Hodapp's Weblog

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hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:23:17 +0000

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hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:23:17 +0000

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2007-03-23 backlog

hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:18:39 +0000

Trevor Metz + +Ok, so this actually has been put off since about 2006-07-22 which is the download date on 6 of the 7 songs I have right now (which are: A World Apart, A World Apart - In Ambience, Changing Times, I Can See Fuji From My Balcony, Rubicon, and The Unfortunate). + +It looks like he's now known as Andries and has a SoundLift page here, Myspace here, and probably a dozen other music pages elsewhere. I should probably go look in more detail and find some other songs to put on my iPod to listen to while I drive to encourage less profanity. + +Adjectives I wrote: Atmospheric, ambient, relaxing + +Where to get it: The SoundLift page. For now. + + + innermost + +Wow, I only have one song (Blue Sky) from this artist, and it's from his SoundLift page on 2007-03-23. But apparently I liked it and then forgot about it, probably out of being really busy. + +I should also check this artist out and get some more songs. + + Adjectives I wrote: Gentle, ambient, dreamy +Where to get it: The SoundLift page.

innermost

hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:16:07 +0000

innermost logo on SoundLift

2007-07-25 backlog

hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:38:49 +0000

Kahvi Collective has been one of my favorite music sites since maybe 2006. Every release I can remember has always been of very good quality and included some interesting album artwork. Any Kahvi link I post is generally going to have a link to a full download of the album in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. + + + +"Red Balloon" by General Fuzz + +This is kahvi #216. Here's what I wrote: +

More beat-oriented; sometimes mysterious

I listened to these before bed; they had some nice imagery and visualizations

+ + +Dream Lab - Cryogenic EP + +This is kahvi #186. I wrote: +

1st half: Dreamy, thick, emotional. "Cryogenic Suspension II" is familiar.

2nd half: More enigmatic, complex, beat-driven. "Chemical Karmasutra" has a signature sound

+I think when I said "familiar" and "signature" I meant that some distinctive melodies were involved that were very hard for me to forget. + +Some of these same songs are on the Cosmotherapy album (CARD010) from Cardamar Music. I ordered a copy in 2007-10 and it's one of my favorite albums.

General Fuzz - Red Balloon

hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:36:38 +0000

Dream Lab - Cryogenic EP

hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:37:28 +0000

2007-07-25, more backlog

hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:18:34 +0000

+ +Coax - Celethyst EP + +This is kahvi #185. I described it as fast-moving and squirrely. It differs a bit from most of the other things I've heard on Kahvi, but I still like it. + + + +Workbench - Detour EP + +This is kahvi #171. This has been on my playlist since at least 2006-07 but I was too lazy to make a note of it, despite having listened to it probably more frequently than any other album.I wrote... +

Soothing, melodic, uplifting, "textured" but not overwhelming.
Lengthy (particularly the last 2, 13+ minutes each), but flowing very well and maintaining interest through changes

I love this entire album. It's extremely relaxing, but without being boring or dull.

+Brioskj - Escape from the City + +This is kahvi #198. I remember that it's one of my favorites, and apparently I wrote: +

Kinda enigmatic, complex, dissonant in spots
Good transition across album

Coax - Celethyst

hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:02:02 +0000

Workbench - Detour

hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:05:08 +0000

Brioskj - Escape from the City

hodapp — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:14:13 +0000

2007-07-30, backlog

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:52:00 +0000

+ + Miss Moonlight - Save Us +

I believe I got this as an album on eMusic, back when I still used it.
It has five mixes (one a radio edit of another)
I really like this, particularly the Vogelmann Armageddon Remix and Thomas Nolte Remix
Heavy beat, varying tempo, a good mix of house and trance

+Where to get it: eMusic? Beatport? Home page?

Miss Moonlight - Save Us

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:51:36 +0000

2007-10-12, backlog

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:57:23 +0000

+ +Scann-Tec - The Man Who Lives Offline + +This is kahvi #222. All I wrote about this is: "Good, notable, I'm too lazy to say why." I guess I should probably listen again and maybe I'll remember.

Scann-Tec - The Man Who Lives Offline

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:57:10 +0000

2007-10-13, backlog

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:14:49 +0000

+ +Cardamar - Sequence Breaker EP +

This is Cardamar PARO011. I got this as a promo CD with "Cosmotherapy" by Dream Lab.

+ +

Somewhat normal Cardamar sound (piano, generally gentle)
#3 is notable (Radioactive Granny) despite the strange name
Melodic, layered, with some light beats +

+Where to get it: I don't know, because it's no longer sold at Cardamar Music. + + + +Dream Lab - Cosmotherapy + +This is Cardamar CARD010. I probably already mentioned it in this entry. Here are the old notes I wrote: +

Some of this I've heard before (Kahvi #186) and already know I like
I like the female vocals where I hear them
A couple different sounds here...
"I'll Guide You" - dreamy, atmospheric, elevated, delicate
Stuff from Kahvi #186, and its various sounds
I don't know, but I like basically the whole album.

+Where to get it: See the Cardamar page; it's on CD Baby, iTunes, AudioJelly, Tradebit, and probably a few other places I haven't heard of.

Cardamar - Sequence Breaker

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:07:20 +0000

Dream Lab - Cosmotherapy

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:13:03 +0000

2007-10-16, backlog

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:34:12 +0000

+ +krill minima - urlaub auf balkonien +

This is Thinner thn098. Thinner is a netlabel that I like quite a bit - they have a helpful website and a number of good releases (which look like mostly ambient to me). All the releases I've seen are free under Creative Commons and have funky morphing Flash-animations for album artwork, artist information and links to pages elsewhere for the same artist. Like kahvi, any albums I post to Thinner will probably have a full download available.

+I wrote: +

Thinner #098: krill minima - urlaub auf balkonien
Very ambient and minimal, pretty gentle, not very beat-driven but has some rhythm
I'm not normally a fan of ambient, but this did give me some visions (mostly geometric)

krill minima - urlaub auf balkonien

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:25:53 +0000

2007-11-03, backlog

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:48:14 +0000

+Eloi Brunelle - The Love EP + +This is EpsilonLab EPS25. DJ Eloi Brunelle also has a Myspace here. + +I don't remember much about the EpsilonLab netlabel. They have a pretty handy classification system for each track, giving it as a combination of: atmospheric, cerebral, energetic, melodic, minimal, rhythmic. Some releases have free downloads available, others don't. + +For this release, my old notes say: +

Focusing more on percussion, closest to house (progressive?), dance-ish, sorta laid-back
What's the opposite of abstract and atmospheric?
This first song is a bit lame with the universe-questions

+Too bad I didn't write anything about the other tracks. I should probably re-listen. + +Where to get it: EpsilonLab release page; all 4 tracks are available for download as MP3s.

Eloi Brunelle - Love EP

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:46:27 +0000

EpsilonLabs logo

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:47:36 +0000

EpsilonLab text

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:47:59 +0000

2007-12-11, backlog

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:01:13 +0000

+ +RMS Maryse + +I must not have liked anything this artist did, because I wrote "Avoid completely." Anyone who feels like disputing that, his SoundLift page is here. + +Sylver - Dance With Loneliness (e-Side Remix) +

Fast-paced, upbeat, driven, almost frantic
Not house, not techno, not quite trance either

+Where to get it: Here at ctgmusic + + + +Mindmasher - Easter Eyeland +

Solemn, less beat-driven, kinda mysterious?
Almost like ambient, but not dream or chillout

I think I vaguely remember this track being good and pretty unique. This artist also has no shortage of music on ctgmusic, so I should go check it out again.

+Where to get it: Here at ctgmusic + + + + +Fleeticer + +I completely failed to note which track I was talking about. Maybe it was several tracks. But I do remember listening to "Seven Seas" and liking it. + +I wrote: +

Full of good transitions and layering
Standard trance, I suppose, but very good

Where to get it: Here at ctgmusic +
+

+ Despot - Something Fresh + +

For being drum & bass, this has more of a dream sound
This reminds me of some kahvi stuff, as it's lighter

+ This guy appears to hav only released two songs. Hmm. + +Where to get it: Here at ctgmusic

RMS Maryse

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:41:45 +0000

Mindmasher - Easter Eyeland

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:49:23 +0000

fleeticer

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:54:29 +0000

speak - mindsplit

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:20:09 +0000

2007-12-21, backlog

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:40:59 +0000

+ +"Speak" by Mindsplit + +This is kahvi #228. I really can't remember anything about this one, but I wrote this: +

Ambient, slow, controlled
Beat-oriented but not driven
Methodical? Melodic?

+So I guess I liked it but I can't remember much else. + + + +I wrote about kahvi #229 like coax wrote it, however it seems coax had nothing to do with it, so I am rather confused. But I said: "Flows well, atmospheric/ambient-ish, melodic" + +Whatever. + + + +Coax - Twilight Snow + +This kahvi #230 is actually by coax, unlike the last release I looked at. All I wrote about this is that it sounds like piano compositions.

Polaski - Planets

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:33:39 +0000

coax - twilight snow

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:37:09 +0000

2007-12-28, backlog

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:48:01 +0000

+ +gastón arévalo – ultramar + +This is thinner thn099. It looks like a pretty short album (20 minutes) but I remember liking it. I wrote: +

Kinda beat-driven; flows pretty well
Minimalistic

ultramar

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:45:59 +0000

2008-01-17, backlog

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:58:06 +0000

+ +Vortechtral - Technical EP + +This is EMRMP001 on a label called ElectraMento. It looks like they have a little more of a commercial interest in mind than Kahvi or Thinner, as they have fewer albums and only some are available freely (though it looks like all of them can be played online). + +I wrote: +

"Subterreanean" is good... beat is heavy but not fast.
Atmospheric, layered
Very good.

+Where to get it: Free download at ElectraMento.

vortechtral

hodapp — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:57:38 +0000

Workfest with Christian Appalachian Project, day one

hodapp — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:20:55 +0000

It's quite different.

People are open. Their groups are open.

It's a difference between being pushed away from people constantly, and being pushed toward them, so one does not constantly need to fight back against the repulsion.

