Here is a bunch of cool stuff I have found lately:
The Openstomp Coyote1 is a product seemingly made for me. A stomp box that you can program to be any thing you wish. Sound great but it is not yet released. I am going to keep an eye on it there is a lot of potential.
From the site:
What is it?
The OpenStompTM Coyote-1 is an open source audio effects processor built for guitar players. With the Coyote-1 users can develop custom audio effects in software (like distortion, echo, chorus etc.), mix multiple effects to build “patches”, and exchange those effects and patches with the OpenStompTM community.
A companion Windows application (OpenStompTM Workbench) allows Users to combine effects into patches graphically, and to move patches and effects between the Coyote-1 device and their PC’s disk.
The Coyote-1 O/S is open source so users can tweak it to behave any way they like, and the hardware is fully documented so that developers can take control of the whole pedal, dedicating all available system resources toward the implementation of unique custom solutions.
Those Wii remote are cool and have lots of great uses. Macs people should check out WiiToMidi.
From the site:
WiiToMidi allows you to convert signals from a Nintendo Wii controller to MIDI signals. It is a Cocoa application for Mac OS X and uses the DarwiinRemote WiiRemote framework to decode Wii controller signals. It also supports the Nunchuk controller.
From Remix comes some really great tips for make glitch effects.
Karlheinz Essl has some neat software for making generative music. I found this when I got interest in generative music after reading about Brain Eno and Spore.
Gearslutz has a good thread on optimizing your PC for audio production use.
Even being part of the first generation that will play games there whole life I am not that big of a gamer any more though I do play. Games like most pieces of pop culture tend to be mostly derivative and disposable but I will always be interested when something attempts or succeeds in rising above a simple distraction to art that is innovative, changes the way you look at part of the world or elicits a emotion response. I hope Spore is one of those games. It approach to the idea of evolution could not be duplicated in another medium. I am excited like when I was a kid. I have been playing with the creature creator and it is great fun.
One of the most interesting things about Spore is Brain Eno creating (if that is the right word) the sound track for spore. Eno and Will Wright are to of the biggest innovators of the past few decades. And they seem a good fit together. Ad generative music might be a perfect fit for a game base on a generative model. I am a fan of of a having a little randomness in all things so I hope it works. It does raise all kinds of philosophical questions about generative art of any kind of art rather than creating it in a more traditional way. And I think that is a good thing to think about and bring into debate.
The video is very long you can skip ahead by using the open tools menu.
I try to keep this blog related to music but this entry is purely about computers. You’re all using computers right? It is such a good tip I could not resist.
I am a PC guy by choice. I like to tweak customize and upgrade. It also is makes economic sense. You can upgrade the components to keep up with the times without throw the whole thing or having to reinstall your programs(and go through the reauthorizing process for each of them) or transfer all your media, documents and settings over to a new machine. Not for everyone I know but great for some of us.
The thing that makes upgrading less attractive to me and other people is having to reload the OS or attempt to use the a repair disk to get the OS to work when you are changing out a motherboard. It is usually a much bigger pain than actually changing out the mobo which is basically a few screws and plugging is a few cables.
I have read and so many place that a clean wipe and do a fresh of the hard drive is the only way to go. “They” say there will be problems any other way. Others suggest you’ll need some kind of boot CD either a custom repair disk or the Windows CD to get make things possible. This what I have done in the past. Most of what I read recommended some version of this. I have found ways to make it less painful to reinstall windows like slipstreaming (a good idea to do as a backup anyway.) But I have found all these to be unnecessary.
I have since searched and found the method I used a few other places on the Internet but it is out numbered by others. I worked for me using XP I have no idea about other OS’s. I found it from Windows XP A to Z. You simple change the the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller. You can find the same method in a little detail here. Note that the terminology for the standard IDE controller you want might vary a little form the examples but you should be able to tell which one it is. I even forgot to restart in safe mode and it still worked. The one thing I will add is you should download new drivers from your motherboards manufacturers website before the change out. The drivers on CD that came with the mobo will most likely be out of date (almost any driver disk is outdated) and it you’ll have the most current drivers available to install immediately.
