This is the last MoJF before I have completed a full 300 pages, that calls for a celebration! But not until Friday¹. ^_^ So when artists get over 500,000 hits, they do a fan service pic or someone does a fan art pic for them.

Well, I've gotten quite a lot of hits, but I think that visitors are more important than hits. And how am I supposed to get visitors? By making these rants. That's right. The only way that I have gotten visitors is by making these rants so uncomprehendably complex that Google ranks them #1 or #2 in 'hentai tentacle telephone hack kanji 3030'. (Laugh for Pete's sake, it's funny.) Even though the visitor won't find what they are looking for, they may find what I am saying to be horribly correct. Right? Isn't that what the internet is all about? There is a song by Karma called "Difuser" on the Mission:Impossible 2 Soundtrack² which explains the truth about the internet: "Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you get what you need, you're always going to get what you deserve." My thought is that some nameless lamer types in 'hentai tentacle telephone hack kanji 3030' and at the top he (or she =P) finds this page. He sees my fan service and s/he thinks: "Good grief, I don't need sex to boost my ego, all I really need is art to satify my love for human spirit." So then he starts drawing in his free time. He invents a new style of art which he uses to create his own website. He aptly names it: "Lamer's hentai tentacle telephone hack kanji 3030". Then one day, I'll be surfing the web and I'll find his website which was obviously inspired by my magnificent creation.

² Another Google term! Bwahahaha!

---

¹Okay, JF has been silent for over 2 weeks. Why? I blame it on TelWest. I switched my telephone service over to them. When it finally switched on the 15th, I lost my DSL. Not cool. At first, I blamed MSN or Qwest. I hadn't paid my bill for Qwest due to being broke. I paid it on the 17th. The DSL didn't turn on, so I called them. It took ~ 2 hours, 20 minutes of which was MSN. I found out that when TelWest switched my phone service, they decided to disconnect my DSL. Since they do not supply new DSL, they cannot help me. Fuck them, I say. So I switched back to Qwest which should happen on Friday. Lame, no? So I've been without internet in my home for over two weeks. Bullshit it is. NEVER EVER switch to TelWest. They are lame like lameness has never graced this fucking Earth.

What has happened since my last transmission? Quite a lot of not much. I went into a slump when my internet went down. I spent a lot of time waiting on hold for various bs companies (as above). I went to Harstene Island for Thanksgiving which was quite nice. For three years I have spent Thanksgiving with my Aunt Vikki and family. It's nice because it doesn't involve the hassle of flying. If you haven't noticed, the airports have become a police state with every implication of such. No one is afforded safety in a police state, by the way. Yesterday and the day before I was very, very sick. The worst of it only lasted ~24 hours, but I still have a little cough and I don't sound like myself because of a sore throat. But at least I can walk and I don't shivver in a room @ 70⁰ in a 5⁰ sleeping bag... I'm kinda happy because I was well for ~2.5 years. Before that I was very sick 1 week per year every year since as far as I can remember. I had hychrond... or something when I was pretty young. I was in a hospital for it, I remember. Perhaps my semi-recent healthiness is due to cooking all my own meals (since September 2001) and becoming vegetarian last year (June 2002).

Two ideas I had in the past day are kinda interesting. I came up with an idea for a digital musical instrument. It's a good idea, so I'm happy about it. I made a very detailed design document and I like it. Below is the picture of the outside of the initial concept of the first instrument: 0011, Cheap Single Note on Demand.



I call the system "AltSci Digital Musical Instrument". I name everything I make in such a way just because it makes sense that the system is nothing apart from its inventor. I, AltSci, am the inventor of this system. The first one is pretty simple. I actually decided to completely redesign it from it's original concept design above, but whatever. The pitch will be 5 digits (0-32kHz), and instead of up/down buttons, it'll use digital knobs like you find on car stereos. The first proof of concept model will cost me approximately $40. The first batch of 20 production models will cost $5 to make and will be sold for $20 a piece. If the product is well recieved, it will continue production and will be sold for $10-15. If it well recieved, I will create ~11 more various instruments including:

AltSci DMI '0010' Cheap Keyboard
AltSci DMI '0100' Cheap Drum Machine
AltSci DMI '0101' Cheap Rhythm Machine
AltSci DMI '0110' Cheap Record/Playback
AltSci DMI '1010' Cheap Theremin
AltSci DMI '1011' Cheap Guitar
AltSci DMI '1100' Cheap Pan Flute/Recorder
And more!

Why do I call them 'Cheap'? Well, A flute/drum with the amazing precision that this digital instrument has normally costs a lot of money. Being that it is made of very simple electronics, it can be very cheap and very precise/accurate. Drum machines, rhythm machines, recorders/players, theremins, guitars all cost a lot of money. Recorders are the one exception³. Back in Spring 2000, I created a drum from two squares of plywood. It was ingenious because it was pretty cheap ($50 parts, and the expensive tools could be reused on a second) especially since there are parts enough for two, it was a very cheap drum. Of course, if you put labor at $7.10 per hour, it becomes a very expensive drum. Of course, I am willing to work for free, so it only cost me $50. Why am I telling you this? Because my drum is not very cool. It sounds like a flat tire. It's loud, yes, but it's not effective as a musical instrument. I came across an interesting program a while back called CSound. It was perfect and it was all digital (of course it's digital, it is entirely software!). The idea is that something far more analog can be made from digital controls. How is this possible? Well, the end result of most music is either CD, DVD (AC3/A52/PCM), mp3, or Ogg⁴. These are all digital at 16 bits, stereo, 44100 Hz with the exception of some DVDs (which are up to 24 bits, 48 kHz which is all the rage). But CSound is exactly this rate and can actually exceed that rate. So all these analog musicians are getting the same end result as CSound. Which makes me think a second: wait a second, I could make a digital musical instrument using extremely simple electronics! I remember quite a few electronics circuits from my Physics 334 (Electronics) and 335 (Microprocessors) lab classes. In fact, that was my favorite class in college. I still have the book and lab manual, The Art of Electronics. I even took a class on the physics of music and musical instruments, Physics 207. I still have the book for that class also, Musical Acoustics. It explains all the ideas that I need to know to make a digital musical instrument that is faithful to the original and even surpasses it. If you've heard any digital song, like Nuclear or any of Monotonik's collection, you can hear that they not only attempt to reproduce the sounds of real instruments faithfully, but also surpass any possible analog song. This is the power of "the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud."

--from The Hacker Manifesto
+++The Mentor+++
aka Loyd Blankenship Copyright (C) 1986 Loyd Blankenship
Written January 8, 1986

³ I played a recorder in my sixth grade class for some reason. I never was decent at music and I didn't think there was a purpose to band or anything, but I could play the recorder like a pro. It must be my genetic material because my dad was a very talented trumpet and my mom was french horn... My brother is a singer/songwriter and I am an audiophile.

⁴ Most of my audio data is in Ogg format. Why? Because I roll my own and I want to use the best. Monotonik uses mp3 but that is because they have been around and want to use the most well-known and supported format. Ogg is great because it is variable bit rate, open source, patent-free, DRM-less, and just good. It's very easy to encode using oggenc for Linux/Windows console or oggdrop for Windows. It's very easy to play with WinAmp, XMMS, or ogg123.

Permalink