Always Talk Always Listen

Credit goes to Pierre Rivera

A friend wrote these words while at a wedding recently and snapped this photo with my camera. I like the advice, I feel like sometimes we forget to talk and forget to listen. I hope that my friends who just got married always remember this and that I do the same.

Finally Where They Belong

My new MacBook Pro art, I've been holding onto these guys for a long time.

When The Last Sword Is Drawn

Be sure to watch this amazing film.

This Must be The Place

Image set on Flickr

Snowpocalypse 2010 - Surviving the Blizzard

Construction barrels burried underneath a lot of snow, photos from flickr.

So after signing a new lease, breaking up with my gf and ordering a new MacBook Pro I thought that my week contained enough excitement but I was completely wrong. Apparently we were destined for a lot of snow and so I had to pull it together.

As the first flurries were falling I was scrambling to get the bare necessities moved into my apartment (desk, chair, futon and kitchen stuff) while also getting a stash of anime from Video American and food stocks from the store.

Moved in, stocked up, cable and internetless, I spent the weekend holed up in my third floor apartment watching the craziness unfold from my window.

The first thing I noticed is that despite large amounts of snowfall, the gay bar across the street didn't bother with closing, they kept at it. Troopers they are.

Second, the people that leave their houses during a blizzard tend to be in good spirits and rather jovial about the whole affair, I thought it was awesome.

Third, if you take photos of cop cars, they will come out and interrogate you. Thanks Osama Bin Asswipe.

All in all, a great weekend to break in a new apartment.

Fluxus - Live Coding with LISP

Building a Portable Guitar Amp (The Smokey Amp)

The parts as they lay out, ordered from mouser.com. Photos on flickr

It was a while ago that I purchased my Smokey Amp and it was always a reliable amp only because it was always in my guitar case and ready to play.

Unfortunately, from the moment I purchased it I've had the desire to rip it apart and see how it's built. Well, given two and a half weeks of vacation time I finally did so and after pulling it apart and googling the parts I found the schematics for the circuit which could've spared my poor smokey amp.



Well, before I knew it I was off to Mouser.com and had the the parts ordered which to my surprise arrived quickly.

Basically what you need (and it's available at radioshack) is a speaker (1watt 8ohm - 3watt 8ohm), a 1/4" stereo jack, two 47uF 16volt Electrolytic Caps and one 386 op-amp chip. That's all there is too it, you can put a pot in there for volume control if you like but really, there's no need.

So now I'm at the point where I need to mount it in a project box and call it done. If you have any questions about building one of these, feel free to ask me questions, it's so simple I'm sure I could do so!

FYI the parts I ordered were:
253-CE502-RO
550-22302
75-515D476M016JA6AE3
513-NJM386D

Ernest Hemingway on Productivity

New Year’s Sausage and Sauerkraut

Just finished this years fixin's, that's all.

-Peace

The Art of Modifying Guitar Pedals

The guts of my ElectroHarmonix Big Muff pedal hang out. Photos on flickr.

So this is only the second pedal I've worked on but at this point I'm starting to get the hang of things and wanted to share my thoughts.

First, working from a kit is awesome and makes diving into these projects really accessible. Two sources if you don't know of them: Monte Allums and Analogman. Kits are nice because the step by step directions are clear and provide they all the parts for you.

The other option is to do it yourself, which as you might imagine is more difficult but can be more rewarding because you can dial in YOUR sound to just how you want it. For this I followed a lot of guidance as laid down by this guy but in the end a lot of the final decisions were up to me.

If you want to go this route I recommend starting off with the Schematics of your pedal (if you can find them) as that will help you map out the board (IE identify where volume, tone control and effects happen). Here's a number of guitar pedal schematics and many more.

Next, if the pedal uses cheap wiring (my big muff did) then go through and replace all the wires, one at a time and check the pedal each time. It's a tedious process but I had a problem with the original wires falling off while working, replacing them helped. For this I used 24AWG solid strand wire, it was stiff and soldered well.

Next, get a pile of components and sockets, by sockets I mean something like these little guys. With the sockets you can easily begin to swap out resistors and capacitors to see what happens to the sound. The idea is simple, experiment until you like it, then solder that part in.

And that's it, there's a lot of resources out there, I recommend you head on over to DIYStompboxes.com for more info on this topic and to get started. Have fun and don't break anything too badly.