GRollins

I'd like to know what the autocorrect thinks an 'aranger' is. Grey

Back when I was the moderator at an audio electronics website, we'd get people asking how to, say, calculate heat dissipation in a resistor. Without fail, there'd be a dozen posts within the first hour lambasting the poor fellow for not knowing how to calculate Pd in a resistor. From peoples' reactions, you'd think that it was costing them money, out of pocket, to answer the question. I confess that I never understood that point of view. If you don't want to chip in, that's okay, just don't answer--leave it to others. There's two kinds of people who use synths: The kind who want to play music on them and the kind who want to design sounds. Yes, that's an oversimplification as there's some overlap, but still...there's more truth to it than some would like to acknowledge. I'm more interested in the music than the sound. Yes, the sound's important, but my focus is on the musical notes themselves. I'm quite content to use presets if I can find one that's anywhere near what I want. At this point, I'm lucky if I can manage an hour a week to play music and it's usually fragmented into five and ten minute segments. Given that I'm trying to write original stuff, it is illogical for me to spend that hour twiddling knobs when I need to be coming up with music. It's the highest, best use of my musical time. (Oh, how I miss the days when I was able to devote as much as six hours a day to music!) Grey

It seems to me that there's little purpose to be served by attempting to draw a sharp line of demarcation between jazz and prog. On the one hand I could say that I view it as more of a sliding scale; a continuum. On the other hand, I'll bet that few people would have argued if Return To Forever and Weather Report had been classified by the Powers That Be as prog. Prog seems to me to be such a broad umbrella that there's ample room for RTF and WR underneath. Surely RTF is a closer match to, say, Yes than...oh...let's say, Genesis. For what it's worth, I think the original link above has merit. It may not be as fully developed as I'd like, but if it's a product demo, then I wouldn't expect them to put as much effort into composition as if it was for themselves. Grey

You can't flip back and forth between pages in a PDF (or whatever) the way you can with a paper manual. For some cosmic reason the information I'm seeking is always spread out in different places in the manual, so I just stick a finger in between two pages and bop back and forth to my heart's content. Doing that in an electronic manual isn't anywhere near as efficient. They're not doing it to save the planet, they're doing it to save themselves money and using the Green argument as a rationalization. Yes, cutting trees to make paper has environmental consequences, but so does the burning of electricity to read a PDF, so it's not as though an electronic manual is somehow a perfect solution. Grey

WARNING: I am not religious, so take this with a grain of salt, okay? Back when I was selling stereo gear, we had two customers, one Baptist, one Methodist, both ministers in their respective faiths. The were both from down in the flat lands, living/working not far from one another. They were, in fact, good friends. The Methodist minister was complaining that there was no money to be had in his faith. This was in discussion with his buddy, the Baptist minister, in our listening room. They knew I was a non-believer, so they spoke freely around me; I was just part of the furniture. Anyway, the upshot was that, after a long discussion, the Methodist minister decided that he was going to switch from Methodist to Baptist faiths because that's where the money was. The other side of the mirror: My grandmother changed churches for the same reason, but flipped. A lifelong Baptist, she switched to...I think it was an Episcopalian(?...it's been a while and she died nearly twenty years ago, so I can't ask her) church because they weren't demanding so much money all the time. Moral of the story? If you want money, go Baptist. (At least around this part of the country, you can drive around and look at the relative sizes of the churches themselves and decide for yourself who has the best-funded building fund, which is an indirect indicator of the truth of why I say.) The choice is yours: True belief or money? Which will you choose? I'll bow out now because this is probably infringing on the no-religion rule and may upset some people. Hope your situation comes to a happy conclusion, whatever that may be. Grey

