So, when shutting down iPlanet Messaging Server you issue stop-msg. On a busy system, some processes don't respond to this, and need to be killed by hand. No problem. We devised a little one line shell command to handle this:
kill `ps -ef | grep server5 | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2 }'`

Yesterday, we were having some very strange server problems(people can't retrieve mail via POP, because the server is returning that they had no messages - probably a popd problem, or possibly a stored issue). We decide to shut down all the processes and restart them- to clear any weird hung locks in stored. I issue the stop-msg, and almost everything shuts down cleanly. I then go to issue the little kill script, and the following gets entered:
kill `ps -ef | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }'`

Another engineer was looking over my shoulder and didn't see the minor issue here(It had, admittedly, been a long day). I hit enter, and lo and behold, I get logged out.

Yeah, that's right, I neglected to only kill Messaging Server processes. Since I was sudo'd as root, I pretty much killed everything up to the point that kill killed something else in the pipeline (except for the greps, of course!). I suck.

Luckily, this didn't really cause that much commotion. It did cause the home directories on that machine to get unmounted, but it's not really a login and play around in your home directory kind of server. After this faux pas of mine, it was decided to go ahead and outright bounce the machine...

Things are running better now, however.

Yeeeeesh.

The last two days have utterly sucked.

Thanks to a rigorous regimen of a) blocking infected machines as we find them, b) shunting off as many messages as possible into a hold queue and finally c)learning how to set up iPlanet's conversion queue to defang bad attachments, I think we've got it on the run. Of course if we'd had the antispam/AV appliance, this wouldn't have been a problem AT ALL...

so, we lived. The e-mail system went live February 8th. By monday the 10th, it was actually relatively stable. Someday I'll write up the whole thing...

1992. Ten years ago. (I feel old now!)

The Cure's Wish came out. Still a top ten favorite of mine. It's a good "General Purpose" Cure album- not too mopey, not too happy. If you do want to mope, you can listen to "Apart", and if you just want to be happy, there's "Wendy Time" and "Friday I'm in Love", or even "High".

I went to my first few concerts that year. The first- The Dead Milkmen(Excellent!) with Billy Goat(Awful!) at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus. There may have been another band called Nevermore that opened too, but I may be mixing that up with another show. I got my first parking ticket that night too.

A month or so later(July 20,1992), The Cure were playing in Cleveland. I didn't go to that show, but I was moaning about not going to my then-girlfriend. She said something about them playing in Dayton the next day. I then formulated a plan. I got permission from my parents, and got tickets the next day. Early in the evening I picked up Jennifer, and we headed west. Once at the Nutter Center, we found what we thought were our seats, in Row AA. We took in the opening act (The Cranes- not a bad set, but I wish it had been Curve now). Then some people came and said we were in their seats. Turned out we were. Our seats were row A- 26 rows closer, and the front row of the outer perimeter around the stage (think of the OSU Horseshoe, but smaller and enclosed- with the band at the open part, and seats in the field- much like the Pink Floyd show there two years later- but I digress...)

The Cure came on and kicked immense ass. The set was similar to that of the "Show" film (likely, since it was just within a few days of the Detroit show). They did extra lyrics during "A Forest" similar to the ones on Show, although I don't remember if they were identical. They did play another track from Seventeen Seconds- "In Your House" and Pornography's "The Figurhead", which I figured they wouldn't play.
(real minutia obsessed types can find the setlist Here.- It's 21.07.1992 Dayton)

Sometime around then I got a copy of Rolling Stone Magazine's "Top 100 albums of the 1980's" book (probably from a library)- It had albums like PiL's Second Edition, Joy Division's Closer, and New Order's Power, Corruption and Lies. The descriptions for those records in particular caused me to seek out those bands. In the fall of 1992, I found PC&L used on vinyl at Singing Dog records. Great album.

That's enough for now.

from The Wesley Willis Song Generator

glacial23

by Wesley Willis

You are a dork star.
About 43400 people like glacial23.
glacial23 is very special to me.
glacial23 is the best.

GLACIAL23!!!
GLACIAL23!!!
GLACIAL23!!!
GLACIAL23!!!

You really whoop the horse's ass.
About 43400 people like glacial23.
glacial23 really whoops a camel's ass.
You can really jam harder like a magicist.

GLACIAL23!!!
GLACIAL23!!!
GLACIAL23!!!
GLACIAL23!!!

You are my special dork.
I love you a lot in the long run.
You really whoop a llama's ass.
You really whoop Saddam Hussein's ass.

