tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229852592011-07-29T01:22:26.063-07:00A web log devoted to the creative side of computingMarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.comBlogger1081100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-28767559889701439122009-08-14T12:26:00.000-07:002009-08-22T18:42:28.689-07:00

August 14, 2009Hello again and Happy Friday! It's been months since I've posted a blog entry but tonight I've some exciting stuff to share. Tonight I have a spot in the late-night stand up comedy revue at the first inaugural Altadena Comedy Festival. The ACF is from Aug. 13th through the 15th and all proceeds go to a great cause, the American Cancer Society. I caught 2 of the shows last night and

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-71749497785210431362009-04-20T22:04:00.000-07:002009-04-20T22:25:45.465-07:00

Friday April 20, 2009Hello Again! It's Monday and I've been very busy and unable to post these past few weeks. I've been away from the blog because I've found a day job and have been devoting more of my free time to stand up comedy. Life is strange in that there are times when you will be most inspired when you have the least time. I suspect that muses are fickle and flighty. You can't

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-75081016051198041382009-02-25T19:21:00.000-08:002009-02-25T19:32:16.656-08:00

Wednesday February 25, 2009Hello World! I'm very late but back with more of the good stuff. I may need to have fewer and less regular blog updates in the future but we'll see what time permits. My topic for tonight is graphics and the focus is on another fun and free program. Context Free is an art program that generates images from a set of written instructions called a grammar. The Context

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-69757829635703337782009-01-25T21:41:00.000-08:002009-08-14T13:06:31.114-07:00

Sunday January 25, 2009Hello again! Sorry for the lateness of this post, but fate and reality have conspired of late to keep me from getting to all I'd like to do. It's another quiet Sunday night and the rain has passed for the moment. The topic for tonight is minimalism and the focus will be on small works of art. The essential challenge of a small art work is to express an idea in a limited

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-55678497762303990702009-01-16T23:08:00.000-08:002009-01-16T23:16:33.009-08:00

Friday January 16, 2009 Unusually warm winter greetings. It's a balmy night considering it's January and this old gray cat has been busy. I've been out in the night a bit more this week so the topic is art with the word “night” in the title. The first night encounter is Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, which has been translated (somewhat inaccurately) as A little night music. After listening

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-30629587193273435552009-01-09T22:06:00.000-08:002009-01-09T22:12:51.783-08:00

Friday January 9, 2009Hello Again! It's another fine Friday in January and the new year is well under way. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on rhythm. I've always been fascinated by unusual and ethnic rhythm patterns. The combination of an odd rhythm with a strange instrument sound or sample can be both startling and beautiful. I've started an experimental piece that has

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-20597183943683512009-01-03T01:03:00.000-08:002009-01-03T01:23:04.981-08:00

Saturday January 3, 2009Happy New Year! It's the first Friday of 2009 and it's chilly here in the Gray Cat's loft. The topic for tonight is writing and the focus will be on writing comedy. We've all had the opportunity to tell a joke we've heard but it's far harder to create a new joke. There is in fact an art to crafting a good joke and to combine a series of jokes on a theme. Brevity is a

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-53493559720943370202008-12-28T21:07:00.000-08:002008-12-28T21:41:55.313-08:00

Sunday December 28, 2008Hello again! It's another late post and the last one of the year. Holiday madness and a full couple of weekends have played havoc with my schedule. For this latest and belated update I have my annual list of my favorite games of the year. My top five for 2008 were:#5. Civilization III. One of the best turn-based strategy games ever.#4. Sword of the Stars. Space

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-31146083852979224602008-12-12T21:15:00.000-08:002008-12-12T21:42:41.371-08:00

Friday December 12, 2008 Welcome Back! It's Friday once more and it's starting to feel more like Winter here. This week's posting is my 100th and it's hard to believe that over 2 years have passed since I relaunched Mark's Digital Arts. This week I'd like to thank all the good people who have contributed in some way to this web-log. I'll start with my lady love Bella who has always given me

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-30545878223124028062008-12-05T21:43:00.000-08:002008-12-05T22:10:33.452-08:00

Friday December 5, 2008Cool December greetings! It's a rather quiet day here in the Gray Cat's loft. The topic for tonight is computer graphics and the focus will be on Carrara 5 Pro. I've mostly used and written about the Bryce 5 and Anim8or because they're both good programs and available as free software. I acquired Carrara 5 Pro as a featured free program on a 3D Now magazine disk, but it

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-828884257474674962008-11-28T21:56:00.000-08:002008-12-05T15:09:51.467-08:00

Friday November 28, 2008Hello! November is nearly done and in a couple of weeks this humble web log will see it's 100th entry. That's right mi agigos y amigas, Mark's Digital Arts is hitting the century milestone and I'm already looking for some special way to celebrate the event. The topic for this week is shopping in honor of Black Friday and the big Thanksgiving Weekend. This year the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-91325848305388675692008-11-22T23:55:00.000-08:002008-11-22T23:58:38.952-08:00

Saturday October 22, 2008Good Evening! Ugh, I'm late once more this week but hopefully this will be the last time for the year. It's Saturday night and I'm here with a fresh new entry, hot and straight out of the oven. I'm pressed for time this week so there won't be any new music loops and the entry will consist of an update of all my current projects. The experimental film group has cast an

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-41430411545093536632008-11-15T22:10:00.000-08:002008-11-16T00:31:17.330-08:00

