patchlore @paul@post.lurk.org

Okay so #introductions

Hello. I'm @paul. I'm a musical hacker and sound designer interested in teaching computers how to sing. I spend most of my time working on software projects related to the field of computer music.

Some topics that amuse me:

#linux
#dsp
#audio
#maille
#mead
#grids
#monome
#android
#generative
#HCI
#powersoftwo
#pixelart
#demoscene
#livecoding
#zen
#mechanicalkeyboards
#art?
#music?

My website: pbat.ch
My mirror website (hosted on GH): paulbatchelor.github.io

I haven't had to touch the stable branch of Soundpipe for 2 years now. Still works just fine. No issues. Take THAT, modern software development practices.

In other words, I don't spoon feed my software to my users. I want Soundpipers/Sporthers to have an awareness/interest in the code. Because hacking on music software is friggin' awesome.

Okay, some people *do* use software like Soundpipe. However, by comparison, being a project maintainer for Soundpipe is a breeze. I pass on the savings to you, dear user!

I don't do *any* kind of packaging, only some light git tagging. Soundpipe either gets compiled and installed from source using my Makefile, or dropped into another project. Oh, it's not uncommon for people to extract individual modules and use them as standalone. If you don't like that, you're missing the point of Soundpipe.

That, and not trying to do anything OS-specific like realtime audio out-of-the-box, have been good choices for me.

Reading comment sections like this makes me glad nobody uses *my* music software:

https://github.com/VCVRack/Rack/pull/1406

Well this day was unproductive.

Some weeks, it feels like my body is a sinking ship and I'm just a passenger along for the ride.

Verbs used in #metafont literate program. #literateprogramming

https://pbat.ch/wiki/verbs_in_metafont/

Deep Chernoff Faces: https://www.ihatethefuture.com/2020/06/deep-chernoff-faces.html

Basically, draw a bunch of faces to represent and visualize data. Take advantage of pareidolia and the human brain's natural sensitivity in human face detection to help better understand nuanced relationships in the data.

I can't help but think about what the sound equivalent would be: human speech. Just like how our eyes are very sensitive to faces and face-like things, our ears are sensitive to speech and speech-like things. Speech synthesis, and subsets of speech synthesis like vowel/formant synthesis come to mind.

Despite being around for decades, sonification (data->sound) is still a bit of a novelty outside of the computer music world. But I think there's great potential in making streams of complex multi-dimensional data babble and leverage the pattern-matching statistical learning bits of our brain to hear insightful things. Maybe apply a filter to the babble to a subset of phonemes to the listeners native language?

More useful info. Not only does the Freewrite Traveler have cursor key functionality via WASD, but you can also insert as well. (In retrospect it seems obvious, but the language on the website was ambiguous and made it sound like this was only a read-only operation). That feature alone makes it heavily more appealing than the original freewrite, even if it has an inferior keyboard.

Support has been great about getting back to me within a (business) day. So, that seems like a good sign. Also, there still seems to be regular updates. As far as hardware startups like this go, that's the best you can ask for IMO.

I'm optimistic, but I still haven't made the purchase yet. Support also says they are going to keep the 389 pricetag up for "a few more weeks", so I should have some time to think about it.

ugh. english is my first and only language, and I still suck at it.

It starts with a desire to make #matcha pudding. I'm making pretty decent chocolate pudding, and I want to branch out it. So, I order some matcha powder in my next grocery store delivery.

Turns out, they don't have it, but I want this matcha pudding. So, I quickly discover r/matcha, and panic buy some matcha.

My grocery order comes in, and somehow the previous matcha is there. So now, I can go with the original plan.

But... what to do with this other matcha? Turns out in my panic, ordered I learned was a ceremonial matcha (for drinking), rather than culinary matcha (for cooking). So, I accidentally bought an opportunity to dive into the matcha tea drinking world.

This stuff is great. They make my morning. I love the routine that goes into it. I love drinking out of a tiny little bowl. I pair my matcha with some baked cinnamon sugar #donut holes. Also delicious.

I run out of donut holes. But, I still have matcha. I have my routine, and I'll be damned if I have to change it.

So, I buy more donuts? Of course not, because it's not grocery delivery day. Instead, I learn to bake 'em at home. I somehow manage to find a recipe online along a mini muffin tin (what, you *don't* have a mini muffin pan lying around?), and bam!, now I have a weeks supply of homemade cinnamon sugar donuts.

@viznut hey! welcome to mastodon. I'm a big fan of your work.

If you'd like, I highly encourage writing a toot introducing yourself using the hashtag #introductions.

I'd like to see a feature in GH where inactive issues after a certain period of time get automatically closed, with some sort of pinging automated message. It could of course be immediately re-opened by someone if needed.

The fact that literally any person can just open an issue, and then just drop off the face of the planet without any follow-up or consequences really bothers me.

I always get a chuckle out of any questions on the lines forum with the general format of "Can the norns do ... ?"

Usually, I'm able to answer YES because I ditched the default software stack and write stuff like I normally would write music software on my standard Linux computer. As a result, the question for me becomes more like "can the raspberry pi do...?" where there is a world of possibility. When you don't have to touch all the moving layers of the default Norns software stack, certain things get easier to implement.