eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:25am on 2011-02-26

"After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed." -- De La Lastra's Law (thanks to [info] blueeowyn)

eftychia: Me in poufy shirt, kilt, and Darth Vader mask, playing a bouzouki (vader)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 09:28am on 2011-02-26

So I've got this keyboard that I have a problem with. And I mean that literally, though, uh, I guess I mean that as an example of synecdoche as well, since the keyboard in question is in fact part of a synthesizer. And I think I know, at basic level, the solution to my problem ... but I'm having trouble getting to the spots I need to reach to solve the problem, and I'm hoping that my friends can help. The problem, my attempts so far, and where I keep getting stuck, behind the cut ... with pictures (thumbnails / links to bigger ones) )

I'd love to have this sucker working again before the next time I load the wall of instruments into the van for a filk convention -- more for the show-and-tell value, since analog synthesizer technology seems to have been kind of forgotten about (and really, something like a Mini-Moog would be better for demonstrating the differences between analog and digital synths, but the Korg is what I have) than to use in performance -- but I don't really expect to manage that. Still, I should give it a shot, right?

Any clues?


photo of keyboard removed from synthesizer
eftychia: Lego-ish figure in blue dress, with beard and breasts, holding sword and electric guitar (lego-blue)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 11:09am on 2011-02-26

Inspired partly by the almost-doings in Wisconsin (stymied so far, last I checked, by Democratic legislators using a trick made famous by a Republican's Republican), as well as assorted other curiosities like the anti-discrimination bill that strangely leaves out the 'public accomodation' language one usually expects, the attempt to redefine rape (the only-violent-rape-counts business that I've misplaced the links to) or redefine rape victims, and the strange "our first priority is jobs so that's why we're banging on the abortion issue" stuff ...

... And inspired at least as much by my mother having handed me a copy of Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous[2] Words[1] ...

... I offer unto y'all this unfortunately useful word:

dysnomy: n. bad legislation; passing bad laws.

Another word in Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary is 'cacophrenic', which Mrs. Byrne lists as "pertaining to an inferior intellect" (and is defined elsewhere as "having a mental illness"), but which I would have otherwise been tempted to interpret as a more polite synonym for a word suggested by my mother, that I haven't found in a dictionary: 'scatophrenic'. I'll let each of you decide whether you want to translate that as "shit-for-brains" or "poopyhead", but either way, it seems to go along with dysnomy.

[0] Yeah, footnotes intentionally referenced out of order.

[1] Heifetz, Josepha. (1974). Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words: Gathered from numerous and diverse Authoritative Sources. Seacaucus, NJ: University Books/Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8216-0203-9

[2] Even accounting for her explanation that some words are included simply for having multiple definitions that contrast amusingly, well, either my vocabulary is even larger than my ego, or a bunch of her words are hardly obscure (even for 1974). But there are enough words I didn't know to be interesting anyhow, even when I refuse to count the ones I'd never seen before but were obvious from their roots, like 'dendrochronology'.

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