#Plug socket conundrum

[lordofthesoups]

Electrical socket from yours truly. I hope it is to your satisfaction

THEYRE SO SAD AND SHOCKED

OH THEIR LITTLE FACES

Fascinating thank you

[r1ddlessy]

tech troubles with klitz

warnings: bimbo + technologically challenged reader

"klitzy, my computer won't turn on!"

your whiny tone on the phone made klitz smile to himself, predicting the conundrum you were facing was bound to be relatively simple.

"are you sure,princess? have you tried pressing the button?" he bit back a laugh as he heard your annoyed huff.

"obviously! you need to come over to check it out." you demanded, tone offering no option of escape. not that klitz wanted one anyways.

"of course, ill be there in 10." he grinned as he hung up, excited at the prospect of seeing his favourite drama queen again.

as promised, he arrived at your home and was quickly ushered in to the bedroom where you gestured to the offending object.

"it just won't turn on! i'm scared it's broken..." you pouted at him and your glossed lips and Bambi-eyed expression broke him.

"i'm sure it's not broken, bun let me take a look at it." he sat in your spinning pink chair and experimentally tapped on the mouse seeing if anything happened. the black screen stared back at his furrowed brow. klitz decided to move to check out the monitor and see if anything was amiss. his hand brushed along the back of the monitor and paused when he felt a gap or rather a socket.

"bun, why is the plug missing?" he asked confused. your own brows furrowed in confusion.

"what do you mean, it's right there?" you pointed to the floor where the computer plug was. klitz couldn't help the laughter that escaped his lips.

"why is your plug on the floor? it should be connected." he proved his point by plugging in the discarded plug, which resulted in your computer screen lighting up. you clapped in excitement.

"i disconnected it 'cause i needed to plug in my CD player. thank you klitzy!" your arms wrapped around his neck and he held you close, inhaling your sweet scent.

"you're like my tech knight!" you exclaimed dreamily. klitz chuckled and kissed your cheek. you were so easily impressed.

[adafruit]

Metro RP2040 with MicroSD socket

this design was originally a "Metro RP2040 Airlift" (e.g. it came with an ESP32 for wifi support) but now that there's a low cost Pico W it doesn't seem to make as much sense. So we respun it with a micro SD card slot! we've got the classic Arduino shape and pinout, USB Type C for programming, right angle reset and user boot buttons so you can reprogram with a shield on it. STEMMA QT for plug and play I2C devices, debugging in both 2x5 SWD and 'pico probe' format, and a micro SD card that's connected to the SPI port and also has the SDIO extra pins connected for high speed dedicated usage for folks who want to try 4-bit SDIO interfacing. we had a bit of a conundrum with D0/D1 - traditionally those pins go in numeric order, but then the UART is backwards from what Arduino shields expect. so we put a DPDT on there to allow changing back and forth. some parts like the capacitors and neopixel didnt render but we like these 3D renders to give us an idea of part location and clearances. time to order prototypes!

[mysynthfetish]

Alisa 1387, Part I

Well, my invisible droogies, it was Xmas in March, me brothers. You see, my Belarusian pal Egor, out of the bloody sincere kindness of his heart, shipped me a goddam Alisa 1387. FOR FREE! I offered to at least pay for shipping (no idea how I’d have done that though, as PayPal doesn’t seem to allow sending money to Belarus last time I checked, maybe it’s different now) but nope. I mean WHO DOES THIS KINDA STUFF?! In this day and age of Drumpf and Breggzit and Me First, Fuck You! Duuuude. Egor, I really appreciate it!!!!!!!

Not in the best (or worst) shape. But the lass is in need of some serious refurbishment. As you can see in the photo above, a number of switches were broken and missing their buttons. But Egor sent me a box of extra knobs, buttons and switches!!!! Goddam man! I owe you, for real. Anyway, I had no idea where I was even gonna start, because before he sent it he provided me a long list of ailments the poor thing is suffering from: “Keyboard is really buggy to not working so I couldn’t get envelopes to work, osc1 is working but something wrong with triangle additional wave shaping, PWM works. Osc2 sounds too low so I think there something with capacitors there. On output only pulse, so need to check triangle waveshaper also. LFO works. Filter works but pots everywhere are almost dead, they need careful cleaning and resoldering. So a great amount of work is needed with it not only soldering but also work with hardware refurbish. Do you still need it?” Bwaahahahahahaha!! I said “yeah!” And so, here we are. First thing I decided to unfuck was this:

WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS?!?! I had the same deal on a DW-8000 I just flipped here a month or two ago. But that’s not it, ohhhhh no, it was even scarier on the inside!!!!

