shinyhappyrainbows

A friend sent me a link to a Naomi Kritzer short story on Clarkesworld, today - Better Living Through Algorithms." It's a quite true-to-life and amusing tale about a group of friends and a new app. Not my usual style of sci-fi preference, but it had me hooked from the start. There was something in the tone that hooked me before my too-cool-for-school 'tude could get in the way, and I'm really pleased that happened. Look, read it for yourself but the #tldr is this:- Linnea, June and Margo are friends having lunch and June explains her new social media app, Abelique, that "has changed her life." She's happier than she's ever been and feeling fulfilled, achieving day-to-day things easily and efficiently, thanks to the app. Of course, Linnea and Margot are skeptical. Margot dismisses it with, "It sounds like a cult." And it actually does a bit. Linnea returns to the office after lunch and her boss insists she and her colleagues use the app beca...

Over at McPherson Music They have a no-power-required, signal boost pedal, the "Golden Gizmo." It's more of a crunchbox than a fuzzbox but, in his youtube video , Waylon McPherson details how this pedal makes clever trade-offs on bandwidth, to create a stronger signal, using a "common or garden variety" audio impedance matching transformer with secondary (low impedance) as the primary, and vice-verse. Essentially "the wrong way round." He also details some extra mods (2 transformers, clipping diodes) to give it more versatility. Waylon's circuit is basically one transformer, a switchable diode circuit for optional clipping and a level pot with a bypass capacitor for a bit of filtering. It provides a little over 3dB of gain on a typical guitar signal. Enough to drive a weak amplifier to a little crunch. You can buy the circuit diagram from Waylon here. The transformer circuit itself is electrical engineering 101. Playing with impedances, basical...

Warning, political post ahead, click if you dare ! SHR is for music, arts and tech, the link is my b(itch)log

Spotify tell you they pay artists. If you're an unsigned musician and you upload your tunes to spotify, they pay you 0.04 US cents per play. There are millions of us listening, it must be good money, right? Well, maybe not. Firstly, Spotify have contracts with record industry labels, so you can guess, they get more slots in the stream, and probably more money. If a play is a play, the money should be the same. Secret deals? Label artists are probably getting way more than 0.04 US cents. Jobbing musos just get the crumbs. Oh, and when you die, if you're an unsigned, unrepresented artist, your fam won't get the royalties. The "spots" will just sit on the music and make interest off what it earns in a holding account. Your family won't be able to get them to take the music down, either. You put a tune on th "the Spots" and the file is theirs. forever. You can't ever take it down. How does that compare to radio and TV plays? I used to work for a...

So, to take advantage of the full social capabilities of Dreamwidth, I've set up a membership-by-approval "deedub" community at... crunchynet.dreamwidth.org and, if you know me (and I know you) membership is likely to be approved without questions, review or audition. If you know me but I'm unfamiliar with you, I'll probably review your DW if you have one, and will ask a few questions to either jog my memory, or be sure we have compatible values. If we're new to each other, you better have a good pitch. If you just want to be a troll, I'll ignore you. Completely. Before joining, please read the following posting rules... Crunchynet Posting Rules . Also, before posting, read the rules. I'm not leaving blogger, I'm just creating a division of social boundaries. A place to share ideas (here), a place to share with fam and chosen fam (there) and a place in between. ( Crunchynet ) Cheers, Crunchy