From what I’ve read, bending capacitors of this magnitude might blow your fingers off. Or at minimum, learn you real quick never do that again.

Love noise? Love toys? Perhaps circuit bending is for you./

To celebrate Thumbuki’s soft launch, we’re kicking off our our first original series: Get Bent

And by original series, I mean I’m personally going to be doing research on “circuit bending” over the next few weeks, and sharing my findings with you. I will post here the top relevant links, video, tutorials, historical accounts, etc, as I find them.

What is circuit bending? According to wikipedia:

“Circuit bending is the creative short-circuiting of low voltage, battery-powered electronic audio devices such as guitar effects, children’s toys and small synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators. “

Also check out this video example of circuit bending by James Anderson.

As for me, I have zero hands-on experience with electronics. Though I do have some familiarity with everything from modular synthesizers to Csound. So I plan on getting very used to the idea of holding a soldering iron in the near future. I will be reporting back to you all of my successes and all of my failures as I turn children toys into little electronic frankensteins. For art’s sake.

perl -e ‘print “hello world”;’

From this point forward, I’m treating Thumbuki as if it were complete. It’s not complete. However, I’m a firm believer that content is king. A fancy smancy layout isn’t going to attract readers. Well written, interesting articles will. So that is what I’m going to set my mind to. In the mean time, I will continue to work on the design and layout to the best of my ability.

Speaking of layout… I haven’t uploaded any changes to the skin in a few days. My time has been severely limited as of late. Though I still have managed to get in a few hours. I’m currently working on getting the comment pages in order. Disorder, perhaps. I broke some things on thumbuki.local. Nothing that can’t be easily fixed. It has been a good three to four years since I’ve done any serious HTML. So I’m going through a sort of re-learning process. HTML and related technologies have advanced quite a bit. The good news is that most, if not all, has been for the better.

Enjoy.

It’s times like this I wish I knew how to wield a soldering iron.

Tony Miracle, of Venus Hum, explores a technique he used in making the bands new release “The Colors In The Wheel”

Tony takes a simple acoustic guitar note and through manipulation and modulation builds an entire electronic composition in an unrehearsed 15 min improv captured on film.

Gear Used In The Short

G4 Powerbook
Oxygen 8 USB Keyboard
Doepfer Regelwerk Midi Fader / Controlor
Taylor Acoustic Guitar
Ableton Live

Today marks the day Thumbuki.com officially goes alpha. What does this mean? It means I’m going to start posting regularly. Though the quality of posts may vary, as I will sometimes be writing filler to test for bugs and other things of that nature. I should inform you that I’m not actually done designing the site (ie sidebar.) I should reach a point sometime next week when I will feel confident slapping a “Beta” sticker on the marquee. At that point, the nature of my posts will become slightly more serious, and more focused on what this blog is going to be all about. In the mean time, have fun. If you feel so inclined, say something in the shoutbox.

“Thppppppt!” -Bill the Cat

Many weeks ago, I purchased 3 lbs of whole bean Dunkin Donuts coffee off the internet. Used the last bit of it up yesterday and pulled out our grocery store bought reserve bag. Yuck! This stuff tastes gawd aweful. I now understand why people put creamer and and sugar into their coffee. That’s a game I’d rather not play.

So on the advice of glitch p-udding, of worshiptheglitch.com, it’s time to invest into a coffee bean roaster. I decided on the Fresh Roast Plus 8. The unit costs $82 and comes with 4 lbs of assorted green coffee beans. Not bad,c onsidering that 4 lbs. of dunkin donuts coffee costs me $40 with shipping.

“I buy the gourmet expensive stuff ’cause when I drink it, I wanna taste it.” - Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction

Link, I just know you are going to rescue that princess.

Reserved my copy of Zelda for the Wii last night. I just happened to be there shortly after they started taking pre-orders for the game. Luck? Or because I call daily? You figure it out. (the correct answer is luck)

Rumor has it that people who reserve Wii games from gamestop will get a call the day they start taking pre-orders. However, the clerk which took my $5 deposit had heard nothing about it. Though she did seem to think the chain will start taking pre-orders for the Wii sometime in the next two weeks. She did bring up the dreaded “trade-in only” pre-orders as a possibility. By the way will guarantee that I never shop at gamestop again if this goes through. You don’t penalize your customers like that and get away with it.

* this post will self destruct when thumbuki goes live

I’ve just finished installing a local copy of thumbuki on my mac. I shall be doing most of my changes there until launch. Which will speed up my development time. I may still occasionally upload some changes from time to time

This place is broke ass. I know. I’m doing extensive testing and modifications. However, I don’t mind people peaking in and seeing the process as it unravels.

* this post will self destruct when thumbuki goes live

I have a passion for electronic music.

Trippy and weird. Just how I like my coffee.

You might be waiting awhile for the official thumbuki launch. In the mean time, have fun exploring. And note, this post, and all others, will most likely be sent to the /dev/null/ when thumbuki gets the green light.