Audience of One is the weblog of Matthew Weston, a UK student, Christian, technophile and musician.
Musical setup
I’m currently playing with my new FireOne, which means that finally I can actually use Logic, software I’ve been wanting to get to grips with for years now. The stuff I’m playing around with isn’t exactly relevant to my degree currently, but will be next year.
For the sake of Google, and anyone else who might be interested (feel free to skip if this really isn’t your thing), I’m using the following equipment:
- MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo
- LaCie 250GB Firewire external hard drive
- Dell 20 inch LCD monitor
- Tascam FireOne audio/MIDI interface
- Logic Studio (including Logic Pro 8)
I’m also looking to buy a condenser microphone in the near future – probably a Røde NT-2A, which seems to be able to lend its hand to all sorts of things.
Hopefully the musical fruits of this setup will be forthcoming; first, though, I’ve got an exam to do and a piece of coursework to finish (involving vocoders, singing backwards, and possibly a Wiimote).
Matthew @ 16:49, May 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Christian computer games
My favourite quote from these articles?
However, instead of killing Nazis in a castle, the player takes the part of Noah, who needs to throw fruits and grain at stray animals.
Is it any wonder many Christians are simply thought to be nice, harmless and a little bit strange?
Matthew @ 12:51, May 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)
iTunes 7
I was going to post something along the lines of “Anyone else really dislike the new iTunes?”, but it turns out someone does. That said, gapless playback! For months Dark Side of the Moon* has had irritating pauses where there should have been smooth transitions. I wonder if the iPods now have it – might make getting one of nanos even more tempting. Those colours, though. I was pleased to see the back of the minis for that very reason.
Matthew @ 11:35, September 13, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Physics + maths
The best kind of jokes* are those that only a particular group of people actually understand and find funny.
Q: How many quantum physicists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: They can’t. If they know where the socket is they cannot locate the new bulb.
The next joke really tests if you know your physics:
Mrs Schrödinger: Erwin, what have you done with the cat? It looks half dead!
This one made a computer scientist I know crack up so much he practically woke up the girls in the room above us:
You have two cows.
You accidentally measure their velocity.
You have no cows.
The joke told last year as a sermon illustration as to how background knowledge is essential to a true understanding:
Werner Heisenberg is speeding along the motorway when he is pulled over by a policeman. He winds down the window, and the policeman says to him: “Now, sir, do you know how fast you were going back then?” Heisenberg replies: “No, but I can tell you exactly where I was.”
And finally, a maths joke:
x3 is holding a party, and everyone’s there having a great time: √ is there flirting with coshx, tanx is wowing everyone on the dance floor – and there in the corner is ex, looking lonely. x3 wanders over. “Hey man, what’s the matter? Why are you over here by yourself! Integrate!” But ex replies forlornly: “it won’t make any difference…”
Tune in next week for the musicians’ list of in-jokes! (If you have any in-jokes relating to your field of expertise, feel free to post them.)
Matthew @ 20:14, August 29, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (10)
Dirty
Suddenly I feel so unclean.
Currently listening to Death Cab for Cutie – 405
Matthew @ 10:23, July 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Posting with TextMate
So the wireless connection in my room drops out just as I want to write a blog entry, and my trial period for MarsEdit ran out last week. So I open up TextMate to write an entry, and suddenly think “Didn’t I read somewhere that you can post blog entries directly with TextMate using one of the bundles?” Turns out I did. So then I got thinking.
The way the blogging bundle is currently implemented isn’t ideal for my needs. Firstly, the template includes an “extended entry” separator by default. Still, that’s easy to remedy.
Secondly, Allan (TextMate creator) demonstrated uploading an image to your website just by dragging the image onto the entry. While doing this inserts the correct code well enough, I can’t get it to upload mine. That needs a play with then. A related issue is that I store my images in a different place depending on what they are. A desktop background goes in images/desktops/, whereas normal blog images go in images/blog/ – and sometimes even in sub-categories. So either I change my mind as to how I organise images (which, for the sake of consistency, means editing past entries. Maybe come September – to do this simply and accurately would require exporting a MySQL database from this site, importing it on my localhost, and writing a PHP script to automate URL changing, followed by re-importing the database on this site and rebuilding all the static files), or once I’ve got this feature working, I hack it to do what I want.