Saturday November 15, 2008Hola! It's Saturday night and I'm back with the belated hits and misses of the last week. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on composition. This week I've started in earnest on the score for a short film project that I'd been involved in. This is an entirely new challenge after only writing non-connected, self contained works. The first step was

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-57687238472163757312008-11-07T21:54:00.000-08:002008-11-16T00:31:36.423-08:00

Friday November 7, 2008Warm autumn greetings! The topic for tonight are lists of art and creation that are the worst in their category. We're talking real bottom of the barrel sludge here so be sure to hold your nose as you wade in. I personally think it's harder to agree on the best examples then it is to name the worst. The first stop on our tour of the truly terrible is Web Pages that Suck

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-26952420746668173882008-10-31T21:08:00.000-07:002008-10-31T21:15:29.893-07:00

Friday October 31, 2008Hello and Happy Halloween! The topic for tonight is films and we're going to talk about some great movies for the Halloween holiday. The first film on my short list is the original 1960 version of Psycho. There have been scary movies since, but few have come close to the impact and suspense of Psycho. In Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock created a cinematic touchstone that

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-32121479545309901392008-10-24T21:05:00.000-07:002008-10-24T21:10:25.215-07:00

Friday October 24, 2008Greetings! It's Friday night and time once more for my weekly share of artistic and technical rants and ravings. The topic for tonight is graphic and focus will be on creating tiled textures. I've been making a number of seamless tiled textured to use as repeating backgrounds. Repeating patterns are also useful as textures for 3D models. To create a repeating pattern I

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-73296479445668669862008-10-17T21:12:00.000-07:002008-10-17T21:23:46.053-07:00

Friday October 17, 2008Hello Again! It's Friday and I'm here with my weekly update of all things technical and artistic. The topic for this week is games and I'm going to share my current obsessions and time killers. MechQuest is a browser role-playing game with anime style graphics. I like pretty much any game that lets you fight it out with giant robots. The game mechanics are easy and the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-72094039610427894242008-10-10T22:18:00.000-07:002008-10-10T22:23:27.249-07:00

Friday October 10, 2008Salutations! It's Friday night and once more I'm back with the usual mix of tech and creativity. The topic for tonight is web design and the focus will be on CSS (cascading style sheets). CSS were designed to add greater style control and to HTML web pages. Style is the colors, spacing, and fonts used in a web page, and CSS is all about controlling style. With style

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-11038407318401964482008-10-03T22:46:00.000-07:002008-10-03T23:04:24.979-07:00

Friday October 3, 2008Hello and Welcome! I'm back with the weekly dose of computerized merriment and artistic commentary. The topic this week is music and the focus is a on a great free sequencer. A sequencer program is the heart of a virtual music studio, in which you can record, arrange and edit compositions. Sequencers range from free trackers to costly and capable professional systems.

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-89594613164845450742008-09-26T21:04:00.000-07:002008-09-26T21:14:07.932-07:00

Friday September 26, 2008Greetings! It's another warm Friday evening and I'm back with my weekly report of creative and fun stuff. This week the topic is graphics and the focus will be on vector drawing applications. The distinction between drawing and painting programs is whether they're vector or pixel based. Pixel paint programs draw and store everything as pixels, or tiny colored dots.

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-26820166030741058102008-09-19T23:31:00.000-07:002008-09-19T23:42:55.551-07:00

Friday September 19, 2008Aloha! It's Friday once more and I'm here with the weekly dose of artistic doings and computerized chaos. The topic this week is animation and the focus will be on political humor. 2008 is an election year in this country and the the overall effect is like being caught in hurricane when you're downwind from a manure plant. There are some fun and funny animation satire

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-63502329451271054532008-09-12T21:04:00.000-07:002008-09-12T21:27:44.821-07:00

Friday September 12, 2008Greetings and Happy Friday! We're on the verge of autumn and the evening is cooler. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on recreating the sounds of old instruments and computers. There's something about the limited sounds of yesteryear to get the old synapses firing. The synthesizer plug-ins listed here are all in VST format, so they'll work with the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-26630546325028898072008-09-05T21:30:00.000-07:002008-09-12T21:04:16.722-07:00

Friday September 5, 2008Hi again! It's another warm summer evening and I'm here with the weekly dose of artistic and creative doings. The topic for today is Graphics and the focus will be on UV mapping. I gained an interest in UV mapping after reading about it in a chapter from a book on creating digital dinosaur 3D models. UV mapping is a graphics technique in which a 3D model is projected

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-16682160421639025422008-08-29T23:00:00.000-07:002008-09-05T21:46:50.920-07:00

Friday August 29, 2008Greetings and TGIF! I'm back on this fair if humid Friday evening with more interesting and creative stuff. The topic for tonight is music and the focus is making music with loops. I'm certain that most of you have heard the fairy-tale/fable Stone Soup. The basic idea is that a flavorful soup is created seemingly from stones boiled in a cauldron of water when in fact it

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-87450173574784995472008-08-22T22:29:00.000-07:002008-08-25T13:10:01.331-07:00

Friday August 22, 2008Hail and hello to all! It's Friday again and topic for tonight is books and reading. This summer I have a backlog of books to read both fiction and otherwise that are filling my shelves. Most were bargains and blowout sales or plunder from book sales at the local library. As much as I like finding a book on the cheap it's even better to get your reading material for free

