Here's the official word on the 2010 PNW Synth Gathering from John Marshall:

"We are scheduled for July 24, 2010

Doors open at 9:00AM

Meeting from 10:00AM to 3:00PM or so

Renton Technical College
Room C-111 (Technology Resource Center)
3000 NE 4th St
Renton, WA 98056

Pizza at about Noon

Show and Tell

Performances

And, apparently lots of birthdays in July. Mine is July 18th (65th). Cake? Ice Cream?
This will be the last Synth meeting at Renton Technical Ccollege.
-----------------------------------------
It will be up to someone else to setup these meetings in the future. I have talked with the people from the American Museum of Radio and Electricity in Bellingham. They would be willing to host a meeting and they have adequate space however there will be costs involved. If you have not been to the museum, go! You will not be disappointed.

Others have suggested holding the meeting on Vancouver Island, a good idea. Perhaps the people at Sound Quest could help out."

It's been interesting reading the comments that have been posted ever since I put up the series of videos showing various Game Boys and Nintendo DS's being overclocked with a GBAccelerator DS chip. Most of them fall into the category of "this is totally fake because...". I'm posting this article as a one-stop source addressing the most common overclocked DS conspiracy theories.

[ Read More! ]

Here are the first pictures of the new Multiplicity VI buffered multiple module for Eurorack.

Here it is all by itself:



Here it is with its big brother, the Multiplicity XV:




The Multiplicity XV is available now and the new VI will be shipping soon!

This laser suit by Taiwanese designer Wei-Chieh Shih has 200 frickin laser diodes attached to a nylon jacket. I think I need one of these so I can fight crime and make ravers jealous. On second thought, it would probably clash with my Tron suit.

The Multiplicity line of buffered multiples for Eurorack is almost ready to go. Both modules regenerate your CV or audio signal for each and every output jack so there is no degradation. The inputs are cascaded so you have flexibility in your signal routing; one signal can be sent out all the outputs or you can have several signals with a few outputs each.

Multiplicity XV (10HP) gives you 5 inputs and 15 outputs and is great for routing signals all over your modular. Available from dealers: Early June

Multiplicity VI (2HP) gives you 2 inputs and 6 outputs and is perfect when you have just a little space left over in your rack that you don't want to go to waste. Available from dealers: Late June

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there.

As a special treat, I bring you the Dr. Who theme as played on a pair of Tesla coils:

The Filtare SEIII has started shipping to the various folks and dealers who ordered them. It's good to finally see it get out in the wild so people can play with it. I've had a few owners report back and the response has been pretty positive.

Now it's time to wrap up my next project, the Multiplicity XV. It's a 5-in 15-out buffered multiple for Eurorack. There's no degradation as you split your signal all over the place because it gets regenerated at each output. The channels are cascaded, too, so routing is pretty flexible. You can have one input with 15 outputs, 5 inputs with 3 outputs each, or several options in between depending on where you put the plugs.

The Multiplicity XV should be ready by the end of May.

Over at tifr.us there are some pictures of an AT-AT made of bacon. I mean AT-ATs are cool and bacon is cool. A bacon AT-AT is cool beyond the sum of its parts!

Choosing a new smartphone can be tough as I'm finding out. Even before you can figure out exactly which model to get you need to decide which OS you want to run. Windows CE / Mobile / Phone or whatever they're calling it this week has come a long way. iPhones have that shiny Apple logo on them that people get very excited about and there are tons of fun aps for it. Android is quite powerful, provides multitasking, and has an ever expanding app market as well. Palm WebOS is an interesting experiment in cloud computing. These are some of the bigger ones but they're not the only choices by any means.

Thesearethedroids.com has a 3-part series of articles comparing these phone operating systems to each other. Well, the site is Android-biased so they compare them all to Android, but they do a good job of presenting some of the pros and cons of each. They're definitely worth a read if you're trying to find your new favorite smartphone.

Choosing a Smartphone, Part 1: Android vs. Windows Phone 7
Choosing a Smartphone, Part 2: Android vs. Palm WebOS
Choosing a Smartphone, Part 3: Android vs. iPhone

Dr. Octoroc has created a nifty tribute to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, done as if it were an old-school NES game. If you like Dr. Horrible and want to kick it like it's 1986 you should definitely check it out.