Hello, my names _ _ _ _ and I’m a Radio Shack Nostalgic!
I’d like the above on a T-Shirt!
The lost tribes of Radio Shack
Please read the article before you read what I’ve written below… just advice and you can, of course, make up your own mind.
I really liked that article even though I know this stuff, we all do, but in the avalanche of it’s repercussions, the fact we all know is hardly ever mentioned. But I don’t really think it’s anything to get too concerned about, I mean it’s wasteful and kinda stupid, but, by the same token, I think it’s merely a passing phase, and adjustment of sorts as western societies find their way into a new phase of living in the world.
While the components disappear of these previous ages of DIY we have to acknowledge that the consumer culture of electronics has actually made a whole lot of things possible that weren’t when Computers and Film and Audio equipment were specialized items only available to the Big Boys. Thats all changed and while we may be losing the nuts and bolts, or at least seeing diminishing supplies and suppliers, of DIY activity the internet and cheaper and cheaper top quality equipment has created a whole undercurrent of abilities that will definitely have their day… in the not too distant future I would surmise. Whether or not the audience will increase to allow this counter culture to grow in a way we might understand as required is another story and not one I’m going to go into but it doesn’t really matter whether it grows or not. The point is that the article is symtomatic of a transitional stage in modern culture and I think the important thing to be looking at is the fulcrum point of those two supposedly divergent areas of development.
One being consumerism and the other being the creative “industries”. They are much alike the struggle that was the Unions back in the day. The argument of Unionism was to collectivise and to take that a little further is the notion that if the creative sector where to survive in and of itself, without needing the big bucks investments from the other pole, then eventually the other pole would have to run on its own fuel… and pop will eat itself!
Seems like the Laptops underway and I’m now looking at doin’ the desktop. Back’dup all the info I’ve had on it and put it on a USB harddrive as well as storing the firefox bookmarks and getting an add on to be able to copy the passwords. Also burned an XP.iso on to a CD so I’m basically ready to do the installs. All I gotta do now is list all the hardware and find XP drivers for it, as the ones I have are for 98SE and even though I can extract and store those, they may not be what I want. Soon as I’ve done that and burnt them I’ll be ready to reboot from the XP disc, load it up, defrag it, then repartition under the Linux load and install that as well.
Just a little more research to do with open SuSe, not hardware compatibilities, but with any Linux software I’d like on both machines.
Basically the desktop is my realworld internet workhorse and the laptops my audio visual workstation but there’ll be some interaction as any downloading and uploading’ll happen on the desktop, and relevant sorting out of files into formats for use, then swapping across to the laptop to be played with. Hmm…
The learning curve isn’t so steep after all, but learning to take things slowly and do research, thats a new ballgame.
I can’t remember what I wrote last time but I think I was on my second install. Now I’ve done the third and it seems alot more stable. I had a bunch of problems on the second after a few add ons to firefox. Whether they were the problem I don’t know but suffice to say I just did another install. Once it was installed I updated straight away and once that was done I went to Ubuntu Studio 10.04 and the whole thing took about 6-7 hrs including the 3.5 hr download of 10.04. This happened at night to about 2.30 in the morning and after the download the computer wan’t another 2 hrs to install so I left it running and went to bed.
I suppose thats a good sign, eh? The fact that I’m happy to let Linux do it’s stuff entirely without me in evidence. So in the morning there it was all set up and ready to go. Then I went back and did the hardware devices and downloaded the Nvidia graphics and that installed this time without a hitch. Now I’ve kinda learned that with a new OS it’s an idea to go back to the beginning and instead of leaping into the OS like you know PC’s inside out and do add ons and plug ins to see what happens its actually a better idea to work into things a little slower. Last night I spent most of my time in preferences remaking the window colours and then downloading backgrounds to get the work surface nice and suitable for what I want. Okay, thats only comsmetic but I think the fact I’m no computer whiz and I know nothing about command lines means that me and the PC need to spend some time on the surface getting to know each other.
