🎅 I was reminded of that time two years ago when Mom and Dad were sick for the holidays, so I ended up spending Christmas 🎄 at the State Horse Camp 🐴 out Madison County, cooking the nuts and cranberries up by the fire, and hanging out by those little pavilions. I want to get back out to Madison County sometime in December, maybe around the holidays or maybe in mid-month. After Thanksgiving 🦃 I will head up to the Adirondacks. Or maybe Martin Luther Kings Weekend, depending on how bitterly cold and snowy ❄️ it is during the coldest month of the year. I want to look at getting skis at the Sportsmart this weekend, as that might be a fun activity to do this winter if we actually get snow.
I read some more of Jessica Soward’s The First-Time Gardener: Growing Vegetables and Michael Pollan’s Second Nature this morning. 🍅 Reading about growing vegetables seems like a werid topic for mid-November when everything is dying off, and it’s manure and root vegetable season 💩 far more then anything but it’s still an interesting topic I wanted to learn more about. Those books are both due back on Friday, I could renew if I wanted to finish up but I think I’d rather save my ten November Hoopla borrows for new books, 📚 maybe this month reading more about construction 🏗️ and sustainable building and Off-Grid Solar and things along those lines. And something of general popular interest – you maybe kind of along the lines of Bill McKibbean or Michael Pollen but maybe not those authors again. Environmental, political topics. 🌎 But not the political penis measuring the contest.
I get tired of the endless number enormous, complicated and thoroughly modern houses I see on Zillow. But when I get to a more remote place like the Adirondacks and look around I know there is reason for hope. Most cabins, especially seasonal hunting cabins aren’t wrapped in plastic or are enormous though some certainly are. I really don’t get the appeal of modernity, the smart television in every room with high speed internet. I am pretty sure the house of future, as sold on television will come with a mandatory 30-yard dumpster with the amount of waste we are told is normal by the television.
I think home should be a sanctuary away from it all. Simple and not needing constant repairs or buying new shit to keep it in good condition. A simple cabin, with as few electronics and as little technology as possible. Maybe some electric lights, but not much beyond that. While I could see the benefits of having a propane heater as a backup when I’m away for an extended period of time, a wood stove, with as little space to heat as possible would be best. No washing machine, no dish washer or fancy appliances. Just a very basic propane stove, an energy efficient refrigerator, a place to charge my cellphone.
Maybe to live a life like that I have to build it, as few houses on the market truly are like that. But there are people who live that way, as witnessed by the Adirondacks. Not all houses are spacious and “modern” or covered with vinyl siding and full of white walls. Shiplap and board batten are common options in cabins, white drywall ain’t the only option. You also don’t have to have a 2,000 foot square house. Maybe such things are normal in suburbs, along with the mandatory 30-yard dumpster for all the things you get in Amazon on a daily basis, but I find it all so repulsive.
