My guitar pedalboard is finally finished! Got a Molten Voltage MIDI pedal to switch presets on my rack unit and also give me tap-tempo MIDI clock for my delay effects. Check it out.
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50EkIid7LpQ”]
Tasker And Flowcharts
In my quest to simplify, I’ve ventured into the territory of Information Automation. Since I discovered the app Tasker, I’ve challenged myself to find new ways to exploit it to automate tasks that I really shouldn’t be wasting time on.
Tasker basically is an automation programming language for your Android device. It allows you to take any number of trigger inputs (GPS position, battery state, apps, network status, emails, RSS feeds, etc.) and then perform any series of tasks you program it to. It has the capability to be a full-fledged programming language, with conditional logic, variables, and so on, which lets you make some incredibly complex “tasks” for it to run.
It also has the capability of using almost anything your device can do as an “action” or output, which means you can automate just about anything your phone/tablet can do. Take pictures, play audio, send texts, run programs, share to social media, control the device’s functions, or even speak and listen to voice commands.
So, sometimes I geek out on stuff like flowcharts and such, and programming is the perfect place for it. Flowcharts! Graphs! Logic! Here’s how it works. Continue reading “Tasker And Flowcharts”
Why I Bike Commute
The folks at the Bike Commuter Cabal were kind enough to let me write up some stuff for you to read about why I decided to start Bike Commuting, and how it changed my life.
Have you ever been at a point where you know you need to change, but you just don’t know where to start? Four years ago, I was at that point.
This would have been around 2010. I had recently moved back to my home town, had a beautiful family, and was pretty much happy. Except that I wasn’t happy. I was pretty miserable in fact, but I wasn’t letting on. Why? Some of the reasons (a lot of them) were related to my job, but a lot of it had to do with me being 40 pounds overweight. I was weighing in at 5′ 11″ and 215 pounds.
“That’s not so bad,” you’re probably thinking. Well, no, relatively speaking, there are a lot of people that are a lot heavier than I was. But the reality was that I knew my life, and my weight, were spiraling out of control. I was always tired, having digestion issues, sinus problems, sleep apnea, and I plowed through it, being miserable and pretty much always exhausted.
But I knew there was a better way. Thanks to my friend Mike, I got interested in whole foods (which I knew practically nothing about) and realized how much garbage I was putting into my body. Somewhere in that time, my job started getting very frustrating. I was hating going to work, and I’m ashamed to say it carried over into my home life. I was not being the husband and father my family deserved. I knew I needed a change, but I didn’t know where to start.
So I bought a bike.
Check it out here!
Bike Commuter Cabal Blog (EDIT: Fixed the link. I’m an idiot. But it’s fixed now.)
The Way-Back Machine
Fortunately, I’ve been able to find a bunch of my articles from before The Great Server Wipe of December August 2011. This is good in a lot of ways. You can see just how much my writing and thought process has changed over the last 6 years. And honestly, you don’t want to see my writing before that. That’s pre-Wordpress…. hardcoded HTML… (shudder)
It’s pretty entertaining to go back and see what I used to write about, and what I thought was important. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be back-posting these articles into the blog’s history, and adding redirects to the new posts.
Thanks to The Way-Back Machine for the help!
Guitarix And Ubuntu For Live Use
I’m working on finishing up some articles and videos of demoing Guitarix in a live performance setting. Until then, here’s some screenshots of my rig in action! The last picture is what the laptop looks like when you put Guitarix in “Live” mode. The buttons at the bottom light up as you use MIDI triggers to turn on/off effects, so you can easily see what’s switched on. Also, if you have a pedal mapped to volume or wah, it shows what position the pedal is at. (That’s going to get a video demo as soon as I find the time!)
You can store presets in banks, so you can set up your sounds according to songs and sets.
