The Mandelbear's Musings

MAKE: Blog: Crazed steampunk cooling solution

While checking inbound links to his Steampunk Workshop, MAKE pal Jake von Slatt stumbled on this amazing steampunk casemod on a Polish modding forum. Really amazing, with needle guages, lots of lighting F/X, a porthole with clockworks inside, and lots of old school plumbing hardware

( too shiny for words, so here are some pix )
We wants it, preciousssss. Possibly time to go buy some brass pipe-fittings.

It seems that Musician's Friend is having a "moving our warehouse" sale. The old bear can't resist the shiny stuff, so I snarfed up a pair of CAD GXL3000 PRO multi-pattern mics for $70 each. List is $219, they say. They arrived today. Sweet!

Gave a listen to the current state of CC&S in the car -- level problems on 5 tracks, plus the two that still need major work. Getting there.

I'm not kidding! LumiGram.com has a "contact us for price" notice on the item pictured, but the handbags and hair ornaments seem real (and expensive) enough.
( big picture here )
(from gizmodo)

Samson Zoom H4 Handy Digital Recorder

Records two tracks at 24-bit, 96KHz, or four tracks at 16-bit, 44.1KHz. Also records direct to MP3 at up to 320KB/s. Built-in electret condenser mics plus XLR connectors with phantom power. Street price is $300, which is at least $50 less than any of its competitors.
( picture behind cut -- may not be safe if you tend to drool on your keyboard )
The bad points are: no 24-bit recording in 4-track mode, and although it can function as a USB audio interface, it only does so at 16 bits. Battery life is only 4 hours; on the other hand that's roughly twice what you'll get out of a 2GB SD card at 24 bits. Bring spares.

(From Gizmodo)

Went to Fry's after lunch, looking for retractible USB and Firewire cables (which I found), a compact preferably wireless trackball and a sleeve or thin case for the new laptop (neither of which I found). To assuage my sorrow and get in a little more walking, I trundled over to the enticingly close and ever-dangerous Gryphon Stringed Instruments.

There in the glass case under their front counter my roving eye lit on a cute little Meisel MCT-7L clamp-on chromatic tuner. It was only $30, and I'd been contemplating bringing my travel guitar to Portland next week.

It's pretty impressive. The box it comes in is 5mm shorter than a 5cm cube. It has a bright-green-backlit LCD display that imitates an analog meter, syncs quickly and accurately, and is more convenient than my Boss TU-12 and easier to use (and probably more accurate) than the built-in tuner on my Ovation. Shiny!

...but they only had one in the store, and it was likely to be gone by the time we needed it. The fact that I'd been to the bank earlier this morning and knew what my balance was also contributed to the decision, along with the fact that our Kitchenaid mixer is still doing just fine after 25 years or so. Of course the fact that the saleslady knows me and the flower_cat well, and knows of our fondness for Japanese sharp pointy things...

( the sales blurb; knife porn )

Happy 30th anniversary, love!