Rock over London,
Rock on Chicago.

Be a Pepper - drink Dr. Pepper.

courtesy of http://googlism.com/index.htm:

glacial is cited with its port of registry as buenos aires and it's flag to argentina
glacial is a purpose
glacial is a very refreshing splash lotion
glacial is like that hypothetical footrace in the sense that it starts off strong
glacial is so strong that i have aways advised against using it in a darkroom
glacial is any more or less measured and perfect than any before it
glacial is not a flammable liquid in the sense of the uno "orange book"
glacial is a colorless liquid having a sharp
glacial is also marked by a short
glacial is going after the dragon balls
glacial is no longer heading to earth
glacial is subdivided by 16 interstadial soils
glacial is not analogous with any one of today
glacial is reviewed more extensively in the main qen review text
glacial is only 2
glacial is the topmost of the three layers making up the long island aquifer
glacial is consistent with nearby evidence of rapidly retreating ice margins during the younger dryas in response
glacial is called an interstadial
glacial is characterized by the same sequence of interstadial events and taken as a whole the last two glacial periods appear very similar
glacial is not a terrible record
glacial is combustible
glacial is a marketing company designed to market and distribute roadway and consumer deicer products domestically and internationally
glacial is noted in blue and the fluvial is noted in yellow
glacial is about 6c-8c colder than the interglacial
glacial is to use the macrofossil assemblage of plant parts found in packrat
glacial is
glacial is the blue light
glacial is being released following a federal court order resulting from action taken by the vessel?s mortgagee under the admiralty act 1988 to
glacial is stage 1
glacial is characterized by sparse assemblages dominated by c
glacial is dark blue with light greenish
glacial is typically 0
glacial is one of the snyder companies
glacial is studied
glacial is just one of the 100
glacial is to be
glacial is probably the most uptempo and happy until now
glacial is the bright completion of it
glacial is 17
glacial is con
glacial is now merely slow
glacial is evident in the summit area and on the southeastern
glacial is her persona that when she thaws
glacial is crinkle
glacial is difficult
glacial is the adjective that fits like a glove
glacial is a result of both anthropogenic and natural processes
glacial is not going to be a problem for the present
glacial is given in table 1
glacial is relatively sane
glacial is a
glacial is a pirate patagonian toothfish longliner
glacial is another matter
glacial is about the correct = speed
glacial is this cheapest by bulk because a pint of it makes a huge amount of working stop bath
glacial is distinguished by the coldest
glacial is the term used for debris deposited by meltwater
glacial is still poorly known
glacial is perhaps equivalent to the würm glaciation or glacial of the alpine areas

1991, Late summer

WWCD celebrated its 1st anniversary of being on the air. They celebrated by playing a lot of the music that they brought to the Columbus airwaves. During the broadcast, another one of the DJs- the host of a show called "Juggernaut"- mentioned some of what he'd be playing that night. Juggernaut was a rather short-lived experiment which played all music on independent labels. He mentioned that he would be playing something from a band called "Negativland" which had all sorts of samples of Casey Kacem swearing. Something about that description triggered something in me and I knew I had to tune in to it. Stayed up late and taped the show. It's got a lot of cool stuff on it- Chris and Cosey, the Didjits, some band called Welfare Heroin, and of course, Negativland.

The song was the "1991 A Cappella Mix" of "The Letter U and the Numeral 2" (you can get it here). It was the funniest thing I'd ever heard before. Unfortunately, it proved very difficult to buy, as the band's record label was sued by Island Records about ten days after its release.

Somewhere in this timeframe, I got the idea in my head that I wanted to make my own music. Never mind the fact that I had very little in the way of skills or equipment(a casio MT-35, a Yamaha euphonium, and a stereo didn't seem to me the appropriate tools for what I wanted to make).

I did get a CD player in November of 1991, however. I also got the Shamen's "Move Any Mountain" CD single, which had a bunch of little loops, that a savvy musician with a good sampler(or a computer nowadays) could use to make their own remix of the song. I played with them a little bit on my CD player, which doesn't have any sort of "seamless loop" facility. While kind of fun, still not what I wanted.

more to follow...

