The Tone Bender Timeline

20 May 2013

www.bigmuffpage.com

Fuzz fan Kit Rae's obsessively detailed history of the Tone Bender fuzz pedal.

The Tone Bender was one of the first fuzz tone boxes to come out of England during the booming London music scene in the mid 1960's, the British answer to the American Maestro Fuzz-Tone. There are numerous versions, each with slightly different characteristics to the sound, and numerous re branded versions made for third party companies. Tone Benders were popular pedals among guitarists in the late 1960's through the mid 1970's, often associated with the Vox brand, and guitarists like Jimmy Page, Jeff beck, Mick Ronson, and Pete Townshend. It is arguably the pedal with the most interesting and colourful history in the annals of fuzz, and the genesis of the UK stomp box phenomenon. The history is somewhat convoluted, with a host of interrelated individuals and companies, including Jennings Musical Industries, Vox, JMI/Vox engineers Dick Denney and Gary Hurst, the legendary Macaris Music Exchange of London, Sola Sound/Colorsound, The Beatles, The Yardbirds, and Led Zeppelin, among others.

Below is a chronological timeline of the pertinent dates for pedal releases, events, and people related to the Tone Bender fuzz pedals, spanning the 1960's, and including some dates from the 50's, 70's, and 90's that are relevant.…

FontShop's List of Lists of Fonts

10 May 2013

www.fontshop.com

What it says on the tin. Of note: lists of alternatives to common fonts (i.e. Helvetica), and by application (i.e. web design, mobile). Via Erik Spiekermann.

Fn.py: enjoy FP in Python

07 May 2013

github.com

Fn.py library provides you with missing "batteries" to get maximum from functional approach even in mostly-imperative program.

Via Clinton N. Dreisbach

ANN: Color.js 1.0

30 April 2013

color.js, my javascript color management library, has reached version 1.0. I'm surprised about this because I wrote it back in 2008 (hence the incredibly generic name) and have hardly touched it since. The magic of open source I guess. Rather than blathering about the features, heres some snippets:

var Color = net.brehaut.Color; // or 
// var Color = require('./color').Color;

var Green = Color("#00FF00");
var Red = Color({hue: 0, saturation: 1, value: 1});
var Blue = Color("rgba(0,0,255,1)");
var Cyan = Color({hue: 180, saturation: 1, lightness: 0.5});
var Magenta = Color("hsl(300, 100%, 50%)");
var Yellow = Color([255,255,0]);

Red.toCSS() //=> "#FF0000"

Red.shiftHue(45)
   .darkenByRatio(0.5)
   .desaturateByAmount(0.1)
   .toCSS(); //=> "#80630D"

The library supports most CSS string formats, object and array literals, immutable values, three color models (RGB, HSV, and HSL) and has a grab bag of operations on each.

Thanks to Matt Wilson, Tim Baumann, Simon Heimler, Aiden Hobson Sayers, and Michel Vielmetter for their contributions.

Bee-harming Pesticides Banned in Europe

29 April 2013

www.guardian.co.uk

Europe will enforce the world's first continent-wide ban on widely used insecticides alleged to cause serious harm to bees, after a European commission vote on Monday.