This was a picture I took soon after I got my 400mm lens in 2001, with my first DSLR, a Canon D30. I’m actually surprised how much better the 6Dmk1 looks (even not considering the much higher resolution), at the time I thought the D30 was amazing…

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Parrot Colony:

Red-tailed Hawk, Hunting:

Eastern Phoebe:

Northern Mockingbird:

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Downy Woodpecker:

Merlin says this is an Eastern Phoebe, which I believe:

And a Hermit Thrush, so cute:

And this Cardinal by himself:

Then a Cardinal love triangle elsewhere:

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My last trail race was a bit over a year ago and apparently these experiences are some of the few I find worth documenting, so I'll bring the imaginary reader up to date on the the last year of running/hiking related activities/health/etc, even though my 2023-in-review post did some light quantification.

After Ray Miller I kept running and ran some road races in NY, including the Brooklyn Half, and a 5k a week later (when I wasn't fully recovered, which was also fun but probably too hard to soon). Later on in May I started having some leg nerve feelings, which ended up being caused by a herniated disc, so I had to cool it on the running for a bit. I started walking a lot. Pretty much any time I would normally bicycle somewhere, I'd walk instead. And as advised, I got a routine going of core strength exercises, and figured out how to continue my glute/hamstring PT. The gym, ugh. I think I read somewhere that gymnasiums were originally places where people would work out in the nude. Maybe the root was the greek word for nudity? anyway I digress. I find myself doing this in text messages too, saying way too much. Do I do it in person too and not notice it because there's no written record of it?

In the summer, Steve, Edward and I all signed up for the January 27, 2024 Sean O'Brien 50 miler. Edward and I ran this race in 2020, right before the pandemic, and joked about how covid would be nothing. When I signed up for the 2024 race, I wasn't running, did not know if I would be running by January, but I figured worst case I could try to power hike it.

I walked the NY Marathon in November (in 5:20 or so), which was a fantastic experience and I would recommend it to anybody who likes to walk. I took videos of a lot of the bands who played and then had a good Strava post which read as a tripadvisor review of the New York Music Festival -- too much walking! I should've posted those videos here. Maybe I still will. Let me know in the comments if you think that's a good idea.

A couple of weeks after the NY Marathon, I started running again, and worked up (with a covid-intermission) to a few 15-20 mile weeks, on top of 40-60 miles of walking. When I was running at my peak, the most miles per week I'd ever sustain was about 40, so I was feeling pretty good about the volume and time on my feet. Then, the week before the race, the SOB organizers sent out an email that mentioned you could change distances, and also that if you were running the 100k and you missed the 17 hour cutoff (or decided you wanted to bail), you could drop to the 50 miler during the race, at mile 43. So it became a fathomable thing -- sign up for the 100k, and if you're not feeling it at 43, just do 50. And not only that, if things go really poorly, it buys you another half hour for the 50 miler. Steve and I decided to do that.


(an old friend saw me off on my journey)

We drove to LA.


(this dog barked at me until I acknowledged him at the red light)

The (almost)-annual pilgrimage to Tacos Delta. Saw Paranorm. ChatGPT told us (and Wikipedia eventually confirmed) that Tarzana was named after the creation of its resident Edgar Rice Burroughs. Steve walked 15 miles the day before the race (!).


drop bags

Gear for the race:

• I wore the most comfortable shoes I had, which were Hoka Clifton 9s, with probably 1500 miles on them (nearly falling apart, by the end they were definitely falling apart). I've been using the https://www.activeimprintsco.com Active Imprints insoles which are great for some mild form corrections.

• At Edward's strong recommendation, I hiked with trekking poles. This turned out to be a huge help. Game changer. Kept me from tripping on my face countless times and the course has some steep climbs which you really can power up with. They were very common in use, and a few other runners I talked to regretted not bringing them (side note, what's the deal with the TSA requiring them to be in checked luggage? You're going to hijack a plane using trekking poles?! wtf).

• Since the start was before dawn and the finish would almost certainly be after sunset, I needed a headlamp. I modded my Fenix HM50R to be waist-mounted (old SPIbelt, heh). And I had a cheapo 5 GBP LED headlamp as a backup. Seeing other people with waist-mounted lamps, though, makes me want one of those (much wider illumination area etc).

• Backpack (Salomon Agile 6) with water bladder and stuff. I also carried my usual 24oz steel water bottle, which I usually keep and toss with my hands, which is enjoyable, but with trekking poles it was a pain in the ass, and while I could put it one of the front pockets of my backpack, it was a pain to take it in and out, especially as the day wore on. Noted.

• I started trying tailwind a few months ago so I brought some packets of that, stroopwaffels, trader joe's peanut butter pretzels, and some almonds.

The race -- forecast was a low of 55 and a high of 72. Turns out the start was considerably colder, though, due to microclimates of the valley. But it was still quite pleasant having so recently been in the 20-degree highs of NY.


Psyched sideways

The first half of the race was more of a run than a race, as these things go.


The race begins on a road. Hey wait.

The water crossing at mile 2 was quite a bit higher and unavoidable this year. In 2020 I managed to keep my feet dry. The wool socks I was wearing quickly dried out and didn't give me any problems.

I changed my shirt and hat and dropped off my headlamp at the drop bag at mile 13, around that time I noticed some bits of chafing in spots, put some bodyglide on there and it stopped being a problem.

Peanut butter pretzels were good, stroopwaffels too. I think I might have accidentally dropped a wrapper though, ugh, sorry, hopefully someone picked it up. I put it in my pocket and closed the zipper but when I went to open the pocket at the aid station to dump the trash it was gone. Or maybe I misplaced it. Your brain sometimes loses track of all of these things.


why didn't someone tell me that water bottle looks ridiculous in the pocket?

group of mountain bikers having lunch, I assume. nice spot for it.

this time, on the descent to Bonsall, I could see the trail across the valley that we would later be on. makes me giddy!

settling in to the race and getting ready to fall apart at mile 22, Bonsall

At mile 22 I stopped, saw a guy (hi, Peter) whom I had previously mistaken for Steve, put some squirrel nut butter and a bandaid on a hotspot on my big toe (worked well, never used that stuff before). Filled up to the brim with water.



(crows getting a free ride on the ridge)

I paid more attention to birds this year, and not just the crows. I'd like to go back to these trails with a camera and big lens and time to spare.

The massive climb out of Bonsall was nice since I knew what to expect (in 2020 it was demoralizing, lol), but it was really hot. There was a stream crossing where dipping your hat in the water was an amazing feeling (though within minutes it was back to heat). If I had more time I would've sat in it.