So instead of me standing on the surface and issueing these big commands that send streaks of lightening down into the core kernel I’m most probably better off acheiving stability in ways that I understand in real life. Basically that means getting to know the ‘puter on it’s surface and then as intimacy developes it’ll let me in deeper and respond in ways that suit us both as we’ll have developed a bond and feel safe and secure in each others presence. I mean without the actual knowledge of making this machine do what I want, as in master and slave, I have no other choice but to treat it like a friend and hope we become lovers in the not too distant future.
So the plan now is to take my time and watch a bunch of DVD’s on it, listen to some of my favourite CD’s and watch some youtube vids given to me by my good friend John about various scientific geniuses. Also I’ve got a set of ‘puter speakers that I got for a few bucks that upon opening seem to have a nice little amp in there so I’ll hook those up as the first hardware to the outside world. Once some of this is under way I’ll make tentative jumps into the audio hardware and do a little playing about with drum loops and suchlike… I think it’ll work!
Meanwhile I’m reading this book about Ubuntu
Plus I’ve joined the requisite forums to get help when needed
And now this’ll be required reading as well
So doing some reading above the first thing one has to do is get Jack going properly.
Jack’d is the underlying connectivity of all the audio so getting that up and running is paramount.
Heres the page detailing the things one does
Last night I had a spare hour or so and decided to load the Ubuntu Studio DVD on my laptop. No internet connection while loading and I made a mistake about what programs were loaded so this morning I did it again. Plug in the power supply, attach the DSL cable and hit F12 on startup, choose disc boot and slid in the DVD.
All went swimmingly, got all the programs installed and immediately got on the internet without having to know anything or fill out anything. During the loading I was asked for a proxy server but I just ignored that and carried on… so I guess I don’t get served by proxy.
Linux OS’s are constrained by law to be able to carry some proprietary codecs for video and sound but all it means is a little extra setup after the OS is loaded. I tried a DVD and it wouldn’t load so I went to the help menu and the links to the needed files are within the help file so they loaded easy and then a little typing into another program, while still having the help menu open… try doing that in Windows, and push enter and DVD’s played.
Initially it’s kinda weird how Linux works but it soon becomes obvious how easy and well thought out things are. I’m just new to laptops and the windows sliding bars, with the arrow buttons, at the side of windows to move the pages up and down are a pain in “Windows” with one at the top and one at the bottom. In Linux they are both at the bottom and that makes things so much easier. And when you do something wrong in Linux….nothing happens! You know how one can get into lots of trouble in “Windows” if one inadvertantely goes the worng way or pushes the wrong button, well it won’t happen with Linux, you can’t do things wrong and even if you do you just do the right thing and your back on track.
Theres this thing called mounting in Linux where a CD or DVD thats loaded won’t autorun, it needs to be mounted first, either in the my computer menu or by opening the program you want to run it. Then when you finish or quit it won’t eject, manually or within the software, until you unmount it then either eject it manually or in the software. Might seem a little complicated but it means alot as far as having choice about how you want to do things. Even with my limited experience I’m thinking I’m going to get the hang of Ubuntu real quick simply because it echoes my own practises. Consumer electronics aren’t the same as professionally specific electronics… the same seems to go with Windows and Linux… so I’m supposing that what the Apple geeks were on about for so long… is what Linux is doing for the PC, and possibly more so as they’ve been able to learn from both!
So next fire up I’ll do music CD’s, utube vids and mp3′s etc.
And what a gorgeous desktop. Well, not exactly gorgeous but alot more hopeful than anything under the commercial applications.
Thats enough instrument making for one week… I’m going back to furniture. Much easier!
Got rained out yesterday. Pissing down it was so all I got done was a few frets brazed to the latest machine… but todays going to be fine all day, good Indian summer day!
Went through some old links and even though I find this chap a little irritating… I love what he does. Does lots of it and it’s good but I’d like to know more about how and the fact hes a little short on explanations pisses me off… one of the prime reasons I try and explain so much of what I do!
He started off with a blog, which isn’t going to last to much longer.
Because now he’s got a website.
