Archive for November, 2009

Sorting Sound Files using Ruby

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

ruby-2008.png

Consider you have 2,248 files in a directory, each containing one single sound program for your favourite Z1 synth. You need to load them into the synth individually, listen to them and to sort them in directories. Painful it would be.

Fortunately, all sounds are set to one of 18 predefined categories like guitar, synth hard, synth soft, piano, organ and the like. In the SysEx files, the category is coded into the 26. byte. So it was easy to sort the files into subdirectories using a couple of lines of Ruby code (sorry for the misformatting):



#! /usr/bin/ruby

require 'fileutils.rb'

def determineCategory( filename )
file = File.open( filename, "rb:binary" )
fileContents = file.read
category = fileContents[25] + 1
# puts filename, category
unless File.directory?(category.to_s)
Dir.mkdir( category.to_s )
end
FileUtils.mv( filename, category.to_s )
end

Dir.glob( '*.[Ss][Yy][Xx]' ) do |entry|
determineCategory entry
end

This language seems to be very powerful. Need to do more with it.

Sound Collection Tools for the Korg Z1 Synthesizer

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
Korg Z1 Panel

Korg Z1 Panel

I’ve collected a lot of sounds for the Z1 from several web pages. All those sounds now need some sorting and rearrangement. After that, I’ll send them to the Z1, extract the best ones and refine them to my likings.

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XP Days Germany ahead

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
Meeting Point Symbol (openclipart.org, public domain)

Meeting Point Symbol (openclipart.org, public domain)

The XP Days are just a couple of hours ahead. I’m curious what people will attend and expect some illuminative talks. I hope it will be possible to blog directly from the conference, either using the notebook or the N810. I’ve also set up an “extra group” :) in our “company owned” messaging system in advance.

Though it is not for free it was too tempting to attend – it’s just a five minutes walk from our office, so there was no excuse :) .

ALSA Sequencer Interface for Simple Sysexxer

Monday, November 23rd, 2009
Simple Sysexxer Icon

Simple Sysexxer Icon

The last release of Simple Sysexxer used RtMidi for MIDI input. However, some weird things happend when I tried to receive data from my beloved Korg Z1 synth. Today I have rewritten the MIDI input thread using the ALSA sequencer API.

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Mapping the Ottertal

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
Fungi of the Ottertal - 1

Fungi of the Ottertal - 1

Yesterday we celebrated the 60th birthday of my mother at the village where I grew up. A nice occasion to meet family members and other people I haven’t seen for a very long time.
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Weird Concert at Jazzclub Karlsruhe

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
Anthony Pateras at Jazzclub Karlsruhe

Anthony Pateras at Jazzclub Karlsruhe

Last saturday Anthony Pateras performed a concert at the Jazzclub Karlruhe. He played a prepared grand piano in a very uncommon manner.
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Korg Z1 synth bricked – almost

Friday, November 20th, 2009
Korg Z1 synth

Korg Z1 synth

I wanted to try out some sounds for the Korg Z1 which are publicly available on webpages (such as the Z1 Yahoo group). To ease this process, I tried out several tools to rearrange the individual sounds across the various collections.
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OSM-Booth at OpenExpo, Karlsruhe

Sunday, November 15th, 2009
OSM-Booth at OpenExpo, Karlsruhe, Germany

OSM-Booth at OpenExpo, Karlsruhe, Germany

The OpenExpo just opened. Both OSM as well as KaLUG are manning a booth. As last year, there aren’t many visitors yet, but this will change until noon.

Switching from Linux to Windows

Friday, November 13th, 2009
Broken Windows (wikimedia commons, public domain)

Broken Windows

I run a dual boot machine, using both Linux and Windows operating systems. I rarely boot Windows but only use it once a semester or so to try out some application or to compile Gebabbel for my Windows users.
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Günter Wallraff Lecture

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Wallraff Lecture at the JuBez, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2009-11-10

Wallraff Lecture at the JuBez, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2009-11-10

I just attended a a lecture of Günter Wallraff at the Jubez. He’s a master of investigative journalism, which surprisingly is not very common in germany.

He has played several roles during the last decades: as a turkish worker, as a journalist for an infamous german tabloid, as a black guy in germany or as a call center agent. Meanwhile, he’s kind of an institution.

I read some of his reports, books and saw some of his films. Visiting a lecture is like meeting a bigfoot: »Wow, I never believed it really exists!« :)

Update:

Metamorphosis.

OSM@Open Source Expo one week ahead

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

osm_logo.png

The Open Source Expo is less than one week ahead. We will populate a booth, as do our friend of the Karlsruhe Linux User Group (aka KaLUG).

If you want to attend or help, please see this Wiki-Page for details.

KDE-Founder gets the German Federal Cross of Merit

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

The initiator of the KDE project, Matthias Ettrich, got the Federal Cross of Merit on Friday , 2009-11-06.

I’ve been a KDE user since I use Linux (I’m an old fart, my first Linux installation was back in autumn of 1998). My first impression was »OK, I just dropped Windows, and this is the operating system that shall do better?!?«. Since then, a lot has changed, and KDE 3 has been out for a while. It always did a great job on my machines.

I’m not that happy with KDE 4.2, though. I switched recently, and there are still glitches of stuff which worked flawlessly in KDE 3 but fail in KDE 4. For example, I always have excessively used the fish:// protocol, which lets you transparently work with and edit files on a remote computer as if they were local files. Since KDE 4.2, however, this protocol very often reports »No connection to server« which renders it rather useless. I’m now back using scp on the command line. No wonder that Linus switched to Gnome a couple of months ago :) .

There are other issues, but I’m pretty confident that KDE 4 will mature just as its predecessors did. So thanks a bunch, Matthias, for your work on KDE!

Great Concert at the Tollhaus

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

I’m just back from a concert at the Tollhaus. There have been three sets. The first one has been performed by Michael Wollny and Tamar Halperin:

Michael Wollny and Tamar Halperin at the Tollhaus

Michael Wollny and Tamar Halperin at the Tollhaus


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GPS-Articles in the current issue of german Linux Magazin

Thursday, November 5th, 2009
Gebabbel Logo

Gebabbel Logo

The current issue 12/2009 of the german »Linux Magazin« features several GPS related articles. On page 40 there’s one about Openstreetmap on mobile devices, especially the N810.
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Sounds from the Prophecy stuffed into the Z1

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Electric Guitar (openclipart.org, public domain. Thanks, guys!)

Electric Guitar (openclipart.org, public domain. Thanks, guys!)

The Korg Prophecy was the monophonic predecessor of the Z1. Unfortunately, both instruments are not patch compatible, so you cannot load sounds designed for the Prophecy into the Z1.
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