So, 1990. 10th grade. My transformation from a mild-mannered computer nerd into the, well, music-obsessed computer nerd I am today had begun. I basically started buying records(rather, tapes, as my record player was crap, not that I could find many new records at that point anyway, and I didn't have a CD player yet). I bought the Cure's Mixed Up shortly after it came out. Some time around then (either fall 1990 or 1991), I decided I had to listen to The Dead Milkmen's "Smokin Banana Peels". I was unaware of the minor video success of "Punk Rock Girl"(remember- no MTV for me!) and 101 didn't play them much, but thought SBP had brilliant song and remix titles, like "The Puking Song" and "Smokin' Banana Peels(Mr. T for two mix)". I took the chance and bought the tape. It was worth it.

Also that year, I began making contacts within the burgeoning "underground" community at my school(ok, this is a total misnomer-it was really about half a dozen girls who would be described as "Goths" today, and a few of my friends, and some of the more punk-inclined metalheads). Rumor has it that (most) of the girls had gotten into industrial from a session with a ouija board, which had told them to listen to Ministry. I think some of the others had gotten into it via other means. We were by no means a tight-knit group, at this point we just sort-of got along and happened to listen to similar stuff. Occasionally we'd recommend stuff to one another, but that was about it.

Christmas 1990- I got a "real" stereo, with a built in turntable(an improvement over the Fisher-Price!), and more importantly, DUAL cassette decks- I could now do all sorts of copyright infringement with better fidelity!

Spring 1991- I dis techno.
Let me clarify. We had Channel One at our school. For some odd reason or another(I suspect a government conspiracy to infect me with the meme), they decided to talk about this "new" music that they thought was pretty hip and would probably be really popular in the future. The music was techno. They talked a bit about raves and had an interview with some guy that actually made this music, and was a relative of Herman Melville's(Moby, for those who don't know). For some reason, the story rubbed me the wrong way and I dismissed the entire techno scene as crap. The only thing I really remember not liking about it was that I thought someone had misused the term "MIDI", although now I don't think they did. Whatever. I was young and dumb.

Spring break. We went to California. Even though I didn't have a CD player, I decided to buy some CDs(the singles of Nine Inch Nails' "Head Like a Hole" and "Sin").

Summer 1991.
Went to Europe(Germany, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Austria). Picked up Depeche Mode's "Singles 81-85", which wasn't available in the US at the time(although Catching Up With Depeche Mode is very similar and at the time they had the same cover artwork) Noticed lots of posters advertising a band called EMF.

Came back. Got a car. My friend Flippy also got a car. This now meant that we could drive places, such as the record stores on the OSU campus.

I'm going to leave off here, as I've gone on enough, and the next bit is quite long too...

Some quick thoughts on my road trip to Canada this last weekend.

0. The Glacier Hills Service Area on the OH turnpike sucks.

1/2. Pittsburgh really is the Emerald City. You drive through miles of nothing, round that corner on I-279 and BAM! There's downtown Pittsburgh!

1. Edinboro's radio station isn't half bad(88.9 FM) At least, whoever was on around 10:00pm Friday, anyway.

2. I got this weird post-apocalyptic vibe at the Angola service center on the NY turnpike. All the McDonald's employees had this shellshocked expression on their faces. I think this was because of the power outages they'd been experiencing all night. I also think the spikes may have taken out their cash registers, so they were doing things by hand. I dunno.

3. Had a diner-style breakfast at a greek restaurant. 'Nuff said.

4. There's a certain sound that occurs in casinos. Specifically, when you're in an area packed with slot machines, this weird high pitched whine occurs. It sounds a little like parts of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Maybe it's just the resonant frequency of my ears. I'd record it, but I get the feeling the casino personnel wouldn't understand and kick my ass out of there.

5. People are really bad at karaoke. Seriously. At least know the flow of the song you're going to sing please.

6. Video games are definitely more fun under the influence.

7. The incline of Clifton Hill is directly proportional to your current level of inebriation.

8. Molson XXX keeps the Duty-Free shops in business. I was disappointed they had no Waterloo Dark.

9. Border crossings are still relatively painless.

10. Pittsburgh's skyline is really pretty at night. Especially with techno turned up to 11 on the sound system.

1990
My freshman year of high school ended. The only real "musical" event that occured was that I seperated myself from the high school band. There were three band classes at my high school(not counting Jazz band)- Marching Band, Fall concert band(for those either too busy or not coordinated enough for marching band, like myself), and Spring concert band(which is more-or-less a superset of the two fall bands).

