Scinortcele with Drow Nekops!

Episode 35, Side B: "DRINK ALL THE COFFEE" (Charlie Pickle, Part 17) by Spoken Word with Electronics

Episode 35, BONUS: "Fred Rogers Soundboard" by Spoken Word with Electronics

Episode 35, Side A: "Mister Rogers' Metaphysical Phone Line" (Do You Consider Death An Enemy?) by Spoken Word with Electronics

HEALING WITH LOVE

Gerald Jampolsky and Fred Rogers

"A moving account of the healing roles love and support can play in children's critical illnesses" — made available to children and parents in 1983 for purposes of therapy, via cassette.

SPOKEN WORD WITH ELECTRONICS #35: Mr Rogers' Rare Words From 1983 on Death and Childhood Illness

Hi, everyone, welcome back to the show. This week is a tribute to Mr Rogers. I have one rare tape on Mr Rogers in my library of unusual records, and when I share this with people I present it as "a side of Mr Rogers you may have never heard." Most listeners agree: This is a very incredible album. Specifically, this is Fred Rogers translating the complexity of death and pain into helping parents deal with a huge fear: The death of their kids. He also relates similar comfort to kids themselves. And then you meet the children, who are all wonderful, happy, and seemingly more aware of the moment than many adults three times their age. I'm posting it this week because we need more compassion in the world, presently.

This is what the 1983 cassette "Healing with Love" is all about, and its obscure placement in the Mr Rogers discography only makes it more interesting. This wasn't work for PBS. It was seemingly only intended for the patients and their parents, and copies of the tape were produced in small numbers. There is no way this topic would have made it onto his show (though Bruce Haack on Mr Rogers is a favorite in that category)

This tape celebrates the word of Dr Gerald Jampolsky, who is a kindred spirit of Fred Rogers. You are introduced to Jampolsky, his group of patients, their parents, and then encounter some frightening moments with a parent grieving a dead child. Dr Jampolsky manages a phone hotline for terminally ill children and consoles parents, both those grieving a death or managing stress, and Jampolsky's love and care for everyone is to be admired. Hear the entire tape here.

Of course, we had to make a tribute to all of this, and that can be found in Side A for this week, "Mr Roger's Metaphysical Phone Hotline" including some of the more intense Mr Rogers sentences I've ever heard. Here's one: "Do you consider death an enemy?" – Wild.

Side B for this week continues our serial Charlie Pickle. This week introduces you to your first day's work at Company Statistics, where both you and Charlie work, and you're given some tips on helping everyone out with the coffee.

Episode 34, Side B: "Happy Birthday, Susan" (Charlie Pickle, Pt 16) by Spoken Word with Electronics

Episode 34, Side A: "The Roomba is Dreaming" (Music made from Firmware Update Files) by Spoken Word with Electronics

Episode 34, Demonstration: "Envelope Filtering Audio-Based Firmware Update Files" by Spoken Word with Electronics

SPOKEN WORD WITH ELECTRONICS #34: Making Music with 2600 Hz Tones and Firmware Audio Update Files

Number-based trivia: 2600, the hacker quarterly, is named after this 2600 hertz tone, which is a single tone that can override a payphone's pricing controls with one single command.

Hi everyone, welcome back to the show. This week is about loud noises made by computers. Awful sounds like modems, faxes, and my favorite unbearable noise: The firmware update file. Firmware can be updated via an audio file and to demonstrate this, we discuss audio files from Korg's Monotribe, the W-slash sampler from Whimsical Raps, and Nanoloop.

I thought it would be fun to make comforting music from these noises, and you can jump to "The Roomba is Dreaming" to hear the end result. The discussion for this week is a demonstration of using envelope generators to smooth out the harsh tones of a firmware file. In particular, a trapezoid generator based on an EMS Synthi is used to pull out tonal rhythms.

Last week's Boing Boing post on "Booting DOS from vinyl" reminded me of cassette drive loading. We had an Atari 400 and an 800, and both of those used cassettes to load many of their games. I used to love that noise, and I expect Atari filtered the sound of the cassettes themselves, otherwise risk injuring the ears of kids who put the cassettes (intended for a computer) into their walkman (it would still play, after all). So you'll learn about Zaxxon, Frogger, and my favorite Atari cassette-based game: Salmon Run.

All of these sound files work to load data because a lot can be communicated in a tone. If you think about a phone dialer, it is twelve separate pitched notes (0-9, pound and asterix) – These tones are used for any number of aggravating automated systems when you call customer service lines, and they also connect your call. There are a few tones never intended for you to hear, however, including the 2600 hertz tone, which was a tone generated by a payphone when a call was concluded.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak unofficially began Apple Computers with a phone phreaking device called the Blue Box. It was a device that sent out a 2600 hertz tone to fake (or phake) the sound of a phone getting disconnected. The two callers would remain on the phone, however, allowing a free call without billing. So in our introduction this week I demonstrate the 2600 hertz tone using a wonderful iphone app called Phonal Tonal, which replicates a Blue Box, Green Box, and a Red Box.

Episode 33, Side B: "The Abrupt Decline of Clarence TX, 1965-1968" (Charlie Pickle, Part 15) by Spoken Word with Electronics