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-86080949547737010102008-08-15T22:12:00.000-07:002008-08-15T22:27:08.006-07:00

Friday August 15, 2008Greetings! It's another fine Friday and I'm back with usual mix of mirth, pith and ideas. The topic for tonight is programming and once more I've turned my attentions to the Euphoria programming language and my long-delayed Musubi/SDL project. Musubi is a project I started a while ago to simplify the use of the SDL graphics/multimedia library and the related SDL libraries

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-90873940937937723252008-08-08T22:09:00.000-07:002008-08-08T22:20:27.590-07:00

Friday August 8, 2008Hello Again and TGIF on this lovely and hopefully lucky 8/8/8. The topic for tonight is graphics and the focus is on tutorials for my favorite free/open-source applications. First off there is a very comprehensive set of lessons on using the POV-Ray 3D/Ray-tracing program at the Online POV-Ray Tutorial page. Users of Project Dogwaffle and the various descendants and

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-49488511370452642472008-08-01T22:54:00.000-07:002008-08-01T23:11:30.543-07:00

Friday August 1, 2008Greetings! It's another warm Friday night and I'm back with more stuff to share. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on squeezing the best string sounds you can out of your sequencer or studio software. My choice of instruments and samples has customarily been limited by budget constraints, though a lack of bucks shouldn't be too much of an impediment to the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-28534250987953110812008-07-25T21:06:00.000-07:002008-07-27T16:44:37.492-07:00

Friday July 25, 2008Hola! We're back again with more fun and hopefully fascinating stuff. The topic for tonight is comics in honor of the massive Comic-Con International in San Diego this weekend. I'm going to focus on some of my favorite titles that have been reprinted as trade paperbacks and are available at your local book shop. The first stop on our tour is the year 1986 when Frank Miller

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-25177356735002653632008-07-18T21:16:00.000-07:002008-07-18T21:25:49.733-07:00

Friday July 18, 2008Good evening and welcome back! It another humid Friday night here and the topic of the moment is web design. This week I took a bit of time to revisit NVU and complete the rewrite of my web page. NVU is a very nice open-source, WYSIWYG HTML editor. It's suitable for beginning to advanced web designers and I gave it lots of bonus points for being user friendly and easy.

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-27700389212356535572008-07-11T21:18:00.000-07:002008-07-11T21:26:50.949-07:00

Friday July 11, 2008Welcome and a most jolly July to all! It's Friday once more and the topic is text as a visual art. A very early example of combining text and graphics into a single artistic statement is the art of illuminated manuscripts. The handwritten letters were embellished with beautiful patterns and decorations that blended illustration with calligraphy. Concrete Poetry is a form

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-42435499969680895232008-07-04T20:41:00.000-07:002008-07-06T12:58:48.546-07:00

Friday July 4, 2008Greeting and Happy Independence Day! It's a hot summer evening and I'm back with more stuff of interest to computer geeks and artists of all types. The topic for tonight is music and I'm going to discuss recording and using your own simple samples. For this exercise I used a cheap headset microphone, a small plastic soda bottle and the excellent Audacity open-source sound

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-9452705473627402942008-06-27T21:50:00.000-07:002008-07-01T21:39:48.842-07:00

Friday June 27, 2008Hello Again! It's another lovely warm summer night here in the old gray cat's loft, and I'm here with more stuff to share. The topic for this session is Graphics and the focus will be on a very useful 3D technique. I've been working on a project in Anim8or that required some facial animation. I decided to make use of morph targets to move the characters mouth, eyelids and

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-65914503306003983242008-06-20T20:46:00.000-07:002008-06-20T21:01:42.394-07:00

Friday June 20, 2008Greetings! We're on the verge of summer and the topic for this hot evening is games. I'm going to focus on a couple of free/open source clones of classic turn-based strategy games. I'll start the session with FreeCiv, a very faithful reproduction of Sid Meier's classic Civilization II. I like the tough AI, wide range of options and depth in FreeCiv. I don't like the long

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-31124458779068416912008-06-13T23:34:00.000-07:002008-06-27T22:31:15.598-07:00

Friday June 13, 2008Hello and Happy Friday the 13th! Tonight's timely topic is music and I've an interesting technique to share. In past blog entries I've described the use of looping in music to create pieces from short instrument or synthesized samples. Beat slicing is a related electronic music technique, in which a loop or sample is divided into separate beats, usually some even increment

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-64491078407969086082008-06-06T21:38:00.000-07:002008-06-13T23:48:00.486-07:00

Friday June 6, 2008Greetings again! The topic for tonight is graphics and the focus is on creating your own extensions for Project Dogwaffle. I recently acquired and started using the tBDW thinBasic Dogwaflle scriptable interface. This package allows you to create your own plug-ins for Project Dogwaffle using the ThinBasic scripting language. There are only about a half dozen statements and a

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-10180782713248088472008-05-30T17:58:00.000-07:002008-06-06T21:37:04.935-07:00

Friday May 30, 2008Friday Greetings! It's another nice late spring evening and I'm back with more of the good stuff. Tonight's topic is computing and I'll focus on portable applications. A portable application is a program that can be that can be installed and carried around on a portable storage device and used on any Windows computer. What this means is that you can take a small suite of

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-49015779825711898572008-05-23T19:35:00.000-07:002008-07-06T13:00:30.978-07:00