The wires were being held together with scotch tape!!!?? Fucking Holy Electrocution By A Russian Synth, Batman! I wanna just yank the socket and put a standard jobby in but the frame is damn near 2mm thick, and it’s fucking STEEL, so cutting/filing is Not Going To Be An Easy Job, so I’m still on the fence as to how to remedy the Power Cable Connector Conundrum.

Next job was replacing all the electrolytic capacitors. Not a super hard job, but I started noticing that the values of components on the schematics and those in the actual synth in front of me did not match. That, and what looked like a polarized electrolytic on the schemo was in fact a Gifuckingnormous mylar or in some cases poly cap. What?! Jeez. And then I found this:

Milk carton time. Have You Seen Me? MISSING CAPACITOR! I was like, you have gotta be shitting me. And the fucker wasn’t rattling around loose inside the synth either!? And there are vacant areas on the Generator 1 (VCO1) daughterboard where the schematic shows capacitors should be. What, they run out at the factory and just decide “fugg eet, no capahceetorz for you, comrade synth!” or what? And that ain’t all the shenanigans going on with that board either! Get a load of this!

What the Jumping Fuck On A Stick is this Soviet Spaghetti here?!?! Flying resistors tied together with a goddam chunky diode thrown in for WHO THE FUCK KNOWS WHY!!??!? All I could do was shake my head. After some minutes of being rendered absolutely speechless had passed, I cleaned the menagerie of components up, just reflowing solder and nudging stuff closer to the board, really. But what the hell is up with this? Seriously if anyone out there has ideas, I am all ears!

I gave up on that board for the time being and then went about replacing all the switches that had their business ends broken off. Egor kindly supplied me with more than enough of the same type switches he got from Bog Knows Where. They all work now (mechanically anyway). The hardest thing was the Generator 1 Waveform Selector Assembly, as it has three switches that are mechanically interlinked, so when you press a new one down, the currently pressed down one will pop up—meaning only one selection can be made at a time. I uncovered the secrets of the inner workings of the assembly after desoldering the three switches and removing the whole shebang. I also discovered that the switch actuators themselves are different, as you can see below:

On the right, with bee-you-tee-full blue base, is an original switch from that assembly. On the left, a typical (standard?) switch. Same electrical connections and pinout (check out those legs! and on both sides too!!) so whatever. The actuators in front are broken ones from two of the three blue switches (I was letting them set after carefully superglueing them back together). See how they have little grooves in them? Those are there to slide a spring-loaded metal inner-faceplate along that then forces the other switches up when you press one down. Anyway, I swapped the blue ones out with the all-brown ones, so maybe if I get the Generator board working again, it’ll be possible to engage more than one waveform at a time. I’ve read reviews of this synth that say doing just that is possible, so I dunno what gives.

After some general cleaning and reflowing of sketchy looking solder, I was ready to plug it in to my step-up transformer and duck for cover. No explosions or smoke or arcs of unbridled electricity occured, thankfully. Oh I forgot to mention I replaced the 5-pin DIN main out with a standard 1/4” jack. Yeah. So I turned it on, the power LED came on, and the LFO LED lit up and cycled on and off properly, and the speed changed accordingly when I twiddled the speed knob so that was reassuring. But, no sound and no response from any key, period. I could make the LFO send the filter into near self-oscillation, but even that was super, super quiet. Nothing happened when I raised or lowered the Gen 1, Gen 2 or Noise knobs in the Mixer section. Oh well. Kind of a big let down. But I knew what I was in for when I started all this. In any case, I dunno where or how I’m gonna start troubleshooting this thing. OH and I found a loose wire too! One side is soldered to the switch in the LFO section that selects filter or Generator as the LFO’s destination. No idea where the other end belongs soldered up to. The schematics aren’t as easy to decipher as those of the Polivoks either, so there’s that to deal with too. In any case, I don’t expect I’ll have her up and running again all that soon. And as I said before, anyone out there with experience refurbing/resurrecting an Alisa 1387, feel free to chime in, as I’d really appreciate it!

