TouchMIDI

So... I'm back. Still working on the thesis. Or not working on it perhaps.

My wonderful wife bought me a keyboard last Christmas and birthday (she wouldn't let me play the upper two octaves until after my birthday ;). My criterion was 88 weighted keys. We bought the Casio CDP100 at Guitar Center for $275 on black Friday after a bit of shopping around. I planned just to use it as a midi controller for fluidsynth samples of grand pianos so I didn't really care about whatever built in voices it had. I wanted a real feeling keyboard so the weighted keys were a must. And it actually has pretty decent samples on its own. I love it. But I also love playing with synthesizers.

Rakarrack GUI

I volunteered this summer to work on a GUI for the Rakarrack Project. Then I had twins. And school started. And I'm trying to finish a thesis. And graduate someday.

Their needs are a better gui. They currently put ALL the parameters in front of you and it looks fairly cluttered and well.... not slick enough. Users like eye candy. I do at least. So the idea is make it fancier looking without being as fancy functioning. As an engineer I should be totally against it, but I like the project and its an interesting challenge. Problem is I'm too busy to work on it.

But this weekend I decided to hang all my responsibilities aside and work on it. I like

About me: In music

I broke the chain. I haven't posted since Tuesday so I must have some semblance of a life. You'd think I could get that thesis done. Especially with how long this is.

Since I've been talking about myself so much (which I love to do) I thought I'd put in this portion about my music history. I've liked music as long as I can recall. I remember singing as a little kid on the backyard swing. Mom tells me I hated pre-school but I would go for the singing time. I'd sing those songs all day.

About me: In linux

This is pretty sad. 3 posts in 3 days, yet I'm so excited about it. I've been thinking of this one for a while. Somehow I think it will make people think I'm qualified to talk about linux, which I plan to do a fair bit of.

I should really start with what I remember as my first exposure to a computer. My dad had some apple Macintosh computers. They had about 128 kb hard disks that could only hold an OS and so to run a program you had to insert a floppy (3&1/2, I'm not THAT old). I remember playing lode runner and some piano scroll type of music program that I really didn't understand. That was around the time I learned to tie my shoe. My dad had some other mac for work with big bernoulli disks and I remember playing with clip art and writing a report on turtles for 2nd grade with that machine (and printing it on that awesome dot-matrix printer! zwaaaawaaawaawaahp). My dad was an engineer for iomega (hence the bernoullis) so we were a pretty tech savvy family. We were also mac fans WAY before they were trendy.

About me: In general

I've had 0 hits since the last post. Yet somehow I feel so fulfilled in getting my voice out there. How very sad.

Well I'd like to introduce myself on several fronts, so this is the first of a many part series.

What a narcissist.
But to paraphrase my favorite author (Twain) I wouldn't talk about myself if there were someone else I knew half so much about.

A first post, perhaps a last

SO. This blog started in 2007. I had no idea I started a blog after my mission but I did. It obviously went far, as this is my first post.

I was a pretty consistent journal keeper up until I became a family man and got busy, so somehow I think a blog is the answer. Part of me though feels like I must have reached an all time social low. This blog is a milestone that my interests have become so specialized and dull that I can no longer find society to converse with about these topics and thus turn to the world wide web where I hope to find literally dozens of people who care.