My brother’s cats, Fry (gray) and Dr. Markway (orange). Doc really loved lying on my shoes, but preferred it when my feet were in them. That last picture is on the one day we had of nice weather with the windows open.
Marshall Point Lighthouse & Museum. The cool lichen was on an oil storage outbuilding; the cool rock was looking down from the little bridge that leads to the lighthouse.
The camp on the lake. The first two photos include chipmunks, though that second one is especially tricky to spot.
Misc other trip photos. My brother collects cheap vintage records and thought this one would amuse me (it did, it’s pretty awful in terms of tastefulness while also very much in the vein of Isao Tomita in its raw sound design aspect). We got him the rug as a Christmas gift but I found it pretty startling in the dark. Those are my shoes, my dad’s lower 2/3, and some random stranger’s feet who we weren’t trying to take pictures of. I still don’t know what “raised castings” are but it sounds vaguely like necromancy…
And some non-vacation stuff. I had that Coke with my lunch the other day but it didn’t seem especially fateful. 365 days of DuoLingo (I am kind of considering switching from German to something else interesting… Welsh? Danish? Maybe I should just stick to the one language.)
The Book of Doors had a couple of fun twists, but also some instances of torture and body horror that I just don’t want to read anymore. There is enough cruelty in the real world not to have it in fiction too, especially when it doesn’t really contribute toward making the villains more compelling. On balance, the book was okay but I feel like it could have been more.
The second of the books I bought in Maine is The Myth of the Wrong Body by Miquel Missé. I’m only a little ways in, but I find I have to exercise patience with the translation, and the different culture the author is coming from. The word “transgenderism”, in English, is in the domain of bigots as an attempt to delegitimize trans people — so it’s weird to see a trans activist using it. And also, the basic premise the author has, that his body was “stolen” by transition, plays too neatly into the current transphobic penchant for bullshit stories about regret and detransition… but no transphobe is going to read the writings of a trans activist and latch onto this, they’re just going to continue making shit up from whole cloth.
I’ll have to read the rest of the book to judge better. I’ve seen some reviewers say they disagreed with some points in the book but overall found it a worthwhile read. I have not seen anyone saying the author is a transphobe or struggling with internalized transphobia. So far, it seems to me like the author’s heart is in the right place and I agree on key points.
Most people have only heard two or three trans narratives: the transphobic one that says it’s all lies, perhaps the equally transphobic “autogynephilia” narrative (that trans women are just gay men who want to attract men), and the wrong body narrative. But the latter can also be problematic, and that’s not a radical idea in 2025.
The idea behind it is that trans people, through no choice of their own, were “born in the wrong body” and the fix is to change the body. The problems with this are:
It makes transness a disease to be cured, a source of unhappiness; only cis people are allowed to be happy. Medical transition effectively makes a trans person into a cisgender one.
The model is very much rooted in the gender binary and gender essentialism, including the narrative that physical sex and psychological gender must be in alignment.
It also confused gender with sexual orientation. Historically, any whiff of queerness or nonconformity in front of the multiple psychiatrists, doctors, judges etc. involved in the process was grounds for denial. They “reasoned” that if a trans woman loved women, she must not really be a woman.
Likewise, any sign that it was a choice or a desire on the part of a trans person was grounds for denial. Proof of suffering was required, pursuit of happiness was not enough.
Anyone who just wanted to live as their gender identity without medical intervention was invalidated. People were divided between “transsexual” and “transvestite” (making it about physical sex or physical clothing, not about gender).
As far as I’m concerned, none of this denies that medical transition is extremely helpful for a lot of trans folks and that it saves lives. But the wrong body narrative doesn’t fit everyone. I don’t recall now whether it was this book that said it or I saw it elsewhere, but “I wasn’t born in the wrong body, I was born in the wrong society” resonates with me. (If I could magically change several things about my body to suit my specifications, I sure would! But I’m neither dysphoric nor interested in the hormones and/or surgery route. And frankly, genitals are low down on my list of concerns no matter what.)
I’ve made rapid progress on the next album project… three tracks done. One recorded yesterday morning; when it was done I decided a previously recorded snippet could stand on its own as a short whole track, and a recorded the third today.
The theme, title, and name of first track is “Suspension” — as in, both suspended chords, and sound suspended by frozen buffers, long or infinite reverb, spectral capture, etc.
