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Photo taken from a NYC Subway 2 train of an 8 train across the platform.
8 train?

Aboard a downtown 2 train, I looked up and saw this 8 train across the platform. What the? I had just enough time to snap this picture before we left the station. I shouldn’t have been too surprised, there have been a few 8 lines over the years and the MTA includes an “8” on the roll signs. While this particular sign was an error, there may be 8 trains on the rails in the future.

Recently, I received the renewal notice for vintagesailors.com domain. It is an oft forgotten ecommerce site that sells t-shirts and other goods emblazoned with old sailboat logos. The site’s existence can be chalked up to me wanting a Pearson Ensign t-shirt and not being able to find one I liked.

It wasn’t much of a leap from making one t-shirt to thinking “Hey, I like this, wouldn’t everybody want one?” Of course, everybody absolutely doesn’t want one. But, a few people did, despite an almost total lack of marketing.

I say all of this because I’m going to let the domain expire and I feel like it is worthy of marking the occasion. Plus, there’s still time left to get a hat if you want one! As of 2025-12-28, the site is shut down, I can still get you a hat if you want one, just let me know.

The jukebox project is coming along. I made some good progress this week on a couple utility type things that make managing the music library much less cumbersome. I also learned a bit more about what it’s going to take to interface with vintage hardware. There’s a short write-up here: Jukebox Title Strips (and more).

Links

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Photo of a sheet of jukebox title strips designed in a classic, star title strip style. Various artists and titles are visible such as "The Dave Brubeck Quartet" and "The Smiths".

The jukebox project continues despite the lack of an actual jukebox…

Cataloging and Displaying the Tracks

First up, there needed to be a way of assigning tracks to buttons. Manually doing this was exciting for the first track, but that excitement waned exponentially by the 3rd or 4th track. I created an indexing script that tears through the whole music collection to make those button assignments in milliseconds.

Photo of a pile of jukebox title cards wit various artists and titles such at "The Police", "New Order" and "The Clash".
Title strips in the Star Title Strip Co. style.

With that data entry burden lifted, I moved on to making title cards. The first thing I did on this project was the card design. It was really satisfying, to use that design for something physical. I created yet another script that populates the artist and title from the aforementioned indexing script and spits out a PDF. I’m really happy with the way these came out. They deliver on the original vision without me having to copy and paste the information for each and every card—or purchase a typewriter.

If you’re interested in the code behind these things, head over my jukebox project on Codeberg.

What about the jukebox?

Mucking around with scripts and audio files is interesting, but this project is about having a physical jukebox with buttons and title cards under the warm glow of incandescent bulbs.

From the beginning, I’ve thought of using a Seeburg Wall-o-matic. Specifically, the 3WA model for it’s 200 track capacity. I thought I’d just get one that no longer works on eBay and wire up the buttons. What could go wrong with that plan?

I dug a little deeper and found this excellent write up and video of a project exactly like mine. Before watching those videos, I had no idea what was inside those wall-o-matics. Long story short, it’s all electromagnetic (not surprising given the vintage). The button pushes trigger a rotor that fires pulses down a communication wire to the main jukebox to queue the songs.

That means my “just wire up the buttons” plan probably won’t work without destroying the existing mechanism, which I want to avoid. Luckily, the project linked above includes schematics for a Raspberry Pi hat that decodes the pulses. For now, I plan on doing that, but I really need to have the Seeburg hardware before I can proceed. I’ll look to purchase one in the new year.

Until then, stay tuned for more digital fun!!!

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Photo of the door of a Brooklyn Firehouse with a mural of an alligator in a swamplike scene holding a fire hose in its mouth. A flaming forest and the Manhattan skyline are on the back ground of the mural. The text in the mural is "FDNY ENGINE 239 - GOWANUS GATORS". The mural is signed INDART 2024.

This swampy mural really stands out on 4th Avenue. I’m surprised I’ve never noticed it before.

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Some progress has been made since the last post about the jukebox project. To properly set expectations, if you read jukebox and thought Cool! This guy resurrected an old jukebox found on trash night with the expectation of seeing pictures of wires, solder and electromagnetic components, you might want to keep moving. The progress thus far has been all software and there are no cool making photos or videos to be had, yet.

However, if you want to read about some starts and stops on getting a simple music server running, stick around…

Continue reading →

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Photo of of a band on stage.
Marky Ramone’s Holiday Blitzkrieg at Gramercy Theatre 2025-12-05. Credit: Kenny Rennard

For the one or two of you following along in real time, this post is a full week late, sorry. I mention so as not to confuse about the dates. Marky Ramone’s Holiday Blitzkrieg was a week ago Friday last Friday, not last Friday.

Timing issues aside, Marky and the band did not disappoint. More than thirty numbers delivered in rapid fire with absolutely zero banter in between. Big thanks to Kenny for scoring the tickets for this event.

In other musical news, the new Jamulus server setup I mentioned last week passed its first live test with flying colors. With the whole band on, everyone sounded great and there was minimal noise. In fact, I don’t think it has ever performed as well as it did in the last jam session. We’ll have to get a few more sessions in before declaring victory, but this is very promising.

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