Nick Glover

I was going to update my Arduino doorbell alert project with a real opto-isolator, but I’m pretty sure I broke the isolator, so… yeah. So much for that idea. I do have some other projects coming up, though. I bought a new guitar amp that I plan on modding. I like all the tones it gives me, but it’s missing a couple features (like an FX loop and a second channel), so I’m going to see about adding those features. I’m also going to put together a speaker cabinet, since the new amp is just a head and not a combo. My last project is a paint job for a reverb pedal. I bought the completed pedal from someone else, so I’m not going to have to build it, but I do get to design the look for the enclosure.

I’ve got a couple projects on my plate that I will post some updates about soon (probably later this week). First, I realized that I had a lot of the parts needed to make a BYOC Large Beaver, which is a clone of the famous Big Muff pedal. Rather than order a BYOC PCB, I decided to build this one myself on some perfboard. This will be my first project on perfboard, so there is going to be lots of planning involved. Good thing I just won a Maker’s Notebook! I did have to order a couple extra parts, though, so I also ordered a couple real opto-isolators to replace my homemade one. I will update that project with the new parts when I figure out how to use them. I also picked up a small mic from Radio Shack, so I’d like to start experimenting with that. Finally, I ordered one of the Billm mod kits for my Fender Blues Jr. amp, so I will try to post that project, too.

Google has been kind enough to fix another of my gripes about their Voice service, or at least get to a nice middle point. Although you still can’t use your current phone number for the full Google Voice package, you can have Google Voice handle all your voicemails. It’s a lot more useful to have all your voicemails in one place with transcripts, though you can’t set up forwarding, screening, or record your calls. Still, it does mean that you still get to use all your free mobile-to-mobile minutes and you don’t have to worry about lag time because of calls running through Google’s servers, so it’s a nice halfway point. To really be useful, though, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got a plan with plenty of text messages so that you can actually see on your phone when you have a new voicemail. You may also want to change your voicemail entry in your contact list so that it calls your Google Voice number instead of your regular voicemail as Google’s service doesn’t actually take its place (in the sense that your provider’s service still exists, but none of your voicemails will go to it).

The downside is that it isn’t quite as convenient to get a text message telling you about voicemail as it is to just have your voicemail icon light up, but you do get a transcript out of it and you can listen to it online, so… decide for yourself, I guess.

I seem to be getting a lot of registrations with strange names and no comments, leading me to believe that a lot of my registered users are spam bots. I’ve updated the comments system so that you have to solve a captcha to register. If I deleted your account and you are a real person, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to register again. I’ve also made it so that you don’t have to be registered to comment, though you will have to fill out a captcha every time until you register.

First, you’ll notice that I updated the site to a new theme. Why? I was using an older theme that didn’t support some of the newer WordPress features. Now there should be threaded comments and some other nice things. I still have some things to work out, like making the main column wider, but I have to figure out how first… I think it will require some image modification, which I don’t really feel like doing right now.

Second, Xbox Live has always annoyed me because I always had to call in if I wanted to stop them from charging me for another billing cycle. If, like me, the only time you use Xbox Live is when someone gives you a free month, that gets to be quite annoying. Turns out that it is now possible to stop them from automatically renewing your subscription right from your computer. Go to xbox.com and sign in (or click on your account name at the top if you are already signed in). From there, the easiest way to get where we want to be is to click “Contact Information” next to your avatar. On the next page, click “Membership Level” on the left. Finally, you should see in the middle box on the right a description of your current membership level, including this text: “Automatic renewal: ON.” Just click on “ON” and you are given the option to turn it off. I’m glad they finally allow us to do this.

That’s right, today’s suck of the day is that behemoth of internet sales, Amazon.com. I decided a while ago that I needed to recover some money by selling my textbooks online, so I listed them on Half.com and Amazon.com. One of my textbooks finally sold last week, the day before I was to go out of town. I got the notification of the sale at about 8 p.m. and my flight was at 8 a.m. I don’t have a scale sitting around the house, so I usually take my packages to the Post Office rather than just printing shipping labels online. Obviously, the Post Office is not open at 8 p.m., so my only option seemed to be the automated machine they have. Unfortunately, that machine doesn’t allow you to specify media mail as your shipping method, which is the only method Amazon seems to approve of. That meant that I paid about $8.70 for shipping, despite only receiving a measley $3.99 from Amazon. That means that not only did Amazon take a percentage of my sales, but I actually lost money on the sale. So I e-mailed Amazon, thinking that they have been fairly cooperative in the past and might throw a couple extra bucks my way so that I at least break even. No such luck. They simply told me to review their shipping policy (as if I hadn’t already done so). I e-mailed them back, arguing that $3.99 was clearly not sufficient for any normal means of shipping and that if I was going to continue losing money on every sale as a result of their policies, I would certainly not continue making money for them. The reply they sent included instructions on how to close out my account. Not only are they screwing me over with their shipping policies, they don’t even care a little bit.

Amazon.com, you are the suck of the day.

I should have some more updates coming soon. I’ve been working on a couple new songs for my band, though they might not get recorded anytime soon. That depends mainly on Navid’s availability.

I’m also thinking about doing some mini reviews of various things as they come to mind. Video games, electronics… I don’t know. If you’ve got any ideas for things you’d like to read reviews for, let me know. I can’t afford to go out and buy a bunch of things, but if I can get access to it, I can probably get a review going.

Also, I’m still looking for work, so if you are looking for a photographer or an audio technician, please check out my samples on this web site or on my band’s web site. Samples of my photography work can be found by clicking the “my photos” link in the side bar. My contact info is all here at the bottom of every page and in the “About” section, which also has more information on the gear I have access to.

My web site seems to be having some issues. Sometimes the link bar doesn’t show up properly, but every time I think I need to fix it, it starts working again. Maybe my theme is just screwy. At any rate, I will likely be making some changes soon so that the audio section more accurately depicts my audio work. I will probably also be removing the video section in favor of a link in the sidebar to my YouTube page.

Speaking of audio, I recently finished a mix for one of my band’s songs, “Now That We’re Home.” Check it out at that web site. The link is in the sidebar. We should soon have enough material to get a demo going, so that’s exciting.

For those of you that actually read this blog, I’m sorry I don’t post more often. There isn’t a whole lot going on in my life right now, so I’d rather not just bore everyone with mundane things like what I ate for breakfast (it was granola, like every other day). If something exciting does happen, I will be sure to let everyone know.

I’m going to guess that not a whole lot of people reading this follow my band’s progress, but lately I’ve been pretty busy trying to get the site up and running. I remixed a song, put up some work-in-progress material, and fixed up the site’s layout. So if you haven’t checked it out yet, please do!

I also posted some old videos I found on my computer up on YouTube. They’re not spectacular, but they’re kind of funny to me. If I don’t have the link on my videos page, I’ll put it up there.

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