Suspended chords have no third, replacing them with a second (sus2) or a perfect fourth (sus4), which are inversions of each other — so they’re neither major nor minor. They are described as sounding “open” and have an interesting combination of consonance and tension, and can do some fun things with distortion. They’re not super weird or unfamiliar — appearing a lot in modal jazz and some pop songs, though they typically resolve to something else while I’m using them as ongoing drones and arpeggios.
I’m not treating these as strict rules, though, but as jumping-off points, ideas for inspiration. As usual with my modular stuff, I’m tuning some bits by ear so they fit or clash in a way that pleases me, without regard to the theory.
The plumber came on Thursday, but the toilet we’d bought ran late. He quickly determined that the leak was really our shower valve, and he installed shutoff valves to stop the immediate problem. Fixing the shower — replacing the old 3-knob mess — requires a second guy, about 3-4 hours, cutting tile etc. and will be scheduled after the new toilet actually arrives.
To access the supply pipes for the shower, he knocked out a section of drywall that had gotten wet, grungy and moldy. It revealed more mold on the opposite drywall panel, so I figured I better get that out too. (This is the section of wall that I’ve often banged my head on, which seemed to create a psuedo-doorframe… I’d be happy to see that whole section removed but I need to consult a carpenter I think.) Knocking it out and cleaning up the mess afterward was some hot sweaty work in a protective mask, goggles, big hat etc. so I definitely wanted a shower…
…unfortunately, the knob for the upstairs shower — which is small, cramped and dark so it has gone unused for years — is completely stuck. So until phase 2 of the repair job, it’s either the sink, or going over to my parents’ to use their shower.
The Rick Rubin book was pretty good, but I think after reading Art & Fear and The War of Art it doesn’t hold quite as many surprising revelations. But I wound up highlighting a lot of quotes. Here are a few favorites:
Not all projects take time, but they do take a lifetime. In calligraphy, the work is created in one movement of the brush. All the intention is in that single concentrated movement. The line is a reflection of the energy transfer from the artist’s being, including the entire history of their experiences, thoughts, and apprehensions, into the hand. The creative energy exists in the journey to the making, not in the act of constructing.
Whether it took months or minutes does not matter. Quality isn’t based on the amount of time invested. So long as what emerges is pleasing to us, the work has fulfilled its purpose.
The story of spontaneity can be misleading. We don’t see all the practice and preparation that goes into priming an artist for the spontaneous event to come through. Every work contains a lifetime of experience.
(A similar thought is expressed in those other books, and elsewhere. When an expert makes something look easy, that doesn’t mean it’s easy, it means they have a lot of practice.)
Part of the beauty of creation is that we can surprise ourselves, and make something greater than we’re capable of understanding.
That is so true, I surprise myself all the time!
When the work has five mistakes, it’s not yet completed. When it has eight mistakes, it might be.
In the creative process, it’s often more difficult to accomplish a goal by aiming at it.
Take art seriously without going about it in a serious way.
We have stories about ourselves, and those are not who we are. We have stories about the work, and those are not what the work is.
There are a lot of these Zen-like quotes scattered throughout the text.
I’m currently reading Gareth Brown’s The Book of Doors, which I picked up in Maine. To be honest I feel like it’s not entirely my kind of story, but I’m still enjoying it and will finish. One thing that bugs me is the magical books that various groups are seeking (either for nefarious purposes, profit (but I repeat myself) or to prevent those nefarious purposes), are given credit for some historical wonders and events which happened before the invention of the codex. Aside from the anachronism, it smacks a little of racist “it must be aliens” pyramidiots. But why I’m concerned with that but can suspend my disbelief about the magic part — which also includes some time travel — I don’t know. 🙂
I picked up What The Car? in the Steam Summer Sale. It’s super wacky and endearing. You control a car with legs… or too many wheels, giraffes for wheels, a jetpack, covered in bouncy springs, a monowheel, a Roomba, a surfboard, and other bizarre variations in something that is usually racing- and/or stunt-driving-adjacent but sometimes is a puzzle or sports mini-game instead. It’s got as much goofy charm as Katamari Damacy.
Unfortunately it also sets off my motion sickness. It was pretty minor until this afternoon when it hit me really hard, like Half-Life 2 airboat level sick, feeling bad for at least a couple of hours.
Before I start in on it again I’ll have to see if there are FOV settings or anything else which might help. I’m not inclined to play it at all anymore today though.
The Maine trip was… exhausting, mostly. It was very good to visit with my brother and his wife again, and his wife’s parents at their camp, and to see more of the Maine scenery than we had before. But it was a ton of driving and a lot of hot weather.