The second half of the race was more difficult. I no longer had the energy to take pictures. The aid station around the halfway point had a lot of bacon. I really wanted some but I couldn't bring myself to eat any. This seems to happen to me at this point, nausea and stuff. I need to figure this out (brain thinks I have food poisoning or something?). Maybe I should've tried a gel. Doesn't require chewing and pure sugar, might have been worth the try. Hindsight.

At mile 37-ish, drop bag again, grabbed lights, long sleeved shirt, other hat. Didn't want to mess with my socks so kept my original pair.

I kept moving, snacking a little bit here and there, trying to down some tailwind along with the water, hanging on. By mile 43 (nearly 11 hours after the 5:30am start) I was 5 minutes ahead of my 2020 time, and only 10 minutes behind Steve, but I really couldn't eat anything. I overhead a couple of people drop to the 50 miler. My legs felt OK, and it turned out if I continued on with the 100k route, I could always drop at 50 miles (since it was a 6-mile each way out-and-back that turned around near the finish). So I continued on. Up a hill, then down a really massive hill. Going up the hill was fine. Going down the hill was difficult. I haven't done enough quad strength training. Tsk tsk. I ran a little bit of it but it was mostly walking. Ate maybe 3 almonds, drank a few swigs of tailwind. It was starting to get dark. At the bottom of the hill it was along a riverbed for a while. Lots of frog sounds. I saw Steve when I was about 15 minutes away from the 50 mile aid station (so his lead was up to about 30-45 minutes at that point, I guess?).

The aid station people gave me a quarter of a banana, which I ate. It was not easy. They were nice (they are all). Someone I talked to earlier in the race asked if I had a pacer for this part, then looked at me like I was crazy for not. I remembered this, and asked if there were any freelance pacers available. No such luck.

Did the riverbed commute back to the climb, now with my head(waist)lamp on. Coming down the hill was a race marshall, sweeping the course. Nobody else would be coming down the hill. I could see headlamps far ahead, and occasionally see them far behind me, but for a long time I saw nobody, and heard only the sounds of frogs and wind. The moon rose, it had a lot of clouds in front of it and looked very red on the horizon.

I running a huge calorie deficit and was having to regulate my climbing of the hill in order to prevent bonking. I'd go too hard and have to back off because I could feel it wouldn't be sustainable. This was the toughest part of the experience, I think, this climb. When I was eventually caught by another runner, it was nice.

Going over the hill and back down to the mile 43 aid station (again, though now at 55-ish), with 7 miles to go. This aid station is a bit remote and you can't drop out of the race there, and I guess it was getting late, so the aid station captain was really big on getting me moving. Tried to get me to eat, but when I did my best picky eater impression he said (very nicely -- everybody volunteering at the aid stations were amazing) something to the effect of "well water is what you need most right now, now get moving." So I did. I ended up not having any real calories to speak of for the last 20 miles of the race, heh. Though almost all of those 20 miles were walked, not run.

After that final aid station, the last 7 miles were challenging but also pretty straightforward, the finish was within reach, and I had plenty of time to not hit the cutoff at a walking pace. My underwear had bunched up and I had some pretty significant butt chafing but it was too late to do anything about it, just had to suffer with it. Should've checked in for it hours ago, doh. Once I got to the flat ground of the last mile, walking at about 13 minutes/mile to the finish felt pretty good (flat!). I was sort of hoping to be DFL, but not enough to slow down when I saw some headlamps behind me.

After more than 16 hours of running and hiking, Steve was waiting for me at the finish (having waiting 90 minutes! <3). There was food, but it would be hours until I could eat anything meaningful. We headed back to Tarzana, and watched some TV (was it Boys or 30 Rock? I can't remember) before crashing.

I got the shivers again. Seemed to be associated with movement, too. Didn't last too long, and not so bad. Way better than covid. Apparently it's about inflammation.


The next day Edward made us steak. Amazing.

There was ice cream, and a cold swim in a 55F pool. Total win.

Am I ready to do this race (including its 13,000ft of climbing and descent) again? No. But it won't be long.

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(I posted this to Mastodon but really why not put it here too?)

In one of our REAPER development branches (and thus the latest +dev builds), there's now support for generating EEL2 code on the fly (for EEL reascripts, JSFX, video processors), using EEL2. I find this immensely pleasing.

To use this functionality, you can create an embedded script, using <? script code ?>, and that script has a separate variable/memory space, and can generate code using printf().

EEL2 often requires a lot of repetitive code to produce fast DSP code.

So for example, our loudness meter has a sinc filter that gets coefficients generated. Here's a before and after:

 function sinc_gen_slice(cs, o*) instance(sinc_gen_val slice_pos) global() (
   slice_pos = cs;
-  o.v00 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v01 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v02 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v03 = sinc_gen_val();
-  o.v04 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v05 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v06 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v07 = sinc_gen_val();
-  o.v08 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v09 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v10 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v11 = sinc_gen_val();
-  o.v12 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v13 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v14 = sinc_gen_val(); o.v15 = sinc_gen_val();
+  <? loop(x=0;sinc_sz, printf("o.v%02d = sinc_gen_val();%s",x,(x&3)==3?"\n": " "); x += 1) ?>
 );

There's some extra logic in there to produce identical output (including newlines) which isn't necessary, but added so I could test the output to make sure it didn't differ. The nice thing is, not only is this more readable and smaller, if you want to increase the filter size, you can without a ton of tedious and error-prone copy/paste.

Update, other tricks. If you want to make this code optional, you can do:

/* <? printf("%s/","*"); 
  printf("code which will only be executed on new jsfx/etc");
  printf("/%s","*");
?> */

/* <? printf("%s/","*");
  _suppress=1; 
  printf("code which will only be executed on new jsfx");
  printf("/%s","*");
?> */
legacy code which will only be executed on old jsfx
/* <? _suppress=0; ?> */

(retroposted on December 17, 2022)

I took a ton of pictures on this race but I really have no use for them, nobody wants to come over and see my vacation slides, and I don't have a slide projector and also I took them on my phone which means they only exist as bits. I'm always looking for excuses to write about things, but it tends to be too much complaining about programming nonsense. So here are my photos, with explanations:

I flew into LAX on the Thursday. Decided to walk from the terminal to the rental car place. It's about a mile and a half, which if you've packed light is infinitely preferable to walk, especially in 55 degree weather, than to pile onto a rental car bus. Especially these days. I rented a car (brand new Kia sedan ftw), wandered my way around, got some lunch using a gift card I purchased in early 2020, mmm french toast, went for an easy run in Griffith Park to waste some time, it was really tough to not go more than a few miles. Checked into the guest house airbnb, went to bed at 7pm or so.