That summer, I started volunteering at COSI, a science museum in downtown Columbus(This was at the old Broad Street location, well before the move). This is significant for two reasons:
1) The traveling exhibit that was there when I started was about music, and actually had hands-on exhibits with samplers
2) I met CoreyDave. For lack of any better reason, I'll just refer to him as Dave- it is his name, anyway. Dave listened to interesting music, much of which I hadn't heard of before. Bands such as Depeche Mode, The Cure, and a band he described as "a new age punk band from Cleveland". I thought it would be cool to listen to some of this stuff, but money was short(as usual) and we didn't have cable or a radio station that would play this stuff(yet).

Skip a little bit(a few weeks, anyway). Late June/Early July. In two days I'm due to fly off to Houghton Michigan for a summer program at MTU. The week after that, a program at OSU. Watching television. See a commercial advertising "Friday Night Videos" on NBC. Among the artists mentioned in the commercial is Depeche Mode. I decide to stay up late and check it out. Twelve years later, I'm still in awe.
The song: Enjoy the Silence
The somewhat dadaist video, with Dave Gahan decked out like a king, walking around with a lawn chair, interspersed with black and white shots of the rest of the band.
Then there's the song itself. That programmed beat, the tinkly little synth sounds, the ethereal guitar, the somewhat deep-sounding(at the time anyway- I was 15!) lyrics. This, to me, is an event of the magnitude of the Sex Pistols playing at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall for forty-two people.

I found myself at the mall the next day, after watching the video several more times(I apparently had the forethought to tape it, perhaps thinking I could fall asleep before it aired). I bought Violator on cassette. Flew to Michigan the next day. I took two tapes with me- U2's "The Joshua Tree", and Violator. I didn't play the U2 tape once. This is not to say I listened to nothing but Violator- one of the counselors was a DM fan, and loaned me his copies of 101 and the Personal Jesus single to listen to. I was officially hooked(although oddly, I still don't actually have 101 on anything other than video).

Came back from MTU. Went to the program at OSU. Still listened to Violator nearly continuously.

The program at OSU ended. Went back to COSI. Proudly informed Dave that I now listened to "Alternative" music(I hate using that term now, but that's what we called it at the time, and I'm trying to keep the dialogue accurate). He was intrigued, and decided to give me a tape he was going to give another one of his friends- They Might Be Giants' Flood.

• More tapes followed:
• Faith No More- The Real Thing
• Something by the Psychedelic Furs whose title I've forgotten
  • And then the Cure:
  • The Head on the Door(minus "Push", for some reason. no big loss)
  • Boys Don't Cry(tracklisting is a little different from the CD. No "So What", but it does have "World War", which is better IMHO)
  • Disintegration(well, the first 45 minutes anyway. Ends halfway through "The Same Deep Water as You")
• and finally, a copy of that tape by that "new age punk band from Cleveland"- Nine Inch Nails' "Pretty Hate Machine". A fine album that I still enjoy today.

In August of 1990, another momentous event occured- WWCD 101.1 Columbus began broadcasting.
They started off by broadcasting nothing but continuous modern rock, with no annouced playlists. I finally got to hear artists like the Sex Pistols, who as far as I'm aware had probably never been aired in Columbus before. I also determined from this that Living Colour had a new album out- "Type" was on their playlist. Within a week, "Times Up" was in my grubby little hands.

Well, that's a lot of exposition for a three-month period, so it will have to do for today.

I got way too many CDs last week:
1. Jack Dangers - Variaciones Espectrales - Pretty good, but way too short.
2. Negativland - These guys are from England and who gives a shit - Nice in that I now have the original "U2" tracks on CD, but gets a little long and repetitive in places.
3. Negativland - Death Sentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak- actually it's a book with an included CD. The CD is the noisiest thing they've done since 1983. It actually doesn't have any terribly discernable spoken samples that I remember.
Fun at the 99 cent cut-out bin at FYE:
4. Happy Mondays - Peel Sessions - This is actually different from the Peel Sessions tape I used to have. Did all Factory bands put out two Peel Sessions releases(Joy Division had two, New Order had two, and now apparently the Mondays have two)?
5. Inspiral Carpets - Peel Session - Yep, it sounds like the Inspiral Carpets. Heavy on the organ.
6. LaTour- Cold (CDS) - This is the same group/guy that did "People are still having sex" in the early 90s. This dates from 92-93, I think. It's not bad for techno of that period
7. Sunscreem - Looking at you(CDS) - This in places sounds like a rough draft of Madonna's "Ray of Light"(the song, not the album). Some of the mixes are pretty good
8. The Button - Prefound - ok, I can't really comment on this one, I helped make it...
9. "24 Hour Party People" Soundtrack - I've been listening to this repeatedly all week. It's quite cool.

