1. Aaron Parecki: haha yeah, specific colors can be trademarked. Keep in mind that the trademark is only valid within the service or product category. So it just means someone else can't start a shipping company that uses the same brown as UPS.

    So we just have to hope UPS doesn’t suddenly “pivot” ;) The package this email was about might be of interest to you… I’m getting an X-Carve! Mainly for hurdy gurdy making, but all kinds of ideas for silly stuff to make for IWC… stamps? wooden badges?

  2. New music on a new instrument for you!

    Churfürst zu Sachsen, König von Polen Solo Mountain Dulcimer

    Originally a song from the north-eastern German Kralsches Geigenspielbuch, I play this tune as a waltz. The interpretation is inspired by the version printed in Neues aus alten Büchern 2, which I highly recommend as a source of central european dance music! “Churfürst” refers to a member of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire, whose job it was elect the pope. “König von Polen” refers to him also being the king of Poland.

    The dulcimer is my newly finished european walnut + reclaimed cedar + ebony hourglass model of my own design complete with floating bridge, inlaid chromatic fretboard and reversed GCgg tuning. It’s the same size as a regular DAdd dulcimer but with a shorter scale length due to the bridge being further up the instrument.

    The recording was made using two C1000S microphones and the internal passive pickup, run through an AKAI EIE Pro.

  3. Just recorded beautiful resonant thunder, strong peaks @ 1kHz 2kHz, consistent throughout whole storm, any idea what could be causing this?

  4. “I take off my glasses & there it is: absolute beauty, surrounded by a sea of lovely analogue blur… and that proximity to something, or more importantly; someone, carries with it an intimacy, the instinct of which is far more important & emotionally valuable than any premeditated intent”

    Tim Prebble on lenses and myopia, Lens vs Microphone (& why i love myopia)

  5. Words are souls.

    They are ourselves, extracted from our bodies, and they live forever.

    After death we speak through words. It is the only way — but a potent way. Words live. They are real things in the world, and readers are not a passive audience, they are champions who take these words, our clues and promises, and with them shape the world. It is this, more than anything else, that Ghostwriter illuminates.

    Words can touch you — physically alter your body — raise hairs at the nape, hollow the gut, send shivers shoulder to toe — and does this not change our understanding of presence and absence?

    I have written these things and you have read them, you have felt my touch, and there is no distance between us at all.

    From Abbey Fenbert’s The Pitch Meeting for Ghostwriter. I love The Toast.