Anna, The Rusty One

A latte served with a small cup of whipped cream and a biscuit.

This is the first time I've had a latte like this. I like it.

Old broken analog stick on a GameCube controller board.

360 analogue stick installed

Another shot of a 360 analog stick

Remembering the old dirty game shop days when I hacked a 360 analog stick into a GameCube controller.

The Pocket Scion synthesizer

The back of the pocket Scion.

Before I left, my partner gave me a beautiful new synth, the Pocket Scion. It has some alligator clip leads that connect to any organic material. Using measurements of resistance across the probes, it generates musical sequences. The voice and different music parameters adjust with push buttons.

A bag of Doritos bits, sweet paprika flavor.

Doritos bits snacks.

So I'm traveling, and I found these. I've never had them before, and because of the blue packaging, I expected ranch.

Paprika is not ranch.

a man with long hair and a beard has a gifsec.com watermark on the bottom of the image ALT: a man with long hair and a beard has a gifsec.com watermark on the bottom of the image

The Microsoft 365 login portal when someone attempts a sign in with a Hotmail address:

The fine tuners.

The Autoharp's tuning pegs and sound hole.

The chord bars of the Autoharp.

I may have acquired a beautiful hand-built D'aigle autoharp after visiting their workshop.

It has passive pickups and fine tuning so I can really crank out that folk cover of "The Ace of Spades."

I finally linked my domain to my bluesky profile so everyone can know that in addition to making weird experimental music and chiptunes, I also enjoy disassembling ColecoVisions.

In the rush to deploy advanced web tech, we left a lot of good, feasible ideas in the dustbin for aesthetics and minor UX issues. There's nothing stopping a renaissance of newsgroups/Usenet, IRC, or even telnet. I like the idea of recycling infrastructure, though let's skip the dial-in services.

Interesting choice for the headlights. It has the same face as someone sneaking to the kitchen at 2am for a shame snack.

The fully refelted vintage 60s autoharp.

It's all refelted and ready to go! Some of the chord bars have some slop and will occasionally dampen a few of the wrong strings. A small adjustment I could make is using thinned CA or contact cement to glue small stubs to the ends.

get equipped with dark information

The bare harp with chord bars removed

The amount of dust and dirt wasnt too bad. I decided to pull it apart to clean under the chord bars.

The chord diagram from near the anchor plate, covered in grime.

The chord diagram is gross 😆

Autoharp felt in an online shopping cart

How it was ^

How it's going:

I turned the tuning peg and the tuning block "popped." I think that's an instrument's way of saying "I'm too old for thiiiiiiiiis."

Close up of the chord bar. There's a worm stuck under the chord bars, and for some reason only one key turned yellow.

I am afraid of tuning this. Right now it sounds like it's badly out of it. I would pick it up and hug it next to my heart but that's probably how the evil spirit gets its victims. Only the g⁷ chord is turning yellow for some reason.

The Autoharp with its blue case opened and showing the Oscar schmidt autoharp with original factory strings.

It has got the factory strings on it. The felts are not even broken in. I feel like I should turn back, like this is a "Christine situation" and I should turn back before it possesses me and makes me sing June Carter songs.

A late 1960s autoharp.

The sales receipt for it that shows it being from 1968.

All of the accompanying paperwork and advertisements.

I somehow lucked out and found this autoharp for sale. It was very cheap. When I got there, I was told that it belonged to an old man who collected things and never played them. It literally has never been played and was in this case for six decades. Its condition is astonishing.

Beware of dehumanization. It is our gravest social sin.

It is a self-fulfilling Doomsday prophecy and portends the swift erosion of a soul.

The more you treat someone as less than, the less you become.

get equipped with escape thing

[Preston Garvey approaches]

"I just got word of another settlement that ran out of Monster Energy and programming socks. I'll mark it on your map."

Selling things on Facebook Marketplace.

There's always a group like "[local area] Buy/Sell/Trade" and another nearly identical group called "[local area] Buy/Sell/Trade (NO JERKS, PEOPLE WITH BAKED GOODS, BAD ADMINS!!!)."

When I see this, I always feel like I'm stepping into some high lore.

An auto harps lower octave strings, installed

A pinhole with a wooden dowel broken off in it.

Titebond 3 wood glue and some bamboo q-tips

The new tuning pins arrived and I reassembled the auto harp. I'm not a luthier by any imagination, and I did the best I could. One of the pins was stripped out of the pin block, so I had to do the old "wooden shim" trick with some titebond. We'll see if it holds tuning.

a close up of a person wearing a black hooded jacket Alt: a close up of a Anakin skywalker with glowing eyes and a dark hood

The check-in agent when I say that my bag is just over the weight limit and I need assistance.

A sprinkler hitting a metal pole directly in the middle of a grassy patch.

When synthesizer vibes are going on but I sweep the notch filter instead of the VFO that is the poorly labeled pot right next to it.

get equipped with happiness search

be good to each other everyone

don’t make a hard time harder

a man in a vest and tie is walking down a dirt road with a group of people behind him . ALT: a man in a vest and tie is walking down a dirt road with a group of people behind him .

We need more third spaces where it's publicly acceptable to jam.

a robot is in a room with a sign that says ' safety first ' on it ALT: a robot is in a room with a sign that says ' safety first ' on it

Every time I try to articulate a post that is non-music related here, I end up going