Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
1

Can Guitar Frets Perform Multiplication?

from Charles Petzold [alt+shift+b] in programming

I’m sure that some pictures are worth a thousand words, but others trigger a whole lot of puzzlement. Such was the case with the cover of a book I recently bought entitled Calculating with Tones: The Logarithmic Logic of Music: ... more ...
3rd Sep 2026

Stay updated

Get a weekly newsletter with the top 5 articles worth reading every week.

More from Charles Petzold

AI-Supercharged Phishing Emails

It was once possible to detect email scams by misspellings, sloppy grammar, messy formatting, and other blunders. Now that scammers are apparently using AI to aid in their phishing emails, the tells are more subtle. ... more ...

22nd Aug 2026 • 2 votes
Protests Then and Now

When a government engages in deviant behavior, it is the responsibility of the people to express their opposition. That’s why I’ll be participating in the No Kings protest in New York City on Saturday. ... more ...

24th Mar 2026 • 2 votes
The Appalling Stupidity of Spotify’s AI DJ

Am I naïve in expecting Artificial Intelligence to be smart? Is my interpretation of the word “intelligence” too literal? And when an AI behaves stupidly, who’s to blame? The programmers or the AI entity itself? Is it even proper to make a distinction between the two? Or does the AI work in so mysterious a way that the programmers need no longer take responsibility? ... more ...

26th Feb 2026 • 2 votes
30 Years

After all these years, I still get the dreams. ... more ...

13th Jan 2026 • 1 votes

More in programming

Unattended reboots with encrypted disks

An introduction to ZKeys: a new service that stores encryption keys off-site and automatically locks access to them if the client machines go offline for a long period of time.

5 hours ago • 1 votes
Education Shouldn't Be Held for Ransom

Google told K-12 schools they could turn off AI, but only if they gave up search too. That isn’t integration. It’s holding education for ransom.

3 days ago • 1 votes
AI Assisted Sermon

Once a year at my church, I usually give one sermon. I was asked to tie the theme to a young adult retreat we had taken to the Sunshine Coast. My first experience giving a sermon was many years ago at my old home church in El Monte, California. It was a Vietnamese-American church, but…

3 days ago • 1 votes
Fortune Telling and Speculative Design

Practical tools for design engineers to explore possible futures through speculative design

3 days ago • 1 votes
Must we always use LLMs this way?

As with my last post on AI, let me open with a statement: Just because most people hold AI a certain way, doesn’t mean that we always must, either now or in the future. As I noted in that piece, and my shades of gray post, I am well aware — and agree with — … Continue reading Must we always use LLMs this way? →

4 days ago • 1 votes
📚 BoredReading

You seem to be enjoying this.

Join free to unlock everything.

Create free account

Already have an account? Sign in