"It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing high intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only. (Hoyle, 1964; emphasis added)"

Quote from cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle on this page about the "Olduvai Theory".

The gist seems to be that, in effect, if we screw all this up, that no other high industrial civilizations could follow us. At least, not for a LONG LONG time. And if we don't make the jump from a petroleum economy, then we're screwed, because there's a finite amount of the stuff and it's running out, and our using the stuff is screwing up the environment.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Dilettante's Dictionary.

"Sundown, you better take care
If I've found you've been creeping around my backstairs."

Gordon Lightfoot sings those words so beautifully, it makes the threat in them that much more ominous.

Might have a solution for the tape loop system idea. More on that at a later date, if it works. The Radio Shack reverb is now bent, and the Ibanez Powerlead distortion is also, but I can't find the back of the case, so I can't close it up just yet. Never mind. Brain storm, just found it.
The Ibanez distortion is now POWERFUL distortion. Almost ring modulatorish with kind of a phase distortion thing. Very lo-fi. And the reverb unit now goes into screaming feedback mode if one of 2 switches are switched. The cool thing is, that there are two different kinds of tonal qualities to both bends, but they both can work at the same time.

"I recon I support anythin' where the outcome is me eatin' checkerboard wafers an' watchin' 'Johnny Bravo' cartoons." Superosity ladies and gentlemen.

Working on circuit bending this old Radio Shack reverb that I have. I'm going to install some switches and variable resistors so that it goes from cheesy plate reverb into gigantic spasms of super crazy feedback delay. Or something. There's also a possibility of, if I can find a suitable tape loop system, that I could do some funky stuff with feeding its output back into it at like a 1 or 2 second delay, depending on the tape loop system. But that's highly conjectural. Anyway, bent reverb minus tape loop system should be done tomorrow. Also, hopefully, tomorrow while I have the soldering iron out I'll finish bending Mike's old Yamaha PSR-6. It's not nearly as glitchy as the Yamaha PSS-460, but it's more controllable. Basically, you can make it do little jumps between synth voices while you're playing it.

I also opened up this old Ibanez Fuzzbox/Distortion pedal that Jeremy gave me ages ago. It's normally suitable for heavy metal and such, but I'm going to attempt to create distortions in that little box that have never been dreamed of. We'll see.

William Gibson apparently has a blog. Could be cool.

Cleaning continues apace. Hopefully getting some bookcases tomorrow. Got a keyboard stand and a MIDI cable this weekend.