Ottertal Fungi
Due to the annual Xmas family meeting I had the occasion to do some further mapping of the lovely Ottertal. Unfortunately my camera failed after I had taken four pictures, but that’s better than nothing :) .
Archive for December, 2009
Mapping the Ottertal, Part II
Monday, December 28th, 2009
Christoph’s Notepad ported
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009Searching the web, I got a brief reminder that I wrote my first blog entries back in 2005. As the data collector I am, I ported them to this blog. Just in case you are wondering why some new posts with a rather dated time stamp popped up :) .
Mapping black forest ski runs
Sunday, December 20th, 2009
Snow of the black forest near Herrenwies
The winter arrived in europe, and even in Karlsruhe with its mild clime some snowflakes and temperatures less than -10°C have been detected sporadically. Surprisingly there’s not much snow at the nearby black forest yet (only about 20cm respectively 8″), but it seems to be enough for winter sport activities.
Simple Sysexxer 0.3 released
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
Simple Sysexxer 0.3
I just uploaded Simple Sysexxer 0.3. See its dedicated page for details about download and usage.
The MIDI reception part has been rewritten to use the ALSA sequencer directly. Receiving (and sending) huge SysEx messages (greater than 256 bytes, ALSA’s buffer size) now should work reliably. At least it does with a Korg Z1 Synthesizer (168 531 bytes for the complete internal memory).
Hope you enjoy. Feedback is always welcome. Just drop me a line.
extrablocks.com launched
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Kitchen rendering created using interiorcad
After months of many additional office hours, we finally made extrablocks.com officially available. While interiorcad mainly is a set of plugins for Vectorworks, extrablocks is a platform for sharing contents like symbols, textures, but also manuals and other stuff for Vectorworks.
The initial content mainly addresses the needs of kitchen builders and interiorcad users, but this will change soon. extrablocks.com will become a common platform for Vectorworks users, and there will be frequent updates providing fresh contents.
To avoid the manual download, extraction and installation hassle, extrablocks is capable to feed its contents (youtube video) straight to the right places in interiorcad. For non-interiorcad users, a plugin will be available which will provide similar ease-of-use for users of Vectorworks Architect, Landmark, and Designer.
Article about Openstreetmap on mobile devices online
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
Pencil (by openclipart.org - public domain)
The german Linux Magazin put the article about Linux on mobile devices online.
I’ve ranted about writing the article back in November and October. If you didn’t read the printed issue, the online article is another occasion.
Another interesting article is Wirbelstürmer which reports about the usage of OSM and openrouteservice.org to cope with the remains of the hurricane »Ike«. Thanks for putting those articles online, guys!
Volker Weber’s conclusion concerning the N900
Saturday, December 12th, 2009Voker Weber concludes that it’s better to wait for the N900’s successor, except »you really want a computer that is also a phone«. A less surprising conclusion. That’s what the N900 is. And that’s how Nokia advertise the device.
10 Tüten Haribo
Saturday, December 12th, 2009oder: Von der Schwierigkeit, sich vom Kunden nicht über den Tisch ziehen lassen, auf jeden Fall aber sein Gesicht wahren zu wollen.
10 Tüten Haribo
Ich kaufe die Dinge des täglichen Bedarfs seit Jahren fast ausschließlich im Edeka in der Karlstraße in Karlsruhe (Nähe Karlstor), da er von zuhause aus mit dem Rad in wenigen Minuten erreichbar ist und zudem direkt an meinem Nachhauseweg vom Büro liegt. Das Angebot und die Warenpräsentation ist ansprechend, das Personal freundlich und die Fluktuation gering. Der Bäcker im Eingangsbereich bietet ebenfalls gute Ware. Im Gegenzug liegt das Preisniveau natürlich etwas höher als bei den Discountern, und der eingemietete Fleischer spricht mich eher weniger an, zumal es bei mir um die Ecke einen guten Metzger gibt.
Synth Programming – Audio Synthesis & Physical Modeling theory
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
Korg Z1 - Parameters of the Bowed String Model
I’m currently reading the master thesis of Henri Hagenow (2001). If you are capable of reading german and interested in that matter, it’s a very interesting read (attention: some maths ahead :) ). It gives me a much better understanding what happens inside my beloved Korg Z1 synthesizer.
In the next live, I’ll become a physicist and write cool audio software.
Synth Programming – “I believe in Fourier Synthesis”
Monday, December 7th, 2009
Sliced lemon (openclipart.org, public domain)
To better understand sound synthesis and synth waveforms it is very useful to learn more about Fourier synthesis, the reverse process of Fourier analysis. In the following sections, I’ll try to condense the necessary knowledge as much as possible. I hope this simplification does not produce mistakable results. Otherwise please drop me a line.
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Where Linux sucks #10811¹
Monday, December 7th, 2009
Penguin (openclipart.org, public domain)
According to my last posting, I wanted to record some audio on my Linux Box. If you don’t want to use a fully flavoured digital audio workstation or sequencer, you can for example use qarecord or timemachine. First I tried timemachine.
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Where Linux sucks #26685¹
Monday, December 7th, 2009Penguin (openclipart.org, public domain)
I’m using Linux for more than 10 years now, and it is my operating system of choice. There is plenty of cool software available, and any programming environment is right at my finger tips. Even on “The Desktop”, it is often much easier and more convenient to use than any other operating system.
However, there are still a lot of glitches which are capable of rendering the machine useless for average users.
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Mapping rivers in the woods ++
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
Brown and brown
Though it was a cloudy (and rainy) day, I needed some compensation for the many extra office hours of the last week. During the winter months, I try to map hiking paths and rivers in the Bienwald, which I cannot map by bike during summer:
An intense week passed by
Saturday, December 5th, 2009An intense week passed by. Though we focussed on many (insert arbitrary factor here) details, we failed miserably and screwed up the first cut of the german interiorcad DVDs. At the very end it just does not matter what we did well and how much we focused on so many details. It also does not matter how hard we worked to get things done. The only thing that counts is whether we get our bits and bytes to our customers.
It is my job to shield my colleagues who do the actual work behind the scenes. If there’s failure, it is my job to step forward and to get bashed for it. Fortunately I’m in the lucky position to have a great leader and a crew of excellent colleagues. If they fail, I just didn’t coach them good enough. I apologize.
So we spent some extra hours in the office today (not to mention the past days and weeks). What about 8/5? Frankly, I do not care. My work is not duty, but passion. As it is for my colleagues. So what?
Due to external circumstances which are out of our control, we are more than late with the release. I’d like to grab the occasion to thank my colleagues for the hard work and our sales department for the patience and understanding. I really expected being bothered much more.
I’m glad we finally got all of the new features out of the door. Due to the delay, we had some extra time to stabilize the new features, so interiorcad 2010 finally became a very nice product. Hope our customers will enjoy it.
Am I pleased? Yes and no. Learn more. Work harder. Do it better. And enjoy the journey!
Mapping rivers in the woods
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Some Lichen
No posting for more than one week? Isn’t there anything interesting to write about? There is, but the release of interiorcad keeps me busy.
Due to the lack of daylight in my spare time, I decided for a short hiking trip last sunday, though it was a rather rainy day. I had good luck: The rain stopped as I reached on-site and it began raining again just as I reached the car after the trip.
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