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Been a while since I posted. So, Here’s an angry baby demanding an explanation.

I recently came across Synplant and have been using it in its three-week testing mode to see if I liked it enough for purchase. Short and sweet, it’s a pretty damned interesting a fun plugin to explore music.

While digging around in the software, I run across the fact that the Synplant patch files (called .synp) are nothing more than text with minimal formatting and settings for the Synplant application itself:


SynplantPatch: {
Version: 10
Implementation: 10
Name: "AZ Quartet"
ModWheel: 88.18897605 %
Rotation: 0.00000000 degrees
Tuning: +0.00000000 ct
Atonality: 7.26197660 %
Effect: 29.45638895 %
Release: 1.23537318 s
WheelScale: 41.46341383 %
VelSens: 50.00000000 %
Volume: -9.32751660 dB


“Well damn,” I thought to myself “I can probably write up a random sound generator with that”. So, with a bit of hacking and some Python, I did.

The resulting application is named GeneticModification for Synplant. It seems to work pretty much 100% with v1.0.1 (154) with no crashes or problems with the synth.

If you want to download and check it out, please get it from [[right here]]. You will need Python 2.6.1. To make it work, run the script by itself. It will create a new, randomly named patch for you in the current directory. Keep running the script over and over to make more patches to play with.

If you just want to check out some of the patches that GeneticModification makes, I’m also making available a set of free randomly generated Synplant patches. You can download the patches from [[download patches]]

That should be enough to get you running. Remember this script is extremely early in its development cycle, so check back to see if and when I get new features for it.

Enjoy the new sounds that it makes! If you end up making some great stuff, send me a copy!

Cheers,

tom

Quick Edit!

Since Python isn’t default on any Windows systems, I’ve lovingly hand crafted up a GM For Windows. This can help you out if that happens to be your OS of choice. MD5 is 67da86bce4841dc028bc48d1199029a1 and I’ve personally tested it on 32 bit XP without any issues.

Enjoy!

This year’s vacation extravaganza had our resident geek flying from Kansas City out to the west coast for two weeks of vacation goodness. Some take-aways from the vacation:

• Take a two week vacation. Seriously. Stop splitting your vacation time, a long weekend here and there, and mabbie a week during the summer.take the whole damn time off all at once. Go out of the country, go somewhere completely different and enjoy the hell out of yourself. You deserve it.
• Even in the middle of summer you will need long sleeves and a jacket in San Francisco. Brr.
• In-n-Out burger is OK. Not the “so great god must have dipped his balls in it” that I’ve heard, but good. I like the fries.
• Tomtom GPS receivers are so good you will want to weep openly. Go ahead, you’re among friends.
• Tomtom GPS receivers will somehow make you drive by the only Best Buy in the region every time. Spooky.
• “It’s a dry heat” is a lie.
• Deserts are neat for about 5 miles.
• A good titty show is about 70 bucks for two. Production is surprisingly good.
• You will leave something behind. That’s ok.

Ok. that’s all I got. Now to find something new to start coding on.

Cheers,

tom

http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

No clue on any of the math, but it’s an interesting video nevertheless.

tom

Stay tuned for more code and other goodies as time permits. If you happen to be interested in Snort IDS, check out http://ultrapig.com, too.

Cheers!

tom

The features for importing posts in to Word Press limited me to using Drupal’s RSS feed to download all of the current posts and import them in. While it sounds good to start with, I ended up stuck with the fact that Drupal happily limits you to the number of feed items to a maximum of 30, no matter what you do.

I located the actual values to the Drupal configuration at “modules/system/system.admin.inc”. Read more on what I did to change it.

The actual array that you’re looking for will be right at line 1442 (or so):

$form['feed_default_items'] = array(
'#type' => 'select',
'#title' => t('Number of items in each feed'),
'#default_value' => variable_get('feed_default_items', 60),
'#options' => drupal_map_assoc(array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30)),
'#description' => t('Default number of items to include in each feed.')
);

See the values in the array? Add in the top number you’re anticipating on using. For me, it was 50, so mine looks like this now:

$form['feed_default_items'] = array(
'#type' => 'select',
'#title' => t('Number of items in each feed'),
'#default_value' => variable_get('feed_default_items', 60),
'#options' => drupal_map_assoc(array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 50)),
'#description' => t('Default number of items to include in each feed.')
);

Save your changes, and then refresh the RSS configuration page. hit the drop down, select 50, and okay the change.

Once that’s done you can have an RSS feed 50 items long, if you would like.

And, for the record, WP gives you a box where you can type in the number you would like. That’s just a bit easier.

Hope this helps.

tom

I'm not a huge gamer, so it takes a while before I end up playing the more popular titles out there. I would have to say that HL2 really deserved the name 'best game ever'. So far, so good. really love it.

I think Highway 17 was my favorite level so far. Dark, misty, driving a dune buggy down a mostly deserted road and fighting off things that pop up here and there. The best 'post-apocalyptic' sort of feeling that I've ever gotten from a game, really.

I suppose this will be a small update this evening. Just wanted to yap about HL2 for a minute or two before getting some sleep.

The lovely wife was photoshopping the pubic hair of one of her friends that she photographed over the weekend. Long story there, kids.

Heard from Gizmo this evening. It's been a very, very long time. Really good to hear from her. More on that later as well.

Cheers,

tom

Where I work, we currently have a new client in the environment that I manage that is getting hit by systems apparently infected by the Storm worm. While the attacks currently happening are not causing any DOS (Denial of Service) and is more of a nuisance instead of a threat, it is *extremely* worrying that all someone has to do is flip a switch and cause all sorts of havoc to an environment.

> IronPort found that on Sept. 9, roughly 280,000 distinct Storm-infected systems sent about 2.7 billion e-mails advertising those addresses, making Storm responsible for about 4 percent of all spam sent that day. [[quote](http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/10/the_storm_worm_maelstrom_or_te.html)]

Perhaps the more frightening bit is that there's no head nor tail to this beast.

Speaking of shrieking… Been playing the hell out of The Thousand Year Door today and love it.

Took the day off from work, sat on my ass, played games and pretty much did nothing whatsoever. Here's hoping for more days like that in the future ;)

tom