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ugh
April 4, 2005
Saw "Sin City" today, was very impressed. yummy even.

I only have one complaint, it was that after getting this LCD mounted in the
new Jesusonic case, and booting the thing up, the LCD requires you to hit a 
button to turn it on. Which is annoying. So I either need to figure out a way
to hack the LCD to always be on, or do something really dumb like have the
microcontroller in the box just simulate a button press after a few seconds
of being on (which could have negative consequences, so I probably won't do
that). Or I could just mount a nice little button on the box to toggle the 
screen on and off, but having to turn the screen on every time you plug the
power in is lame. real lame.


Comment...

Got an expression pedal working with Jesusonic, yummy (right now it's just
connected to my microcontroller dev board). Since that works, I started 
working on a wah effect. Using a resonant bandpass, seems to be working 
but haven't gotten it to sound decent yet. Here are a couple mp3s.

The first one also has the new advanced drum sequencer I made earlier today,
it lets you specify volume, panning, and additional timing information for
each event. Yay for more flexibility, and it's backwards compatible too.

(One final post-posting note, I realized that picture is giant line6 ad. 
oh well.)


2 Comments
it's late (or early)
April 2, 2005
It is quickly approaching 5 in the morning, and I just got home. After seeing
a midnight showing of Napoleon Dynamite, and a spirited rehearsal turned jam,
I decided to ride my bike the mile or so home. San Francisco SoMa and Mission
is awesome at 4 in the morning on a bicycle. Nobody around, quiet, concrete 
playground. yum.

Also, I got some Etymotic 6i headphones for free (SV100 or whatnot), and while
I'm not completely sold on their everyday use for me (a bit itchy at times),
they are fuckin perfect for band practicing. They block out so much sound,
and when you mix in the monitors, feel really natural. OK they are good for
planes too..

The highlight of the jam we had is this song of epic proportion (or should that be 
plural?). Listen to the whole thing (start to finish) if you want to get it. 

Really.



Recordings:

freeform jam with brenchr

1 Comment
I couldn't agree more with Brennan on this subject (the second paragraph).

Also, the whole April fools joke thing is funny, and was funny back when it
would be one or two or three things being thrown in there, making you wonder,
whereas the tons and tons of them that end up on sites like slashdot make it
really just annoying. seriously.


1 Comment
big update
December 6, 2004
So let's see, stuff that I've gotten done recently:

+ Ported Jesusonic to OS X. This involved mostly spending time
retargeting the internal script compiler for PPC instead of x86.
It wouldn't have been hard, except for stupid mistakes 
(particularly pertaining to loading 32 bit immediate values to
registers, and not taking into account that addi treats values
as signed (doh!)). What made it really frustrating is that _some_
pointers would be loaded right, and others wrong. Took a bit to
figure that one out. Doing the UI was a breeze, since it just uses
ncurses, and Core Audio support was pretty easy too, just read the
PDF and boom it worked. Supporting multiple simulaneous devices, 
however, looks like it will be a pain in the ass. Some notes:
on my old 667mhz G4 powerbook, it works decent, a little bit
better than an 800mhz Via C3. The latency when using a firewire
MOTU 896HD with it, was great. 8ms or so, I think. Feels really 
nice when playing the guitar through it, even with effects that 
add latency (such as high speed convolution amp modeling). The
main remaining issue left is that pageup/down don't work, since
the Terminal app hijacks them for the scrollback buffer (any way 
to turn this off perhaps?). Anyway, I think we'll be releasing 
the mac version along with the windows one by christmas. at least
in some beta/preview form.

+ Been building the Jesusonic packaging app. This little bugger
lets you package up effects/presets/data files, and resolves 
dependencies for you. Once they are packaged up, you can decide if
you want to upload to jesusonic.com, etc. The other side of the app
is one that lets you install packages, and choose which elements to
install, handle if you already have some on your system, and whatnot.
I want to make it very easy to both make packages and install them.
This tool will probably be Windows only initially, but have no fear
the format is just .ZIP so you can create/install these packages on
pretty much any OS.

+ Added OGG Vorbis support to Jesusonic. Which means you can store
whatever audio you want, and have effects stream it back as needed.
Decoding OGG from disk is extremely simple from script -- it's 
transparent. Whenever you open a file that ends in .ogg, it tries
to use it as a decompressor.

