There’s a new beta of Audacity 1.3 out. Previous versions have been somewhat unstable and lacking features, but now it starts to improve: - New selection bar and improved selection tools Dockable toolbars New “Repair” effect, other improved effects Auto-save and automatic crash recovery {#image307}
I had some SVN problems, and figured it would probably be faster to do a full new checkout rather than trying to figure out the mysteries of the .svn folders. But then I realized that I had made some uncommitted changes in the old folder, and started brushing up on my unix diff commands. While looking for some hints on this, I came across this Mac OS X Hint on how to compare two folders....
Tim Place just announced that Jade is now open sourced under LGPL. Jade is a flexible, relatively easy-to-use, environment for composition and performance. For many Jade has made approaching the complexities of interactive music possible. Now it is available for free as an open-source project. The basic unit in Jade is a Module. Jade has a number of ready-made modules for analyzing, generating, and processing audio and video. These modules can be created using Cycling’74’s Max/MSP/Jitter authoring environment....
A group of German students are working on a project called Stekgreif where they include a number of popular sensors built as lego-blocks. Adding power through the lego bricks makes it possible to build instruments and other fun things entirely out of lego.
Myron is the cross-platform, cross-language, open source, video capture and computer vision plugin. One core C object gets cross-compiled as a handful of high level language “wrapper” libraries. The wrapper for Java and Processing is called JMyron. The wrapper for Macromedia Director is called WebCamXtra. The aim of the project is to keep computer vision free and easy for the new media education and arts community. I will have to look into whether it is be possible to use this with Max/MSP/Jitter....
{#image275}Philips Research is currently showing off a their new Photonic Textiles at the IFA Consumer Electronics Fair in Berlin. The Photonic Fabric integrates flexible arrays of multicolored LEDs into the weave, allowing the fabric to give off light and display programmable patterns like text messages, without compromising the softness of the cloth. Philips’ Photonic Textile Prototypes include an “SMS pillow” and an “SMS Backpack” (send a text message to it and words scroll across it)....
In a Sneak Peek for OS X Leopard, Apple shows a debugging mode in Xcode that works something like music sequencers. Taking its interface cues from timeline editors such as GarageBand, now you can visualize application performance like nothing you’ve seen before. Add different instruments so you can instantly see the results of code analyzers. Truly track read/write actions, UI events, and CPU load at the same time, so you can more easily determine relationships between them....
As part of the Musikkball project, we are making a “music ball troll” for the science fair Forskningstorget in Oslo next week. I have been looking for a solution to make the setup as self-contained as possible, and this includes building a Mac mini into the speaker box founding the base of the “troll”. What is great with the mini is that it is possible to run it headless (without any attached mouse, keyboard and monitor), and control it using Chicken of the VNC from my MacBook....
I am getting adjusted to my new MacBook and have realized that the remote control is a funny little thing. Cool features: Works with Keynote Holding down play button puts the computer to sleep Shows up as “Apple IR” using HI in Max/MSP, so that it can be used for controlling anything there. Only problem is that I can’t turn off the system functions while using it in Max. To avoid people taking control over a presentation, here’s a short description of how it is possible to pair the remote:...
{#image248}Researchers at Microsoft Live Labs are working on Photosynth based on Photo Tourism from the University of Washington. By structuring the photos based on their relative position to each other, it is possible to navigate in a large photo collection in a 3D style way. The system looks very responsive from the video, but I would be curious to see how it works in a real-world context. It would be very interesting to create similar navigation tools for audio....