There was no need to mess with the BIOS, boot order or a repair disk. A few minutes to install the drivers a restart and that was that. Great.
I caught this video. I don’t really have cause to use a interactive white board. Or track eye movement. But it has has the potential to track anything. And by doing so control anything. Music and video performance came to my mind. A less than $40 dollar piece of hardware connected to a PC via ubiquitous blue tooth opens a myriad of possibilities. It is a wonderful when a mass produced(read as cheap) hardware can be co-oped into a whole bunch of unintended applications.
A few days ago I had a disk partition accident. Then I compounded it with my stupidity. Not good.
I am trying to be positive about it. Learning lessons. Moral victories that kind of crap. huh.
The first lesson is when doing something potentially completely destructive read the menu carefully and don’t assume anything.
The most obvious lesson is an obvious one that a lot of people ignore. Backup. I kept most of the non-program files on a second hard drive used to store media and irreplaceable files. Most. OK, that is not a back up solution. But it usually is the drive with the OS(s) that gets screwed up. The idea was that would really minimize that change of losing important data in between occasional backups. I would keep really important stuff on both drives and on removable storage, etc. Well, the saving important files to the storage drive and backing up occasionally fell by the wayside. I did not lose everything. But I lost some. Luckily I had my really important stuff in about ten different places including online storage. Yeah, I know I am not very smart. So, please let this be yet another cautionary. Let this one be the one you pay attention to.
I actually have scheduled a back up reminder. Lets face it not something most people are going to think about a lot. It is not fun. No one ever said I can’t wait to back up my data yippie! Besides neglect the other thing that kept me from regular backups up was disorganization. It not really practical to to back everything up with the gigs & gigs of data we collect now. So when your important data is scattered across multiple drives and in zillions of mislabeled folders and mixed with crap it makes it hard if not impossible to do a good job backing up.
You gotta have a real plan I guess not just a vague intent like I had. There is a million possibilities nowadays so there is no excuses. My plan is basically segregating all the data I create like project files, recordings, written word, etc. Then back that up on a schedule. As long as I pay attention to where I save things and stay organized it should not be that hard.
OK now I have to get a little philosophical. You don’t really realize the amount of crap that you can accumulate virtual or otherwise until you have to replace it. Especially if you have to go through annoying copy protections and have to find install disk you have seen since 2 seconds after you installed a program. Rerip music, etc. Despite all the advances now days in clock speed, bus speeds, memory and bandwidth installing software and data from DVD’s and CD is still slow as hell. You start to ask yourself if you need all of it while you watch the endless procession of progress bars.
The philosophical bit is you realize how little of it you actually really need. Not surprising really considering the culture here most people end up so much we don’t really need. Stuff that does not improve our lives at all and most likely hinder our happiness. Remembering that this here World Wide Web is just that World Wide I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world but in the good ole U.S. of A there is a strong almost religious tendency toward acquiring more and more stuff. Big neon signs, glossy print, screaming radio ads and moving pictures urge over consumption and acquisition overtly. Then there is the strong current drag us down stream with out us knowing it that some call culture. George Carlin describe this phenomenon well in this video. But it really is worse had he puts it. Maybe it is this way in the rest of the Western World and Westernized Far East but I do not really know what life is like other than the bullshit I have seen on TV. But I know how it is here. It is even the supposed answer to your current financially problems. Were are supposed to spend our way out of being broke. Go figure. And People buy into this idea. We are so entrenched in acquiring more and more stuff. I tried to stay organized. And keep my hard drives clean. I would try and get rid of the stuff I never used. But i probably was doing a very good job of that either. My computer was bloated with crap. Crap that hogged resources and diverted my attentions. Nothing good ever came of it.
