The countryside is all well and good, but it's not very well edited.
If you've ever walked through a meadow on a warm summer's day (or even an English summer's day), you will be familiar with the racket produced by large numbers of crickets.
Chirrup, chirrup, chirrup - quite soothing, really. Chirrup, chirrup. Though it is a bit over the top. Chirrup, chirrup, chirrup. And can get annoying after a while. Chirrup, chirrup, bloody chirrup.
The world, therefore, welcomes the arrival of the MaxCo Cricket Modulation kit. The kit comes complete with 250 assorted plastic wing overlays, a library of sound files (Macintosh and Windows compatible), Lasermatic thermal printer, USB cable, three tubes of Chitomax adhesive, and a safety pin. Yours for less than £99.99 or more!
To use, first catch your cricket and use the handy reference card to determine the species. Select an appropriate wing overlay, place the overlay in the loading tray of the Lasermatic printer, and close tray. Either choose one of the panoply of sounds from the free library, or upload your own (MP5 or .wav supported). Simply click "burn", and wait 5-10 seconds until the process is complete.
Open tray, remove wing overlay (caution: may be hot!) and allow to cool for at least 30 seconds. The overlay can be tested at this point by drawing a fingernail across it, where the pattern of grooves etched by the Lasermatic printer should reproduce the chosen sound.
Once cooled, the overlay should be bonded to the left forewing of the cricket using one or two small drops of Chitomax. Remember to keep the cricket immobile until adhesive sets (17-23 hours), before returning it to the wild.
A few hours' work will have your nearest meadow resounding to the gentle tinkling of raindrops, a horde of tiny voices all shouting your name, or the magical sound of a tiny hundred-piece brass band tuning up.
Bulk discounts available.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 28 2008 For [UnaBubba] http://kunarion.com...ery/hb_at_night.mp3Prost! [Amos Kito, Sep 29 2008, last modified May 23 2009] Could this somehow be automated, and have a machine do all the catching and lasermatic-ing? +-- swimr, Sep 28 2008 Excellent - although I must confess to some initial disappointment when I discovered this wasn't something to make cricket more interesting.For some reason I'm imagining a large field of crickets all chirrupping Rod Stewart's "Sailing" in unison.-- hippo, Sep 29 2008 //disappointment when I discovered this wasn't something to make cricket more interesting.// MaxCo has been working on that one for the last nine years, but has so far failed to crack the problem.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 29 2008 Great idea, but I was half expecting something like mr. potato head for crickets. Which isn't the case, you've actually used something akin to non-stupidity here. <thousands of mini 'bravo!'s echoing through the night>+-- daseva, Sep 29 2008 This idea won’t work. You need to modify upper and lower wings to withstand the new ridges, but even if the cricket survives capture and modification, it won’t play the file. The cricket’s natural sound is required for communication, and an off-spec sound is no good. The playback speed produces a high-frequency high-speed chirp. The low number of ridges you could put onto a cricket’s wing limits the length and quality of sound that could be produced. This is no oompa band. It’s not even a “hey”.-- Amos Kito, Sep 30 2008 It has been studied that in many forset settings there includes a "chorus master", usually a bullfrog, that seems to herald openings for forest chatter on a semi consistent basis throughout the night. I have witnessed such an occasion where the forest was quite silent upon dusk. And then, out of nowhere, a bullfrog sounded a long "buuuuuuuuuuurrrrraaap!" whereby the forest came alive with sounds. It's a bit scary to witness, indeed.
Give each cricket a different insturment, and watch them progress naturally towards vast ensembles of symphonic mastery, mozart and bach and all the rest intertwined and weaving sounds unimaginable, unintelligible and utterly beautiful!-- daseva, Sep 30 2008 +-- xenzag, Sep 30 2008 First, catch your Cricket.....-- gnomethang, Sep 30 2008 //"chorus master"// hmm, I don't suppose any of those orchestral cues are in the ultrasound region ?-- FlyingToaster, Sep 30 2008 Yet another of the best, worst ideas ever.
I ended up in a meadow where someone thought it would quite a lark to hook up all the crickets with samples from a certain song by Rick Ashley.
Consequently, I set fire to the meadow, and am posting this from jail.-- land, Oct 02 2008 (sp. "Astley")-- hippo, Oct 02 2008 Listening to Rick Astley is still a criminal offense, in most countries. However the objective is to get someone to listen to his music. It is called Rick- rolling. This would be crick-rick-rolling?-- 4whom, Oct 02 2008 random, halfbakery