Monthly Archives: March 2009

annoying noise

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If there is one skill I have with regards to music, it’s that I make can make some really annoying noises.

While driving home, I started thinking about what would be the most annoying musical instrument one could build. More specially, more or less “acoustic” instruments.[1]

The ideas that came to mind were mostly about building wind instruments, and attaching a large number of them to a compressed air source. Kind of like a set of bagpipes, but far more annoying.

A large pressure chamber with say, three dozen slide whistles attached to it. All slightly out of tune. Or a large number of siren whistles. Or both. Maybe a few dozen cheap penny whistles. Or a hundred kazoos.

Something else to put on the list of things to build.

[1] and not including things that are just brutally loud, like a klaxon, or steam whistle, or a Hemi powered siren, or an orchestra of pulse jets, or maybe a fog horn.

in other words

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I was having a discussion  with michael over lunch, about other words for “thesaurus”. I could swear I saw one used somewhere that was along the lines of “omnilexigraph” or the like.

Couldn’t find anythough, so I created one. It’s “lexibus”.

Usage example: “‘fabiform’? Thats not a real word! It’s not even in the lexibus!”

fire, spam, rain, etc

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I managed to get a picture of my gloved hand holding a oxy-acetylene torch and cutting through a metal plate into the Durham Herald Sun. It was an article about the Durham Tech Shop and was taken during the oxy-acetylene class. I’d post a link to the article, but the Herald Sun’s website seems to be from somewhere in the past.

Tech Shop Durham seem to be making progress getting things setup for the opening, but there’s still a lot to do. It take’s a lot of work and time. It certainly took us longer to get Rod-O-Rama setup and ready than we expected, and Tech Shop is much bigger.

I’ve noticed on my blog, that I get more requests to update the spam protection plugin than I get actual spam. I’m not sure if this is good or bad.

If you get a chance, take a look at Not Yet Rain. It’s the website for the Not Yet Rain documentary about womens reproductive health in Ethopia. lintqueens been working on getting the site launched for a bit.