We split the distance at Erie, PA. For some reason, the Erie-Portland leg of the trip, and especially the 400-mile stretch across New York, was by far worse in both directions than anywhere else: construction, tolls, a flood and weird detour on the way up and a fiery wreck that completely stopped traffic for more than an hour on the way back. When you’re on the road from 7 AM to 11:30 PM that’s just too much. (I did the majority of driving, with my wife taking about 1/3 and my mom covering a couple of hours on the very first day.)
Our rental was a Mazda CX-50, which seemed like it would have a bit more space in the backseat than the Honda option that was available. (Alas, there was no Nissan Rogue nor a Toyota 4Runner.) But my sore butt and back can tell you the driver’s seat isn’t great for long periods. I had to do some seat adjustment just to see the speedometer instead of having it blocked by the wheel. Also, the car’s software / general behavior was flaky. Sometimes the motorized back door would close about 1/3 of the way and then stop, requiring you to haul downward on it hard to get it the rest of the way. After sitting with the engine running for so long during one of the delays, it refused to shift out of Park until I killed the engine and restarted it. The Android Auto implementation was less than smooth. The automatic slowdown for a car in front, when using cruise control, would continue braking for about 3 seconds after said car had changed to a different lane, which was frustrating.
The heat wave was pretty nasty, near 100F on Tuesday. We bought my brother a window AC unit which helped tremendously, and one of the rooms downstairs stayed relatively cool thanks to impressively effective ceiling fans. But we still chose Tuesday to go to my brother’s in-laws’ camp on a lake (with slightly cooler temperatures, and a wonderful heat pump that made things quite comfortable) and then stayed in motel rooms that night courtesy of my mom. We also visited the Marshall Point Lighthouse, visited a couple of apparently stereotypically Maine-ish discount stores and a couple of tourist tchotchke shops, and consumed Moxie, fried haddock and whoopie pies.
The coast up there is lovely, but for tourist spots, I still prefer the Smoky Mountains. Family is the real reason to go there, and the super long drive is the reason not to go there.
I watched some videos on the OBNE Darkstar Stereo pedal, and I think it’ll be a good complement to Walrus Slöer. It’s effectively a single reverb algorithm, but with bitcrushing or overdrive, separately adjustable predelay and decay time, and feedback there’s quite a lot of possibility there. I’ll consider it once I’ve sold off the Hypnosis. (Maybe the EP-133 too, since I just don’t use it. And the Ploopy trackball.)
GForce has a cheap new software synth called Halogen FM. It seems possibly inspired by the Korg DS-8, but not an emulation of it, in that it’s “2×2 FM” (two 2-op pairs in parallel). But it has some continuous waveshaping options that go well beyond the Korg, making it somewhat of a unique approach. I only had a few minutes this morning to try it out, but will continue to play with it later. I’ll probably grab it for its unique contribution.
I’m still pondering some stuff in that trans philosophy book. I picked up The Myth of the Wrong Body at the bookstore we visited in Maine, since it seems to be related to one of that book’s points and offers alternative ways of thinking about transness. It’s kind of my hope that a different narrative will help to unify the transgender and nonbinary experiences a little better.
Meanwhile, I’ve read Marsha. The main impression I get is of a deeply caring person, full of love and joy and celebration. 95% of her defiance had nothing to do with rioting, but just being who she was without shame, and caring for fellow queer folks. She seems to be best known now for whatever she did at Stonewall (narratives vary), but setting aside the historical shininess of the event that started the Pride movement, her advocacy and personally caring for AIDS victims at a time when the government was actively getting in the way of helping, and the inspiration that she passed on to others, probably contributed far more.
Marsha also gives more insight into what it was like before the modern trans terminology and concepts, and a bit of what it was like to navigate that while Black. There has been a lot of progress since then, but there is still far to go — not just politically and in terms of rights, but how we think about and communicate these experiences. In fact I think evolution of the thought might be required to fix the politics beyond a certain point.
Meanwhile, I’m reading something completely different: Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being. I like occasionally reading a general book on artistic creativity — about perception, inspiration, openness, practice/work, etc. Many of the precepts in books like this are in agreement with each other, but individual artists have different insights or ways of expressing them… which of course is true of art itself as much as books about art, which are themselves art. Wheee…
Mostly what concerns me now is catching up on stuff after the trip. General physical and mental recovery. Checking out stuff I discovered or became curious about. Getting that bathroom leak fixed! Preparing for the basement repairs. Finding out WTF our lawn guy has delayed his “every two weeks” visit for more than two extra weeks now. Wrapping stuff up for the release at work. That sort of thing.
