#non-standard

NON-standard Hotel, Pirogovo, Russia, 

Food Fortunes is a pretty interesting and yet detailed abstract tarot. The deck is a fully illustrated 78-card deck by Josh LaFayette. The suits are replaced with sweets, drinks, sides, and mains, and the whole deck is pretty up for interpretation, considering the whole deck and all the names are redone and don’t appear to line up with any traditional deck types, but can be used intuitively. Or to find dinner.

Buy the deck from the artist or from Hot Topic!

This one’s an interesting entry. The Queers and Queens tarot is a deck made by artist Sam Kahn. A full 78-card deck of portraits of everyday queer people, the Kickstarter originally included entries for people to get into the deck, and includes a plethora of color, element, and flower symbology. The deck meanings themselves are derived from the Rider-Waite meanings, and people were paired up based on their propensity toward certain cards. It’s definitely a beautiful and unique deck, and a particularly great match if you’re looking for LGBTQIA+ representation.

Kickstart the deck here!

A complete technical reference for fretted instrument string tensions Catalog Supplement/String Tension Specifications

Their version of the magic formula features a mysterious constant (386.4). If you use it, the string density results seem plausible. 

Anyway: I was trying to find out if I could put guitar strings on an octave-viola. So I wrote a python program to generate this table:

c2: (e2) 1.66  (a2) 1.90  (d3) 2.01  (g3) 2.02  (b3) 1.61  (e4) 1.61  g2: (e2) 1.61  (a2) 1.85  (d3) 1.96  (g3) 1.97  (b3) 1.57  (e4) 1.57  d3: (e2) 1.71  (a2) 1.96  (d3) 2.07  (g3) 2.08  (b3) 1.66  (e4) 1.66  a3: (e2) 1.33  (a2) 1.53  (d3) 1.61  (g3) 1.62  (b3) 1.29  (e4) 1.29 

Each row describes a string of the octave-viola. Each entry in a given row corresponds to a guitar string (so first entry in c2 row corresponds to to e2 string of guitar). Each entry gives

(tension using this guitar string) / (desired value)

where desired value is string tension for a normal viola. So for first entry in first row, 1 would mean string tension is exactly what it ought to be. Instead it's 1.66 -- too much tension I think, not a good idea to these guitar strings on my axe.

This is one of those nonstandard waterproof keyboards. It has a large enter key and a small backspace key.

Title of review: On your life, do not buy this.

How can I title the review such, if I have not bought this myself, you ask dismissively. I know things is how. Terrible things that would wake you up in a cold sweat.

There are two TREMENDOUS PROBLEMS with this keyboard, and a third that you would think is a benefit until you own it for a while. The first problem is the large enter key. This rearranges all those keys on the side, so if you use them at all you’re going to be hitting random ones constantly. Then, and this is the joy of the tiny backspace key, you will snap your pinky finger up to delete the random key you just put in, only to add another random key because you missed the backspace key. Who on Earth has precision when hitting backspace? Ask yourself that. So this is the sequence of events that will occur over, and over, and over until that selling point I mentioned becomes a flaw:

You will be typing and want to add some kind of punctuation. If you are a programmer, this will happen to infinity and possibly beyond. You will not input the punctuation you want because you might as well just be throwing darts at the keyboard blindfolded. Next you will snap your hand up to hit backspace, and input a /. Then you will try to hit backspace again, possibly input another /, then finally delete the 14 /'s you just put in. This will happen VERY FREQUENTLY with this keyboard layout, and eventually you will dunk the keyboard in a pool of water to destroy it with glorious catharsis.

And it won't die. It is waterproof. It will sit in your closet for eternity no matter how much you hate it because it is immortal. And one day... you'll have to go back to it. And ALL OF THIS WILL REPEAT AGAIN.