+Maybe it's the types of people. Maybe it's the environment. But it's wonderful. Maybe similar to the way I felt in Seattle when I visited there last year. + +Months in Cincinnati and I might never meet a new friend... hours here and I've made several already. + +It's good to see Lea for a change, instead of just emailing. Corrie's also very friendly, and so are most of the other people from the class for that matter. Max and Dan tolerate me being around them, which is good when they're the only two that I have talked to much. +People I've seen so far just look like generally very good people - honest and practical and benevolent and grateful, and not trying to escape or cheat the system for their own greed. Put them in certain cities, and maybe that would emerge - but they're here. + +They're out of that context. They look like they're in the context they belong. + +My Canon camera is probably almost out of battery power, despite efforts. I should have brought the charger. But I have the Kodak too. Maybe it will show some of the picturesque terrain. + +

Workfest, day two

hodapp — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:53:54 +0000

Proceed with first work day. + +Due to loud snorers and periodic heater-startup and my cell phone failing to be a usable alarm after its batteries drained in standalone mode for no apparent reason, causing me to believe it was 6 AM when it was probably around 2 AM . . . I had very little sleep, and woke up pretty groggily and felt like eating nothing and doing nothing. + +This wore off pretty easily once I was at the work site with my crew. I was working with Corrie at first, and she was cheerful and this helped; Connie, the owner of the house we were helping repair, was also extremely kind to us. + +Most of my morning consisted of putting up fanfold insulation on some walls. Despite constant hammer-pounding and cold, it was pretty peaceful, maybe calming (in a "stage crew" sort of way, like in high school when I discovered that painting flats and beating the crap out of things with hammers was very stress-relieving)... though tiring for my hands and arms. + +It reminded me a bit of working on the grounds department at KMCN, except that the surrounding area was miles of country, not just a collection of flowerbeds and trees in the city. I will need to bring my camera and get some pictures of the rooms loading there, as well as the house and its environment. + +A bluegrass band (Phillip Akemon and Flatlick) also came tonight. They were very good; I have a few pictures and short video clips (though Kirsten probably has most of it in a much higher-quality format). + +I was talking to Lea and she told me she hated being around some of the Christians here... I don't totally blame her, even if I don't have the same view (yet). My view is that they are having a very positive outcome, and if they have to believe what they believe to achieve it, then so be it. They aren't pushing beliefs on anyone else, so I can't really criticize much. + + +Phillip Akemon + +Mike Morgeson + + + +Kevin Amburgey & Phil + + + +Phil & Phil Jr. + +

Workfest, day three

hodapp — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 04:07:10 +0000

Well, scratch that part in the last entry about not pushing beliefs. + +I slept like a rock (as MJ predicted), woke up groggily, and started another day. Work was a bit slow at first because my wrist was sore and it was hard to hammer, but everyone was pretty productive in general. + +Deacon Gregory gave a long, slightly unexpected sermon at lunch today, which I disagreed with a lot of, but thought it a bit inappropriate if I spoke out and had no one on my side (though Corrie said later that she didn't like it much either). So, Lea perhaps was right. + +I also had some odd discussions with Max, Dan, and Paul. I've been trying to talk with everyone from UC, but I haven't see Lizzie or Holly much. Aside from that, I've tried to talk to some people in my crew and just around camp. Lolita has seemed to keep her distance from the rest of the crew (just as a general tendency, not like active avoidance), but she's very friendly. We walked around for 10-15 minutes to shoot pictures of the landscape and a nearby family cemetery. + +A speaker came to talk about poverty when the camp met after dinner. I don't recall much of this because I was dead tired, and the room was very hot and making me ready to pass out. Everyone from UC met after that, and Lea made a point that many of the volunteers were very ignorant in general and this bothered her (such as when they'd say things that were insulting to her and her heritage). + +I wandered in the cafeteria after that and eventually got Corrie, Dan, and Max to play Thirteen (the card game that my brother showed me days prior, and almost a year prior in Seattle). Paul replaced Max when he wanted to play euchre with another group instead, and William joined in; his girlfriend Laura wanted to play but then she was distracted looking at pictures on my camera and then reading a paper/magazine/something. We played about 3 or 4 hands before everyone else was too tired to play, so they left. I think they liked the game, but it's hard to tell for sure. + +I took a ton of pictures today... my 512 MB card is almost full in my Canon, but I have my 128 and 32 MB cards, and my old crappy Kodak with 512 and 64 MB cards. I am surprised the batteries have lasted so far in the Canon, as they've been at "low" since the first day. + +I understood some of what Jen Eich said months ago about being able to volunteer for a year without racking up debt - much of the staff lives in a sort of coop under CAP, with most expenses covered (like housing, insurance, and utilities) and a $150/month stipend. It looks very nice - if one is suitably dedicated. +

Early stages of the deck:

+ +

Corrie & Christine putting up soffit

+ + + + + +

Workfest, day four

hodapp — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:45:58 +0000

Typical morning, finishing up of some work, watching a deck get assembled... + +After that we went to a church about 30-40 minutes away and had dinner with the families whose homes we were repairing. Some people got up to talk and expressed a lot of gratitude in general. + +Sometime on the drive back to camp with the rest of my crew, we all basically lapsed into some mix of a sugar-high combined with slap-happiness, and we were laughing and screaming the whole way back over really nothing in particular, fueled by the occasional 55-mph tight turn with a bus and semi truck in the other lane, and random songs on the radio (which otherwise had been off until now). Ma'Isah randomly grabbed me during her overdramatic dancing to "Rescue Me," which was a bit odd, but also quite funny. + +Once back at camp, the colleges split up to meet, and it seemed everyone from UC was just as slap-happy and high on sugar/caffeine/whatever. They already were laughing at MJ (or maybe with him) about some conversation revolving around underwear or something I completely missed, and the meeting was just a sort of continuation of that. We attended to all needed business, like evaluation forms that we had to fill out - we just happened to be laughing the entire time. Kim, for instance, saw that I had written "cute fluffy kittens" on the part of the form where I was supposed to note a high point of the trip, and she confused "kittens" with "mittens" and then proceeded to laugh her ass off for about 5 minutes. + +She also asked the group if they thought they'd like to meet afterward sometime just to get ice cream or something, because we all seemed to be enjoying being around each other and it would be weird to suddenly leave and cease to meet again. Holly also asked who'd like to return to Workfest next year, and MJ suggested talking to honors at UC about that, as people didn't have to come as part of a class - it could just be a university function. + +It's odd... it's like we all started meshing and being friends. + +It's miles apart from other environments I've been in, where I had suspicion that it was not my fault that I couldn't enter people's social boundaries and felt that they were putting up walls to keep me out. Sometimes those suspicions would leave and I'd blame myself for being who I am, but if I have no trouble befriending multiple people over a few days, I must be doing something right. + +Photos: + + +

We were repairing Connie's house; this photo has Andy (one of the crew leaders), Connie, and Heather (Connie's daughter)

More progress on the deck

Random cat that would hang around

Arriving at Camp AJ (full size)

hodapp — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:42:43 +0000

Camp AJ from one angle (full size)

hodapp — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:45:51 +0000

Arriving at Camp AJ (small)

hodapp — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:52:04 +0000

Camp AJ from one angle (small)

hodapp — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:54:47 +0000

Playground and climbing wall near entrance road

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:50:01 +0000

Sky at 7:30 PM?

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:45:34 +0000

Phillip Akemon

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:56:50 +0000

Mike Morgeson

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:59:18 +0000

Kevin Amburgey & Phil

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:03:26 +0000

Phil & Phil Jr.

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:04:55 +0000

Early stages of the deck

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:41:16 +0000

Corrie & Christine putting up soffit

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:46:12 +0000

Deck from the other side

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:56:45 +0000

Nearby road

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:00:44 +0000

Family cemetery

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:02:58 +0000

Some kitten

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:05:46 +0000

Sky in the morning

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:40:29 +0000

Andy, Connie, Heather

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:41:40 +0000

More progress on the deck

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:43:41 +0000

Workfest, day five/sixish

hodapp — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:45:08 +0000

I was too busy/asleep to write much of an entry, so I'll just post the few photos I have from the last two days. +

Almost-completed deck

+ + +

Crate of Ale-8-One donated by someone whose name I forget

Pastries which Andy took a lot of time preparing for breakfast

Random cat with no tail

hodapp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:44:59 +0000

Stuff I Experienced At Work Today?

hodapp — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:48:15 +0000

Declared myself a complete asshat for writing a blog about nothing
Declared myself a lazy bastard for using iTunes to subscribe to podcasts to put on my iPod and listen to while driving in to work. Whatever, I get sick of Clearchannel and raving right-wing lunatic talk radio.
Broke the printer after two pages
Discovered that while both my managers described the intern who had just left as essentially clueless, she had decorated the cubicle in interesting tiny artworks made with post-its and highlighter, like this: +
Was very glad that I took 2 hours several months ago to document WTF I was doing when I left, because I certainly did not remember

Was told I needed to cut my hair, which is true
Heard the random Canadian guy comment about all the snake-handling that he thinks goes on in Appalachia (and the venom from those snakes, he claims, is from female brain cells)
Was mistaken for someone who cared during some discussion about why baseball and the Cincinnati Enquirer suck
Read The Democratization of the Music Industry by Jeff Price
Read about TuneCore of which Jeff Price is the CEO... it would be more interesting to me if I actually created any music to sell on it
Read about gizmo which my friend described as like Skype, but better.
Basically nothing

Pastries that Andy put a lot of work into

hodapp — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:46:25 +0000

Deck, almost finished

hodapp — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:47:45 +0000

Crate of Ale-8-One

hodapp — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:50:04 +0000

Alexander Blu

hodapp — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:06:22 +0000

+ + + +Alexander Blu +

I had a song by this artist from 2005.08.13 (from Interconnected MusicMedia, now known as SoundLift) which I never really listened to... but finally got around to listening to, and I found the artist is still around and writing songs.
His personal site is here. His albums are available online under the Creative Commons. He also has a decent collection of digital pictures, some videos, and slide shows.
His description of the music: "...electro genre (Instrumental Music) with frequent use of electric guitar and Instrumental Lullabies for kids and adults in electro ambient genre. My music philosophy is that music should be relaxing and not burdening to the listener." . . . basically lines up with how I'd describe it.
I've listened to "Moderato" and "May" so far, but a few other albums are there as well.

+Where to get it: Here at his home page.

Alexander Blu - May

hodapp — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:48:05 +0000

Alexander Blu - Moderato

hodapp — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:48:37 +0000

Alexander Blu header

hodapp — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:49:08 +0000

Cubicle art?

hodapp — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:45:30 +0000

Post-its and scrap notes, starting 2008.04.03

hodapp — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:56:59 +0000

So, my bag now has a big stack of scrap notes in it, just from things I jotted down at work... these should probably go online... + +2008.04.03 +

http://www.ucsusa.org - Union of Concerned Scientists
Study: Unskilled and Unaware of It - some notable paper
Ig Nobel Prize - "Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK"
Talking Points Memo - I don't know why I wrote this
Analog Devices - Blackfin - 16/32-bit embedded core, 10-stage RISC MCU/DSP pipeline, full SIMD support
Analog Devices - SHARC - floating-point DSP
Administration Asserts No Fourth Amendment for Domestic Military Operations - some article from EFF

+2008.04.04 +

"Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past" - Lloyd Gardner, Marilyn Young (Amazon)
Open Media Now! foundation - has the goal of open media infrastructure; apparently the same guys who made Gnash
Ohio InfoSec
"The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" - Eric Hoffer; published in 1951, discusses the psychological causes of fanaticism (Amazon)
IBM Power6 at 4.7 GHz benchmarks

2008.04.09

David Allen, Getting Things Done and GTD - some sorta organizational system that NPR's podcast from 2008.02.20 mentioned

2008.04.11

Ken Miller - biology professor, notable for combining evolution with belief in God and rejecting creationism and intelligent design; wrote "Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution" (Amazon)

2008.04.16

"Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" - Bertrand Russell (e-text here)
"The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" - Naomi Klein (personal site, Amazon)
same author: "No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs " (Amazon)
"The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot" - Naomi Wolf... for a bit more apocalyptical point of view (Amazon)
"War is a Racket" - Major General Smedley D. Butler - booklet/speech from 1930's (e-text here)
MUCS-PCB - PCB design software (GPLed) from University of Manchester