+ Upgrading my pre-prototype hand-made Jesusonic box to a new CPU and
motherboard. Went from a 800mhz Via C3 to a 1.6ghz Pentium M. I have to
say, I am extremely impressed with the Pentium M. Amazingly fast, the 
HSF is tiny and quiet, and it doesn't even get that hot. Now if only the
price would come down. With the new board, I really have to try hard to
max the CPU out (i.e. getting 20 effects in there at a time), and I can
even crank the latency down a bit more.

+ Managed to order a Geode NX eval board from Arrow Electronics. In 6 short
weeks I should be able to see if those will work well, too. They are a bit
too expensive, too, though. 

So I guess I've been only really doing shit with the Jesusonic lately. I 
guess that's ok, too. 

Oh yes, actually last night I watched the director's cut of JFK last night.
So relevant to today. Argh. 


Comment...
Reward:
  To the first person who can get me a source to buy some AMD Geode NX 
DB1500 development boards, for a reasonable price (i.e. less than $700), 
within the next month or so, I will send via paypal or whatever, $200. 

The VIA EPIA boards are just too slow for what I need, and the pentium
M boards are hot/expensive/etc.

Thank you. <3


Comment...
random musings
July 29, 2004
Happy Birthday doggie!

Now, a little story:

When I was a freshman in highschool, the physics class (which consisted 
primarily of seniors) put on an egg drop contest, to see who could build 
the best device to cushion a raw egg dropped (in the device) from various
heights. There was about a week between when I learned of this contest
and the contest itself, and I was interested. So I thought about it for
a few days, trying to figure out something that would work good and not
be the usual bubblewrap-to-hell kind of thing. Eventually I decided I 
would try a liquid suspension system, where the egg was suspended between
two different liquids, one that was more dense than the egg, and one that
was less dense than the egg. The liquids should ideally not mix, or at 
least mostly not mix. Initially I wanted to do Glycerine for the denser
liquid, since it was very viscous and I thought it would work well. But,
unfortunately I couldn't find any in the quantity I needed, and Glycerine
soap was all expensive. So I decided to do something Glucose-like, which
involved me heating up some water and adding sugar until it was a thick
nasty sweet syrup. For the thinner liquid I used vegetable oil. For a 
container I used what I had handy, and since I did a lot of hiking in
highschool I had a few of the soft white Nalgene Trail 1L bottles. I 
don't know if you are familiar with these, but they are pretty common
and generally pretty tough. So the egg was floating in the Glucose, 
sinking in the oil, all inside this water bottle. I wanted the bottle
to land bottom-first (which later on turned out to be less important
than I had thought, since the liquids seemed to adjust accordingly if
the bottle was rotated even reasonably fast), so I used some soft clay
packed on the bottom to offset the balance a bit. I did a few tests from
around 10 or 12 feet, and it seemed to work. On the day of the contest,
it worked remarkably well from the 20ft or so drop point we had, so good
in fact that we started playing around with shooting it up from a water
balloon launcher. Or shooting it down. The circumstances in which the 
egg did eventually break were a little bit suspect (I think someone hit 
the side of it on purpose, or something), but the design had flaws that
I noticed, primarily that the bottle started leaking, from little holes 
where the bottle landed and was punctured. It still had plenty of liquid
in it, but boy oh boy did it make a mess. 

This next part, I didn't really remember until today, and it definitely
amused me. When I was a senior, there was a group of studens going to an
egg drop contest at NAU, the university an hours drive a way from my
school, and I forget why but I wasn't going (I think I may have had the
SATs or something that day). I suggested that they use my design from
years past, but that they use a hard Nalgene plastic bottle, which I
thought were even more indestructable (we would usually call them Lexan
or what not, though I'm sure they were just a good hard plastic). I
definitely enjoyed drinking from the hard plastic bottles (the water
would taste better), and I figured it wouldn't leak as easily. They
seemed receptive.

So apparently, they went to this competition, using my design, and it
performed so amazingly well, that everybody was PISSED OFF at them.
OK so that was some sarcasm in there, but everybody was in fact pissed
off. Because on the first drop of their device, when the bottle hit
the target, the bottle burst, sending super sticky sugar water and
vegetable oil (and I suppose an egg yolk and whites) EVERYWHERE. A lot
of people got a good dose apparently, and that group of students were
pissed in turn at me. To which I replied "oh, I guess the hard bottle
was a bad idea." 

Now, when I thought of this today, I really couldn't believe what they
had done, and how stupid it was. They went to an egg drop contest, using
somebody elses design, and DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO TEST IT. They had so
much time to prepare, and what did they do? They used my design, but 
didn't even think to test it. Cynicism is definitely wise. Perhaps 
self-doubt is wise, too. 


