site: reviews — bIRC, Cayin CP6, Marbles on Piano Strings (graduate from finds)

2026-07-27 01:40:56 -04:00
parent cbc1060b67
commit 01d3499cff
11 changed files with 137 additions and 2 deletions
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@ shortlist: true
 link: "https://birc.app/"
 linkText: "birc.app"
 source: "Daring Fireball — Linked List"
+promotedTo: birc
 topics: [macos-apps]
 tags: [irc, chat, native-mac, free]
 description: "Free Mac App Store IRC client built only from Apple frameworks, with broad IRCv3 support, bouncer history replay, TLS client certificates, and a sandboxed JavaScript automation API."
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@ shortlist: true
 link: "https://cayin.com/produkt/cayin-cp6-cd-spieler/"
 linkText: "cayin.com"
 source: "Gear Patrol"
+promotedTo: cayin-cp6
 topics: [music-and-sound, gadgets-and-toys]
 tags: [hi-fi, cd, tubes, portable]
 description: "A battery-powered CD player running two Raytheon JAN6418 tubes on silicone suspension, with Classic Tube, Modern Tube and Solid-State voicings and a one-button disc ripper."
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ linkText: "epatel.github.io"
 source: "Hacker News — Show HN"
 topics: [gadgets-and-toys, history-and-archives]
 tags: [retrocomputing, hardware, "6502", open-source]
-description: "The 6502's circuit rebuilt from 4,051 individual SOT-323 transistors on an A4-sized board, each placed at the coordinates of the transistor it replaces on the real die."
+description: "The 6502's circuit redrawn as 4,051 individual SOT-323 transistors on an A4-sized board, each placed at the coordinates of the transistor it replaces on the real die. Designed and verified; no board has been built yet."
 ---

-Every transistor sits at the coordinates of the one it replaces, scaled up from photographs of a decapped 6502 — so the dense stripes across the top are the instruction decoder's own floorplan, and the ordered columns below are the datapath, arranged by the silicon rather than by a designer. The front face carries only transistors and LEDs so the texture reads cleanly; resistors and capacitors live on the back. Fifty-five LEDs, one per register bit, make the CPU's state visible while it runs.
+Every transistor sits at the coordinates of the one it replaces, scaled up from photographs of a decapped 6502 — so the dense stripes across the top are the instruction decoder's own floorplan, and the ordered columns below are the datapath, arranged by the silicon rather than by a designer. Fifty-five LEDs, one per register bit, would make the CPU's state visible as it ran. Would: the design is finished and verified in simulation, but the boards are only now being ordered, and the maker says so plainly.
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@ shortlist: true
 link: "https://youtu.be/V9fkPC6Jrxw"
 linkText: "youtube.com"
 source: "The Awesomer"
+promotedTo: marbles-on-piano-strings
 topics: [music-and-sound]
 tags: [piano, video, experiment]
 description: "Vinheteiro pours marbles across the strings of a grand piano and plays it anyway — the smooth notes come back rattling."
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+name: "bIRC"
+subtitle: "A native Mac IRC client for the post-Textual era"
+date: 2026-07-27
+category: messaging
+topics: [macos-apps]
+tags: [irc, chat, native-mac, free, ircv3]
+link: "https://birc.app/"
+linkText: "birc.app"
+description: "A free Mac App Store IRC client built only from Apple frameworks, with broad IRCv3 support, bouncer history replay, CertFP and SASL, DCC transfers, and a sandboxed JavaScript automation API. Version 1.1.4, macOS 14.6 or later."
+source: "Daring Fireball — Linked List"
+fromFind: "birc"
+---
+
+import { Image } from 'astro:assets';
+import hero from './hero.png';
+
+<Image src={hero} alt="The bIRC window showing the Libera network in the sidebar with the #MacOSX channel selected, the channel topic bar across the top, and a member list of 357 names down the right side." />
+
+> Textual, the Mac's best IRC client for the better part of a decade, has been sunset. bIRC is one developer's answer — a client built from Apple frameworks alone, that speaks the modern extensions IRC has quietly been growing all this time.
+
+IRC has a reputation as a fossil, which undersells what has happened to it. The IRCv3 working group has spent years bolting the things people expect from a chat app onto a protocol from 1988, and bIRC implements a genuinely wide slice of them: message tags, server-time, batches, reactions, replies, typing indicators, read markers, message redaction, and multiline messages. The one that changes daily use most is CHATHISTORY — reconnect and the client asks the server for what it missed, rather than dropping you into a conversation already in progress.
+
+The native part is not a marketing line either. Real windows and toolbars, split views, semantic colors that follow the system appearance, system notifications. Fredrik Blank built it with no third-party dependencies at all, which is an unusual choice in 2026 and the stated reason he can keep the codebase small enough to vouch for.
+
+The security surface is more thought-through than the category norm. TLS with CertFP client certificates and SASL cover authentication; SOCKS5 and HTTP-CONNECT proxies do remote DNS, so your lookups don't leak the networks you're on. It works with bouncers — ZNC, soju and others — replaying stored history on reconnect. DCC is there too, with passive mode, resume, and automatic port mapping through the router, which is more care than most clients still give a feature this old.
