Productive/Creative – Analog Man in a Digital World
I’ve been commuting to work by bike for the last 4 weeks, and during that time, I learned something interesting.
In my goal to get closer to my ideal weight/fat ratio, I’ve been putting in some miles on the bike, and increasing the intensity of my riding, in an effort to help burn calories. But after almost 2 weeks of riding and watching my diet, I hadn’t lost anything!
I’m getting close to replacing my aging (but still perfectly functional) HP 625 laptop. The kids have been using it heavily for school, along with the handful of other laptops (two Dells and an HP). My requirements for a laptop are a bit different than most people’s, though… I need mine to be Linux compatible.
I’m looking at getting an HP laptop/tablet with a rotating screen, for a couple of reasons. First, the tablet function would be very handy for using it on a music stand, or as an e-reader. Second, I write a lot, so it needs to have a decent keyboard. Third, I don’t like devices that separate the screen from the keyboard.
Possible candidates are the HP Elitebook 2760p, or the HP Elitebook Revolve 810 G1. Both come with an Intel i5/i7 and comparable hardware, but the Revolve is thinner, lighter, and more expensive. The only thing that doesn’t work with Ubuntu is the fingerprint scanner (yet).
One thing I want to be able to do with it is use it as a mobile recording studio/performance laptop with Ubuntu Studio.
I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal about my bike commuting. Check it out!
http://www.wsj.com/articles/your-commute-could-help-you-lose-weight-1439315593
I’ve decided, after making decisions loosely based around Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, to focus on developing my “Important But Not Urgent” activities in my life.
You’ve probably heard it said, “the Urgent is the enemy of the Important.” That’s because urgent things demand our attention NOW, and we never get around to doing the important things. Continue reading “Back In The Saddle”
One of the toughest challenges in using the Roger Linn Adrenalinn III pedal (henceforth referred to as the “A3”) is figuring out how to use it! The pedal is nearly perfect, and yet there are ways I want to use it that don’t fit how it was intended to be used.
For starters, the pedal is basically two machines in one: a full-blown digital guitar effect pedal, and a Drum Machine. You can connect the two, but I want to be able to use them completely separately, with two separate sets of controls. The pedal’s buttons can control certain things, but can only change presets up/down. You can use external MIDI commands to switch presets, but you can do either FX or drums, or both together, but you can’t use two different controllers to change presets separately.
My setup is a bit complicated, I’ll admit. I have a rack unit that I want in the MIDI chain, for clock-synced delays AND preset changes. But I want the presets to change with the A3’s FX presets, and NOT the drum patterns. I want the Molten Voltage Master Control (henceforth referred to as the “MC”) to provide clock and PC only for drums… and a second controller to provide PC and CC messages only for the rack unit and the A3’s FX side. I also want to leave the A3’s buttons alone to turn individual things on and off. So how do I make this all work?? Continue reading “Adrenalinn III Pedal Control Project”
As part of my Constant Struggle To Simplify, I wanted to track my cycling miles without having to jump through hoops or do anything crazy. Up until recently, I was using Endomondo to track miles (and before that I used MapMyRide). These programs promise all sorts of features; social commentary, audio coaching, ANT+ and Bluetooth connectivity, route planning, etc. etc. But really, I found I didn’t use any of these extra features. I just wanted a simple, automated way to track my mileage that I could keep in digital form. And with Endomondo’s recent feature creep I was having to tap 3-4 menu items just to get to where I could record a ride! Nothing wrong with my Cyclecomputer, either, but I like analyzing numbers and stats.
Keeping with my wanting to use Tasker to automate stuff, I found a Tasker Plugin that allows it to start and stop Google MyTracks recording. MyTracks doesn’t have all the fru-fru social stuff, but it supports ANT+ and Bluetooth if I decide to go that route later (and Tasker can automatically connect to them). Plus it automatically syncs with Google Drive, so the potential for 100% complete automation is there. Let’s get busy!
There’s a couple of plugins I use to do this: AutoActivity, and the MyTracks Tasker Plugin.