Friday May 23, 2008Hola! The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on a unique all-in-one solution for music making. In the past I've tried a few different Linux distributions, most recently settling on Suse. While I've had some success with most applications, the one area that really favored the Windows OS was sound and audio. Getting my Terratec EWX 24/96 audio card to work with

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-40382129728354133452008-05-16T21:59:00.000-07:002008-05-16T23:33:12.656-07:00

Friday May 16, 2008Hola! It's Friday once again and I'm back with more stuff and fun to share. The topic for tonight is graphics and the focus will be on layers. Layers in computer graphics and animation are a part of most 2D applications whether commercial or free/open-source. You can think of a layer as a drawing on a transparent sheet. When you stack a number of layers, those closest will

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-60411338599630552602008-05-09T23:19:00.000-07:002008-05-09T23:34:14.578-07:00

Friday May 9, 2008Friday Greetings! Today was a bit gray and cloudy but all told not a bad spring day. The topic for tonight is music technology and the focus will everyone's favorite portable media player, the iPod. What most folks don't know is that Apple's tiny tech marvel is really a small computer, complete with CPU and RAM. Given that information, some clever folks have successfully

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-46944377339048897272008-05-02T21:17:00.000-07:002008-05-02T21:27:57.816-07:00

Friday May 2, 2008Hi all! Friday brings lovely spring weather and slightly cooler temps. The topic for tonight is music software and the focus will be on upgrades. Software for music creation runs the gamut from free trackers to pricey studio packages. I've always tended toward the applications somewhere in the middle of the price/performance curve. The sneaky “gotcha” that underlies

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-74116745614395554192008-04-25T22:05:00.000-07:002008-04-25T22:15:12.518-07:00

Friday April 25, 2008Greetings! 'Tis Friday and I'm back with the usual mix of creativity and high spirits. This week the topic is writing, and in particular we'll talk about working with others. I recently started on a collaborative project with a small group that has been working on creating a short film. This is new territory for the old Gray Cat but it's fascinating to be in this type of

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-27109233036953421212008-04-18T21:06:00.000-07:002008-04-18T21:19:14.316-07:00

Friday April 18, 2008Hi All! Friday is here once more and the topic for tonight is music. Rehearsal is a subject that every musician must deal with. Hours of exercises, scales, and general noodling build confidence and skill. I must confess that being both a keyboard player and guitarist, I find myself waxing in one department while waning in the other. Practice time can also conflict with

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-57971300914665771162008-04-11T21:26:00.000-07:002008-04-11T21:34:31.399-07:00

Friday April 11, 2008Hi All! It's another fine Friday evening here in sun-drenched so cal. The topic for this week is the creative process and a method for finding your muse. I deal mostly with art as it relates to technology but sometimes you need to take a step back to break a creative block. If you're a visual artist, try spending an hour or 3 away from the PC screen and drawing with

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-4501865527250463852008-04-04T22:20:00.000-07:002008-04-04T22:30:32.107-07:00

Friday April 4, 2008Hola and TGIF! It's April and the weather is mild and suitable for springtime. This week I started my first SDL project using Dev C++. I've done some work in the past with SDL and the Euphoria programming language, going so far as to write a header for SDL and a number of associated libraries. Euphoria quite a bit easier to work with, but C++ has the advantage of being a

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-53840614093533568862008-03-28T21:11:00.000-07:002008-03-28T21:20:45.303-07:00

Friday March 28, 2008Greetings! It's Friday once more and the theme for tonight is music. I've embraced randomness as a tool for music creation, and I'm starting to do some work with white noise. Most simple software synthesizers have a white noise generator as one of their basic oscillator types. White noise in a raw form seems distinctly non-musical, but by applying some filters and effects

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-14709622012532677702008-03-21T21:05:00.000-07:002008-04-14T23:51:30.483-07:00

Friday March 21, 2008Good Evening and Good Friday to all! Spring has sprung once more along with warmer weather here in the Gray Cat's neighborhood. This week we're going to focus again on graphics. In a previous post I promoted the excellent open-source program MakeHuman, which creates highly detailed 3D models of people. At least one inventive Blender user has devised a method for creating

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-71185197314258544382008-03-14T20:48:00.000-07:002008-03-14T20:59:21.053-07:00

Friday March 14, 2008Hey All! The ides of March are nearly upon us and it's a fine Friday evening. The topic for tonight both graphics and also constructive criticism. This past week I shared a few of my animation efforts with my old friend Mark of the Illogical blog. He had more than a few choice comments in response that made me think bout how any artist can take critiques of their work.

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-68604071732715517402008-03-07T21:28:00.000-08:002008-03-07T21:44:40.165-08:00

Friday March 7, 2008Hi again! March has marched in and this weekend marks the start of daylight saving time in the US. I generally balk at the loss of an hour's slumber but that's cause I'm a lazy old gray cat. The topic for tonight is music and I'm going to clue you in on a very simple yet interesting technique for creating bass loops. The simple part of this formula for bass lines is that

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-54765924459533716702008-02-29T22:07:00.000-08:002008-02-29T23:06:15.125-08:00

Friday February 29, 2008Hello and happy leap year! Once again we have an extra day on the calendar to ponder our fates and to celebrate the good stuff. The topic for tonight is computer games and the history thereof. Any regular reader of this blog will know that I'm very keen on space games of all types and the game I'd like to focus on is one of the earliest. Star Trek, an unauthorized