Corporate Emo Poetry Monday (Busted Keyboard Edition)
clicking and flickering letters they fly
onwards and upwards lest nimbleness die
the tongue from which henceforth forever proceeded
yet rapidly languishing, no longer is needed
yet the rapping and tapping can never subside
for the ravenous metrics we have to provide
together the syllables clutter and run
into pieces of meaningless information
and so now at last, my keyboard has died
a weapon that all geeks should have at their side
for writers, no greater blade can be drawn
but I’m stuck with a cheap piece of junk from Taiwan
My Thoughts On Self-Publishing
My thoughts on self-publishing
Some of you out there in Internetlandia® enjoy reading books, and a few of you have even gone so far as to say “Hey, since I love books so much, and writing one doesn’t look too hard (I mean, look at romance novels, right?) I should self-publish one!”
Well, far be it for me to proclaim myself an expert in self-publishing books, but I have done it, so I figured I’d share my thoughts surrounding the process, instead of talking about the mechanics of the process itself. If you’re looking for helpful advice in formatting and/or figuring out the publishing process, there’s already plenty of information on that.
We’re going to focus for a minute on the why of self-publishing, which is something not many people think about. If you’re serious about writing, this is going to be a litmus test. Either a) you’re going to get upset, or b) you’re going to recognize what you need to be doing. Hopefully I don’t upset anybody.
These are the questions you need to be asking yourself if you’re seriously considering self-publishing: Continue reading “My Thoughts On Self-Publishing”
New Music Project
For the last few months, I’ve been working on a new music project with my good friend Luke McNeely. It’s mostly 8-bit “chiptune” music, made using old-school video game sounds and instruments. Don’t laugh, it’s a lot harder than it looks! But between the two of us, we’ve spent thousands of hours listening to really amazing music written by greats like Takashi Tateishi, played through Nintendo and Atari game consoles.
We decided to call our group “Not Entirely Unlike Chiptune” as an homage to Douglas Adams. So, if you like old video game music, were a child of the 80’s and 90’s, or just want to hear something different, check us out on Twitter and Soundcloud.
Our first official project is an 8-bit tribute album of one of our favorite bands, Five Iron Frenzy. We’re releasing the songs as we go, rather than holding out till we’re finished. Feel free to check it out!
https://soundcloud.com/notentirelyunlikechiptune/
MIDI Controllers: Not Just For Keyboards
I’ve been working on my new guitar pedalboard, with the idea to have a 1U rack space and two rows of pedals. This should give me more possibilities in less space than a monster controller pedal, using stuff I already have. However, with a rack effect unit (and even some pedals now), you need some way to control it.
(This picture is a bit different than it will look when finished, but you can see the 1U rack unit. The MIDI pedal will go where the Roland interface is in this pic)
Next to go on the board is some sort of MIDI pedal that is capable of sending Program Change signals to the rack unit. Ultimately, I’d like one that does Program Change, Continuous Controller, and a tap-tempo MIDI clock. As far as I know (and I’ve researched it endlessly) I can get two of those features in a pedal, but not all three. It just doesn’t exist as far as I know, outside of custom $1000 setups.
Well, if I had to choose between two of those features, one would have to be Program Change. And as far as MIDI clock tap-tempo, I only know of a few pedals that can do that. The cheapest and most flexible would probably be the Molten Voltage “Tempode” pedal. I also discovered that Molten Voltage offers a pedal with the same functionality, plus simple up/down program changes called the Master Control. For the price of a Rocktron MIDI Xchange, I can get the same functionality with tap-tempo MIDI clock and start/stop.
So, how exactly does this MIDI stuff work, and what do PC, CC, and MIDI Clock messages do, exactly? And why do you need them? It depends on what you have on your board, and how you want to control it. Lots of new effect pedals can use MIDI too, including ones from Boss, Strymon, TC Electronics, Line6, Eventide, and so on. Continue reading “MIDI Controllers: Not Just For Keyboards”
Living The Good Life
“Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.
To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.”
-Bill Watterson