AutoActivity is a service that runs in the background that guesses what you’re doing (walking, cycling, driving, still) based on GPS and inertia input, and assigns it a “confidence” score percentage of how sure it is you’re doing that. You can use it both as a trigger (i.e. “when you detect me driving, do this”) or an active variable (i.e. “Do this only IF activity=xxx”)
Tasker is so ridiculously flexible, it takes some playing around to figure out the best way to accomplish something. Sometimes the “best” solution isn’t immediately obvious. This is definitely the case with this problem. So, let’s look at what we want to accomplish, and how we can go about it. Continue reading “Tasker And MyTracks”
Note: since this was published, Google has announced the end of MyTracks, and as a result Google Fit now tracks bike mileage, though without any other kind of stats.
We can’t escape it, we’re in the digital age. Companies are all about Data, and we as consumers have followed along. With the rise of GPS-enabled devices in phones and bike computers, almost anyone can now track their cycling and running statistics, complete with geolocation and tons of other stats. This of course allows us to not only track our ride history, it allows us to compare information and apply it different ways.
I’ve long been a fan of GPS technology, and so naturally I migrated to using GPS to track my bike rides and commuting miles. But there are so many choices out there! How’s a person to decide what’s best for them, except try them all? I even made a poll in the G+ Bike Commuter Cabal community!
Fear not, for I’ve already used them all*, and my findings are here to help you make a decision on which App is best for you and your riding style.
We’re going to look at the top ones, and also include Google’s newcomer “Google Fit” to the mix, just to see how it stacks up against apps that have been on the market for years. I started off using a 7″ Samsung Galaxy Tab, and recently got a Motorola Moto G, which is what I’m recording rides with now. All app data and screenshots are from the Moto G. The apps will be reviewed in the order I tried them, nothing special about that.
Criteria:
I finally figured out a screencap program that works in Ubuntu. I had tried RecordMyDesktop, but had no success. I tried several ways to get it working, but it never did work correctly. (To be fair, it might not be the program’s fault… it just didn’t work on my system running Ubuntu Studio 12.04) After some searching, I decided to try Simple Screen Recorder, and after a few tweaks, I got it working.
For my system, I had to use Jack audio. For some reason, it just wouldn’t record anything from Pulse Audio (no shock there… Pulse’s reputation isn’t the best). So with a hacked .asoundrc file to channel Alsa to a Jack sink, it finally worked!
With this setup, I’ll be able to record some of the guitar and audio software I’m using, as well as games and such. (recording games on Steam requires some tweaking, too). So here’s a short demo! Continue reading “Linux Screencasting”
As a writer, you’re probably aware that November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I haven’t decided if I’m going to officially participate, but I’ll probably get some writing done anyway. When I sit down to write, this is what my desktop looks like:
First and foremost, the centerpiece of my writing, is Scrivener for linux. I’ve already written about it here.
Second (and almost as important) is my full-screen “motivational” app, Write or Die 2. It kills writer’s block dead! This is for grinding through word counts, when I have an idea for a scene in my head but it just won’t come out. WriteOrDie gets the words out, whether I like it or not.
For non-fiction, I’m learning to use the program Zotero for annotations and footnotes. It integrates into Scrivener, too.
Thirdly is background music. Sometimes I can listen to rock, but mostly, I listen to ambient sounds, and the best thing for that is SomaFM.com. They’ve got several ambient and downtempo stations, so I’ll play that through RhythmBox. I really like the stations DroneZone and BeatBlender. On the rare occasion I want to listen to something specific, I’ll listen to Pandora with an app called Pithos.
This is how I get my fiction writing done. What’s your writing desktop look like?
I’ve been a Linux user for going on twelve years now. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered Linux was actually a pretty good platform for gaming too. And with Steam’s supporting Linux, it became official: Gaming isn’t just for Windows.
On a whim, I picked up a title called Beat Hazard Ultra from Steam, since it’s one of the games that runs natively on Linux.
Ho-lee-cow.
