収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

You may and may not recall that I built a little optical theremin.

Basically, I’ve been trying to develop an electronic instrument project that could be built, in a workshop environment, at nwcMUSIC at Norwescon. It had to be really simple, but functional. And I can – what you can see in this picture totally works! It could be simplified further just by swapping those three resistors with one of similar value.

But the output is really, really quiet. Sure, I could – and did – add a matching impedance stage and hook it up to my amp, and that worked, but we can’t do that in a workshop.

So I wanted to add a pure amplification stage, using an amplifying transistor. I hooked all that up and: silence. After a few minutes, I realised that I was attempting to amplify a signal with a lower-power source than what I had to begin with. That won’t work.

And I could fix it, either by adding an impedence-matching voltage transformer (complexity rating no) or a second power stage, but it would take it well above my complexity limit for a one-hour workshop.

That won’t work either

So then I thought, “all these components are rated 40v, let’s just double the input power to 18v and see what happens.” And what happens is fire.

Or, at least, a surprisingly enthusiastic outbreak of magic blue smoke. And now nothing works, and now the little battery-powered air filter I built is running.

And that’s why there’s no DIY project today.

See you next week. XD

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

I have this Sony minidisc recorder I bought back in... 2002? When those mattered, anyway. I've tried a couple of times to use it to do quick recordings of live shows and it's failed me each time - it's fine for a minute and a half or so, then I get garbage, then it's fine again, then garbage. I thought it was bad media, but now I'm re-testing the same media in the studio and it records fine.

When I set it up outdoors it's always in a shaded, reasonably-level position, and everything has lots of power. All the parts work fine tested in the studio, but at shows so far I have a 100% failure rate with the same symptoms across different discs each time.

Suggestions, anybody?

Also, suggestions on a pure-digital recorder? This has officially become stupid.

So, um, yeah! I was updating my shows page because Bothell Country Village decided to upgrade me from "busker" to "billed performer at the stage tent" and asked for a photo and such, and threw me a bunch of dates, and as I was putting all that into iCal I noticed that even listing mostly only stage gigs (with one exception that I'm listing Woodinville this coming weekend because I announced it at Lake Forest Park), I've got... kind of a busy summer. And my current approach to a website really doesn't do it anymore, even if it ever really did.

So I'm gonna need a better website. I guess that's one more thing to do once I get back from Boston, innit?

No MacBook means no calendar. Clearly I should start posting my calendar somewhere. Anyway, if I'm supposed to do something involving you in any way in the next week, you need to tell me, 'cause until I can get this fixed, it's gone.

Except anime night. That's Thursday. I remember that. And I have an open-mic on Saturday, because that calendar, I do keep online, and it's always right.

OKAY so if you upgrade your iTunes purchases from the old DRM versions to the new, shiny, higher-bit-rate non-DRM version, be aware that you may not get the same edit in the upgrade. e.g., my Music: entry for this post. The DRM version is a shorter cut (4:13) vs. the non-DRMed version (4:44) and I prefer the shorter edit, and it's a good thing I told the upgrade software to keep my old versions.

Doesn't anybody have ultraviolet LEDs in stock in this town? I've tried the usual suspects (Vetco, Fry's, Radio Shack) and have no joy. Am I gonna have to mail order these stupid things? From Radio Shack? Jeez.

Seattle's fireworks hung after the initial run up the needle.

This is not how to start a year.

ETA FAIL: lulz

I hate Zoology very, very much. The best part is when your first lab practical (which counts as much as a midterm) is worse than your first midterm, which was previously the lowest grade you could remember getting on a science exam. No, wait; the best part is when your professor tells you on Friday that she was really surprised at how well you did and that you only lost 5-10 points (out of 50), so you're thinking you got a B until you get the paper back with a score of HA HA FUXX0R J00, by which I mean me, by which I mean my chances for graduate school.

And there's nothing else in this stupid class so far. It really is just "what's this?" We're starting to see some processes and some systems. She's all "now I know this is complex" and "A lot of people have problems with this figure" and I'm going CHRIST I'M BORED and answering all of her in-class challenge questions (which count for zero) and going THERE IS NOTHING TO LEARN IN THIS CLASS WHY AM I HERE?!

Oh right, it's a requirement. Crap.

And to cap it off, my left ear is really acting up today. Loud and screechy and full of hate. Joy.

Monday's miles: 8.3
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1686.3
Miles out of Rivendell: 1229.3
Miles out of Lothlórien: 774.3
Miles past Rauros Falls: 357.4
Miles to Isengard: 110.3

In other news, biking back from Shoreline turns out to be pretty easy, and only mildly terrifying, and that mostly at 15th Avenue NE. Biking to Shoreline would be not happening, at least via this route. Here's the way; on the left side of the screen find "Elevation: off small large" and click on "large" and you'll see why I won't be reversing that. It's particularly worth noting that the huge elevation change over time is on a road (NE Perkins Way, mostly) with somewhere between tiny, tiny shoulders, and no shoulders at all. At least there isn't much traffic - at least, not at this time of day.

