Do vinyl records count? I really like that they make beautiful noise from a simple electromechanical process.

I do think a split keyboard design would serve a slate like this a bit better though.

I’d been looking into building something like this out of a Raspberry Pi, very cool that this is open source.

It was the early days of a new technology and way of listening that was completely different compared to the past 60+ years of recorded audio. I guess as a more modern analogy it’s like those cheap 3D films at the height of the fad that felt the need to gratuitously shove objects directly in front of the camera to get the most out of the 3D effect.

Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, who produced Pet Sounds, was actually deaf in one ear. Despite that, he got along just fine in a monophonic world, but the switch to stereo completely left him behind. It was a huge change in how music was mixed.

You have to understand that mixing consoles from that era were supremely limited in channels (think four, eight, later sixteen), to the point where they would often have to mix one section (say, the drums) and then record that mix to tape so it would take up a single channel and then do the guitar, bass, and vocals on another channel. The idea of having two of the same thing going through two channels was an exorbitant luxury they couldn’t afford!

Hey just so you know in many people’s minds SW doesn’t stand for software.

Fedora is what I’ve got on my Thinkpad right now and so far it seems pretty good! Silverblue is very intriguing to me but I chose not to go with it because I need to be able to modify aspects of how the lower system works (using JACK for audio for music production purposes; afaik this is not really supported through Flatpak). Compared to Arch or Nix OS or whatever else that’s popular with the hardcore Linux enthusiasts, Fedora is just right for someone that needs a working system to just get stuff done.

I’d heartily recommend Niagara Launcher to anyone that wants something a little different.

Workers co-op

That seems really exciting! But don’t services like Discord forbid third party clients?

I do think that the 4e DMG had a lot of practical DMing “advice” that got dropped for the 5e one sadly. Stuff about how to tell a fun story and organize a full campaign.