Misc Signals

Below, a few recent highlights. From Hamming, “You and Your Research” (June 6, 1995). The example I’ve given you already is working with the door closed or open. If you work the door closed, you won’t be interrupted and you get your work done. You work your door open, people come by and stop and chat and so on and so on. But I’ve noticed very clearly, at Bell Laboratories, those who work with door shut may be working just as hard ten years later but they don’t know what to work on.

String bending and visual navigation on the guitar Just realized that I want to try to think about the “destination” note of the string bend when playing it, rather than the starting note, which I usually do. What do I mean about “visualizing the destination” of the bend? Well, pretty much what I mean by visualizing any fret on the neck. But because I bend to the destination note and not fret it directly, I tend to focus on where my finger is at, instead of where the note is at.

This is absolute Misc stuff, just a bucket of paragraphs. Digital Fabrication A few days ago I listened to the Neil Gershenfeld episode of Lex’s podcast. It’s extremely inspiring! Highly recommend. A few highlights (please excuse the lack of details): Digital Fabrication, where “digital” is understood not as “binary” computer stuff, but by it’s deeper meaning. The concept is rooted in Vannevar Bush/Claude Shannon/Von Neumann Analog computer age and the transition to Digital as a way to get a grip on accumulated error.