Thirdly, there’s the new release of Movable Type 3.3, which includes various new ways of doing things which would require a new version of this plugin. Hopefully one will be short-coming so I can have a play, but seeing as the final release hasn’t even been reached yet (though it’s any day now) I doubt it’ll be quite yet. Still, no rush.
Fourthly, there’s the issue of posting photos from Flickr. Once I’ve got the whole drag-and-drop image thing working (which I’m sure I’ll sort eventually, just not before my hectic summer and certainly not before I come home from Japan), there’ll still be the issue of Flickr photos. There’s no point in hosting all the photos I want to post here locally – I want to use Flickr. So, I need to write a command that allows me to input a Flickr URL (or possibly just picture ID), and it automatically creates the right code to insert a Flickr image into the page with a link to the photo page on Flickr (as per their terms and conditions).
One other TextMate thing to mention, though this time it’s not related to the blogging bundle. Snipplr (you can tell it’s cool because it ends with an “er” without the “e”) allows you to post little snippets of code, which can be tagged, and then inserted at the touch of a button (or two). So if I save the following text as a Snipplr snippet:
if (!is_object($db)) {
global $db, $vars;
$db = new DB($vars['db_host'], $vars['db_user'], $vars['db_pass']);
$db->connect($vars['db_name']);
}
I can simply press ⌃⌥⌘S, type in “db” (one of the tags I saved it with) and select it from the list to insert it. It’s basically like TextMate snippets, only you can easily add other people’s – plus it’s slightly easier to add them than adding TextMate snippets. I’ve yet to decide whether it’s useful enough to me to start adding things to it, instead of just adding TextMate snippets (which can be searched in a similar and equally simple way). The main advantage is adding other people’s – but because everyone has a unique way of coding, and TextMate’s own snippets are so useful, it’s probably even better just to copy and paste as a TextMate snippet.
So, to round the entry off, TextMate rocks supremely. Seriously, if I had to use Windows to use TextMate, I’d do it – and people who’ve talked to me about anything technical for more than five minutes know Windows drives me mad. (Vista does look better though, if they sort out the whole security concept and make IE 7 support web standards as well as Safari.) This is what this entry looks like in Textmate, and if you wanted to know what the entry I wanted to write was, then tough – you’ll have to wait. (Possibly indefinitely too – I think I’ve changed my mind about posting it. As often happens when I listen to advice involving photos of me from friends.)
Matthew @ 07:59, July 3, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Desktops
Today I remembered a program I’d heard about before I got my Mac, that I’d wanted to try out but couldn’t. It was a program that created a close to realtime image of the earth from space on your desktop, updating clouds, lights in the night etc. every half hour or so from the internet. It’s called EarthDesk, and it’s a fantastic program. I downloaded it today – there’s a Windows version available now so most of you could do the same – and it works brilliantly (albeit with large text over the picture telling you to buy it). I’m not using it for one reason – it takes up about a hundred megabytes of RAM. If I had a few gigabytes to spare, maybe…
I also tried out BackLight, which again is pretty darn excellent – it allows you to use a screensaver as your desktop. Apple have a brilliant slow-moving abstract screensaver that’s perfect, as it barely changes but changes enough to make it interesting. So I used that for a bit – only to discover that Exposé breaks it, and the real desktop (BackLight only overlays something on top of the current desktop) appears again. That, and it creating a menu item next to the Bluetooth and Airport status items (which I never like it when applications do) made it not such a good choice.
So what about Desktop Earth? Pretty good, actually. This website allows you to choose the time, date, and where to centre the camera, and renders custom desktops of the earth from space for you. I’ve got one currently which I will use in the future that is an amazingly detailed picture, perfect for a desktop.
In the end, though, I had to go with an old favourite:
I don’t know why I always return to this picture. I edited a picture I found on deviantART years ago and have used it on every operating system since Windows. I will have other things on my desktop for months at a time, but I don’t think there’s been a year since I found it that I haven’t had this one for a couple of months. (I want to take a photo of my own one day that I’ll feel the same way about.)
Matthew @ 14:14, June 17, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (9)
Curse of the small insects
Using a Mac really makes you look at the world differently. For the past half hour I’ve been trying to work round a rendering bug in a Gecko browser.
Currently listening to Muse – Cave
Matthew @ 03:04, June 2, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (8)
With nothing better to post...