I once contacted Anvil Cases about refoaming an old, rotted case. It was going to be stupidly expensive and would only be temporary, as the new foam would rot, too. But in the middle of my email exchange, something occurred to me...I've got a chair that belonged to my uncle. It's got fairly dense foam in the seat cushion, almost as dense as the foam they put in cases. The funny thing is, that chair is 40 years old if it's a day and hasn't decomposed. So...what gives? What's different about the foam in the chair and the foam in a case? Here's my hypothesis: The foam in a case is, by definition, in an enclosed space. Any outgassing that occurs will be confined to the inside of the case and will build up over time. I think it's possible that the chemicals that outgas from the foam attack the foam. After all, they're plasticizers, and that's their job--to keep the foam pliable. But...perhaps they oxidize or something and that leads to a runaway reaction where they "over-plasticize" the foam, melting it. My uncle's chair can breathe. The plasticizers can escape into the atmosphere. Granted, eventually foam exposed to the air dry rots and gets crumbly, then turns to dust--the mirror image of the destructive process in a case--but that process takes much longer and doesn't make nearly the mess. So what happens if you leave your case cracked open so it has a little air circulation to let excess plasticizer vapors out? I asked the guy at Anvil about this and he reacted as though he'd been stung. Got rather testy, in fact, which I found surprising. Why would he act like that when it was just a simple question, "Would it help if I left the case open so it could breathe?" Maybe the chemicals are carcinogenic or something and he didn't want to expose the company to a lawsuit. I don't know. But his response was unexpectedly quick and harsh. I shrugged and broke off communication. I'm in no position to insist that my hypothesis is correct and an experiment based on my idea will take years to prove out, one way or the other. It's just a thought, but you might consider leaving a little air circulation when your case is stored. Might help. Grey

Keith Emerson vs. Chicago Neither won. I'm sure they assigned him the task of rearranging I'm A Man, rather than it being something he chose. As much as I love Emerson, I can't say that I get much out of that tune. He got paid and it put food on the table, I'm sure, but I can't help but wonder what he thought of that project after the passage of, say, twenty years. Grey

I think this was a combination of two things. (1) We'd placed all of our eggs into a heavy lifting vehicle (STS) that had an unacceptable failure rate. (2) After 2008 there was no public appetite to spend the money it would take to fix STS and redirect into a coherent/viable program. I view it as part of the increasing anti-science sentiment that we're seeing. Grey

I'm not saying that we should just let racism run rampant. Far from it. My point is that you can never "win" against that sort of thing, only manage the problem. Around here we have something called the American Cockroach, aka Palmetto Bug. They're big suckers, up to 2" long. They're not rare, either--'bout near as common as mosquitoes. Some nights we get as many as five or six coming in from outside, and that's after I went through and meticulously sealed the house several years back. One memorable night my wife was sick and trying to sleep on the couch and I killed something like thirteen of the damned things over a four or five hour period. How they get in, I do not know. They are relentless and they are legion. Like racists, you're not going to "win" against Palmetto Bugs. They were here long before our ancestors were crafting the first tools on the African savanna and they'll be here long after the last human is radioactive dust. That said and in spite of the fact that they're "part of the natural order of things," I don't intend to tolerate them...nor do I suggest a policy toleration towards their relatives, the American Racist Assholes. Unfortunately, there's no bug spray for racists. Grey

I was at Boy Scout camp the night they first landed on the Moon. I and the other boys were completely psyched because they let us stay up late to watch the televised images as those boots touched Lunar soil. Wow! Simply wow. Today we have to settle for "well, at least we can get into space on American hardware again, instead of having to hitch a ride with the Russians." The sad thing is that we've fallen so far that it's exciting simply to get back to where we were. Damn, by now we should have had permanent bases on the Moon and perhaps an outpost on Mars and... At least in 1969 we were doing NEW things. In 2020 the best we can manage is to play catch up with where we were. We've come full circle in other ways as well. Americans are dying in an endless, pointless war in the Middle East instead of Southeast Asia. Greed rules. And racism? Racism never went away. People who thought that progress was being made were fooling themselves. I worked with some of the most virulent racists you could imagine. They chafed under what they imagined as the iron boot of liberals who were preventing them from assuming their rightful place at the pinnacle of society. Now they've been unleashed; they're free to speak aloud the things they only muttered under their breath before. They've been enabled, encouraged, and enraged by people who tell them that they are victims. People like that cannot be cured of their hatred. They will not stop. They will not get better. You cannot reason with them because they don't run on reason, they run on emotion...and negative emotions, at that. There will always be a dark side to human nature. There will never be a golden age where it suddenly ceases to exist. The best you can do is to manage the problem. Don't fall for the false equivalence of "Encouraging violence = Free Speech." Don't let them start playing the victim card about how they've been downtrodden. And don't ever vote them into any office higher than dog catcher...and preferably not even that, because they'll just kick the dogs they've caught out of pure spite. It was true in 1969 and fifty years later, it's still true in 2020. It'll still be true in another fifty years, and also fifty years after that. Hatred, fear, prejudice, suspicion, superstition, and greed will always be with us. When people of that nature start crawling out from under their rocks, don't let them reach critical mass. The history books are brimming with grisly, bloody lessons of what goes wrong if they gain control. I just never thought it would be the United States of America that led the way into darkness. The joke's on me, I guess. Failure of imagination. A sin in a science fiction author. Grey