Friday involved going to Tacos Delta for chilaquiles. I'll leave this here. Kept to myself, worked a bit, went to bed around 7pm again.

Got up at 2:30am, left the airbnb at a little before 4am. Drove the long way to Malibu. Got to see places I occasionally went as a kid. Met Steve and Edward (and their friend Alex) at the start around 5:15am. There are other pictures with less fantastic lighting but really why when you have this one?

Something like 80 people, I guess? We start at 6am.

I should point out that the organizers mention that the course is well marked, but there is one turn that it's very important that the 50-mile runners make (there's also a 50k starting an hour later), and if you don't make the turn you'll end up running a bit over 50k. Why did I mention this?

The first few miles are a singletrack climb, which means the start position is very important. We held back, letting the faster people go ahead. Maybe we let too many. A little running, but a lot of fast hiking. Which was good, the last thing I wanted to do is go out too fast. I never know how these things will go, I mean usually it's fine but things will hurt and there will be suffering so better try to minimize it. And I'm on a low-mileage year. Anyway.

It starts getting light on the climb, 6:19am. Steve wants to go faster, runs a little bit of the climb, I somewhat keep up (catching up on the level bits or when he stops to take pictures).

It levels out a bit, there's some running, 6:40am. The aid station will come in another 20 minutes or so.

After the aid station (which was about 5 miles), some oranges, watermelon, water fillup, maybe some other snacks I forget now, we start a 6 mile loop with a little mud. Steve's in front of me here, at about 7:20am.

Ah the views, 7:28am.

The view ahead from the last shot, I love those shots of the trail ahead (or behind -- and more accurately the experience of seeing them in real life -- at home there's nothing more satisfying than seeing the Brooklyn Bridge ahead of you a mile away, and 1 WTC in the distance behind it, then finding yourself there by your feet). I'll try to point the trail shots out, if we can see with these low quality images I uploaded.

This one I could've left out, but hey 5 minutes passed and I can still see the ocean.

We head inland and it gets really muddy, I'm told this is due to rain. Tons of mud stick to your shoes, you end up tweaking your gait in order to try to shake it off as you go. Activating strange muscles. It gets a bit warm. Only a little bit. 7:49am. Another 10-15 minutes and you're back at the same aid station as before.

I left the aid station before Steve. As a result I was in front of him. There was a climb. I was not faster.

Oxnard, in the background, I assume! Our friend Fritz was always obsessed with that name. I meant to text him about that but didn't have much cell service. 8:26am.

After that climb, there was a pretty amazing descent, which I had a lot of fun on. Steve seemed to be on a phone call while he was running so I thought I'd give him his space. Near the bottom of the descent was the Valley of the Spiders[tm][cc](Andy). The spiders were considerate in marking their territory and I didn't feel threatened. 8:50am.

Just down the road a 100' from the spider web, it got really cold, this valley trapped that cold air, and the with the humidity there were these clouds forming. It was cool but didn't photograph well, just looks like dust here.

A short 10 minutes later, you pay the price of that descent, with a pretty steep fire road climb. I walked this (I walked all of the climbing really). As I was hiking up this, the leader for the 50k race ran past me. RAN. That did not look easy to do for a 10k let alone a 50k. At the top of that hill was the same aid station again (16 miles, 9:05am or so). Where I filled my water, ate some more, and left as soon as possible. Then about 100' down the road I stopped to clean out the mud from my sock which was messing with my big toe. Oh such stupid timing...

After that there was some nice downhill, then I ended up in a valley which was very warm and humid. This was probably as hot as I was all day, and it was at 9:30am.

On the climb out of the riverbed valley, it got cooler, but my hip was doing something funny, popping with each step that I walked (didn't have the issue running). I stopped to stretch a little, which didn't help, then found that I could adjust my gait slightly in order to avoid the popping. The popping didn't hurt but it also didn't seem like a good thing. The climb was nice, here's the view after crossing a gravel path that people were bicycling on (you can see them barely). It looked like a really nice place to ride. I do get jealous of California this time of year. 10:00am or so, 20 miles in.

I had a 10 minute stop at a NEW aid station, at 10:35-10:45 or so. At this point in addition to the eating and getting water (and watered down coke), I took my socks off, put some ointment and bandaids on my toes, which had been giving me problems (somewhat due to my mismanagement of them 4 weeks before at the NY marathon, another story which will not get documented). I also snugged my shoes slightly to try to keep some of the pressure off my toes (this ended up being an oops that I'm still paying for). Anyway 10-15 minutes after that aid station is this picture, mountains pretty. I like them. I start to climb them.

I go up what I thought was a really big hill (Strava tells me it was about 750'. OK not that big). At the top is this left turn. The one they mentioned at the start. It's a little tempting to just miss the turn and do a 50k. 11:15am, about 26 miles. I take the turn.

Side note: the course was very well marked, especially compared to the races in NJ I've done, but this is sort of the exception. They really should have a sign that says "50 mile runners: if you're not at mile 40 or so, turn around and make the turn!" Maybe missing turns and getting lost is a rite of passage for trail runners...

The climb continues! You can see the trail below... wait, shit, you can't. OK how about I "ENHANCE":

That's a person, I'm 79.3% sure. It could be Steve! I could easily check that in the days of Strava and GPS data but it's better not to know.

More climbing. 45 minutes and 2.5 miles later, nearing the top. This will be fun to go back down (we go out 7 miles or so and back another 7 miles to an aid station).

After that climb, there's still hills, some up, some down. I liked it better when the aid stations were closer together. You occasionally pass groups of tourists, which always feels odd, such differences in current experiences.

Still headed to the aid station, there's a view to the Northeast of some lake. I ponder whether it is artificial. 12:40pm, 31 miles, about to descend to the aid station.





Crow (or as I'm told, Raven), seen from the descent to the aid station.

Soon after, I arrive at the 33-ish mile aid station, and put on the best thing ever -- fresh socks. Long overdue. I try to eat some but it's getting more difficult. Sitting is nice. I arrive at around 12:50pm, leave around 1:05pm.

Out and back not so interesting, same thing in reverse. I see Edward before the big descent. Take a video of him running the other way. Share some ginger candy. He says Steve should be not too far behind him. We go our separate ways.





Take this video of running at the start of the big descent -- "Coming down the mountain" (around mile 38, 2:05pm)

I didn't mention it until now, but this whole race I've had songs from The Verve's "A Storm in Heaven" in my head. Butterfly, "The Sun, The Sun", Star Sail. I wondered if "The Sun, The Sea" is a reference to l'etranger. I'm not listening to anything but damn those songs just burn a hole in my ears. Maybe I get sick of them, or just my general starting-to-feel-awfulness projects to them (I still love that album and have happily listened to it since!).

