Posts Tagged aviation
So I leave my bags behind (Galilee Song parody, now actually sung!) and another new version of Seddit
Posted by Angela Brett in My Software, video on September 2, 2025
Hey look, Joey Marianer sang the parody song lyrics from my last post! Check there for the lyrics and the aviation incidents referenced.
There are some more song parody lyrics, but first, a word from my sponsor: me. Just like last time, I’ve released a new version of Seddit, my text-to-speech-focussed Reddit client for macOS and iOS. This has a feature I’ve wanted to add for a while — the possibility to select multiple voices, and read each user’s posts and comments in a different one. The variety makes it easier to keep paying attention when listening for a long time, and having each user consistently use the same voice should make it easier to follow conversations.
I made some other changes in this version too. Here’s a full list of them:
Features
- Added the possibility to have each user’s posts and comments spoken in a different voice
- Added settings for whether to read out the subreddit name, and date and time for each post.
- Added the option to load no comments — this was for Joey, who wanted to try listening to short story subreddits while obeying the “don’t read the comments” rule of the internet.
Bug fixes
- Fixed a bug whereby turning off the ‘Say “Link” instead of reading out URLs’ setting would not work
- Fixed a bug where comments that weren’t loaded would be read as “comment by unknown user” Comments that aren’t loaded due to the comment depth settings are also no longer displayed.
- Fixed a potential crash when opening the app if posts had been deleted on another device
On the subject of text-to-speech, nine or ten years ago I read a book and a bunch of papers on speech synthesis in order to write a term paper for my Web Development for Linguistics degree. The term paper was longer than the text of my thesis, because my thesis also included source code for a web site and a Mac app. Anyway, from this book I learnt about PSOLA (Pitch Synchronous Overlap and Add) which is used to change the pitch and duration of sounds for text-to-speech, as one might do to change prosody, or create a robot choir.
Newer voices don’t use PSOLA so much, as (to put it simply) they have more samples of actual speech in different situations, so they don’t need to modify samples for the sake of prosody. Note, this is ‘newer voices’ as of a decade or two ago; I don’t know whether the latest crop of ML-based voices do things the same way. Anyway, I assume this is why the newer macOS voices don’t support the TUNE format I used for my robot choir.
At the time, I wrote an utterly silly partial parody of Lola, by The Kinks, about PSOLA. I thought maybe I’d finish it or maybe even make it less silly[why?], but I never did, and now I don’t remember enough about how PSOLA works to fully understand what I originally wrote. So here is that draft. It really doesn’t scan, but I hope it doesn’t scan in amusing ways:
I was trying to synthesise some prosody,
but my source and filter were mixed up just like granola
G-R-A-N-O-L-A, granola.
So I found a new way to make it sound rad
It’s called pitch-synchronous overlap and add, that is PSOLA
P-S-O-L-A PSOLA. Pso-pso-pso-P-SOLA.
Well I didn’t want to sound like a smallpox blight
So I really took care with my to get my epochs right
for PSOLA. Pso-pso-pso-P-SOLA.
If you’re not dumb then you’ll soon understand
How I speak like a woman then sound like a man
It’s P-SOLA. Pso-pso-pso-P-SOLA. Pso-pso-pso-P-SOLA.
[It doesn’t look like I wrote anything for the bridge (is that a bridge?) of the song, so just pretend it keeps going roughly like before]
It was used to make synthesized speech sound natural
But now there’s some super-sized features that fill that role-uh
R-O-L-E hyphen U-H role-uh
So that’s my guess if you’re wondering why r-
ecent voices don’t sing in my robot choir:
No PSOLA.
So I leave my bags behind (Galilee Song parody lyrics) and a new version of Seddit
Posted by Angela Brett in My Software on August 19, 2025
Whoever else you believe is in the sky looking after you, you can be sure that the crew of any airliner you fly in are there to keep you safe. So here’s a parody of the hymn ‘The Galilee Song’ about surviving an emergency water landing. It’s based on the stories of Pan Am Flight 526A, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, and US Airways Flight 1549:
Both the right wing engines glitched, when a plane had barely climbed,
So the pilots deftly ditched; soon a rescue crew arrived.
Panicked flyers feared the sharks in the sea where they came down,
So instead of boarding rafts, some stayed in the plane to drown.
So I leave my bags behind
Leave through unfamiliar doors
Set my raft upon the deep
Pull my life vest inflate cord
Once some halfwits stormed a flight, made impossible demands,
So the captain who was bright, steered them stealthily toward land.
They came down just off a coast; those with life vests could be saved.
Some inflated theirs too soon, trapped inside that sinking plane.
So I leave my bags behind
Leave through unfamiliar doors
Only after I am free
Pull my life vest inflate cord
One plane struck a flock of birds; there was nought to do but glide.
Skiles and Sully, undeterred, ditched the plane and no-one died.
Though ’twas not an ocean flight, there were crucial vests and slides.
A stroke of luck that now we cite in the transport safety guides.
So I leave my bags behind
Leave through unfamiliar doors
Set my raft upon the deep
Pull my life vest inflate cord
So I leave my bags behind
Leave through unfamiliar doors
Only after I am free
Pull my life vest inflate cord
∎
After I posted the chorus of this along with my last aviation-themed parody, Joey made noises about potentially singing it if I wrote the rest, so that’s what I did. The chorus is very catchy, so I hope it reminds people what to do if they need it.