Ok, I lied, this one won't be that much more interesting, but it will clean up the 1980s...

1988-1989 still:
I put out a record that year. Well, ok, the seventh and eighth grade bands at my middle school did. I'm sure you can hear me pounding out brass bass on tunes like "Vortex" and "A salute to Glenn Miller".

It was around this time(might have been xmas '87) that I started playing at Merry TubaChristmas- basically an ensemble of tuba, sousaphone, euphonium, baritone (and keyed trombone?) players who play christmas tunes. We would usually play at the Columbus one (in front of the statehouse) and less often at the Licking county one(at Indian Mound Mall). If memory serves correctly, I believe I played in 87,88,89, and finally in 92(IMM only).

I first slow danced with a real live girl to Def Leppard's "Love Bites".

Sometime in 1989, I discovered Living Colour. I thought the samples in "Cult of Personality" were darn cool. I bought "Vivid" sometime that summer, I think. It's just a cool album. I read it's been recently re-released with some bonus tracks(a live Clash cover was one, IIRC). It rocked as hard as anything else I'd heard at that point and was pretty intelligent to boot.

Fall 1989- High school starts
I have a vague memory of attending a football game. I ran into two girls I knew(one of whom was the daughter of lottery winners, and at this point had abandoned the Southwest Licking Schools for the Columbus School for Girls. I think she later went to Yale. I have no idea what she's doing now.) Somewhere in the conversation, they told me I should listen to The Cure. I think my response was "Never heard of 'em."

I went to the homecoming dance that year. I did not enjoy myself, except when they played "Cult of Personality".

Also in the fall of 1989, there was a Dr. Who convention in Columbus. This has little to do with music, except that I was able to get the Timelords 12" single(it's the TVT US version, not a UK KLF Communications original. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers...). Of course, the turntable I had at the time was made by Fisher-Price. Nothing but audiophile quality for me!

This concludes my audio tour of the 1980s. In our next installment, it's on to the 90s and beyond...

So, sometime around 1987-1988 my musical tastes changed somewhat. I had started listening to QFM96- Classic rock and the like. Lots of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc.

Another aside- Columbus, in 1987, still had no proper "Modern Rock" station, and no metal/hard rock stations. Your best bet was QFM... Because of this, I have a theory that all modern rock/electronic/experimental musicians from Columbus have a secret love of AC/DC. I know The ECC do- witness "Rocked by Rape", and "Dirtywerk" from the Double the Phat album... We at TBP are no different. When the ECC's fracas with CBS News occured, we did a tribute to them, which actually featured an hour of AC/DC sampling...

That said, Back to the 80s...
On QFM, in the late 1980s, there was a show on Sundays hosted by a British DJ by the name of Russell Carey called "Psychedelic Sunday". I actually found a mention of it here. The guy was(and still is, presumably) an absolute genius. I remember two shows in particular. One was about the Yardbirds and their legacy- pretty cool- he even played some "New Yardbirds"(aka proto-Led Zeppelin). The other was far more significant. The actual topic of the show was Gary Glitter-lots of emphasis on "Rock and Roll part 2". Big deal. The other important facet of this is that
1) I am a huge Dr. Who fan, especially at this point in my life.
2) This broadcast (obviously) occured after May 23, 1988, the release date of the record he played.

That date is significant because of what Mr. Carey played that Sunday. During his show, he teased a segment by saying he was going to play a song that used "Rock and Roll part 2" along with the theme to a long-running British Science Fiction show. I had an idea of what he was talking about. I didn't quite know what I was going to get.

What I got was "Doctorin' The TARDIS" by the Timelords, also known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, furthermore known as the JAMs, also soon(at that point) to be known as the KLF. I was jumping around my parents kitchen/dining room like a maniac. This was the greatest thing I had ever heard at the time. If Carey had mentioned the JAMs earlier exploits(the 1987 album and the ABBA flap), I probably would have been converted right then and there, but he didn't. It would still be a while...

Also around this time, I was enamored of skateboard culture. The skaters in my area were into bands like Metallica and Anthrax. The skateboard magazines mentioned lots of punk bands, but Columbus being the town that it was meant I couldn't actually listen to the genre without plunking down a large(for me at the time) chunk of money for a tape, and my parents weren't too hip on the idea of buying me Sex Pistols albums as gifts.

