Older blog entries for bneely (starting at number 20)

Audio Software

I recently got a synthesizer, and I'm planning to perhaps add a drum machine and another synth to this setup shortly. Also in my aural arsenal is a sampling/effects program, a software synthesis program, and a midi sequencer. All of this software runs on Windows 95/98. Blech.

Is anyone using similar software that runs in Linux? The midi sequencer would be the one I'll spend the most time in, followed by the sampler, followed by the software synth.

Please contact me if you have experience with any similar open source applications. bneely at parts hyphen unknown dot com. Cheers.

Hey Maciej: The Yahoo Games version of Scrabble, Literati, checks words against the OSPD (official scrabble player's dictionary), that is somehow supplied by dictionary.com. I have an ascii file of the OSPD that contains one word per line (but no definitions). It's great when you can query for "give me all five-letter words with e as the second letter, and containing an r" with `grep /usr/share/dict/ospd ^.e...$ | grep r`. Er. at least, that's how I do it. Fun. (Yes, I'm a cheater.)

so..."ga" isn't in the OSPD.

I have submitted a patch against grepmail to allow a different method of getting the date out of an email. While working on a project at linuxcare, I discovered that grepmail always pulls the date from an email's "Date:" header line, but hypermail always pulls the date from the "From " header line (the "hidden" one). Since these two dates were often in conflict, it was producing undesirable results for date-sensitive email sorting. I needed grepmail and hypermail to grab the date from the same place. The patch lets grepmail grab the date from the "From " header, which fixes the problem I was having.

In case anyone's listening, I want my old job back!

Hooray for lame bitterness!

I have an mp3.com station called get whipped. It features deep house. I haven't updated it in about 3 weeks, but I should be able to get around to it this weekend. Enjoy.

Example of a moron.

Everything

If you happened to be at the Robin compound last night, you would have thought I was being antisocial. I was, sort of. I was actually in my room recording an ambient mix. (Mail me for the URL of the mp3.) It was fun.

Yesterday I started reading up on XML. A cow orker referred to XML as OTT. I told him to Go Away.

Music

Have I mentioned how much I love music? I probably have. Well, on Friday I took the opportunity to teach myself some python. My initial reaction was mixed. I'm still not sure how I feel about the language. My initial reaction with perl was, "Woah! This is pretty powerful. The syntax is similar to C, too, so that makes it easy." My reaction with python is more like, "Gee, that took a bit of effort. My program works now, I guess, but, er .. well, *shrug*." No, those aren't very scientific evaluations, but that explains how I felt at the time.

What I do know is that O'Reilly's Learning Python, First Edition is a terrible book. The online documentation is considerably better, and costs a lot less than $29.95. Case in point: I was completely unable to learn how to use python lists by just using the book. However, a lot of effort was required to find the right place on python.org to learn about lists. I'm confused about the distinction between the language reference and the tutorial, and it cost me quite a bit of time.

OK, now for the part that actually relates to music. I have written muf.py - a music fader. The README tells the story, but if you're too lazy to hit that link even though I took great care to craft that URL by hand, I will share the story with you. I like to put a CD on when I go to bed. But I needed a way to gradually fade it out so the sound wouldn't keep me up. I learned python by writing this program. I should mention that muf.py is a front-end to aumix, which uses /dev/mixer.

The program needs a lot of work, but it functions correctly now. And I can honestly say I've written a program that I might use every day of my life. :)

Abstract

Wow.

The New Office

The new office rocks! It is well-lit, comfortable, reasonably spacious, and most importantly, feels like a place where work gets done. Two thumbs up -- way up. I moved with three cardboard boxes of stuff, and have unpacked/condensed it down to one. I even found a little picture of Bullwinkle on a candy bar wrapper to hang up in my cube.

Disclaimer

I only talk about software in my diary entries once in a while. If this bothers you, please look for other diaries to read.

VMware

This command hard-locked my system yesterday:

rmmod vmnet

I closed gkrellm (which was monitoring activity on the vmnet1 interface) and disabled the interface with ifconfig vmnet1 down, but still the crash. I know, stupid me, use "/etc/init.d/vmware stop" next time. But instead (after reboot) I opted for "mv /etc/rc2.d/S90vmware /etc/rc2.d/K90vmware". :)

Mutt bug (versions 1.01 and 1.2)

Mutt's advance-on-message-tag action in the index mode doesn't work as I would expect. For an example, let's imagine a mailbox with three messages:

1. "j"ump to message 2.
2. "d"elete message 2.
3. "j"ump to message 1.
4. "t"ag message 1.

This should put you to message 3, but instead it moves to message 2. The problem is, if you wish to tag the message, you can. But to un-tag the message, you have to use the "j"ump command and specify message 2 explicitly, because cursor keys will skip over "D"eleted messages by default.

Possible fixes:

• Make the "t"ag feature advance-on-tag with recognition of deleted messages, skipping over them (preferred)
• By default, skip over "D"eleted messages, but do not skip over "D"eleted and "*"-tagged messages. (I guess this is only useful if there is a good reason to delete and afterwards tag a message, but I don't suppose people tend to do this. I only end up doing it by accident because of the problem described above :D )

clyde

clyde is the name of my home machine. It is running well, and everything seems to be happy. I have been tracking the sblive driver snapshots every few days. It's great to have sound. Hey, what would anyone recommend for wav-recording in Linux? I would like to take the line-out from my mixer and try to record a dj mix. I'm too cheap/lazy to go out and get a DAT recorder right now. Some of you might want to know who clyde is.

Music

As much as I once thought I hated drum'n'bass, I found a mix CD that I really enjoy. It is the instrumental version of LTJ Bukem's Progression Sessions vol.4. I guess this isn't straightforward drum'n'bass, but it is more melodic and atmospheric. Whatever it is supposed to be called, I like it.

Abstract

Happy.