Yeah, I also wanted to comment on this, though I think it’s technically against the rules.
I hit this first on my VPN, so I disconnected, then got asked again from my home wifi. I dunno why I look like a bot to Cloudflare. I hate these prompts and it’s too bad they’re all over the web.
You can also use Claude Code in a VS Code terminal window, which I much prefer for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. Granted, I’ve moved to Zed in the past few months. I’m doing the same there.
Since I was a kid I was fascinated by computer math, such as a projectile in Scorched Earth (wind, angle, velocity, gravity). I turned 50 this week and I STILL haven’t dug into how even the basics work.
Can still remember the sound of the Funky Bomb firing in Scorched Earth. Thanks fot reminding me of that.
If you're interested in this sort of stuff, the book Nature Of Code is great for exploring this topic by creating simulations. There's a Javascript version and Java based version (using the Processing framework). It isn't actually all that difficult, and I found it very satisfying to work through.
Oh, yeah. I’ve been meaning to build an electric ukulele. I’ve built some handmade electric guitars, slide guitars and similar. Mine are rudimentary, more akin to a cigar box guitar (if not less complex).
I've built half a dozen similar box guitars, it's such a fun little thing to build.
Do I see a piezo disk under the bridge in the 3rd instrument? Do you use some kind of preamp with it?
I have been recently experimenting with different kinds of piezo pickups [0] and preamp electronics for them. I've figured out a pretty nice JFET based circuit for the preamp and ordered tiny 13x13mm PCBs with tiny SMT components assembled and it works pretty well (but needs a second revision). They mount directly on the volume potentiometer and fit in a small space.
The one thing I haven't figured out yet is grounding the electronics. In a typical electric guitar you ground the electronics by touching the (grounded) strings, but that doesn't work very well (at all) with slide guitar when your left hand has got a bottle neck slide on it (made of glass or ceramic which is an insulator).
Drop a message below if you want to geek out more about home made guitars and/or related electronics. Depending on your location I could also send some preamp PCBs your way.
Happy to stay in touch. I haven't build one of these in a long time. My website and email address are in my bio here on HN.
To answer your question, yes, that's a piezo pickup, if I remember correctly. I don't think I had any kind of pre-amp. I wired it to a 1/8" stereo plug and then connected that to a very small portable guitar amp. It was all very rudimentary. A very distorted sound. I don't remember grounding to be a problem but I played the slide version of this with a slide made from a galvanized pipe, rather than glass.
I also use clear boxes, called “shoe boxes” at my local big box store. I started 8-years ago, when I devoted a closet in a new house to them. They’re now everywhere. I often answer a lot of questions with, “in the box in the closet”. Even my guests don’t need more info than that to find what they’re looking for.
I have some I don’t think I use. I’m going to adopt this idea. Instead of dots, however, I think I’ll just use a pen/pencil. Maybe I’ll print space for the marks on my labels.
I just purchased a cheap thermal sticker printer that I may use instead of my label maker. But handwriting labels would be fine too.
reply