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 your assorted drum, bass, keyboard, ocarina or whatever loops, then you’re ready to start putting them together, and for that you need some software. One of the original and preeminent programs for looping is Acid from Sony. Acid lets you assemble your loops with a minimum of effort, by simply dragging and dropping the sounds you want. A key feature of Acid is the ability to change the pitch or tempo of any or all loops used in a song, so that you can match up loops of varying length and key. The pitch/time-shifting feature has some appreciable limits, since you can’t change the pitch or tempo too much without it becoming noticeable. Acid comes in 3 varieties: Acid Pro the high-end version, Acid Music Studio with fewer bells and whistles, and Acid Xpress a free version that you can download from the Sony Acid site. You need Windows 2000/XP and a fairly fast PC, plus it helps to have an audio editing program if you plan on importing or rolling your own loops. Finding decent loops to use in your own work can be tricky. There are a few places to find freebies online, and there are a ton of el cheapo CD’s you can buy on Ebay. Every week I offer a few loops for free (to download you need to right click on the loop name) on this site. There are other loop music program available (namely Ableton Live and Garage Band) but I’ve yet to try them. Let me know if you think the Acid family of products is great or just lacking. A Wikipedia article on Acid is here.

This week’s picture was created using Corel Photo Paint
Click on the picture to get a full-sized view.

The loops of the week were created with Cakewalk Music Creator.
right click on the name of a loop to download it.

The song of the moment is Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

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 price tag and runs only on the Windows OS. I don’t feel much like paying the monopolistic, monolithic, Microsoft Corporation any more of my hard-hoarded cash (especially after having my wallet lightened buying Windows XP). Happily for those of us too broke or anti-trust to buy MS Office, there exists a most excellent alternative. That product is OpenOffice.org, a spiffy suite from Sun Microsystems that provides most of the functionality of MS Office, in a free (!) and cross-platform package (Windows, Linux, or Mac). Open Office passes the crucial ease-of-use test, in which I was gave it to my parents and they were able to figure it out without my help. The Wikipedia article on Open Office is here. Give it a try and let me know if you think it’s a winner (or a waste).

This week’s picture was created using Bryce
Click on the picture to get a full-sized view.

The loops of the week were created with Orion Pro.

The website of the week is Bad Movie Planet wherein you'll find reviews and tributes to the all the bad films ever made. The movies listed and lauded range from almost passable to truly awful.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

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 much of that dark, dystopian theme has been diluted as the backdrop for the first Apple Macintosh Computer commercial, or as the title inspiration for cheesy reality TV. It may be of some ironic historical significance that Ronald (Bonzo) Reagan was in office during that fateful year, but that’s a matter of political taste. “2001: A Space Odyssey” gave us a marvelous vision of interplanetary space travel and near-sentient computers but both of those innovations are still years or decades off, giving lie to the title. “Soylent Green”, the Sci-Fi and culinary classic, had most of civilization falling apart around Y2K, and a previewed a mass consumer product only slightly less distasteful than Hot Pockets. The “Mad Max” films and “Waterworld”, while violent and silly, don’t give us a whole lot of time before the end of the happy trail due either to societal collapse or global warming. The point of this week’s exposition is that the future is whatever you make of it, and that is neither entirely good nor bad. Our choice is whether we live as if we’re living through the end of time, or simply living and trying to make it a better life.

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.

The website of the week is the 30 Second Bunny Theatre, wherein you'll find 30 second re-enactments of famous films acted by bunnies.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Have a Happy New Year and Bye for now!

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 price is usually a lot less than the latest titles, mostly under $20 US. Second, is that the older stuff has lower system requirements, which improves your odds of playing straight out of the box. That is a good thing because I can’t always afford to upgrade CPU, memory, or video to accommodate the latest game. My favorite fantasy role-playing title is Neverwinter Nights, which offers some epic adventuring and a complete kit for creating your own quests. Real-time strategy players can try Command and Conquer: Generals and the Zero Hour expansion pack. The units and weapons in C&C Generals are a blend of the current military hardware and sci-fi ultra high-tech. If you like a bit of fantasy mixed with your strategy then you can’t do much better than Age of Mythology, with its unique blend of ancient armies and colorful myth units. Star Wars: Battlefront represents one of those amazing chocolate and peanut butter moments in PC gaming history. Combine the key elements of Battlefield 1942 and the Star Wars Universe and you get a sweet, gooey FPS that is actually fun to play. Don’t get me started about the cathartic aspects of "sanctioning" Jar-Jar Binks
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This week’s picture was created using POV-Ray for Windows
Click on the picture to get a larger view
The loops of the week were created with Orion Pro.

The website of the week is the Darwin Awards, which seek to prove old Charles Darwin's theory by citing examples of extraordinary human folly.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

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, plug-ins, and samples. All these goodies come bundled on the Computer Music monthly magazine DVD-ROM, which sells for about of $15 in the US. That right compadres, essentially everything you need to learn to make music on your computer is included for less than a couple sawbucks. The suite includes the Computer Muzys software studio and the CMusic sequencer, as well as some cool VST instruments and effects. In addition to all that gratuitous goodness, Computer Music also packs a whole bunch of loops and instrument samples onto each and every monthly cover disk. The programs run on Windows (CMusic requires Windows XP) or Mac, and are quite stable. If your local newsstand or bookshop doesn’t carry Computer Music, have a look on Ebay for back issues. The one drawback I’ve found is that the Computer Music programs are slightly less intuitive and easy to use than some others I’ve used. Having mentioned that minor bummer, I’ll leave it for you to try it or buy it.

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.

The website of the week is MythologyWeb, which as the name suggests is devoted to mythology, folklore, and legends.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

Friday December 8, 2006

Greetings 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 more are added with each update. And what’s the price for all this concentrated coolness you ask? Try zero bucks. That’s right, it’s a free program and you can’t get much cheaper than that. Anim8or is an excellent way to learn the finer points of computer modeling and animation before trying a full-featured commercial program. Give it a test drive and let me know what you think.
A Wikipedia article on Anim8or can be found here.

This week’s picture was created using Anim8or
Click on the picture to get a full-sized version


The loops of the week were created with Orion Pro.

The website of the week is PVP, which has become one of my favorite web-comics. It helps to either be a gamer, or to know a gamer to get most of the jokes.

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

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 Euphoria, and FreeBasic, and I’ve even used it for a bit of HTML editing. You can assign macros to handle common functions such as compilation and organize your source code into projects. It’s a compact program (1224kb), it’s very stable, and it’s free (!), but donations are accepted. The downsides are that it’s only for Windows and it may be moribund, since the last update was back in September2004. This program is well worth a look, especially if your programming language of choice doesn’t have an IDE of it’s own. A Wikipedia article about Crimson Editor can be found here.

This week’s picture was created using POV-Ray for Windows.
Click on the picture to get a larger view

The loops of the week were created with Orion Pro.

The web site of the week is the Marvel Database Project a wiki devoted to everything about Marvel comics. It’s a feast for the inner fanboy (or gal).

Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!