Fake TV

What this is, is a small inexpensive box that plugs into the wall with a panel of multi-colored LEDs. It can be set on, off, or to come on for various periods after dark. When it’s on it uses the panel of LEDs to effectively simulate the light coming from a television set… and does a good, convincing job of it. From outside of the room the indirect light coming from the room looks very much as if there were a TV on, with the typical changing and flickering patterns that one would see from pans, jump cuts, commercial breaks, etc., with no repeating pattern that I’ve been able to detect, giving every appearance that the room must be occupied.

Knives in Space… 1

I don’t mind going into more detail about any or all of this, at least what I know and can find out about the subject, in fact I’d rather enjoy it, but my personal interest is even more about the future, and especially the key question of how useful and necessary knives are likely to be for those leaving the planet in the decades and generations to come… or not.

Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools

I subscribed to the mailing list as soon as it started, and while the quality has varied somewhat and there have been times when I felt that it wandered too far into non-utilitarian (non-useful) selections, I’ve never been tempted to un-subscribe, and I’ve learned of a great many useful things from it that I wouldn’t have otherwise known about.

DIY SM7b microphone?

Maybe this dynamic microphone classic is worth the $400 price tag, “Made in Mexico” and all. Maybe not. It has certainly proven itself many times over. Thing is, I’ve got no business owning one even at a quarter of that price. I’ve got negligible microphone experience in recent decades (when I last sang on stage the Electro-Voice EV664 was the mic of choice- ancient history). There’s no way I can remotely justify spending $400 (not to mention $150 for a Cloudlifter CL1, which seems to be the “trick” setup) on this thing.

Of course, I still want one.

Sense and nonsense: Studio Monitors

I may be about to make an exception for “studio (reference) monitors”. I have, admittedly, pretty much zero experience with them, and I went into learning more about them with an open mind. Having done so, I can’t say that they are or are not worth the money that professionals pay for them (which is often extreme), but I can say for sure that many of the reasons that I’m being fed for that make no sense.

A Pocket Recording Studio

A few days ago there was a deal on Slickdeals (now expired) for the Samson Go Mic USB Microphone. I think MSRP on this is $50, it seems to go for just under $40 normally, the deal was for $30 from Adorama with a $5 mail-in rebate* for a net cost of $25 shipped. I had seen it and read some things about it before, so I was intrigued- but the place is filling up with microphones, I clearly didn’t need another, so I resisted for a few days. Finally curiosity won out, as it usually does with me, and I ordered it. It got here yesterday and I played around with it for a few hours last night. Turns out I don’t regret the purchase in the least. I’m impressed with the little beastie, I hope I can express why.

Mars is in the Air

Honestly, how could you NOT love an honest-to-god spaceship with a hatch latching mechanism from a junked minivan? This not only captures the best spirit of the Maker movement, but also Victor Korman’s excellent and prescient book Kings of the High Frontier, and, for that matter, Tom Swift, Tom Swift Jr., and a whole slew of we-can-do-it “juvenile” science fiction from ages past, from what seems in retrospect like an alien, long-vanished culture. I loved it all.

Home Recording Centered on a Raspberry Pi, How feasible?

As I recently posted I came across a “deal” on the Behringer “U-PHORIA” (ugh, stupid name) UMC22 and UMC202HD USB audio interfaces, for $40 or $45. Even though I don’t anticipate getting a lot of use of out of these for… well, who knows. If there’s a move in the offing, which seems inevitable now, it might be a year or more… still, it got me thinking.

I was reading a lot of articles and watching a lot of Youtube videos on the functional differences between condenser microphones and dynamic microphones, and the problems of filtering out background noise, and one of the consistent gripes was about the microphones picking up computer fan noise.

Since I’ve done a lot with Raspberry Pi computers and have several of them around, I jokingly thought “why not just record with a Raspberry Pi? No fan!”.

Then the more I thought about it, the less it seemed like a joke.

Seriously, why not?