I got these vintage accordion reeds from ebay ages ago. They have been sitting on my shelf for over a year. I’ve calculated that they have gained as much as 1% more vintage in that time.
These accordion reeds are unlike their neighbours who came from pump organs. Accordion reeds have steel tongues (not brass), and the frames are made from aluminium (not brass). Beyond that there are no material differences. Only morphological ones.
Don’t you just love jigsaw puzzles? I don’t. I’ve only ever done them out of selflessness or spite.
But what if, instead of interlocking pieces in a two dimensional grid (if you’re lucky), each piece was smooth. Instead of aligning tabs and a picture (if you’re lucky), each piece is instead had a similar resonance to its neighbours. And what if, instead of a two dimensional puzzle, it’s one dimensional. There aren’t any corners, but on the other hand, it’s all edges.
Start with Part 1.
Bellows are a mystery to me. Even now. There are plenty of tutorials showing you how to draw lines on paper and then fold them up, but my brain doesn’t find it easy to visualise it. Easily solved, I’ll just make a model.
Start with Part 1.
I just wanted another portable harmonium. Whether that meant buying or building one.
I saw one on eBay, listed as a fixer-upper that doesn’t play. I had to get it. In the best case I would have a harmonium. In the worst case I would have learned something.
The seller was quite open about it not working. I took the gamble, and met him in a car park off the M4. It looked exactly like its photo.
I should be clear that I already have a harmonium. It has three octaves, two ranks (voices) and knee-pedals to operate the swells. It’s small, and folds up smaller. If you saw me carrying it you might mistakenly think I was struggling with a very heavy suitcase.
I put Cloudflare and a CAPTCHA on Folk Tune Finder. It’s a pragmatic decision, which ensures that the limited resources of the site are used for the people it’s intended for. It’s an uneasy trade-off that doesn’t align with all of my principles. It does, though, align with the fundamental principle of folk tune finder: helping people to find tunes.
I have been asked to pass on the following message to Three Bean Salad Podcast:
Esteemed Beans,
Your recent episode, “Elevators”, was so flagrant in its profligate use of jingles that I must break my silence and share my top secret research project.
Unlike many, I don’t use your podcast to go to sleep. But I do use it to wake up, and the jingles really get me out of bed. Knowing the exact timings of each episode is crucial for my scientific lifestyle. I have therefore scientifically catalogued every jingle and cross-referenced it against every episode.
At this trying time for public health you may be concerned that I’m diverting scientific attention from more pressing matters. Nothing could be further from the truth: it’s better for public health that I do remain at home and out of the lab, I am assured.
Professor Potamogdon
None of the below is particularly original. That’s kind of the point.
I’m addicted to paper. When reviewing documents I prefer to print them out and scribble on them. That’s all well and good in an office located on a planet with infinite trees, but I find myself in neither of those situations.
As a programmer, I also find it useful to scribble things down on paper, point at various scribble marks and ask people questions. I do enjoy making carefully perfected, data generated, diagrams with arcane tools. But scribbling is a necessary precursor.
My son is nearing his second birthday, which makes him nearly two years old. When he was only four months old I decided that I would make him something with buttons. I didn’t have much more of an idea than that, but I ordered one hundred illuminated buttons and started mulling what to do with them. Nothing much happened for a few months; I knew this was a long term plan. But every so often my subconscious would come up for breath, and I would open the drawer and get them out. Just to see how they felt.
This was a micro-slot talk at Oxford Geek Nights #51.
As my son found his feet and began to walk, he found his hands at perfect height to reach the piano. Music is very important to us, and I could not have been more delighted to see him walk over to the piano and press the keys with the tips of his fingers.