2021

Do not eat BAM

image

Tags: synth

Date created: 2021-02-06

Show your work!

I've been reading Austin Kleon's Show Your Work!, which is a nice little book.

A few things I appreciate about the book * you can't find your voice if you don't use it * Mememto mori * share something small regularly (though I think daily is too much, thinking about it daily makes sense) * share work (does it pass the So What test?).

I enjoyed his Steal Like an Artist! as well.

I'm usually quite reticent to share stuff-- like who am I to waste your time? But I think I should just share stuff and leave determining its significance up to others. Oversharing shouldn't be a problem.

Around 7 years ago I set up this platform (really a script), to make it easy to write a markdown file in Dropbox and have it show up here in a nice enough sort of way. And then I didn't bother to use it.

I'm going to add some retrospective stuff to begin with, to get into the habit.

Tags: books

Date created: 2021-02-07

Daddy blog needs a conclusion

I looked after my daughter, E., from when she was 1 till she was 2. I did a daddy blog

So, it's 13 years later. E. is 15. "In July I'm going to be 16! I can't wait!". She's said the appropriate variation on this for the last few years; she really likes the idea of getting older.

I was very afraid of DS, of retardation, of what it would mean. This isn't the case any more. I am afraid of what the future holds for her; what supports will be available, what abuses and neglect she'll have to endure, what will happen after we're dead. J. has good longevity genes, so that shouldn't be for some decades yet. Thinking about dying and missing out on sharing her life instantly brings me to tears.

I love her more than anything. She delights in telling people I'm her number 1 favourite, and that her brother is number 2, and mum number 3. She calls me her butler, and I defer to her as "my queen", at least when I feel like playing along, which is more often than not. She loves it when I make her her lunch, or bring her her drink bottle before bed and tuck her in, although she's completely capable of doing these things for herself. I think I like to treat her like a queen because the world probably won't.

We chose mainstream schooling for her. This has been double-edged; I think her reading and writing is much better than it would have got at a special school, but she really has no school friends. Her friend from primary school went to a different secondary school and they don't see each other much, and she hasn't made any real friends at secondary school. Everyone is nice to her; on the occasions when I'm doing pickup or drop off, other kids say "Hi E.", and during lockdown they spoke up for her when a substitute teacher couldn't understand her language.

Her language is difficult to understand, especially when she speaks quickly, and she can get frustrated and say "Never mind". We can usually understand, but it's harder for people who don't know her.

She is very independent, and well organised. She always knows what classes she has, packs her bag appropriately, and never forgets her lunch, unlike her younger brother. Her teachers use her as an example of good behaviour and effort. She is kind, and assertive -- she calls us out when she thinks we're not "being kind". She's usually right.

She's getting to the time of school where the academic subjects are beyond her. She's always been hopeless at math, but she can do very basic arithmetic. It's like she doesn't trust that sums will be the same as last time-- simple additions need to be done anew each time they come up. She's taking more practical subjects -- Food Tech, and Woodwork, and Art and Drama. We'd promised her a bedside table a few years ago but never delivered, so she made herself one in woodwork. It's great.

She learns, but it takes a lot more time. Sometimes she just needs a method to follow. I fear that even the practical subjects have a large, mostly unnecessary but easily assessable "theory component", which will get in the way of her learning.

Her favourite things at the moment are lounging on her bed watching YouTube, and complaining bitterly if any demands are made on her. "You're wrecking my free time!". She reminds me of my sister at her age (though that was well before YouTube).

She loves singing and dancing -- she's been doing dance classes at a wonderfully inclusive dance school for years. While watching youtube, she's ususally journalling or writing stories and colouring. Multitasking. I don't really know what's in her writing because "that's private, dad".

She puts her laundry away before she's been asked. Her room alternates between being well organised (if you don't look under the bed) and a disaster area. "Oh no, I forgot to clean my room again (hahaha)".

We play games. She loves winning. She and I play best 2/3 of an iPad game called Disc Driving almost nightly. I used to let her win sometimes, but now she wins regularly without my help. If I've won 2 and she wins the last game she's assumed the right to "reset my score", so that she can be the winner of the night. This doesn't diminish her delight in the win one iota.

But she loves boardgames too and will suggest Ice Skool, Outfoxed, Sleeping Queens, Dweebies, Big Fish. She loves games on the Switch where she can attack her family. Slapparazzi in Super Mario Party is a favourite.

She cares about people. She remembers birthdays, she knows when people have been sick.

She really likes to be included, to have a role, a place.

She'd probably love a pet, but neither my partner nor I really want one.

It turns out that cleverness doesn't matter that much. I love being around her and we have fun together.

A few things about her are really odd and fascinating. Her imaginative play is full on-- she throws herself into her role, which is usually about betrayal or death--always tragic. For a while we were concerned-- she'd be on the floor, panting and in tears and we'd be all "are you ok darling?" and she'd be "I'm fine, leave me alone" because she doesn't like being interrupted.

She has amazing hearing. If we want to talk about her we have to whisper or wait till she's asleep. Otherwise we'll hear a "Dad! Mum! No talking about me" from the other room.

