Plonsky writes on reverse lens combinations do go great macro-shots of bugs.
Nov 302004
Nov 302004
With December 1st coming up tomorrow, here is Praetorius’ Puer natus in Bethlehem in Christian Mondrup’s transcriptions for the recorder. He’s used ABC Plus for the typesetting for those who are interested.
Nov 302004
A Quicktime video with a 6 minute preview of Lord of the Rings – Return of the King, the extended version, has been released. I ordered my copy from Amazon about a month ago, nice to see what I have waiting for me. 
(via Binary Bonsai)
Nov 252004
With Illiad’s Userfriendly cartoon going on about treating coffee addiction (see first strip here), my cravings for coffee skyrocket
Nov 252004
I finished my first external Pure Data object, a note determining object. This object takes in the number of Hz a note is measured to be and outputs what note it is (the low A on a piano being 1, going up to 88), determining how many cent off it is and how many Hz extra there is (i.e, 415Hz = A flat (tone 47), one cent (minus 0.174Hz) low. Fourth output is a text with the note name, in this case Ab. This object uses equal temperament and was just an excercise for me to see if it can be done.
Here’s a screen shot:
The code is copyrighted Niklas Saers, 2004. I place the code under the two clause BSD license meaning I merely ask any redistribution, whether in source or binary, to reproduce this copyright.
Nov 232004
Christian Mondrup has added an italian madrigal Tu che del mio dolore by Giovanni Battista Dalla Gostena (c.1558-1593) for 5 recorders to the recorder archive. Keep up the good work, Christian!
Nov 222004
Thought you’d might want to see just how simple it is: my pyext example for Pure Data. I’m planning to make an object that takes in a floating point number of frequency height and determines what note it is and the amount of error according to different scale temperaments, i.e. Valotti, Werkmeister 3, Kirnberger, Meantone and Equal tempering.
Nov 222004
I decided I prefer writing normal logic in a language I’m used to, so I went looking for a Python-external for Pure Data. And sure enough, I found Thomas Grill‘s py/pyext (built upon flext, a C layer for Python externals). I didn’t figure out how to install the binaries (didn’t take the time to experiment) so I just compiled them up. Works great.
Writing externals for this is supersimple:
class example(pyext._class):
_inlets=2
_outlets=1
def _anything_1(self,args):
print "inlet 2:",args
self._outlet(1,1)
def _anything_2(self,args):
print "inlet 2:",args
self._outlet(1,2)
This little code should be an external that prints out the argument it receives and sends the inlet number it received the signal on to the outlet.
I think it’s about time I introduce my project:
I want to use Pd to extract the overtones of the recorder and train a neural network to identify what kind of sound (broad, thin, glass-ish, etc) I’m playing. I want to use this to control VST processors to shape the sound I play. And after the network is trained, I want to the analysis and processing in real-time.
At the moment I’m reading up on alternatives to FFT to separate out overtones, and I’ve made a prototype as a proof-of-concept kind of thing using fiddle~ to identify the overtones in hz and bp~ to separate them out as audio streams. It still has lots of problems such as artifacts, sound degeneration and latency issues. But it gets the job done, so I’m optimistic.
I’d prefer to do my project as a part of a Ph.D, but since Ph.D funding takes a while to find, I’m already starting. Can’t wait for formalities. When I’ve checked that it is ok to release code here I’ll post some as I progress.
Nov 212004
I’d really like to get to know blogs that focus on Pure Data and/or Max/MSP and use it for development and performances. Leave a comment with your blog URL
Nov 192004
Missing: 
A statue of Edvard Munch in a Our Saviour’s Cementary in Oslo has been stolen of his grave only short time after Madonna and Scream were stolen (via VG and Aftenposten)
Nov 192004
Nov 172004
I loved this dodgy bathroom mirror. But I need to pay better attention to my camera, I’d left it on 3200 ISO.
Nov 172004
Tracy‘s photoblog is one of my favourites, so upon reading her interview I decided to take her challenge
and posted my first self portrait. I toyed with a couple of ideas, and finally I decided on trying to work with the problem with people closing their eyes when the moment I take a picture. Serious blinking brought me this photo
Nov 162004
The BBC is reporting that a European moon-probe has arrived in orbit around the moon. They also describe the propulsion system and theories of the moon’s formation.
Nov 142004
CNN reports that a new Band Aid is being formed. Whee!
Nov 142004
I’m making an XMLRPC server in Python that I need to access from a Java Servlet. But the default security manager is picky about allowing SSL certificates it does not trust (if you were in doubt: this is a good thing! ). The solution (based on this site was:
openssl x509 -in server.crt -out server.crt.der -outform der keytool -keystore $JAVAHOME/jre/lib/security/cacerts -alias pySSL -import -file server.crt.der
Nov 122004
I just saw PicoJet’s flash-based ad (via The Digital Photography Weblog). PicaJet is software for organizing my photos, not much unlike iPhoto. I’m really fond of iPhoto, except that it’s too slow and that labelling and organizing pictures still takes too long. I miss RAW-support and search-functionality like imgSeek. I love the Gallery plugin, despite rotation bugs. I’m currently sticking with iPhoto 2 as I figure it’s been so long since the release of iPhoto 4 that a new version is bound to be due soon. But as with all other photo-organizing software I’ve seen, PicaJet & iPhoto have a problem with DVDs.
With my recent purchase of my Canon EOS 20D, the amount of pictures I take has risen sharply. And the file size of my favourite format has risen for each picture from ~400k to ~6m. Within three weeks I’d taken 4Gb of pictures, nicely fitted on one DVD. But, that’s making my pictures unavailable. I need to have a thumb-nail in my archive (say about 640×480 would be nice) that informs me what DVD I’ve put it on so I can find it back. I’ve got a 15cm stack of photo DVDs and the occational photo CD. I need this to become available. How have you guys solved this?
Nov 102004
Get it here