There’s a huge panoramic photograph of Paris here. It was assembled from 2346 separate photos stitched together into one huge 26 gigapixel photo. You can pan and zoom around on it; the close-up detail is remarkable. Of the “20 most beautiful Paris monuments” mentioned on the right, I’ve seen at least 12. Tracie and I tried to find the hotel we stayed in but eventually arrived at the conclusion that it’s just out of view, obscured by a larger building between it and the camera.
Welcome to the Future
It’s a strange time, this second decade of the 21st century. Something as seemingly innocent as a battery charger can infect your computer with malware, allowing someone else to gather data from it or otherwise exploit it for nefarious purposes. (Too bad, too; a charger that small would be a handy gadget for travel.)
They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To
That’s a close-up of one end of the spring tank in my TASCAM RS-20 Spring Reverb. One detail that surprised me a little when I opened it up is that the transducers appear to be symmetric, i.e. the part that feeds audio into the springs appears to be the same as the part that picks up the resulting signal. I’ve never opened up a spring reverb before but somehow I expected the drivers to be different than the receivers.
Wow. All of Popular Science Magazine is Now Online
Subject says it all–137 years of Popular Science magazine can now be browsed and searched online. Click here to go there.
Modifying a Frontier Design Tango for DC Output
I just put up a lengthy description, with photos, of how I modified a Frontier Design Tango (older 20-bit version) ADAT audio interface for DC output, allowing it to be used with software such as MOTU’s Volta and Expert Sleepers’ Silent Way to control analog synthesizers. It’s able to control my VCOs over nearly a nine-octave range, so its performance is much better than the MIDI-CV converter I built awhile ago. (Somewhat ironically I submitted the artwork for having the PC board fabricated for that project the day before Volta was announced.) This project consumed several consecutive weekends, and documenting it took nearly as long, so I’m also quite pleased to have it all finished. I went to the lengths of making a demonstration video to cash in on the Expert Sleepers Silent Way bounty demonstrate how well the system works. The video is embedded at the bottom of the page.
Unusual Security Mechanism
I’m trying to log into my YouTube account, and it’s not accepting my password (even though I logged into the same account from a different machine using the same password a few minutes ago), so upon the advice of the help screen I asked for a password reset. Partway through the process I was presented with this:
Wow. ‘Fraid I can’t answer that, Google. As much as I’d like to be able to read questions presented in Japanese, I can’t.
TASCAM RS-20 Spring Reverb Owner’s/Service Manual
Thanks to Richard, I’m now the proud owner of an old spring reverb, specifically a TASCAM RS-20 Spring Reverb. He warned me that there seems to be something wrong with the input circuits but I’ve been too busy to even plug the thing in to check it out. However, I was able to locate a copy of the TASCAM RS-20 Owner’s/Service Manual, which you can download by clicking this link. Since Google turns up almost nothing about the TASCAM RS-20 Spring Reverb, I’m going to mention the TASCAM RS-20 Spring Reverb and the TASCAM RS-20 Reverb Owner’s/Service Manual several times in this post in hopes of providing search-engine fodder so that anyone with a TASCAM RS-20 Spring Reverb in need of the TASCAM RS-20 Owner’s/Service Manual will now be able to find it.
Japanese Beverage Report: Shiso Pepsi
Thanks, once again, to our friends Richard and Rafael, I recently sampled another one of the mysterious special-edition Pepsi products from Japan. This post is rather late in its arrival since it covers a product which is no longer in production. I confess that I sort of forgot that I had the bottle tucked away in the back of the refrigerator until I noticed it recently.
It’s called Shiso Pepsi, and it’s a nice shade of green:
The label says “Japanese Refreshing Flavor” and that’s pretty accurate. It’s refreshing and it does taste oddly Japanese. It has a very herb-like flavor and is somewhat sweet (as you’d expect for a soft drink). Imagine if you’d rarely or never tasted an herb like basil or oregano, and you tried a beverage sort of like 7-Up flavored with basil or oregano–that’s pretty much the impression that Shiso Pepsi gave to me. It was quite good; I understand why Richard wanted a case of it after he tasted it.
Barbie the Computer Engineer
Strange but true: Barbie has a new career as a computer engineer:
Yes, this looks like yet another Photoshop job, but it’s the real deal. Barbie’s 125th career, determined for the first time by public vote, is as a computer engineer. The press release doesn’t say whether she’s in hardware or software engineering; her shirt seems to have suggestions of both.
[From Gizmodo]
When Memes Go Wrong
Here’s a pair of essays that go together nicely: author Charles Stross examining the widespread misinterpretation of the phrase “information wants to be free” and dangers and fallacies therein; and songwriting legend Paul Williams reflecting upon a specific instance of these dangers.