Jeez. I've been naming files more than forty years. I'm not claiming expertise, just experience. Now I start all file names [1] yymmdd because: It is probably a local maximum for six characters and sometimes file name length is severely constrained. It sorts by name with most recent first and sorting by name is often a default. Date is a pointer into a log/journal/diary/notebook with additional…
Waves and particles are models. Maybe the best models we have, but still models. Wave-particle duality is another model. Again, maybe the best model we have, but still a model. Like all models they are useful and maybe not wrong in a way that can be proven within the limits of human understanding. I lack the hubris to ignore the "limits of human understanding" condition of knowledge because Kant…
Sequencer: The EA-1 is a two track sequencer with 64 steps. Each sequencer track is one MIDI channel wide. Each track operates on its own MIDI channel. There are a pair of independent monophonic synthesizer engines, one synthesizer engine per sequencer track. Thus, each engine has its own MIDI channel and it's own sequencer. The combination of track and synth engine is called a Part. So there are…
I was thinking about dogs. Walking dogs in particular because I do a lot of it. Have for many years. Walking a dog involves getting the dog to do things. And not do things. And the same for the dog getting me to do things. We go down the road shifting between forbearance, negotiation, and violence. Less and less of the last because I am learning.
My best is the best I can do right now. I know that barring dumb luck, in the future my best might be better if I keep learning. I'm ok with my best right now being not as good as it might be in theory. I'm ok with working hard and still doing it badly. That's what learning feels like. Doing doesn't feel like shopping. Doesn't feel like planning. Doesn't feel like success. Even though it is.
The economic order breaking down. I should worry about inflation. China and other countries (the usual suspects). Trump. Biden. The border. The title race. Musk. GWoT. AGI. Sea level rise. Privacy. Viruses on my computer. Viruses in my brain.
Wave How much of it can I know? How much of it can I see? What's new? Wave Now it looks like work. Smells like work. Tastes like work. Wave My fingertips eat My screen glows I lie in bed. Wave I'm high and listening to Plasticman. And working. I remember when the internet was a single thing. When it had 2D edges. Before the internet folded back on itself. Back when the topology was a human…
Ferrari's aren't fair either. Good luck.
A Eurorack system can show much of its causality in the physical domain. Wires, knobs, and sliders create a Rube Goldberg legibility. With the modules, they create a notation. Plugging, turning, and sliding a Eurorack system is a way of writing music. Writing the first draft on a Eurorack is slow. Editing is not because there are no incidental abstraction layers. That's the appeal of it to me, I…
The history of civilization is the history of watering deserts.
There was a Eurorack case for seventy bucks. It came with a power supply. It came with distribution cables. I pressed buy it now. I thought oh shit. Behringer makes cheap modules. I've been buying them and hooking them up with cheap aux cables I buy in bulk. I appreciate the precision German engineering of Doepfer's design. But HP. HP is a problem. It doesn't make sound. Four bucks an inch is the…
Mine is a digital version from about 2010 as best as I can tell. It is an awesome electronic music drone instrument. But it has two quirks: 1. The sample loop isn't seamless and every so often (on the order of minutes) there's a brief discontinuity in automatic mode. Running it through a delay effect mostly masks it, so that's what I do. 2. When running only on batteries (without wall power) it…
An Imagined history I've seen the CDX-1's electronics described as an SP-808 with a CD-RW drive instead of using ZIP discs. But unlike the SP-808, the CDX-1 is designed to produce a CD recording. It was marketed as a digital recorder with sampling to guitarists, etc. As best I can figure, the CDX-1 was released in the summer of 2001. Then 911 happened. By the time the dust settled multi-gigabyte…
A. It's not that multitasking is a bad idea. Computers usually do it pretty well these days. Mostly because computers are fast and humans are slow. Occasionally because some computers use their cores in parallel for something humans care about. Thinking about my actions in terms of multi-tasking muddles concurrency and parallelism. I can only focus on one thing at once. That's not among my many…
Power AC wall power Device power Audio Loud Speaker (headphone) Networking MIDI DIN USB TRS Bluetooth Sequencing On-Device Sequencer Hardware Sequencer General Purpose Computer
Vector 1 Virtual Acoustic - Audio Domain Riyaz Tabla Master Sound modules - MIDI In Boss DR-3 Zoom 123 Boss DR-550 Networked - MIDI In and Out(s) Yamaha RX5 Boss DR-5 Behringer RD-6 Korg Electribe ER-1 MK-ii Vector 2 Factory Patterns Pattern Prerecording Live Recording Vector 3 Factory Sounds User Modification Sampling Synthesis
The past is never dead. It's not even past. (Faulkner) The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. (Gibson) It's always endless September somewhere.
Bad dog Not from here Untribed Drunk Fat Clueless Lazy Angry Rentabum Now I'll try nice
Food labeling exists because supermarkets are full of food that's made by companies that know their food creates health problems for many many people. Not to protect their market share from plucky new-comers.
Each time I make a something it becomes Sol's own satellite. All we orbiting objects
Squeeze suggests: poor -> middle class <- rich The wealth vacuum model doesn't benefit from a middle class: rich <- poor The political implications of squeeze thinking better serve wealth than vacuum world-views.
Charging enough to compete on price is the only sustainable way to compete on price. It seems paradoxical but it ain't. Because I used the word "sustainable." If your normal price doesn't provide good headroom, discounts equate to loss.
A fictitious person is not a person. The pronoun of corporations is "it" not "they." The psychology of corporations is the psychology of groups not the psychology of individuals. It can be interesting to explore why an individual is primarily motivated by money. A mistake to assume a corporation is motivated by anything but.
What is the best subject for a beginning painter to paint? Next time you think about building something. Stop thinking. Start. The choice of project doesn't matter. If it is worth doing, it will probably fail because things that are worth doing correlate with things that are hard to do. So maybe it's better to pick something that isn't worth doing. To pick something of manageable size. Because an…
If you just want to know how to set up a French Easel, here are two videos that show the way French Easels were designed to be set up. + Quick visual overview of the sequence: + Practical instructions for setting up a French Easel in about 45 seconds: In writing: Set the French Easel on the ground with the handle up and the single leg side away from you. Unfold, extend and tighten the single leg.…
Author: National Museum of Iran License: CC Attribution and Share Alike 4.0
In this ten minutes of fame right now, a photographer has declined a prestigious award because the picture was made using AI. Please don't ask me which photographer? which picture?, which award? which AI? because I don't know. I read the headline and it more than quelled my interest. Then I saw another headline about it. And another. Lots of them in fact, that's just the nature of my internet news…
I'm investigating using floppy disks again. Not exclusively of course. But when I want to reify small data and that data is not text. Someone says "But single micro-SD can hold all your small data And all your other data too!". That's the distraction of metadata management in the form of a labeled file hierarchy not a feature. I don't need to wrap my head around as many layers of abstraction. When…
[Old man yelling at the surf] Notes: I toss my notes in a shoebox and stick the shoebox in a cupboard. [1] Eventually, I stumble on the shoebox, look at the notes and throw them out. Ideas: "Idea" is a four letter word. I start on the thing I am thinking about or I let it go. Ideas that I am not acting on aren't worth holding onto. Knowledge: I remember where to look should it be useful. Or I…
In November, I eBay'd a "For Parts" Yamaha QY100, and yesterday I got around to finishing up the repairs by adhering [1] new conductive rubber pads to each of the 52 silicon rubber buttons. It still reflects someone using it until twenty plus buttons had worn to failure and the headphone line out jack was wobbly and intermittent. But it now plays great, even though it won't win a cosmetic award.…