Sunday, February 26, 2006
Nerd update
Been busy. The next two weeks I’m working for my old colleagues from the JFC in Cologne (reinstalling all their computers and setting up a CMS for a website). That means more money and money means more stuff.
I was asked to dj on a friend’s party yesterday and looked for a bag or box to put in my PowerBook, an external hard drive and the audio interface. I ended up using a small cheap flight case for CDs, drilling a hole in its side (and closing it with a cable duct used for desks) and placing all the stuff inside (including a powerstrip). So I just have to bring the case along, take out the PowerBook and put it on top of the case, plug in all the cables and start playing some music. Still have to make a power Y-cable for the laptop and harddrive power supplies (instead of the power strip) to save some space.
No university lectures until april. That means:
- Replacing the empty backup battery in Till’s Yamaha Sequencer
- Performing the Filter Mod on Till’s Korg Poly-800 synthesizer (adding a pot for filter cutoff)
- Getting a new stylus for that old orange record player I found on a flea market (and maybe make it run from batteries to have some music outside)
- Having a try at one or two of ladyada’s POV toys
- Modifying my slide projector for halogen lamps (I found another one on the same flea market; maybe I’ll buy and remodel that one too)
- Finding out how Phillip’s strange old Grundig tape deck can be used (it only has one 8-pin DIN connector which apparenty carries audio as well as power)
- Building a noisy toy gun from several cheap sound toys and a plastic toy space-gun
- Buying that strange Kawai SX-210 organ/synthesizer I already tried twice in that small second-hand music store in Kreuzberg
- Waiting for the new great Prophet 64 cart (C64 synthesizer, drum machine and sequencer)
- Doing even more (music, travelling, jumping around, girls)
I’m such a nerd. I even bought a book just about joysticks. (Ah, and just today I bought a Super Nintento console, so we could use Litte Sound DJ on a big screen.) I failed to buy another Casio SK-1 (circuit bending’s favourite victim) for 20 Euros. And I ordered old Russian black-and-white Super8 film stock I read about on Retro Thing. So that means:
- Getting a cheap Super 8 camera. I’ve seen a Cosinasound 130 M at the flea market today. Looks cool. Nice zoom objective, does slow motion. Perfect. (Actually, I don’t know anything about cameras.)
- Filming something that looks great on grainy, overaged, low light sensitivity russian b/w film.
- Building a homemade film digitizer. Hey Buck, let’s do that in summer, maybe August.
- Finding a girl who can bear all that. =)