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-11378927845864066152008-02-22T22:11:00.001-08:002008-02-22T22:32:04.297-08:00

Friday February 22, 2008Good Evening! Friday in So Cal bring colds weather and rain again. The topic for this fine winter night is music and more specifically resources for learning to play Blues on the Net. The first stop on our tour of this rich musical territory is the Slowhand Blues Guitar page. The main attraction here is a cool free Blues guitar tutorial with an emphasis on the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-39116366162792555782008-02-15T22:24:00.000-08:002008-02-15T22:43:53.084-08:00

Friday February 15, 2008Hola! It's the Friday before President's Day weekend and the topic for tonight is free software. I have a couple of new additions to my ever-expanding collection of graphics programs that deserve a bit of attention. The first half of tonight's double-feature is MakeHuman; A free (GPL) program for creating detailed 3D models of human figures. MakeHuman produces very

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-71462593358370120592008-02-08T21:16:00.000-08:002008-02-09T17:32:35.724-08:00

Friday February 8, 2008Warm winter greetings! I'm back for yet another Friday evening of shared artistic thoughts and views. Tonight I'll talk about the use of recycling in music and graphics. The term appropriation applies to the practice of using borrowed elements in the visual arts. In music a new composition can be made entirely from short sound samples or loops. Some controversy has

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-10897757561429359382008-02-01T22:29:00.000-08:002008-02-08T21:26:24.101-08:00

Friday February 1, 2008Hi All! Welcome back to my words for the tail-end of yet another week. I was browsing eBay this week when I spotted what looked like a remarkable deal. A full-featured 3D modeling and animation package for less than $10. The specifications listed were very impressive, as were the screen shots. So what was the catch? The software in question is Blender, a program that

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-54315144261373344172008-01-25T22:21:00.000-08:002008-01-25T22:41:27.932-08:00

Friday January 25, 2008Chilly winter greetings! It's a cold and rainy January eve here at the gray cat's place. The topic for tonight is music and I'm going to share some web sites that offer free music stuff. I've mentioned KVR Audio before as a good place to hunt for free and commercial plug-ins. You can search for instruments, effects or host programs in a huge variety of categories,

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-62497054587286866202008-01-18T22:55:00.000-08:002008-01-19T01:31:09.485-08:00

Friday January 18, 2008Hello again! It's Friday once more and I'm here doing the TGIF dance. I was blog-tagged (or meme-tagged) way back in December by my blog-buddy OneLuvGurl so this week I'm passing the favor on to my friends and two new individuals whose sites caught my attention. The rules are you have to answer each question by using the first letter of your name. You can’t use your own

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-85029703882970637062008-01-11T21:45:00.000-08:002008-01-11T21:59:51.950-08:00

Friday January 11, 2008 Good evening and welcome back! The topic for tonight is graphics and I'm delving into the realms of symmetry. The simplest use of symmetry is to mirror an image horizontally or vertically. By doing multiple reflections you can create a kaleidoscope effect. The mirror option is also useful in 3D designs. When making a human figure, you can create a left arm or leg and

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-20908916724458916682008-01-04T23:08:00.000-08:002008-01-18T23:27:50.389-08:00

Friday January 4, 2008Happy New Year and happy Friday to all! It's rainy tonight and looking to be wet weekend. I don't have a fixed topic in mind so I'll just update all the current progress. In music I've been working on some short loops that are mathematically symmetrical in nature. The resulting sounds are a bit strange but pleasing and decidedly different. The main graphic project of

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-92150274640779529002007-12-28T21:47:00.000-08:002007-12-28T21:55:53.985-08:00

Friday December 28, 2007Hi and welcome back! It's been a rather lazy week due to the holidays so tonight's post will be short and sweet. This week also represents a small milestone in that it's the 50th post made to this site. The main projects of the week were some more animations in Anim8or. I've continued working on a revamp of my web page and did a bit of music sequencing.The picture of

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-74882220334679419912007-12-21T21:51:00.000-08:002007-12-21T22:12:52.234-08:00

Friday December 21, 2007Hail and TGIF! Cold winter weather prevails on this penultimate Friday for 2007. The topic this week is games, and I'm going to give my top 5 PC games for the past year. This list is purely subjective and based on what games I had access to and played the most. In ascending order, my favorite games of 2007 were:#5 Star Wars: Battlefront 2A good mix of FPS action and the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-10128222501651279002007-12-14T21:11:00.000-08:002007-12-21T10:57:26.262-08:00

Friday December 14, 2007Hi all and welcome back! It's Friday again and chilly tonight for So Cal. Most of my creative time and energies went into graphics and animation this week. I'd like to learn to use Carrara Studio or Blender, but every time I have a 3D animation project I end up going back to Anim8or. There are pricier and more powerful packages, but you can't argue with the sheer ease

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-59041439419829150232007-12-07T21:24:00.000-08:002007-12-07T21:31:45.250-08:00

Friday December 7, 2007Salutations! I'm back on another rainy Friday night with more creative and compelling stuff. My creative energies and time this week past were spent mostly on music, so I thought I'd share a bit of music technology technique. I was working on a synthesizer track with Orion Pro and I used 2 very useful and complimentary processes: Quantizing and Humanizing. The Humanize

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-36011818023422563882007-11-30T21:42:00.000-08:002007-11-30T22:19:45.456-08:00