I don't see Steve on the descent. I start to guess he missed the turn. D'oh.

The section of the climb that took 50 minutes to go up takes about 30 minutes to go down. Fun. My weak left calf starts feeling not great with every left step. Still fun though.

After that descent, some new territory. 2:30pm, around 39 miles. Eating ginger candies. So far between aid stations.

Nice trails though.

Ah another canyon, 3:15pm.

I think this was soon after the last one. The photographer was like "you're almost to the last aid station!" But those 3 or so miles took FOREVER. Boring flat jeep trail.

Get to the aid station, eat some stale Chipotle chips (they had water and gels and offered to make some soup but eh). Did some more toe management. This is the part of the race where I usually end up complaining and then after the fact regret the complaining. But anyway only like 4 miles to go, just one small climb and descent then it's done.

That climb went on way too long. The small climb is still 1000'. I talked to another person who was also complaining, though his excuse was that since September he had only run two 7 mile runs. pfft! and then he proceeded to go ahead and beat me by a solid 5-10 minutes. Ah, youth.

The climb kept going. More complaining.

Looking back.

My goal was to finish. Bonus to not finish in the dark. 4:30pm.

Damn, magic hour, 4:38pm. After taking this I enjoyed the descent, passed various hikers taking sunset pictures, we all agreed it was beautiful. Finished at something like 4:52pm. Took a few minutes before I could eat anything, had some quesadillas, chili, couldn't really stomach much. It was getting cold, so I took off. Saw in my text messages that Steve did in fact miss the turn (bummer).

Drove back to LA. Got back to the airbnb, ate some snacks, realized I didn't have enough of them, oops, took a shower, got chills, got in bed, felt really good under the covers. Whenever I'd get up to pee, massive shiver shiver chills.

7am Sunday, return to Tacos Delta. Glorious breakfast burrito made me whole. A few hours later, beer with salt and kebabs at Edward's. That was also amazing.

Thus concludes my story.

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I've had nothing but contempt for Bitcoin and everything (afaik) that has spawned from that ecosystem, though apparently I've never written about it here. I have nothing but contempt for Bitcoin and everything that has spawned from that ecosystem! I'm hopeful that it's on its way out, but made sad by the fact that so many people have been scammed.

Having said that, it seems that the "Web3" movement wants to move the web past where we are now (which is where Facebook/Google/etc are almost everything), which is an admirable goal. If we can do it in a reasonable way. There's just no reason to build systems that try to be trustless or fully distributed, we already have a fantastic hierarchically distributed infrastructure for this: DNS.

In 2012, I had a thought along these lines -- and I wrote a Google Doc (irony much?) -- don't bother reading it though, it's very outdated and lacking in specifics.

To make the web more open and decentralized, what we need is a new protocol and piece of software!

WATCH - "We Are The Cloud Hosts"

• the ability to publish content to the public
• the ability to publish content to trusted people
• the ability to subscribe to content creators

• the ability to publish content to the public
  
  Typically these require a web server to server the content. WATCH envisions a system where you could run software on multiple systems (your desktop, laptop when it's connected, cloud provider, etc), and it would automatically reproduce and sychronize your content. The protocol would allow connecting to a WATCH domain index in order to connect to the WATCH servers that contain data.
  
  
• the ability to publish content to trusted people
  
  When making WATCH content requests, the requesting user could be identified by digital signature to ensure access rights.
  
  
• the ability to subscribe to content creators
  
  AKA RSS. RSS feed generation and feed display would need to be integrated into this software.

• An instance of the WATCH server running as e.g. watch-index.mydomain.com. If you have your own domain you could run it on a cloud VM, presumably email providers would be able to provide this service for your accounts if it ever caught on, etc. If a user wants data from user@mydomain.com, it would connect there, and (assuming it had permission), would receive a list of WATCH content servers for that account (which could possibly include watch-index.mydomain.com).
• A few instances of WATCH servers running wherever. If you want your web presence to be very reliable you'd put them on VMs in a few AWS zones. If you don't care much you'd leave it running on your laptop or your desktop computer or whatever.

• Part of your WATCH account state would be a feed of content
• To access WATCH feeds (yours, others, a mix of both, whatever), you'd point a browser at any of your own WATCH servers or indexes
• For purely-public web pages, there could be a lot of opt-in shortcuts to this, having the index servers redirect links to content, things like that.
• The WATCH server could provide browser-based and/or filesystem-based interfaces for posting content.

I recently got my first e-bike, and I have some thoughts:

(I've been riding in NYC for a number of years, most days, somewhere in the thousands of miles per year. Most of the time I ride a Salsa Casseroll Single with fenders, rack, panniers, 20 tooth cog for easier climbs, and most recently a Surly Open Bar handlebars and a stem riser for upright posture. Side note: a video of a recent ride. )

The last few (six?) months I've been dealing with a hamstring issue (too much running with poor biomechanics, curse you teenage self), and bicycling does seem to aggrevate it, so I decided to get an e-bike with a throttle in order to be able to rest a little while still living life and going places by bike. I got a RadRunner 2 (it seems pretty decent, reasonably priced, and you can set it up to carry passengers. I have some qualms from setting it up but I'll save those for another day).

This morning I rode from Tribeca to Union Square to pick up a few things from the green market, and back, usingthe throttle almost exclusively. I found myself going a lot faster than I normally ride, and worryingly defaulting into a "driving" mentality. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Later in the day, I rode to my office/studio in Red Hook, via the Manhattan Bridge, and made a special effort to go at a usual (leisurely) pace. It worked, and I managed to stay in a better, more peaceful frame of mind, but it took mental effort. I will have to continue that effort.

I find I definitely prefer the peacefulness of riding regular (*cough* acoustic *cough*), but my hamstring appreciated the electric-ness. What's interesting, though, is the economics:

I recharged my battery after riding 15 miles (which would be about 90 minutes of riding at city speeds), and using a Kill-A-Watt, I measured 360Wh of power use at the mains power. I looked up electric rates, and a ballpark we're talking about $0.05 worth of electricity, and the battery probably had less than 0.05% (or $0.25) of its lifetime wear. If I had ridden my regular bike, I would've burned a few hundred calories at least, and unless I was extremely frugal in my eating (I am not), there's no way I would spend only $0.30 on replenishing those calories. So in some ways, this is more economical (and probably more efficient, too?). Obviously there are benefits to exercise but let's assume I have that taken care of anyway.