Naturally, a couple of days before we take off on a trip, the downstairs toilet is leaking with some degree of enthusiasm. We’ve had, for years, just a little bit of drip into the basement from somewhere unidentifiable in the bathroom — we had a plumber look around for it, find nothing and leave us unimpressed. But it’s gotten markedly worse in the last couple of days or so and I suspect the wax ring and/or something else with the toilet mounting. (It could be something else, maybe a supply line, but that seems so much less likely.) There’s no water on the bathroom floor, but things are obviously wrong down below. We wanted to replace that toilet anyway — it’s the cheapest one the flipper could find from a brand that my mom’s plumber said to avoid — but the timing leads something to be desired. I mean, it’s never a good time to have a plumbing issue, I guess…
For now we do have an upstairs bathroom, built into a roof gable. But aside from being small and cramped, it can get miserable in summer heat because there’s no AC vent. Better than nothing or letting this leak continue to progress.
And while I was stewing over that this morning, I logged in to work and… time for performance reviews. I had to fill in my SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) thingy with some haste, since we’re also in the final week before a code freeze and I have other stuff to get done. My actual performance reviews always go well and are a relief to get done, but I don’t like trying to figure out what to fill in on that form. I have plenty I could say about “threats” but if I want to avoid excessively personal or political topics at work, which I absolutely do, I have to leave them off.
I just realized, Amphibian was only about 3 weeks in the making from start to release. Nice.
That Nulea M505 trackball is… fine. I feel like it might have been designed with a smaller hand in mind, but after some time I find it’s comfortable if I just rest the right side of my hand on the desk. Everything else falls into place comfortably. I find myself having to think about what I’m doing a lot less than with the Adept.
I’m still playing with speed/acceleration settings, finding that nice compromise between being able to move 2560 pixels across the screen in a single motion vs. precision. I’ve tried Custom Curve from mouseacceleration.com off and on, and I think the trick for me is going to be just to leave it at its default curve (ironically enough) and get used to that. It is definitely better than Windows’ internal “enhanced precision” feature, at least for the needs of a trackball.
My run in GW2 continues. This may be the longest I’ve kept playing it before deciding to drop out and do something else.
I leveled and geared a Vindicator — giving up my “free” slot I was using for key farming — and she’s probably the best of my characters in terms of performance, even better than the Willbender. Then I decided to abandon my Tempest (forgetting that they had a Jade Bot core that doesn’t show up in regular inventory, so now I have to get my jeweler to build another new one) and raise up a Barbarian — too early yet to tell how effective this will be, but probably not a super tank. I went with a cute Asura who is technically male but has a feminine face and hairstyle; that race has basically no sexual dimorphism in body shape by human standards.
My experience with reading philosophy and philosophy-adjacent books has been very mixed. Some authors assume you have an education in philosophy (and maybe fluency in 4 or 5 languages… the showoffs). Some write for a layperson, clearly lay out examples and reasoning, and are merely trying to share fascination and wonder (this is great). Some are more of a guide for living.
In this case, the reading is not necessarily easy, but it’s not elitist either. The author is interested in liberatory, resistant philosophy meant specifically for trans and nonbinary people and friends (“I do not believe in wasting my breath on transphobes,” she writes). The point of the book is to find an understanding of both trans oppression and “trans gender phoria” — her term for both dysphoric and euphoric experiences. It’s impossible for this not to also be a feminist project, because no matter how you slice it, transphobia has its roots in the worst parts of heteronormative sexism. It also would would have been nonsensical and irresponsible to not include racial oppression because it’s very much tied together. (A major part of colonizer thinking was that “savages” were not “properly” masculine or feminine, thus not proper men or proper women, therefore not proper humans. Jim Crow era public restrooms came in Men, Women, and Colored; even in the present day nonwhite cis women are often targets of transphobia and “transvestigation.”)
There is a lot going on here, and I’m finding it hard to summarize. If it was that simple it wouldn’t need a dense 312-page philosophy book. Probably some brilliant writer could condense things a bit more than Bettcher did, but I’m not that person.
But it’s providing a lot of food for thought. I am starting to think about my own identity at a different depth now, so it’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
It’s released! Back to free/pay-what-you-want, but I encourage folks to donate to a worthy cause. Particularly one that protects the rights, safety and dignity of marginalized people. Or maybe support good solid, non-pandering journalism.