Comment...
disappointment
July 3, 2004
OK finished the book. Despite a couple of surprises,my previous stucf
mostly stands. :) If anything, disappointed by the endings lack of 
ambition...


Comment...
A kind reader pointed out to me that I made a similar mistake as
Bill Gates did in his book, in saying "factor large primes". I had
the luxury of a head injury at the time (as the passage was keen
to point out), so that's my excuse. What I meant to say on June 17th, 
was "factor large numbers into their prime factors" rather than "factor 
large prime numbers". Thank you, sir (I don't know your name, but I can
say 'mr dkl tessellated who is uberpedantic'), and I'm pleased to know
that I already had the ability to factor large primes, in constant time,
err well logarithmic time, actually, since each digit takes time to write
out...
[edit: or I suppose, saying "factor large numbers into their prime
factors is redundant, I could just say "factor large numbers"]

In other news, just finished reading (last night) The Confusion by Neal
Stephenson. So good. I can't wait for the third book in the series.
I LOVE YOU NEAL. YOU RULE. CAN I BUY YOU A CHOCOLATE TREAT?  :) 

Now I gotta decide what to read next, until September.

In the mean time, ordered an Amtel AVR starter kit. mmm.

Oh the irony, that on Webdog, I'm the only one (of Nullsoft) who's updated 
his .plan this year, and I don't even work there anymore! HAHA.


Comment...
music and pain
June 17, 2004
Christophe and I made this mp3, testing out some new Jesusonic effects,
and otherwise playing around.

Ah fun today dealing with the bank for a small business account. The 
account person there liked the company name a lot, though. Though she
did misspell it at one point leaving out one of the o's. Ha ha. Oops.

Thinking about canceling my Hiptop service since I never use it, and
it gets very little signal at home (whereas my phone gets plenty).


--

Oww, completely slammed my head into a doorway. Ouch. That'll take
the bounce out of my step...

Maybe this will temporarily disable part of my brain and let me learn
how to factor large primes using my mind. Or to play the guitar better.
Or vaporize a yak at 300 yards, err, something like that. Doubt it,
probably will just give me a sore neck and bump on the head for a
few days. Belh.

And it looks like we have fleas in our carpet. And the ALSA drivers
for the recent 686B VIA chipsets can't record (But can play back) 
properly. Bitch. Moan. Here I go.

It pisses me off when I hear people say shit like "man, if I ever
get a lot of money I'm going to move it all into some tax free 
country blablabla".. I mean, if you get that money living in a 
society that enables you to make that money, don't you think it's
your duty to pay tax? And if that society as any good, with a large
amount of money, you shouldn't have any trouble making it grow,
WHILE paying taxes. Or do the tax-free muni bonds. Then you're 
investing in your state. Anyway...


Recordings:

dittyalone
freeform jam with shawn

Comment...
Spent the day using Knoppix and freebsd for programming. Kinda 
enjoying it. Don't think I'll always want to use it, but I'm
at least appreciating how decent it's become. and /dev/dsp is
actually pretty usable now! :) the only thing that really bugs
me is that whenever I do something wrong the beeps are a little
loud. aumix cant seem to fix that. listening to mp3s via mpg123
is kinda amusing too (I'm using knoppix lang=us 2 so I'm not in
X11, I'm in consoleland yay fun. ) Ah yes, programming, I remember
thee. 


Recordings:

freeform jam with brenchr

Comment...
meter maids blow
April 25, 2004
So a couple weeks ago I was sitting in the car parked at a metered spot,
talking on my mobile phone. The meter had just run out, and a meter maid
was like 2 cars behind me, so I figured I better move. I did, before the 
meter maid was within a car length of my car. I guess it was too late. I
got the ticket in the mail earlier this week. Rather than fight it, I 
just paid the motherfucker. Fine, whatever. Not worth dealing with. 

So my question is, why can't the fucking DPT get here already? Someone 
blocked my driveway, I called them nearly 90 minutes ago, and nobody is
here yet. I called them back 30 minutes ago, and they said "we'll be 
there when we can". I mean, come on. This guy will probably drive off
in another 30 minutes, before the parking guy gets here, and get away
with it. And I'll have to have sat here for 2 hours, waiting. Tired.
Wanting to go home to go to sleep, in a warm bed. hmph. 

