IDLE HANDS

Ever since I first saw the first video with solenoids banging away on stuff making beats I have wanted me some of that. I even emailed a lot with that guy who made the NintendoGameboy thing, I promised to help him program the UI but it neven amounted to anything.

I found a few solenoids some years later, but they where huuuuge and scary, really scary. So I never used them for anything (I still have them though). I built the first version for those solenoids, but I was not sure I got the  Transistor part correct so I never really dared hooking them up to my arduino/computer but with the help of this blog and it made me rebuild and retry, this time with really smaller Solenoids.

I reused some old code from the Opal build, that was nice having that on the blog (since I just got my computer stolen and I had not that back upped anywhere else) that reads Midi in via some magic OS X functionality. HOORAY. And then a little tiny tiny Arduino program listening to what the OS X program tells it to initiate the Solenoids. Anyway here is the SolenoidServer.zip and the SolenoidClient.zip

And if you only want to watch the vide, it’s here:

Of course I have a juicer already, in fact I have three.

Two manual one’s and one electric. The two manual ones are alright, but they are small and you can only juice oranges in them. The electric is hard to wash, it does not juice especially well (the “not-juice” is very wet, sometimes it’s more juice there then what dripples out) and mostly, the juice is very clouded and foamy. I don’t like that. I tried buying something, a Ferrari press from the, it did not work properly either, apparenty it’s not that good. I emailed the seller and I got some hints, but it still doesn’t measure up to what I want.

So I decided to build one instead.

This is it, a construction of m12 threaded rod and really thick wooden planks. The first iterations broke in funny and spectacular ways. The second one as well. The third still holds but I figured that I needed to grind apples before, so I built an apple grinder. Instead of talking to much about it I could show you, and here’s the youtube video of it:

Is that we had a break-in wednesday. They stole a whole bunch of things, including my mac.
They missed the one that I had backupstuff on, sadly I had not backupped a lot of things.

This is what I miss the most:
Pictures had movies I had taken with the phone and the camera. Especially one image where a monkey tried to steal the phone. It was awesome.
Most songs I’ve made over the last couple of years (I have some backed up)
Almost all coding projects I’ve done recently (except the ones I shared on internet)
Almost all of the tinkerteam.se source.
A few new shuriken.se VST’s
A whole bunch of other stuff.

Kid’s remember to backup, you never know when some fucktard is going to steal your hardware, at-least you get to keep your data.

And I got this logo for it.

except, I cut away a piece of it that I did not like!

I’ve been dabbling with Neural Networks lately, specifically I’ve been trying to get a NN to learn to be a audio effect. I’m still in the early stages of learning me and “it” stuff. But here is a wave file with one file original and the other modified by a NN behaving as a rather simple waveshaper.

If you care to listen to it: testtrol

I have read a few of science fiction books in my days, but I recently stumbled on a “genre” that combines sci-fi and dystopian societies. My faves!

In a humanitarian outburst of sharing I hereby give you the top three books. All thought-provoking and a good action-read, on Wikipedia not all of them are labeled as science fiction, but I bought them in the sci-fi bookstore in Malmö so I’d go by that category anyways.

In no order:

Market Forces
You win contracts to your firm by racing against your competitors. And if you are in for a promotion, there is almost always a colleague to race against. And the races are to the death. Very cut-throat competitive.

Jennifer Government
The US of A is run by corporations, the government is a shattered in a libertarian utopia, but the companies does not behave well. Employes dont have their own last names, but keep rather the company they work for like John Nike. John Nike starts of the book by killing of kids in a marketing scheme, making demands for the new Nike’s much much higher.

For The Win
Workers in third world countries works as gold-miners in on-line games, selling the farmed gold to rich western players that cant be bothered to level up themselves. Shit hit’s the fan when these workers try to organize unions and demand fair salaries.

When you where in kindergarten, or first grade. Little anyway. Let’s say you’ve made a drawing. You’re mighty proud of this masterpiece. Let’s think about the following scenarios:

1, Someone takes your painting and draws something on it.
Obviously you’re heartbroken since you’re drawing is now destroyed.

2, Someone draws you painting again, copying it with crayons.
This is probably not as upsetting, it probably depends on if it was one of the cool kids or not.

3, Someone takes you’re picture, walks over to the copy-machine and makes a copy of it and keeps it in his or her drawer, never showing it to anyone.
Do you even care? you’re a toddler.

4, Number 3 makes a copy and gives to his or her best friend.
you’re getting popular right?

5, The same copy machine is used again and the kid from example NR 1 is not destroying you’re drawing but extending it on his/her own copy.
Does this upset you? I don’t think so, you have you’re own painting still and the other kid has a new one.

So what does this all mean? I’m thinking that when we grow up, we loose a bit of common sense kids have but we keep (and expand) some of the feelings and reactions that we thought we have grown up from.

Svar: JA!

Bevis:

As you all know I like to do some geocaching once in a while, but I’m often a bit surprised as how wrong the coordinates can be. This is sometimes frustrating, and could easily be fixed, all you need is enough data. Another peeve is that you need to write on paper, to validate your find. I geocache with my phone, I don’t feel the need to write my name on moist paper, nor do I really need to exchange small treasures. It’s the search and the “getting out into nature” that does it for me.

Let me describe the solution to the described problems.

1 Every cache has a QR-code.
2 To validate your find all you have to do is scan the QR-Code
3 profit

A few things happens in the background though, when scanning the code, you
* Check the co-ordinates of the device that scans the qr-code
* check the device that does the scanning.
* Looks up the the cache in the database (so the app could present you with a dialog like: “You found “kära jesse” would you like to log it?”)
* Saves the registered coordinates and the device that found it (some devices have better GPS) so that the more ppl log the cache the better it’s co-ordinate gets.
* You log the find.

I think this could be something, I really really do. The more finds, the better coordinates.
Perhaps I should do a little test with the new geocaching.com API’s, guess we’ll have to hide a whole bunch of QR codes then.

I just want to hang this idea out here, one idea reason is for me to collect my thoughts so that it’s not in shambles, so I can go back to check out what I want. Another reason would be for someone other then me to take the idea and run with it.

OK, so this is what I want:
* An AU/VST plugin that can load a settings file (ie neural network) that emulates an effect (be it an old vintage distortion or something other out there)

This is how I think it could be done:
* Make a neural network trainer where you input the original audio file, what kind of parameters to run on it, and the expected result. Then then train the neural network with new output and change the parameters to that that would output the new sound-file.

A good thing about being a kickstarter junkie is that open sometimes buy’s really really useful stuff like this: http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/nature/nn/ but in .pdf format, and with even more info. So maybe, maybe I will be able to make this happen even though I previously thought I lacked the math skills needed.

Now if you’lll excuse me I’m gonna do a whole lot of reading.