Delivery people all moved to e-bikes ages ago. There were stories in the news about how they needed them in order to keep up, but I never really realized that the economics of it, even if you are as fit as possible, made generally cheaper to use electricity than to eat the extra food!

It's very good that e-bikes have been made legal in NY, hopefully the parks will follow (it feels like there should be an ADA claim against the parks that ban them, as there are people who can ride e-bikes but can't ride acoustic bikes). I'm still stunned by the efficiency of this bike, even with its massive 3" wide tires and weighing in around 65lbs.

(Update March 19: I was curious how much electricity electric cars use by comparison… sounds like typical is 34kWh per 100 miles, or 340Wh per mile… assuming that holds up in the city, that’d make the electric bike use about 1/15th the power. which is roughly in line with the mass ratio...)

Recordings:

nothing that will be missed

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It's now time when I bitch about, and document my experiences dealing with Apple's documentation/APIs/etc. For some reason I never feel the need to do this on other platforms, maybe it's that they tend to have better documentation or less fuss to deal with, I'm not sure why, but anyway if you search for "macOS" on this blog you'll find previous installments. Anyway, let's begin.

A bit over a year ago Apple started making computers with their own CPUs, the M1. These have 8 or more cores, but have a mix of slower and faster cores, the slower cores having lower power consumption (whether or not they are more efficient per unit of work done is unclear, it wouldn't surprise me if their efficiency was similar under full load, but anyway now I'm just guessing).

The implications for realtime audio of these asymmetric cores is pretty complex and can produce all sorts of weird behavior. The biggest issue seems to be when your code ends up running on the efficiency cores even though you need the results ASAP, causing underruns. Counterintuitively, it seems that under very light load, things work well, and under very heavy load, things work well, but for medium loads, there is failure. Also counterintuitively, the newer M1 Pro and M1 Max CPUs, with more performance cores (6-8) and fewer efficiency cores (2), seem to have a larger "medium load" range where things don't work well.

The short summary:

• Ignore the thread QoS APIs, for realtime audio they're apparently not applicable (and do not address these issues). This was the biggest timesink for me -- I spend a ton of time going "why doesn't this QoS setting do anything?" Also Xcode has a CPU meter and for each thread it says "QoS unavailable"... so confusing.
  
  
• If a normal thread yields via usleep() or pthread_cond_timedwait() for more than a few hundred microseconds, it'll likely end up running on an efficiency core when it resumes (and it takes an eternity in terms of audio blocks to get bumped back to a performance core, by which there's been an underrun and the thread probably will go back to sleep anyway). Reducing all sleeps/waits to at most a few hundred microseconds is a way to avoid that fate (though Apple recommends against spinning, likely for good reason). It's not ideal, but you can effectively pin normal threads to performance cores using this method.
  
  
• Porting Your Audio Code to Apple Silicon was the most helpful guide (I wish I had seen the link at the bottom of one of the other less-helpful guides sooner! so much time wasted...), though it assumes some knowledge which doesn't seem to be linked in the document:
  
  You want to get your realtime threads in the same thread workgroup as the CoreAudio device's (via kAudioDevicePropertyIOThreadOSWorkgroup), and to do that you first have to make your threads realtime threads using thread_policy_set(THREAD_TIME_CONSTRAINT_POLICY) (side note: we probably should have been doing this already, doh), ideally with the similar parameters that the coreaudio thread uses, which seems to be a period and constraint of ((1000000000.0 * blocksize * mach_timebase_info().denom) / (mach_timebase_info().numer * srate), and a computation of half that. If you don't set this policy, it will fail adding your thread to the workgroup (EINVAL in that case means "thread is not realtime" and not "workgroup is canceled" per the docs). Once you do that, you do effectively get your threads locked to performance cores, and can start breathing again.

Hopefully in 2036 I'm not calling 2021-me an idiot, too. Here's an interesting old bug situation:

Dan Worrall posted a video on the 1175 JSFX, which was written by Scott Stillwell, way back in 2006, and graciously provided for inclusion with REAPER. In this video, Dan finds that the ratio control is completely broken, and posits a fix to it (adding a division by 2.1).

Sure enough, the code was broken. I went looking through the code¹ to see why, and sure enough, there's a line which includes a multiply by 2.08136898, which seems completely arbitrary and incorrect! OK, so we see the bug ². How did that constant get there?

When the 1175 JSFX was originally written, REAPER and JSFX were very young, and the JSFX log() (natural log, we'll call it by ln() from now on) and log10() implementations were broken. On a 8087 FPU, there are instructions to calculate logarithms, but they work in base 2, so to calculate ln(x) you use log2(x)/log2(e) ³. Prior to REAPER 1.29 it was mistakenly log2(x)*log2(e), due to the ordering of an fdiv being wrong⁴ and insufficient (or non-existent, rather) testing. So when that got fixed, it actually fixed various JSFX to behave correctly, and that should've been the end of it. This is where the stupid part comes in.

I opted to preserve the existing behavior of existing JSFX for this change, modifying code that used log() functions to multiply log2(e)*log2(e), which is .... 2.08136898. Doh. I should've tested these plug-ins before deciding to make the change. Or at least understood them.

Anyway, that's my story for the day. I'm rolling my eyes at my past self. As a footnote, schwa found that googling that constant finds some interesting places where that code has been reused, bug and all.

* 1 (beyond our SVN commits and all the way back to our VSS commits, all of which have thankfully been imported into git)
* 2 (and it will be fixed in REAPER 6.26, we're calling the non-fixed mode "Broken Capacitor" because that felt about right)
* 3 (or if you're clever and care about speed, log2(x)*ln(2) because ln(X) = logX(X)/logX(e) and logX(X)=1, but now my head hurts from talking about logarithms)
* 4 I haven't fully tested but I think it was working correctly on Jesusonic/linux, and when porting the EEL2 code to MSVC I didn't correctly convert it.

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(youtube link)

This was a quick thing, using REAPER and the JSFX "sequencer megababy" and "super8", recorded and edited in 18 minutes while videotaping (taping hah). I'm going to do a longer version with more explanation of the tools used, I think. Lots of fun.

Recordings:

blanking on the date

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This is my first pedalboard. Andy was very very kind to give me The Wave and the Big Muff Pi and Pog, and I always coveted his Sunset. And I also copied his Iridium since it seemed appropriate. Anyway, so much fun. Good for recording and NINJAMming.

I also posted a song (second opinion) below... the drums I recorded when I stopped to check in on my studio, the rest from home. The words were a poem written by my grandfather (in the 90s, I imagine, given some of the references). My family edited and (self)published some of his works on Amazon.