Skip a bit. Fall of '88. Eighth grade. Metallica's "...And Justice for All" was released. I got Guns and Roses' "Appetite for Destruction" from my aunt and her then-boyfriend for my 14th birthday. She also took me to see U2:Rattle and Hum. I convinced a friend to loan me "Master of Puppets" so I could copy it- I didn't have a dual cassette deck, so I had to do the old "two boom boxes against one another" trick to make a bad copy of it. I got Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and "Delicate Sound of Thunder" for Christmas. I did manage to have enough money to buy the cassette single of "Eye of the Beholder"(still one of my favorite Metallica songs), at a church outing, of all things(proof I was evil, I think :-)). I think that was actually in the spring of '89, as we saw "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" that day, and it opened on the 17th of February.

Enough reminiscing and rambling for today. The next installment gets better, I promise...

More musical history...

1986. Sixth grade. New school- same school district, but middle school instead of elementary. New position in the social strata- the bottom. Apparently being somewhat intelligent is cool in 5th grade, but bad in 6th grade. I didn't get the memo. Regardless of what I listened to at the time(still the cols. pop stations - WNCI and 92X), it was seemingly decided at this time that as a "nerd" I must listen to classical.

Anyhow, as far as making music is concerned- Around this time I got braces. When tightened, this would make playing trumpet, and its rather small mouthpiece difficult. After discussing this with the teacher, it was decided I would move to baritone(aka euphonium - it looks like a mini-tuba, for those who don't know). This is because (a) the mouthpiece is bigger and (b) when playing treble clef baritone, the fingering of the notes on the scale is identical to that of the trumpet.

As far as music listening, I remember George Michael's "I want your sex"- I wasn't originally going to mention it, but Amy mentioned it in her journal, so I guess it's safe for me to mention it too...

1987
Sometime around 1986, my aunt graduated from high school in Kentucky, and came to live with us while attending Ohio University. She could perhaps be credited as a catalyst for all the music I would listen to at this point. When we would visit while growing up, she listened to mostly pop stuff, David Bowie's "Let's Dance", Culture Club, etc. When she lived with us, her tastes changed a bit. Led Zeppelin was the order of the day, along with U2, INXS and others. She subscribed to Rolling Stone, and would let me read it when she had finished it. I do remember M/A/R/R/S' "Pump up the volume" on WNCI/92X, and thinking that was darn cool, but this other stuff(the stuff that Q-FM 96 played) seemed darn cool too....

Somewhere in this time frame I got my first 45- Arcadia(The Duran Duran side project)- Re-election day.

That's enough for now. Things get a little more interesting in the next installment.

listening to EM's radio-freedom.co.uk show right now. No activity on the IRC channel there. Guess I'll take some time to describe my latest hardware hack- the optomin (well, optomin has been used before - the glacialmin?).

It began its life as an Ameco morse code practice oscillator. I bought it from the Nationwide Insurance photography club in 1993 or 1994 at a sale they were holding(I was working there at the time). For the last eight or so years it's been mostly sitting in my parents basement, just waiting to be used in an interesting manner.

About a month and a half ago, I went down there to visit, and was asked to remove some of my stuff- they're planning to move out in the next year and I own my own house, so I guess it had to happen. Amongst the stuff that was grabbed was the oscillator.

After bringing it back, I was able to trigger it by shorting the terminals together. While triggering it, I noticed that the tone knob had a pretty good range. I then thought that provided that the tone knob was a resistor(which is a pretty safe bet), I could replace it with some other sort of variable resistance, such as a photocell.

I later decided that it should be made flexible- so that if light wasn't an appropriate trigger, something else could be through interchangeable plugins. i.e. a thermistor could be used for a heat-sensitive instrument.

I then went to work. I went to the local poor source of parts("You've got questions, we've got blank stares"). and got some 1/4" jacks, 1/4" plugs, an assortment of photocells, and a new soldering iron- my old one was getting downright dangerous.

I then opened the oscillator and had a look inside. The tone control was a 20k pot. Good. I then desoldered it and replaced it with a 1/4" jack. I then began the work of building a plug. After trying a few combinations by just holding the photocells on the plug connected to the jack, I determined the optimal combination was 1 big cell and one little cell in parallel. Unfortunately, I used fairly stiff wire, so the actual plug is fairly ugly, but it does work.

I haven't built a heat-sensitive plug yet, but it should be easy enough :-)

My next project is to build a pedalboard for my Midwest Analog Products modules(an ADV-Bass and a Classic Snare+), perhaps with an optional metronome function...