Slöer arrived today and I took a little time to play with it. It is very ambient and tasty; it does woozy and ethereal like a champ, and a fun vibrato thing as well. Turning the clock rate all the way down doesn’t make it completely lo-fi, but it gives a taste — surprisingly a couple of the algorithms sound grainier and grittier when it’s turned up higher! Overall it seems like a winner. But I want to rearrange my desk a little to make it more accessible instead of having it way off over my left shoulder.
I already have a concept in mind for the next album.
It’s not that these billionaires are specifically transphobic, although many of them probably are. But rather:
Jesse Bryant, a sociologist studying right-wing environmentalism at Yale University, sees the issue as emblematic of a larger trend. He said the bigger issue lies in the fossil fuel industry’s funding of nearly every conservative political issue in the United States.
Indeed, billionaires with fossil fuel origins have left their fingerprints all over right-wing U.S. politics—from fracking tycoons Farris and Dan Wilks’ reported financial contributions toward anti-abortion efforts to Charles Koch’s funding of right-wing groups that advocate for violent border policies. The Koch network has also promoted immigration reform in the past. And Democrats have taken fossil fuel donations, too.
And so:
“If we care about climate, we’re going to have to care about trans rights,” Taylor said. “And if we care about climate, we’re going to have to find ways of getting America and the whole world past all forms of bigotry so that we can work together to face an existential threat to all of humanity and the natural world.”
I am mostly done mastering Amphibian and expect to release it soon. This weekend?
I feel like there’s a lot going on. This week my spouse is taking my parents to two doctor appointments, then we’re meeting with a lawyer to discuss power of attorney (Mom’s idea), and then Saturday a gutter contractor is coming to give us an estimate, Sunday is Father’s Day, and then the next weekend we are taking a road trip to visit my brother (so we need to clean house before that, and do laundry and pack and stuff).
The basement drainage work is scheduled to happen sometime in the first two weeks of August, and before that happens we need to move a bunch of stuff AND get another contractor to come in and cut a hole in or remove an interior basement wall.
And we’re coming up on a new release at work. Scheduled code freeze is right before my vacation. Wheeeeeee!
So Many Stars had some gut-wrenching, heart-breaking stories — though more of them were about government oppression and AIDS (almost the same thing) than rejection from family.
There were also some beautiful stories, people taking care of each other and celebrating who they are and spreading joy. And I don’t think it’s entirely “without darkness there can be no light” bullshit either. One of the things I especially liked was, all these elders (and folks my age… I refuse to call myself an elder yet) talking very respectfully about how much they are learning from younger generations. These folks went through tough times when there wasn’t even a name for what they were, and many of them were fighting for rights and recognition. But they recognize that younger generations are more tuned in to gender issues, that there is still a lot of pioneering happening right now, as well as a lot of struggle still happening. A couple of them gave the hopeful message that the backlash we are seeing now is likely the death throes of transphobia, a final temper tantrum before much more widespread acceptance happens. (I’ve often felt the same, although I recognize that these sorts of struggles go on for ages even after major victories are won. Women still do not have equal pay and respect; Black folks still are being oppressed; slavery still exists in the world even if it’s illegal and disreputable.)
One of the interviewees owns a bakery that makes traditional Argentinian alfajores (cookies with dulce de leche rolled in coconut), so I had to order some. 🙂
I’ve just realized, I didn’t say anything about trackballs!
I have gone back and forth between mice and trackballs for a long time. I loved the original (or at least, one of the early versions of) the Logitech Trackman Marble — one of the first widely available optical trackballs — but its ergonomics were drastically changed, and the original used a PS/2 port and had only two buttons and no scrolling. More recently I liked the Elecom HUGE, until it started to fail on me. Lately I’ve been using a vertical mouse — very comfortable and ergonomic — but the left mouse button had been getting progressively worse over the last couple of weeks, with clicks either not registering or sometimes double-clicking.
There was a recent thread about trackballs over on KvR, and that got me looking around. KvR seemed to like the Logitech M570 or the Kensington Expert. And there are, of course, entire communities of trackball fans. Apparently the GOAT here is the Microsoft Trackball Explorer, long since discontinued and ridiculously expensive if you can find one, although there are quite a few clones out there. There are fans and haters of Kensington, Logitech, Elecom and everything else — different designs work radically differently for different people so there’s a lot of personal preference in play.