Life keeps going on. Today I was looking at the graphs and timelines of things and got really angry with our state-level leadership (federal is another level of anger and despair). Had Cuomo put PAUSE in to effect a week earlier, think how many lives would've been saved. 15,000 cases before doing anything is way, way too many. California did their stay-at-home order with ~900. Bravo.

There's no use being angry, maybe, and I fully appreciate not having to be responsible for so many other peoples lives. I don't think a lot of politicians think this through -- the responsibility that comes with the power. Cuomo and Bill de Blasio clearly did not. There is no need for me to mention the other person who doesn't take the responsibility seriously. That's another league, and while some people say a malignant narcissist I prefer "bag of shit."

So now, I'm drinking a G+T made with the best grapefruit I can recall having had, making nothing of a perfectly lovely evening at home.

Recordings:

Not Vampires (NINJAM) - 1 - Face the Lies -- [6:58]
Not Vampires (NINJAM) - 2 -- [7:13]
Not Vampires (NINJAM) - 3 -- [5:53]
Not Vampires (NINJAM) - 4 - The Random Few -- [8:43]
Not Vampires (NINJAM) - 5 - Force Majeure -- [7:59]
Not Vampires (NINJAM) - 6 - Renormalize -- [15:17]
Not Vampires (NINJAM) - 7 - Major Reprise -- [4:50]

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Well time keeps on ticking, I guess. I've done as NINJAM-related work in the last week as in the previous 10 years, I think. The jam we had last night (see below) was awesome, I especially like the last track in it.

We started renting a cheap ($20/month) server for hosting some private NINJAM servers. My initial thought was you could request a private NINJAM server via a web interface, then it would launch a new ninjam server process and give you the port number. That seemed like a bit of work, so instead I did something that would be less work.

As the first experiment I ran 50 NINJAM server processes on the one box, and had it as a purely etiquette-based system, where you only join an empty server or a server to which you were invited. It had some usership, though it was hard to tell if people really wanted them as private or if it was just a big farm of more servers.

I thought about modes where you connect to a server, and then can temporarily set a password so only your friends can join. Seemed easy enough, though you might connect to a server you think is empty and have someone beat you to it, and people might hog servers.

One thing I noticed is that the mechanism the NINJAM server uses to decide when to sleep was fine for a few processes, but if you ran 50 of them, all those polling between nanosleeps added up.

Then I thought -- what if you had a server where if you connected with a password, that password would define the room-name you go into (the NINJAM server already has a User_Group object which is basically the whole server). This seemed like a great idea, but it turns out it wouldn't work, because the password challenge/response system doesn't allow identification of passwords, nor would it detect if two users used the same password. I thought about using part of the anonymous username as a server ident, but the downside there is that if you set that, then connected to a different server with the same anonymous credentials, you'd leak your private server name.

So what I finally came up with: the NINJAM server can now run in a lobby-mode, and via chat commands you can create/join private rooms. You can also chat in the lobby with other people who are in the lobby. So you could negotiate "hey want to play an ambient session? let's !join ambient." So you have private rooms (secret roomname), semi-private rooms, etc. Feels pretty fun! Not many users yet, though.

Of course this will all get ruined once someone decides to troll/spam/flood/etc. I'm sure at the very start IRC was amazing and simple, and by the time I left it it was a mess with bots and anti-bots and other things that just ruin everything. Oh well let's enjoy it while it lasts.

(anything to distract from what's happening outside)

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Oops I haven't updated here in months. I posted a thread to Twitter the other night, which I'm now going to post here since it's more appropriate here anyway (I was tired and lazy and on my phone). So here goes (with [edits]):

Yesterday [Saturday, 3 days ago] I did my first 50 mile ultra[marathon]. It was in California, near Malibu [Edit: The race is called the Sean O'Brien 50]. I woke up at 3:30am, left the house at 4:10, picked up @runviper [Edward] at 4:35, arrived at the start at about 5:15, before sunrise. It was cold, 40F [reminded me of home], and since the full supermoon was low on the horizon, dark.

You will see a lot of me making this face in this thread:

The start was supposed to be at 6:00 sharp, though I'm pretty sure it was 30 seconds late:

[That's the organizer with the megaphone, I believe. In the final race information email, there was a really thoughtful paragraph which stuck with me, I'll quote it here:

I believe we are capable of anything we set our minds to. If you visualize it enough, and work hard you can make it happen. Remember that it's a "gift" that we get to run on the trails. There are people who can't even get out of bed. You "get" to participate in an ultra. Enjoy the experience. Be in the moment, and just have fun. It will all come together on race day if you stay positive, and remember what a blessing it is to do what we do. Not even 1% of the population will ever do what you are going to do in less than 1 week. Pretty awesome when you think of it like that? See ya soon my friends!!

The first couple miles were crowded enough that I didn’t stop to take a picture. It went up a nice hill which made me feel powerful in my ability to climb it while running, then down the other side, through some more park, and then we arrived at a stream.

It was perhaps a small creek, but big enough that crossing it was tricky. There was a loose rope going across to help. A headlamp went flying and started floating down the water. I had a moment of heroism when I recovered it. I crossed with dry feet. Not bragging. After the creek crossing we started climbing again, and the sky started getting light.

and then the sun rose. Around this time I was able to feel my fingers again. I had thin cherry tree 10-miler branded gloves on but they could only do so much. This was almost an hour in, probably around 4 miles in, having climbed about 1500’

After we ascended another 10 minutes or so, the fog covering the Pacific came into view:

There was a photo-op moment going up over some rocks. Approaching it I figured that round thing would be a microwave dish or something but it was actually a light for a photographer.. I’ll see the results eventually I imagine. [edit: that photo wasn't great and too expensive to buy!]

[The] first aid station was about 7 miles in (hour and 40 minutes after the start). Mmm watermelon and oranges. Also potatoes and salt. Eating felt good. [Spent about 2.5 minutes here]

The next hour or so was mostly single track and had a good amount of variety. The charcoaled wood from the fires of last year offered a contrasting element to the blissful joy of the run.

At about 9am (3 hours elapsed, about 13mi, 3200’ ascent) after crossing above a tunnel, we arrived to the second aid station, which had expanded offerings from the first. Sandwiches! PB&J awesome! In hindsight I should’ve had some candy. Regretting not having candy. Getting warm.

There were drop bags at that aid station... dumped my wool shirt, headlamp, picked up sunblock. [spent about 7 minutes here] Soon enough it got very bright, and less photogenic. (note re: video — Spaceballs reference, had plenty of water):

After another hour or so (10:15am?) we crossed over a pass and could see the marine layer again. ~17 miles and 4300’ climbing cumulative...

