Friday February 9, 2007

Warm 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 DisasterGurl

This 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!

Friday February 2, 2007

Hi 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 computers were personal and has gone through a number of changes and variations in its history. BASIC was the first programming language many people learned, because back in the early days nearly all home computers had some version of BASIC built in. It worked well, cause it was dead simple, and very immediate. There currently have 3 different BASIC dialects in my expansive software library: Dark BASIC Pro, FreeBASIC and IziBASIC. I’ll devote a bit more time to the specifics of each BASIC variety in a later entry.

This week’s picture was created using POV-Ray for Windows
Click on the picture for 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 -----
----- Drums 1 ----- Drums 2 ----- Drums 3 -----
----- Synth 1 ----- Synth 2 ----- Synth 3 ----- Synth 4 -----

The website of the week is The Thousand Nights and a Night which contains various translations of the Arabian Nights tales.

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

Friday January 26, 2007

Greetings 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 modem and splitter, and that required no fewer than 4 phone calls and a drive out to the payment/service center. It seems my cable company was suffering from a severe case of cranial-rectal inversion as the result of a recent transition. I also was advised to invest in a broadband router for added firewall protection, the Net no longer being the safe and insular place it once was. The good points of the upgrade are raw speed and capabilities. Audio actually streams and it no longer takes 20 minutes to download a 2-minute video. I also got the opportunity to prove what a compete newb I am at UT2K4 by getting killed in various gruesome ways in the course of a friendly game with real-live humans instead of bots. I’ll have more on my new adventures in cyberspace in future posts.

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 title 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 The Internet Ray Tracing Competition. The competition is mostly good natured and some of the stills and animations are truly noteworthy.

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

Friday, January 19, 2007

Hi 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 textures and some other very impressive effects. It’s not often that you see such a comprehensive add-on package, but Terranim8or delivers the goods and like Anim8or it’s a FREE program. I used an earlier version of Terranim8or to produce an impressive snowfall scene and a starry particle trail for a short animation. If you liked Anim8or, you’ll almost certainly want to give it a try.

This week’s picture was created using Anim8or
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 to download it

The website of the week is Otaku World, a site with numerous links to places to learn to drawn Japanese style cartoons (manga, and anime).

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

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!