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Friday March 30, 2007
Greetings 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 some freelance computer consulting, and I'd like to start my own music production and software design business. I'll keep making the Mark's Digital Arts posts in the meantime, if only to keep some small semblance of sanity. This week is for recovery and transition and next week I'll be back to the usual mix of fun and enlightening stuff.
The picture of the week is one I took just down the street from my apartment. I liked the look of the neon and was experimenting with taking photos without a flash.
Click on the picture to get a full-sized view
Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!
Friday March 16, 2007
Hi 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!
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 message “Hello World”. There are literally hundreds of examples in just about every known programming language of this simple program. The earliest known example of the “Hello, world” program was created by Brian Kernighan, the co-author of “The C programming language” book, the definitive tome on C. Check out this fairly funny list of Hello World programs based on age and experience, and this rather exhaustive list of Hello World variants (314 computer and 25 human languages). This week’s picture was created using Project Dogwaffle
Click on the picture to get a larger view.
The loops of the week were created with Orion Pro.Right click on the name of a loop to download it.----- Bass 1 ----- Bass 2 -----
----- Drums 1 ----- Drums 2 ----- Drums 3 ----- Drums 4 -----
----- Ping 1 ----- Ping 2 -----
The website of the week is Dork Tower, a web comic that explores the lives of gamers. Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.Bye for now!
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 absence of digital input an opportunity for solace and growth. Pity I’m not made of that noble stuff, else I wouldn’t have been pacing and rambling like a crack-addicted lab monkey in search of his next fix. Well, maybe not so bad as that. I did have my DVD’s and I was able to check my email and do a bit of clandestine surfing from work. Next time I'll be a little better prepared for a dry spell. This week’s picture was created using Anim8or and Terranim8or. Click on the picture to get a full-sized view.
The loops of the week were created with Orion Pro.Right click on a loop name to download it.
----- Bass 1 ----- Bass 2 ----- Bass 3 ----- Bass 4---------- Drums 1 ----- Drums 2 ----- Drums 3 ----- Drums 4---------- Synth 1 ----- Synth 2 -----The website of the week is Nic Squirrell’s lovely illustrated blog. Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.Bye for now!
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, but my favorites are the vocoder, the speech synthesizer, and the auto-tune. The vocoder can be used to make a human voice sound electronic or robotic. The Cylons (in the old Battlestar Galactica TV show, not the new one), or any number of ELO songs used the distinct sound of a vocoder. A speech synthesizer can take a typed string of words and turn it into roughly recogonizable human speech. The auto tune simply can detect and change the pitch of a WAV format sound file. The downside to these freebies is that they’re mostly monophonic rather than stereo and limited in resolution to 16 bits of output. The good part is that they are free software tools that perform musical functions that used to require a rack full of costly equipment. Give them a try, and send me your own review! There was some belated news from the blog tag of 2 weeks ago. This week I got a nice note from Disaster Gurl and she’s going to continue the chain and tag 5 others. For my part I was polite, lest it be said I was flirting with Disaster.This week’s picture was created using Project Dogwaffle Click on the picture to get a full-sized view.
The loops of the week were created with Orion Pro.Right click on a loop name to download it
----- Bass 1 ----- Bass 2 ----- Bass 3 -----
----- Drums 1 ----- Drums 2 ----- Drums 3 ----- Drums 4 ---------- Electric Piano 1 -----Electric Piano 2 -----
The song of the week is Hocus Pocus, originally by Focus and covered by Gary Hoey.Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.Bye for now!
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 not exclusively a Linux program, and in fact it runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows (all versions from 95 through Vista!). Everything is designed from the ground up for ease of use. The graphics are relatively low-resolution 640x480, which is just about the right for kid-sized hands pushing a mouse with less than pixel perfection. There are the usual paint tools, various brushes, a bright palette, and some cool special effects that can be applied. My favorite feature is the rubber stamps, which are images that can be pasted anywhere on the screen. The default stamp set features Tux the penguin in various poses, but you can replace Tux with your own images. There’s a lot of coolness here and it’s free, with the one caution being that it’s not quite as slick as a commercial program. My 7- year-old nephew promptly figured out how to use the rubber stamps and quickly crafted a short story starring Tux. Give it a go, or better yet have your kids test drive it and let me know what you think! You can read the Wikipedia article about Tux Paint here.The results of last week’s blog tag are in. Max and Ben expressed an interest in continuing the chain, Claire declined politely, AlvinZ is closing his blog (bummer), and Disaster Gurl hasn’t responded yet.This week’s picture was created using POV-Ray for Windows.Click on the picture to get a full-sized view
The loops of the week were created with Orion Pro.Right click on a loop name to download it.
----- Bass 1 ----- Bass 2 ----- Bass 3 -----
----- Drums 1 ----- Drums 2 ----- Drums 3 ----- Drums 4 -----
----- Synth 1 ----- Synth 2 -----
The website of the week is a gallery of artworks by a guy called Wizard. It’s amazing stuff and he uses one of my favorite art programs, Project Dogwaffle. Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.Bye for now!
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 be asked to post their own 5 things and to tag 5 others. The idea apparently is to achieve critical mass and self-sustained fission after a number of iterations. So without further ado, hesitations or condiments here are the
Five Things You Didn’t Know About Me Until Now:1. I reside in Southern California, but have visited 6 other states: Nevada, Washington, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, and Hawaii.2. I wrote a BASIC wargame named “Tactwar” on my Atari 800 back in 1982. I Googled it recently found that it’s available for download on an Atari retro site some 25 years since I posted it on GEnie.3. My favorite daily comic strip is Get Fuzzy.4. Between 1995 and 2002 I played keyboards in 4 L.A. area bands.5. I used to be addicted to Starbucks Frappuccinos. I still imbibe the occasional ice-blended coffee drink, but in moderation.I audited a bunch of blogs and picked the ones I liked the best to tag. I don’t know the people I’m tagging, but hopefully they won’t think I’m completely rude or a wacko. At best they’ll respond and continue the chain reaction. At worst they’ll get restraining orders and add me to their “spam” lists. In any event I’m tagging:Max, Claire, Ben, Alvinz and DisasterGurlThis week’s picture was created using Project Dogwaffle . Click the picture to get a full-sized view.
The loops of the week were created with Orion Pro.Right click on a loop name to download it.----- Drums 1 ----- Drums 2 ----- ----- Marimba 1 ----- Marimba 2 ----- ----- Saxy 1 ----- Saxy 2 ----- Saxy 3 -----The websites of the week are the blogs I’ve tagged above. It’s all good stuff and worth a quick browse or an extended reading. Explore, expand, and expound! Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.Bye for now!
