Here at the end of all things

Posted on 21st December 2010 in Something Daily

I knew since last night that today was going to be a bit rough. I had two finals today, which took a combined total of close to four hours. Having that ahead of me, you’d think that I would study for something. Yeah ok. I did discover some fantastic new music in the form of Siah and Yeshua DapoED (which I have no idea how to pronounce). The beats on their Visualz Anthology are some of the crunchiest I’ve ever heard. Comparatively speaking, the rapping on that album as a whole isn’t the greatest, but it really varies by song. Great album.

The point is, though, that between 8 and 1 last night, I could have been working, but I was instead hanging out with Eric and Jen for a good portion of that time, listening to music and talking about how we “should” be working on stuff. I reviewed a bit this morning, which ended up being quite helpful on my first test this morning, a 2.5 hour Performing Arts in Western Civilization final which comprised ten essays. The only time a test hurt my hand that badly was Audio for Video a few weeks ago, and before that, probably the SAT or something. What I’m really trying to say here is that that test sucked, and I’m happy that it’s over. It was a good class, just not a good test. I also took the Electronics final today, which I was similarly prepared for. Honestly, I’m just glad that my finals are over at last. I’m still in the decompression stage right now, just getting used to the idea that I don’t have to do anything for the next month.

I was checking out my mic last night, a Rode NT1-A, and noticed that the diaphragm was tilted on a slight angle toward the back of the grill. I did a little research and determined that it was pretty safe to carefully remove the casing and gently nudge the capsule back into place. I had never taken a mic apart before, especially not one that cost 300 dollars, so I was exceedingly careful. I was kind of surprised to find, though, that the capsule of that mic is secured to the body by a gummy, silicone-type substance, so when you jostle the mic around, it actually wiggles a little bit. It probably has something to do with the sound, too; maybe the rubber stuff acts as a diffuser. Either way, the capsule wouldn’t go back to the right position with a push, so I decided I’m just going to store it differently and let gravity slowly do my job for me. I tested the mic after putting it back together, and I succeeded in not breaking anything! Great job, Mister Emmett!

In case you haven’t gone on my Soundcloud from the “About” page, here’s the other finished Gameboy song I made a few weeks ago.

Level Three by Raised by Robots

These are fun, I haven’t worked with LSDJ for a little while now.

Apparently the mixing desk in the studio where we were going to present our final Recording Tech project is broken now, so it may turn out that we don’t present at all. That’s actually pretty unlikely, but it could happen. Apart from that (which will be fun, not work), I still have to tech tonight! What a bummer! I think we all know that I’d much rather be sleeping. But I’ll be home soon. And I just know winter break is going to go by very, very fast.

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Red Five reporting in

Posted on 14th December 2010 in Something Daily

The semester is over. I mean, I still have finals to take in the next two weeks, but I don’t really have to go to any of my classes anymore apart from those. I’m free, sort of. I can do what I want now, which largely involves blogging and gaming. But that’s not all! I do other stuff too, sometimes! More on that later.

As I mentioned yesterday, I only got four hours of sleep Sunday night due to mitigating circumstances, so I was, as predicted, completely toasted by the end of yesterday. I was essentially falling asleep during our film mix session, and I actually did upon trying to watch a skate video with London when I got home. Actually, we were both totally exhausted. We went to bed at eleven, which was awesome. I really need to do that a bit more often. It feels so good today, like I can stand up and face the problems of the day like a champ (for example, the ridiculous 20 degree weather this morning that had my fingers falling off inside my gloves). It’s ok though, I have a rad rocking awesome pea coat, a sweater, gloves and a scarf. Problem solved. We’ll be presenting our film mix tonight at the class, and I’m hoping it goes smoothly. Unfortunately I can’t post it here, because it’s part of a larger project that’s not mine. But instead, here is a photo of my completed electronics project!

That’s my MIDI controller, “Red Five”! It’s an Arduino and a PC board encased in a tin Star Wars lunchbox that I found at a comic book store on St. Mark’s. In auto mode, it sends out a constant stream of MIDI note-on messages, with pitch, rate, and note length determined by the knobs. Also, every time it sends a note, the Death Star blinks. In manual mode, it’s the same except that instead of sending a constant stream of MIDI notes, notes are only sent while the blue button is pressed. The cables coming out of it are a USB (for power) and a MIDI connector (for data). I’m also going to look into using a normal wall wart for power instead of a USB cable – it seems a bit annoying to have to have a computer present whenever this thing is used. But yeah, it’s rad, and it actually works exactly as I intended it to, unlike last semester’s fiasco of a “Darth Compressor”. I’ve tested it with PureData notein patches as well as my Alesis Ion – the latter is especially cool because of all the physical sound controls it has that let you warp the synthesis in crazy ways.