2008.04.17

www.linuxcnc.org - software to let a PC control a CNC machine; according to archivist in #electronics on Freenode, this can use a parallel port (with some level converters and optoisolators) to control four stepper motors, and the CNC itself can be made from largely a lot of scrap parts

More scrap notes, starting 2008-04-18

hodapp — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 04:53:30 +0000

2008.04.something +

"True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society" - Farhad Manjoo (Amazon) - in a way, a more factual approach to people judging by "truthiness" rather than truth
"Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think" - George Lakoff (Amazon) - who knows, might be interesting

+2008.04.18 +

People that some guy labeled as "hard left": Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klei
Artist that I like who appears to have not released any songs in 2 years: John Schmidt (CNet Music Library)
Some other artist I also marked as liking despite the generic name: Digital Trance (Dance-Industries)
Artist I don't particularly like, but who has had songs in my collection for 4 years for some reason: Eye Candy (personal site)
One that I liked for being "ambient, pretty soothing + flowing": Organic Frequencies (CNet Music Library)
Some artist that I like for similar reasons: Rec.Hat (Myspace, CNet Music Library)

+2008.04.21 +

Glenn Greenwald (Wikipedia entry) - apparently wrote some interesting books, criticized the corporate media, and so on.
Economic Mobility Project - "The Economic Mobility Project is a unique nonpartisan collaboration...blahblahblah... Our purpose is to provoke a more rigorous discussion about economic mobility in America by presenting new findings and research, and analyzing the effects of social, economic and human capital factors that may impact one’s ability to move up the economic ladder over a generation."
Another netlabel I like some music on: Rohformat (and I was listening to "flight of birds" by ronin, which I'd link to but the site is down right now)
Artist which makes me most sad to find he has not released anything in years: LMK (CNet Music Library)

+2008.04.23 +

Decent album by Easily Embarassed: Darkened Emotion EP (free download courtesy of Cardamar Music)... I wrote "electronic, flows pretty well, beat-oriented"
From the same source, "Another Day in the Clouds" mixed by Cardamar is good; it's available at their mixes page . . . I wrote "gentle, ambient, soothing"

+2008.04.25 +

More artists: Windcheater (Beatpick, Myspace)
Beatpick, apparently, is a service that offers DRM-free music under the Creative Commons, allows people to license the music, splits profits 50/50 with the artist, allow free non-commercial use, etc.
Another artist, also of the house genre: Zeropage (personal site, DMusic, and SoundLift for the tracks I originally had from 2005).
Another artist, this one more of the trance genre: Edzes, or Andreas Bruvoll Skaarung (CTG Music)
An ambient artist that I think I like: Art of Infinity (personal site, Myspace). The place I originally found him (Interconnected Musicmedia, now SoundLift) no longer has his page, but he appears to be thriving without it.

+2008.04.25 + +Software I had at one point for some reason: +

arbaro: tree generation for POV-Ray as described in "Creation and Rendering of Realistic Trees"
Bliss intellivision emulator
DarkPlaces: modified Quake engine that, for me at least, works a bit better on modern hardware and OSes than the original
Flock: "the social web browser", or, the browser that I used to use because it allowed me to do bulk uploads to Photobucket. It appears to now support a lot more, with regard to interaction with online social networks.
knotplot: plots knots... or, visualizes knots from a mathematical perspective.
Nosefart: Nintendo Music Player which handles NSF files from NES games.
ScummVM: multiplatform VM to play old adventure games, such as from LucasArts (I am probably completely butchering these terms), provided you have their data files. Beneath a Steel Sky is one such game, now available as freeware, apparently of the cyberpunk genre.
Namazu: full-text search engine, as in a piece of software that you can install on your own servers if you wish
Art of Illusion: "Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering studio. It is written entirely in Java..." . . . I've used it to make 3D meshes for POV-Ray and it works quite well for being written in Java.

6547

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:10:50 +0000

6549

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:11:46 +0000

6553

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:46:55 +0000

Cover off, after removing like 50 screws from the bottom

6554

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:49:53 +0000

Up-close on part of PCB

6555

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:56:55 +0000

Up-close with one key removed

6556

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:04:31 +0000

Spring mechanism and such

6557

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:08:24 +0000

Back side of key assembly

6562

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:13:00 +0000

More keys removed

Alix.1C board & Edirol repair

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:32:43 +0000

I guess I'll repeat what some other people do, and put up blog entries about what they do with hardware... + +Alix.1C + +My Alix.1C mini-ITX board just arrived, hopefully to replace the server that's sitting in the closet collecting dust, and making a lot of noise and heat due to having 5 hard drives (all of which could be replaced by a single drive for about $30). + +This board is a 500 MHz AMD Geode with 256 MB RAM onboard; it uses about 5 watts and runs from 12VDC. It has a CompactFlash header onboard, so right now I am running Linux from a 128 MB card. + + + +Edirol PCR-M50 + +My brother got me an Edirol PCR-M50 keyboard about 16 months ago. When I used it recently to mess around with Reaktor 5 I found that a number of the keys had stopped working. I figured this was probably because for the past several months I'd used the MIDI keyboard primarily for putting books on top of rather than any music-related purpose, due to being in a dorm room with nowhere else to put the books. But after some online searching, it looks like a number of people have had the same issue. and it's due to some corrosion/oxidation/dirt on the contacts that the keys activate. + +Some said they'd taken it apart and cleaned it to fix it. So I figured that would be easier to do than try to memorize which notes didn't work. I took some pictures... mainly for my own reference in case I forgot how things were supposed to go back together... but I am putting them up here too: + +Front cover off, after removing like 50 screws: + + + +So I started the process of removing keys because I could not see any other way to access the contacts. They grey part on the left in the first picture looks like about the same mechanism as a keyboard or older joystick pad. There are two pads for each key rather than just one, and my guess is that the one nearest the fulcrum is hit slightly sooner than the further one, and the time elapsed between the two hits is used to guess the velocity with which they key was struck. + +Other than that, just a pretty easy-to-understand design. Each key is held up by a tension spring on the opposite side, and keys slide in and out pretty easily once the springs are gone. The only annoying part was all the white grease everywhere that kept getting all over my hands. + + + +And it's just connected electrically with a ribbon cable, normal 0.1" pitch, like an IDE header. + + + +So I proceeded to remove the first dozen or so keys by pulling out the springs, then white keys and black keys. + +The PCB in the next pictures looks almost black, but it should be more of a dark green. The lines are dust that came between the keys. In any case, these show the rubber(ish) part on top that the keys strike, and the gold PCB contacts beneath them. + + + +Conveniently, there are four rubber sections (one per octave). Each two gold pads correspond to a key, and the holes between each are where the rubber section is secured. + +I removed the first section completely, but fully re-seating the rubber took awhile. What I eventually did was lift up just the portion enough to get to the PCB contacts underneath. As only a few keys were problematic, it was just a matter of pounding the keys or rubber to hear which ones didn't respond right. Electronics are really supposed to be turned off when you service them, but it is much easier to audibly hear the response of a key/contact to determine how well it's working, so I had it plugged in... oh well, the electronics are all low-voltage. + +From there I just needed to clean off the contacts underneath the problematic keys with some rubbing alcohol on a q-tip. I didn't exactly need to remove all 48 keys to do this, but I wanted to clean the keys off anyway. + +Yay. Keyboard is working well again.

6563

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:13:28 +0000

Keys removed and rubber removed

Scrap notes, 2008.04.25ish-2008.05.03

hodapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:54:01 +0000

Adobe Open Screen Project - apparently Adobe is now opening up the SWF and FLV formats, which hopefully soon means significantly less trouble getting Flash to work for me on Linux.
Tilera TILE64 - some sort of chip with 64 interconnected cores (or "tiles"); according to their site, tiles can be grouped into clusters, and the chip can run multiple operating systems simultaneously. Maybe kinda neat.
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest - "whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." Kinda interesting to read.
Contiki OS - "Contiki is a small, open source, highly portable, multitasking computer operating system developed for use on a number of memory-constrained networked systems ranging from 8-bit computers to embedded systems on microcontrollers, including sensor network motes." (from Wikipedia entry). Apparently can run from a few KB and provide multitasking and TCP/IP, as well as a full GUI if given about 30 KB. It runs on a variety of systems, including AVR micros, Commodore, Apple II, blahblahblah. Looks handy.
Sort of reminds me of the TRON Project despite not really being anything like it.

Overdue scrap notes, 2008.05.01-05.16

hodapp — Sat, 17 May 2008 14:39:34 +0000

2008.04.30 +

Reaktor diary: might be helpful as I learn to use Reaktor
Despite that this program is not open source but proprietary, it offers more comprehensible insight into its workings than any of the open source synth software I have tried so far.
Given, I've only used a couple premade instruments, but their internal structure is out-in-the-open in the form of modules, not as blocks of code that I would have a hard time finding and a harder time comprehending.

+2008.05.06 +

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse: "A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and (about a dozen schools).... Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities."
Linux Softpedia - EDA: looks like a good collection of Electronic Design Automation software for Linux
Signs (or here): "a tool for logic synthesis and gate level simulation... include synthesis of RTL-style VHDL circuit descriptions and a dynamic graphical netlist viewer..."
KTechLab: "...an Open Source Intergated Design Environment (IDE) for electronic and PIC microcontroller circuit design and simulation."
Alliance CAD: "a complete set of free CAD tools and portable libraries for VLSI design... includes a VHDL compiler and simulator, logic synthesis tools, and automatic place and route tools."
Octeon Plus - some chip, 4 to 16 MIPS64 core, 600-1000 MHz, 15-40W power usage... looks pretty fast (Linuxdevices link)
Helpful link about silkscreening/screenprinting from nomediakings.org

+2008.05.09 +

"This Film is Not Yet Rated" (IMDB) - some movie my friend Adam recommended; looks like the full version is online, for now, at Google Videos
Univ. of Manchester, Advanced Processor Tech. Group - good link for some software projects and papers relevant to processors
"In Defense of Lost Causes" - Slavoj Zizek (Amazon)... maybe an interesting book from a "Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic." who describes himself as a Marxist
"Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe" - Arianna Huffington (Amazon) . . . just in case you needed more anti-conservative propaganda
Past public lectures from Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics are available here (though videos look like mostly Windows Media Player or Flash).
SIMH: software from the Computer History Simulation Project, able to simulate (not emulate?) a variety of rather old hardware, like the DEC PDP +

+2008.05.16 +

Excerpts from Einstein's letter to Eric Gutkind on 1954-01-03 - expresses some of his views on religion pretty well... apparently lining up a bit with the "Deus sive nature" views of Spinoza
Reconfigurable computing... worth learning about.
Microcode... also worth learning about, particularly with x86
FpgaC: "FpgaC compiles a subset of the C language to net lists which can be imported into an FPGA vendors tool chains... excellent alternative to VHDL/Verilog for algorithmic expression of FPGA reconfigurable computing tasks." . . . like an HLL rather than an HDL.
Atmel FPSLIC: AVR microcontroller and SRAM-based FPGA combined on one die
Achronix: FPGAs running up to around 2 GHz
OpenCores: Designs and publishes core designs (for FPGAs, CPLDs, ASICs in general) under a license based on the LGPL
OpenFPGA: Promote FPGAs in blahblahblah by trying to have open standards and information and practices
Pragmatic Marketing: I dunno, but I've read a few useful links here