To Be Continued.

[sansy-fresh]

Oo! May I request 14 with Slim/Fell, please? Thank you! 💙

You sure can :D <3

14: “You’re not listening to anything, your headphones are unplugged!”

It was a conundrum he’d been trying to solve for the past few months, unable to gather the desire to outright ask until the question was nearly burning the end of his proverbial tongue. Slim would wear headphones when they were out and about, typically still answering him any time he got his attention, but other than that he was lost to the world, head swaying to the beat of music Fell couldn’t hear.

Or, at least, that’s what Fell had thought at first, before he noticed one day that the end of the headphones weren’t actually plugged up to anything. The end that would typically be plugged into a phone or music listening device was just stuffed in the pocket of his pants, no music being played.

Finally, one day, as he watched Slim rock his skull to the beat of imaginary music, he couldn’t help himself. “You’re not listening to anything, your headphones are unplugged!”

Slim’s sockets shot open, his head turning as he gaped at Fell, his face soon turning sheepish. Fell frowned. “Why do you have them in if you aren’t listening to anything?” It made no sense to him.

Slim looked away, seemingly ashamed, before his quiet voice spoke up. “It’s so the noise is…less.”

Fell blinked, then, sockets widening, he stepped forward, pulling his boyfriend into a tight hug. “Well, if that’s what helps you, then keep doing it. Don’t mind me.”

Slim smiled up at him, a faint blush on his cheeks, and Fell smiled back. Well, at least that was another puzzle solved.

[piscesdoctor26]

Real life conundrum #72

Trying to find an extension cord for the new work fridge because the power cord won’t reach the socket. Female Co-worker: Why don’t you just wait for a man to come help you with that? Me, externally: all I need is a power cord and I’ll be fine. Me, internally: lady when the hell did this office transition back into 1950s standards like seriously did you just ask me that for real why the hell can men magically make power cords grow or extension cords manifest out of thin air cause damn I mean I just unpacked the entire damn fridge out of the box BY MYSELF without a man and oh golly my dainty triceps can’t take this shit anymore apparently cause wow high heels and a vagina prevent me from plugging in electrical devices, sure go find me a man let’s see what happens when I plug his junk into the socket

[shirlleycoyle]

This Company Thinks It Can Solve Diversity With 100,000 Fake AI Faces

A startup thinks it can solve diversity issues in stock imagery by replacing real people with algorithmically-generated portraits of people who don't exist.

Generated Photos, a collection of 100,000 images of AI-generated faces, is owned by Icons8, a company that makes stock icons and illustrations for designers. According to the company, all of the portraits are free for anyone to use and accessible in a Google Drive link as long as users link back to generated.photos whenever the images are used.

According to a blog post by Icons8, the company took the training images (AI generates new images after “learning” from a pool of “training” data) in-house using real models, and none of the training images were pulled from existing stock media or scraped from the internet without consent.

The portraits Icons8 chose to feature on the Generated Photos website are weirdly poreless and stiff—the telltale signs of algorithmic generation. Still, they're no less stiff or weird than traditional stock imagery of, say, a woman eating salad and deliriously laughing.

But many of the 100,000 images found within the database itself are truly fucked up. Some have random eye sockets on their foreheads, or chins that melt into the background. Engineers still haven't perfected a method of generating fake faces that escape the uncanny valley. If an algorithm doesn't have enough source images or time to train—or just because of the quirks in AI models—it can leave artifacts like a hole in the head.

The available information on the Generated Photos website doesn't disclose the demographic makeup of the models whose images were used for training or any details on the dataset or system itself. Icons8 did not respond to a request for comment.

"So, the resource lets creators fill their creative projects with beautiful photos of people that will never take their time and money in real life," Icons8 wrote in the blog post. The company says that it's "creating a simple API that can produce infinite diversity."

Its website previews a user interface that allows designers to filter the fake people into categories based on skin tone, ethnicity, age, and gender—alongside an image of a grinning blonde white woman.

"Generally, I raise my eyebrows at anything as 'infinite diversity,'" machine learning designer Caroline Sinders, a fellow with Mozilla Foundation and the Harvard Kennedy School who studies biases in AI systems, told Motherboard.

