Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: We launched Modelplace.AI, I played Team Fortress 2 again, Brad Sucks released a new album.
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This week’s guest on OpenCV Weekly was Katherine Scott, from Open Robotics. She told us all about ROS, the Robotic Operating System.
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I played more Team Fortress 2 again this week with Ev and John. If you’re interested in playing some co-op against a bunch of robots, hit me up on Steam. It’s a nice way to unwind, with explosions and robots and whatnot.
Magnetic Interference
This week I released an album, sorta. Magnetic Interference is a collection of drum beats, generated by my Korg Volca Beats, piped into two layers of little tiny synths: The Korg Monotron Delay and the Monotron Duo. Working together they look like this:
It gives them a reverb-y, almost ghostly quality. The album is available on Bandcamp for $3 and it’s free to listen. Patrons of mine also got the album for free. You can use the loops however you want once you download ‘em, I don’t mind.
Even if this ain’t your cuppa tea, please subscribe to me on Bandcamp so you get notified when I release new stuff there! If Magnetic Interference sells well enough I may release some more little albums like this. Tell your friends.
Divergent League Baseball Sign Up
It’s been a few weeks and I’m getting the itch- it’s time for a new season of Divergent League Baseball. You’ll find a link to sign up on divergentleague.com. This season will probably cost $10 per player, and will be hard-limited to 5 weeks. Last season kinda got away from me.
Last season was also our biggest ever, with 14 player teams. I’m not sure what season we’ll be choosing this time. We haven’t done the 1960s yet…
Welcome The Boss
As mentioned last week, I spent way too much money on a guitar. The Boss, aka Bruce, is a G&L ASAT Classic Bluesboy semi-hollow, with a Humbucker in the neck and Leo’s standard magnetic field pickup in the bridge. It plays and sounds great. If I do ever buy another guitar, it’ll probably be another G&L. Maybe I will share some noise from it with you soon. One thing that surprised me was how weak the humbucker is compared to the MFD- I may wanna grab a booster pedal.
I have switched to using Dunlop Ultex picks with it. Don’t worry. I still don’t know how to “play the guitar,” but I sure like this one a lot.
RetroStrange TV Upgrade
RetroStrange TV got an upgrade this week, too, and it lives in a bigger Linode server. We were able to increase the video quality by a LOT, but still maintain the bandwidth at 2000kbps/30fps so it’ll work damn near anywhere no matter how bad your internet connection is. The new server is about $20/mo .vs. $5 for the old one, but we’ve got Plans.
Me and Noah are still thinking about how to do Season 2 of Movie Night, but we’ll probably have a special invite-only event for Patrons and newsletter subscribers soon… stay tuned.
The Good Links
It ain’t all bad news.
One of the common stories coming out of the pandemic (which is ongoing) is that worker owned co-ops were unsurprisingly more resilient than their corporate counterparts
“A thread of some of my fav sailor moon s baddies starting with: tire vagina”
This is something I feel pretty strongly about, and it’s interesting to see the polarization around it: National Right-to-Repair Bill Filed in Congress
TikTok being played on two stacked 4:3 black and white CRT TVs
A deep dive video series on the RCA SelectaVision, which was their attempt at putting video on vinyl back in the 70s
Total Phil bait: Introducing Moonjumper Alpha, a font inspired by ... the Cow Palace? - it’s $5! Go get it
From the “I didn’t know I didn’t know that” files: Why You Can’t Buy Grape Ice Cream
Cabel Sasser (of Panic, creators of the PlayDate) posted some cool pics of the LJN VideoArt system, and the View-Master Interactive Vision, two great examples of 90s industrial design. Kinda remind me of the Valve Knuckles…
A fully-functional iPod Classic, implemented in HTML and CSS. Takes me back.
Former NRA President duped by Parkland parents into giving fake graduation speech to empty chairs.
I’ve been venturing out, slowly but surely, as San Francisco opens back up. I hope wherever you are, you get to be around some people you like this week. Take care of yourselves. Take care of somebody else if you can.
— Phil
Wizard Tower Gamma, South of Market, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Earth
06.24.21