+2008.05.16 +

"Commonwealth - Economics for a Crowded Planet" - Jeff Sachs (link at marginalrevolution.com)

20 pages of scrap notes, 2008.05.19-05.23

hodapp — Sat, 24 May 2008 04:06:44 +0000

I astound myself by how many pages of scrap notes I accumulate over 5 days, just during my down time at work. + +2008.05.19 +

"Exposing the Modern Racist Paradigm," extremely long page here +
Someone's opinions on why the Amiga is awesome, here . . . meaningful to me because I haven't used an Amiga
Simputer - "self-contained, open hardware handheld computer, designed for use in environments where computing devices such as personal computers are deemed inappropriate." (quoth wikipedia)... this looks like a project that didn't do as well as expected and is rather old right now, but it looks interesting anyhow.
Someone's blog about the memristor, and why it's the 4th circuit element, and why he thinks it's useful/revolutionary.
Reversible computing . . . worthy of consideration

+2008.05.20 +

Intel Atom D945GCLF motherboard from Tranquil PC Ltd. - $82 for motherboard with 1.60 GHz Atom 230; looks like a pretty good deal
OLPC XO 2.0 - new version of the XO, which "isn’t really a laptop at all but a double-screened, fold-up electronic book", and which Negroponte has a goal of being producing for $75 each.
Pen Computing - good resource on mobile/handheld/rugged computing products

+2008.05.21 +

Lulu - Self publishing service; allows you to publish (as in, actual physical books that can be purchased online) with no setup fees. You keep 80% of creator revenue on sales, and you keep the copyrights to the material.
Adam Smith's Lost Legacy - because someone's pissed about how people constantly mangle what Adam Smith said

+2008.05.22 +

Digilent Inc. - Offers some inexpensive starter boards with Xilinx Spartan FPGAs or Atmel AVR microcontrollers
Xtreme Data, Inc. - "Database Analytics Appliance able to sustain 1TB/min of SQL processing"... well, that's kinda boring, but I suppose it does live up to the name, and somehow accomplishes this with FPGAs.
DRC Computer Corporation - offers Reconfigurable Processor Unit which fits into an AMD Opteron socket on a multiway board, allowing it to directly connect to its bus and access memory, and offload CPU-intensive software routines to hardware; they use Xilinx FPGAs for this.
Project VGA - "Low Budget, Open Source, VGA Compatible video card"
FPGA Central - Good resource for FPGA links

+2008.05.23 +

Llamasoft Blog - From the maker of one of my favorite games, Llamatron. He has written some interesting software.
JavaSpaces - distributed shared memory in Java, along with other stuff, and part of Jini from Sun. This could be neat if I actually used Java.
VX32 - "virtual extension environment" for x86; one can run x86 apps in this for a secure, isolated environment in which they are limited in what they are allowed to do.
ACL2 (Applicative Common Lisp) - "both a programming language in which you can model computer systems and a tool to help you prove properties of those models," and part of the Boyer-Moore family of theorem provers

Old-tattered-notebook-from-1999 notes

hodapp — Tue, 27 May 2008 02:06:04 +0000

So, these are probably more useful here than sitting in a dusty binder... + +2003.07 +

"Common Lisp, Typing, and Mathematics" by Francis Sergereart - good (long) paper about one application of Common Lisp; Postscript here
"Getting Started With LaTeX", David R. Wilkins - here

+2004.07 +

AT&T Graphviz - very very useful program for visualization of directed and undirected graphs

+2005.04 +

Croquet (from the Croquet Project, not to be confused with the Croquet Consortium) - by my description, an attempt to extend the original 2-dimensional paradigm for a GUI into 3 dimensions; by their description, "Croquet is a powerful new open source software development environment and software infrastructure for creating and deploying deeply collaborative multi-user online applications and metaverses on and across multiple operating systems and devices."... I think it's an interesting project, anyhow. Check out some of the papers Alan Kay helped write, and look at some of the videos.

+2005.?? +

JGraph - some sort of graphing and visualization software, open-source and written in Java
Ploticus - more graphing and visualization, not as shiny as JGraph, but not Java either; apparently good for on-the-fly graph generation, for websites and such
TeXmacs - " GNU TeXmacs is a free wysiwyw (what you see is what you want) editing platform with special features for scientists."... it puts Mathematica's rendering to shame.

+2005.08.23 +

Very useful link for using matrices in POV-Ray
Media and Particle Systems in POV-Ray, here
Photons & caustics in POV-Ray, here

+2006.12.11 +

"Weaving the Web", Tim Berners-Lee - "The original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web, by its inventor."

+2006.12.15 +

Grasshopper Enterprises, "Borders of science, boundaries of imagination," might be complete and total bullshit, but the page has some interesting things on lucid dreaming and other workings of the mind

+2007.04.19 +

cachegrind - cache profiler, part of the valgrind suite, designed to pinpoint cache misses in code
I don't know why, but I wrote down "BDI2000 JTAG", maybe because the Abatron BDI-2000 can be used to debug the Linux kernel via JTAG?

+2007.04.26 +

"The Grand Inquisitor" from "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky - I think I'm supposed to read this because I don't know why else I'd have written it down.

+2007.11.02 +

Voyage Linux - Debian-based distro, designed for embedded systems, like Soekris boards; it is suitable as a WAP, firewall, gateway, NAS, etc.
IPv6 Tunnel Broker - reach IPv6 internet freely by tunneling over existing IPv4 connections, courtesy of Hurricane Electric Internet Services
The Honeynet Project - goal is to increase the security of the Internet by "learning the tools, tactics, and motives involved in computer and network attacks, and sharing the lessons learned"
"Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads"
"The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier" by Bruce Sterling; available here as "literary freeware"
"The War on the Unexpected" by Bruce Schneier

+2008.05.26 +

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/ - helpful web applet for figuring out chords and scales and numerous other things about which I am clueless but trying to learn +

Semi-organized scrap notes, 2008.05.26-2008.06.01

hodapp — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:55:32 +0000

Political/otherwise controversial + +

Seen on a bumper sticker on a semi truck: http://www.headsneedtoroll.org/ . . . looks to have a pretty good stated mission +
Vote Apathy Party 08 because at least I'm honest.
Just discovered Utah Phillips upon hearing an interview with him after his death on May 23
"Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine On Trial" by Simon Singh (Amazon)

+Technical blah +

For some "brilliant" explanations of why most science is completely wrong, Louis Savain's site is a good reference
You can score the site on The crackpot index by John Baez ("A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics")
The Join-Calculus from INRIA in France - "...a process calculus. It provides a simple support for distributed programming."
JoCaml from the same place; basically Objective Caml plus Join-Calculus
INRIA also made SciLab which is quite useful as a free tool for numerical computation, particularly if you hate MATLAB.
uClinux - embedded Linux/Microcontroller project, for MMU-less systems... website is very slow as of late for some reason
ELKS (Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset) - in case you really want to run a subset of Linux on an Intel 8086, 8088, 80186, 80188, 80286, 386 in V86 mode, or Psion SIBO
JLime - Jornada Linux Mobility Edition, which runs quite well on some HP Jornadas, like the 680, which is good in cases like mine when the included WinCE is one giant pile of fail

Notes 2008.06.01 - 2008.06.07

hodapp — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 18:24:56 +0000

Technical stuff +

Red Hill Technology - decent articles pertaining a lot to old x86 hardware
TRIPS (utexas again) - "developing a new class of technology-scalable, power efficient, high-performance microprocessor architectures called EDGE (Explicit Data Graph Execution) architectures." and I've got at least one technical paper that's been on my computer for over a year that I've put off reading somehow

+Programs and stuff +

Xournal - " Xournal is an application for notetaking, sketching, keeping a journal using a stylus."; open source, of course, and maybe I can make it run on my Jornada
OPIE - Open Palmtop Integrated Environment... some sort of interface for smaller devices; I tried it on my Jornada and found it uselessly slow, but kinda neat
GPE - GPE Palmtop Environment, which might be a better option than OPI
BlenderCAD - "a Blender script created with the aim of expand the functionality of Blender, so that it could be used for the Computer Aided Drawing." ...haven't tried it but it might be worth it
GNU Radio - the GNU software radio; can be combined with minimal hardware (like the USRP) "allows the construction of radios where the actual waveforms transmitted and received are defined by software," which is probably a good way to totally piss off the FCC

+Books +

"Tainting Evidence: Inside The Scandals At The FBI Crime Lab" by JF Kelly and PK Wearne (Amazon)
"Confessions of a Record Producer - How to Survive the Scams and Shams of the Music Business" by Moses Avalon (Amazon)
"Rainbow Painting: A Collection of Miscellaneous Aspects of Development and Completion" by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (Amazon) - was recommended very highly by a program I listened to, related to Buddhism and meditation

+Political +

The Memory Hole [rescuing knowledge, freeing information] - "The Memory Hole exists to preserve and spread material that is in danger of being lost, is hard to find, or is not widely known.... The emphasis is on material that exposes things that we're not supposed to know (or that we're supposed to forget)."
Cryptome - "Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance -- open, secret and classified documents -- but not limited to those."

2008.06.07 - 2008.06.17, yay notes

hodapp — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:24:08 +0000

Potentially political +

Meetup - find groups of a given topic or interest, near whatever location you give... or "Get on the Internet to get off the Internet
Legal Rights of Photographers by Andrew Kantor (or this PDF) - very informative and helpful to know
The Photographer's Right flyer by Bert P. Krages II, which is actually what I was trying to find when I found the link from Andrew Kanto
"The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir" by Isabel Allende (Amazon)
Local indie band, "Bad Veins" - my friend Carolyn wrote their name down a few years ago and told me to check the band out, and I stuck the piece of paper in a folder and forgot about it... then coincidentally when I finally looked them up online, realized I had already read an article about them months prior in Citybeat

+Pretty obviously political +

The Ruckus Society - "provides environmental, human rights, and social justice organizers with the tools, training, and support needed to achieve their goals."
Free Press - nonpartisan organization working for media reform
"The New Media Monopoly" by Ben H. Bagdikian (Amazon) +
Daily Kos - "State of the Nation", +

+Technology/electronics +

Arduino - "an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software." Can be purchased pre-assembled or built by hand; software and CAD files are available at the site.
FreeIO - "Free Hardware Design Resources for the Free Software Community" though looks slightly dead
Gallium3D - "Tungsten Graphics' new architecture for building 3D graphics drivers."; only interesting to me because it might mean better Linux drivers for 3D graphics cards.
BAZIX One Chip MSX - apparently implements some computer called the MSX, and does it using an Altera FPGA... I don't know
Hypercomputing HC-62 - just some ridiculously fast computer with 36 GB of RAM and eleven FPGAs
Holografika - true 3D holographic display, visible with naked eye, so the site claims (and has videos to show)
Astak Mentor ebook reader - epaper-based, claimed to get 8000 pages per charge, support TXT, PDF, RTF, HTML, on a WinCE-based OS, with SD expansion card and wireless; there is a 5" version (800x600) should be $200, 9.7" (1280x825) for $350. Should be available Real Soon Now(tm).
iRex iLiad looks to have better specs and it is Linux-based, however it's also $600-$700 (but it's actually for sale)
Graphics Gems by Andrew Glassner - a set of books I should probably read eventually so I stop reinventing the wheel every time I program anything

