Voice lessons at the local community school of music. I'm a lifelong musician, but was an almost entirely solitary one. I taught myself different instruments, but I never felt like I could get to basic competency teaching myself to sing. I decided to spend ~$200 for a semester of weekly 30 minute lessons. (The community school cooperates with the local university to offer lessons taught by university students for a low rate.)
My singing improved (more work is needed), but the life-changing thing was getting involved with the local music community. It turns out they have a shortage of piano teachers--I had mistakenly assumed there would be plenty in my town! So I started teaching piano, which had long been a dream of mine. The school also connected me to local performance opportunities that are now a part of my regular music routine. And ultimately, the experience encouraged me to enroll as a (part-time) music student at the university, which itself has been extremely enriching and a tremendously positive community experience.
Not the parent, but I would definitely recommend it. A lot of voice quality has to how you pronounce vowels and where you place the resonance in your mouth. Also, avoiding singing through your nose (hold your nose closed and if there's pressure, then don't sing that way). There are vocal exercises for all of those, as well as exercises for breath support, singing in tune, phrasing, etc.
If you'd like to improve, definitely! There are all sorts of things involved in singing that some do naturally and others (like myself) do not. Having a knowledgeable teacher who's able to observe you, identify areas of improvement, and help you progress is really beneficial. There's a whole lot of "not knowing what you don't know" at play.
Plus singing is a pretty personal way of making music, and there can be a lot of social fear of doing it badly. Formally studying it can help with getting over the psychological hump from self-identifying as "someone who is attempting to sing" to "singer".
I think you should pursue anything you're interested in.
I don't have the best singing voice, but after a few years of learning how to sing, it's like I finally "get it". It used to be this very mystical thing, but now I realise how to use my body to sing properly.
I would temper your expectations. Singing lessons will improve your singing faster than practicing alone but it still may take years and years to develop.
I had always enjoyed singing and I started singing and piano lessons at the same time. With consistent practice you can improve at the piano, learn more complex pieces and see your progress. With singing the process is a lot more mysterious. You probably don't understand the things that are going on inside your body very well and the teacher can't just say "Try putting your first finger on this key and your middle finger on this key".
After three years I could play reasonably complicated pop songs on the piano and read chords. I'm still a few steps the average "someone who likes to sing level".
I was a heavy Google Reader user and mourned it for years. At some point, though, I discovered Miniflux [1], and haven't really missed Reader since.
What I do miss from the Reader days, though, is widespread RSS support. I wonder if the death of such a prominent RSS reader gave sites "permission" to stop supporting RSS, and pushed RSS into further obscurity. Anecdotally, it feels like RSS is a feature often not carried over after a site redesign.
It's not Escape Velocity, but Maelstrom was open-sourced [1]!
A while ago I forked a version and changed the braking power-up to be controlled by a button press, instead of always active [2]. It was cool to fix something that always bugged me in a game I played when I was a kid.
Works great! If you're on Ubuntu/Debian/etc, you'll need to apt install libsdl1.2-dev and libsdl-net1.2-dev. I thought something was wrong when the build took less than 2 seconds, but it turns out computers have gotten faster in the last 25 years.
It looks like the subject has come up a couple times on the mailing list [1] [2], but in my (admittedly casual) searching I didn't find anything since 2017, with the most relevant answer being "not at the moment". Since it has been a couple years, maybe it's worth bringing up again on the mailing list?
Accepting that we're just throwing out interesting-sounding ideas, I wonder if having a powered runway rail (or something of the sort) to provide takeoff power could work. With that you wouldn't have to worry about dropping anything.
But I do wonder how much power is actually expended at takeoff versus climbing or cruising flight. According to [1], only ~19% is used for both takeoff and climb, so electrifying the runway to save the fraction of the 19% used while in contact with the ground is probably not worth it.
SupersonicScrub's comment (a sibling to yours) says that the engine can be significantly more efficient if it doesn't have to meet the power demands of take-off. Their link says "at least 30%" fuel savings on a one-hour flight (although "the fuel savings will partly come from the latest gas turbine technology"). So maybe the rail system you propose isn't such a crazy idea. Also, it's not totally different in concept from an aircraft carrier's catapult; hopefully gentler...
>Also, it's not totally different in concept from an aircraft carrier's catapult; hopefully gentler...
Nah. If someone can't handle a few g's in takeoff, maybe they shouldn't be flying, and should should stay home, or maybe in a nursing home. I know it sounds mean, but seriously, think about it: aircraft transport isn't always comfortable. Turbulence happens, and it can be extremely rough at times, even injuring people severely if they're not belted in. If someone is too frail to handle being launched by an aircraft carrier catapult (which, remember, also launch those big AWACS planes, not just small fighter jets), then they're not suited for handling turbulence either.
Also, don't forget, the latest generation of catapult technology is actually pretty gentle. The USS Ford's "EMALS" catapults are electromagnetic, rather than steam, and one of the big stated benefits of this is that it's gentler on the airframes than the old steam catapults. It's still going to subject the pilots/passengers to several g's, but probably lower peak acceleration than the older technology did.
Wacom also sells drawing tablets with integrated displays [1]. I've never used them or an Apple Pencil, so I don't know how they compare, but Wacom isn't totally caught out here.
On the other hand, I can see a lot of people buying (or already owning) iPad Pros and using this feature who might not buy a dedicated device for it.
People do. That's what the pledge drives and "brought to you by viewers like you" commonly heard on PBS are about.
Different local stations rely on difference funding sources. Stations in smaller or rural markets would have a harder time existing on direct donations alone.
Voice lessons at the local community school of music. I'm a lifelong musician, but was an almost entirely solitary one. I taught myself different instruments, but I never felt like I could get to basic competency teaching myself to sing. I decided to spend ~$200 for a semester of weekly 30 minute lessons. (The community school cooperates with the local university to offer lessons taught by university students for a low rate.)
My singing improved (more work is needed), but the life-changing thing was getting involved with the local music community. It turns out they have a shortage of piano teachers--I had mistakenly assumed there would be plenty in my town! So I started teaching piano, which had long been a dream of mine. The school also connected me to local performance opportunities that are now a part of my regular music routine. And ultimately, the experience encouraged me to enroll as a (part-time) music student at the university, which itself has been extremely enriching and a tremendously positive community experience.