patchlore @paul@post.lurk.org

Notable logs of mine:

Research oriented zet:

https://pbat.ch/brain/logs/

Thoughts related to creative process:

https://pbat.ch/wiki/create/

General updates related to my main personal wiki:

https://pbat.ch/wiki/meta/

A re-#introduction

Hi, I'm Paul. I'm a computer musician and researcher, currently thinking about lyricism what it means for a computer to sing. I explore quirky vocal synthesis DSP algorithms and try to control them in interesting ways.

As a musician-turned-programmer, one of the things I try to do is build resources for topics related to audio programming and DSP that I wish I had when I was starting out. My aim is to empower digital musicians to "dig in" more and craft their own toys and tools for their work.

I also bake a lot. Expect many pictures of bread and croissants here, among other things.

A brief guide to me:

I "organize" many projects and ideas on my personal wiki:

https://pbat.ch/wiki/

I talk about what I'm currently working on in my "now" page:

https://pbat.ch/wiki/now/

I keep a list of projects I've done:

https://pbat.ch/wiki/projects/

I use "metapages" to better organize thoughts and wiki pages:

https://pbat.ch/wiki/metapages/

For more research-y stuff, I maintain a zettelkasten-wiki that functions as a knowledge base:

https://pbat.ch/brain/
https://pbat.ch/brain/now/
https://pbat.ch/brain/wiki_index/

Damn, still thinking about that TASBot OOT video I watched today. I watched the whole hour in one sitting. And I don't even watch speedrun vids.

Once they are imported into the zet, a zetdoc can be dynamically restitched together and rendered as HTML. You see this towards the end of my notes on The Algorithm Design Manual. The weird jumble of letters like [guihokhak] are actually an abbreviated UUID for that particular snippet:

https://pbat.ch/brain/TADM/#chap11

Zetdoc is a constrained markup format I have developed to write sequential chunks of ideas in an intermediate format, which can then be imported into my zettelkasten database:

https://pbat.ch/brain/zetdoc/

It remains to be seen how useful this will be in the long term. My goal with zetdoc was to try and make my writing more granular, in order to help facilitate more interconnected ideas.

This "mobile" scanner seems like mostly promising solution for digitizing handwritten notes. Lightweight and small (good for travel), battery powered (2x AA), writes to microSD card, low-powered monochrome LCD display.

The only real weak point I've discovered is that it doesn't scan margins that well. That means in a way I'll have to handwrite notes *for* this thing, which I have mixed feelings about. I suppose big margins isn't terrible. If TeX can do it, so can I.

A thing I've been trying to do that's been difficult for me is revisiting ideas and elaborating on them. It's a slog looking at scribbles and transcribing voice memos of carefree off-the-cuff thoughts. I think it'll be a good thing in the long term though.

I've recently decided to become more disciplined in writing ideas down rather than just relying on remembering them. I am starting to realize that while I am able to hold onto core concepts, retention of details is much poorer than I expected. So, write your ideas down!

What's the state of audio like on BSD (say, OpenBSD)? Curious about trying it out for music production stuff. I use my own software which I'd expect I'd be able to port okay. Things I'm curious about are things like driver support for class-compliant DACs, performance for low-latency audio, and what the audio API looks like (does JACK work on it?)

Shame on Imperial College London and the Dyson Robotics Lab. Apparently, they create environment where their PhD students are allowed to mass-email people to get data (potentially market data?) about their product (or is it their thesis? it's hard to tell from the email).

They did not disclose how they got my contact information, only that they reached out because I had "ML experience" (I do not). So, sketchy stuff. If this is indeed "research", I have to imagine that this is some kind of ethics code violation.

Person who cold emailed me with the subject line "Unifying all ML frameworks": did you find me here?

TIL that calling the backslash character "whack" is "microsoft corp. speak". Which actually makes a lot of sense to me now, as my first encounter with the term was at MSR.

https://ss64.com/bash/syntax-pronounce.html

This parallels with the efforts happening to get AI to produce music. "What if DALL-E... but music?" is an inevitable question.

Even if there existed something that could generate high fidelity super realistic music from a prompt using AI, would that be something interesting? Short term, absolutely. Long term, I think it would get old. More interaction and control could maybe make it better.

Like, I can see the novelty of the generated pictures themselves wearing off after a while. If they didn't have the prompts, they probably wouldn't be all that interesting.

Something I've noticed with the DALL-E and similar emerging prompt-based technologies is a natural emphasis towards curating the prompt, with the actual generated output being secondary.

Thoughts on Gestured Sound:

https://pbat.ch/brain/thoughts_on_gestured_sound/

A new DSP algorithm added to #sndkit. EnvAR is a gate-controlled envelope generator, whose shape is determined via attack and release parameters:

https://pbat.ch/sndkit/envar/

#dsp #literateprogramming

Found this in a product description for a hand scanner:

"Hold the magic wand scanner in your hand and gently brush over your photos, this will become the most emotional way to feel your memories, and digitize and let them be immortal."

Points for creativity.

I'm grateful that the engineers for this camera chose a very low-tech protocol for the remote. A 30 minute hack like this wouldn't have been possible.

I'm also pretty sure that this also lends itself to a very responsive remote. It certainly feels snappy!