10 minutes downhill and we arrived at an aid station. Lemonade, fruit, sandwiches, potatoes, consumed. @runviper made a taco, I questioned his judgment for eating beans, then proceeded to join him. No regrets [on the beans] (for me at least) [regrets on not eating candy]. [spent about 5 minutes here]

At this aid station they explained we were 19 miles in, we just had to do 3 miles down to the next aid station, then 8 more miles back up another trail, then the 19 miles back to the start. Legs felt pretty good... time to descend. Oof.

3 miles, 1500’ of descent, and maybe 30 minutes later, the cracks started to show. That tight IT band thing you feel sometimes? hello

eat eat eat [spent about 7 minutes] then back up the hill with full water, going back to where we were, in 8 miles instead of 3. Hey why is it so steep?

After having climbed 1800’ for an hour, you suddenly realize you’re on top of the wrong mountain [edit: but still on the course -- it is a torturous course], and the aid station is a tiny speck on the horizon. There is a gorge separating you from it.

The aforementioned IT/knee thing made the 800’ descent difficult, especially the steeper parts. So I was actually happy to be climbing again, which was good because there was 1000’ to go for the aid station

These 8 miles were brutal. The sun was strong, it was hot, and seeing the expanse between you and where you need to be was intimidating. And knowing once you get to the aid station, you still have 19 miles to go (which are largely downhill, ugh) After having gotten to the aid station, food [nutella (gnutella) sandwiches, mmm. apparently they had run out of water too, but had since gotten more], ice in the face, etc [spending about 8 minutes], we continue on. There’s a small descent, a few hundred feet later I decide I must stop and get a rock out of my shoe. We are 31 miles in, 7300’ of ascent, it’s 1:40pm, there have been rocks in my shoes all day. I probably also tried to stretch my IT. anyway we climb 600’ to go back over the pass, and look back at the ocean:

Now it’s just a short 6 miles to the bag-drop aid station. At some point around here I started using anti-chafe stuff everywhere i felt twinges. Seemed to work but could’ve been placebo. I was wincing on all of the steeper descent bits, not taking too many photos

Get to the mile 37 aid station, change shirts back to wool, grab headlamp. Eat a little but damn at this point I’m sick of food. [Should've started eating candy. changed socks, win. Drank cold brew coffee from drop bag. Both win. Also did some stretching of the IT. total time here was 13 minutes]

And another 6 miles of mid-afternoon. With 2000’ of ascent (not too gradual, plenty of my new favorite thing at this point: descent)

We get to the final aid stop at around 5pm (that 6 miles took a while!), just 7 miles to go! Stretch again here [spent about 8 minutes here -- total aid station time was about 50 minutes]

After this aid station it really got to be the magic hour:

and the fog and mist:

the full super moon returned, too

the anticlimactic ending is that I stopped taking pictures, we turned on headlamps, I endured the descents, and in the last 2 miles got my feet soaked trying to cross the stream that I had managed to cross dryly in the morning [tweaked an old injury in my arm doing this, though, hanging on to the rope crossing the stream. didn't really realize it at the time, but it became apparent by Monday], and despaired that the trail never seemed to end.

and then finally finished 50ish miles with approx 11,000ft of ascent and 11,000ft of descent, in a bit less than 13 hours. And @runviper [Edward] was kind enough to wait for me to catch up before crossing the finish.

update: Monday: legs feeling pretty good! had some nice walks yesterday and a hike today. much better than post-marathon, which makes sense since most of it was hiking...

update: Tuesday: flew home, had an easy run.

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(youtube link)

Audio (edited) - The Old Man and the C Live at Rockwood April 6 2019

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I've been recording 1-3 hour (occasionally longer) sessions of music and posting them to the internet as bigass .mp3 files for about 15 years now. As the quality of the music has steadily icnreased, I've also been looking at ways of making it more accessible (very few people can commit to listening to 2 hours of a single mp3). So after the last session, I thought it would be nice to mix it into individual tracks, naming them as I edit the session.

What I determined was that individual tracks were great! I thought about it some more and decided I could have both, generating the bigass mp3 files and indexing them (much as brainal.org does, but more intelligently. And then I realized I could parse the .RPP (REAPER project file) projects from the last 12 years or so, and generate a list of songs (from places where it was clear everything was edited) for each session. It doesn't work totally reliably, as there are plenty of places where two or three songs flow into eachother. But that's OK.

Anyway, so you might have noticed on this page the full jam links have been replaced with individual song/supersong links. We've been going through naming them as appropriate.

The other nice thing about this is that we can pull these feeds into our band websites...

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(youtube link)

Recordings:

below grade
numerically significant
super8 - 1 -- [17:58]
super8 - 2 -- [11:32]
super8 - 3 -- [1:10]

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(so much fun, yay!)
(youtube link)

Recordings:

Decanted Youth_live_at_pianos - 1 - What If We All Just Disappeared -- [6:28]
Decanted Youth_live_at_pianos - 2 - Major Major Major -- [2:51]
Decanted Youth_live_at_pianos - 3 - Insecurity -- [3:45]
Decanted Youth_live_at_pianos - 4 - False Impostor Syndrome / Sandman -- [5:12]
Decanted Youth_live_at_pianos - 5 - Niente -- [5:14]
Decanted Youth_live_at_pianos - 6 - The Squeeze -- [4:29]
Decanted Youth_live_at_pianos - 7 - Storms -- [3:52]
Decanted Youth_live_at_pianos - 8 - Last Light -- [4:50]
Decanted Youth_live_at_pianos - 9 - Spring -- [4:59]

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(youtube link)

Recordings:

live solo improv: super8 stemsy

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(youtube link)

Recordings:

a little help live
so empty live
live solo improv: super8

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This might be Major Major Major w/ Andy and Sarai (from yesterday's recording)

Side note: my Jams/Full directory now has over 65GB of 192kbps mp3. Apparently that's about 800 hours, or a bit over a month if played continuously. Maybe I should try listening to it all in order.

P.S. I just overhauled brainal.org yay.

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NYC readers -- I'm playing with Decanted Youth at Pianos on Tuesday April 17th at 8pm. If you're reading this blog then you probably have an idea of our music, but if not there's a video of a previous show, or you can listen to any of the "rehearsal with sarai and andy" mp3 links throughout.

Recordings:

unexpected need

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I've been working on a REAPER linux port for a few years, on and off, but more intensely the last month or two. It's actually coming along nicely, and it's mostly lot of fun (except for getting clipboard/drag-drop working, ugh that sucked ;). Reinventing the world can be fun, surprisingly.