+
+Two honest caveats. It is not open source: the developer says he may open it up later but, as a sole developer with this as a side project, he doesn't want to take on pull requests he can't service — a straight answer, and worth knowing before you build a workflow on the sandboxed JavaScript automation API. And it needs macOS 14.6 or later. It is free, currently at 1.1.4, and on the Mac App Store.
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+name: "Cayin CP6"
+subtitle: "A portable CD player with real vacuum tubes inside"
+date: 2026-07-27
+category: music
+topics: [music-and-sound, gadgets-and-toys]
+tags: [hi-fi, cd, tubes, portable, headphones]
+link: "https://cayin.com/produkt/cayin-cp6-cd-spieler/"
+linkText: "cayin.com"
+description: "A battery-powered CD player running two Raytheon JAN6418 pentodes on silicone suspension, with Classic Tube, Modern Tube and Solid-State voicings, LDAC Bluetooth in both directions, and one-button CD ripping. Around $699 in the US, €998 in Europe."
+source: "Gear Patrol"
+fromFind: "cayin-cp6"
+---
+
+import { Image } from 'astro:assets';
+import hero from './hero.jpg';
+
+<Image src={hero} alt="The Cayin CP6 portable CD player in grey aluminium, three-quarter view, showing the amber segment display, 3.5mm and 4.4mm headphone jacks, transport buttons and a copper Timbre Menu key." />
+
+> Two miniature vacuum tubes, built decades ago for military electronics, running off a battery in a machine you can carry — driving headphones from a compact disc.
+
+The tubes are the whole argument. Cayin picked Raytheon JAN6418 pentodes, subminiature valves originally made to survive being shaken around inside military gear, and suspended them in a silicone damping system. That last detail is the one that makes the thing possible rather than merely charming: tubes are microphonic, and a portable player is a device you carry, tap and set down. Without the suspension, every footstep would ring faintly through the music.
+
+What you get for it is a switch. The Timbre Menu moves between Classic Tube, Modern Tube and Solid-State, and — unusually — the choice applies to the headphone output, the line out and the Bluetooth transmission alike, rather than only to the analogue path. Underneath sits a fully symmetrical discrete four-channel headphone amp that runs in Class-A or Class-AB, rated across an 8 to 600 ohm range, so it drives sensitive in-ears and stubborn high-impedance cans from the same box. Both 3.5mm and 4.4mm balanced outputs are on the front.
+
+It refuses to be only a CD player. It takes USB and Bluetooth as inputs as well as discs, transmits and receives over LDAC, aptX Adaptive and aptX HD, and offers coaxial, optical and Bluetooth digital outputs. Best of all, it rips: press one button and the disc copies losslessly to USB storage, which quietly makes it the most pleasant CD ripper anybody has built in twenty years.
+
+The limitations are the ordinary ones for the category. Battery life is roughly 7.5 hours and varies a lot with which mode you are in — tubes cost power. And the price is not casual: around $699 through US dealers, €998 in Europe, with distribution running through specialist hi-fi shops rather than the usual places. It also charges over QC and PD, so at least the power brick is not another purchase.
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+name: "Marbles on Piano Strings"
+subtitle: "What a grand piano sounds like full of glass"
+date: 2026-07-27
+category: sound
+topics: [music-and-sound]
+tags: [piano, video, experiment, prepared-piano]
+link: "https://youtu.be/V9fkPC6Jrxw"
+linkText: "youtube.com"
+description: "Vinheteiro pours hundreds of marbles across the strings of a grand piano and plays it anyway — the smooth notes come back rattling, a prepared piano assembled by the cheapest possible means."
+source: "The Awesomer"
+fromFind: "marbles-on-piano-strings"
+---
+
+import { Image } from 'astro:assets';
+import hero from './hero.jpg';
+
+<Image src={hero} alt="A pianist in black tie reaching into the open body of a grand piano, its entire soundboard and string bed covered in hundreds of coloured glass marbles, several caught mid-bounce above the strings." />
+
+> You are not supposed to put things inside a piano. The Brazilian pianist Vinheteiro tips hundreds of glass marbles across the strings of a grand and plays it anyway, and the instrument comes back changed rather than broken.
+
+The picture does most of the work here: a concert grand with its lid up and its entire string bed under a layer of coloured glass, marbles caught mid-bounce over the bass strings as the hammers land underneath. It is a genuinely beautiful image of a thing nobody should do.
+
+What it sounds like is the interesting part. The marbles sit on the strings and damp them unevenly, so each note comes out with a rattle riding on top — the fundamental still there, roughened, buzzing where it used to be smooth. And because the strings move, the marbles never settle: they hop and reseat with every strike, so the same note played twice does not quite match. The piano stops behaving like a fixed instrument and starts behaving like a surface.
+
+There is a real tradition behind the stunt, whether or not the video reaches for it. John Cage spent the 1940s wedging bolts, screws and rubber between piano strings and calling the result a prepared piano — the *Sonatas and Interludes* are the canonical outcome. What is on screen is the same principle assembled from the cheapest possible material, and arriving at a percussive, faintly gamelan-like result by accident rather than by score.
+
+Vinheteiro — Fabrício André Bernard Di Paolo, on the channel @Lord_Vinheteiro — has form for this: an earlier video plays a piano using typewriters. Nothing here needs a musical education to enjoy, which is most of the appeal. You watch a man in black tie ruin a piano's tone on purpose, and the piano turns out to have more in it than expected.