"Who is determining or defining that? Are their definition or parameters open to audit? Can they be changed? What is their process for ensuring infinite diversity?” she said “On [the] one hand, it is better to have a database full of images that are not real people—that doesn't violate anyone's consent. But what are those data sets used for? And who benefits from those systems? We need to ask that as well."

Implying that a lack of diversity can be "fixed" with an algorithm is dubious. Machine learning models are the product of human labor, whether it's an engineer coding an algorithm or Mechanical Turk workers being paid literal pennies to identify objects that help train an AI. Their human biases and prejudices are often baked into their software.

The AI research community is struggling with a lack of diversity from the people who makes these systems; Findings published by the AI Now Institute earlier this year said the machine learning industry is experiencing a "diversity disaster," with systems built mostly by men. As for how this has turned out so far, one example: In 2018, Amazon pulled the plug on its own hiring AI, after it found that the system was biased against female applicants.

Computer-generated humans, and CGI influencers in particular, are having a moment—and are similarly under fire for attempting to achieve some idea of diversity while not actually engaging or compensating people of color. "Shudu Gram," a CGI model as seen on Fenty Beauty's Instagram, is the creation of a white man—and has been criticized for profiting off of her representation of diversity. He calls her his "expression of creativity."

View this post on Instagram

Shudu ❤ Nfon . . . 📸@cjw.photo . #shudu #3dart

A post shared by Shudu (@shudu.gram) on Jan 8, 2018 at 10:32am PST

Another issue raised by the Generated Photos project is that of fake accounts on social media, and the ease with which people can make bot, spam, or catfishing profiles using algorithmically-generated images. Earlier this year, spies used AI portraits to make connections with high-powered government officials.

Instead of “infinite diversity,” AI is giving us an infinitely expanding set of conundrums to navigate. But if you want to use diverse and ethically-made stock images, you can download them from a place like culturally-diverse stock image company TONL, or Vice's Gender Spectrum Collection image library.

This Company Thinks It Can Solve Diversity With 100,000 Fake AI Faces syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[lewishamledger]

The land of make believe

Marcus Halls Props has worked on all the major West End musicals from Hamilton and Tina to Bat Out of Hell and Kinky Boots. Chris Marcus and Jonathan Hall, who set up the company in 2006, show us behind the scenes at their new premises in Ladywell

Words Nikki Spencer; Photo by Paul Stafford

At the back of Supreme Animal Foods pet supplies in Ladywell lies a secret magical world of make believe, where cakes look delicious yet can’t be eaten, flowers bloom but have no smell and there’s an array of musical instruments that won’t play a single note.

Huge shelves are stacked to the rafters with chairs and coffee tables of every design and size, piles of empty suitcases, tea sets from all eras and a plentiful supply of trays.

“Nearly every show seems to need a butler’s tray so those get used again and again”, says Chris Marcus as he and Jonathan Hall embark on a guided tour of their veritable Aladdin’s Cave.

In the workshop area a team of props makers are busy making weird and wonderful creations for stages not just in the West End but for touring shows around the globe.

“We have an incredibly talented team who have previously worked at places such as Madame Tussaud’s and the Royal Opera House”, explains Chris as he picks up a cup of tea and turns it upside down with a smile.

“We create a lot of fake food and drink and tea is one of our specialities. A while ago we did all the cakes for the Calendar Girls Musical so we had trestle tables full of cakes. You knew they weren’t real but it did still make you hungry.”

By the large warehouse doors there are two huge piles of props all packaged up and ready to be shipped to Germany and the US for tours of Bat Out of Hell. “It’s an action-packed show and it’s been quite a challenge,” says Jonathan.

“There’s one scene where a large white table cloth is pulled away to reveal a car underneath. That was a headache to say the least. We had to find a way to disguise a four-metre car convincingly as a banquet table and then work out  how to remove the cloth in an instant. In the end we suspended the cloth with electro magnets which could be released at the press of a button.”

And that wasn’t the only conundrum.

“There’s lots of furniture and quite a bit of it is in perspective. We had to have bedspreads specially made at some very funny angles, it almost sent the bedding company over the edge.”