The problem is that--like the '60s--so much of what's going on is inextricably intertwined with politics. To keep politics out would be like reading a bread-baking recipe with the word "flour" removed: Measure 4 cups <-----> into a mixing bowl. Add 2 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. sugar to the <----->. Add 1 1/2 cups water at 125 degrees to the <-----> mixture and stir with a rubber spatula until all the <-----> is moistened. And so forth and so on... Grey

I'm not sure of the precise wording, but I always thought Robert Heinlein's saying covered a lot of ground: The best way to get revenge on your enemies is to outlive them. Now all I have to do is keep idiots from killing me and mine with their willful ignorance and bad attitudes. Live defensively; let Covid and Darwin do the heavy lifting. It's just going to take a while and there will be a lot of unfortunate collateral damage in the meantime. Grey

1) It's never too late to become a rock star. However, the longer you wait the fewer groupies you'll get and the less attractive they will be. (Note to self: Get a move on, stupid! That "Become A Rock God" entry on my to-do list has been moldering for far too long.) 2) Porn star? Er, I started to say that I wouldn't touch that topic with a ten foot pole, but realized that would inevitably generate a certain number of ribald comments. 3) Animated video character? That's easy. I'm willing to audition for a grumpy old man or a god or an alien...you know...roles where a little, um, maturity sounds good. Look, if Yoda is 900 years old, they're not going to voice him (except as a youngster) with a, well, youngster...right? 4) The way I see it, the two primary at-risk categories are those who live in close proximity (e.g. cities, nursing homes, etc.) and those who, for ideological reasons, refuse to take Covid seriously. There is some overlap, in the Venn Diagram sense and they're doubly at risk. 5) We are in agreement regarding the net raising of the national (and world) IQ, but it's best not to say such things out loud. I was mildly chastised for saying exactly that recently. (Don't mean it ain't true, though.) Grey

My mother ran across a gift card that said something to the effect of "The amount of intelligence in the world is constant, but the population is increasing." She was so tickled by the card she dubbed it "Grey's Law" due to the fact that I had been on a rant about how stupid people are not long before that. I find it...uh...a matter of concern, shall we say, that we have now lost more American citizens in the last three months than in the last four wars combined (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq--roughly seventy years, all told) and yet there are people who claim that this is 'no big deal.' And, mind you, the death toll is rising daily; it's not as though this is over. Far from it. Say wha'? What the everlivin' flagnog do these people use for brains? I will not say more for fear that I will run afoul of the "no politics" guideline, but jeez, folks, how plain does it have to be that there are problems in certain areas of the government and with certain news organizations before the average citizen wises up? *sigh* Grey

By that point, Covid 19 will have mutated and become Covid 20 or Covid 21 or... Grey

I'm about cross-eyed by now...been staring at knobs for, like, forever. Okay, since I posted earlier I've confirmed that the knobs on my theremin are Shin Chin RN-99D. Mouser had the diameter wrong on their page for the part, but the datasheet had dimensions that matched the actual knob. Also, once I knew what the Shin Chin logo looked like, I found it inside the knob. (Large S with small c superimposed over it.) I had thought it was just a random mark from the mold. One thing I'm discovering is that 99% of this style knob use a set screw (including the Cosmo that you're showing). That's okay if I want to replace the knobs on the theremin, but the knob I pulled off the RME is a half-moon, press fit. Yes, you can use a set screw on a half-moon and get away with it...sometimes. My luck is that the screw needs to go on the flat side and isn't long enough or even if the set screw manages to go on the round, it pushes the knob off center and it looks wonky when you turn it. I'll hit this again after I get this headache under control. Thanks for your input, guys. Any and all thoughts are welcome. I figure that there are probably others out there who are in the same boat, so if I can get this nailed down, I'll leave a trail of bread crumbs for others to follow. Maybe do a group buy and hit a higher price break if the numbers work. Grey

