blog.smalleycreative.com · EST. 2010
"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. -Aristotle" -Francis Bacon
31 ENTRIES · SINCE 2010
NOW ON THE BENCH
Note: Other than for illustrative purposes, no LLMs were used in the creation of this content. All opinions, typos, em dashes, and uses of negative framing in this artisanal, hand-crafted content are my own. There is a battle underway between those of us who produce value by beautifying, improving, and
25 MIN READ
Note: When writing this post, I made a deliberate decision to remain as politically neutral as possible. The theory I am about to outline for you looks at politics and mass media through a macro lens, and does not depend upon condemnation or support of any particular political view. That
7 MIN READ
In the tech industry, we’re often driven by a relentless pursuit of innovation, efficiency, and more recently, growth. I’ve built my career in this space, starting in olden times (read: 2009) with this blog, leading into organizing public engineering meetups, and eventually in various roles in the tech
5 MIN READ
I am pleased to share that Modartt has released the long-awaited Pianoteq 8 for iOS (iPhone/iPad). As of this writing, Modartt hasn’t even shared this news on their website, so it’s likely you may be hearing this news here first. Recently, I wrote up a deep dive
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If you’re a jazz or blues guitar player, there is a good chance you’re not interested in much distortion in your tone. You probably seek mostly clean tone. One of the most crucial yet frequently neglected components of any guitar signal chain is the preamp vacuum tube(s)
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Understanding how to perform the visual study of vacuum tubes can enable you to readily identify the unique characteristics and applications of a given tube. In The EICO 667 Vacuum Tube Tester I shared high-level information about what vacuum tubes are, their use cases, and how to test them. In
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In the last week of 2021 I purchased the above Rhodes electric piano (or EP for short), a 1975 Rhodes Mk. I Stage Eighty Eight from Tim Warneck and his team at Retrolinear in North Wales, PA. According to Tim, this particular instrument was produced at a strange time: right
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This story starts in an unexpected place: In mid-February, Clavia Digital Music Instruments of Stockholm, Sweden teased the imminent release of the Nord Stage 4, the long-awaited update to their flagship stage piano, the Nord Stage 3. The Nord Stage 3 had been my main digital keyboard for many years,
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I was recently fortunate enough to get my hands on a workhorse vacuum tube tester, the EICO Model 667 Dynamic Conductance Tube and Transistor Tester. For those of you who don’t know, vacuum tubes are amazing little piece of hardware that are similar in construction to lightbulbs and have
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I feel ashamed at the thought that thousands of years from now our descendants may discover what I refer to as Artifacts of Unbridled Consumerism. To our progeny, these items would be seen as small components collectively representing the grand folly of our era. At some point in the ’90s,
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This blog is now 13 years old, certainly a relic by Internet standards. It’s now 2023, and it’s been some time since I’ve last posted. Still, I regularly receive messages from those readers who have found value in my posts, whether they’re wrangling legacy software, or
4 MIN READ
Today we’re going to build a router. Yes, that’s right, we’re venturing into networking, which for many is uncharted, technically daunting territory. Together we will work through all of the steps required to build a high performance, Linux-based router I have named alpha — almost totally from scratch.
20 MIN READ
