Balafon

Western classical musical instruments have remained pretty much static for the last couple of centuries. Now there’s a piano that’s tunable in real-time (without electronics), so you can adapt it to different scales and microtonal music on the fly. Unfortunately the video doesn’t clearly show the sound of it, as they add a bunch of other background instruments, but it seems to sound something between a fortepiano and a sitar. Also includes a bonus harp :-)

Assistance dogs for the emotionally traumatized:

Tuesday is a so-called psychiatric-service dog, a new generation of animals trained to help people whose suffering is not physical, but emotional. They are, effectively, Seeing Eye dogs for the mind.

Tuesday is with Mr. Montalvan at all hours. Taught to recognize changes in a person’s breathing, perspiration or scent that can indicate an imminent panic attack, Tuesday can keep Mr. Montalvan buffered from crowds or deliver a calming nuzzle. Other dogs, typically golden retrievers, Labradors or Labrador retriever blends, are trained to wake masters from debilitating nightmares and to help patients differentiate between hallucinations and reality by barking if a real person is nearby.

Why you can’t trust the evidence of your eyes.

Good advice if you’re in a Coast Guard rescue boat in the surf:

A Nice Message about Joshua, the Divine Ointment: The Beginning

Attributed to A. Marcus

Chapter 1

Isaiah the prophet prophesized — “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me”, and “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” So John the Baptist showed up from the boonies, preaching at people to change their ways, get baptized, and get their sins forgiven.

Everybody in Judea and everybody in Jerusalem went to see him, and they all got baptized down in the Jordan river, and confessed everything they ever did wrong.

John the Baptist wore camel hair clothes and a leather belt and ate bugs and wild honey. He preached that someone even more hardcore than him was coming: “I’m not worthy to even carry his stuff. I’ve been baptizing you with water, but he’s going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit!”

So Joshua came down from Nazareth, in Galilee, to get baptized. When he came up out of the water, he saw the sky split open, and the Spirit come down to him like a dove, and a voice from the sky said, “You are my son, who I love. I’m proud of you.”

Right away the Spirit sent him into the desert. He stayed out there for forty days, being tempted by the Accuser. Angels came and took care of him, out there with the wild animals.

When John the Baptist got put in jail, Joshua went back to Galilee and preached about God’s good news. “It’s time,” he said. “God’s Kingdom is coming. Make a change, and trust the good news.”

Down by the lake of Galilee, Joshua met Simon and his brother Andrew net-fishing in the lake — they were commercial fishers. Joshua said, “Come follow me, and I’ll make you fishers of men.” Right away they dropped their nets and followed him.

A little further down he saw Zebedee’s James and his brother John in their boat fixing their gear. Right away he called them, and they left their old man Zebedee and the deckhands in the boat and followed him.

So they went to Capernaum, and right away on Saturday Joshua went to Synagogue to preach. People were amazed, because he talked like he knew what he was talking about, not like some quibbling egghead. Right away someone in the Synagogue who had a nasty spirit started yelling, “Why are you here, Joshua from Nazareth? Are you here to destroy us? I know who you are, you’re God’s Holy One.”

“Shut up,” said Joshua, “and get out of him.” The spirit shook the guy, made him yell, and left him.

Everybody was amazed. People said, “Wow, this is powerful new stuff! He orders evil spirits around and they obey him!” Right away news about Joshua spread all over Galilee.

Right after the Synagogue got out they went with James and John to Simon and Andrew’s house. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, but they told her about Joshua right away. And when Joshua came and held her hand, she got better and got up and cooked them dinner.

That night after dark people showed up with all kinds of sick and demonized people. The whole town showed up. Joshua healed a bunch of people with a lot of diseases. He cast out a bunch of demons, and he didn’t let them speak, because they knew him.

Early the next morning, Joshua left the house and found a lonely spot to pray. Simon and the others went to look for him, and when they found him they said that everyone was looking for him. Joshua said, “Let’s go to the villages and preach to them. That’s why I’m here.” So he went around Galilee preaching in Synagogues and casting out demons.

A man with Hanson’s disease came to Joshua on his knees and said, “If you wanted, you could make me not disgusting anymore.” Joshua felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He hugged the guy and said, “I want to. Be healed.” Right away the disease went away and the guy was whole again. Joshua sent him away and ordered him not to talk about what had happened, but to go to a priest and make the sacrifices that the Prophet Moses commanded, to witness to them. But he went out and told everyone what had happened instead. After that, Joshua couldn’t get around in public, so he stayed out in the boonies. But people still came to him from all around.

Sulako links to a video of a destructive test of a 777 wing. They load the wing to over 150% of its design limits before it fails. The end of the wing flexed over 25 feet. So you can feel a little safer when you see those wingtips flexing in turbulence.