I've also been a bit frustrated with Windows (that crazy defender/antispyware exploit comes to mind, but also one of my Win10 laptops used to update when I didn't want it to, and now won't update when I do), so I decided to install linux on my T100TA. This is a nice little tablet/laptop hybrid which I got for $200, weighs something like 2 pounds, has a quad core Atom Bay Trail CPU, 64GB of MMC flash, 2GB of RAM, feels like a toy, and has a really outstanding battery life (8 hours easily, doing compiling and whatnot). It's not especially fast, I will concede. Also, I cracked my screen, which prevents me from using the multitouch, but other than that it still works well.

Anyway, linux isn't officially supported on this device, which boots via EFI, but following this guide worked on the first try, though I had to use the audio instructions from here. I installed Ubuntu 17.04 x86_64.

I did all of the workarounds listed, and everything seemed to be working well (lack of suspend/hibernate is an obvious shortcoming, but it booted pretty fast), until the random filesystem errors started happening. I figured out that the errors were occurring on read, the most obvious way to test would be to run:

debsums -c

sdhci.debug_quirks=96

--- a/drivers/mmc/host/sdhci.c
+++ b/drivers/mmc/host/sdhci.c
@@ -2665,6 +2665,7 @@ static void sdhci_data_irq(struct sdhci_host *host, u32 intmask)
 				 */
 				host->data_early = 1;
 			} else {
+				mdelay(1); // TODO if (host->quirks2 & SDHCI_QUIRK2_SLEEP_AFTER_DMA)
 				sdhci_finish_data(host);
 			}
 		}

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Edit: updated April 9 2018 with less blur, original image:

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Recordings:

the messy return of an old friend
the plan for recording

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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Here, here's a collection of tracks I recently compiled into an album. It has some instrumentals, then some loop-based tracks at the end that have weird vocals on them. Lather, Rinse, and Repeat:

• 01 - Siri Is Not Listening.mp3
• 02 - Fan Appointment.mp3
• 03 - And So Returns The Heat.mp3
• 04 - Not Seventy Eight, Again.mp3
• 05 - Alternate Form.mp3
• 06 - In Need of Something.mp3
• 07 - They Think You Are Special.mp3
• 08 - SMAC (reprise).mp3
• 09 - Bad Gain.mp3
• 10 - Back of Mine.mp3
• 11 - Somewhere Else.mp3
• 12 - Don't Stop The Train.mp3
• 13 - Free Monkey.mp3

(retroactively posted Nov 2015)

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

Recordings:

dont stop the train
nana flute

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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retroactively posted Nov 2015

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(retroactively posted Nov 2015)

Recordings:

long losta cola

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(retroactively posted Nov 2015)

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(retroactively posted Nov 2015)

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(retroactively posted Nov 2015)

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First, from a recent 'git log' command:

commit f94d5a07541a672b4446248409568c20bca9487d
Author: Justin <justin@localhost>
Date:   Sun Sep 11 21:52:27 2005 +0000

    Vss2Git

diff --git a/jmde/mediaitem.h b/jmde/mediaitem.h*
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52b8a8f
--- /dev/null
++ b/jmde/mediaitem.h
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
#ifndef _MEDIAITEM_H_
#define _MEDIAITEM_H_

#include "pcmsrc.h"
#include "../WDL/string.h"

class MediaItem 
{
public:
  double m_position;
  double m_length;

  double m_startoffs;
  double m_fade_in_len, m_fade_out_len;
  int m_fade_in_shape, m_fade_out_shape;

  double m_volume, m_pan;

  WDL_String m_name;

  PCM_source *m_src;
};

class AudioChannel
{
  WDL_PtrList<MediaItem> m_items;
  double m_volume, m_pan;
  bool m_mute, m_solo;
  WDL_String m_name;
  // recording source stuff, too
  // effect processor list

  // getsamples type interface
};


#endif

* Trivia: guess what jmde (JMDE) stands for?

Wow, 9 years have gone by.

I've been having a blast this week working on something that let me make this:

The interesting bit of this is not the contents of the video itself -- 3 hasty first-takes with drums, bass, and guitar, each with 2 cameras (a Canon 6D and a Contour Roam 2) -- but how it was put together.

I've spent much of the last week experimenting with improving the video features of REAPER, specifically adding support for fades and video processing. This is a ridiculously large can of worms to open, so I'm keeping it mostly contained in my office and studio.

Working on video features is reminding me of when I was first starting work on what would become REAPER: I was focused on doing things that I could use then and there for things I wanted to make. It is incredibly satisfying to work this way. So now, I'm doing it in a branch (thank you git), as it is useful for me, but so incredibly far from the usability standard that REAPER represents now (even if you argue that REAPER is poorly designed, it's still 100x better than what I've done this week). You can't go put half-baked, poor performing, completely-programmer-oriented video features into a 9 year old program.

The syntax has since been simplified a bit, but basically you have meta-video items which can combine other video items on the fly. So you can write new transitions or customize existing transitions while you work (which is something I love about JSFX).

I'm going to keep working on this, it might get there someday. Former Vegas fans, fear not, REAPER isn't going to become a video editor. I'm just going for a taste...

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midi2osc, as mentioned in the last post, got some updates which made its name obsolete, particularly the ability to send MIDI and receive OSC, so it has now been renamed OSCII-bot. Other mildly interesting updates:

• OSX version
• Can load multiple scripts, which run independently but can share hardware
• Better string syntax (normal quotes rather than silly {} etc), user strings identified by values 0..1023
• Better string manipulation APIs (sprintf(), strcpy(), match(), etc).
• match() and oscmatch(), which can be used for simple regular expressions with the ability to extract values
• Ability to detect stale devices and reopen them
• Scripts can output text to the newly resizeable console, including basic terminal emualtion (\r, and \33[2J for clear)
• Vastly improved icon

As a bit of an experiment, and after having set up a Twitter feed for Cockos, I'm probably going to start posting more random things (that I wouldn't bother updating this blog for) to twitter.com/lejustinfrankel... All that I have so far is a link to a mp3 I made today. Maybe I'll complain about [insert random API here] from time to time, too. The big meaty stuff will go here, still, though. For example, a discussion I've had with a friend:

Someone really needs to make an open system (think web, or email) for social (or anti-social) content publishing. Imagine a world where all of the content of each user on Facebook can be hosted and delivered by the provider of your choice (or yourself), and where the privacy controls and failures are not controlled by one monolithic company.. *cough* hurry up people *cough*.. The hard part, of course, would be getting such a thing to the size where it is useful, but there should be enough people out there interested. Speaking of which, this Onion video is absolutely brilliant:





Recordings:

staring makes things disappear

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