At one workbench a retro mixing desk is being built for Motown the Musical, while most of the team are busy working on rather macabre assortment of props for A Very, Very, Very Dark Matter a new play at The Bridge Theatre about Hans Christian Anderson which is set in the attic of a Copenhagen townhouse.

The attic is stuffed full of puppets and Chris and Jonathan and the team have been making 120 of them from hummingbirds to skeletons to horses, alongside other rather unusual items including a large bible filled with dolls heads.

“Luckily we found someone in Spitalfields who was selling off a load of old dolls heads so we now have a plentiful supply is we ever need them for anything else”, says Chris.

So how did they get into this business?

Jonathan grew up in Derbyshire, left school at 16 and worked as a touring puppeteer and puppet maker before training in Stage Management at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, while Chris, who was involved in amateur dramatics when he was growing up in Devon, studied Technical Theatre at Rose Bruford College in Sidcup.

“We met when we were both working as stage managers on the Lion King and became friends” explains Chris. “We went on holiday to New York and late one evening we got chatting about what we wanted to do in the future and we came up with the idea of setting up our own props company.”

Their services were immediately in demand and last year it became clear that they had outgrown their premises in Camberwell.

Both Jonathan and Chris live in Ladywell, and they came across their new building online, although it looked nothing like it does now.

“It used to be used by Acre Lifts and was the perfect size but when we saw it, it was just a large empty space and it was only after we moved in that we discovered there was only one plug socket in the corner, and a tap with a small dribble of water coming out,” recalls Chris.

“In January some friends came over from Spain for a week to help us sort it all out and they ended up staying until April!”

They got a mezzanine company to install an upper floor where they have their office. On the wall there’s a huge whiteboard with all their current projects mapped out. They never know what they will be asked to do next.

“We get requests for all sorts of random things. We had to make a body of Eva Peron for Evita and a whole lot of bodies wrapped in plastic for a show at the Donmar Warehouse”, recalls Chris.

“You just learn to just go along with it and do your best. They will want a table that is light enough that one person can lift on their finger but that 10 people can tap dance on,” Jonathan says wryly.

“Some set designers simply present us with a rough drawing while others give us beautiful intricately made 1:25 models of everything. We still have all the ones from Tina stored in a Quality Street tin.”

As well as making things in the workshop, they regularly trawl big antiques markets such as Ardingly, Newark, Lincoln and Kempton and closer to home, Greenwich Auctions, hunting for things that can be used as they are or adapted.

“We needed thousands of old books a while back and Greenwich was good for that”, says Chris adding that eBay is also a “ very valuable resource”.

Every show works differently but once everything has been made and sourced they then attend technical rehearsals at the theatre.

“Something that someone sat and wrote at a computer may not actually work on stage so things change all the time”, explains Jonathan.

“Strictly Ballroom Act 2 bears no resemblance to the original and Tina is the same. Bat Out of Hell on stage is poles apart from what it was at the beginning,” he says.

And with shows going all around the world that means they are often travelling.

“It’s been a crazy busy year, as on top of moving I have been and all over the place from Tokyo for Mary Poppins and Toronto and  Germany for Bat out of Hell to Newcastle for Benidorm Live!

“Jonathan has been mainly on our shows in London but has been in some glamorous locations like Northampton for Kinky Boots and Leeds for Calendar Girls,” says Chris.

Every day there’s a constant steam of vans arriving with deliveries and collections. “We know our postman very well and all the delivery company drivers too,” says Jonathan.

With so much coming and going the large warehouse doors are often open so people can see in as they walk to and from the pet shop car park at the rear of the building.

“Ricky, who has run the pet shop for over 25 years, is lovely to have as a neighbour but there have been a few odd moments for his customers since we moved in”, says Jonathan.

“We recently had to make a load of cut-up animal carcasses, and butchered pig’s heads out of polystyrene for a play in the West End. You could see people doing a double take as they walked past!”

[lordofthesoups]

things i have learnt from this: americans keep sad/shocked/screaming little guys in their walls. Absolutely fascinating. I think i kinda love them

Mutuals, followers, friends, enemies i didnt know i had, i ask that you show me what your plug sockets look like because i have remembered that not everyone has the same types and now have become interested in what everyones normal plug sockets are.

Thak. You