Category: Uncategorized

There’s an interesting, 10-minute video interview here with Morton Subotnick, one of the pioneering electronic-music composers. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I’ve never heard Silver Apples of the Moon in its entirety; after watching this video I may have to obtain a copy.

There’s a nice article and short video here on the Boston Globe’s site about the origami club at MIT, along with some general information about recent trends in origami.

This Wikipedia entry will almost certainly make you laugh out loud.

The temperature was -8°F (that’s -22°C for those of you living almost anywhere other than the USA) this morning, so it was time to brave the cold to blow some soap bubbles. In previous winters I found that the critical threshold for getting bubbles to freeze in mid-air seems to be around -3 or -5°F, and it’s cloudy but bright and still today, so the conditions were excellent. Many bubbles froze before hitting the ground, and a few small ones stayed intact for a minute or two after landing. I managed to blow one about the size of a large orange which stayed airborne for maybe 30 seconds, buoyed up by the faint thermal draft coming from a window. I could see it turning from an irridescent film to grey-white ice as the subdued rays of the sun hit it when it rose above the house. Finally it drifted back down to the ground and tumbled a few times as it crumbled on the snow. read more

I couldn’t help but chuckle when I learned that the color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System is being scrapped soon. Good riddance to one more useless relic from the Bush years.

It came to my attention recently that one of my heroes, Roger Linn, is receiving a Grammy Merit Award for Technical Achievement. Quoting directly from the press release:

Roger Linn is a musical instrument designer who revolutionized the world of electronic musical instruments when he invented the LM-1 Drum Computer, the first drum machine to use digital samples of a real drum kit. Linn also went on to help in the design of other drum machines including the LinnDrum, Linn9000, the Akai MPC60 and Akai MPC3000. In 2002, Linn founded Roger Linn Design, which released the AdrenaLinn series of guitar pedals, which contain a digital multi-effects drum machine and amp modeler all in one that specializes in beat-synced effects. In addition to his production career, he is a guitarist and songwriter who has written hits for artists such as Eric Clapton and Mary Chapin Carpenter. read more

In my junior high school, woodshop classes were overseen by Mr. Witt. Mr. Witt was a large and somewhat dour man, seemingly with a slightly short temper. On the other hand, Mr. Witt had to ride herd on a couple dozen barely adolescent males (mostly males, anyway) who had free run in a large room full of things with sharp edges and large motors, so the onus was upon Mr. Witt to impose some degree of discipline on us. Mr. Witt also turned out to be quite jovial if you happened to show an unusual interest in some project or process related to his classes, after summoning the nerve to approach him directly to broach the subject. read more

SparkFun had a free day about a year ago, on which they gave away $100,000 in free orders (up to $100 per customer). Not surprisingly, it brought their web site to its knees in a fairly short period of time. Ostensibly part of the hidden motivation for this event was to evaluate the load-handling capabilities of their web servers. They decided to do it again today, this time giving away $150,000 (with slightly different rules) and making some donations to local charities. They also made much ado about how they’ve increased their server power by an order of magnitude (I think that’s part of what they said, anyway–I could be wrong), tuned various things, etc. I thought I’d join in the fun, just to see what happened. Here’s a chronology of what I observed: read more

You can tell that something has been around for a long time if it has a name that you can’t say in polite company without smirking. One of the toilets has been running longer than it should after being flushed and I finally got around to investigating the cause. As usual for such household-problem situations, I started by pulling out my trusty copy of Black & Decker’s The Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair–a rather good reference if you happen to be a homeowner. Therein, in the 11-page section on toilets, I learned that the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty ballcock. Yes, the valve that controls the incoming water is called a ballcock. This is clearly a term coined in a kinder, gentler era. I mean, imagine walking into your local Home Depot and telling one of the orange-aproned employees that you need a new ballcock. Could you do it with a straight face? I couldn’t. read more