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Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

Thorens TD-124 mkII(late 60s).

I also have a watch from the 20s, but don’t wear it often.

Various pieces of audio equipment, mostly home made and vacuum tube based. The top of the rack has a Thorens TD-124 turntable in a plywood plinth with a modern tonearm.

September 25, 2025 at 4:54 AM

Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

Now that I've been able to use mine for an extended period of time, I have found it very helpful. The reference stuff doesn't get a ton of usage, but the lined pages are exactly what I wanted. Spending the year learning more grammar does make me wish I had observed proper s'michut for the title...

The inside rear cover of a handmade composition style notebook fills most of the frame. The page is covered in chart for converting Biblical and Talmudic measurements to contemporary metric and Imperial equivalents. The left column has length, time, and mass. The right column has area and volume. In the area section at the top right are boxes showing the three smallest area measurements, and along the left and bottom edges of the page are rulers for the two smallest length measurements.

The rear cover of a handmade composition style notebook fills most of the frame. Since the notebook opens right to left, the spine is on the left side, covered in green bookcloth. The cover is a handmade relief print with a dark blue background and the Hebrew alphabet in white on repeating lines. The alphabet is written with each line offset from the previous, so Alef is first on the first line, Beyt is first on the second line, and so on.

September 1, 2025 at 11:20 PM

Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

I wanted notebook paper that was better suited for how I would use it, but anything like this was for small children. I wanted college rule plus a half.
As the idea percolated, I thought it would be fun to really lean into the composition book style, with reference information on the inside covers.

The inside front cover of a handmade composition style notebook fills most of the frame. On the right side is table that lists the Hebrew letters in order in block and Rashi script, their numeric equivalents, and their names spelled in Hebrew and Roman characters. At the top of the left side is a box for the notebook's owner to place their name and contact information. Below that is a table that lists Hebrew vowels and punctuation marks with their names spelled in Hebrew and Roman characters. On the left of the frame a green bookcloth hinge and the first ruled page of the notebook are visible.

A custom sheet of white notebook paper fills most of the frame, designed specifically for the spacing of writing in Hebrew. There is a pink vertical line near the right edge of the page to create a margin. Blue lines run across the full width of the page. The top has some extra blank space for titling purposes. The top line is followed below by the second line. The third line is half the distance from the second line as the second line is from the first. This pattern repeats so there is a large space, a smaller space, a large space, a smaller space and so on down the page. The page is sewn into a notebook, with the green bookcloth hinge visible on the right side of the image.

September 1, 2025 at 11:20 PM

Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

Earlier this year I completed a project that had been kicking around in my head for a long time. I meant to post pictures online but never quite got around to it.

This all came about because I noticed that when translating, I was wasting a lot of space leaving whole lines blank to fill in vowels.

The front cover of a handmade composition style notebook fills most of the frame. Since the notebook opens right to left, the spine is on the right side, covered in green bookcloth. The cover is a handmade relief print. The center of the print is a white block with a black framing box, a line for writing, and black text that says "Tofu VaVohu Machberet" in Hebrew letters. Most of the print is a dark blue background with the Hebrew alphabet in white on repeating lines. The alphabet is written with each line offset from the previous, so Alef is first on the first line, Beyt is first on the second line, and so on.

September 1, 2025 at 11:20 PM

Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

The television character Homer Simpson responds to seeing a television character named Homer Simpson.

August 31, 2025 at 2:59 AM

Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

She’s pretty mad about it, but damn, Babka’s onesie is so cute!

A brown tabby cat is eating kibble from a steel bowl. She is wearing a garment with arm, leg, and tail holes that is white with brightly colored dinosaurs.

July 29, 2025 at 4:59 PM

Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

Homer Simpson’s face is pressed against a window. Text below in the typeface based on Matt Groening’s handwriting says “OH, SAVE ME, JEBUS!”

June 22, 2025 at 2:52 PM

Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

We jam Mitzrayim

A copy of the 2CD set of“Monorails and Satellites” by Sun Ra sits on top of a boombox on a kitchen counter.

April 12, 2025 at 9:32 PM

Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

The body of the entry is where it gets hard to read, somewhere around 4 points.

And the page headings that are so helpful in navigating the dictionary are really tiny (8 points from the top of an ascender to the bottom of a descender), and also blurrier than the text on the entries.

A close-up photograph of a line gauge ruler graded in 5 point intervals sitting next to the body of a dictionary entry with with the Roman numeral VI, showing that the capital letters measure approximately 4 points.

A close-up photograph of a line gauge ruler graded in 9 point intervals sitting next to the page heading of a Hebrew dictionary showing that from the top of a lamed to the bottom of a kuf is approximately 8 points.

March 27, 2025 at 2:32 AM

Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

A standard Hebrew letter is about 6 points, or if you look at the top of an ascender to the bottom of a descender, it's about 11 points.

(yes, I know my pica pole is weird. I had been doing a bunch of stuff in 18 point intervals, so I thought it would be super smart to get a 9 point line gauge)

A close-up photograph of a line gauge ruler graded in 7 point intervals sitting next to the heading of a Hebrew dictionary entry showing that the overall height of an aleph is approximately 6 points.

A close-up photograph of a line gauge ruler graded in 11 point intervals sitting next to the heading of a Hebrew dictionary entry showing that from the top of a lamed to the bottom of a kuf is approximately 11 points.

March 27, 2025 at 2:30 AM

Don’t be fooled by the Josh that I’ve got

@tofuvavohu.bsky.social

I am going to be starting a Talmud class soon, so I wanted to get a copy of Jastrow that's not falling apart. I got on eBay and decided to get the one with the cover that uses the typeface that makes me think of The Hobbit: