Sometimes things take longer, but also sometimes I get distracted.
Well, I said “by the end of the month,” but technically I didn’t say which month.
Anyway I’m continuing to work on Shtory. I’ve had my usual struggle to balance “drilling down into tiny details instead of looking at the whole picture” with “drawing high-level block diagrams and blithely assuming the implementation will be trivial” and also with “just plunging ahead writing code without much plan, in the hopes that it will somehow come together.”
I’ve realized I need to add join and quit commands, and that I need to try to get all this PlantUML/Graphviz business working, and sort out the VSCode plugin situation, so that I can write myself out some sequence diagrams for how things are supposed to communicate over the sockets.
Also, because who can just keep their attention on one project at a time, I’ve gotten interested in DIY audio electronics — specifically guitar amps, which I dabbled in about a million years ago, and associated stuff. I used to hang out on the Solid State Guitar hobbyist forums, and I got an email recently that the guy who runs them had launched a Kickstarter for a 9V-battery amp kit of his own design, based, like my previous efforts, on the venerable and ubiquitous LM386 amplifier IC. The “Honey” amp kit has beaten its funding goal, so I’m looking forward to receiving my kit once those get shipped out; and in the meantime it’s stirred up a bunch of ideas from the dusty corners of my brain.
The first one is that I should repair the old Ruby circuit I housed in that Balvenie packing tube, and the second one is that I should actually do something with the components I still have lying around — including a pretty nice 10″ Jensen speaker, a big transformer, and an LM3886 chip —that I once meant to build a ~40-watt amp from.
The third one is that I could build a cabinet to house that speaker — quarter sheet of 1/2″ plywood with a nice hardwood veneer, splined miter corner joints with internal corner braces, 14″x14″ face plus 2″ high instrument panel, 8″ deep, yes I’ve already sketched out the cut list — but wire the speaker to a jack, and use the combo cab as a modular platform for trying out different amplifier circuits with different power supplies, features, etc. Even the little ~1/2-watt Ruby can drive a proper full-size speaker, so as long as all the amp circuits are designed for an 8Ω speaker (and don’t put out more than 50W) that should pose no problem. I’d also like to try building another Ruby or similar design, but add in some extras like an effects loop or two, the recommended bass-boost circuitry (perhaps with a bypass switch), a headphone jack, etc. Ideally I could design the cabinet so that swapping in my original Ruby board, the Honey, such a modified Ruby, or even the big LM3886-based design if I ever get around to making that work, would be quick and easy.
“But Scott,” you might ask, “are you actually any good at playing guitar?”
Ha! You’re funny. No, of course I’m not.
Scott Madin 