The great thing about this project is that, since it only generates commands and not actual audio, I can connect it to any old instrument with a MIDI in and demonstrate it for people. As long as that particular instrument sounds cool, people will assume that “Red Five” is the one making the cool sounds, when in reality it’s essentially just “telling” the instrument what to do. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that here. Never mind, there is no “should”, anyway.

I just got another letter from my good friend Monica, who’s doing a gap year in France, so I’m going to go write her back. As an epilogue to this sweet Tuesday morning post, I would like to share with you the current state of the paper recycling bin in our apartment.

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Failing is better than not trying, but success is better than both

Posted on 13th December 2010 in Something Daily

Hi there. Let me just begin by giving a heads-up to Jen Barbosa for being an awesome person. We hung out two nights ago until way too late at night and it was quite nice. Actually we hang out often (and it’s quite nice then too). I just wanted to say thanks for being my rad friend, Jen.

Last night ended up being awesome once again – much better than expected. All around, the Upright Citizens were funnier than last week, although there were still a handful of jokes that I was embarrassed to be laughing at. It was probably a result of some of the weird, weird stories that the show started off with. They start each show by asking the audience what they did over the weekend, and last night’s stories were kind of crazy. There was one about a homeless guy who walked into a Starbucks and started setting up his clothes on individual chairs around one of the tables, and was subsequently vomited upon by a man who ran into the store. There was also a semi-pro wrestler/dominatrix in the audience who told this crazy story about a mansion she visited to do a “session” – it was just nuts. But the show itself was fantastic, as was the rest of my evening. I didn’t get to sleep until 2:30, though, as my roommate had a guest. I had to get up this morning at 7 for class, so I can expect to be pretty toasted in a few hours. I’m thinking seriously about not going to my 5 PM class – it’s finals week. Come on.

Today will involve the last stages of my electronics project design. Yesterday I finished the prototyping process and soldered the circuit to a PC board. It works fine, first try. Not really a big deal or anything, I’m just awesome at soldering. Circuits are scared of me. I also got some knobs to fit on top of my potentiometers from Radio Shack, and stopped by the St. Marks comic store for another Star Wars lunchbox to use as an enclosure. The first one (last semester) had Darth Vader on it, so this one has Luke, Leia, Han Solo, and Obi-Wan, of course. I’ll be drilling a bunch of holes in it this morning, and hopefully not hurting myself too badly with the power tools. I’m actually going to go start that right now.

I tried drawing a “hawk woman” last night, but then I realized that I suck at drawing. That was the end of that. Instead, I ate a large quantity of Kit Kat, played some New Mario Wii and watched Arrested Development.

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Life Electronic

Posted on 12th December 2010 in Something Daily

Yesterday and today were both very much electronics-themed. I went in to Steinhardt (again!) at 11 AM yesterday to help a classmate with her final project. I thought helping her was going to be pretty easy, but it ended up being a big pain due to the lack of barebones MIDI equipment available on the 8th floor. I spent about 2 hours banging my head against a wall over the apparent absence of MIDI note reception by the Arduino, finally managing to pinpoint the problem. I think it has to do with the fact that the MIDI controllers available were sending more than just note messages. Either way, she thought I was quite helpful and took me out to lunch – a place called Cafetasia that has a lot of different types of Asian food. I got something called Gyo-Za and it was nuts. Not that it actually contained nuts, but it was just awesome. Crazy delicious and covered in soy sauce. Also, this was around 3:30 PM. So once again, I succeeded in spending most of my day in the Music Tech department. That’s why I’m staying far, far away from that place today.

Also, last night was the Charlie Brown christmas special viewing in our room! I made everyone hot chocolate and we watched the special…it was awesome. It’s great to have everyone together like that, and I liked feeling like the “mom” of the situation, as odd as that may sound.

I woke up at around 9:30 this morning and got immediately to work on finishing my own electronics project, which is due on Thursday. I had originally intended to use a multiplexer to increase the possible number of controls for MIDI note sends, but upon trying it again this morning I sort of got over that idea. So I got some knobs and a PC board, as well as another star wars lunchbox to use as a case, and soldered the whole thing in about half an hour. Once again: first try, no mistakes. I’m pretty much the man at soldering. I don’t know if you knew. So apart from putting the whole circuit in its enclosure, I’m done with the project. And after that, it’s just a few more final exams and I’m good to go. I was expecting to work on this project all day, but now I have time to do whatever (that is, play TF2!). Good times. And I’m going to the Upright Citizens again tonight, hopefully it’s as good as it was last week, if not better.

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Giving is Fun

Posted on 8th December 2010 in Something Daily

Yesterday evening at work as a tech was frantic. At about an hour into my shift, about five people asked me do help them out with various tech things within five minutes of each other and I was forced to run around trying to please everyone. More than one of the requests had to do with the impending final project due date for electronics lab. That’s the class for which I’m making the MIDI controller, and though I feel like I don’t exactly know what I’m doing, I’m still able to give help to some people due to my coding experience which, short as it is, constitutes a larger body of work than most of my Music Tech peers. So I helped out a couple of my friends on shift last night and got a cupcake out of the deal (red velvet from Crumbs!). That’s the second time something like this has happened. My friend Amy, who I also met through teching, gave me a Hershey’s bar after I stayed after hours to help her in the studio. So the job can have its perks, mainly in the form of food gifts from nice girls. I say girls because I don’t feel like I know of any guy who would do that for someone (I mean other than me of course).