She sometimes communicates with herself verbally. I wonder about the connections in her corpus callosum. She talks to herself, but is often surprised at what she says-- it's like she can only think aloud. When she was younger, she'd sometimes be surprised when we overheard her schemes to steal bread and interrupted her -- how did they know?

She loved beanie boos for a few years. She'd arrange them in rows as a class, and give them work to do, and mark it. Lots of little bits of paper. Or they'd go on excursions all neatly arranged in a box. This is sort of finished now, though she likes getting an new one now and again for her collection. At last count she had more than 80. She probably would have been as happy with about 30, but when it's this easy to make her happy...

She still loves her teddy Lucy. More in the last few years than when she was younger probably. Lucy often somes with us to the shops, and E. will carry her, much like kids do in picture books. In some ways she seems quite grown up "I'm not a child, I'm an adult, Dad", in others, not so much. She likes her American Girl dolls as well, they participate in her epic tragedies. I often hear E.'s side of the drama, but I'm convinced E. hears their side loud and clear. It's a bit spooky-- they're talking, but I can't hear them. Fully realised alter egos are pretty much demons/spirits.

She's not really into other toys; she mostly likes journals and colouring books and stationery. Her iPad is essential though. She watches the talent show I can't remember, with those foul judges, and gets right into people's stories about triumph over adversity to realise their dreams of singing. And youtube is her source for music to sing along to. She loves pop, and thinks my foray into abstract electronic music is ridiculous. "Silly dad".

She's a good dancer. She's got moves.

She's very clear on what's her style and what isn't. She can go into a shop and be no, no, no, this one, and she's right. It's amazing to J and me-- she didn't get it from us!

Tags: blog

Date created: 2021-02-07

Minecraft

My son wanted a Minecraft server to play on with a friend from school. We're going into a 5 day "hard lockdown" in Melbourne, so why not?

We already have a Realms server. I've spent a surprising amount of time exploring, making a few holiday houses and running track undeground. I want to keep that around. Minecraft is a recurring obsession with me and my kids. We've been playing it since they were quite little. I got it when it went onto iPad and was immediately obsessed. It's got that computer thing happening, just a little tweak here, and another there, and six hours have passed.

So my initial thought was to put a server on the raspberry pi. We have a couple of pi 3's kicking around, and with the NBN giving decent upload speeds it would be easy to attach it to the router and open a port.

Bedrock edition is just for Ubuntu, so I did an ubuntu server install and stuffed around configuring wifi and finding a USB power adapter with enough juice to power the pi. Lots of flipping between sources on my monitor to look things up. Overall, an enjoyable task if you like the linux command line and enjoy the "Adventure" like nature of this sort of thing.

Get the bedrock server onto the pi. Wifi's not installed. Get it on my mac and scp to the pi. Ubuntu isn't allowing the connection. Fine, scp from Ubuntu and source it from the mac.

Really it's the same thing as get the bird cage. Too far away. Fine, fetch the ladder to get the cage. etc...

Anyway, wrong executable format. Oh no, maybe I need 64 bit ubuntu. Reimage the card. Same error? Oh.... The Bedrock edition is x86 only. Raspberry Pi is ARM. Right. There's a blog entry where someone emulates it but it's slow...

In the meantime, the java edition works (after getting java from oracle) -- but it can't be used by iPad clients.

So we have an old pc from about 2004. No wifi of course. Dusty.

I could probably do a USB install of Ubuntu, and set it up like I was going with the raspberry pi. But it's much bigger. There will be fan noise. In the middle of trying to find a place on my desk where it could be attached to power, the network and a keyboard I realised the machine didn't even have HDMI out. Just VGA. So my monitor probably has a VGA input and I do keep every possible cable for just in case, but...

This blog is running on a cloud server hosted by Binary Lane. It only costs $4/month for 1Gb memory, and 20Gb disk. A few minutes later I had a working internet connected cloud server with it's own subdomain. And a few minutes after that, the x86 Ubuntu Minecraft bedrock server was working. It's fine so far.

Tags: computing

Date created: 2021-02-13

Brickworks Ether

Went for a walk to the brickworks to see if it was explorable. All fenced off (though there is a hole down the dead end street on the west side).

brickworks

Standard Brickworks fence south side, using the Soma Ether.

Box Hill central car park near train.

Tags: synth

Date created: 2021-05-02

Coco 3 patches and thoughts

The Cocoquantus is always fun. Is it derivative-- is PB the artist here, and me just a user?

Where is the musician/instrument divide? Seems like instrument making is the greater art. But raising goats would take too much time.

Cocobam

cocobam

2 bleeps, both recorded, and slowed through bam. I quite liked this one. Mournful, and some great ululations. I need some alternatives to fadeout to end.

FM

Going out of right fm the left. BAM on Room. Works like a delay

Quantussy

Each osc clocks 2 s/h (apparently two clocks/cycle-- 0 crossing? direction change?

The triangle is derived from a square used for the s/h

The greens can be routed so the outputs of an osc are ignored, but not so that it has no inputs.

Playing with mic. and cocos

The quality of the coco is fine; and there's a lot of time. Before 9am, there's digital aliasing, but speech still understood, as long as inputs at right levels. I think before I wasn't close enough to the mic.

Tags: synth

Date created: 2021-05-16