Friday November 30, 2007Warm greetings on a rainy Friday. I've been a busy gray cat this week, and once more my time management skills (or lack thereof) are getting pushed to their limits. I got a good dose of writing, doing more documentation for the Musubi project and writing up this weekly blog post. Musically I've fallen in with a group of guys for a weekly blues/rock jam and I've resumed

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-19112311947165976482007-11-23T22:59:00.000-08:002007-11-23T23:23:41.676-08:00

Friday November 23, 2007Happy Friday. So It's Black Friday and for once I didn't brave the crowds in search of a good deal at any of the countless retail sales going on through the weekend. There were some rather tempting offers, but nothing enticing enough to overcome a tight budget and a bit of will power. Rampant capitalism aside, I've continued my work on programming in Euphoria in general

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-76232299268833432302007-11-16T20:57:00.000-08:002007-11-16T21:07:55.969-08:00

Friday November 16, 2007Hi and welcome back! My topic for tonight is music theory once again, and I'm going to discuss the blues scale. As an aspiring Blues piano/guitar player I've had a little bit of firsthand experience playing blues scales. The blues scale has 6 notes, one less than the normal major scale, and 3 of those are flatted. The six notes of the scale lead naturally to melodies

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-61454542119303014012007-11-09T22:24:00.000-08:002007-11-09T22:35:46.341-08:00

Friday November 9, 2007Greetings! It's November and quiet here tonight. This week I tried to do a bit more programming in Euphoria. I've been trying to pick up where I left off on Musubi, a simple library for using SDL with Euphoria. My tool of choice for programming in Euphoria is still the Crimson Editor which actually serves nicely as a kind of IDE. The other major piece of work that

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-80241625638303855942007-11-02T21:43:00.000-07:002007-11-02T22:05:38.377-07:00

Friday November 2, 2007Hi all and welcome back! This week I've been working with Project Dogwaffle to create some small tiled textures to use as backgrounds. The main criteria for the images were that they be light in color so that I could print text over them, and that they tile neatly. Seamless tilings are best accomplished by using the transform/shift to shift the image horizontally or

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-37510440957747484392007-10-26T21:58:00.000-07:002007-10-26T22:21:30.870-07:00

Friday October 26, 2007Good evening all! It's Halloween next week, so I'll share more of my favorite scary stuff. In comics, you can't do much better than the truly haunting horror to be found in EC comics 1950's triple shot of titles consisting of “Tale from the Crypt”, “Vault of Horror”, and “The Haunt of Fear”. The EC comics were anthologies rather than the more common continuing tales

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-30478978967214881732007-10-19T21:49:00.000-07:002007-10-19T22:02:56.423-07:00

Friday October 19, 2007 Greetings and welcome back! It's another warm Friday night in the midst of autumn and I've finally found the time time make another post. The topic for this week is web design. I'm going to try to update my aging web site to better reflect my current interests. I don't have any sophisticated tools for development, and my budget is nil, so I'm going to make use of free

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-72725930698901568132007-09-05T21:43:00.000-07:002007-10-19T22:00:30.312-07:00

Wednesday September 5, 2007Good evening! I'm back with more info and fun for this fine late-summer night. The topic for tonight is music and the focus will be on music theory. I recently got a refresher course on musical scales during my weekly piano lesson with my niece Anna, and that reminded me of how useful the simple scales can be. The C major scale can be played on a piano or keyboard

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-51769411743564280232007-08-28T22:45:00.000-07:002007-10-19T22:02:22.671-07:00

Tuesday August 28, 2007Hello and welcome back! The days of late August and the tail end of summer have been filled with heat and high temps. I've been staying cool and chugging lots of cool water, and other drinks. The topic for this week is graphics, and the program of the moment is Project Dogwaffle. I've written in past posts about this nifty free program but I've only really scratched the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-29299307224436836342007-08-15T21:48:00.000-07:002007-08-15T22:41:37.894-07:00

Wednesday August 15, 2007 Belated greetings once more! I've been away from the blog dealing with a few personal issues for a couple weeks, so I hope that my meager readership hasn't lost interest and jumped ship. The last time I was here I was in the midst of a big computer game programming project. I felt that project was breaking too far away from my original intent to keep the focus of this

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-77208618635090124582007-07-13T21:13:00.000-07:002007-07-13T22:33:10.467-07:00

Friday July 13, 2007A slightly belated Good Evening to all! I've been away doing a bit of reorganization, and preparing more content for the game project. Yea, yea, it's an excuse, but life if full of those and I'll try not to exploit them too much. The topic for this week is audio and focus will be on sounds and a short musical loop for our computer game project. Last week I went over the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-44806345598383517422007-06-22T21:33:00.000-07:002007-06-22T22:17:40.577-07:00

Friday June 22, 2007Greetings! The topic for this week is graphics and the focus will be on creating graphics for a computer game. Last week we started the the project and made some initial decisions about the type of game we'll make. The game we're working on is a simple puzzle game, so the graphics will likewise be clear yet limited. To begin with I created a gray background using Project

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-64131537985827066102007-06-12T23:27:00.000-07:002007-06-13T01:10:13.617-07:00

Tuesday June 12, 2007Belated salutations. The entry for this week is late cause I’ve embarked on a long needed but all-too-brief trip to Australia. I’m currently in the city of Adelaide, which is located in the state of South Australia (closely adjacent to the grand state of bliss). What a remarkable world we live in when one day you can be enjoying the warming rays of a near-summer sunny day and