+Software +

serdisplib - library to drive serial displays with built-in controllers (like the Optrex LCDs I messed around with at work)
ACML (AMD Core Math Library) - heavily optimized routines for LAPACK, BLAS, FFT, transcendental & random number generation, utilizing SIMD instructions available on AMD CPU
Similar - SIMDx86 - optimized SIMD library for x86 (I don't think it does x86-64)
FBReader - ebook reader for Linux/Windows, intended for portable devices. Handles Plucker which I found really useful on Palm
sdtcon - "Simple and secure remote access over SSH... provides easy to configure, easy to use, secure remote and out of band access to systems and devices inside a private LAN or management network."; works via SSH and Java on Linux/Windows
FreeRTOS - free, portable, open source, mini realtime kernel for embedded systems, like ARM7, ARM9, Cortex-M3, MSP430, MicroBlaze
DjVu - digital document format with very high compression and quality for scanned documents or photographs... too bad it's not nearly as well-supported as JPEG and other raster formats, lossy or otherwise
C optimisation tutorial - from 1998 but still pretty relevant
DSP DesignLine - lots of useful articles and technical papers about programming for DSPs (such as this one about Programming and Optimizing C Code)

2008.06.18 - 2008.07.09, really overdue notes

hodapp — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:35:24 +0000

Hardware +

http://www.ucapps.de/ - "Non-commercial DIY Projects for MIDI Hardware Geeks"
http://midibox.org/ - Looks like a blog about various other MIDI-related DIY projects
Nvidia Tegra - "features a GPU, media processor, system memory, peripherals and a CPU all in one ultra-low power chip, smaller than a US dime (10-cent piece)."
Ethernet Mini Board

+Geek Articles/Software +

An Interview with the Old Man of Floating-Point (William Kahan)
Numerical Workbenches, pt. III (Christoph Spiel) - plotting in GNU Octave, Scilab, and Tela
Scilab lecture notes from University of Pune
Basics of Scilab Control Toolbox
freemind - "is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java."... I could probably benefit a lot by using this properly.
Art of Illusion by Peter Eastman - "Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering studio." . . . looks very powerful and capable; another manual here
xpra - "persistent remote applications" for X; think like GNU Screen, or like a remote application rather than a remote desktop
Scale - Scalable Compiler for Analytical Experiments; right now, a research/instructional compiler (open source, Java) used mainly for generating code for the TRIPS architecture
raw Architecture Workstation - project at MIT for "simple, wire-efficient multicore architecture that scales with increasing VLSI gate densities"... tiled, multicore, highly parallel
Sun Labs Lively Kernel - positioned as a Flash alternative for the iPhone, for instance (interview with creator Dan Ingalls here)
The Sentinel - old computer game that was notable for generating its levels procedurally
.kkrieger - procedural generation taken to an extreme, from .theprodukkt

+Hippie Stuff +

MoBo Bicycle Coop - "The MoBo Bicycle Co-op is a non-profit, volunteer-run collective dedicated to providing every member of the Tri-State area access to bicycles, maintenance, and education." (also Myspace site)
AskWish -
Hegelian dialectic - remind me to read this in detail and find why it pertains to politics

+Hippie Geek Stuff +

Owner-free Filesystem - "distributed filesystem in which everything is stored in reference to randomized data blocks" and bound to be soon pissing off a legal system near you
What Colour are your bits? - relevant to intellectual property somehow but I haven't read it yet.
Traffic Waves - "sometimes one driver can vastly improve traffic."
"Big and Bad" - Malcolm Gladwell's opinions of SUVs and their marketing. (same Malcolm Gladwell who wrote Tipping Point though I didn't make this connection when I read the article)

+Food +

http://www.tonychor.com/archive/000443.html . . . I now know that it's better to cook bacon in the oven.
Jewish Purist's Bagels

2008.07.10 - 2008.07.26 debris

hodapp — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:11:54 +0000

Food-related + +

Chai recipe I tried
Using fresh and ground ginger - which I looked up because I had a lot of ginger root left over than just the 1/4" that I used for the chai
Wikibooks cookbook - I don't know much of what else is on it, but my recipe for hardtack came from here.
Stuff to do with cloves which doesn't really belong here because these are mostly medicinal uses

+Music +

The Future Freaks Me Out - album from a band my friend Shannon likes
Jamglue - remixing for the masses... I haven't looked at it in much detail. but Corina uses it
John Walsh - local (as in Cincinnati) punk/hardcore band that Joc likes
The Seedy Seeds (and also here on Myspace) - another local band (electronica?) that Joc likes

+Shiny stuff +

Dafont - site full of categorized fonts for download (free for personal use)

+Books/Authors/Literature +

Paul Ekman, "cutting edge behavorial science for real world applications" with some downloadable articles
The Silent Language and The Hidden Dimension by Edward T. Hall . . . pertains to non-verbal communication and emotions
Mentioned by Meredith and probably directed to a female audience but maybe still worth a look: Memory Keeper's Daughter and The Fall of a Sparrow and The Picture of Dorian Grey and some books by an "up and author" Emily Giffin: Something Blue, Something Borrowed, and Love the One You're With
Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School
Like this one about how Science should find a way to make farts smell better.

+Hippie & Political Stuff +

Joc showed me this: Freecycle - "It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills."
The Problem with Music by Steve Albini
Courtney Love's commentary on record label profits, Napster, music, and piracy
Order of Death on Youtube - someone told me I should watch it. I haven't yet. There's a high chance it's complete BS.

+Software stuff +

Bart's way to create bootable CDs - very handy
Squeak - VM (open source) implementing Smalltalk (this FLOSS Weekly talks about it)
Seaside - "framework for developing sophisticated web applications in Smalltalk" (this FLOSS Weekly talks about it as well)
Squeak by Example - pretty good book (available as a PDF for free, or as a printed copy from lulu.com for $20.10)
Early History of Smalltalk by Alan Kay - it is from 1993, but is still a very in-depth paper
Smalltalk: Getting the Message - article more focused on the "why" and "how" of Smalltalk than its history
SliTaz - a Linux distro designed to run out of RAM and still have a usable desktop; current version is only about 25 MB
Rocks Clusters - a CentOS-based Linux distro designed to make building and managing clusters a lot easier (mentioned in this FLOSS Weekly)
Webconverger - "open source web kiosk", or basically a Linux distro designed to boot quickly into Firefox
VR Juggler Suite - some sort of open source virtual reality suite
Englab - open source mathematical platform, similar to MATLAB, in very early versions right now
Quotes about C and C++ and Programming Quotes which are mostly good for being funny rather than useful, or for pissing people off

+Hardware stuff (DIYish) +

Making a solar baker from an abandoned satellite dish
LyngSat - free satellite channels to receive, in case you wanted something else to do with that satellite dish
Journal from evilviper on Slashdot, also about FTA satellite reception
Atmel AVR ATmega16 / ATmega32 programmer - needs parallel port and ATmega16
Really simple AVR ISP programmer for ATmega128 - uses just parallel port and a few resistors

+Hardware stuff (non-DIY-unless-you-have-a-fab-or-a-CNC) +

Loongson - general-purpose CPU made at Chinese Academy of Sciences; MIPS-compatible and used in some small devices like this

+Research +

3D holographic display at USC (uses projector + rapidly rotating mirror)
Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys - research from Princeton about how information can be recovered from memory after a system is powered off, and how to utilize this to defeat most encryption systems because they leave their keys in memory.

+Video game-related +

FIFE engine - open source 2D engine designed for isometric and top-down views
XGameStation video game development kit - looks like they have various kits for programming games, old-school style, and a lot of user-submitted programs

2008.07.26 - 2008.08.03 stuff

hodapp — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:10:45 +0000

Music +

Kaskade - House/electronica artist I came across many times on imeem... was good for calming me down while doing homework +
"5th & Avenida" by Afterlife - an ambient track I liked... it's on "Café del Mar, Volumen Cuatro" (Amazon)
"100 Billion Stars" by Lux - another ambient track I liked, from "Cafe del Mar, Volume 8" (Amazon)
"Alive" by Mads Arp with Julie Harrington - yet another, from "Cafe del Mar Dreams, Vol. 4" (Amazon)
Cafe del Mar, since I didn't realize all those songs came from the same set of albums until I looked them up

+Food +

The Black Beast - my friend Jessica made this flourless cake and it's pretty supremely awesome

+Research +

"The Limits of Quantum Computers" by Scott Aaronson (draft) - or, why articles professing how quantum computers can do anything are complete bullshit
Rendering for an Interactive 360-degree Light Field Display
From RenewableEnergyWorld: More efficient way to convert waste heat to electricity, from research at Ohio State University
arxiv draft - Funky chemical bonding that happens at very high pressures (officially, "Tetrahedral clustering in molten lithium under pressure")

+Political & hippie stuff +

"In Debt We Trust" by Danny Schechter - film about the national and personal debt crisis in the US (trailer here)
"If This Is a Man" by Primo Levi - novel by an Italian author, inspired by his time in Auschwitz during WW2
"No Tech Hacking" by Johnny Long (Amazon) - "A guide to social engineering, dumpster diving, and shoulder surfing."
"Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow - novel, available freely online if you so desire

+Programming & computerish crap + +

Papers about Self and OO - I haven't read any of these, but I should
Bad Mojo - some pretty well-reviewed adventure/puzzle game from 1996 which happens to run on DOS/Windows/Mac
The not-so-short introduction to LaTeX 2e - PDF about LaTeX
Kile - integrated LaTeX environment
XeTeX - a merging of TeX with Unicode and modern font technologies
Apache FOP - "print formatter driven by XSL formatting objects (XSL-FO) and an output independent formatter." from the Apache XML Graphics Project
Hercules 390 - The Hercules System/370, ESA/390, and z/Architecture Emulator... incidentally, TRON Guy is in charge of the project
The LiveCD List from FrozenTech - Table of info about Linux distros available as LiveCDs
INSERT - the Inside Security Rescue Toolkit, a Linux distro that comes with various tools for rescue and recovery; it's a 60 MB download so it works well as a LiveCD or USB-stick
Open64 - the Open Research Compiler, used originally on Itanium and now on Nvidia CUDA; it is under GPL
BrookGPU - "Brook for GPUs is a compiler and runtime implementation of the Brook stream program language for modern graphics hardware."
OpenCL - "a language for programming heterogeneous data and task parallel computing across GPUs and CPUs."; initial implementation is on LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) and clang

+Electronics +

LM317 - According to Cowclops, this variable linear voltage regulator can be a good way to limit current and voltage for charging an SLA.
JOP: A Tiny Java Processor - A hardware implementation of the Java Virtual Machine; it can be put onto a low-cost FPGA, so the site claims, with the VHDL source (which is GPLed)
OpenPCD - Open RFID Reader for 13.56 MHz; site provides the schematic, PCB layout, Gerber files, bill of material, and some software
OPEX - A "Unique Operating System" for the AVR microcontroller
Use, Abuse, and Misuse of Amplifiers by Bob Pease - online seminar from National Semiconductor (or "webinar" if you prefer... which I don't); beware, page is quite large
Operational amplifier usage (also from National Semiconductor)... handy for stuff to do with op amps.

