Remember back in the nineties, when Junkyard Wars was the rage and your mom still hadn't heard of the 3rd or 4th round of DIY movement?

Remember Cathy Rogers?

While cleaning virtual house, I stumbled across some of her old band's music videos and basically wondered what she's been up to. The interwebs informed me that her and the SO and babies migrated to Italy and.....

Started olive farming!? Sexy, hip, modern move huh? You'd love to? Perhaps...but silence the hunger pains and grasp the pragmatism of their story. Ok, fine, I haven't read it yet, but I wanna...and I'm rather inspired by the blog and humbled by the guardian article.

Mobility and lifestyle? Freedom and financial security? Simplicity juxtaposed with the complexity of solitude?

Regardless, it's a wonderful story and it sparks the hunger...

In the event of zombie apocalypse, I am your guy for coathanger iron stands!

(but yes crack heads did steal my tools)

So I picked up this nice USB foot pedal at Goodwill on the cheap:

I wrote some C code that allows it to act as an "external" (plug-in library if you will) for Pd. Click the above link and you can read all the gory details about how I turned it into a controller for Pd. Demo video is forthcoming.

The midi controller I posted earlier was used to great depth in the missile silo performance that CRM114 Discriminator gave at toorcamp.

I built this little midi controller to trigger samples and control a few Pd parameters:

It's based on an old touchtone telephone keypad, a rotary encoder, a two digit LED display, and a USB-based AVR breakout board (the Teensy++). The PC board was hand-etched at home, and it's mounted in a solid white, repurposed jewelry or makeup box, purchased at the Goodwill.

Click the above to view more images, read the brief technical spec, and to download the code and circuit/pcb design artifacts.

Sometimes when bogged down by responsibility I can find it rejuvenating to embrace the right kind of distraction.

So my distraction involved hearing a radio cut of the Billy Idol hit "Cradle of Love" and finally following thru on a long-time desire to cut the thing into its most fundamental (read: important) parts: The grunts.

"That's right!" Sir Cyborg Himself. Despite having such a HUGE hit in the 90s, there are probably between zero and 3 people on the planet who actually know all the lyrics -- it's a slurred bozo fest of nonsense sexual innuendo and rockstar spittle. Simply brilliant.

So I leave you with "Rock The Cradle of Love Grunts".

There's a new Goodwill very close to my house, so I'm able to visit frequently.

I'm constantly amazed by the quality of the packages on vintage/retro merchandise. The just don't make them like this anymore:

There's really something to be said for not having that photoshop-polished picture perfect glossy sheen.