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The Story of a Free Electronic Organ

A little over a week ago my roommate knocked on my bedroom door to ask me for a favour. He wanted to know if I would help him move an electric organ from the Salvation Army Thrift store into the basement. Please note that it was a fairly large and non-functioning electric organ. My mind said, “no” but my mouth said, “sure” and with a smile we walked out the door.

As we headed across town in my fairly large capacity (but not huge) Jeep Grand Cherokee he explained that the organ had worked when it was originally brought into the shop but that somehow in its first week there it had stopped doing the one thing electric organs are supposed to do—that is to say it no longer made music. But he was confident that he could fix it and the guy running the store told him he’d let him have it for free if he would just come and take it away.

We muscled that boat anchor into the street but no matter how we turned it, it just wouldn’t fit into my jeep. Please trust me when I emphasize that we turned it plenty.

“I don’t really want to unscrew the spare tire”, I stammered, “because I don’t think it will be easy to get back together.” A moment later I pushed the now free spare up against the front seats.

I don’t know why it took so long for me to process what was obvoiusly about to happen. Either he wouldn’t be able to get it working and I was going to be stuck hauling a rather heavy and awkward non-operational organ out of my basement or he would get it working and I’d have the opportunity to enjoy a constant stream of vibrations from the basement until the end of his stay in my house at which time I would still be stuck hauling out a rather heavy and awkward operational organ from my basement.

He assured me that I’d have nothing to worry about and insisted that whatever happened he would take care of it in the end.

And what do you know? He actually got it working. I’m not sure how long it took him, but I returned home from my holidays in Medicine Hat to see a collection of electronic tools, a soldering iron and plenty of parts, peices, and wires scattered around the room. I could hardly believe it but my roommate—whom has absolutely no training in electronics—figured out how to solder wires together in the proper places thereby restoring the organ. He even cleaned up the mess and it turns out that the electronic vibrations are more like music than just a noisy racket afterall.

To him I have to say, good work my friend—I’m really impressed. Now maybe I should ask him if he can figure out how to get the spare tire back in place.

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F-117 Stealth Fighter at RIAT 2002

I came across some amazing photos of the F-117 Stealth Fighter today. They were taken at the Royal International Air Tattoo in 2002 in England.

F-117 Nighthawk (Stealth Fighter)

From the site:

The F-117 is a little bigger than the initial impression you get—it’s about the same size as an F-15 Eagle. It has a whole range of tricks to make it stealthy, starting with the dark, low contrast paint scheme which makes it so difficult to see at night (or photograph during the day), it’s covered in radar-absorbent materials and its very shape is intended to deflect radar away from the radar station. Its two jet engines are quiet and produce very little smoke, and the outlets from the engines, visible at the rear of the aircraft, mix cool air with the hot exhaust to reduce the type of heat signature that a heat-seeking missile could lock on to. The unusual “butterfly” tail is designed to shield the exhausts so missiles can’t see them.

See some more cool F-117 Stealth Fighter photos at RIAT 2002. If this topic interests you, you might want to check out Richard Seaman’s index of airshow photographs.

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11 Steps to a Better Brain

New Scientist put out an article outlining 11 steps that you can take to improve your brain. I might be a little skeptical of any panacea like pills, but some of their tips seem downright inspired. From the article:

It doesn’t matter how brainy you are or how much education you’ve had—you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn’t have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 11 of them.

11 Steps to a Better Brain.

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GAP Advertisement

Pardon Our Dust Gap Ad image

Last week Slate’s Seth Stevenson published an article about Spike Jonze’s “Pardon Our Dust” Gap ad. There are two versions of this ad — the much cooler Jonze-approved version that I found on the internet and which never played on TV, and the totally gutless Gap-marketing-execs approved version, (linked in the Slate article) which uses a musical cut called “Don’t Stand Still” instead of Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” the mischievous scoring from Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” that Jonze used.

Stevenson explains that a Gap spokesperson claimed to have “tried several variations” of the ad, settling on the one they thought worked best. But it causes me to wonder, did The Gap not use Jonze’s version because they thought it was too much on its own wavelength? Perhaps it just plain scared them.

Admittedly, Jonze’s version doesn’t really deal with, much less convey excitement about, the idea of a forthcoming renovation of the Gap stores. What it does is comically express a fierce loathing of the Gap brand and, as some have suggested, a distain for all corporate chain stores everywhere.

However, Stevenson feels that “what the company needs is a piece of marketing that suggests radical changes are afoot — that the Gap brand is about to tear itself down to its foundations and be reborn.” He boldly wonders, “Did Gap not see the possibilities? Were they too scared to go for broke?” The answer is that Gap executives saw exactly what the ad portrayed and consequently squashed it’s distribution. They aren’t ready for a complete brand restructuring — which this ad would have been perfect for. With that in mind please enjoy the internet leaked and Spike Jonze approved, Director’s cut Gap Ad.

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Merry Christmas

Wishing you all the best! I hope you have a Merry Christmas—or whatever holiday you celebrate in your part of the world.

A Not-So-White Christmas

Here is a photo of the “not-so-white” Christmas that we’re having in Southern Alberta.

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Morning Glory Hang-gliding

hang gliding

There are about a dozen people in the world who have done it—cloud surfing on a wave of air which forms around a cloud called the morning glory.

“The cloud is in the shape of an enormous tube and rolls in at first light over the coast of Queensland. It offers what some call the most exciting gliding experience in the world.”

Cloud Surfing.