Speakers
Without wanting to bore you about my living situation, I found myself with the need to purchase some Hi Fi equipment. I went with a Fosi Audio v3 amp and a Fosi Audio P3 pre-amp and a pair of Elac Debut B6.2 bookshelf speakers (spoiler, they’re too big for a bookshelf).
They have sounded pretty good to me, and I have a reasonable history with audio so I think they’re very much there or thereabouts.
However, on the RSS feed came up a post from Tim Bray’s blog about his adventures in purchasing new speakers in which he described his test music. Oooh, I though, I should have a listen and see how it stacks up.
I started with his recommendation of Identikit by Radiohead, noting the artificality (is that a word?) of the sound stage. I fired it up this evening, on the above, and I had a bit of a religious moment. The soundstage was perfect. The drums were bang in the centre, and all the jiggery pokery was flying around where it should be.
Long story short I have somehow, almost by accident and without any opportunity to audition, put together a banging little setup. I was quite happy with it, but I hadn’t really put it to the test with any form of critical listening so I am quite chuffed for someone else’s test piece to really shine.
Printed the case, thusly:
It’s come out pretty well. I can see why the designer went with the 30 key keyboard - it looks like it would be in proportion with the case style, so I think I’ll probably go with it. May need a Vial cheat sheet to deal with the layers!
Notes
As alluded to in previous posts, I am a Terrible Notetaker. I have fired up Logseq as that seems to (notwithstanding the possibility that it’s moving to a DB backend vs flat files) fit me a bit better - the block/pages idea seems to work well, and the iOS app is excellent, but the proof will be in the pudding.
If I find myself with a week’s worth of blank daily journals, then we know it hasn’t taken! The real check will be whether it stands up to work once I’m back, I have deliberately not been thinking about any of that while off.
Maker goals
First, some form of apology. I’ve read that the best way to improve is by writing, so you’re now a test audience for what may resemble a bit of a stream of consciousness - I’m going to try and get some words down regardless, and this may soon resemble a dumpster fire but I will promise to try and keep some relevance in here somewhere.
Further to my various posts re the microjournal, I’ve been pricing things up and it is likely to come in at about GBP150, plus/minus some tool investments - it is high time I got myself a soldering iron and it turns out that things have come on some way since I was doing sound for a living! Also it turns out that you can still get leaded solder, which I didn’t think was a thing any more, but apparently I was wrong.
I have been considering the V2 original. Not a folder, but in what the designer describes as an accountancy calculator. I think it looks pretty good.
So the plan. First things first, I will get the case printed. Once that’s in hand, I can see exactly what I’m working with and whether adding something bigger than the 30 key planck ortho is a sensible idea or not. I’m wondering whether the rPi zero is right, or whether I want to go all in with an actual rPi but, like the keyboard, until I see what space I have to actually work with, it is a tricky one to say.
Technology ambitions
Yesterday, I linked to this.
It turns out that the maker, Un Kyu Lee, has in fact open-sourced all the units on that there GitHub, and as the proud owner of a 3D printer this could very much be something on the cards!
Again, very much a want rather than a need but there is no denying that it is an exceedingly good looking beast and probably more practical than the Psion 5MX that’s languishing in a drawer. I clearly don’t do enough writing to make it a justifiable purchase, but as a project to make, I think it may be entirely reasonable. I’ll have to do the sums and if I can get it below the maker’s $289 I’ll be onto a winner.
Practically speaking, the 3D printing side is about as free as is it possible to be now (with filament coming in at about £15/kg ish) with a printer on hand, which just leaves the electronics and I happen to have a load of MX switches lying about from a mistaken purchase. The only real issue is that I may have to spend more time on the Ali Express website, and that is something I really want to avoid if at all possible.
Watch this space!
Assumptions, we make them…
So I mentioned something about drones being witchcraft. Possibly wizardry. But turns out that I was overconfident in the magic - I have a Project, which requires me to map the back field at high resolution.
Maps Made Easy is one of those “this is witchcraft” applications that makes the drone, which is already magic, churn out high resolution aerial mapping in minutes. Draw the area on the phone, send it to the drone, drone lifts, does the camera work, returns and you just send up the files. Boom.
Anyway, long story short, turns out that the assumption I made about collision detection in this mode was, in fact, wrong, and I watched it gently glide into a tree.
The problem with the witchcraft of drones is that once the magic has evaporated, you’re left with an object with the aerodynamic property of a brick hanging in the air. The results were grimly inevitable, which is why I am once again cursing Ali Express’ UX designers who must hate their users so, so much.
Also, I don’t need one of these, but I do very much want it.