The final bit of secret santa news has arrived, and honestly it’s my favorite of all. My giftee got the present I had shipped to him (a custom name placard for his desk with an Arrested Development joke on it) and registered his reception on the redditgifts website! It’s amazing to actually see the gift that I had ordered for him, and also to know that he’s happy with it. It’s really an awesome feeling.

Of course, we’re getting close to the completion of the final mix of our bluegrass “Get Low” cover. We plan to finish the mix tonight, so you can expect the final mix online some time tomorrow. If you didn’t hear it, here’s the rough mix on my soundcloud. We think it’s a pretty funny song in the bluegrass style.

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Let Us Be Pals

Posted on 5th December 2010 in Something Daily

After I wrote here yesterday, I worked a bit more on my MIDI controller project and ended up destroying my only multiplexer IC, magical blue smoke and all. I’m notoriously bad about breaking chips – my teacher makes fun of me for it often, and I have a steadily growing collection of burned out ICs to remind me to be more careful where I put voltage and ground. So I have to buy a new one now and pay for fast shipping, since it was my only one. The multiplexer is the part that will allow me to use more controls for MIDI parameters than the Arduino could otherwise handle. So since it’s gone, I’m at a bit of a standstill. Awesome.

I started playing Majora’s Mask for the first time today. I know, crazy, right? You’d think that loving N64 games as much as I do, I would have playing MM by now. But you’d be wrong if you thought that. I’ve started playing it a few times, and never devoted enough time to it to actually get past the prologue and save my progress. The one problem with that game I’ve found is that you can’t save during the prologue. That’s one of the reasons I never played it any more than that until today. Anyway, I just finished that part, saved, and stopped. I’m going to play a bit more later, but first impressions are good!

And here are some drawings I did this morning! I woke up and decided to play some Half-Life 2, and then changed my mind at the last moment and decided instead to draw. Because being productive is not only easier early in the day, it makes you feel better about the day from the beginning. These guys are pretty great. There’s more than meets the eye here, though.

The pretty little guy won the Nobel Prize for Physics, and the booktopus murdered nine people. Shame on you for thinking he was cute.

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Bagel MIDI

Posted on 4th December 2010 in Something Daily

My recent weeks have been marked by a marked lack of concern for the impending wave of school work that’s going to come with finals week. The projects that I have to do by then have been weighing on me slightly since before thanksgiving, but I haven’t been worrying about them too much. Specifically, the Recording Tech project of recording a “Get Low” cover, the Audio for Video postproduction sound for a film, and the Electronics MIDI controller are the big ones that I haven’t been freaking out about. I woke up this morning and realized, though, that while my audio projects are far enough along now, the MIDI controller wasn’t really started at all. I still haven’t even bought all the parts I need for it, in fact. But at least I woke up this morning wanting to get something done. I spent about two hours configuring everything needed for MIDI transmission and reception with the Arduino, successfully generating MIDI output from the Arduino with a series of potentiometers that determine repetition speed, MIDI note, and note length, and then playing MIDI notes in Pd. So it’s going quite nicely as of now. I’m going to try and incorporate the multiplexer into the design a little later to allow for more comtrols. This thing is going to be bristling with knobs. I need a creative case idea though. Last year my compressor was inside a darth vader lunchbox, and I need something equally awesome this time. If I had that project here with me, I’d totally take a picture of it, by the way. It’s fantastic.

Here’s the MIDI controller project right now.

So that project is due in less than two weeks. Honestly though, I think I’ll be done with it by tomorrow evening. At least the design part. Soldering is another story. Which reminds me my soldering iron is a piece of crap! It’s Craftsman, so you wouldn’t expect that. But the tips it came with are slowly melting under the heat of the iron. When I was making the compression circuit last year, every time I touched the tip to a bit of metal, part of the end would just slough off. Now there’s a little horseshoe shape in the end of my once-square iron tip. Lame! But I used it today and it still works, it’s just a bit of a different technique now. So yeah, I’ll try to modify the code for the multiplexer tonight. But right now, I’m playing Nintendo 64 with Eric. Mario 64 and Ocarina, namely. These games will never get old even though they’re two of the first I ever played.

On an unrelated note, today was the first day that I bought breakfast food from Food Emporium in about two weeks. I’d been subsisting on Dunkin’ Donuts bagels and paper-tasting cream cheese for that interim period, and it’s amazing not have to do that anymore. And real orange juice! Tropicana Pure Premium forever.

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