Archive for January, 2009
Friday, January 30th, 2009
Though I’m relatively familiar with synth programming and MIDI controllers, I never cared or needed Non-Registered Parameter Numbers. Sequence 15 shares some info about them:
To send an NRPN value, first you send messages to select the desired parameter. Continuous controller 99 is used to send the most significant byte (MSB), and controller 98 is used to send the least significant byte (LSB). If the receiver has fewer than 128 parameters, the MSB message need not be used. For example, to select parameter 131 (whatever that parameter happens to be on a given synth), you would send a controller 99 message with a value of 1, and a controller 98 message with a value of 3. (The value of the controller 99 message is multiplied by 128, and added to the value of the controller 98 message.) Having selected the parameter, you then send two more messages to specify the value of the selected parameter: controller 8 sends the MSB of the value, and controller 38 sends the LSB. (If the parameter is limited to the range 0-127, the MSB message need not be sent.) If we wanted to set the selected parameter to a value of 286, we send the controller 8 message with a value of 2 (2*128=256), and the controller 38 message with a value of 30.
Posted in Musical Instruments | No Comments »
Thursday, January 29th, 2009
If you ever played in a band, you know that it requires to permanently communicate with each other. Usually the tune played builds the overall framework. In a rock band, the drummer and the bass player usually contribute the main part to belt together the rest of the band. Of course that’s not enough and would only lead to a huge amount of notes accidentally stuffed together. Instead, all musicians need to communicate, need to “feel” each other.
(more…)
Posted in Music | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
Finally some progress in Miltenberg!
Posted in Openstreetmap | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
If you think that openstreetmappers are people who spend lots of money for their GPS toys, there are similar projects which require even more expensive gadgets :) .
Posted in Gadgets, Neogeography, Openstreetmap | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
I’m just playing around with Ruby “to get some work done™” (he he). I want to read some waypoints from a gpx file and stuff them into a sqlite database file. REXML wasn’t that intuitive. so I just installed the gpx GEM:
su
apt-get install rubygems
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/50755/libxml-ruby-0.9.8.gem
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/32625/gpx-0.4.gem
gem install libxml-ruby-0.9.8.gem
gem install gpx-0.4.gem
Will figure out tomorrow how to actually use it.
Posted in Products | No Comments »
Monday, January 26th, 2009
Igor Brejc just released GroundTruth, yet another tool to create Garmin maps from OSM data.
Posted in Gadgets, Neogeography, Openstreetmap, Software | No Comments »
Monday, January 26th, 2009
Ever wanted to see a Minimoog demoed live? Switched on Synthesizer hosts a Youtube video of hvrhd1000u. Don’t miss the related videos of the same guy. Enjoy!
Posted in Musical Instruments | No Comments »
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
Yes, it’s true, the MAD magazine still exists! According to Slashdot, they are about to release their 500th issue. From april on, they will switch to quarterly releases. To be honest, I haven’t read one of them since my youth. But nevertheless, it reminds me of Alfred E. Neuman, Dave Berg and Don Martin. Will order some of the latter one’s comics instantly :) .
Posted in Lifestyle, Literature | 2 Comments »
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
I’m pretty sure that this Interview, where Linus states that he has switched from the disatrous KDE 4 to Gnome, will reignite all kinds of religious discussions concerning window managers and desktop environments. As tempting it is, I’ll better resist to read all those useless postings and better continue to play around with stuffing POIs in a sqlite database :) .
Posted in Software, society | No Comments »
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
Here’s a panorama picture I took in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It’s far from being perfect, as I only used the automatisms of Hugin without further interaction or editing. The camera position was approximately here, with camera movement from east over south to west (left to right):
I took the images in auto mode, thus the variant exposures. I should have used the stitch assistant instead.
Posted in History, Outdoor, Pictures, Travel, society | 1 Comment »
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
Admittedly, the german language neither is an easy to learn nor an elegant language. During my stay in Kaufungen, I found this »Berliner« ad in front of a bakery. The writer obviously was not a native speaker (instead of »verschiedene Fühlungen« he meant »verschiedenen Füllungen«, »various fillings«):
Not that my english was perfect (actually, it’s lousy :) ), but it reminds me of a column of Bastian Sick called »Zwiebelfisch«. (more…)
Posted in Literature, society | 2 Comments »
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
I always liked the discrepancies between the actual filesystem as seen in a shell window and the GUI on the Mac. For a current software project, I needed to experiment with folder names containing colons: »:«. This is a valid character on Un*x like machines. On the Mac however, it is not possible to create a folder called »:::« – at least via the GUI. But it is of course using a shell. The result, however, is rather amusing :) :
(more…)
Posted in Software | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
Of course it’s part of the political show business. But anyway, do you remember such a stirring speech of a german or even european politician? Admonishing, but also encouraging each individual citizen? Clearly stating that freedom is the base of our modern societies? That we want to lead the world?!?
This speech is not comparable to the boring monologues of most german politicians. Obama will be judged past his presidentship. But his first official act looks promising. Wish to be an american today.
Posted in History, society | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
Posted in Pictures, society | No Comments »
Monday, January 19th, 2009
Here’s an attempt to design an open source tablet computer, the CrunchPad. My first ideas read as »Is it water resistant?«, »Is there a bike mount!?« and »Will it run jackd and Ardour?!?«. Don’t miss the videos of this promising device :) .
Posted in Gadgets, Musical Instruments, Software | No Comments »
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
Since last year’s election, Hesse was governed by an interim government led by the former prime minister, Roland Koch. Thus our neighbours voted again today.
While the CDU got the same result as one year ago, the citizens scolded the Social Democratic Party of Germany. They lost 13% compared to last year’s election. The FDP and the green party seem to have won those ballots.
Andrea Ypsilanti, who is responsible for the crash, finally withdrew herself a couple of minutes ago¹. It’s now the job of Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel to reunite the SPD. Roland Koch will probably remain as prime minister and form a coalition with the FDP. Probably not the worst choice for the inhabitants of Hesse.
Here’s a table of (rounded) results in percent:
|
2008 |
2009 |
| CDU |
37 |
37 |
| SPD |
37 |
24 |
| FDP |
9 |
16 |
| Grüne |
8 |
14 |
| Linke |
5 |
5 |
¹ If she really wanted to prevent her party from this disastrous (and foreseeable) result, she IMO should have done so on November 4, 2008.
Posted in society | No Comments »
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
The second book I just read about the mass extermination of jews during the second world war is called »We wept without tears« (»Wir weinten tränenlos…«) by Gideon Greif. It’s a compilation of various interviews he held with some survivors of the Sonderkommando of the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
(more…)
Posted in History, Literature, society | No Comments »
Friday, January 16th, 2009
If you remember a little latin, you might know what »Anus Mundi« means (a vulgar german translation would read as »Arsch der Welt«). Still under the impression of my recent visit to Oświęcim, Poland, I wanted to get a bit of a clue what life was like in those infamous german concentration camps.
(more…)
Posted in History, Literature, society | No Comments »
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
Not that I am a fan of destroying things, but well, it’s part of the rock’n'roll history: Keith Emerson treating his Hammond in 1971 :) .
Posted in Lifestyle, Music, Musical Instruments | 2 Comments »
Saturday, January 10th, 2009
Due to an announcement of twitter-inkface for the N810, I got aware of Inkface. Don’t miss the demo video. Scripted and AJAX applications are repelling the traditional C and C++ applications day by day.
Posted in Software | No Comments »