Nah...most of the knobs are okay...it's just one of those things you get when buying used, you know? How many I need will depend on price. If they're 10 cents apiece (they're not, I know, this is just a for instance...) then I would replace more knobs than if they are $10. A dozen? Two dozen? And they'll likely need to be different diameters. I haven't done an inventory of how many I'll need yet, because I wanted to work backwards from price/availability and let the price determine how many I'd replace. Both my Behringer Model Ds are pristine. One I bought new and the other, although used, was in absolutely perfect condition, not even dusty. Maybe I'll pull one of those knobs and see if there's any info there. The 24mm Shin Chin I mentioned earlier is $1.51 @ 1 (price break at 50), whereas the 1" (25.4 mm, for them whats don't think metric) via synthesizers.com is $4.00 and that appears to be the only diameter they carry. That sort of pricing difference is why I'd rather go with Mouser (or Digikey...haven't started looking at their knobs yet) than one of the "keyboard part" suppliers. Some people may think $4/knob is normal and okay, but to me it's kinda like rape. Why pay $4 if I can get them for less than half that? It offends my Scottish ancestry. It's going to take a while to sort through all the candidates at Mouser. They've got a screaming blue million knobs and Moog-style knobs are scattered among at least three different categories. Then I get to start on Digikey. Oi! That's why I was asking you folks. If you knew what manufacturer Moog uses it would save boodles of time and aggravation. Grey

Aye, but I'm working up an order with Mouser (and maybe Digikey, depending). If they've got the right thing, I'll go with them (possibly cheaper...?). Might as well cram as many parts in the box as possible and save shipping charges. Grey

Who makes the knobs Moog uses? I've pulled several from the Voyagers (kbd and RME) and they have no markings at all. I can't get any of the knobs on the Little Phatty to come off. I pulled one from my theremin and it says RN-99D. Poking around leads me to Shin Chin...but the diameter is wrong. The theremin knob is 27mm and Mouser says the Shin Chin RN-99D is 24mm and it doesn't look quite right, so they might not be Shin Chin after all. In addition, the theremin knob uses a set screw and the others are all press fit. I suppose, in theory, I could replace all the knobs of a given size at the same time--that way they'd match--but I don't want to spend that much money, especially for knobs that aren't "right." Grey

Huh... I have accidents every time I sit down at a keyboard... Grey

Thanks for the link. Grey

There's a common theme in science fiction: singularity, meaning some event that totally resets everything and everyone. How it's used in stories varies, but it's always in the context of...not just a life-changing, but a world-changing event. History-making. Epoch-making. A "Where were you the day the shit hit the fan?" kind of thing. For all the nattering of the Great Unwashed about how this or that or the other thing is/will be The Singularity, this Covid virus might just be the real deal. Or, as they say the curse goes: "May you live in interesting times!" Grey

Waiting for? Man, you haven"t looked at boutique Eurorack recently, have you? I refuse to buy anything from Make Noise for the good and simple reason that I cannot read the damned labels under the knobs. Grey

Nah...guitarists don't want the newest thing, they want the next, oldest thing...kinda like keyboard players and Hammonds. Grey

Actually, they won't have any trouble at all. Anything an archeologist can't explain at first sight is clearly: a) A religious ritual. b) A sport. So with that firmly in mind, the hypothetical future archeologist discovering a Roland will have to decide between: a) An instrument that they play in church (actually, this is probably right at least some of the time). b) An instrument that they played that little dah-de-da-dah-da-dah riff on at baseball games (uh...maybe also right some of the time, but surely it's overkill...wouldn't they just use a recorded riff these days?). Grey