Tracie ran across a couple of interesting videos online recently. The first is here; it’s a CNN.com spot about an autistic teenager who uses a computer with text-to-speech software to speak to her parents. The second is here; it’s a brief article about an autistic woman who has made a video about herself and how she communicates. What they have to say, and the clarity with which they say it, is startling.
Future Shock: Your Picture Frame Might Be Spying On You
I ran across an interesting article about a nasty computer virus that’s coming into the country from China in the firmware of digital photo frames (those self-contained LCD things that display digital photos, which I guess are purchased by people who don’t have computers in every room of the house). This is the sort of thing that–as my cousin Ziggy put it many years ago–makes the world seem increasingly like a science-fiction novel. Go into Target or Costco, buy a gadget for your grandmother so that she can put her digital photos of you and her Pekingese on her coffee table, and zap, suddenly her computer is sending all of her personal info to someone in China. Sound farfetched? Read the article.
Announcing Ricochet
I’m pleased to announce that Audio Damage has just released our latest product. Ricochet is a multi-tap delay plug-in with an unusual architecture and a far more direct user interface than most multi-delay plug-ins. That’s a rather brief synopsis, of course; you can read more about it, listen to sound samples, download the manual, and buy it at the Audio Damage website.
The Joys of Home Ownership #392
We had the roof replaced this week. A roof replacement has to be one of the least interesting home-maintenance projects one can do (or pay someone to do, rather). Don’t get me wrong: a good roof is essential, and a bad roof can be a nightmare. That’s why we replaced the old roof now, while it still had some life left in it, rather than later, after it had started leaking or something. But it’s really not very gratifying. It’s a noisy, dirty, expensive project, and in the end you have nothing other than a new roof. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t spend much time gazing at my roof. Roofs just don’t hold my interest. I guess having the water heater replaced a couple of years ago was even less interesting, but at least it was done in a few hours rather than in a few days.
Go, Stan!
One of my high-school classmates is headed into space today. Dr. Stanely Love is Mission Specialist 4 on STS-122, scheduled to launch today at 2:45PM EST. There’s live video coverage here and tons of info about the mission here, from which I grabbed this photo of Stan [I don’t know whether he goes by Stan or Stanley these days–I knew him as Stan, but that was 25 years ago] during training:
Our high school wasn’t a particularly nice place if you happened to not be in the “in” crowd, and Stan most definitely wasn’t in that crowd. (I wasn’t either. You probably guessed that.) Well, here we are, 25 years later, and Stan’s an astronaut, about to do what he’s dreamed of doing since he was a kid. I’d love to know how many of the “in” crowd are still in Eugene pumping gas or something. (Chris told me a very gratifying story awhile ago about returning to his home town a year or so ago and discovering that his high-school football champ was still pumping gas at the same place he worked when he was in high school.)
MOTM-480 Expansion Panel Project
I recently added an expansion panel to one of the MOTM-480 filters in my modular synthesizer. Click here to read about the project and see photos. (The link takes you to a permanent page in the Synth DIY section of this website.)
Getting Into My Synthesizer
I found myself doing this the other day, and realized that there are some merits to the smaller modular formats that I hadn’t previously considered:
Yes, this photo is staged; I took it with my camera’s timer. However, I really was doing this before I realized how silly it is (and how silly it must look–not that that particularly matters) to have to climb onto the desk and stick my head into one of my modular’s cabinets just to make sure of the orientation of the power connectors. Sometimes I think that if I were starting from scratch today, I’d go with the much more compact Euro format instead of the MOTM format. Back when I started building this synthesizer there was much less activity among manufacturers of Euro-format modules. Today it seems that most of the interesting module development–most of the module development in general, for that matter–is being done in Euro format. It would be a tough choice; I wouldn’t happily give up the quality of the MOTM VCOs and filters, and I really prefer 1/4″ cables and jacks. On the other hand, a synthesizer with the same complement of modules (functionally speaking) as mine would take up much less room in Euro format, and as Chris is pondering, there are some pretty neat Euro format modules coming out these days that are unlikely to appear in MOTM format. I may eventually consider whether I can change the mounting rails in my cabinet somehow so as to accomodate some number of Euro modules, even though that would mean mixing jack sizes.
Nifty Electric Bikes and Cars
I happened to cross paths with the owner of Small Planet Electric Vehicles recently. The site offers for sale a number of electric bikes, electrically assisted bikes, and a couple of small electric cars. I’m fortunate in that I don’t drive much–my daily commute consists of walking down and up a flight of stairs–but were I buying more gas these days I’d certainly consider the alternatives.
Pee-Chee T-Shirt!
Some fellow left a quiet little comment on my post about Pee-Chees, but his creation seems worthy of special mention. He’s created a Pee-Chee T-shirt, made available from one of the numerous short-run custom-printing services available online. Click here to visit his page and see a photo of the shirt.
Abandoning WordPress–Or Not
Awhile back I wrote here about my intent to cease using WordPress and replace it with a static site generated with other tools. Since then, to state the self-evident, I’ve changed my mind and am stick with WordPress for the foreseeable future.
I changed my mind awhile ago when I was looking at my server logs and realized that WordPress wasn’t really the problem. WordPress seems to be pretty secure, and the anti-spam plug-ins I have in place do a good job of keeping spammers from posting. (The main plug-in tells me that it has blocked over 8,500 spam attempts since I installed WordPress, which gives you some idea of what a site like this is up against.)