The necks flat as a pancake, or was before I started putting the frets on, but I hadn’t checked the straightness perpendicularly, and it has a nice curve there… but that doesn’t really matter much. So I’m at the point where I’ll just keep adding frets and then hammer the shit out of it later if the neck comes up and then heat up each fret joint to straighten them all up… and if that doesn’t work I’ll put the belt sander on it. Basically build it then try and set it up flat and even… ish. Steel’s just to fluid too be kept straight when the method of joining involves heat. But this is how I keep relearning that fact! Try and make it do what it doesn’t really want to… but it doesn’t matter, it’s not for Rockstars doing licks at the speed of arrogance.. it’s for me!
So all it has to do is look good and sound… interesting, and it’s already done that without even having strings on it… I can’t fail!
These photos below were what I acheived yesterday so I didn’t completely finish the instrument… but I did get alot done and then attached a piezo to the neck and took it out, to Vit S and played it anyways; and so did Ivan!
…and a slightly different view of the same thing.
Now I’ll go out and get a photo of the thing kinda cleaned up and with the neck brazed on plus strengthening … bit.
The frets will be made from 6mm rod bent around some roundy thing, so they are all the same curve (not like the drawing but outer ends out in space) then I’ll get the measurements from the wee machine at windworld and braze on the top and bottom fret, they’ll be wider than the neck by about 10mm each side at the top (headstock) and maybe 25mm each side at the bottom (body) and brazed in the centre to the neck. Then by vice gripping two lengths, from the outer ends of the frets, of square tubing, 12mm, I will have a template to sit all the other frets to. Then it’s just a matter of getting them at the right length and distance from the one before and brazing them on.
When I did the neck brazing, with strengthening gusset, there was no appreciable bending of the neck, but I’ll find out for sure when I braze the frets on as the whether the neck will bend up as the metal cools and tightens. Even if it does I should be able to apply heat to the bottom of the neck below the frets to balance any stresses that appear.
I’m also thinking, and I’ve yet to have succes with this, of mounting some sympathetic strings within the neck cavity itself and the one thing that’ll make or break this idea is being able to mount machine heads. I’ve got room for the main strings by cutting up some wood to slot into the end of the steel tubing that goes through the wok, hey thats a name for this instrument, gwok – in – speel, gwokinspeel, but the sympathetics may be troublesome as the idea in my head may not pan out. Basically it’s about having a violin style tailpiece and adding a set of tuners to that and the question is whether that’ll actually fit under the break for the main strings. At the top the nylon strings will be tied into knots and simply slid into slots. The other unanswered question is how much stretch the weedcutter nylon needs before it comes up to usable tension… I’d surmise it’s alot more than steel but then again normal nylon strings don’t take too much and weedcutter nylons thicker than those and so may take less than those… who knows?
Fret calculator and other music calculators.
Last night I decided I’m going to build an instrument today. I’ve had the idea floating about for a while and because of the furniture making I’m doing, which I have started I’m going to do an instrument in steel today to setup the way I go into the furniture when I get back into it tomorrow.
Theese eze de chairoo!
I quite like the idea of one set of aethetics helping to define another. So I’ve got the backbone of one chair I’m planing to do sorted, out of two, and the second is an Ottoman that’ll have three woks as the seating bases, so if I now spend the day building a musical instrument with two woks joined together as the body the problem solving I’ll have to go through to bring the instrument into reality will set me up nicely with a set of principles to build the chairs.
Years and years ago me and some good friends were in the Red Bull Trolley Derby, I got 2k from Slingshot to build the trolley and advertise them on it’s body work, and I did a soundtrack for our performance and then we all dressed up and played make believe instruments. The instrument I had, ’cause I was lead guitarist and singer… of course!, was really neat and I’ve always thought of building something similar that really works. I’ve got a photo somewhere but God knows where, maybe on a CD, but anyways the instrument was all aluminium and I’ve kinda figured I couldn’t make one solely out of aluminium, it’d be really hard and super time consuming as well as expensive, so I’m going to make it out of steel.
Orcon man is here now to changeover so later… (changeover done and it doesn’t seem any faster than slingshot… I’ll have to have a word after checking some download speeds)
But back on the net anyways.
Heres the backbone for the top wok placed in position.
… and this is the view from the top.
…and here I’ve kinda stuck it all together and just run out of oxygen but I’ve got another so I’ll return the empties, to keep costs down, and then finish brazing it up. Actually I’ll go out and finish braze it then drop the empties as it’ll have time to cool down.
