Weekender #29

• Birb weekly update: There’s no other way to put it. I’ve been grieving the loss of my favorite birb, Handsome the myna. Things haven’t been the same since his departure. I find myself wandering near the back door, hoping to see him when I pop my head out… but he’s not around. I can only hope that he’s found a new territory to defend and that he has lots of food and water, and hopefully a new partner.

  • The hardest part about caring for wild birds is that you’ll never know what happened to them if they never return. They just never come back and you never know why.

• Over the past two weeks, there has been a huge increase of COVID-19 cases reported in Hawaii due to the delta variant. 845 cases were reported today. COVID restrictions have been relaxed for a while now, and life has a business as usual atmosphere, albeit with masks and some physical distancing. School is back in session and all students are back on campus. Many of the youngest students aren’t able to get vaccinated yet, and that has me concerned. At least I know that if things need to go back to distance learning, my team at work is prepared to do so.

• Audra and I decided to check out the Public Library for the first time in over a year and a half. We ventured into Kapolei Public Library and found a treasure trove of books and music. It was really nice to be able to browse for books again.

• I’ve been taking photos with the Micro Four Thirds system for many years. My trusty Olympus OM-D E-M5 mkII is dependable, but has been starting to show it’s age. My plan was to purchase the E-M5 mkIII the moment it was released at the end of 2019. When it was released, I waited for a few reviews and to hear what early adopters thought about it. Many suggested that purchasing an Olympus E-M1 mkII would be a better choice instead of the E-M5 III since it was essentially the same camera with a better viewfinder, 30 fps faster continuous shooting, better battery life, and a few more “pro level” features, for a little more money. At the time, the E-M1 II was 3 years older than the then new E-M5 III. I decided to wait to see if Olympus came out with anything better, and then 4 months later they came out with the E-M1 mkIII, which was a step up but very expensive. That said I’m still waiting for something new from Olympus or Panasonic.

  • This month, I decided to sell my E-M5 II before it loses all of it’s value. Audra and I each have one, so I put them up on Craigslist to see if anyone locally was interested. There aren’t any Micro Four Thirds dealers in Hawaii as far as I know, so I knew that chances were slim that there would be any takers. After a few weeks of no interest locally, I sold both of them to mpb.com. Now I wait to see if the offer they quoted me turns into cash.

  • I was telling a friend today, that if I had to start over again, I’d still look at the Micro Four Thirds system, but I’d also be looking at Fuji and possibly Sony. I’m too invested in Micro Four Thirds lenses at the moment, but if a nothing better materializes, I may consider what my future purchase would be.

• As promised, I posted a photo of all of the pedals that I built during the summer of 2021.

  • If you’re interested in what the actual effects these pedals are clones of: From left to right: Top row: Vertex Steel String (which is actually a copy of Jack Orman’s classic Mini Booster), Ibanez MS-10 Mostortion, Harmonic Percolator Fuzz, Roland AD-50 Fuzz. Bottom row: Benson Preamp, Friedman BE-OD / Dirty Shirley, A rehoused Fuzz Face clone from BYOC, Dinosaural OTC-201 Optical Compressor.

  • Most of these pedal clones were built using PC boards purchased from AionFX and components purchased through various online vendors. The exceptions are the Dinosaural OTC-201 compressor, which was a complete kit from AionFX, and the Benson Preamp. I purchased that PCB from PedalPCB.

  • All of them are functioning/operational, but I still have plans to do some custom graphics for each of them, once Audra finds some free time.

  • As I’ve mentioned previously, purchasing components can get expensive, especially with shipping costs to Hawaii. Unfortunately, there’s only one electronics shop that sells these types of parts locally, but they don’t have everything. Learning what parts to purchase, as well as the specific sizes and values needed has a steep learning curve, and often makes my head spin. It’s the part of this process that I dislike the most. It takes a lot of organization and multiple checklists to ensure that the right parts are ordered. I’ve narrowed purchasing components down to Tayda for a majority of the parts. Since Tayda doesn’t usually stock of rare, N.O.S. transistors or diodes, I purchase those from Small Bear Electronics.

  • As the summer progressed and I built more pedals, I wised up and started buying some of the components in larger quantities to save on shipping. I only wish that I had the extra space to store all of my parts in a easily accessible and organized manner.

• This week, I put on the smooth, lo-fi sounds of Recollections - EP by RdBeats. I learned about this collection from Metic, whose guitar playing is featured on two of the tracks. Listen: Apple Music