+WTF? +

The Roommate Files - This will put to shame any story you have about bad roommates.

2008.08.04 - 2008.08.21, more technical blah

hodapp — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 04:15:51 +0000

Ideas ranging between "unconventional" and "BS" + +

Uberman's Sleep Schedule if you are insane enough and need the extra time
Live Longer: The One Anti-Aging Trick that Works (no, "live longer" is not the trick, it's caloric restriction)
How Your Inner Athlete Makes You Smarter
Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind
Collected Writing of Don DeGracia - pertains to lucid dreams & astral projection. I originally found his writings on a BBS in about 1999, and the files I found were from Compuserve in 1994. Wow.
Software for binaural beating: binaural, sbagen, AutoZen

+Political stuff +

Corporate Swine - certain companies, and why they suck.
They Rule - "They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class." The page is almost all Flash-based, but given its interface I don't see how else it could have been done. Check it out.
SaveNetRadio

+Food +

The cottage cheese page - more things to make with cottage cheese than I thought was possible
Kalyn's Kitchen - a blog with lots of colorful pictures... oh, and recipes

+Music +

Netlabels collection at Internet Archive; "This collection hosts complete, freely downloadable/streamable, often Creative Commons-licensed catalogs of 'virtual record labels'."
Discogs - lots of information on music from obscure labels and artists
Tangerine Dream - I wrote this band down in 2005 and I haven't listened to them yet
"My Freedom" by Beat Foundation - yet another ambient (or chillout?) track I liked, from Cafe Del Mar: Ibiza vol. 3 (Amazon)

+Literature and Other Stuff With Words +

"Mysterious Stranger" by Mark Twain
and a very creepy claymation version here
"The War Prayer" also by Mark Twain

+Technical Stuff +

SynDEx from INRIA - "a system level CAD software based on the "algorithm- architecture adequation" (AAA) methodology, for rapid prototyping and optimizing the implementation of distributed real-time embedded applications onto "multicomponent" architectures."
Data visualization tools for Linux - covers GnuPlot, Octave, Scilab, MayaVi, Maxima, OpenDX
gnuplot tips & not so frequently asked questions
memcached - "a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load."
BeOS bootdisk collection which I have no idea if I'll ever use but here it is
Thesis paper from Mark Samuel Miller (Robust Composition: Towards a Unified Approach to Access Control and Concurrency Control)
Another thesis paper, by D. P. Reed (Naming and Synchronization in a Decentralized Computer System)
P2P-Radio - Internet radio distributed via peer-to-peer means
PGP Digital Timestamping Service
Manent - algorithmically strong backup and archival program
DSPACE - an open source solution for accessing, managing, and preserving scholarly works

+Shiny Technical Stuff +

Project Looking Glass from Sun Microsystems
Videos of Croquet from Croquet Consortium
LaTeX Beamer Class - something for making presentations in LaTeX
http://www.visualcube.org/ - 3D volumetric display with 6x6x6 voxels

+Electronics/Programming/Lower-level +

More FPGA stuff - Xilinx USB/Parallel JTAG cables on Linux without proprietary kernel modules
OpenOCD - Open on-chip debugger, ISP, boundary scan
Objective C & programming musics at another wordpress blog
GNUstep mini tutorials
Implementing an Interpreter; or, Going Fast Without Writing Code - good presentation on the Parrot Virtual Machine
Perl 6 and the Parrot Virtual Machine
Ken Silverman's voxel engine with source code available

+Flame Wars about technical stuff + +

On the Thesis that X is Big/Bloated/Obsolete and Should Be Replaced because I've heard that too many times
BSD vs. Linux
"He Who Controls the Bootloader" by Scot Hacker (it's from 2001)
Essay by Jean-Louis Gassee (of BeOS fame) on why PC makers don't sell non-MS stuff
Article on a similar matter

+Games +

Interview with Wendell Hicken, creator of Scorched Earth which is only one of my favorite games ever
Outcast - some voxel-based engine that was very well-done, apparently

2008.08.22 - 2008.09.26 or something like that

hodapp — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:08:24 +0000

Reference stuff +

National Criminal Justice Reference Service - good collection of papers and resources from the DOJ
Secrecy News - "Secrecy News from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy", FAS=Federation of American Scientists
Stanford Engineering Everywhere - free online courses from Stanford in CS, AI, and Linear Systems & Optimization; includes transcripts and video lectures
"Life Incorporated" by Doug Rushkoff, or "How We Traded Meaning for Markets, Society for Self Interest, and Citizenship for Customer Service."
"Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, or "The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets"

+Technical stuff +

Creating DjVu documents in Linux howto
Kicad libraries converted from EAGLE
pfSense - "free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router."
How to apply color curves in ImageMagick - came in handy for optimizing files from massive numbers of scans before DjVu conversion
Internetworking Technology Handbook from Cisco - lots of freely available guides
FreeMind - a free mind-mapping program written in Java. I haven't used it much yet, but it looks really useful.
Mathesaurus - quick reference for switching to open-source mathematical computation environments for computer algebra, numeric processing and data visualisation (e.g. MATLAB to Octave/SciLab/Python+Numpy)
Advice in Mini-ITX - mailing list conversation
KolibriOS - OS for x86 written in assembly; runs on one floppy; a fork of MenuetOS. This runs well in VirtualBox.

+Music, demoscene, and other shiny stuff +

Future Crew - Second Reality - very impressive demo from 1993 (actual program for DOS here)
ChibiTracker - portable Impulse Tracker clone (i.e. "a small, compact music composing application that is easy to learn and powerful enough to sound good"); GPLed and runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS, BSD, and BeOS
Map of Science - trying to visualize connections between various sciences... Flash-based and interactive and kinda neat

+Miscellaneous +

10 Steps to Becoming Enlightened (yeah, slightly lofty title)
List of Fallacious Arguments
38 Ways to Win an Argument - from Schopenhauer's "The Art of Controversy" (which can be found here)
The Happiness Project - read about this in Citybeat; "I recount some of my adventures and insights as I grapple with the challenge of being happier," from an author before the release of her book by the same name in late 2009.
Intelius - People search, free and apparently pretty good

+Religious +

Major Writings of Nichiron Daishonin

2008.09.26 - 2008.11.09, really overdue stuff

hodapp — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:33:09 +0000

Linux +

http://www.spencerstirling.com/computergeek/powersaving.html - "Saving Energy in Linux" from Spencer Stirling
PowerTOP - tool to assist with such energy-saving (on Intel boxes at least) by telling how well hardware power-saving is utilized and which software is causing problems
Improving Boot Time on a General Linux Distro from Frederic Crozat
Handy One-Liners for sed from Eric Pement... I used the venerable sed extensively at work to un-screw-up CSV files
MediaTomb - an open source UPnP media server with a web interface; my coworker Uriah said he used this to stream things to his PS3 from his Linux box

+Graphics +

MeshLab - free 3D triangular mesh processing software
Caustics Mapping from UCF

+Networking +

A Look at NoMachine NX - I discovered NX performs better for remote access than anything else I've tried (i.e. RDP, X11, VNC, and straight SSH+screen if you happen to need GUI), particularly over slow links. Unfortunately, it doesn't handle links with 93% packet loss very well.
Quagga Routing Suite - GPLed routing software for IPv4/IPv6 that handles a number of routing-related protocols (a list of them is here)
Yersinia - network tool designed to take advantage of some weaknesses in different network protocols... I haven't used this but the guys from cinci2600 did a presentation with it
Etherboot/gPXE booting - an open source network bootloader, providing a direct replacement for many proprietary PXE ROMs. I have yet to try this.
LTSP, Linux Terminal Server Project - adds thin-client support to Linux servers, so thin clients or dumpster PCs can be used for something useful within a school or business.

+Programming/general computer stuff +

"Roles Before Objects" by Doug Lea - some sort of pattern for software development, particularly for "organizing activities that separate object-independent from object-dependent matters"
"10 Amazingly Alternative Operating Systems etc." - maybe overly prophetic and lofty, but a good article nonetheless
Twibright Optar - OPTical ARchiver, a codec for encoding data on paper; it gets about 200 KB per page at 200 DPI which is reliable for most paper, and contains some pretty heavy error correction. This might be neat for long-term archival purposes of smaller data.

+Other projects +

MAgtALo (MultiAgent Argumentation, Logic and Opinion) - a prototype tool for virtual round-table meetings. I don't really know much about this. I just read about it in some IEEE publication I found on the ground.
LibriVox - free audiobooks from the public domain
Geographic British Isles - a project aiming to collect geographically representative photographs of every square kilometer of Great Britain and Ireland

+Electricity +

"High Voltage Sparks and Arcs" - My friend Mark found this, and it has a collection of videos and photos of some pretty spectacular incidents at high voltages. The only casualties are machines, if you are worried.
How Transistors REALLY Work, from William Beaty who is annoyed at the way many textbooks teach transistors to students

+Music +

Lunar - an artist Jeremy likes, self-described as "An eclectic blend of electronica, rock, dance, ambient, drum 'n' bass and classical." They have two albums available for free download as of now.

+Tinfoil hat stuff +

Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America (Google Video link)... I don't know what to think of this, but I did watch it.
Maltego: "Maltego is an open source intelligence and forensics application. It allows for the mining and gathering of information as well as the representation of this information in a meaningful way."

+Economics of the non-tinfoil-hat variety +

"Where to put your money if it's just sitting in a checking account"
ABSEL - Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning; "professional association whose purpose is to develop and promote the use of experiential techniques and simulations in the field of business education and development"
M.U.L.E. - an early video game that was praised for its elements of economic simulation
The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, by Gregg Easterbrook (Amazon link)

+Other stuff +

Anti-pattern - something that distinguishes itself from a conventional bad idea or bad practice in a particular way; "Some repeated pattern of action, process or structure that initially appears to be beneficial, but ultimately produces more bad consequences than beneficial results."

2009.04.20

hodapp — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:32:16 +0000

2009.04.20 - If I am lucky, then this text file is being posted from the commandline via blogpost from http://srackham.wordpress.com and possibly screwed-up by being processed first by AsciiDoc which I have not yet bothered to learn.

2009.04.20b

hodapp — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:28:02 +0000

This hopefully occurs in a bulleted list.
This hopefully is a URL: http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/asciidoc.css-embedded.html

2009.04.26

hodapp — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:02:02 +0000

2009.04.20 == log * If I am lucky, then this text file is being posted from the commandline via blogpost from http://srackham.wordpress.com and possibly screwed-up by being processed first by AsciiDoc which I have not yet bothered to learn.

