Let the Bloodletting Begin! (Stuff for sale)

I’m moving once again and don’t want to bring the junk I no longer need/want. My new apartment will be up a few flights of stairs so the less I bring the easier the move. I figured I should try pawn off the stuff to friends/acquaintances before dealing with the hassles of ebay/craiglist.

That being said here’s  the first wave of stuff. If interested in anything email/facebook/tweet/call/text me and we can figure out the specifics. Counter offers are welcome and I can ship for cheap. Click on the images below for more info.

• Edirol Roland FA-101 10X10 Firewire Recording Interface $200
• HOSA 8 Channel Recording Snake $10
• Nyko Nintendo Wii Component Cable $5
• Hynix PC2100S 256 DDR 266MHz SODIMM Ram $5
• Elpida Lenovo 512MB PC2-5300S SODIMM Ram $5
• Belkin Wireless G Router F5D7230-4 VER:6002 $5
• Pearl Aux Percussion/Cowbell Mount $5
• Assorted Drum Contact Triggers $10
• BELKIN Wireless G Plus Desktop Card F5D7000 VER:5000 $10
• Pearl Bass Drum Pedal $20

My European Observations

The Netherlands – Dutch can’t dance
Switzerland – Is apparently Bollywood West?
Italy – Toilet seats are optional

Select photos here

Harris’ Final Show

The End of an era. Please Attend.

The Facebook Event Page: Facebook | Scamper Reunion / Harris Final Show.

Obsolescent!

For quite a while I’ve been meaning to post the collection of scripts I’ve written over the years. The majority were written to avoid mundane tasks that consumed way too much keyboard time keeping me from:

• fun computer related activities
• being social
• sleeping
• not being on a computer

I figure I might as well take advantage of computers while humans still have the upper hand. We should embrace the fact that they don’t yet have the ability to get bored, tired, lazy or understand the word “no”. In short, I like making computers my bitch, having them do my virtual chores and stiff them on their allowance come Sunday.

Below is the first of hopefully many dedicated to scripts that someone out there may find helpful/useful as either a final solution or starting point for a similar project:

I was going through some files on my old Powerbook G4 (that has been converted into a digital photo frame) and came across a script I wrote a few years back. It automates mp3 encoding and uploads the encoded mp3′s to an ftp.

I was sick of manually converting Harris’ biweekly practice recordings to mp3 and then uploading them so everyone could listen to the ideas kicked around each week. Manually, the process would take a good 20 minutes each time. Each practice session would be recorded and saved in a folder with a naming convention based on the current date (eg: 03-31-09). The script was setup to run after each practice night via a cron job. Set it and forget it. Just the way I like it.

The script was written in bash and was intended originally for use on OS X. I used lame to convert the aif files from Abelton to mp3. Once converted the mp3 are zipped and upload to a server ftp. I’ve marked up the script a bit to explain what’s going on.

#go to folder with current date
cd $HOME/Music/Ableton
cd `date ‘+%m-%d-%y*’`
cd Samples/Recorded

#dump directory list to temp file and count lines for loop
ls -1 *.aif > convert.tmp
y=`cat convert.tmp | wc -l`
x=1
e=`date ‘+%m-%d-%y’`

#declare loop to extract each line individually to pass on to lame
while test $x -le $y
do
z=`sed 1q convert.tmp`

#call lame and append mp3 file name with date
/Applications/lame –replaygain-accurate –preset standard “$z” harrispractice-”$e”-”$x”.mp3
sed ’1,1d’ convert.tmp > next.tmp
cat next.tmp > convert.tmp
x=`expr $x + 1`
done

#clean up, move mp3s to dated directory and zip
rm convert.tmp
rm next.tmp
mkdir ~/Desktop/Practice/”$e”
mv *.mp3 ~/Desktop/Practice/”$e”
cd ~/Desktop/Practice
zip -r * *

#upload zip
ftp ftp://username:password@ftpsite/uploaddirectory/ << EOF

mput *.zip
a
quit
EOF

#delete local zip and mp3s
rm -rf ~/Desktop/Practice/*

On a related note:  Twilight Zone – The Obsolete Man

Stream me up Scotty

In lieu of having two cats crash at my place for a few days I decided it would be fun to keep tabs on them while at work. Using Dreamhost’s Darwin Streaming Server, I setup my MacBook’s iSight to stream video to the net.
Prereqs:
A webcam
QuickTime Broadcaster (free!)
QuickTime Player

I found this tutorial extremely helpful making the setup fairly painless and straight ahead: IAMedia. If you don’t have a darwin streaming server, the uni/multicast setup is straight ahead so an app like VLC can pick up the stream. One thing they didn’t note was when making the reference movie be sure to include the rtsp port in the url:

rtsp://streaming.yourdomainname.com:554/…

Without referencing the port I found the stream wouldn’t work with the Windows build of Quicktime.

Capturing the every day exploits of two house cats can be a bit mundane, but was all I needed to get around to figuring this stuff out. Now I have the ability to stream video and audio anytime as long as I have my MacBook and some wifi.

Below is the embedded stream. Chances are it’s off at the moment, but if it’s live hopefully the cats are doing something other than sleeping or licking their butts.