One company that cloned the MTE is Ploopy, but they have a handful (heh heh) of other designs: all open-source, 3D-printed, repairable and hackable. Partly for reasons of price, I chose to go for the Adept, which has 6 programmable buttons and generally great reviews and a lot of love. Great sensor and good bearings and buttons. You can scroll smoothly by holding one of the buttons while spinning the ball.
(mine is also purple, but I went for a blue trackball.)
After having it for a few days, I understand the appeal but I don’t think this has the best ergonomics for me. What I find with this:
It has that 3D-printed look, but it feels smooth. Not “luxury” feeling but not bad at all.
Reports of noisy bearings are exaggerated; I don’t think it’s any louder than moving a mouse.
The ball rolls very smoothly indeed, with no sticking. It doesn’t have the kind of momentum that a large arcade trackball would, if you’re looking for that.
The buttons do indeed have a nice, non-cheap feel.
My personal accuracy with it is… not super? I’ve been trying to find a compromise between speed to get that cursor across the screen easily, and accuracy.
It’s making me really aware of how awkward some interfaces are. Guild Wars 2 for instance, requires a lot of right-dragging for camera movement, especially while flying — and there’s a lot of mousing to the center of the screen for confirmation dialogs while manipulating inventory and rewards and stuff that require mousing back to the edge of the screen. (I figure that becoming more aware of something that used to be second nature/muscle memory is, in this case, not really a good thing.)
I think I do want my hand more in a resting position and with some “handshake” angle, rather than palm-down flat. And I think this one is more suited to hover-hand folks.
I’m not sure I love the ball scroll feature after all. It can be awkward at times.
So with a little sadness, I started looking for a different option. Another HUGE? An MTE clone? A thumb ball like the Logitech MX 570 or Ergo? (Logitech mice/trackballs apparently wear out fast and don’t have great sensors; some people hate Elecom bearings and buttons and question their quality control.)
I wound up going for a cheaper MTE clone, a Nulea M505. Ploopy’s own clone is considerably more costly, and this is still sort of a trial to see if I like it. I may go with a Logitech-ish thumb ball instead, or go back to the HUGE, or another vertical mouse… we’ll see.
I’ve kind of been celebrating Pride myself for six months already, and I am probably not going to go to any events or anything. But still: here we are, in what’s arguably the worst year so far for LGBTQIA+ rights since Reagan, and it’s Pride month. We’ll see what happens.
I have been thinking about the term “MOGAI” and especially that first word in the acronym, “marginalized”… and how this relates to a nonbinary identity that is in the margins. I really don’t have any deep insights about that, it’s just simmering.
all the interviewees are people in their 50s, 60s and 70s — something that might surprise younger folks or those who believe that it’s just an internet-fueled fad.
they are from big cities, small towns, reservations, the Philippines, Cuba, Argentina during the “Dirty War”, diverse neighborhoods, all-Black neighborhoods, fish-out-of-water families in white neighborhoods. With those diverse backgrounds come diverse attitudes toward gender, and different ways to adapt.
I also plan to read Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson during Pride month, particularly as this administration tries to erase transgender history even from the monument that commemorates it. Marsha is the one who threw the first brick at Stonewall, but I don’t know much about her at all.
The two books I mostly recently finished were by genderqueer author Alexis Hall. The Affair of the Mysterious Letter is a retelling of a Sherlock Holmes story, but as a sort of eldritch horror/fantasy/comedy with a notorious bisexual sorceress replacing Holmes and a bizarre twist to the mystery. Mortal Follies is a tale of a woman in early 19th century Bath, discovering that she is both cursed and gay (not a part of the curse!), with the Robin Goodfellow narrating and occasionally interfering. The sense of humor is pretty great, and I’ll have to look for the author’s other fantasy novels. But they also write… baking-themed romance novels? Huh.
After waiting two years since its release (and another four years since the original version), I have finally gone for the Walrus Audio Slöer.
I found a B-stock one with minor factory paint flaws at a big discount. My thinking is, I use the Dreadbox Hypnosis very little, so this will either replace that — or it will prove to me once and for all that I just don’t need any hardware effects that aren’t in Eurorack.
I have always liked the sound of Slöer in demos. The original one was mono, which I sometimes find a bit sad with reverb. This one has stereo, more modes, and the “stretch” slider which can lower the sample rate to stretch the reverb and make it more lo-fi. That last bit is something software tends not to do (at least without faking it), so besides the fact that I know it sounds great, that’s also compelling. We’ll see how I take to it in practice, though!
Here’s a dump of some images I’ve downloaded or screenshotted over the past few weeks:
