X-11: Spark Test

The X-11's been running poorly lately, especially since the beginning of summer. I'm currently running a distributor and coil from an '85 S-10 Blazer. It works well enough, making a really nice, fat white spark, but I've never been happy with the installation. I had to make a bracket to mount the coil and wire up connectors for power and tachometer feed. None of it looks good. It seems to have a block of some sort on the casting restricting how far it can be turned (probably for emissions purposes), but all I'd need to do is loosen the hold-down, pull the distributor, turn the shaft just a little, and put it back. It's been a guessing game trying to get the engine timing dialed in ever since I put this distributor into it. It's really happy in winter, but I start having drivability issues once the weather warms up.

The distributor I'm testing in this video is identical to the X-11's original item, aside from being non-computer controlled. It's an all-in-one style with the coil built into the cap. Very clean installation, no external coil and wire, and the car's original wiring just plugs right in. There's nothing to keep it from being turned for more advance, either, so maybe the engine will have better hot-weather manners.

My test rig was powered by an old PC supply. I originally intended to run jumper wires to each of the distributor cap "towers" (where the plug wires connect) and even started making up some jumpers for the second half of the video, but at this point I was satisfied that it'll work, since I could hear a "chirp" from internal sparking where there wasn't a jumper and could see a good spark in the tester for those that were jumped.

I could have used a lab assistant, though, to see just how good that spark was. The last time I rigged up a test like this was for the distributor that I'm about to swap out of the car. My lab rat then was a co-worker who just couldn't resist the urge to touch the pretty white fire--and BAP!!. He jumped a couple of feet in the air. He didn't think the thing was going to work. Heheheh.

I still need to check out the vacuum advance and replace the cap and rotor, but now it's ready to drop in.

Song of the Day: Happy Anniversary to "The New Guy"--Neil Peart Joins Rush, 1974

Thirty-nine years later, Neil's still the New Guy after replacing original Rush drummer John Rutsey.

Here's "Finding My Way," live at Pittsburgh's Civic Arena, August 17, 1974--his first concert:




...and here's the band June 2, 2013 playing "Clockwork Angels," the title track from their latest album:



It's really weird seeing any musicians other than Lifeson, Lee and Peart on the stage. Guess THEY'RE the new guys.

Bonus: "Far Cry" from 2007, just because:

Song of the Day: Awesome young woman busts up some Goppers.

Awwww, yeah. (more here)

Funny how she was such a threat that it took FOUR deputies to get her out of there.

Fark republicans.

"Awe" and "Heroes" tags for the young lady who busted 'em up, all the other tags for the scumbags.

Song of the Day: Sweet Dreams (Moby)

Working on a CAD drawing and sort-of watching "The Next Three Days."
As soon as I heard the enormous-sounding piano in the scene just before the cops pop in to arrest Lara Brennen, I had to know what song this was. Fortunately, it's second in the movie's IMDB soundtrack page.



There's not a lot going on, musically. Plenty of open space. Can't get over how amazing that piano sounds.

Song of the Day: Rush accepting Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2013 Induction

Wish I'd seen it in mid-April, but I forgot.



It was nice of them to let Neil "The New Guy" Peart speak first.

Alex Lifeson's speech is memorable!


Bonus, from 2008: an 11 year old girl plays one of Rush's more technically difficult songs.

Solo.

On an electric piano.

Song of the Day: Cheerios Spoof

A few weeks ago, this happened:




...and the wingnuts predictably fell all over themselves trying to come up with the most vile thing to say about the ad's interracial couple and their little girl.

Too bad they won't see the humor in this spoof:



The song? Yeah, wingnuts as they scream scream SCREAM!!!!! over the rest of us living our lives the way we damn well see fit.

ADDING: Bonus! 11-year old kid sings National Anthem, wingnut scum crap their cages (some Twitterrhea at the link)...and the kid's doing an encore tonight. bwahahaha!

Song of the Day: Go Into the Water / Fansong (Dethklok)

I've got a bad habit of getting an album and only listening to a song or two on one side. When I first bought Rush's "Moving Pictures" in 1987, it was just for the one song: 'Tom Sawyer'. I'd slap the tape in my player, rewind to the beginning of the song, and play only that song. It took a couple of years to get into the rest of the album--and with each new song I couldn't believe I'd waited so long, because each one was awesome. Now "Moving Pictures" is a favorite and I'm on my 3rd tape and 3rd CD (I don't know how I wore the music off a CD, but I did--sounds cooler than "they just deteriorated with age").

There's a long list of other bands and albums: I've listened to the first side of Alice In Chains' "Facelift," Def Leppard's "On Through the Night," the first few songs of Metallica's "Pantload" "Load."

That said, it's only taken a few months for me to get into the first Dethklok disc ("The Dethalbum"). There's not a bad track on it. Some are more awesome than others, but today's song, "Go Into the Water," is glorious. The guitars are incredible, especially those Brian May-like harmonies. Reminds me of Metallica when they were still in the music business.



The video (from the deluxe edition Dethalbum II DVD) includes "Fansong" as a hidden "bonus" track.

Pic of the Day: Columbus Tower, San Francisco

I snagged a shot of San Francisco's Columbus Tower without realizing that I was a half-block from a "Star Trek IV" filming location, near the intersection of Kearny, Columbus and Pacific.

Dig that JJ Abrams lens flare in the Google Earth shot! That makes it more Trekkie! (Trekish? Treklike? Trekalicious? Trekadelic?)


Right here:



Man, that music sucks.

The building's got an interesting history. It was home to Caesar's, the restaurant credited with creating the Caesar salad. Francis Ford Coppola bought the place in the 1970s and made it home to his American Zoetrope production company.

Song of the Day: Going to California (Led Zeppelin)

Got an opportunity to fly out to San Francisco for a few days. This'll be a lot of firsts. Never been further west than New Orleans, no farther north than Louisville, KY--and that trip was just last year.

The only mountain I've seen is Lookout, right near the Georgia/Tennessee line. Furthest south? Key West.

Never been out of the South.

Got the cameras ready, batteries charging, and all that. Really looking forward to seeing Alcatraz, that big orange bridge, and whatever I can spot from 30,000 feet.

(Edit to add: I want to thank those awesome fellas in Congress for doing an end-run around the Sequester by getting the FAA to make things more convenient for traveling members of Congress by throwing money at them. In fixing things to their own benefit, they've indirectly made my trip easier. Hope that hurts.)

Cartoonists Demand Action

Cartoonists Demand Action is a subset of Demand Action, which is a campaign of Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

You might not recognize all the cartoonists' names at the end, but if you've read editorial cartoons and comics pages you'll recognize their work.

Brace yourself for one heartbreaking image at the end.




The Cartoonists:
Lincoln Peirce
Lalo Alcaraz
Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman
Dave Roman
Mike Luckovich
Art Spiegelman
Tom Tomorrow
Bill Amend
Roz Chast
Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott
Jeff Keane
Mo Willems
Ruben Bolling
Stephan Pastis
Mike Peters
Ted Rall
Steve Brodner
Garry Trudeau
Raina Telgemeier
Dan Piraro
Peter Kuper
David Mazzucchelli

Song of the Day: "Natural Science" and "Animate" (Rush), covered by Pierre Martin

I ran across Mr. Martin's YouTube channel a few nights ago. Don't remember what I was looking for, but his was the third rendition of "Natural Science"--and, I'd say, the best.



I went through his uploads list, watching him play most of Rush's fan favorites--"Cygnus X-1," "One Little Victory," "The Camera Eye," and seriously got tears in my eyes from some of it. This guy's GOOD, with an excellent grasp of the basics and a lock on Neil Peart's drumming style. It seems like he's chosen the more technically challenging songs (that's the thing about Rush--their songs range from kind of challenging to pretty challenging to holy-crap-how-can-three-guys-play-this-live?! Makes it a lot of fun to play on a good day and a trainwreck on a bad one).

It helps that he's got a much smaller kit than Peart; you can see what he's doing from the single front-view camera (Neil's kind of hidden behind a wall of cymbals and drums).

Out of all of them, "Animate" is the one that's been stuck in my head for the past few days:



Love that ride cymbal on the upbeats.

Song of the Day: Take Five, RIP Big Dave Brubeck

One day short of 92. Here's the song I most associate with Brubeck, though it was written by Brubeck Quartet member Paul Desmond.


I've heard several interesting variations on this song. There's this reggae-ish version that was used as the theme song for "The Secret Lives of Machines" which morphed the song into 4/4 time instead of its normal 5/4.

The other one I can remember off the top of my head was at a Chinese restaurant, played using Asian instruments.

Tell it to the next hurricane...

Bunch of idiots chanting "USA! USA! USA!" shouting down a guy heckling the ShitMitt about climate change....



All that hot air and wishful thinking should deflect the next hurricane or other natural disaster. Just put 'em all right where Jim "The Hurricane Will Hit HERE" Cantore shows up.

Pic of the Day: Bwahahaha!

This is getting to be a daily occurrence as the MittBot's programming proves ever less capable of parsing the real world for him.

Best quote of the day: Lawrence O'Donnell opened his "The Last Word" with "Mitt Romney is drowning in stupid people..."

De Niro nails it:

Song of the Day: Countdown (Rush)

Instead of a sad song for the passing of Neil Armstrong, I wanted something that expresses the excitement of seeing human ambition paying off.

This is the sort of thing we should be focusing upon--reaching for the stars, walking on the moon, exploring our little corner of the sky.



I'm sad to see Mr. Armstrong go--but what a life he led!

Pic of the Day: The Vulture Picks the Granny Starver

The MittBot has picked Paul "Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver" Ryan as his running mate for his 2012 presidential campaign.

With that in mind, we've selected yesterday's Pic of the Day and its companion video, since rMoney couldn't really have picked a better way to hand Obama another four years without picking Sarah Palin.

Ryan is the guy whose "budget" would gut Social Security and Medicare--and the National Park Service, among other things. rMoney's the guy whose company guts smaller companies and feeds off the corpses. They're perfect together!

AND...



A huge thankyouthankyouthankyou!! to Charlie Pierce for starting the "Zombie-eyed granny starver" nickname.

Bonus snark: WereBear coined the campaign name: "Dunning/Kruger 2012." Here's why that's funny.

Bonus bonus snark: rMoney's such a shit that he outsourced notifying the runner-up VP candidates to one of his offspring units: "Dad says you're not it."

Super Extra Bonus Snark from The Thin Black Duke: "And if Romney reminds people of the asshole boss who fires you on Christmas Eve, Ryan is the ratfuck snitch in the office who tells lies to the boss behind your back."

Ryan is the S.S. Mittanic's iceberg. It's all over but the sinking.

Song of the Day: The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing (Joe Satriani, live)

A few months after I started learning to play guitar, I started reading guitar magazines--and all of them were abuzz about Joe Satriani's "Flying in a Blue Dream" album and his amazing guitar pyrotechnics.

I found a used tape of the album and was blown away by it. I'd never dreamed that a guitar could be made to do the seemingly impossible things Satch makes look simple.



Never learned to play like that--but at least now I can see HOW he does it.

Song of the Day: Bach's Toccata in Dm...

...on a 1,000-watt tube amp driving a smaller amp as a load:




Same amp, with a 25Hz signal running through it to show how the tubes react:




Update: Here are the specs for the EL6471 amp. The 6 mercury-vapor rectifiers are there to handle some pretty hefty juice flow in the power supply--a 3-phase (220/380V) AC supply that gets kicked up to a 3,200 V anode voltage to feed the two big output tubes up top.

The two smaller tubes in front of and to the right of the big rectifiers are part of the power supply for the amp's third stage tubes.

The amp was intended for stadium sound. The 1kW model is the baby: Philips also listed 2kW, 10kW and 20kW amps.

Here's some glorious electronics porn of the amp in case the videos aren't enough.

And a link to the service manual...and one to the data sheet on the output tubes.

Song of the Day: Afterimage (Rush)

This song plays in my head at times like this, after a death. The song's about the loss of Robbie Whelan, an assistant engineer on some early Rush albums and close friend of the bandmates. It made Song of the Day almost 3 years to the day ago to commemorate the murders of Jim Barrett and Dr. John Britton; now it's dedicated to the victims of the Colorado shootings. No snark tonight.

Riff of the Day: Tom Sawyer synth "growl" (Rush)

I'd been wondering for a few days how Geddy Lee got what he calls the "growl" in Tom Sawyer--the first thing you hear after the drum hit:



Andy Skuse has a writeup of his attempts to figure out the growl, a set of .WAV files of his results, and a demo of the Digital Men playing "Tom Sawyer" with the resulting growl:



Not too shabby. Singer sounds more like Rik Emmett of Triumph than he does Geddy Lee--but Geddy Lee doesn't even sound like his 1981 self anymore.

As a bonus sound, Keyboard Magazine has the info for programming the "lead synth" sound for the song using a MiniMoog.