Classical Convert

Mistery Noises

If fate had worked itself all wrongly, and had made me into one who makes music (I thought) then I would definitely, definitely write a piece for foghorn. Foghorns are sexy. And intimidating. They are the roars of our largest artificial animals. Here is a fun foghorn fact: it is impossible to find a video on youtube of one which does not involve one of (a) wind static, (b) ADD cameramen, (c) some dude who attached one to the roof of his ScionxB. Well, there might be a few others:

I can see from your eyes that you have a great desire to learn more about foghorns. Let me share with you a few secrets unraveled in the Great Internet Foghorn Adventure of the last half hour. It turns out that the “classic” foghorns — diaphones — are an endangered species. They are all getting replaced by electronic diaphragm style ones. This is sad as the diaphone has a rich and exuberant (well, maybe not exuberant) history. Check it out:

Air comes in from the left, and that piston in the middle is cut away on its left side: that’s why it looks weird, it’s actually symmetric and shaped like a top-hat. It starts with the piston in the top position. Air pushes the rim of the top-hat down, until this exposes the channels which let the air escape up through the hollow center of the piston and out of the top of the cone. In the process the piston is forced back up again, causing it to vibrate up and down.

This is kind of like a half flute/half reed type mechanism for producing a noise. There is a column of vibrating air (like a flute) but instead of this being due to purely the dimensions of the device, it is due to being actively oscillated by a mechanical, err, thingy (like a reed). This mechanism originally came from a (rarely used) stop on an organ, invented by the same guy who created the Wurlitzer. I think it’s really cool that there is a little piston in there. It’s like a half instrument/half machine.

Still not convinced that foghorns are sexy? Perhaps this will change your mind:

I’ve GOT to get me one of these bad boys.

They are available from the store at gamewelldiaphone.com, if you are interested. This is also the site where I found that awesome animation up there. For further foghorn-based entertainment (and I know you know that’s the best type) check out the wikipedia entry on diaphones.

Tags: diaphone, foghorn, thong

Things Not to Do In My Garden Next Year

Things learned as another season of stump farming draws to a close:

• I will try to avoid squeezing fifty-thousand tomato plants into three inches of dirt - it makes it frickin impossible, and uncomfortable, to extract any fruit from within the clutches of all those stems. They need about a two foot radius each.
• No more cantaloupe. Cantaloupes DO NOT work well in this climate. The space required/taste acquired ratio is far too high. Although… it is kind of awesome that they actually grew. Now I can be proud of attaining the life accomplishment: Has Grown Melons.
• Don’t be stingy with the beans. Next year I will use all the cantaloupe space to erect the most enormous bean teepee the gardening world has ever laid it’s green-fingered eyes on. Beans are promiscuous little holy grails. They are easy, delicious, and you can make a bloody teepee out of them. One cannot argue with a teepee.
• Don’t bother planting tonnes of chilis. This year I stuck a Jalapeno and Habanero plant on my pseudo-balcony and they have been way more than adequate. Acres of chilis in the real garden are totally unnecessary, they just end up unused and rotting.
• Don’t put off weeding and turning soil over until the spring. Spring Ben hated previous-Autumn Ben this year for being a lazy so-and-so and letting everything overgrow.
• Do grow… no wait, this list is supposed to be all negatives. Don’t, errr, not grow dyers indigo.

Tags: gardening

Free Sound Samples

This is as much for me to remember as for you to use — I’ve taken to using some of these blog entries as a sort of bookmarking system — but we’re dead dead certain that some of you will have a use for freesound. It’s a library of creative commons licensed sounds, so you can use them in whatever project you feel is necessary to present to the world. Like an animated cartoon (yeah, as opposed to an unanimated cartoon. What are you going to do about it?) about your adventures reading my blog.

My fellow American’s, we must solemnly pledge to add sound effects to everything we create from this day forward.

Tags: sounds effects

Comment Spam

Good god. Every few weeks a spammer will latch onto this blog and start piping hot buttered spam into comments on random posts, despite the supposed protection of CAPTCHA (which, incidentally, is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing-test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). This results in me receiving in the neighborhood of on hundred emails over the course of a mere couple of hours. THIS results in me getting annoyed and setting Wordpress (THANK GOD for this feature) to automatically block comments which contain parts of the recurring spammy URLS.

So, if you are not a spam-king and are rejected trying to make a valid comment, you might be mentioning something which is taboo. This might be obvious (e.g., viagra, day-trading, etc…) or not so obvious (e.g. groups.yahoo.com) so drop me a line via the contact form if it’s problematic.

On the other hand, if you are a spam-king, go die in a fire.

Tags: spam

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog

Back from Woodstock this afternoon. Tired, and overloaded with food, alcohol and science. It was our lab ‘retreat’ if you haven’t been following the recent bitching. It actually turned out to be a far funner experience than the prep lead us to believe, despite the 8:30am rising and ten hours of daily science presentations. We still found time to grill and booze and play Wii way into the early-hours, and I fulfilled one of minor life goals of giving a science talk with a beer in hand (and six in the stomach)!

However, we all wish it was not Monday tomorrow. I doubt the lab will see much action until about midday.

Tags: lab retreat, woodstock