For Christmas I made cards for my kid’s preschool teachers, which got me thinking about my first teachers (Mrs. Whitt, RIP) and all the great teachers/mentors I’ve had thereafter (Hi Mr. Storey! Hey Higgs! Sup Jeff) and just how lucky I’ve been to have had them. I’m not gonna yuck it up too much but I think educators are one of very few noble professions...

Then in the new year I did a Zoom with a small class in Boston who’d put together some Scout synths. (Hey Zach!) It was a lot of fun. I want to do more of them.

And so now there’s a new Education page on the site that codifies school stuff like bulk pricing, order processes, and how to put me on a screen so students can tell me what I should make next but mostly I just encourage them to make their own new things instead.

We’ll see how it goes, wish me luck, and LMK if you have any suggestions.

Higher Lower

The last email I sent announced Higher Lower, a non-video video game about arbitrary intervals. Two tones play, do they go higher or lower? Think Simon but reduced into an Oskitone kit. You get it.

That little marketing campaign went out to 500 people to get 5 orders and 10 newsletter unsubscribes. Uhhh, not great! One possible lesson is that I should stick to musical instruments. Another is that the market for electronic games about ~note directionality is small, and the market for soldering them yourself is even smaller.

I’ve luckily sold more since then and recently restocked. If you want to make a Higher Lower game, you can and should. Please do. And I promise I'll stop talking about it now. Please don't leave me!

In other news

• The next email you get from me will officially launch my Space Dice kit, an electronic 1D6 that doubles as a space laser sound effect noisemaker. What can I say, I like what I like.
• I’m making zines to accompany it and got quotes from local print shops. Guess how much it costs to print 100 copies on 8.5x14 paper, double-sided color. No cutting or folding, only printing. Guess! Then see the last bullet point. Also guess if the guy at the local indie printer I was excited to talk to was mean to me.
• Oskitone's social media has been pretty non-existent. Anything I put on Instagram gets so little traction it's hardly worth it, I don't want to pay Meta because Mark Zuckerberg has just slightly too much money already anyway, the Twitter account is long abandoned for well known reasons, and I find the Fediverse too weird to engage very much (sorry Mastodon people). I've been thinking about some kind of "Share Your Make" promo for word-of-mouth? Suggestions welcome.
• Speaking of things I dislike, I did a free trial of GitHub CoPilot to see what all the AI coding fuss was about, and it helped me make a script to "snap!" voice-control taking photos for the assembly guides (see GIF above). It was compelling and powerful but left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I was like a cabinetmaker shamefully screwing Ikea stuff together: fast but craftless. I canceled the trial before it was time to pay but will likely revisit.
• An old customer emailed me about the sequencer I made forever ago and abandoned. You can now order its PCB directly from OSH Park, with my blessing.
• The scout_2_prototype is on GitHub. Check it out if you want to see what's next after I'm done with my game phase. I'm aiming for something by Christmas, if there aren’t too many curveballs.
• Quotes for 100 copies from two printers averaged at $200, give or take $50. $2 is a lot for a single piece of paper, so I’m making them myself. Typical! Yes, he was mean to me. :sad: :crying:

Yours truly,
Tommy from Oskitone
@oskitone