shinyhappyrainbows

If there's one thing I love about Melbourne's public transport system, it's being able to take my bike on the train. that is all, as you were.

My electronics/Software/Firmware projects haven't stalled. It's the creative process I'm blessed/cursed with. Sometimes I need slabs of time not thinking about an idea. To that end, I'm back to working on my MIDI sync "babelfish" and have found a few tools that help me to do it using truth tables. Truth tables are charts which layout the array of input and output states of a logic device. For a device that will be used to pop out large, but relatively simple, high and low logic states to operate analog sync signals, creating a 2 dimensional array of the output logic is a simple and reliable way to make 4 channels switch on and off at 48 pulses per quarter note (PPQN), 24 PPQN, 1 PPQN and one pulse per bar (for controlling the tempo of my SY-1 guitar synth pedal) is relative easy to configure with arrays. Simply increment an "address" count using an interrupt, and access each address in the 2D array. Working on the initial premise that all of my timi...

This has been probably the longest, slowest creative project of my life! Behold, my tribute to the greatest pedalboard in the world! (And who doesn't need a Jack Black reference on a post about a pedalboard?) I've been using a Korg AX-5g for about 10 years for practice, and Logic Pro X guitar amps and effects boards for recording since 2016. I miss playing live, though, and have a hankering to put a regular youtube live performance together. So, one needs effects. A more direct, sans amp guitar line, and a synth line for Andy Summers fantasies. Don't stand too close to me, OK, or I'll call The Police. So, the details, from top-right to bottom left... The blank space will house a custom built A+B-Y switch, to select guitar (A), SY-1 synth (B) or both (Y) and a 2x momentary button pedal to provide tap tempo and filter sweep for the SY-1 synth. These passive pedals are still on my contruction bench. IMage renderings are down at the bottom. The Boss SY-1 ...

Mary Spender has a following pushing a line of staying independent in music. I call it owning your own business. I'm one of those pub players you never remember but love when we're playing. I gave up on ever getting "the deal" in my 40s and, as I write this, I'm 60. I was spread too thin to do what I needed to to get a major label contract. I was never going to move to London or LA, or even Sydney or Melbourne back in the day, although, now I'm retired, I live in Melbourne. I was kind of high on my supply, "...better to be a small fish in a tiny pond." Also, the internet is the democratisation of the arts. This makes the job harder, but it also keeps the control of your art in your hands, you're a tradie with an instrument. So, check out Mary's channel, click subscribe and give her Patreon some love. She says it much better than I do, and she's better looking and better spoken than me by a country mile. Oh, stick to mostly originals, ...

In Australia, our equivalent to the USA's Home Depot is Bunnings Hardware. Tradies use them, handyfolk use them, they carry nearly every imaginable item. One item I've used a LOT of is the Carinya Make-A-Bracket line . About 7 or 8 pieces of the 200x200 (shown) should be enough to make the metal tray for the play mat foam padding. Just add some heavy duty grommet strip to protect flesh from the metal edges and you have a light, strong seat.

Sendle claim 100% carbon neutrality. If only more people did this.

I think I have settled on my epitaph. Death is inevitable, only it's timing is unkown, so I must, while living, decide on how I might be remembered, and the words of Kahlil Gibran's " The Prophet " speak the best idea I can imagine for a rememberance, "And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky." That, or Jimi Hendrix's, "And so, castles made of sand fall into the sea, eventually." Ammendment - 2022:12:18:22:20. Better! Both! "So castles made of sand fall into the sea but, if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky." Oh, this fair inspires!

More cops never did improve safety. It increased quota pressure on officers, which blows back on the vulnerable. When you have generally conservative institutions like the Auditor General's Department saying that extra cops was a waste of the public purse, not only are all cops bastards #ACAB, but more cops is a bastard waste of money. From The Guardian ... No proof a 2,700 boost in Victorian police numbers has improved safety, audit finds Auditor general finds police unable to ‘assure itself or community’ that $2bn program is meeting its aims. Photograph: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images Adeshola Ore Thu 1 Sep 2022 14.00 AEST A blitz to recruit more than 2,700 additional Victorian police officers under a $2bn investment to tackle crime has not been proved to improve community safety, a report by the state’s auditor general has found... [ read more ]

I worked there for 27 years, the ABC. From 1987 to 2014, when Tony Abbott decided he didn't like the cut of my jib and I had to go. (It was a routine redundancy, actually, but hey, if Spike Milligan could claim a part in Hitler's downfall...) I gave 27 years of loyalty to that institution, to the newsroom (audio support), to the Charter, to public broadcasting, generally. One look at today's front page, loyalty vanished, banished, gone. From a clickbait clearly pro-antivax biased headline on a fact checked story that has the exact opposite finding, to dozens of factually incorrect headlines, this is not the journalisim the Broadcasting Act is looking for. I can't even. If they've lost me, they've lost everybody but a few oddballs.