My Desktop a microcosm of the this materialistic world…you bet. OK, I am not going to bullshit you and say I am glad this happened. I am not it is pain in the ass and I lost a few things I wish I didn’t . But maybe understanding a little better that I should possess only what I need and take very good care of those things is worth something. I should schedule a reminder for that also.
Disaster, Accidental Hard Drive Cleaning or Stuff, Stuff, Stuff
A few days ago I had a disk partition accident. Then I compounded it with my stupidity. Not good.
I am trying to be positive about it. Learning lessons. Moral victories that kind of crap. huh.
The first lesson is when doing something potentially completely destructive read the menu carefully and don’t assume anything.
The most obvious lesson is an obvious one that a lot of people ignore. Backup. I kept most of the non-program files on a second hard drive used to store media and irreplaceable files. Most. OK, that is not a back up solution. But it usually is the drive with the OS(s) that gets screwed up. The idea was that would really minimize that change of losing important data in between occasional backups. I would keep really important stuff on both drives and on removable storage, etc. Well, the saving important files to the storage drive and backing up occasionally fell by the wayside. I did not lose everything. But I lost some. Luckily I had my really important stuff in about ten different places including online storage. Yeah, I know I am not very smart. So, please let this be yet another cautionary. Let this one be the one you pay attention to.
I actually have scheduled a back up reminder. Lets face it not something most people are going to think about a lot. It is not fun. No one ever said I can’t wait to back up my data yippie! Besides neglect the other thing that kept me from regular backups up was disorganization. It not really practical to to back everything up with the gigs & gigs of data we collect now. So when your important data is scattered across multiple drives and in zillions of mislabeled folders and mixed with crap it makes it hard if not impossible to do a good job backing up.
You gotta have a real plan I guess not just a vague intent like I had. There is a million possibilities nowadays so there is no excuses. My plan is basically segregating all the data I create like project files, recordings, written word, etc. Then back that up on a schedule. As long as I pay attention to where I save things and stay organized it should not be that hard.
OK now I have to get a little philosophical. You don’t really realize the amount of crap that you can accumulate virtual or otherwise until you have to replace it. Especially if you have to go through annoying copy protections and have to find install disk you have seen since 2 seconds after you installed a program. Rerip music, etc. Despite all the advances now days in clock speed, bus speeds, memory and bandwidth installing software and data from DVD’s and CD is still slow as hell. You start to ask yourself if you need all of it while you watch the endless procession of progress bars.
The philosophical bit is you realize how little of it you actually really need. Not surprising really considering the culture here most people end up so much we don’t really need. Stuff that does not improve our lives at all and most likely hinder our happiness. Remembering that this here World Wide Web is just that World Wide I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world but in the good ole U.S. of A there is a strong almost religious tendency toward acquiring more and more stuff. Big neon signs, glossy print, screaming radio ads and moving pictures urge over consumption and acquisition overtly. Then there is the strong current drag us down stream with out us knowing it that some call culture. George Carlin describe this phenomenon well in this video. But it really is worse had he puts it. Maybe it is this way in the rest of the Western World and Westernized Far East but I do not really know what life is like other than the bullshit I have seen on TV. But I know how it is here. It is even the supposed answer to your current financially problems. Were are supposed to spend our way out of being broke. Go figure. And People buy into this idea. We are so entrenched in acquiring more and more stuff. I tried to stay organized. And keep my hard drives clean. I would try and get rid of the stuff I never used. But i probably was doing a very good job of that either. My computer was bloated with crap. Crap that hogged resources and diverted my attentions. Nothing good ever came of it.
My Desktop a microcosm of the this materialistic world…you bet. OK, I am not going to bullshit you and say I am glad this happened. I am not it is pain in the ass and I lost a few things I wish I didn’t . But maybe understanding a little better that I should possess only what I need and take very good care of those things is worth something. I should schedule a reminder for that also.