(no subject)

[ewt]

Lost phone last night, came home, got it barred.

Have phoned police, insurance company. I'm covered for a new handset and sim (although I have to pay for the sim and send the receipt to the insurancecompany - what is up with that?), and for any calls made between when I lost it and when I barred it. I'm really glad I had in insured, now. Insurance = good.

They are all slow with forms and things.

I have to go to the store and get the form faxed to the store (because it is that or they post it to me - they cannot e-mail it to me), fill it out there, and hopefully get a new phone.

I also have to pay an excess of £50. Grah, but I suppose it is better than buying a new phone outright. I'm not sure. I'll see what they have to offer. I may just take the best of the 'suitable' replacements, and wait a few months and make a nice, thought-out decision about which phone to get.

Today is Buy Nothing Day, too. I feel like some sort of traitor, but I need a phone, there is an ad in the newspaper for people to phone me for rooms in this house and guess which number it has on it? GRAH!

It is reported as lost, rather than stolen, because nobody bumped into me or anything like that, I have no reason to believe it was nicked. There is a possibility that someone will find it and turn it in to the police. If that happens then I have to run around un-doing everything, or get done for insurance fraud.

If you have my mobile number you can't phone me on it right now; you may or may not be able to do so starting sometime in the next few days.

Comments

[ex-purplekaz150.livejournal.com]

Even if I wanted to buy something, I can't sodding well afford to! :(

Sorry to hear about your phone

[magister.livejournal.com]

Sebab referred me to you because I have a question you might be able to shed some light on. I hope you don't mind.

Here's the goofy question. I have been very interested in natural horns and french horns lately...most importantly, I have been looking into the stopped-horn technique. I've been told that stopping the horn can flatten or sharpen the pitch by a half-step, depending on how much of the hand is inserted into the bell. What I don't know is how big that half step is...is it a big one or a little one? Like, is it 10 cents sharp or 5 cents flat? It can't be a perfectly in-tune semitone.

Re: Sorry to hear about your phone

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

It really depends on the horn, and the hand. On my horn, with my hand, in most of the range, it is a pretty good, very slightly sharp, half-step. My horn cheats and has a hand-stopping valve which will make everything a half-step flat so you can hand-stop without having to worry about pitch, but I rarely use it because I don't _need_ to. For scoring purposes it is left to the devices of the horn player to figure out how to get the best pitch when doing hand-stopped passages; there are also 'stopping mutes' (which are different than ordinary mutes) which can stop the horn without affecting the pitch.

It's possible to 'lip up' or 'lip down' most notes by quite a bit if you've been playing a while, so most people who end up with a 10-cents-sharp hand-stopped note just instinctively put it back in tune at the other end, with the mouthpieces. If necessary one could pull in or pull out the main tuning slide to adjust for the pitch, but this is of course awkward for short passages or passages where one has to play open horn next.

Moving the hand around affects the pitch even when it is up to about a foot out of the bell, because that space is still part of the column (okay, spiral) of air that vibrates.

I hope this answers some of your questions. If not, you might try asking in hornplayers