The original song has a strong enough tune that you barely notice that it has basically no rhymes, only a little assonance in the chorus. I couldn’t help putting in a bunch of rhymes though. Where’s the challenge, otherwise? The chorus still pretty much rhymes with the lines of the original chorus rather than with itself, though, which doesn’t make sense for anyone who doesn’t know the original, but is so very tempting for those who do, because the chorus is catchy enough to inspire faith… to the non-rhyme scheme.
So I add a bunch of rhymes
Fix the song’s familiar flaws
To absolve it of its [bleep]
Wait, that word was not untoward!
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m including a song parody each time I post about a minor update in an app I release. Well, I’ve released a new version of Seddit, my text-to-speech-focussed Reddit client for iOS and macOS. The new version has three new features, so it’s not such a minor update, really. Here’s what’s new:
Features
- Settings for sounds to play between posts and comments — now you have two options for the sounds to play when going up or down levels when reading comments. You can also choose to turn off the sounds played between posts or when going up or down comment levels.
- ‘Random from previous’ option when autoloading more posts, so it will automatically load posts from any of the subreddits you have previously loaded posts from, instead of just a specific one
- Option to say ‘Link’ instead of reading out URLs in posts and comments
Bug fixes
- Fix to a potential hang when autoloading posts
You can get the latest version of Seddit from the app store!
Rotation Speed (Sam Bettens parody lyrics) and a new version of Lifetiler
Posted by Angela Brett in My Software, News on August 14, 2025
This is a parody of Coasting Speed by Sam Bettens, because ever since I learnt the phrase ‘rotation speed’ from Mentour Pilot, I’ve had it in my head to the tune of Coasting Speed every time I’ve taken off (as a passenger) in an aeroplane. I’ve added a little to this parody with each flight. This is from the perspective of the flight crew and cabin crew, talking to the passengers.
The takeoff’s cleared
We’ve finally reached
rotation speed
We known we’re each
prepared for takeoff
and we start to fly
You board your flight
You stow your bags
Tray tables up
Do your belts up tight
We know you’re ready
As we get you high
But it’s not a rush
We take our time
your life
is in our hands
Ohhh
When the engine’s drowning out all other sound
When the landing just won’t stick, and we go around
We won’t let you, we won’t let you down
but we’ll get you down
At altitude
We are pressurised
We’ve got attitude
And you inside
So you’re breathing easy
When you’ve got to fly
But the flight goes on
And on and on
It might seem much too long
Ohhhh
When the engine’s drowning out all other sound
When the landing just won’t stick, and we go around
We won’t let you, we won’t let you down
but we’ll get you down
Sometimes life is scary when you’re all up in the air
But we’ll be there
We won’t let you down
but we’ll get you down.
We won’t let you down.
The engine blocks all other sound,
The landing sticks, we won’t go around
We won’t let you, we won’t let you down
but we’ll get you down.
We won’t let you down
but we’ll get you down.
We won’t let you down
but we’ll get you down.
∎
I think parts of this could still be improved, but I’ve decided that each time I release a minor update to an app, I should post about it, and include an old song parody or poem that’s been gathering dust each time — that way, two things that might not have been enough to post about on their own will both get posted.
This one is probably good enough to post by itself, especially as I’ve also written another partial parody about aviation, which I will put later in this post. But first, an ‘ad break’ for the new version of Lifetiler! After releasing Seddit a week ago, I set to work fixing some issues I had noticed in Lifetiler, the app I wrote to chart my once-long-distance relationship with Joey Marianer. I have now released version 1.2, with the following fixes:
- Features
- Pinch-to-zoom is now supported in the Tiles view, both on iOS and macOS. Previously you could only change the tile size using a slider at the bottom of the screen, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of pinch-to-zoom before. The slider is still there, but now you can also use pinch-to-zoom, or the zoom rotor setting in VoiceOver.
- On macOS, you can now change the width of the ‘Export as Image’ and ‘Document Settings’ panels
- Fixes for large font sizes on iOS and iPadOS
- I’ve fixed several screens where text was cut off or just poorly laid-out at larger font sizes.
- I’ve made sure tiles scale according to the font size setting, in the ‘List’ screen/pane, as the default size for the main ‘Tiles’ screen, and for the list of existing symbols when adding a date range, and settings for how to show tiles not in date ranges, or in simplified mode (where all tiles within date ranges are shown as the same symbol.)
- Fixes for VoiceOver (and probably other assistive technologies)
- I’ve made the VoiceOver interface correctly reflect what is seen in simplified mode, and for empty tiles
- I’ve fixed a bug whereby the tiles in the existing symbols list, and settings for how to show tiles not in date ranges, or in simplified mode, were not accessible to VoiceOver if they were currently set to coloured squares rather than emoji.
You can get the new version on the App Stores for macOS 15 Sequoia or later and iOS/iPadOS 17 or later.
Okay, now for the other aviation-related song parody I promised. This is a parody of the chorus of the Galilee Song, a hymn we used to sing at my Catholic high school. The original lyrics go:
So I leave my boats behind!
Leave them on familiar shores!
Set my heart upon the deep!
Follow you again, my Lord!
But when you’re evacuating an aeroplane in water, remember God helps those who help themselves… so here’s what you should be thinking:
So I leave my bags behind
Leave through unfamiliar doors
Set my raft upon the deep
Pull my life vest inflate cord
That’s all from me for now! I’m off to apply for more jobs and work on more features in Seddit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Please tell me if you do something cool with it.
Creative Output 