Just got back from feeding horses in the middle of a thunderstorm. I think I actually did start singing “I’m feedin’ in the rain…” a couple of times for the benefit of the babies. I was moving the farm’s stallion today on a halter and lead rope and he reared up on his back legs right in front of me. I just froze (for the record: not a smart thing to do). Two thoughts occurred immediately:
- My God, that looks spectacular to see a real horse doing that up close, even better than the movies.
- So this is it, I’m going to die.
Fortunately he wasn’t actually striking with his front hooves, or I doubt there’d be enough of me left to sit here typing this. He was just showing off. The stuff I put up with for the love of four-legged critters…
In the words of Servalan from Blake’s 7, “That’s not Orac! That is a box of flashing lights! I will kill you for this!” (Orbit, season 4.) Right after OVGE, I was glowing with happiness about procuring a little disco light at the show, and finding a place for it (in the same display cabinet as my Coleco mini-arcades), but I hadn’t quite found a way to integrate it into my entertainment system so it had something to respond to on a consistent basis. Well, now it does. With a little bit of creative wiring, I’ve tied it into the sound mixer I have in my game room, so it responds to whatever’s running through that – and that includes the PC’s sound. So basically, any sound the PC throws out there, even event sounds, cause the colorful little thing to light up. (Man, there’s just no way to say that where it isn’t a double entendre.) Other things which send sound to the mixer include the CD changer and the sound output from my game consoles. The original idea of the mixer was that one could listen to music and play games at the same time, but now that the color organ is plugged into an otherwise-unused headphone jack, there’s a whole other light show going on in my room. (The mixer also drives my Atari Video Music, which probably has gotten more use since I’ve owned it than in the entirety of 1976 to 2005.) Yes, both of these arcane disco lighting devices will respond to the sound of someone playing Yars’ Revenge. (And since the consoles run through an analog stereo reverb to make the room sound like a football arena when it’s all pumped through the surround speakers, the light patterns get pretty funky.)
Click here to see a short flash video of some of my blinky game room lights in action. If you’re so inclined or even remotely interested. 😀
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