The Design of Unusual Things

Jeez. I've been naming files more than forty years.

I'm not claiming expertise, just experience.

Now I start all file names [1] yymmdd because:

• It is probably a local maximum for six characters and sometimes file name length is severely constrained.
  
• It sorts by name with most recent first and sorting by name is often a default.
• Date is a pointer into a log/journal/diary/notebook with additional detail, and vice versa.
• Sometimes, just knowing when I made something helps me remember what I did.
• When file name length is not constrained, I can add detail to the file name after the date:
• yymmdd-c when  limited to 8 characters where c is a character
• alternatively yymmddnn if numerals make more sense with limited characters
  
• yymmdd description where file name length is less limited.

But by far knowing how to meaningfully start a name is the most important reason. Naming things is hard and starting to name them is the hardest part. Certainty goes a long way...

...for me. Your mileage may vary.

Waves and particles are models. Maybe the best models we have, but still models. Wave-particle duality is another model. Again, maybe the best model we have, but still a model. Like all models they are useful and maybe not wrong in a way that can be proven within the limits of human understanding. 

I lack the hubris to ignore the "limits of human understanding" condition of knowledge because Kant changed my life. Not necessarily for the better. Not necessarily for the worse. How would I know? 30 years and half a lifetime from philosophy school...that's what writing gets me.  Γνῶθι σαυτόν, gnōthi sauton.

What's 30 years? The Greek is performative erudition with the low effort Google makes possible. A typical collage.  But this time I actually read the cribbed wikipedia article and learned that the phrase isn't from Socrates via Plato. I've been misinformed for forty odd years. Ever since I got the tee-shirt with the Greek upon it. 

Was the tee-shirt 1980 or 90? Doesn't matter. It's a fact that has no social impact to get wrong. It's a tiny world that would know what I am talking about and not a fact worth verifying. It was before philosophy school (there's an interesting-to-me fact about how my life unfolded)?

Here's a model: 

• All facts are interesting-to-me facts. 
• Some facts are also interesting-to-you facts. 
• Statistically, interesting-to-you-facts don't exist?
• Interesting-to-you facts are entirely social.
• Interesting-to-you facts two sources
  
• Authority
• Peers
• Authoritative interesting-to-you facts exit in a hierarchy of facts, therefore they create a hierarchy of social relationships.
• Hierarchies are constructed from status not expertise.
  
• Sometimes expertise is the ordering of a social hierarchy.
• Statistically it doesn't happen.
• Oh shit I've constructed a hierarchy.
• Good luck.
  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphic_maxims

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sages_of_Greece

Sequencer: The EA-1 is a two track sequencer with 64 steps.  Each sequencer track is one MIDI channel wide. Each track operates on its own MIDI channel.

There are a pair of independent monophonic synthesizer engines, one synthesizer engine per sequencer track. Thus, each engine has its own MIDI channel and it's own sequencer.

The combination of track and synth engine is called a Part. So there are two parts: Part 1 and Part 2. They are identical. Except each comes out of a separate 1/4" jack on the back.

Each track can store a motion sequence a single synthesizer parameter from the Oscillator or Filter block of each engine. It can also store motion sequences for the effects block of each synthesizer engine.

Synth Engine: The synth engine has two oscillators:.Oscillator 1  (OSC1) and Osciallator 2 (OSC2). OSC1 and OSC2 are not identical.

OSC1 has four wave shapes: saw, square, triangle, and Audio In (more about Audio In later). It does not have modulation.

OSC2 has only three wave shapes: saw, square, triangle.. It has three OSC Mod's (modulations): Ring, Sync and Deci (for decimator), The modulation can be turned off.

Each engine has it's own filter section. The filter is low pass with resonance.

Each engine has it's own Amp envelope with a combined attack+decay knob  (EG Int)  and a dedicated release knob labeled Decay. It's called "decay" but it effects the release phase of a typical ADSR envelope.  

Each engine has it's own effects section with two effects. There's a signal flow diagram on the EA-1's playing surface, but it doesn't go into these details.

I was thinking about dogs. 

Walking dogs in particular because I do a lot of it.

Have for many years.

Walking a dog involves getting the dog to do things.

And not do things.

And the same for the dog getting me to do things.

We go down the road shifting between forbearance, negotiation, and violence.

Less and less of the last because I am learning.

My best is the best I can do right now.

I know that barring dumb luck, in the future my best might be better if I keep learning.

I'm ok with my best right now being not as good as it might be in theory.

I'm ok with working hard and still doing it badly. 

That's what learning feels like.

Doing doesn't feel like shopping.

Doesn't feel like planning.

Doesn't feel like success.

Even though it is.