I recently spent some time learning how to refinish/finish wood properly. Up until recently I would just bung on some varnish and call it a day – but there’s a lot more too it than that. WoodCraft put me right on how to apply dye/stain/toner to match one wood finish to another. I’m also trying out Tung Oil as a finish (the real stuff, not the “Tung Oil Finish” products you get at the ‘regular’ hardware store).

I thought I would practice on the old piano cabinet that’s been sitting in the corner of the living room…

It’s over 100 years old, and left out in the rain – so the black gunk I’m slowly removing must have been good for something…

I’m also about half way through a PAiA 9700s modular synth – I think that the piano will make a nice new home for that when it’s done.

You may not know this, but green lasers are actually 2 stage infrared lasers that have the frequency doubled (and the wavelength halved) into the green part of the spectrum.

They are only about 6% efficient, whereas red and blue lasers are “pure” lasers.

BUT…

[Via Slashdot on Ars Technica:]

“Ever wonder why projector systems and televisions doesn’t use laser illumination? It isn’t for safety reasons, and it isn’t for efficiency reasons—laser diodes have efficiencies ranging from 30 to 50 percent. No, the problem is green light. We have red laser diodes, and blue laser diodes turned up nearly 15 years ago. But green—where the heck is the green laser diode…? ”

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Great, so all the laser harpists can now burn holes in their hands even faster!

I just found these clips on youtube…

A couple of things I noticed, one is the flare on the camera lens when he breaks a beam. This manifests itself as a vertical broken line – due to the pulsed or scanning nature of the harp.

Another thing is he sometimes seems to hesitate before selecting a note. Playing a laser harp up close can often be visually disorienting – a couple of times I found that I had to count along from the end to make sure that the beam I was about to break really was the one I wanted…

Oh yes and the neat open/close effect when going from 9 beams to 7. Maybe this is when he presses the transpose footswitch?

I think that the fact he loses his place during the performance shows that it really does work – and how difficult it can be to keep track of where you are…

Today is the birthday of Nikola Tesla, I just wanted to preserve the neat logo that Google did today…

Googletesla (C) 2009 Google (tm)

And my attempt to recreate one of his devices…

Hopefully the Google lawyers won’t come get me…

Hang on, there’s somebody at the door…