Meet Dr. William (Bill) Federspiel. In German, “federspiel” means “feather play” or “feather games.” Turns out that the last name of this collaborator is appropriately descriptive of his contribution to the project, since the ideas suggested by Dr. F. are indeed playful.
Bill Federspiel is the W.K. Whiteford Professor within the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Surgery, and Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He’s also an admittedly “excellent” snorer. He volunteered to generate a Snore Tone for the project, suggesting that the tone could be funny (or useful) if it went off during not-so-great dates or way-too-long long business meetings.
He’s also an avid boater, thought that fireworks would make a good ringtone, and said that we’d be likely to get really good audio out on the river on the Fourth of July. Federspiel learned about boating from his father while growing up in Florida, and he likes to take his boat out on our Three Rivers on as many good weather days as he can.
A ringtone recording artist couldn’t really get much closer to the audio source than being out on the Mon, seemingly almost directly underneath the fireworks. And wow–what a view! Here’s Bill’s Fireworks at the Point Ringtone. Thanks, Bill for ideas from the opposite range of the spectrum–from “boring” (Snore Tone) to exciting (Fireworks at the Point).
