Memories are easily stirred by music; a lyric that speaks to your own experience or a melody triggering an emotion linked to past events. We’ve all been snatched back in time by hearing a song that saturated the air of our teenage years again. The stereo’s shuffle button erratically throwing out new songs and deep memories with impunity. This connection is strong and unpredictable. A cassette version of Blur’s Parklife bought on a ferry back to Britain means any song from that album is tinged with a strange melancholy. The end of a summer away and returning to the classroom routine, the leash of homework and longer nights only short days away. Having one or two nights of freedom left, but too paralysed from the oncoming term to enjoy them.

Shorty flying display by the Qatar bound 787 under moody skies.

Earlier in the year I built a Tube Screamer clone from a kit, pleased with the result and feeling more ambitious I thought I’d try building another design. This time I picked the more exotic Devi Ever Soda Meiser ; it’s a fuzz pedal with a wide range of gain and the ability to create some very strange, broken sounds. The other reason for this choice is that Devi has published the schematic for this pedal, which along with the stripboard/vero layout, guided my build. If you’re using this stripboard layout be warned that while the legs of the transistors are labelled correctly the MPSA18 transistors I bought have the flat side on the other side to that show in the layout, so double check the data sheet before you solder them into place. All the components were bought from Bitsbox.co.uk , apart from the enclosure which I got from Gap Co .

4Chan’s [NSFW] founder Chris Poole seems to be suffering from a heavy bout of nostalgia. In his one man panel at ROFLcon he bemoans the decline of the internet communities that used to be home to meme creation and storytelling, now replaced by endless repeats of advice dog . There seems to be a built in reaction to humans that we believe everything is in decline . It’s been a popular meme of its own since ancient times. Plato believed that wide spread literacy would lead people to becoming more forgetful , even if the great value of literacy is now accepted everywhere.

Whatever you’re doing today I hope you get to enjoy the good weather. After a month of almost continuous rain it’s worth appreciating.

This documentary on weapons design reminded me of the real genius of the de Havilland Mosquito. This wasn’t its speed, though it could outpace almost every other aircraft of the time. It wasn’t the versatility it offered, though it did everything from photo-reconnaissance to night-fighter missions. Nor its manoeuvrability, which allowed it to fly low and fast under the radar and avoid anti-aircraft guns. The real genius was the consideration of the design and manufacture process together, and it was only because it was designed with these considerations in mind that it was possible at all.

There’s a strong counter article in Slate arguing against the assertion that Facebook is making us more lonely . While we’d like results now, it’s probably far to early to draw any real conclusions about how social networks are changing society. They’ll improve some aspects and perhaps remove others, as is the way with new technology. The best we can do is try to ensure that nothing value is lost, while keeping as many positives as we can. It all comes down to how the tool is used, but the defaults that the tool has may drive us particular directions which we need to be conscious of. How would we use the telephone differently if the default was to broadcast to a whole road?

A few months ago I read Jaron Lanier’s ‘You Are Not a Gadget’; self-described as a manifesto, it covers a range of ideas on the evolving nature of computing, the internet and the changes, for better or worse, it’s bringing about in society. The writing and ideas presented are incredibly thought provoking and stand far above the usual level of internet navel gazing that happens on many sites. The main ideas that struck me were the erosion of the human element in the internet; the over-simplification for the convenience of computers, not humans; and that we’ve hit a cultural stasis, where we are not generating new ideas or fashions.

Last week I had a few spare hours in Hamburg and spent the time in the Kunsthalle . Amongst the more famous residents, there was also the beautiful Birken im Schnee. Not one of Emil Nolde’s most famous works, but incredibly beautiful. A scene that by most artists would have been painted overwhelmingly in white, is created in Nolde’s trademark bright colours while managing not to lose any subtlety; incredible. Picture Curtesy of BernieCB

There’s a great article over at The Atlantic looking at if Facebook changes the way we interact with people. While some of the studies show interesting correlations between social behaviour and the way people use Facebook, none can demonstrate causation, which is always much more difficult. It still invites an interesting question; is there something in the mechanics of social networks that encourages shallow relationships over deeper ones? The main feature of Facebook (or any similar social network) that I think might lead to more, but shallower, friendships is the ‘Like’ button. There’s a phenomenon known as Operant Conditioning , where an individual changes their own behaviour in response to positive on negative reinforcement of that behaviour. If you are rewarded you do it more, if you are punished you do it less.