2009.04.26

hodapp — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:02:39 +0000

2009.04.26

hodapp — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:40:26 +0000

log

Here is the first post made to my Wordpress in an automated way…
I guess here is where I put "Hello, world" and for once it’s actually kind of accurate because the post is going where the world can see it.
So, uh, Hello, world == log,graphics
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview (John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more)

2009.04.26

hodapp — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:52:02 +0000

log

Here is the first post made to my Wordpress in an automated way…
I guess here is where I put "Hello, world" and for once it’s actually kind of accurate because the post is going where the world can see it.
So, uh, Hello, world

log,graphics

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview (John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more)

2009.04.26

hodapp — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:53:16 +0000

log

Here is the first post made to my Wordpress in an automated way…
I guess here is where I put "Hello, world" and for once it’s actually kind of accurate because the post is going where the world can see it.
So, uh, Hello, world
Well, damn, my program has a bug that makes it impossible to post more than one entry per day. It’s a very obvious bug, too.

log,graphics

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview (John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more)

log,graphics,links,blogs

http://www.tanashabitat.com/ (Tana’s Habitat - a site Jane recommended for useful information about living on your own. It looks far more suited to her gender than to mine, but it still has some good advice.)

log,graphics,links,blogs,notes,technobabble

Perl 6 has two main interpreters:
- Rakudo Perl which uses Parrot VM and PGE
- Pugs which uses Haskell (and Hugs or GHC)
Stuff about Erlang I should remember:
- shared-nothing, async message passing
- single assignment
- strict or eager evaluation (as compared to lazy evaluation like in Haskell)

log,graphics,links,blogs,notes,technobabble,books

http://www.truly-free.org/ - The Burgomeister’s Books, a large library of ebooks; you have a borrowing quota but items are downloadable and in open formats

2009.04.26

hodapp — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:13:00 +0000

log

Here is the first post made to my Wordpress in an automated way…
I guess here is where I put "Hello, world" and for once it’s actually kind of accurate because the post is going where the world can see it.
So, uh, Hello, world
Well, damn, my program has a bug that makes it impossible to post more than one entry per day. It’s a very obvious bug, too.

log,graphics

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview (John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more)

log,graphics,links,blogs

http://www.tanashabitat.com/ (Tana’s Habitat - a site Jane recommended for useful information about living on your own. It looks far more suited to her gender than to mine, but it still has some good advice.)

log,graphics,links,blogs,notes,technobabble

Perl 6 has two main interpreters:
- Rakudo Perl which uses Parrot VM and PGE
- Pugs which uses Haskell (and Hugs or GHC)
Stuff about Erlang I should remember:
- shared-nothing, async message passing
- single assignment
- strict or eager evaluation (as compared to lazy evaluation like in Haskell)

log,graphics,links,blogs,notes,technobabble,books

http://www.truly-free.org/ - The Burgomeister’s Books, a large library of ebooks; you have a borrowing quota but items are downloadable and in open formats
http://www.storyofstuff.com - The story of stuff - a flash video Joc sent me; it’s kind of long

2009.04.30

hodapp — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:10:59 +0000

log

Here is the umpteenth post made to my Wordpress in an automated way…
I guess here is where I put "Hello, world" and for once it’s actually kind of accurate because the post is going where the world can see it.
So, uh, Hello, world
Did I fix my idiotic bugs yet?

graphics

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=532&type=overview (John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more)

links,blogs

http://www.tanashabitat.com/ (Tana’s Habitat - a site Jane recommended for useful information about living on your own. It looks far more suited to her gender than to mine, but it still has some good advice.)

notes,technobabble

Perl 6 has two main interpreters:
- Rakudo Perl which uses Parrot VM and PGE
- Pugs which uses Haskell (and Hugs or GHC)
Stuff about Erlang I should remember:
- shared-nothing, async message passing
- single assignment
- strict or eager evaluation (as compared to lazy evaluation like in Haskell)
Stuff about Smalltalk I should remember:
- "Messaging" is more important than "objects"

books

The Burgomeister’s Books, a large library of ebooks; you have a borrowing quota but items are downloadable and in open formats
The story of stuff, a flash video Joc sent me; it’s kind of long but worth the watch

comic

This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow - a webcomic and blog I first came across in Citybeat, but came across by accident later

2009.05.01

hodapp — Sat, 02 May 2009 11:59:57 +0000

software

Finnix, 'Finnix is a self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution ("LiveCD") for system administrators, based on Debian testing"; I came across this while looking at what common distros were out there for PowerPC since I recently acquired an iBook.
Open64, the Open Research Compiler, "an open source, optimizing compiler for the Intel IA-64 (Itanium), AMD Opteron and Intel IA-32e architecture"
GCC UPC - extensions to GCC to provide a compilation and execution environment for Unified Parallel C
- "UPC is an extension of the C programming language designed for high-performance computing on large-scale parallel machines, including those with a common global address space (SMP and NUMA) and those with distributed memory (eg. clusters)."

local

http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Cincinnati - Hackerspace wiki for the currently-under-heavy-development Cincinnati Hackerspace
- Also http://cincinnatihackspace.wikispaces.com/

hardware

Awesome MIPSy stuff:
- Lemote Fulong miniPC (Linuxdevices story) - powered by a 666 MHz Loongson 2E
- Rather similar to the $150 YellowSheepRiver "Municator" (Another Linuxdevices story) based on a 500 MHz 64-bit Godson-2
- Lemote YeeLoong, a laptop with completely free software (including BIOS and firmware) and a power usage of about 12W, based on an 800 MHz Loongson 2F; Richard Stallman supposedly uses one of these

2009.05.03

hodapp — Mon, 04 May 2009 11:54:41 +0000

software,education

Scratch: "Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web. Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills."

video

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog - I don’t know what this is but my friend Patrick tells me I should watch it.

2009.06.14

hodapp — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:06:08 +0000

log

Well, after my computer exploded and my hard drive became an orphan, I finally built a working computer again and fixed up my scripts so they didn’t suck. Now I shall attempt to post the giant piles of stuff that have accumulated.

diy,links

The Repair Manifesto from Platform 21 - worth thinking about.

motivational,practical

Twelve Steps to Practical Problem Solving by Paul Polak
No Nonsense Self-Defense - This is a helpful site. The author gives a vast collection of useful, well-informed articles about self-defense - and why too much of martial arts completely misses the point of it.

food,photography

http://www.tastespotting.com/ - My friend Cassie sent me this link. In its own words: "Think of TasteSpotting as a highly visual potluck of recipes, references, experiences, stories, articles, products, and anything else that inspires exquisite taste."

game,geometry

The eyeballing game - Another link from Cassie… it’s a Flash game that’s sort of interesting, related to one’s ability to eyeball something and tell if it’s straight
Nomic Game - A paperwork table game that looks a bit complex to actually play. The object of the game is to change the rules of the game.

article

The Score: How childbirth went industrial - An article in The New Yorker giving a (critical) opinion of why C-section is used so often. Interesting read.
Perils of pop philosophy
- Probably related to Dunning-Kruger effect - "…people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it"
The Zen of Drinking Alone from Modern Drunkard Magazine. I can’t say I’ve ever heard of Modern Drunkard before, but this is a surprisingly cogent article about the value of… drinking alcohol alone, or "using alcohol to find your inner monkey".
Well, more of an essay than an article… On Liberty by John Stuart Mill is something I should probably read at some point

music

Jake Speed and the Freddies - just saw them at the Southgate House and was extremely impressed, despite that ordinarily I’d never listen to "folk blues" voluntarily.
StumbleAudio - I don’t really know what this is. but I wrote it down, so maybe it’s good. "Guide to discovering music and sharing great new music."

2009.06.14

hodapp — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:06:26 +0000

technobabble,links

http://www.cbkihong.com/index.pl?op=perltut - A tutorial on Perl from Bernard Chan that I found helpful

apps,linux

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/116353 - Article on Siag Office for those who don’t feel like using any remotely mainstream office applications

editor,cheatsheet

http://www.viemu.com/vi-vim-cheat-sheet.gif - A Vim cheat sheet that is essential to me.

programming,scheme

Is Scheme Faster than C? - An oldish article about some interesting performance benefits found in Scheme

hack,wii

http://www.smoothboard.net/ - Interesting thing from my friend Lincoln. It uses a Wii remote, IR transmitter, and PC (with Bluetooth) to "Transform your screen into a user-friendly interactive whiteboard with Smoothboard."

2009.06.15

hodapp — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:07:44 +0000

video,apps

MediaCoder - "a free universal batch media transcoder, which nicely integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution." Only natively works on Windows, but came in handy trying to re-encode some video at work after I found that fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/[Avidemux] liked to either crash or screw up the encode (on Windows at least as I know I’ve used it without problems on Linux)
CamStudio - An open source screen recorder (screencast?) application. Only works on Windows, but works pretty well.

photography,apps

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/58887

2009.06.16

hodapp — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:07:55 +0000

music

Saw these two at Rohs Street Cafe and was very impressed:
- http://www.myspace.com/hickoryrobot
- www.myspace.com/thehappymaladies

2009.06.18

hodapp — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:08:03 +0000

photography,rant

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm - A page from Ken Rockwell, a photographer my uncle likes, called "Your Camera Doesn’t Matter"
http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Up-and-Start-Taking-Photos

2009.06.19

hodapp — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:31:07 +0000

apps,photography

So, I’m on a quest to find a photo organization tool for Linux (or, on a later note, for any OS) that does some things like…
- Allow me to apply metadata to images, like comments and groups and tags (preferably hierarchical)
- Store the metadata IN THE ACTUAL IMAGE, IN A STANDARD FORMAT. This also means it will probably need to support IPTC or XMP, preferably XMP. (No, shut up about GQview, it doesn’t cut it.)
- Allow me to set metadata as a batch operation. I am thoroughly uninterested in having to manually go through the process of setting metadata for each individual image. And when I say "batch operation", "batch" really needs to be more generic than "all files in a directory." (No, shut up about scripting it with ExifTool or Exempi or Exiv2. Yes, they can edit XMP data on groups of files, but scripting doesn’t cut it as a solution unless someone can show me how to make this integrate with a GUI.)
Here are the apps recommended thus far:
- digiKam
- F-Spot
- imgSeek
- Picasa
- GQview
- KPhotoAlbum
- gThumb
- GwenView
- Mapivi
- LightZone
- Razuna
- Lightroom
- PicaJet FX
And my responses thus far:
- digiKam:
  - Has a pretty nice UI (though overdone sometimes)
  - The built-in editing features and plugins are handy and quick. I’m kind of cheating here because I’m already pretty familiar with digiKam.
  - Searching capabilities are pretty good.
  - Only wants to edit IPTC/XMP metadata one image at a time.
  - All its metadata (besides IPTC/XMP that you do one image at a time) is stored in an SQLite database, not in the image
  - Interface can get pretty slow sometimes.
- imgSeek:
  - The interface works okay but it’s a little clumsy, and sometimes things are slow (I loaded about 10K pictures).
  - Finding pictures based on similarity to other pictures or to a hand-drawn image is an interesting feature.
  - The grouping/batching features are powerful, but a bit slow.
  - I am unsure if imgSeek lets me add IPTC or XMP data easily.
  - There is no easy way I can see to search based on date.
- F-Spot:
  - I’m told the IPTC/XMP support in this isn’t that great.
  - I have yet to try this program.
- LightZone:
  - This is proprietary, but they have a 30-day trial.
  - "Linux users will especially enjoy access to the new LightZone Relight Tool l which can achieve HDR effects from a single negative revealing hidden HDR detail in both the highlights and the shadows, using just a single exposure. For instance, you’ll see both saturated colors of a sunset and bright detail in the face of a back lit subject that was formerly lost. Achieving such stunning results from a single exposure without LightZone would require multiple flashes, reflectors and shades at the time the photograph — if it could be possible at all." . . . sorry, but if you honestly believe this, you don’t have the slightest understanding what HDR is. Oh well, it’s all marketing.
  - Having tried this software, I cannot see any batch metadata editing capability, or any reason why I’d want to pay for this.
- PicaJet FX:
  - This is proprietary with a 15-day trial.
  - I tried this software and could not find any batch-editing features for XMP.
- Lightroom
  - This is the expensive stuff from Adobe ($300, but there’s a 30-day trial). Some people in #photogeeks on Freenode recommended it.
  - This is a "workflow app designed for professional photographers" and it’s from Adobe. If anything at al supports XMP batch-editing, and a billion other features, this would have to be it.
- Razuna
  - I don’t know. This is an open source, web-based Digital Asset Management application.
  - It looks very nice (check out the videos there), but I don’t think it’s whatI need for this task.
- Any application I failed to mention: I either ignored it on the basis of provided specifications, or I ignored it because I’m just too lazy.

