Those of us who have attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to learn guitar and ended up learning the ukulele sometimes miss the “fuller” sound of the guitar, which makes it appropriate for sadder songs, just to mention one possibility. The re-entrant high-G tuning of most ukuleles doesn’t help much in this regard, but if you are, say, in a gig situation where you are going to amp the instrument anyway, there’s an inexpensive solution that will supply the “missing strings” without having to change your uke or your playing style at all. It’s called an “octaver pedal.” Read More
At last! The pretty good MIDI guitar
I have this thing for making a guitar sound like something different, like a piano, or a marimba. Those instruments produce short, “plucky” sounds like a guitar, so why not? One way to achieve this is to output MIDI instructions from a guitar, which has been attempted with rather limited success ever since MIDI was invented. Well, I’m happy to report that the wait might be over for the majority of us guitar (or ukulele) hacks. It’s a gizmo called “TriplePlay Connect,” and you can get it for under two hundred bucks. In this article, I make a pretty thorough review of it, including how to connect it for the quickest best results. Read More
Fiction section started
You may not know this, but prgomez.com began as a promotion website for my fiction, under pen name PR Gomez. This aspect got rather buried over time, but it’s back. You’ll find a FICTION button on the header, which will take you to a sort of blog where you can download my fiction in epub, pdf, and kindle formats, so you can read it comfortably on your computer, tablet, or smart phone. I’m starting with some short fiction entirely for free. I hope you enjoy it and pass the word to others.
Here’s the link to the first item: a short-short story about what might happen to you when you click “I accept” on a software installation without reading the fine print.
PassLok Universal released
Here it is, the latest variation of my PassLok encryption app. PassLok Universal is a lot like PassLok for Email, with these few enhancements:
- It runs with just about any email service, not just Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook online
- It includes all the password management power of SynthPass
- It that weren’t enough, it also includes the page isolation functions of Page Cage
All of it launched by clicking a single icon. Which functions become active depend on what’s on the current page: encryption/decryption if that material is on the page or can be put into it, passwords if a login is visible, page security otherwise.
Here’s where you can get it for Chrome, or for Firefox. Read More
Make a baritone cuatrolele
No, it’s not a tongue-twister. Rather, it’s a new cool-sounding tuning that you may want to try. Ingredients: a baritone ukulele, an extra guitar 5th string (or baritone uke 4th). It sounds particularly good using a capo. Read More
PassLok for Email updated to v. 0.5
It doesn’t look like much judging by the number, but this is a huge update, which deserves a special announcement. As usual, you can add it to your browser from these links:
Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/passlok-for-email/ehakihemolfjgbbfhkbjgahppbhecclh
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/passlok-for-email/
Emerging Email Encryption Extensions
The other day I was curious about what other extensions the Chrome Web Store thought were “related” to my own apps, which led me to discover a number of possible competitors that I knew nothing about. In this article, I am critiquing a number of those competing with PassLok for Email and the just released PassLok Universal.
Read More
Make a baritenor ukulele
By “baritenor” I mean a tenor-size ukulele that rather sounds like a baritone. Why do this? Because you can always get the standard uke sound from a baritone by simply putting a capo in the 5th fret, and you get two ukes for the price of one. Ideal for traveling, except that baritones are a bit too large to stuff in a suitcase. The solution? Tune a smaller uke like a baritone, or close to it. I’ve found that a tenor uke works well as a starting point, with good results. The baritenor set, plus a couple wound strings for the basses, should also work well to make a good-sounding guitalele with standard tuning.
Read More
Make a tenor banjo
A couple years ago, I wrote a post on how to make a banjolele starting from parts bought here and there. I’ve simplified the process to make a 4-string banjo, and it has turned out so well that I just had to share it.
FusionKey released
FusionKey, just released in the Chrome and Firefox web stores, packs into a single icon all the power of PassLok and SynthPass. It makes a high-security password when you want to fill a password. It decrypts an encrypted message if there is one, and makes a new encrypted reply. It integrates with every web mail service in existence. And, like all my other apps, FusionKey is free. Read More