I changed my desktop for the first time since getting my Mac today. It is now one of my own photos, edited:
On another geeky note, I miss tab-completion outside the terminal. Those image URLs were far too laborious to type…
Which is why TextMate is such a fantastic text editor. Or rather, it’s one of the reasons why. Column selection is another I’m surprised I’ve never thought of myself. Snippets and commands work brilliantly. I’m growing to love it more and more. (I need a new syntax highlighting scheme though. The current one is so 2005.)
Currently listening to Radiohead – Subterranean Homesick Alien
Matthew @ 12:28, May 25, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (7)
The curse of the DSLR photographer
Yesterday, as I was staring up at the bright blue sky, my first reaction was to look for sensor dust.
Matthew @ 09:16, May 9, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)
The final straw
I saw this, and thought “Now is the right time to switch”.
Matthew @ 09:00, April 6, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (25)
You know you use the terminal too much when...
You type “exit” in the Firefox address bar to get it to quit.
Matthew @ 09:18, March 21, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Needs oil?
For some odd reason, the mouse at this computer has started squeaking.
Matthew @ 08:59, February 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Movable Type 3.2
Following on from my last post, I decided I should finally get round to installing Movable Type 3.2. So I did. First off the upgrade script didn’t work as it couldn’t load the Javascript needed to do the upgrade. I edited my new central config file (turns out you now have to specify the static directory even if it’s the same as the cgi directory) and got it to work. But none of the functions in the control panel worked once I’d managed to log in. Schoolboy error – I’d forgotten to clean my cache of the old Javascript and CSS and it was still using the old stuff. So now everything is fixed and Movable Type 3.2 is beautiful. You won’t have noticed because it’s on all the old entries, but I’ve been getting about twenty pieces of spam a day (luckily not as obscene as in the past). 3.2 has a built-in junk feature, which will block pretty much all of it. Why didn’t I do this sooner? It took all of twenty minutes. (Answer: the same reason I don’t write twenty minute blog entries every day. You go on for five minutes, saying “I don’t have the time to do this or that”, and stay for two hours, always meaning to go off in five minutes.)
All I have to do now is upgrade my templates to be more efficient, and we’re sorted.
Matthew @ 16:20, February 20, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Doomed!
After installing the latest version of Gnome, I noticed some small changes.
Matthew @ 18:07, February 7, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (5)
Perfect timing...
After writing my last entry about leaving romance for the moment, I seem to have rather inconveniently fallen in love.
I knew Steve Jobs wouldn’t let me down on yesterday of all days (it being my birthday). (That said, where’s Firewire 800 and the PCMCIA slot?)
Currently listening to Switchfoot – The Blues
Matthew @ 14:03, January 11, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (7)
Looking good!
Back from holiday to some very good news. No, Bush hasn’t backed down on climate change, but IE 7 beta 2 will support CSS about as well as I’d hoped. Thankyou, Chris Wilson and your team!
Matthew @ 12:10, July 31, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5)
It's back!
Everything fixed. After about four days hassle, the system is up and running perfectly again. (Cue something else vital breaking down. MySQL hasn’t gone for a bit, so it’ll probably be that.)
Regular readers must get the impression Linux is unstable. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have edited system config files, reinstalled and upgraded major system components and wiped entire hard drive partitions in the past few days, and the core operating system has never failed. It’s my own stupidity (as ever) that’s got me in this mess (that, and choosing Gentoo, which while it’s absolutely fantastic in almost every way, has a development team that assume you’re almost as clever as them).
So, my wiki’s back. And it seems like I didn’t have anything interesting to post after all.
Matthew @ 18:03, June 15, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Desktop screenshot
I just installed Gnome 2.10 which gives me an excuse to post this screenshot.
I was going to write a picture gallery at some point (to include desktops for those interested in such things) but gave up and got a Flickr account, so the screenshots will (occasionally) go here instead.
Matthew @ 14:17, June 15, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)
It's sucked me in
About twenty years after the rest of the Western world got hooked, I’ve become addicted to Tetris.
I thought I was doing really well, having beaten my brother’s highscores to become third on the table before he told me that on his logon he’d got far higher scores and I wouldn’t come close. Oh, and he normally starts on level nine, not level four like me.
Still, however rubbish I am, I’m addicted, and generally the worse I am at such a game the more addicted I am. Let’s hope I improve, for the sake of my A levels.
Matthew @ 19:17, May 31, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)