Yesterday I finally finished (after many months) Quicksilver by Neal 
Stephenson. It required a lot of investment to read the 900+ pages, 
but man, was it worth it. I'm now itching to go buy the second book
in the series. The stories were pretty good, but also, I feel like 
everything I'd forgotten or ignored learning in my 10th grade western 
civ class (managing to get a B minus I think), well not everything 
but some, is now back. In style. Leave it to Stephenson to make that
stuff interesting (well in all truth I find history more interesting
now than when I was in highschool, in general). I will be starting
"The Confusion" soon, and if my reading habits of the previous book
continue, I probably won't finish it for another 6 months. I seem
to mostly read when traveling...


Comment...
meat
April 22, 2004
Woot, Brennan Christophe and I made Made Of Meat.
I likey. Made a new little homepage, too. nifty.


Comment...
wasnt quite ready yet
April 21, 2004
*sigh* 

OK so I won't just make that my .plan update. I was very tempted to do the
ol' ESC :wq ENTER. Hell, nobody probably reads this anymore anyway, since
all I do is "blabla here's the shitty mp3 I made today"[0] (I could go off on
a huge tangent of how I'm feeling about that shit now, but I won't. Well maybe
 I'll do it as a footnote[1]). Soon, that will change. Just waiting til I 
move, really. And get a few other nibbles and pieces sorted out. 

We went and had a really good lunch at Citizen Cake today[2]. Amazingly good,
really. mmm. 


0: I just checked webdog and it seems .plan are going out of style.. what with
the rise of the "blog". fair enough. hell, even I'm a sucka and have a little
webpage that lets you view this text. oh well, maybe I'll move to a full-on
blog. some day. 
1: I'm finding challenge in making things that sound good all flow and sound
right all the time. I keep making 3 minute tracks that have about 5 seconds 
where I'm like "damn, that's nailed" and I wish that the rest of the track
sounded as good. Ah the challenge of details. The integration is a challenge.
It really makes programming seem simple in comparison--at least if you design
code right, you can have all these simple independent systems abstracted and
functioning together... can't quite get to that point with music, at least 
yet. This is compounded by the fact that I can only do one thing at once,
this might (or might not) be easier with more people.
2: Allison and I have discussed logging where what and how we eat all the 
time. I'm tempted to, considering we do eat out quite a bit, and seem to
find so many good restaurants, it would be as useful to us as anybody else,
since we constantly ask the question "where should we eat?". 


Recordings:

freeform jam with brennanchristopheircppl

Comment...
music moving
April 16, 2004
Woot, Al and I get to move soon! yay!
Here's something I made today, based on something I did last summer.
Kinda chaotic, needs quite a bit of tweaking and cleaning up, to say the least...


Recordings:

revisitingdejavu

Comment...
I decided the lyrics to that last song I posted here were a little too harsh,
so I adapted some that I had written a while back and made this:

lone parasite (the vocals I will rerecord soon, cause the mic I have at home sucks)

to anyone who thought the previous lyrics were too harsh, it was more 
commentary than how I actually feel. email me if you want more details.


Recordings:

mistress-rough

Comment...
waste's second life
April 12, 2004
Wow, I could swear I've written something like this before.
Wonder what will happen with that...

A work in progress of a song.
Has a ways to go, yes. But interesting (to me).


Recordings:

freeform jam with BRENNANjesusballs

1 Comment
immortalized
April 5, 2004
hahahaha, rad.

I had bacon every day of my trip back east. mmmm.
about 2/3 through 'Quicksilver'.. It's good. Kinda overwhelming.
Makes me think about how I never realized how miserable people 
must have been in the 17th century...


Recordings:

secondworstmaybe

Comment...
happy halloween!
October 31, 2003
allison back for a bit from nyc, yay!

saw primus last night, they ruled. hard. woot.
saw REM the night before in LA. 


Comment...
Funny, last time I updated my .plan I was pretty sleep deprived, and here
I am again. Had a good birthday time (week or two total heh). Last night
spent about 12 hours in AC playing holdem, and a mere 3 sleeping. ehehe.

The iTunes launch today was kinda amusing. Funny how our beta got out at 
the same time, too.. eheheh. I think we'll be updating it early next week,
with a lot of tasty fixes and polishing... good times... 

Driving in NYC yesterday and today was kinda fun. Not as bad as I'd thought
it was gonna be. I guess driving "like a cab driver" (as I was once told, heh)
in SF probably helps a little... just a bit more crazy here. yawn sleep.


Comment...


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