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-31382196947595570132007-05-25T23:35:00.001-07:002007-06-13T01:08:52.962-07:00

Friday May 25, 2007Hello again and welcome back. The topic for this week is graphics, and the focus will be on the creating your own cartoon characters. My software tool of choice for making 'toons is Anim8or, which aside from being a free program, has all the features you need to make your own characters. A good way to start is by building a figure out of primitives and simple shapes.The samples

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-66350027473735300792007-05-18T23:15:00.000-07:002007-06-12T23:26:58.905-07:00

Friday May 18, 2007Greetings and bonsowa-ru. This week the topic is film trilogies. That's right people, we're talking movies with exactly 2 siblings and there are a lot of them. This month the 3rd Spider-Man movie and Shrek the Third opened, and the third installment of Pirates of the Carribean is to be released next week. Of course none of these summer blockbusters may remain 3-parters and it's

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-60342501100654455802007-05-12T00:15:00.001-07:002007-06-15T18:34:26.435-07:00

Saturday May 12, 2007Good evening and happy Friday to all. The topic for this week is music and main focus will be on creating music using patterns. Repetition is a key part of music composition, and nearly every song has at least one repeated phrase. It's a basic technique, but very powerful and frequently used throughout all genres of music. A pattern can be a minimal drum beat, a driving bass

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-42955816538154592452007-05-05T23:53:00.001-07:002007-05-10T21:35:17.246-07:00

Saturday May 5, 2007 Hello and welcome back! The topic for this week is computing and the focus will be on scripts and scripting languages. To a computer programmer the term “script” doesn't refer to the lines that an actor will read on stage or TV. A script is a more generic term for a kind computer program. A scripting language can actually take the form of a general-purpose programming

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-4446171985662298812007-04-27T22:13:00.000-07:002007-04-30T00:15:34.176-07:00

Friday April 27, 2007 Hi again! It's a nice warm weekend here in So Cal and the topic for tonight is graphics. The program of the week is Virtual Dub, an open source video editing studio for Windows (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP). Virtual Dub can be used to record video from a camera, piece together separate scenes into a single long video, or to add an audio soundtrack to your video creation. It's

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-59784707421926293112007-04-22T22:56:00.000-07:002007-05-06T01:06:19.768-07:00

Sunday April 22, 2007 Hello again! This week's entry is late because I was away visiting some friends in Sacramento. Due to my current state of employment (or lack thereof) I chose to rent a car and drive there. My luck was running true to form, and I managed to pick the first rainy weekend in months for my getaway. It wasn't all rain and driving the roughly 780 mile round trip gave me a bit

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-91375384389548642732007-04-13T23:12:00.000-07:002007-04-14T00:13:19.533-07:00

Friday April 13, 2007 Hello and welcome back. This past Wednesday one of my personal and artistic inspirations departed this world for whatever lies beyond. Kurt Vonnegut wrote novels that were both fictional and full of truth. His humor was darker than the dark matter that fills the void between the stars, at turns satiric and cynical, and always a bit absurd. It was a balancing act that

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-84923544802224063092007-04-06T23:07:00.000-07:002007-04-07T00:14:33.471-07:00

Friday April 6, 2007 A very good, Good Friday to one and all. The topic for this week is music, and more specifically live performance. Every band or individual will eventually reach a point at which they've outgrown the garage or bedroom. The likely first gig for an aspiring artist will be a nice non-paying night at the local pub or coffee house, or an “open-mic” night. While playing for

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-38694082074786840912007-03-30T17:02:00.000-07:002007-03-30T17:18:42.774-07:00

Friday March 30, 2007Greetings my faithful friends and long-distance co-conspirators. I'm back after a bit of absence caused by a great deal of job stress and the stain of making the hard decision to resign. Old Mark the gray cat was being worked like a gray mule and continually underpaid, so I quit and decided to seek some other line of work. I'm currently looking for an opportunity to do

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-18787989252036603162007-03-16T22:12:00.000-07:002007-03-16T22:17:23.366-07:00

Friday March 16, 2007Hi all. Old Gray Cat Whiskers (Mark) is not feeling well tonight, so the entry will be postponed until tomorrow or Sunday. I'm going to bed early and we'll see if we can't have the usual week's worth of stuff here!TTFN and TGIF!

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-38101452613969268612007-03-09T21:42:00.000-08:002007-03-09T22:08:06.978-08:00

Friday March 9, 2007Good Evening Friends! Life goes on and I continue to roll along with it. The topic for today is computer programming and what is often the first program you write. One of the simplest tasks that you can do in any programming language is to display a text message on the screen. What has emerged as a kind of non-standard standard is for that simple program to display the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-43969676014428464202007-03-02T21:49:00.000-08:002007-03-02T22:33:16.902-08:00

Friday March 3, 2007Weekend Greetings! This weekly post may be a bit late because the cable that feeds me TV and Internet was down. That’s right amigo y amigas, the old gray cat has been without cable TV and the ‘net since Monday. Somehow I’ve managed to maintain my fragile grip on sanity in spite of the sensory and entertainment deprivation. I suppose there are some who would consider the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-14360196392008895512007-02-23T22:01:00.000-08:002007-02-23T23:13:03.394-08:00