2009.07.21

hodapp — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:22:28 +0000

local,links

Queen City Discovery - An interesting blog about urban exploration in Cincinnati that some guys in Hive13 told me about
Amidst a pile of other new-age and holistic bullshit in some free magazine, I miraculously discovered an ad for the "Uptown Farmer’s Market" at Garden Park - 3581 W. Galbraith Road, Fridays 12-7, Saturdays 10-2, 513-238-6616
- In trying to find a record that this existed, I came across the Central Ohio River Valley Local Foods Guide (which does indeed acknowledge that this market exists).

programming

MapReduce - I don’t care what your opinion of MapReduce is or how much it might suck, I am just putting this here so I will encounter it later and remember that it exists.
Epigrams on Programming from Alan Perlis - Written in 1982 but still pretty true.

software

Vanish: Self-Destructing Digital Data - Pretty clever.

video,books

Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions? - A video of a talk from this guy, who’s also the author of the book Predictably Irrational (here? the www.predictablyirrational.com[offical website] looks gone)
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness ** Not sure why I wrote this down. I haven’t read it.
the deliberate dumbing down of america by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt - I have not yet read this but it looks good. PDF is available here.

games

Balance of Power - A geopolitics game by Chris Crawford (also with his interesting essay/article here).

lit,historical

We the People Network - I was searching for an image of the Declaration of Independence here and discovered they have rather high-resolution scans (like, the Declaration is 63 megapixels) of that and many other historical documents too.

2009.08.12

hodapp — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:31:59 +0000

videos,paranoia

Here and here - videos from Prof. James Duane and Officer George Bruch about why talking to the police is almost never a good idea.

software

omploader - A place to upload files. It can also be done with a firefox extension or in a script.
Paperback, from the OllyDbg guy. This lets you store data on paper (about 500 KB for A4 at 600 DPI).

web

HTML5 Canvas Experiment - Perhaps good for comparing different Javascript engines. It chokes on Firefox 3.5 on my Atom 330, but works well on 3.6.
drop.io - A file sharing site which Wired mentioned because of its ability to set an expiration date on any file you upload. It also appears to have a collection of other, much cooler features for collaboration.

programming,linux

Bash cures cancer - Some helpful stuff for commandline Unix/Linux. It seems to have not been updated in about a year though.
Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! - My friend Lincoln showed me this. It’s a decent Haskell tutorial with some very oddball illustrations.
How to Design Programs - A book, freely available online, which teaches software design using Scheme (or is it DrScheme?)
- How to Design Worlds: Interactive Programming in DrScheme - Another freely available book from the same guys that made HtDP, but this one is about writing interactive applications using pure functional programming.

games

Kongregate - A large collection of rather addictive online Flash games.

books

The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto; the full text is readable for free online. I haven’t read it, I just noted the link, so I can neither agree nor disagree with the contents of it.
Wishcraft by Barbara Sher; I came across this motivational book from Havi Brooks. I haven’t read this either, but I should at some point. It’s free as a series of PDFs.

food

Basic Beef Stew with Carrots and Mushrooms - made this last week and I’m noting it here so I can find it later. No, I don’t use bookmarks.

hippie

Living on NST - Nomadic Standard Time - Some post from "Tales from Technomadia".

something

Seth Godin’s Blog - I can’t remember why I saved this, but it looks like it’s full of thought-provoking articles.
- The bandwidth-sync correlation… is worth looking at.

Fun with NX stuff

hodapp — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:56:22 +0000

So, I was trying out various NX servers because I'd had very good luck with NX in the past and generally found it faster than VNC, RDP, or X11 over SSH. My options appeared to be: +

NoMachine's server (here), which is free-as-in-beer but supports only 2 simultaneous sessions.
FreeNX made from the components that NoMachine GPLed. It's open souce, but apparently is a total mess and notoriously hard to set up. However, it doesn't limit you to two sessions, as far as I know.
neatX, implemented from scratch in Python/bash/C by Google for some internal project because apparently FreeNX was just too much of a mess. Like FreeNX, it lacks the two-session limitation; however, it doesn't handle VNC or RDP, only X11.

+NoMachine's server was a cinch to set up (at least on Fedora). The only thing I remember having to do is put my local hostname (idiotbox) in /etc/hosts. Performance was very good (though I haven't tried RDP or VNC over a slower link yet - only a LAN with VirtualBox's built-in RDP server). + +neatX was a bit tougher to set up, primarily because the documentation I saw was very sparse. This blog post was helpful. It advised that you should make sure you could log in with SSH manually before checking anything else, which gave me a starting point for my problems. + +I took these notes on how I made it work: +

Install all of the dependencies it says. ALL OF THEM!
Follow the other instructions in "INSTALL".
Go to /usr/local/lib/neatx and run ./nxserver-login +If it looks like this, you're probably good: ++[hodapp@idiotbox neatx]$ ./nxserver-login +HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.3.0 - GPL +NX> 105 + +If not, you may need to install some dependencies or check paths of some things. If it complains about not being able to import neatx.app, add something like this to the top of nxserver-login: ++import sys +sys.path.append("/usr/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages") + +Replace that path with your own if it's different, of course.
Set up password-less login for user 'nx' using something like 'ssh-keygen -t rsa' and putting the private & public keys someplace easy to find. Check that this works properly from another host (i.e. put the public key in the server's authorized_keys file in ~nx/.ssh, copy the private key to the client, and use 'ssh -i blahblahprivatekey nx@server' there to log in. It should look something like this: ++chris@momentum:~$ ssh -i nx.key nx@10.1.1.40 +Last login: Sun Oct 11 13:11:49 2009 from 10.1.1.20 +HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.3.0 - GPL +NX> 105 + +If it asks for a password, something's wrong. +If it terminates the connection immediately, SSH is probably okay, but something server-side with neatX is still messed up. SSH logs can sometimes tell things.

+Once I'd done all this, neatX worked properly. However, I had some issues with it - for instance, sometimes the entire session quit accepting mouse clicks, certain windows quit accepting keyboard input, or things would turn very sluggish at random. But for the most part it worked well. + +After setting up SSH stuff, FreeNX server worked okay from Fedora's packages after some minor hackery (i.e. setting user the login shell for user 'nx' to /usr/libexec/nx/nxserver. I haven't yet had a chance to test it over a slow link, whether with X11 or RDP or VNC, but it worked in a LAN just fine. Someone in the IRC channel on FreeNode assures me that it runs flawlessly over a 256 kilobit link. + +Then, for some reason I really don't remember, I decided I wanted to run all three servers at once on the same computer. As far as I know, all of the NX clients log in to the server initially by passing a private key for user 'nx'. The server then runs the login shell set in /etc/passwd for nx - so I guess that shell determines which NX server handles the session. + +So, amidst a large pile of bad ideas, I finally came up with this workable idea for making the servers coexist: I would set the login shell to a wrapper script which would choose the NX server to then run. The only data I could think of that the NX client could pass to the server were the port number and the private key, and this wrapper script would somehow have to get this data. + +Utilizing the port number would probably involve hacking around with custom firewall rules or starting multiple SSH servers, so I opted to avoid this method. It turns out if you set LogLevel to VERBOSE in sshd_config (at least in my version), it'll have lines like this after every login from the NX client: +Oct 14 18:11:33 idiotbox sshd[15681]: Found matching DSA key: fd:e9:5d:24:59:3c:3c:35:c5:29:74:ef:6d:92:3c:e4 +You can get that key fingerprint with 'ssh-keygen -lf foo.pub' where foo.pub is the public key. + +So I generated 3 keys (one for neatX, NoMachine's server, and FreeNX), added them all to authorized_keys, found the fingerprints, and ended up with a script that was something like this: +

#!/bin/sh
+FINGERPRINT=$(grep "Found matching RSA key" /var/log/secure |
+     tail -n 1 | egrep -o "(..:){15}..")
+if [ $FINGERPRINT == "26:dd:67:82:c1:2d:cc:c0:c6:13:ac:d4:49:0e:79:a3" ]; then
+    SERVER="/usr/local/lib/neatx/nxserver-login-wrapper"
+elif [ $FINGERPRINT == "35:fb:bd:45:c5:71:91:ce:d6:d9:7f:0b:dc:84:f4:b3" ]; then
+    SERVER="/usr/NX/bin/nxserver"
+elif [ $FINGERPRINT == "b5:d7:a5:18:0d:c4:fa:18:19:58:20:00:1d:3b:3c:84" ]; then
+    SERVER="/usr/libexec/nx/nxserver"
+fi
+$SERVER

+I saved this someplace, set it executable, and set the login shell for nx in /etc/passwd to point to it. Make sure the home directory points someplace sensible too, as the install script for some NX servers are liable to point it somewhere else. But as far as I can tell, the only thing they use the home directories for is the .ssh directory and all the other data they save is in locations that do not conflict.So I copied the three public keys to the client and manually did 'ssh -i blah.key nx@whatever' on each key. +

chris@momentum:~$ ssh -i freenx-key nx@10.1.1.40
+HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.2.0-74-SVN OS (GPL, using backend: 3.3.0)
+NX> 105
+chris@momentum:~$ ssh -i neatx-key nx@10.1.1.40
+HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.3.0 - GPL
+NX> 105
+chris@momentum:~$ ssh -i nomachine-key nx@10.1.1.40
+HELLO NXSERVER - Version 3.4.0-8 - LFE
+NX> 105

+The different versions in each reply were a good sign, so I tried the same keys in the client, and stuff indeed worked (at least according to my totally non-rigorous testing). Time will tell whether or not I completely overlooked some important details or interference.