From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V6 #121 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Sunday, May 13 2001 Volume 06 : Number 121 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Alloy: small (cool!) world & Nuclear Survivor [CRACKERS ] Alloy: So Long And Thanks For All The Laughter [CRACKERS Subject: Re: Alloy: small (cool!) world & Nuclear Survivor On Sat, 5 May 2001, Robin wrote: > Crackers, do you think your ability to fix just about anything and your > fascination with simpler electronic devices might stem from a similar sense > of survivalism? I think my ability to repair just about anything comes from my being poor as dirt. When you can't afford to buy a new thing or have someone else fix it then you've got no choice but to fix it yourself. The truth is though, I do enjoy fixing with things and really love taking something simple and modifying it to do something more. As for my fascination with electronics... that started at an early age. One of my favorite toys when I was a kid was my RadioShack 175-in-1 Electronic Projects kit (the same kit is still sold today but has been upgraded to 200 projects). I would spend many hours tinkering away with that, learning about electronics. I loved building bizarre little noise makers and things that made lights flash and stuff like that. Incidently, I would highly recommend that every parent get one of these for their kids. It's a great toy and a great educational device. You can even use it to teach yourself about electronics. Speaking of tinkering. I just bought this really cheesie home organ today at the Goodwill for $30. The first thing I'm going to do with it is chop the top half off the cabinet (which is empty save for the speaker and bass pedals) so that it will be portable and I can mount it on a regular keyboard stand. Depending on how much it weighs I might end up building a new case for it. I popped it open at the Goodwill and everything for the organ is mounted on a single wooden board under. The cabinet of the organ doesn't support the keyboards or anything. It's simply a housing. This will make it very easy to build a much lighter cabinet if it's still too heavy when separated from the bottom. The other cool thing I noticed when I opened it... everything inside appears to be modular!!!! The oscilators seem to feed into five separate analogue filters! This puppy has TONNES of modification potential. I think the first modification I might make will be an ADSR envelope generator to contour the amplitude of the sounds and then look at adding an envelope generator for the filters. Apart from volume and vibrato the filters are the only tool for shaping the sounds of this organ. It doesn't have preset tabs or anything. From what I've been able to gather from my brief experimentation with the organ in the shop was that it generates three waveforms with it's oscilators for the top manual, and two waveforms for the bottom manual. The top seems to generate a sinewave, squarewave, and sawtooth wave. Each waveform has it's own lowpass filter and you adjust the filters to modify the sound. The bottom manual seems to only have the sine and square waveforms each with their own filter. So adjusting these filters changes the quality of the sound. It doesn't sound very much like an organ as a result and more like an old analogue synth which it would really be if it had the ADSR envelopes. I should be able to build in seperate ADSR envelope generators for each waveform which would really let me create some wicked sounds. Of course who knows when I'll find the time to do such an extensive mod and I have a horrible habbit of getting the schematics drawn up and then not following through with the actually construction because I become distracted with another project (or the endless stream of home rennovations). I'm sorry, I'm probably going on about something most of you find boring but this wee beastie I found really has some thrilling potential to this geekboy. CRACKERS (Can't wait to get it home from hell!!) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 19:26:14 -0400 (EDT) From: CRACKERS Subject: Alloy: My New Project Well gang, I've created my first webcomic. It's a weekly webcomic that basically has fun with some of the cliches of japanese hentai manga. If you get a kick out of the hentai scene then take a peek at http://ghastly.keenspace.com Most of the pages are still under construction but the main page with the comic is up. I'll likely do updates once a week, every sunday. Crackers (Ecchi-boy from hell!!!!!) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 19:31:42 -0400 (EDT) From: CRACKERS Subject: Alloy: So Long And Thanks For All The Laughter I just heard today that one of my favorite authors Douglas Adams passed away yesterday of a heart attack at the age of only 49. Such a sad loss of suck a brilliant talent (although it's a pity the last HHGTTG book sucked so much). CRACKERS (death sucks from hell!!!) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 18:17:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Brian Clayton Subject: Re: Alloy: So Long And Thanks For All The Laughter On Sat, 12 May 2001, CRACKERS wrote: > I just heard today that one of my favorite authors Douglas Adams passed > away yesterday of a heart attack at the age of only 49. Such a sad loss of > suck a brilliant talent (although it's a pity the last HHGTTG book sucked > so much). I've been sitting here listening to the BBC Radio series all afternoon, still in a bit of a shock over it all. Douglas was one of my favorites as well. I remember getting into Hitchhiker's just before it hit it big here in the States. I taped the radio shows, the TV show, bought every variation of the books (the American printings tended to change English expressions and spellings to American ones. It foreshadowed the seemingly-endless pursuit of copies of The Golden Age of Wireless a few years later.) Sadly, Douglas gave new meaning to the word "procrastinate." He never finished his latest novel after several missed deadlines. Also, his screenplay for the Hitchhiker's film was still in development. It could have made "Men In Black" look as staid as a Jane Austin adaptation. There's no telling if it will ever be produced now. *sigh* Thanks for what you did give us, Douglas. Should I ever make it to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, I'll raise a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster to you. I'm sure you have a table there. 42, BC ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 00:53:37 -0400 From: "Robin Thurlow" Subject: Re: Alloy: small (cool!) world & Nuclear Survivor Crackers wrote: > I'm sorry, I'm probably going on about something most of you find boring > but this wee beastie I found really has some thrilling potential to this > geekboy. actually, I know nothing about electronics but I was really interested to read all of this. The tools of music making are every bit as fascinating as the way it's composed or performed, IMO! I know what you mean about starting new projects. I'd been wanting to electrify this little plywood cello I have, because the poor thing sounds sort of sick when it's played accoustically & I thought electronic effects might help it along. But I've never really gotten to do it because my wrists finally gave out from trying to wrestle notes from the thing (it's a real beast!) so it's just been sitting by the fireplace for several months now. I'm now simply going to do some body art on it and the bow, and sell them at the shop I think. It does play, somewhat, but I feel it'd be most useful as a pretty household oddity in someone's home. And anyway I'll need the space it's been taking up for my drum kit! (one day :) Good luck on your new project. I'd just love to get a look at your work space, it must be filled with all kinds of cool gadgets. xxx Robin T ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 01:09:05 -0400 (EDT) From: CRACKERS Subject: Re: Alloy: So Long And Thanks For All The Laughter On Sat, 12 May 2001, Brian Clayton wrote: > Sadly, Douglas gave new meaning to the word "procrastinate." He never > finished his latest novel after several missed deadlines. Also, his > screenplay for the Hitchhiker's film was still in development. It could > have made "Men In Black" look as staid as a Jane Austin adaptation. > There's no telling if it will ever be produced now. *sigh* Oh it'll definetly be produced. Death sells. Disney will likely hack together something as quickly as possible, slap Douglas's name all over it and shove it infront of the greaving masses. CRACKERS (Wow, when did I become so cynical from hell!!) ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V6 #121 ***************************