Since I was a kid I was fascinated by computer math, such as a projectile in Scorched Earth (wind, angle, velocity, gravity). I turned 50 this week and I STILL haven’t dug into how even the basics work.
Can still remember the sound of the Funky Bomb firing in Scorched Earth. Thanks fot reminding me of that.
If you're interested in this sort of stuff, the book Nature Of Code is great for exploring this topic by creating simulations. There's a Javascript version and Java based version (using the Processing framework). It isn't actually all that difficult, and I found it very satisfying to work through.
Oh, yeah. I’ve been meaning to build an electric ukulele. I’ve built some handmade electric guitars, slide guitars and similar. Mine are rudimentary, more akin to a cigar box guitar (if not less complex).
I've built half a dozen similar box guitars, it's such a fun little thing to build.
Do I see a piezo disk under the bridge in the 3rd instrument? Do you use some kind of preamp with it?
I have been recently experimenting with different kinds of piezo pickups [0] and preamp electronics for them. I've figured out a pretty nice JFET based circuit for the preamp and ordered tiny 13x13mm PCBs with tiny SMT components assembled and it works pretty well (but needs a second revision). They mount directly on the volume potentiometer and fit in a small space.
The one thing I haven't figured out yet is grounding the electronics. In a typical electric guitar you ground the electronics by touching the (grounded) strings, but that doesn't work very well (at all) with slide guitar when your left hand has got a bottle neck slide on it (made of glass or ceramic which is an insulator).
Drop a message below if you want to geek out more about home made guitars and/or related electronics. Depending on your location I could also send some preamp PCBs your way.
I also use clear boxes, called “shoe boxes” at my local big box store. I started 8-years ago, when I devoted a closet in a new house to them. They’re now everywhere. I often answer a lot of questions with, “in the box in the closet”. Even my guests don’t need more info than that to find what they’re looking for.
I have some I don’t think I use. I’m going to adopt this idea. Instead of dots, however, I think I’ll just use a pen/pencil. Maybe I’ll print space for the marks on my labels.
I just purchased a cheap thermal sticker printer that I may use instead of my label maker. But handwriting labels would be fine too.
Fun read. I was there for most of this, from 1994 to 1998. I have a little different take on what doomed the company.
They had the innovation but, because of the class action, they were afraid to release it. I was using the Clik! drive before Compact Flash (CF) and later SD were ubiquitous.
The Clik! would have been amazing in the digital cameras of the era and manufacturers seemed to be lining up.
But the failure rate was >2% and leadership wanted it under 1% before they would ship. It took two years to close the gap and we all know that’s a lifetime in technology.
Love the story. I feel like I also rolled the dice more than others. Somehow, I haven’t ever hit. Well, that’s not true, my career has been good to me. Maybe that’s why, but my crazy ideas never seem to work or I give up too early.
I wrote about a bunch of my hits and failures a few years back.
Original career aside, I only struck gold once, and I didn't realise what I was sitting on for a while. I'm almost a decade in, and I'm still learning.
I’ll just throw in a counter example. I turn 50 in two weeks. I programmed for the love of it and eventually turned it into my career. Maybe it hampered my love, a little, maybe. But the job and the passion are still different. I still write software on nights and weekends. But, maybe I’m a weirdo.
Hopefully this career will still be here until I retire. If not, I’ll try to adapt, maybe to something more hands on.
Same. To add some details, I used Authy because at the time it was the only app that would just work after upgrading my iphone. I never enabled their cloud mode, so only local 2FA codes.
I'd had a GH account for ages under my own name, I closed that as soon as Microsoft took it over, moved all my repos to GitLab, good move. I opened a new GH account under a silly name [1] so I could collaborate with people still on it. Now I'm not really against 2FA, but don't use it myself, it adds friction, adds risk (what if you lose it), it seems too "theatrical" for my liking. You want to use 2FA? be my guest, live and let live etc. What I don't like is being told what to do with my account, particularly by someone like MicroSlop. I won't add 2FA to my GH account, so I'll not contribute any code to GH based projects, ho hum. As I understand it, I'll still be able to raise issues without 2FA, fine, and when 2FA becomes mandatory for that, I'll stop doing that too.
Lose what exactly? Decent 2FA setups make you confirm you've recorded a set of backup codes somewhere (they often recommend print and store in a safe, I find a secure note in a password manager works well) before activating it.
Furthermore plenty of TOTP applications offer secure backup and syncing features.
So again, what specifically do you think you're going to "lose"?
https://www.unfolder.app/
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