Friday February 23, 2007Buongiorno! It’s another chilly Friday and I’m tired but inspired. This week the topic turns again to music creation and I’ve lined up some choice PC music tools to share. The programs in question are from the AnalogX site, small, easy to use and, best of all, they’re free (!). There are a number of these bite-sized, stand-alone and plug-in apps available at the site,

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-56443384265502557722007-02-16T22:48:00.000-08:002007-02-17T00:47:21.854-08:00

Friday February 16, 2007Bonjour! I’m back once more and the topic for tonight is graphics and art. The recommended program of the week is a great open-source application for kids named Tux Paint. Tux Paint gets its handle from Tux, the famous Linux penguin, who appears throughout the program as a kind of on-screen guide. In spite of the name and the use of the cuddly Linux mascot, Tux Paint is

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1171093349240003062007-02-09T23:39:00.000-08:002007-02-10T03:34:18.026-08:00

Friday February 9, 2007Warm winter greetings! This week’s entry will be a slight departure from the norm but detours and unexpected turns lend spice and interest to life. I’ve been tapped to participate in a Blog-Tag, by C.K. Lester, the avid Euphoria programmer and proponent. I’ll post a list of 5 things you didn’t know about me until now and then tag 5 other bloggers. Those poor souls will

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1170481700929311272007-02-02T21:46:00.000-08:002007-02-02T22:23:28.283-08:00

Friday February 2, 2007Hi All and Happy Friday! The weather is wet and chilly and the topic for tonight is computer programming. I’ve already touched on my favorite programming language (Euphoria) in a previous posting but way back during the very earliest days of personal computers there was BASIC (Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). BASIC has been around since the time before

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1169875408870553652007-01-26T21:22:00.000-08:002007-01-26T22:05:38.720-08:00

Friday January 26, 2007Greetings and Welcome Back! This week I started using broadband Internet in my home after years of moving at the far slower dial-up pace. Yes, this old gray cat is finally driving in the 21st century fast lane, and loving it. As with all good things there were a few minor obstacles along the way. It took about 4 weeks to get the installation kit, including the cable

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1169273636940211792007-01-19T22:09:00.000-08:002008-07-11T22:04:35.322-07:00

Friday, January 19, 2007Hi again! The topic for this chilly January eve is graphics, and the application of the week is an add-on for an already great program. A few weeks ago I wrote about Anim8or, an excellent free program for 3D modeling, rendering, and animation. Anim8or has inspired a companion program named Terranim8or that can generate random/algorithmic terrains, particles, animated

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1168670501036753072007-01-12T22:38:00.000-08:002008-07-11T21:57:27.492-07:00

Friday, January 12, 2007 Hail and Howdy! The topic for this lovely mid-January is music creation and I’m going to review loops and programs for using them. A music loop is a short, pre-recorded musical phrase that you can use as the basic building block in a song. A loop can be as long or as short as you like, but the most manageable length appears to be about 1 or 2 measures. Once you have

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1168066371630949382007-01-05T22:51:00.000-08:002008-07-11T21:55:12.913-07:00

Friday, January 5, 2007 Greetings and welcome to my first entry for 2007. As much as I like a good game or leisure application, there comes a time when every computer user needs something more serious. Microsoft Office is the big dog of productivity suites and is pretty much the standard by which all such software is gauged. MS Office is polished, easy to use, and quick but comes with a hefty

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1167458464581749782006-12-29T21:59:00.000-08:002008-07-11T21:53:12.271-07:00

Friday December 29, 2006 Hello again! We’re nearing the end of the year and if December is a time of remembrance then January is a time of forecasting and speculation. A lot of people feared the onset of 2000 and the “millennium bug”, but New Year’s Day arrived on time and we were little the worse for it. “1984” (written in 1948) gave a grim depiction of the world without human rights, but

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1166851468245263122006-12-22T21:14:00.000-08:002008-07-11T21:51:22.471-07:00

Friday December 22, 2006 Seasons Greetings and Welcome Back! Gaming has been ongoing obsession and this week I’ll share some of my favorite older PC game titles. When I say older games, I don’t mean the unplayable turkeys but the true gems that were hits in their day. There are a couple of good things about scrounging the bargain bin or the local used store for computer games. First off the

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1166253204251954742006-12-15T23:11:00.000-08:002008-07-11T21:49:43.813-07:00

Friday December 15, 2006 Salutations All! We’re at the mid-point of December and nearing the start of winter (or summer for those in the southern hemisphere). In honor of Beethoven’s birthday, the weekly topic again turns to music and its making. The recommended music creation software of the week isn’t a single application, but an entire collection of highly functional music programs,

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1165650852320104522006-12-08T23:52:00.000-08:002008-07-11T21:45:33.498-07:00

Friday December 8, 2006Greetings and TGIF! This week the topic is graphics and I’ve got an application to recommend. Anim8or is a Windows program for creating your own 3D animations, though it can also be used to render individual images. Almost everything you need to make you own ‘toon is included, from modeling tools, to a sophisticated scene editor. There are a ton of cool features, and

Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04193195000690409013noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22985259.post-1165039025452039772006-12-01T21:48:00.000-08:002008-07-11T21:41:26.334-07:00

Friday December 1, 2006 Hello all! It’s the first day of the last month of the year and a time for transition all around. The topic for this week is computer programming and the focus will be on one very cool utility in particular. Crimson Editor is a nice Windows application for the rather prosaic task of source code editing. I’ve found Crimson Editor to be a particularly good match for

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