Yann Seznec

My current struggle: the seemingly dozens of semi-compatible Molex connectors. I am really struggling to find matching housings and pins!

I am soldering a lot of Molex connectors to PCBs these days. I really struggle to find a good way to hold them in place while I solder the back side of the board. Does anyone have any good methods for this? I feel like I’m missing something obvious.

It turns out that I can get the university to send out hard copies of my dissertation to whoever I want. Let me know if you want one, they will be printed up next week!

@cb @Binder yes I made the boxes! the strings are repurposed from an old controller called a gametrak, I made a new custom enclosure and PCB. the "brain" is a Daisy Seed microcontroller, running Pure Data code compiled by plugdata. I'm slowly adding everything here, but still a lot of work to do to make it actually documented: https://github.com/yannseznec/STR500-stringSampler Hope that answers your questions, but happy to provide any more details of course!

@nnenov yes exactly! specifically they are hacked out of the rev2 gametrak.

@evilpaul_atebit which day of the week would you have expected it?!

Progress on my STR-500 string sampler. Now I have made two! This makes it nearly twice as fun!

Starting a Barcelona-Stockholm #CrossBorderRail journey today. First observation is how the experience of taking the TGV from Barcelona Sants is oddly reminiscent of airports? You have to xray your bags, wait in a weird queue, board from a certain area, etc. I guess it works but feels very strange. #interrail

New paper for #CHI2026 - Play/Destroy: A portfolio of sound destruction devices. I dive into my thoughts and process behind destroying sounds, what it can mean and do. I frame it all in terms of sustainability, to push against the relentless pursuit of growth and seamlessness
https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791701

@nach@chaos.social hahaha ohh nooooo

@Mrhoatzin@idlethumbs.social i think i see it as all the same issue. Like, the ai idiocracy is (partially) enabled by a lack of understanding of how computers are meant to work

I don't mean to be grouchy-old-man about this, I think there are plenty of non-judgemental explanations and ways of contextualising it. But I do feel like the creative-computing-design-pedagogy world is sleepwalking into a very strange situation.

having dipped in and out of teaching digital-adjacent things over the past 15 years the difference is really noticeable. A large percentage of students at apparently high-level technical universities don't know how to save files to a folder or install software or the difference between closing a window and quitting the software.

A thing people don't talk about enough: the seismic shift in forms of computer literacy over the past 5-10 years.

I'm not saying that young people don't know how to use digital things. I'm talking specifically about how they have no idea how desktop operating systems work or should be used. Saving files, installing applications, folders + subfolders. This knowledge is steadily disappearing.