A pleasant surprise was finding a deeply, deeply early-1950s sign-and-planter into a pocket development at 10th Ave NE and NE 195th. My guess - and it is a complete ex recto guess - is that this was developed around that time, and was kind of upscale, and that then 10 years later the freeway came through, wrecking the place - possibly cutting some of it off, I don't know - which is why there's a pedestrian bridge over I-5 there. The original owners might have been the sort to say, "You're screwing us with this freeway, the least you can do is not cut us off from town!" and get that bridge. Given that there just aren't any other pedestrian-friendly crossings that I can think of until you get to, oh, Ravenna Boulevard, it's the best theory I've got.

(Well, okay, 185th is doable. But it still sucks. Four lane + turn lanes + on/off ramps? Not so much fun for pedestrians. Christ, I-5 is a scar on this town.)

Oh, speaking briefly of pedestrian overpasses, I biked down to and over the new one Shoreline has built over Aurora at 160th, as part of the Interurban Trail project. It's very nice. The noise control works really well. +5 to Shoreline's trail development team.

( Scattergories meme )

There isn't all that much going on right now; I'm going to be clearing the leaves off the raised beds and prepping the soil soon, I'm looking forward to gardening again; I want to see about attending the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, probably on Thursday the 15th (anyone else interested?); Norwescon is coming up and I need daily 'zine ideas badly; I've joined the Japan Culture Club at school, but they keep scheduling meetings while I'm in class so haven't been able to go to any events yet; and I need to start talking to faculty at UW again starting right about, oh, now. But mostly, I've been doing daily life and classes.

The biggest thing bothering me this week is that I'm almost certainly going to drop to audit status in Japanese 112. Everything will be the same except that I won't get a grade or credit. The reason for that is that the expected vocabulary acquisition rate has jumped quite a bit; we're now getting about, hum, 8-10 words a day at this point - not counting things like counters which are kind of like new individual words but kind of aren't because they're in series, with regular roots and such. That rate isn't going to go down - in fact, it's expected to go up. It's a real problem, given that I was barely keeping up last quarter, when it was more like 2-4 new words a day - and that was only true because I already knew half the words from previous study. And I've forgotten half the words that were new to me then.

I kind of figured I'd hit this wall eventually, tho' I was kind of hoping that I wouldn't, or that if I did, it wouldn't be until spring quarter. But I did, and it was pretty abrupt; I was okay, okay, okay, hey wait, zomg oh crap I don't understand any of the words anybody is using in class, and then oh look I only know about 40% of the words on this test <p0wned> - all in about a week and a half.

I hate that wall.

So unless a miracle occurs, I'll be officially changing to audit late next week. It makes me sad, but it's better than adding a D or something to my GPA. I talked with the professor about it (for over an hour) on Thursday, and she thinks it's the right thing to do, given everything. I don't really like it, but I don't have any better ideas.

So here, have a picture:


Leaf on Smooth Rocks
And here, have a couple of URLs:

Bicycle Boulevards, as implemented in Berkeley, California. It's a multipronged approach, but key elements are: 1) Making openings for bikes in closed-end streets, most of which were closed for vehicle control, and 2) designating some secondary streets to be bicycle-centric, tho' not bicycle-only, and paint/mark them appropriately as such. (Cars and such are still allowed.) It seems to be a rather low-cost approach to improving bike transit.

Meanwhile, the FHA tells Oregon to stop focusing on anything but cars, and get to building more freeways, presumably like the South and midwest, where it's endless acres of parking lots and zillion-lane freeways and a walkable environment is seen as some sort of commie plot. (Courtesy Cascadia Drumbeat.)

Now, back to trying to learn these stupid words.

Yesterday was wretched. Harbourview called me about three hours before my much, much belated ENT trauma doctor appointment and cancelled it. The best they can do is next week with a physician's assistant, and I have to skip class for that. Then I went in for an allergy shot (which I rescheduled just so that I could have one day of doctor and car instead of two) and SURPRISE! office closure!

So I stopped by Uwajimaya and bought hot cake mix (this kind, but in a box: ) and konpeito (not this brand). The first place I saw konpeito was in Spirited Away and the first time I saw it being fed to soot sprites I knew that was real and wanted some, so I finally found some and bought it.

Candy is pretty much always good and konpeito makes me feel about nine years old. I made the hot cakes this morning - they're a lot more like cake than American pancakes, and are sweeter and taste of vanilla. I liked them very much.

I feel better now.

Thursday's miles: 2.3
Friday's miles: 0.6
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1386.6
Miles out of Rivendell: 921.6
Miles out of Lothlórien: 467.6
Miles past Rauros Falls: 59.7
Miles to Isengard: 412.3

CWU along the way.