Lileks injects a wry dose of realism into the Christmas zeitgeist:

Went shopping. I suppose this is where I should drop the pre-fab whine about parking, crowds, commercialism, and the grating nature of pre-fab holiday music. Oh for the old days, when a man could walk down the snow-choked alleys on Christmas Eve, taking care not to make eye contact with his betters, pushing aside the ragged beggars with their oozing carbuncles and the haggard gin-blasted pox-ridden doxies who chew your unholstered parts for a farthing. Oh for the honest Christmases, when you’d buy a goose and take it home and spend your week’s salary getting the stove hot enough to cook the thing. Remember the year little Tim pitched in his crutch so we could have enough heat to crisp the duck? Merry times, merry times. Now let us sing a carol and thank our stars we do not have to drive self-propelled machines – complete with auto-heat and magical devices that pluck music and voices from the very either – to great broad sheds filled with goods unimaginable. It seems like a wonderland, children, but every Eden has its snake; there are other people there, and they oft do not comport themselves as we would wish. And the songs from unseen minstrels, while short and endlessly variable, are often contrary to our aesthetic preferences. No, be happy we are here together in our perfect Victorian times. Now throw another volume of Dickens on the fire; it grows cold, and Father cannot lose but two more toes.

Looks like comments are broken for the time being. Stay tuned…

Update: things seem to be working, somewhat. If you happen to read this, could you try commenting, just for fun, please? Thanks.

Maybe I could just Google this, but why are Catholics always seeing Mary instead of Jesus? Is she like the Press Secretary or something? Or is she more like Karl Rove?

— Jame Zawinski

I have apparently successfully upgraded to WordPress 1.5. I didn’t bother to save the old look-n-feel, since it wasn’t anything special. So this is the default WordPress theme. I hope to think of something more interesting by & by.

Hi everyone,

I’m writing this to see how many of you want to stay on the mailing list. I only ever get feedback from one or two of you (hi Dad!), so in a fit of peevishness and blatant self-promotion I’m going to stop sending updates to people who don’t want them.

So if you want to keep getting emails, please let me know, otherwise I’ll take you off the list. And hey, visit the website and leave comments and discussion! If you think it’s not interesting then suggest things that are!

Paul Graham’s advice to high school students is perceptive and eminently sensible: treat high school like a day job, and find projects that are interesting.

A bit of a jab at teachers:

Your teachers are always telling you to behave like adults. I wonder if they’d like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you’re very docile compared to adults. If you actually started acting like adults, it would be just as if a bunch of adults had been transposed into your bodies. Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time. To say nothing of the things you’re taught. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first thing they’d do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the administration.

I’ve added lots of new links to the blogroll, including the usual top-tier Blogosphere demigods, a couple of Iraqi bloggers, and some Africa-focused sites. For just one example of the bloggy goodness, check out Jonathan the Head Heeb’s examination of the dilemma your average despot or dictator faces when the urge strikes to give it a go in the arts.

Why is it that when an American soldier shoots an enemy combatant who may or may not have been a prisoner (and not protected under the Geneva convention, in any case), it’s headline news, but when the French unilaterally invade an African country, completely destroy the air force of a sovereign nation, and massacre dozens of protesters nobody hears about it?

If an anti-American shoots a person of colour in the forest, do they bleed?

You’ll all be happy to know, no doubt, that I’ve got mailouts working again in WordPress. New this week (http://balafon.net): Chrenkoff’s latest Good News from Iraq, and the very first screenshot from my long-premeditated and still in-progress spaceflight game.

Check out the very first screenshot from the game I’m writing. It’s shrunk down from 1280×1024, so the text isn’t legible, but you get the idea.

I dreamed last night that I was piloting a Boeing 737. Now because I drive the PMDG 736 in my Flight Simulator life, I’ve got a fairly good handle on the checklist, FMC and procedures.

Unfortunately in my dream everything went wrong. I started out lined up on the runway, and immedately took off. Hit TO/GA, gear up on positive rate of climb, flaps up at 1000′, so far so good. But it seemed I hadn’t set up the FMC, and the panel was missing several useful buttons, including ALT HOLD and CMD A. And suddenly the yoke seemed to lose control authority. After some interesting gyrations and PIO, I realized that there was about a five-second delay in the control response. So I finally managed to get things stable and started hand-flying in circles while trying to get the computers organized. For some reason there was no trim, either, so I had to keep pressure on the yoke.

But I finally managed to get a route entered into the FMC, and luckily the VNAV button was still there on the panel, so I managed to get the plane somewhere and auto-landed (how I did this without CMD buttons I don’t know). To much applause, I might add.

I wonder if this is a metaphor for life :-)

Whatever it signified, I feel inspired to do some “real” sim-flying.

The three people who read this blog will have noticed that I’ve switched from Moveable Type to WordPress. There are many benefits to the switch, but one drawback: WP lacks the convenient email notification feature of MT. There are plugins that sort of duplicate it, but I haven’t found one I really like yet.

So for the time being I will not be emailing notifications of posts I think are interesting. You’ll actually (shock, horror) have to check the site now and again.

Just FYI, if anyone sent me mail from about 9:00 this morning to 2:00 this afternoon (PST), I may not have gotten it. Please re-send it.

Update: make that until 4:30 this afternoon :-(

My apologies to anyone who tried to send me email last night; I’ve been upgrading my system, and didn’t quite have everything working right again.

Things should be working again now.