Trying to remember which magical realist type book I read that has a character who is trying to make a 1:1 map of the world, anyone able to help? or am I misremembering?

Kickstarter pledges for my spoke board are now out in the wild and its both very very exciting and also a bit nerve wracking.

doing a lot of pondering these days about the feasibility of a project around making a new version of the gametrak string mechanism for the adafruit/sparkfun hacker-hobbyist market (spoiler alert: I think the feasibility is low, but the idea is tantalising)

Made an "analog" YouTube book for my kid so she can choose what she wants (from pre-approved list) without being exposed to a thumbnail hellscape. Also automatically cuts her off after x scans

today I learned about this triple groove fortune telling record from 1901 youtu.be/MhZQpFKLuEE

Testing the new enclosure and PCB and stereo input/output on the STR-500 string sampler I've been working on

I've been working away on my STR-500 string sampler and (a bit) on the Memory Cloud synth, with the idea of maybe making a few for sale along with DIY kits etc. I now have a mailing list you can join if you'd like updates on either of these instruments: www.yannseznec.com/docs/updates/

this Allen Toussaint track is just everything oh my goodness be prepared for both the heaviest of grooves /and/ the most unexpected of chord changes www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zU1...

need some advice about internet things. What is a good way these days to offer people to sign up for updates about a thing, particularly from instagram? I've been out of this game for a while. Requirements: simple, ethical, free

I'm recruiting a PhD student for autumn 2026 on a project on accessibility in musical instrument design, in partnership with disability arts charities OHMI and Drake Music. Application deadline 15 February 2026. More info and contact details: liss-dtp.ac.uk/project/inst...

among the many interesting things about having a hardware project that's popular on the internet is people asking me to "share the schematics". I'm never sure how to respond to this, because it feel like it's a question that stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the design

I've made a PCB for my string sampler and it seems to work, which is both fun and a relief

say hi to the Memory Cloud: an ultra-personal cloud library granular synthesizer that turns your memories into musical material youtu.be/O04mHHChG2U

Looks like gametraks are back on the menu, boys

Taikyoku Shogi (possibly the largest ever chess-style game) is mind boggling "The only played game in recent history was played in 2004...which took 32 hours and 41 minutes, spanning over three days, and a total of 3,805 moves" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taikyok...

Wow the new iOS update really is something, huh. I really thought I was jaded by humanity’s ability to make things worse, but here we are

just heard yet another higher education person talking about how we "have" to teach students how to program with AI because that's just what's happening in the real world anyway. this is such an insane argument

Another request, music tech community (esp in Australia) pls give this a boost. A fully-funded 4-year PhD at UNSW Art & Design, working with 256 speaker array with sensor array tracking human responses to audio. The project investigates sound in the art gallery. www.unsw.edu.au/research/hdr...

Overhead view of my string sampler, doolulululululuboobap!

this is fine

I think about this little guy all the damned time. I saw him in the DIA collection almost ten years ago and he's remained a permanent fixture in my brain ever since. Art is fucking wonderful. dia.org/collection/s...

ahhh joining bluesky has reminded me of the whole "indie game social media drama" thing, it's been a while

one of the coolest things about ChatGPT is how you can actually just never use it. you can fill your whole entire life with simply not once using it. it's incredible.

I was offered the position of manager of a combination ice cream shop and Segway tour company called Segs in the City.

Tomorrow evening Sweden time I'll do a seminar about my work. It is represents the completion of 80% of my PhD, which is nice. I'll be talking about my sound machines and the reasons behind them, followed by a chat with Will Odom. Let me know if you'd like to attend and I can send you the info.

I have always been lightly obsessed by the Philips "Pure Perfect Sound Forever" slogan that accompanied the launch of the CD. I only now noticed the translations, though. German and Dutch are basically the same, but the French was "Le son laser", which is hilariously less ambitious. Laser sound!

Love this: Dick Moby - Or, the Book "Moby Dick, or the Whale" by Herman Melville, but with all the words in alphabetical order. mouseandthebillionaire.com/dickMoby/

One day, you'll close Microsoft Word for the last time, but you won't know it

I am super on board with this, I got a good CD player hooked up to good speakers again recently and seriously people, CDs sound amazing (and also libraries have excellent CD collections)

today I learned that the word for a bagpipe in Dutch is a "doedelzak", which I would encourage you to say out loud

I'm probably not the first to suggest this, but in a way I find it sad that alt-text fields for pictures are not limited to 1000 words

oh hey I just realised I haven't posted the Period Instrument here! it's a menstrual blood musical synthesiser I made with my friend and collaborator @nadiacw.bsky.social and you might like it too. I think it's one of the top 5 menstrual blood synths ever designed youtu.be/vOGdXnA11Is

new painful slider cap just dropped

Performative now just means “doing something in public” and “liminal” is an empty swimming pool or something

Today I'm thinking about a music controller that uses thermistors instead of knobs, so I guess you play the instrument with ice cubes and a hair dryer?

I feel like I read some good academic writing a while back about how the obsession with "realism" and "quality" in audio field recording was super creepy and weird, but I can't think of where I read it now, help me social media

Last time I'll post about this thing (this week). I tied the string to the head of my guitar so I can control the sample by moving the guitar around, which is fun

my STR-500 sampler has proved frighteningly popular on the social medias, because apparently the world wants to watch me move my hands awkwardly to control sound (kids, ask your grandparents about dragons den). So here's a thread about it + my thoughts on future developments

IN WHICH I tie the string from my STR-500 sampler to my wrist and play a duet with myself in the recent past

Hello there! For my first post on this here social network, here's a new thing I've been working on, a live sampler where you scrub through the sound by pulling a string. It has a filter!