Next step is putting the neck on and then brazing on the frets after chasing down the program at Windworld to do the calculations for me.
As for holes in the top I’ll drill them later and make ‘em bigger with the jigsaw then pore in some rust preventive to keep it clean…
This is a quick sketch of what I’m trying to acheive.
Spent all day yesterday downloading Ubuntu Studio, took 9 Hours, and then this morning I found a disc on trademe for $6.30.
The guys work out of Massey uni and offer a choice of three Linux disc’s, CD or DVD, for ten bucks so I credited a paltry 10 bucks and asked for Ubuntu Studio on DVD and a CD or two of OS’s that’ll suit my desktop and browsing, storing etc.
Then all I needed was a driver backup program to get all the installed drivers copied, on both ‘puters, so when I reformat and load Linux I’ve got driver CD’s for all the installed hardware ready to go.
In the end the process was made remarkably simple but it took 9 hours of downloading then an hour or two trying to figure things out after trying to figure out what I needed to learn and thanks yet again to those geeks and nerds who hang out at forums just to let you know how clever they are and how stupid you or… timewasters who aren’t needed by anyone except their own Mummies!
I know it’s a process of learning thats going on and I’m glad I’ve kinda finally got the concept of Occams razor down and it’s being brought into reality sooner than I used to bring it. For the Ubuntu studio I finally asked myself what do I want? Answer; I want a DVD with the program on it. Do I have to burn it myself after downloading? Answer; not if I can find a copy in NZ… look on trade me.
The question of drivers took me a little longer to understand and as usual it came down to nomenclature. The question is that ,because any working computer already has the hardware drivers installed, then there must be a way to get those drivers off the hard drive and ready to be reloaded after reformatting and install of an operating system. There is and it’s called driver backup. It’s not a restore drivers or system backup and thats where nomenclature is a pain in the ass and lots of searches and reading of posts in forums eventually got me to driver backup.
Drivermagician Lite
The program I used is quite nifty as it isolates all the drivers and highlights all the hardware drivers as opposed to the OS drivers. So you then just tick all the highlighted boxes and push play… or begin, I can’t remember. But before you do that it’s an idea to create a folder called hardware drivers or somesuch and stash it somewhere close to the top of a directory, like in my documents, then browse to it and hit play. Then just burn it as data and let the fun begin.
Took me a while to figure it all out that but I suppose I’ve learnt and thats what counts.
The thing that got me going about a laptop was discussing the options with Felix while driving back to Raglan the day after the opening at Pierre’s. Felix suggested a desktop in a travel case and that had me remembering one of the chaps at Fleet FM who was into military spec ‘puters the size of a lunchbox way back in the Odeon cafe days.
Tonight I found Ubuntu studio and while looking into that I’ve now cottoned onto the idea of recording studio software and ever operating system software being able to be loaded from CD’s…
This means that you can load your collection of software, complete with operating system, onto a CD or even USB flash drive, then plug it into any PC and boot from the CD or flash drive… amazing.
Given though that you can pickup laptops from trade me with depleted batteries nice and cheap then the alternative of building a PC could be quite costly, relatively speaking, but the fact remains that HD’s are noisy and power supplies are dirty so the idea of a small box to attach a Small screen, keyboard and mouse to is quite an interesting one as well as the idea that much older PC’s with 1/4 Gb of ram and processor speeds well under 1/2Ghz are really cheap and easy to pickup then these ideas of adding smart drives to them and running from batteries is quite an interesting idea.
This is one mans attempt
This one is way past my abilities but it does bear scrutiny I think. This fellow is able to get right down underneath the OS and do the bios stuff which I kinda wish I’d got into all those years ago, but I didn’t, but it shouldn’t be too hard to build something using an old computer then attaching a smart drive box and having the ‘puter boot from it.
What I find intensely interesting is that while these things may be completely beyond most peoples abilities to put together themselves it also means that whats done in the shed this year will most probably be on the shelves at Harvey Normans next year… or the year after!
Oh, I am so behind the times….
This post is dated 2007!
But it’s also still available as a kitset.
This ones available from a company in Canada, and Mums going there in a coupla months.
