Recently, I've gone somewhere, done something, or seen something amazing I've shared in these pages. Here, you'll find my most recent posts, covering a wide range of topics that pique my interest. Whether you're passionate about travel, captivated by photography, enchanted by music, or intrigued by computer programming, there's likely to be something here for everyone!

Dive in and explore the latest insights, stories, and adventures that I have to share. Enjoy your stay!

The Operating System of My Dreams

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/12/2026		Page Views: 129
Hashtags: #Retirement #Programming #OperatingSystems #Singularity #DesktopMinder #FileExplorer #Projects
In 1995 I started building a document-oriented operating system. I should be done any day now!
Estimated reading time: 8 minute(s) (1846 words)

Suppose a letter arrives in the mail and you want to read it. You pick up the letter. That is the whole procedure. Nobody has ever opened a letter by first going to the closet, getting out the letter-reading machine, plugging it in, waiting for it to warm up, and then asking the machine to go find the letter.

Xylophone Concerto

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/11/2026		Page Views: 2
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone #Concerto
Three works for xylophone and orchestra, presented with rather more ceremony than the instrument is accustomed to.

Of all the instruments admitted to the modern orchestra, none has been so persistently underestimated as the xylophone. Confined for the better part of two centuries to the depiction of skeletons, comic mishap, and the occasional startled bird, it has waited with great patience for a composer prepared to take it at its word. In Paul S Cilwa it has found one.

Renaissance Flaire

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/11/2026		Page Views: 1
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone
Three simultaneous versions, no original, and a title nobody has dared correct.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (353 words)

The textual situation of Renaissance Flaire is without parallel in the composer's output. It exists in three complete versions, none of which can be shown to precede the others, and all of which the composer maintains he wrote first. Editors have generally responded to this by printing all three and declining to discuss it.

Reflective Path

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/11/2026		Page Views: 1
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone
Recovered from the glovebox of a 1974 Oldsmobile, and presented twice.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (239 words)

Of the three works in this collection, Reflective Path has the least secure provenance and by some distance the most devoted following. It was found folded into the service manual of a 1974 Oldsmobile Delta 88, between the section on wheel bearings and the section on the heater core, in handwriting the composer has described as "probably mine."

Xylophone Concerto #1

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/11/2026		Page Views: 1
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone #Concerto
Four movements, one coffee ring, and a tempo marking that may not be one.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (357 words)

The Concerto No. 1 is cast in four movements and lasts a little under half an hour, which its composer has described as "about a tank of gas." It is the only one of the three works presented here whose manuscript is complete, legible, and unambiguously in his own hand, a distinction he regards as overrated.

How Music Minder Works

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/6/2026		Page Views: 25
Hashtags: #Software #Music #ReplayGain #rsgain #ffmpeg #Loudness #EBUR128 #FLAC #MP3
What Music Minder actually does to your files, in what order, and what it leans on to do it.
Estimated reading time: 8 minute(s) (1719 words)

Music Minder is mostly a conductor. The measuring is done by a program called rsgain and the audio surgery by ffmpeg; Music Minder decides what an 'album' is, what to do to it, in what order, and shows you what's happening, while it's happening. This page is for anyone who wants to know exactly what that means for their files.

Music Minder

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/6/2026		Page Views: 117
Hashtags: #Software #Music #ReplayGain #Loudness #Normalize #FLAC #MP3 #Volume #Silence #Mono
A free tool that evens out the volume of your music library, album by album, and tidies the tracks while it's there.
Estimated reading time: 7 minute(s) (1483 words)

Every album was mastered at its own volume. A record from 1975 is quiet; one from 2005 is loud; a compilation is all over the place. So you reach for the volume knob every time the album changes. Music Minder measures each album once, writes a small note into every track saying how much to turn it up or down, and from then on your player does the adjusting for you. Nothing in the audio is changed; the note is just a tag, like the artist's name, and removing it puts everything back exactly as it was.

Fake Stereo!

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/2/2026		Page Views: 162
Hashtags: #Science #History #Music #SoundRecording #Stereo #ArtificialIntelligence
How we finally solved the one-microphone problem.
Estimated reading time: 24 minute(s) (5635 words)

I've spent a good part of the last few decades building a digital music library of my own. Streaming services can drop an artist overnight—a licensing dispute, a contract lapse, a public relations problem—and the album you've played four hundred times simply isn't there any more. So I've ripped thousands of CDs, a wall of LPs, and even a trunkful of 78s and 45s. And what came off those older (pre-1958) discs is mono. Which got me wondering what it would take to hear those recordings the way the people in the room heard them.

Whippoorwill (2030s Bardcore)

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/28/2026		Page Views: 9
Hashtags: #Music #Whippoorwill #Bardcore
A bonus track from the future, which sounds suspiciously like 1350.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (584 words)

Sixteen variations march this tune forward three hundred years, from a harpsichord in a candlelit room to a pop diva on an arena stage. Having run out of decades, there was nowhere left to go but round again—so here is the 2030s, which turn out to sound remarkably like 1350.