New video: How to build a Chien (hurdy gurdy buzzing bridge)

The article I wrote a few years ago is now available for your viewing pleasure.

Are you as sick as I am of stupid modal pop-ups interrupting almost everything you try to do on the web these days? Here’s the email template I’ve started sending to any site owner who I think might be receptive about the issue. Feedback welcome.

Hello NAME,

I was just trying to read this article on your website: URL but stopped pretty quickly because of the annoying modal pop-up window which showed up a few seconds in.

Decades worth of user research data has shown modal pop-ups to be a terrible, off-putting design pattern which will do nothing but irritate and drive away readers and users: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/popups/

Apologies for the weird email but I’m really sick of these annoying modals which pervade online life these days and decided that, in cases like this (where the website has an easily-reachable, potentially receptive contact person who is likely to both care about the issue and be able to implement a better solution) I would just write to them in the hope that it might result in the situation being improved.

All the best,
YOUR NAME

who’s a good doggo then?

File under “places least likely to be as exciting as their name makes them sound”

A quick video to demonstrate the 8th hurdy gurdy I built, which was back in the workshop for a tune-up before heading off to its new owner. I was happy with the sound when it was built, and two years later it’s developed very nicely. The video doesn’t really do it justice, but gives a fair impression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD9D9P2O750

It’s always nice to have your old instruments back in the workshop. In this case, number 8 is getting some adjustments before heading off to its new owner.

These little furballs are easily one of the best perks of living in Vienna

Made some laser-engraved walnut random number generators

Does anyone else get bizarre spam emails consisting of a single image with a bunch of chinese writing, then a long gap and around 10 paragraphs of text randomly excerpted from old books? It consistently gets past my spam filter and I still have no idea what it’s even trying to sell me.

What to do during coronavirus lockdown? Start building organ pipes, obviously

Today I realised I had never taken any good photos of this mountain dulcimer I built in 2016 as a warm-up project after moving to a new workshop.

The 70s got me covered if I end up getting quarantined due to coronavirus. Unopened and in mint condition, I can rely on McDougall to see me through these hard times

I think this is the most fun I’ve ever seen people have playing classical music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSyLauxdwtw

The French really know how to name christmas carols

A workshop emerges from the chaos… and soon, new instruments.

This is perfected, ideal music. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmO6QkJhuu4

I think about this canadian aquarium sign a lot

TIL: in #kicad, clicking on a component in eeschema will navigate to and select the corresponding component in pcbnew

the VHS, it screams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8GOcB6H0uQ

Quora, here to answer all the important theological cosmetics questions you may (or, perhaps, may not) have